March 04, 2009

Nano stars

Can you imagine Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Michael Moore, Joan Baez, David Lettermann during an election campaign for georgedabliubush? Imagine them keeping quiet on the weapons of mass destruction that were never found in Iraq? Imagine them shrugging off the destruction of the planet and the refusal of the Kyoto agreement desired by the oil lobby? The same people that have been financing the republican presidencies in the last decade.
The American Star System wanted Obama and they suffered Bush. In Italy the stars are nano, fixed, and indifferent to everything. Our own Star Nano System, like Fiat, is always for the government. The doormat Fazio, big baby Jovanotti, the rubbish collector Pino Daniele, the silent Vasco Rossi, mother’s boy Baglioni. The attendants Bonolis and Gerry Scotti. The former companion De Gregori, the optimist Pieraccioni. The Eagle of Arcore Iva Zanicchi. Mr. Benigni in the arms of Mastella for a fistful of Euros.
No one who denounced the lodo Alfano, the nuclear power stations, the death of parliamentary democracy, the corruptor of Mr Mills, the incinerator. I invited a few of them to V Day. They didn’t come, apart from the rare exception. They were busy. If they had participated, then “good-bye” to TV, producers, soirées, nice homes, invitations to the feasts of the parties and advertising.
Baudo dissociated himself on live TV when I said that the socialists were thieves and he kept his job. Today no one dissociates themselves anymore. Who do they dissociate themselves from? They would have to dissociate themselves from themselves. They have achieved the tranquillity of a fixed position. At Piazza Farnese, at Chiaiano, at the Grey Mouse Night in Genoa, there was no nano star.
The influence of the System’s cloned nano stars on public opinion is enormous in a TV State as Italy still is. Silence is golden, the word is silvered, and power is leaden. A lead head.
They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

PS: for the good ones, the few that are left, I’ll do a separate article.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 06:07 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (3)
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February 20, 2009

A Parliamentarian is a public servant with Special Rights

Have you ever seen a member of the riot squad charging any politicians, bankers or bankrupters? Their baton charges are reserved for protesting office workers, students and working class people. It can safely be said that the long arm of the law, lengthened by the obligatory truncheon, only comes down on the heads of the latter three groups, the destitute and the temporary workers. It is a truncheon aimed on the basis of wealth, so if your earnings exceed a certain amount, then you are quite safe. What holds true for physical beatings, holds even more true for our legislation. Powerful and ruthless when it comes to the weak, but obsequious and condescending when it comes to parliamentarians. “Dura lex, sed Brunetta lex”.
While the office worker with the broken leg is subjected to house arrest and a faxed order, the Deputy can do whatever he wishes. He can be a parliamentary absentee, he can have two jobs and two salaries and he can continue to practice his profession, just like attorney Ghedini who is paid with public money and then paid again by his client, namely Berlusconi, to defend him in the court cases against him. One of the highest parliamentary salaries in the whole of Europe and the right to a pension after only two and a half years of service. The Italian Parliamentarian truly is a public servant with Special Rights. An example to the Nation and, therefore, if the laws don’t apply to Parliament, then they should not apply to the citizens either. Public servants included. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

"Good day Beppe,
I would like to bring my specific case to you attention. I work as a nurse in a Healthcare Company and, just a few weeks ago, I was involved in an unpleasant accident and landed up with a fracture of the radial styloid and scaphoid, with a prognosis of 90 days. As you may well imagine, this situation itself was rather unpleasant, but given that there is no end to bad news, along comes the new Brunetta law. The abovementioned law highlights three important points:
1- Having to remaining available for a home visit by the medical inspector between 08h00 and 20h00, with only “one hour of fresh air per day” (from 13h00 to 14h00)
2- Having to notify the authorities exclusively by fax every time you need to leave home to go to the doctor or any other reason.
3- Loss of any salary incentives.

Point one:
I would like to know from the Honourable Brunetta whether he has ever read through the Italian Constitution, particularly articles 13 and 14 (civil relationships), which deal with the inviolable principle of personal liberty and that an individual cannot be placed in exile against his will, unlike the case with the new Brunetta law that imposes a sort of house arrest.

Second point regarding notification via fax.
I live alone and I don’t own a fax machine. In the accident I also suffered a sprain to my foot, which prevents me from walking around. The nearest shop equipped with a fax machine is about 3km away from my home and I am unable to drive, so I would like to know precisely how I am supposed to send the various notifications before leaving home so as to avoid incurring any penalties.

Third point regarding salaries.
I am being denied my freedom; I cannot return to work due to the fracture. Just like a prisoner, I am obliged to report all my movements and then, to top it off, I am also penalised in terms of my salary.
It seems to me that this legislation only penalises those that have genuine health problems, while the usual “smart alecs” will, in any event, somehow manage to get off scot-free. At this point I would like to appeal to someone in the media world who would be prepared to support me in my quest to make a point, namely to be allowed to return to work as a “plaster cast wearer”. I want to do this because I have no desire to remain “in prison” for the next three months when all that I am guilty of is getting injured. Regards." Paola M.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 08:30 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (3)
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February 14, 2009

The importance of being Ugo

The name “Ugo” offers the bearer of the name many advantages, but even more so for the one who has to say the name for whatever reason. It takes less than a second to say “Ugo”. Ideal when barking out orders and excellent when calling the bearer to order. The perfect name for the son of Berlusconi’s accountant. A name that, if it is borne by someone with the surname Cappellacci, is perfect for a nominee. The psychodwarf is busy campaigning for the elections in Sardinia, using Government funds. Never before has a Head of Government gone out to drum up support for his employees instead of dealing with the Country’s problems, which is what he is actually being paid to do. He is currently spending more time in Sardinia than in Rome.

The Sardinian employee, Ugo Cappellacci, is treated like a doormat. Yesterday, from the stage in Cagliari, the psychodwarf called Ugo to order: "Ugo... don’t put on too many airs and graces, because we are the ones that brought you here!" Then, surprised that Ugo actually wanted to say something, much like a true P2-ist master would to an island slave, he said to him: "How many times must I tell you that, when I am around, you must keep a low profile?"
The psychodwarf promised to begin with a series of public works that “could be funded immediately”, just to garner the Sardinians’ votes. That is a crime in my opinion. Promising State resources, from his position as Prime Minister, simply to favour a specific political party, is illegal, it constitutes vote buying, only worse, given the importance of his institutional position.

Berlusconi against the rest, using all of our resources. He uses the State to do his election campaigning, as if it was his personal property, "Cosa Loro" (as opposed to Cosa Nostra). He is doing so purely out of survival instinct. But for how long can this continue if he loses in Sardinia?

Go Paris!

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 06:41 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (6)
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February 13, 2009

Maurizio Gasparri (1956 - 2028)

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February 10, 2009

The strategy of the whoremonger

Berlusconi on the island of “Lost”

The psycho-dwarf’s political strategy is that of the whoremonger. Once you have understood this, all his actions become clearer. What are the elements of this strategy? It’s simple: the whoremonger always tries it on. He doesn’t worry about lightly brushing against a thigh, or touching a breast. If the woman stays quiet, his hand advances. If there’s a refusal he’ll say that she made a mistake, she didn’t understand, he had no bad intentions. Until the next time when he touches her arse.
Let’s take the Lodo Alfano as an example. The psycho-dwarf tried it in 2003. It was called the Lodo Schifani, called after Schifani who was promoted to be President of the Senate for this law. Then, the Constitutional Court smashed it. Any old politician without the instinct of a whoremonger would have set his heart at peace. Instead, he proposed it to the Italians again without even using a condom. Napolitano signed and while the Constitutional Court for the moment has not made a pronouncement, he can live free and unpunished. The strategy of the whoremonger is to go forward without having troublesome thoughts and in case of difficulty, as in “l’Onda degli studenti”(inundation by students}, to move back, and then, when the others are distracted, to move forward again.
The perfect whoremonger is one who is misunderstood: he doesn’t want to send the Police into the schools, he doesn’t want to offend the Constitution. “Chiagne e fotte” {privileged but complaining}, how could it be different? A true whoremonger does not want to be put on trial. He is innocent “a priori”. It’s not his fault if D’Alema was up for it, if Violante can never say “no” to him and if Fini likes the Kama Sutra. And not even if Mills corrupted himself on his own or if Previti corrupted the judges to get Mondadori. By definition, the whoremonger has nothing to do with it and he has a family to look after, usually more than one. The strategy of the whoremonger, however, in order to succeed, needs a very high number of whores in circulation, but he knows they’re never lacking. He rarely gets a refusal. In that case he behaves like a high class Italian whoremonger. Anyone who does not give it to you becomes a whore. And he tells everyone around. He confides disconsolately in Fede and Giordano and Gasparri and Cicchitto. He makes sure the word and the wheels of the printing press go round to destroy a reputation.
The whoremonger is an arch-Italian, a mother’s boy, one who used to cry as a child if he didn’t get a biscuit, one who copied his homework from his classmates. That’s why he has success. We are a nation of whoremongers and we are ashamed to say it. Let’s start “outing” and finally let’s all go whoring together in this country.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 05:02 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (4)
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February 07, 2009

Eluana and the end of democracy

Eluana has nothing to do with it. It is nothing more than a pretext designed to dishearten the State President and to attack his control and his role as guarantor of the Constitution. It is a head to head battle, with a shithead. The psychodwarf doesn’t want anyone around that could hinder his march towards the occupation of the institutions. Napolitano has not signed the law by decree. So the Cabinet is now bypassing him by proposing a Bill that is identical to the original decree. We must remember precisely who voted him into power. One day we may be able to take action against them for attempting a coup..
The Bill will be proposed to the Parliament of Arcore puppets, who will approve it. Is the Bill unconstitutional? Well, then we’ll simply change the Constitution! No European Prime Minister would do or say the things that this anti-democracy time bomb is about to do. Could Eluana procreate? Could Eluana survive for three or four days of enforced starvation like Pannella did? I may be a comedian, but anyone who talks like this is nothing more than a sad excuse for a human being.

Schifani has been forced into a race against time in order to get the Bill approved in the Senate. The Head of the Senate, under orders from the Prime Minister. Can’t you see that this is nothing but a farce? That Eluana is simply news to distract the masses? Another piece of terrible news comes along every day. It is not enough for us to defend ourselves against the collapse of the economy or deal with the thousands of everyday problems. That is not good enough. Every new day that God grants us on Earth, we now have to spend defending ourselves from some or other new law, decree, amendment or expropriation of our civil rights.
Our employees work tirelessly to save themselves from the magistrature and from the day of reckoning that is coming. Living in Italy is exhausting and humiliating for this Country’s citizens. While the rest of the world is trying to find a way to confront this crisis, these petty politicians, former fascists, former Lega members and full time P2-ists are using this crisis as an opportunity to strengthen their grip on power and eliminate all opposition, from the magistrature through to Parliament itself, the National Audit Office and all the way through to the figure of the State President.
They are in a hurry, indeed a great hurry. They can already hear the sound of buffalo hooves, the Niagara Falls that is heading Italy’s way. They don’t want to end up like Ceaucescu, indeed not even like Bottino Craxi (Booty Craxi). The International Monetary Fund has stated that there are some "gloomy prospects" in store for Italy. Gloomy, now there’s a term worthy of Dario Argento or some or other horror movie. They want to leave the army on the bridge of the Titanic while they make good their escape in the lifeboats.

They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 04:04 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (23)
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January 31, 2009

Rasman: officers sentenced

The Rasman murder will not make any of the television news headlines, nor will it even be discussed in any of the television studio lounges where Mrs Franzoni and the Guidonia rape cases were once discussed. No one will mention that, for the first time ever in the history of the Republic, a number of the Government’s Police Officers have been found guilty of culpable homicide. In our Police Force, there are any number of men and women that put their lives on the line for the citizens on a daily basis. Hundreds of names of policemen and women murdered by the mafia and by terrorism appear in the Calendar of Lay Saints. And it for this very reason that events such as those that occurred in Triest must be made public in order to avoid any future repetition. So that the Italians can feel free to turn to the Police, who are supposed to protect them, to protect them and nothing more.

Summary:

The attack

The trial

The sentence

Riccardo's family

A historic judgement

Daniele Martinelli: "Good day to everyone, I am here at the Court in Triest in order to follow the proceedings in the Riccardo Rasman trial. I advise sensitive readers not to watch this video because we will soon be screening certain images showing the state he was in when he was found after the crime that was committed by at least three police officers. These acts were perpetrated on a young man that was affected by paranoid schizophrenia, an illness he contracted back in nineteen ninety-two, fourteen years prior to his death, during his military service, as a result of a serious round of hazing that he went through at the Cordovado Air Force barracks.
In recent years, Riccardo was being treated at the mental health centre in Triest, so he was well known to and registered with the forces of law and order given that ten years ago already, back in nineteen ninety-two, they had arrived at his parents’ house with members that were receiving treatment at the mental health centre.

The attack

A number of witnesses reported hearing shots being fired, the sound of fireworks going off, and the doorman, a man called Pollanz, called the Police to come and investigate what was going on. The Police arrived at the entrance to Riccardo home, knocked and when Riccardo failed to open the door, they proceeded to call for reinforcements. Members of the armed emergency unit arrived with crowbars and gained access by forcing the door. At this point, they went into Riccardo’s apartment, which was in darkness.
Riccardo’s mood, afflicted as he was by paranoid schizophrenia, deteriorated when he either realised or feared that he was being attacked by persons unknown, because this is the nature of the illness or the feeling of persecution. Therefore, given the circumstances, Riccardo was experiencing precisely that which he already feared, or that the illness led him to fear.
He found himself being attacked by these police officers who threw him down onto his bed, and then proceeded to hit him while one officer clamped his one of his wrists with handcuffs and another officer clamped his other wrist. And what did the third officer do? He proceeded to tie his ankles together using a piece of wire because, given his state of anxiety and agitation, Riccardo was obviously reacting rashly at that moment. While he was thus bound hand and foot, the Police Officers continued to hit Riccardo, so much so that the autopsy even revealed a wound on his head, probably caused by a heavy object, perhaps even the crowbar they had used earlier although this is not certain, but the fact remains that at this point he was lifted up bodily and pushed to the floor.
He was then given a few kicks to his back and began vomiting, and one of the two police officers proceeded to sit on his back, at which point Riccardo, tied up as he was, died of asphyxia because, in the interim, the handcuffs had been joined together behind his back. In that position, with someone sitting on his back it is clear that the person has no other option but to die of asphyxia. It took a few minutes for Riccardo to die, he did not die immediately.

The trial

Given that this tragedy occurred, an official inquiry was launched, headed up by public prosecutor Pietro Montrone who, in about April of last year, asked that the case be archived given the exceptional circumstances and the officers’ need to protect themselves. However, the Rasman family’s defence team, headed up by attorney Giovanni Di Lullo, submitted the findings of an independent investigation and opposed the archiving of the case. The objection was admitted by the Preliminary Investigation Judge, who set a date for the preliminary hearing, during which the public prosecutor, after having read the findings of the investigation submitted by the Rasman family’s defence attorney, said: “Let’s not beat around the bush. I hereby withdraw my application for the archiving of this case because, in my opinion, certain facts that have emerged from this investigation need to be investigated further and indicate that there may be sufficient grounds for suspecting that the police officers may be guilty of culpable homicide. Therefore, the hearing was postponed to last week, still here in the Court of Triest and the accused opted for the expedited procedure, which was held in a closed courtroom with only the persons involved present, closed to the public and consequently also to the press, unless the accused themselves request that the proceedings be opened to the public.
We waited to hear the sentence, which failed to materialise even after a full day of hearings. Until today, when a second hearing was convened to continue discussions regarding the sentence, a sentence and verdict that we are about to hear."

The sentence

Public Prosecutor Pietro Montrone: "Yes, Yes, he accepted the majority of the public prosecutors requests"

Daniele Martinelli: "Please tell us Mr. Public Prosecutor."

Giuliana Rasman: The truth must come out! Ricky never threw any fireworks! The truth must come out! I understand, I understand, it went well so stay calm. WE won, let’s calm down.

Giovanni Di Lullo: "The two unit leaders have been sentenced, police superintendents Mis and Miraz, as has police assistant De Biasi, while police assistant Gatti has been absolved.

Daniele Martinelli: "Sentenced to how long?"

Giovanni Di Lullo, the Rasman family’s defence attorney: "They have each been sentenced to six months in prison, but the sentence was conditionally suspended.

Daniele Martinelli: "What was it that influenced the sentence?"

Giovanni Di Lullo: "The judge’s reasons will be issued within ninety days and we will have to wait to find out. All that was read out today was the provision itself and the guilty finding against the three police officers.

Daniele Martinelli: "So, were the requests accepted after all?"

Giovanni Di Lullo: "The prosecution’s requests were accepted for the most part. One of the four accused was absolved (female police officer Gatti), for reasons that we don’t know as yet. Evidently it emerged that her actions were not decisive in terms of Riccardo’s death in my opinion, however, we will only be able to know for certain once the judges reasons are made known.

Riccardo’s family

Daniele Martinelli: "Mr. Rasman, would you like to comment?"

Duilio Rasman: "Well, I was expecting something more, at least that some sort of justice would be served, because all that I can honestly say is that the blow we have taken is truly too great.
At our age, we had a son that suffered for so many years, to whom I was always very close. I dedicated my life to him in all respects and this blow has been simply too great. I believe that they too have a conscience and will have to admit to themselves that they made a mistake, because the only time I remember ever having come across events such as these was during the war. So all I can say that here in Triest we need some relief such as this, at least some form of justice.

Daniele Martinelli: "Will you be lodging an appeal?"

Duilio Rasman: "I don’t know. We will have to talk to the attorneys."

Daniele Martinelli: "Giuliana, how do you feel about this sentence?"

Giuliana Rasman: "I hope that more information becomes available at some stage in the future and that more light can be shed on everything that wasn’t said in these hearings. A lot has been said about these four police officers, but there are a number of issues that still need to be cleared up regarding the reasons why they acted in this way!
Like why it was necessary to bash down the door and massacre a person in this manner … Riccardo did not die as a result of a physical collapse, Riccardo died as a result of the blows, in a pool of blood, so there must be some other explanation as to why they acted in this manner …"

Daniele Martinelli: "Which you don’t know?"

Giuliana Rasman: "Well, in the police officers’ written statements there are certain specific things that the attorneys are already aware of, so an open hearing should be held so that the many remaining issues can be cleared up. This is because it was not only the four police officers that were guilty of anything and, in our opinion, there were a number of other people involved, including the other people in the building where Riccardo had this studio apartment.

Daniele Martinelli: "Attorney Anselmo, what do you think of this sentence?"

Fabio Anselmo: "Well, I don’t normally consider the weight of the sentences but rather the sentence itself because, in my opinion, in the end it has a proper and huge significance.

Daniele Martinelli: "Six months for a homicide."

Fabio Anselmo: "It was culpable homicide, but what we mustn’t forget is that these are members of the forces of law and order. I don’t wish to say too much as regards the length of the sentence..

Daniele Martinelli: "But are you already thinking of appealing against the sentence, or what?"

Fabio Anselmo: "We will wait and see what the written judgement says. Quite frankly, we were hoping for a guilty verdict and for some suitable legal sanction for the death of Riccardo Rasman and, in my opinion, this is what we worked towards.
Remember that we only became involved once the request for archiving had already been submitted!

Daniele Martinelli: "But why must there be some sort of special treatment in the case of members of the forces of law and order?"

Fabio Anselmo: "That is not for me to say, but let’s just say that it is a political issue about which I would prefer not to comment because I am part of the process. Let’s just say that the matter is certainly extremely complex.

A historic judgement

Daniele Martinelli: In essence , there are two important aspects to this very said matter: the first is the unusual occurrence of the public prosecutor’s withdrawal of his request for archiving at the beginning of the hearing.
The second issue is this sentence for culpable homicide, in other words only six months in return for having taken a human life, which may seem laughable on the one hand, but that on the other hand is breaking new ground in Italy because for the first time ever, a policemen has been handed down a sentence for culpable homicide. It has never happened previously and court records reflect only one previous case of a sentence for manslaughter.
This judgement will be reported in all of the legal magazines and could change the entire framework for assessing any other cases currently pending or any future cases."

Daniele Martinelli: "So, just one year ago public prosecutor Montrone was asking for the case to be archived. What did you, as a regional group of Greens, do about it?"

Alessandro Metz: "We bought an entire page of space in the local newspaper, "Il Piccolo", in order to tell the story about what was happening, because from what we were reading in the articles that were being published at the time, they were being very careful about choosing their words.
For example, the word killed was never used! Riccardo Rasman was in fact killed.

Daniele Martinelli: "Are you saying that Il Piccolo did not report the matter?"

Alessandro Metz: "They did report it, but in a manner that showed the reality in a biased way. It is one thing to report that a person that has been killed, but then it is up to the courts or a judge to decide whether it was wilful murder, culpable homicide or manslaughter, that is not for me to judge the case, but the fact remains that a man was killed.
Prior to publishing the article, the editor of the Il Piccolo daily insisted that we meet with the newspaper’s legal advisor in order to discuss, word for word, what we were allowed to say and what not. Notwithstanding the fact that we had bought a page of newspaper space, there were certain things that they were not prepared to put into print, one of these being that the four police officers had killed Riccardo Rasman.
And so, after exhaustive negotiations, we nevertheless said what we believed was important to say, toning down the language in a few areas, otherwise this news would never have got out in the most opportune manner."

Daniele Martinelli: "The sum paid to this daily newspaper by the Greens of Friuli Venezia Giulia amounted to some 3,500 Euro. Now, after this judgement, we still ask ourselves why this happened and we are left with a bitter taste in our mouths regarding the reasons why so much ferocity and malice was poured out against a young man with no criminal record who, just be the way, was also suffering from an ailment and was well known in the town precisely as a result of the ailment.
In this regard, at this point I don’t know whether or not an appeal will be lodged, as you will have noted from the interviews.

I will leave you with these last few comments made by Riccardo’s mother, Mrs. Maria. That is all from my side."

Maria Rasman: "They were all in it together! What we discovered is that it was not only the police officers, but there were a number of others involved because, for example, Mr. Pollanz was working for the Domio social cooperative, the same group that allocated the flat in which Riccardo was living, via the Basaglia office.
In other words, there are a number of connections. You understand? There are certain things that were concealed. I pray that these connections will come out into the open because our family had already been suffering for fourteen years, ever since Riccardo became ill during his military service and they eventually killed him..
We, instead... after having done so much for our son, those people killed him. We were so happy to be able to look after him and to provide everything that he needed. No one else helped him. We need to find out what really happened, it must not be allowed to remain hidden!
My son was not a criminal, nor was he a member of the Mafia, so obviously someone must have lodged a false complaint.
There is something that I must tell you! They had been badgering him already for a year and a half, ever since they found him alone. He was never alone because he was scared and was always with me or my husband, or with his sister. "Mom, won’t you come up and help me a bit with the cleaning?" Either we, or his sister would go to his apartment, but he was never alone.
On that fateful day, he stayed with my husband and I until half past seven and when we parted company at the crossroads, my son said to me: "mom, we’ll se each other again in a couple of hours..."Did we ever see him again? Taking care of a thirty-four year old son, only to have him disappear suddenly is a shame!
The reason we left our hometown of Portorose in Slovenia to come to Italy was so that we could live in peace, instead, here in Italy they killed our son and we don’t know why! We loved him so much! Our family has been torn apart by this episode! I don’t know what else to say. Our family has been torn apart! After a lifetime of work... "

Previous postings:

On the death of Riccardo Rasman

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:31 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (4)
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January 23, 2009

The Maroni Clause

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The demonstration called for by the family members of Mafia victims has been moved from Piazza della Repubblica to Piazza Farnese in Roma but will still be held on 28 January. I am told that the move is due to the Maroni Clause, inspired by Clause 22 by Joseph Heller.

Clause 22:
- article 12, Clause 1: The only valid reason for requesting leave from the front is insanity
- article 12, Clause 22: Anyone requesting leave from the front is not insane
In other words, if you are insane you can leave the front, but if you want to leave the front then you are not insane.

The Maroni Clause:
- The Italian Constitution, article 17: Citizens shall have the right to gather peacefully without carrying arms...The authorities must be notified about any gatherings to be held in public places and said authorities may only forbid such gatherings for proven reasons of security or public safety
- Maroni Clause, sole article: Demonstrations prohibited in front of places of worship.
In Italy, all main squares have a church. Citizens shall be free to demonstrate in any main square, as envisaged in the Constitution, but not in any main square with a church.

Therefore, for example, the Vday demonstration in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna and in Piazza San Carlo in Turin would not have been authorised.
The Maroni Clause is unconstitutional, and you don’t have to be a constitutional expert to understand this fact, it is enough for one not to be Maroni.
Islamic mass prayers in protest against the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza lie at the root of the Maroni Clause. Harbouring bed thoughts is a sin, but in Italy it is a good thing. I want to have extremely bad thoughts. The objective is not the Muslims, but rather the Italians that want to hold a demonstration. First they filled up the media with the regime’s bullshit, and now they want to make the squares off-limits.
All I know is that I will be in Piazza Farnese on the 28th January 2009 at 09h00, in order to demonstrate my solidarity with the families of mafia victims and the Public Prosecutor of Salerno, Apicella, as well as Luigi De Magistris and Clementina Forleo. Spread the word.

Ps: in the interests of safety, I will get myself a pair of thick shin pads so as to avoid being bitten by Maroni.

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January 18, 2009

Berlusconi’s Sardinian elections paid for by the State

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The psycho-dwarf is in the election campaign in Sardinia. With the Blue {official} cars? With whose resources? With whose bodyguards? With whose salary? With which helicopters? With what unauthorised TV concessions? With what time, given that he is paid to be the President of the Council? With what cheek, given that, with his office, he should represent all the Italians? With which State aircraft? With which State functionaries who receive a public salary? With what pressure on ENI for an election-style occupation in Sardinia? With what absence from Parliament where he is never present? Who is paying for his cappuccino and brioche in Cagliari? Are those also on his expense account?
A President of the Council cannot take part in an election campaign with public resources. A President of the Council should not be occupied full time on regional elections, first in Abruzzo, and now in Sardinia. A President of the Council should be committing himself to turning round a country that is by now on its last legs, not in using the resources of the Italians to run a permanent election campaign.
Has the Court of Accounts got nothing to say? And the Constitutional Court? And Morpheus Napolitano is not sending out a warning? Brunetta, so watchful and ferocious about the absenteeism of public employees, does he know that his boss is never presenting himself in the Lower House and that he is using public finances to be a travelling salesman. Is he going to put his name forward to be sacked? How many Ministers did Berlusconi take to Abruzzo to support wooden-headed Chiodi? How many will he take to Sardinia? “Tremorti” who is talking to the shepherds. The Ministers seeking votes rather than working for Italy.... In such a blatant way that has never been seen before.
A President of the Council in an election campaign is capable of making every promise and imposing it on the Government to keep the promise. His opponent cannot do that. What’s the point in having immoral elections? A farce worthy of a travelling salesman? The psycho-dwarf is fighting using all the resources of the nation (not his own). Soru just his reputation. Fortza Paris!

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 09:05 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (12)
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January 17, 2009

Save your current account from the State

Dormant accounts used to finance the social card and Alitalia. Dormant accounts. What a nice definition designed to screw you. You are dormant like your accounts and other people have all the fun. You deposit your savings in the bank. You trust your bank and the person of the manager of your bank branch, otherwise you would certainly not trust them with your money. You leave your money there, dormant, so that it may grow over time, perhaps with the aid of a modest rate of interest. However, if you do not touch your account, after ten years prince charming comes along and wakes it up for you. He wears the face of the Minister of the Treasury. He doesn’t kiss your account but instead screws it. The account is woken up and the contents are transferred into the State coffers. The relationship is supposedly between you and your bank. The money in question is yours. The party using it is the Treasury.
It is nothing more than legalized expropriation. As at the end of November last year, there were some 1,071,590 dormant accounts, equivalent to some 800 million Euro.
This Government is on the bones of its arse and yesterday the “Banca d'Italia” used the term "wartime economy". This Government is sticking its hands into the Italians’ pockets, using dirty tricks such as that of the dormant accounts. This has happened before and forced withdrawals were made from current accounts during the time of the Amato Government, but this time the situation is worse.
This Government cesspool is now striking the weakest and most trusting members of society. The elderly and the Italian emigrants living in Canada, in Australia and in Brazil, who are not aware of the decree or are not in a position to keep themselves informed or to be informed. Those that are unaware that their money is about to disappear unless there is some movement on their accounts. And this is true for all types of investments:
- cash deposits made with the intermediary and subject to the duty of refund
- deposits of financial instruments in custody and under administration
- insurance contracts covered by article 2, clause 1 of Legislative Decree No. 209, dated 7 September 2005, in all cases where the insurer is committed to pay out interest earnings or capital amounts at some predetermined future date.
The bank should send the depositor a registered letter with proof of receipt in order to advise the individual that their money is about to be withdrawn by the Treasury. As far as I am aware, the bank is not required to do so for all types of deposits. Let the Treasury correct me if I am wrong.
If you have any acquaintances abroad or know any elderly people, use the Ministry’s search engine to check whether or not they have any dormant accounts and warn them immediately. In theory, for up to ten years after the date of expropriation, the Treasury can be asked to return the money withdrawn. Do you get it? You can ask for YOUR MONEY BACK... There should be some or other procedure in place for recovering your money, however, I phoned one of the banks and was told that they are still awaiting instructions from the Ministry so as to find out what this procedure will be...
The Government expropriation does not apply to deposits of less than one hundred Euro, for the time being..., but perhaps tomorrow they may even need this small change.
As regards the 2% drop in GDP forecast for 2009, Tremonti has stated that we are not living in the Middle Ages. This is true, because at least during the Middle Ages thieves were called thieves and taxes were called taxes and not legal decrees. This Government doesn’t bother to stick its hands in the Italians’ pockets, it goes directly to their banks.
Warn your acquaintances and family members living abroad, as well as any elderly people that you know. Don’t allow the Government to screw them out of their savings.

Ps.: join the Facebook group called: "Save your current account from the State"

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:21 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (2)
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January 14, 2009

Pavia, a de-grillified town

Interview with the mayor of Pavia, Piera Capitelli

Once upon a time I was on TV, then they threw me out. I took to theatres. But often the theatres are not big enough to hold the numbers of the public. So I moved on to the arenas. Then I started the blog and I organized two V-Days against corrupt politics and the regime information. Now the mayors are denying me the possibility of using the arenas with the most varied of excuses. Pavia is not the only town to be de-grillified. It has not been possible to tour the show “Delirio” to many cities with the most varied of excuses.
I have often been to Pavia with 2/3 evenings in the “palazzetto” that has a capacity of about 3, 000 and for this welcome I thank the people of Pavia. In 2008 I was not allowed to use the PalaRavizza and the reason given was because it is only for sports events. The parquet got ruined. The cabinet member Portolan and the mayor Capitelli have however made this same venue available for a private party , with the guests Ale and Franz, for the company "Fratelli Della Fiore" with 500 invited guests on 11 December last year. See the article in “Provincia Pavese”. Thus it is a "parquet ad personam": it depends on who is trampling on it.

An email received from the City of Pavia on 4 December refusing the use of the venue.
From: Gianfranco Longhetti mailto:glonghetti@comune.pv.it] Sent: Thursday 4 December 2008 16.42
TO: PROMOTER
Subject: Request to use PalaRavizza
With reference to the request to use the PalaRavizza for the day of 19 January 2009, I am communicating to you that on 4 December 2008, the City Council has adopted the decision to not make the venue available for that show.
I am available for any clarification and I offer you courteous greetings.
Director Gianfranco Longhetti"

The people of Pavia cannot see Grillo. Is this an order from the Veltroni camp? The mayor invites me to go to the exhibition hall, a smaller space that has never been offered before. She wants me as a participant in the Festival dei Saperi {Festival of Knowledge} in September. I already have commitments. I’m sorry. But, as of now, there’s one thing I can make known for their Festival dei Saperi: to Fxxk off!

Text of the interview:
D.Martinelli: Mayor Capitelli? Good evening. I am Martinelli, an Internet journalist. Could you give me thirty seconds before the City Council meeting starts? Thank you. Recently, use of the hall has been denied for the Beppe Grillo show. How is that?
Mayor Capitelli: Nothing has been denied at all! The cabinet member for sport has decided to not give authorisation for shows in the sports hall. This, I believe, I don’t know, but a long time before there was a request from a local agent who organises shows for Beppe Grillo. These are all things that they don’t know. I wouldn’t think of preventing someone from doing a show! If there’s a building suitable, Beppe Grillo can do it where he wants to. Anyway, Beppe Grillo does not shock politicians, at least not politicians like me, who have nothing to be shocked about. In fact, his presence has been requested for a cultural initiative. I hope the request has already got to him and that he has got the September date down because we would like Beppe to be among our guests for the Festival dei Saperi.
D.Martinelli: So you are confirming that Beppe can come to Pavia in September?
Mayor Capitelli: Yes, as a guest in a debate in which he can say anything he wants to, but he can even come before that! As long as he asks his agent Fraschini and it’s OK.
D.Martinelli: No because it seems that that regulation was issued just the day before the show. It wasn’t there before that.
Mayor Capitelli: I would say that it’s not like that and that it is malice that makes people talk about it. I’m sorry but I really have to go now. I have to deal with the snow emergency.
D.Martinelli: So it’s not true that you are refusing to give a space to Beppe? Can I talk to the cabinet member for sport?
Mayor Capitelli: You would have to telephone the cabinet member for sport because he is on holiday. A final question then I will leave you.
D.Martinelli: Anyway, it’s true that you have denied the people of Pavia the possibility of seeing Grillo in Pavia?
Mayor Capitelli: I have not stopped anyone from doing anything. – the town council – no! I have obliged nothing. Gianni Morandi has an agent who is organising a show for him in the exhibition hall. Let Beppe Grillo’s agent go and ask the Chamber of Commerce for the exhibition hall that is absolutely accessible and available. My cabinet member has said that there can be no shows in the sports hall and I am not going to overturn a decision of the cabinet member for sport.
D.Martinelli: Thus there is a venue available in the city?
Mayor Capitelli: I truly believe so, you just have to look for it and you just have to be prepared not to start arguments. I have no wish to have arguments with Grillo.
D.Martinelli: No. No one wants to have arguments. Thus what is the venue that is available for Grillo?
Mayor Capitelli: The exhibition hall! So Grillo can do just like Gianni Morandi. Great.
D.Martinelli: Thank you.
If you too want to ask the mayor for information about the PalaRavizza then send her an email.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 06:16 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (4)
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January 10, 2009

Free torture

Waterboarding - Amnesty against torture

Obama has stated that: “The United States will refrain from practicing any form of torture during my administration”. What this means, therefore, is that torture was practiced by Bush … All forms of torture are prohibited by the Geneva Convention, however, it appears that the greatest democracy on earth (whatever that may mean these days) was practicing torture. Ever heard about simulated death by drowning, about Guantanamo or about Abu Ghraib? If Bush was indeed the one in charge of the torturers, then he must be prosecuted.
Georgedoubleyou can ask the psychodwarf for help. He could seek political asylum in Italy. The Country of sunshine, sea and torture. Indeed, our penal code does not classify torture as being a crime. He we can continue to torture people, like in Genoa during the G8 meeting, and be absolved of all blame. If torturing someone is not a crime, then there are no grounds for claiming that an offence has been committed. It is thus possible to make a bunch of youngsters strip naked, then take them into a “torture chamber” (that is precisely what it was called), make them kneel down over the latrines and beat them with truncheons. Just as happened at the Raniero barracks in Naples in March 2001. All of the accused got off scot-free thanks to statute barring. I hereby propose the twinning of Bolzaneto and Raniero, with an exchange of prisoners. Both the left and the right wing like the idea of torture. The events in Naples took place while the left wing was in power, while those that occurred in Genoa took place when the right wing was in power. As we all know, these two sides are equally bad. In Cesare Beccaria's Country we are free to torture anyone with total impunity.
Not only does Italy practice torture at home, but it also exports individuals for others to torture. Abu Omar, an Egyptian imam, was kidnapped in Milan on 17 February 2003 by CIA agents and taken to Aviano, from where he was taken to Germany and then on to Cairo. He was incarcerated in Alexandria in Egypt and tortured at leisure by being beaten until he bled, then tied to a cross and electric shocks administered. Perhaps Obama could ask the man he has appointed as Head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, to publicly reveal the names of Abu Omar’s torturers. Perhaps all those Deputies and Senators that spend their days and nights trying to reform the justice system in order to cover their own arses could propose that torture be classified as a crime instead of rewarding the torturers as happened with the promotions granted to the agents involved in the G8 fiasco. It would be in their interest. Unless the practice of torture is abolished, it could (possible) be applied (legally) to them one day … A Nuremberg virgin, one yank of the cord, two turns of the screw, three litres of water and salt. The Italians demand nothing less.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 01:53 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (0)
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January 07, 2009

The Voghera housewife and maestro Pregadio

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The Voghera housewife is waking up from the TV torpor. Her husband is touching up his clogs in the garage. The instigation to berlusconpopular consumption has left her feeling muddled. The debts that she accumulated when full of trust in the tall stories from Giordano, Belpietro and Fede don’t let her sleep at night any more, but it’s her fault if the country doesn’t take off again. She can smell a strange odour in the air and it’s not Chanel number 5. And she became more distrustful right from the moment that maestro Pregadio was cut out of Corrida. Crikey. If you take away Roberto Pregadio from the Voghera housewife that’s the start of the end.

"Dear Beppe,
Here in England it’s already 1929. On 5 January, Woolworths closed (27,000 employees). It was a supermarket of tens of years of experience, selling products accessible to the working class, the ideal for the Voghera housewife, as they would say in Italy.
Closures of other great commercial networks will follow. Most of the major banks have already been ‘nationalised’ by the government. House prices have tumbled. In London not even a garage is getting sold. The pound sterling has collapsed. Waste paper like the German Mark in the time of the Weimar Republic. By the end of 2009, one million one hundred thousand employees will be without a job. In the City they have started already. So should I be crying? Not at all. I’m having a great laugh!
This crisis was needed. It is a panacea for everyone. The vendetta for those honest people who base their economy on working for others and not on consuming just for themselves. As a medical doctor, I have always worked a lot (well over 40 hours a week) . I have never had debts. I have always tried to avoid the vulgarities of the Voghera housewife (holidays in the Tropics, restaurant every Saturday night, weekends in the snow, etc…..) based on unlimited credit for everyone. And this is the point. It’s the end of the ideology of the mass market.
From the 1980s onwards, the delirium of capitalism had mapped out a market society based on the standard character , the so-called Voghera housewife. She is an ordinary person, often lazy, one who consumes 4 or 5 hours of TV a day (usually Berlusconi ‘s important soap operas, with us it means programmes like East Enders or Coronation Street) who had to have the right to everything to be able to buy everything and thus to enrich the few really rich people on the planet. Bit by bit, all the most important things in life like health, food, a home, even resting from work and sex have become a market product. The housewife no longer had to work and produce but just consume and be really insistent that all products are sold with the maximum guarantee so as to protect her day to day enjoyment. Professionals with years of experience and competence like myself, are obliged to treat their impossible-to-make-content clients (at a certain point even the "patients", from the Greek word “pazein”, to suffer, have become "customers") as though they were managers in a supermarket who had to sell themselves in the best way possible (including the ‘look’), rather than be thanked for their daily dedication and forgiven if they perhaps lose their temper with a hysterical patient after a hundred hours of being on call. And the few people that worked extra, risked more, until even collapsing at work.

...

If those millions of Voghera housewives and their lying husbands had studied, if they had worked their butts off and if they had kept themselves informed with true information rather than the rubbish from Bruno Vespa and Mike Bongiorno, no thief would have taken them for a ride and violated them. So shall we give them a hand? Revolutions start with pitchforks. I’ll pay for the first one hundred as long as they use them well, up the backsides of the folk mentioned above.” Giovanni Dalla-Valle

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:04 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (8)
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January 04, 2009

Horoscope for 2009

Goodnight Italy, Luciano Ligabue

In January the economy will slow down, but it’ll hold up.
In February Morpheus Napolitano will be slightly worried about the GDP.
In March Tremonti will beg the Italians, Geronzi, Profumo and Passera to buy BOT, BTP and CCT {government bonds}.
In April the psycho-dwarf will give guarantees about the future of Italy.
In May Boss(ol)i will give reassurances that federalism is very near.
In June no one will go and vote in the elections
In July there will be more than 2 million newly-unemployed people.
In August Morpheus Napolitano will explain on live TV that he is worried by a possible crisis.
In September Tremonti will cut pensions and public service salaries by 30%. Still in September the public debt will be more than 1,900 billion. Still in September the psycho-dwarf will be snapped shopping in Milan’s via Montenapoleone to reassure the Italians. Bondi, Cicchitto and Gasparri will spend every afternoon in Upim (a supermarket) filling up their trolleys.
In October teachers will receive no salary and the schools will be closed.
In November the local authorities in Rome, Naples, Palermo and Bari will go bust. Still in November the psycho-dwarf will g off for two weeks to Barbados to set an example and show everyone that the crisis is a communist invention.
In December, while he is crossing the border with Austria, Tremonti will declare that the State is bankrupt and that there is tax federalism. In that each one will keep for himself what he has in his pocket.
In December the psycho-dwarf will decide to prolong his holidays for a few years and to get assistance from the super consultant Lucianone Gaucci to negotiate with the tribunals of the Republic his re-entry into Italy under house arrest.
Happy New Year for 2009!

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 06:22 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (7)
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January 03, 2009

Five sisters may just be enough for me...

Bombings in Gaza
Click on the picture

Jawaher, 4 years of age, Dina 8, Samar 12, Ikram 14 and Tahrir, 17 years old. Five Palestinian sisters from the Balousha family. They used to live in Jabaliya, near Gaza City in a refugee camp in the Gaza strip. They were killed by a bomb. An Israeli F16 flew over the houses of Jabaliya and the Imad Aqel mosque. The plane skimmed over them in the night and its breath destroyed them. Israel wants to fight Hamas, but kills the children instead.
Can it be said, or even shouted that anyone that deliberately kills children anywhere in the world is an assassin? And that such party should be put on trial in an international court for committing crimes against humanity? There can be no valid justification for such action. Author Abraham Yehoshua, one of the most important voices in all of Israel has stated that: "We had no choice ". But there must in fact be some choice between the life of a little girl and any other option. The little girl is sacred, while the rest matters not.
Israel wants to create a security cordon around its territory by executing bombing sorties all the way from Lebanon through to Gaza. However, it won’t be their bombs that deliver the security they desire. For every civilian that is killed there will be one hundred new terrorists. For every Lebanese, Palestinian or Arab child that is killed, there will be one thousand new terrorists. When Israel massacres civilians in this way, the Country becomes no better than their sworn enemy and, for this very reason, at some time in the future they may well find that they no longer have any friends in the West. We ask Israel to be not only stronger than those that wish to destroy her, but indeed better than them.

The photograph of the five dead sisters has been circulating around the Arab world and the Middle East. A photograph of mass rage.

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January 01, 2009

Upside Down Italy

"Long live Caselli! Long live the Antimafia team of magistrates!"
Click on the image


A young Sicilian lad shouted out: "Long live Caselli! Long live the Antimafia team of magistrates!" during a peripheral exhibition of Sgarbi the man convicted definitively. He was moved away by the security forces, deprived of his liberty and closed in a room. The people who witnessed the scene, apart from a few exceptions, just stood and watched. It is an Upside Down Italy. The honest one is the dishonest one. The judge is the thief. The convict is the parliamentarian. To understand how to behave it’s enough to say the opposite of the truth.
The Italian’s North Star is what is right turned upside down. He cannot make a mistake. Whoever minds his own business lives for a hundred years and whoever minds his business and ours as well becomes the President of the Council. If the lad had shouted out "Mangano’s a hero!" he would have been invited to dinner with the authorities with festive food. In a country of liars, saying the opposite of the truth, pays off.
Let no one touch the lad. He is a little hero, a rare flower. The others, those present who did not take action to defend him, are instead real Italians. Those that have to look after a family and a “capobastone” {mafia boss} .

Sonia Alfano writes:
”Once more we are obliged to take note of the shameful behaviour of Vittorio Sgarbi, mayor of Salemi, the municipal police who acted in complete and total violation of the law and of the press who, as often happens, reported false and imprecise information. The lad who challenged Sgarbi only proclaimed true information and a certain press labelled that as “accusations”. Sgarbi has a previous conviction for defrauding the State and at the first and second level for having libelled Dr Caselli and the entire Antimafia team of magistrates. Thus we are grateful to the lad who presented this challenge for having shown that in Sicily there are people who are able to shout out the truth and to challenge, legitimately, anyone who is stained by such serious behaviour. We are saddened by the outrageous behaviour of the municipal police who without right or reason took the lad and locked him in a room in the library "Franco La Rocca"... It is paradoxical that men of the State defend a convict who has defrauded those same institutions that are represented by their uniforms. We will call those who carried out these serious events to answer for their actions in front of the appropriate judiciary....” Sonia Alfano

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December 28, 2008

The reform of all reforms

Mussolini at the Teatro Lirico, 16 December 1944
Click on the picture

The psychodwarf has said that: "in my opinion, 2009 is going to be a terrible year ". He stated that the Government’s main priorities in order to drag the Country out of the current crisis will be to "Reform the justice system and the law on telephone tapping ". So now the unemployed can sleep easy. If they phone their wives they will at least be sure that no one is listening in on their conversations. Furthermore, even the ever decreasing number of people who are employed will not need to worry. If any public servant who is paid with their income tax money steals anything, he won’t land up in jail. In the light of an Italy that is impoverished and prediction that two million more people will be unemployed, the psychodwarf’s words ring out like the orchestra that accompanied the Jews on their way to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Since its inauguration last spring, this Government has had only one priority, namely to prevent the incarceration of any politicians at any cost, beginning with the Prime Minister himself. The Alfano Bill has become the gravestone of democracy. In Italy, there are now four individuals that are more equal than everyone else. As regards the Mills and Bassolino court cases, the only ones taking any notice of the proceedings are the judges, while the regime media remains conspicuous by its absence.
The psychodwarf has pointed out that he: "finds himself acting as President of the G8 and the G14 for the third time, which is an absolute record ". This is the kind of statement that should make us stop and think. If someone like him can set such a record as our representative, then there is no hope for the controlled media. We are the problem. Our apathy. This Italy was never really born and it has neither body nor soul. It is like a zombie, dominated by mafia groups, freemasons and criminal politicians. There have been some highlights along the way, such as the partisan battles, Falcone and Borsellino, Ambrosoli and Livatino. But these were nothing more than isolated cases. Exceptions to the rule. For a long time now, those that have not resigned themselves and have continued to oppose the regime have been either isolated or killed and often isolated in order to be killed.
Fake democracy is no longer enough for those that are busy implementing the P2’s plans in a scientific way. What they want now is a true dictatorship. We underestimated these people badly when we believed that they had any limits. There are no limits. They are our employees, but they have now become our masters. Wastrels with an immense survival instinct and, at the moment, their survival instinct is stronger than ours. They are keeping us in a state of assisted media coma thanks to the newspapers (financed by us) and control of television broadcasts.
Waking up will be hard and when Tar Head says that: "IN MY OPINION, 2009 will be a terrible year ", perhaps he is referring to himself. On 16 December 1944, Mussolini went to the Teatro Lirico in Milan. Italy had been destroyed by the War through his doing, however, the people of Milan had a triumphal welcome in store for him. Just a few months later, in Piazzale Loreto, they had other ideas.
The only reform that is needed in Italy is Political Reform. Those that represent us cannot be above the law. The signatures of 350,000 honest Italians calling for a popular law for a Clean Parliament have been stalled at the Senate Committee for a number of months now. They have yet to be examined by Committee Chairman Vizzini of the PDL. His master will not allow him to proceed. Nor will the PDwithoutanel party of the D'Alemas and Cicciolino Veltroni.
Every now and then I think about this and I cannot understand what is going on. Why is this happening to us? What have we done as a nation to deserve politicians such as these? And how much longer can this continue?
They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 05:49 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (3)
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December 27, 2008

Shoe of the year

The Baydan Ducati 271 shoe is the personality of the year for 2008. This is the most famous shoe in the world. Journalist Muntazer Al Zaidi recently donated his to President Bush who was on a visit to Iraq, the Country to which Bush has been exporting democracy in recent years. Muntazer now finds himself in prison, facing a sentence of up to 15 years, in other words seven and a half years per shoe. The court case is due to begin next week. He will be charged with attacking a foreign Head of State during the course of an official visit.
Support has come from all over the world for Muntazer, who is being seen as the victim of a judicial error. The Turkish Cmpany Baydan is busy producing 500,000 pairs of Ducati 271 shoes for all those people that especially wish to bid a special farewell to georgedoubleyoubush. We too have not held back. One Italian company is currently distributing their own model of shoe, bearing the name of the journalist Muntazer on the Arab market. Muntazer’s brother, Thargam al Zeidi, has not taken it very well. He announced that he intends to take the company to court.
The psychodwarf could also become the best ever sponsor of Italian companies abroad. Any “Made in Italy” item that a journalist could throw at him would become an instant success worldwide. The throwing of objects at Berlusconi could provide a much needed kick start for our exports. I understand that this would be difficult because the journalists can’t even get close enough to him to ask him a question. They wouldn’t even dare to throw a scarf at him, which is a pity because "Berlusconi shoes" would sell like hot cakes all around the world and would be worth at least an additional two points on our Gross Domestic Product.
Muntazer’s shoes were destroyed by the Iraqi security services for fear that they may contain explosives. This was a big mistake, it was only a gesture of affection. Let’s give our own politicians some shoes. They are facing a long walk in the New Year. The shoes will be very useful to them. Here are some suggestions for the 2009 winter-spring season.
Napolitano: an old Hungarian boot
The psychodwarf: a pair of seven-league boots to ensure a safe escape in 2009
Veltroni: brownish-pink, PDwithoutanel-coloured booties for the matinee, as well as a pair of slip-on sandals for the afternoon at the beach
D'Alema, Violante and Fassino: little red shoes and a tutu, perfect for their last tango in Arcore
Brunetta: a pair of platform shoes
Calderoli: Lega-green galoshes for pigsty workers
Carfagna: a pair of glass slippers to be worn on the next date
Gelmini: black, thigh-high leather boots, she drives me mad
Bassolino: downhill ski-boots for the refuse dumps in Campania.
Start a collection of old shoes instead of simply turfing them out. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 05:06 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (1)
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December 24, 2008

Letter to Father Christmas

" Dear Father Christmas,
During 2008 I have not been good. I have told so many people to FxxK off. I have been nasty to journalists, editors, politicians, ragged arsed entrepreneurs. Please bring me something all the same. I promise you that next year I will change. It’s a little gift that I’m doing for you. I will be even more nasty, more of a bastard. I will not forgive anyone anything. The year 2009 will be my Vaffanculo Year. You who brings presents to everyone. You who has transformed the birth of Baby Jesus into a supermarket. You who are the grandpa of the psycho-dwarf and suggested the idea of the social card to him. You, with your reindeer, who are a witness to consumerism. To you I ask to bring me tonight a few gifts for the year that is coming.
Don’t let any more workers die. 1,300 have disappeared in 2008, that has already been announced. Change class. Move on to the politicians, the editors of newspapers and TV channels. A really tiny work accident for Riotta or Vespa or Giordano, a TV camera on their foot. A slight upset for Cicchitto, Gasparri or D’Alema, a basic pension and a studio flat in a housing project on the outskirts of the city.
Take an alarm clock with an exceptional sound system for Morpheus Napolitano and if it’s needed a hearing aid and a pair of spectacles. Perhaps he will wake up and will see his former mate Bassolino in the right judicial light and he will be ashamed of the Lodo Alfano.
To the precarious workers, the unemployed, the fathers of families, the single mothers, the non-European who have ended up in this delirium that is Italy, give the hope of a civilised democratic country, in 2009 apart from hope they will have nothing else.
Give to the psycho-dwarf, 10 judges of the same school as Paolo Borsellino from the Prosecutors Offices in Italy. In your sledge, don’t load up with lawyers, you have already too many at home and in Parliament. With them you pass your Saturdays and Sundays playing cops and “prescritti”. He plays the part of the prescritto as it’s the part that suits him best. Take him a helicopter as well of the brand used by Ceaucescu. In 2009 it could turn out to be useful to him.
Don’t take anything for Tremonti. He has always been playing with amnesties and public auctions of State Bonds. He tries to sell the debts of politics to the citizens. Don’t give him our money any more. A deserted auction of State Bonds in the Spring will change his life for him. He could retire and using a false name move to the Stelvio Park together with Bossi’s son.
To the Lega, give this federalism. It’s been 30 years that Umberto Garibaldi has been wanting it. Take the Mafia and the Camorra and the Ndrangheta to the hills of Bergamo and the building sites of Lombardy. Everyone must have their own federal mafia. But you have already done this, I was forgetting.
To each Italian take a wall. As high as the Berlin Wall. As long as the Great Wall of China. More resistant than the Walls of Jericho. And make them bump into the wall so that they wake up before it is too late.
Happy Christmas to all honest Italians.” Beppe Grillo

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December 20, 2008

Rosa (Russo Iervolino) you are all alone

Rosa Russo Iervolino listened excitedly to Topo Gigio Veltroni’s speech. Walterloo said that the PDwithoutanL is a party made up of decent people and that there is no room in the party for dishonest people. No one in the room stood up when he uttered these words. Everyone remained in their seats, arms resting on the armrests, from D’Alema through to Latorre and Fassino. It is a party for lily white parliamentarians.
Following Topo Gigio’s profound reflection (against a background of heartfelt self-criticism), Ms Rosa Russo Iervolino began to feel less alone. Her best councilors are in jail. Loneliness is a terrible thing. She took to the floor and said: “I really enjoyed Veltroni’s speech, which … has strengthened my attempts to re-establish an ethically strong junta in Naples …”. Never mind that he was surpassing both Totò and Peppino De Filippo rolled into one, he added that: “The timing has to be quick as possible by necessity because we are four councilors short… The reshuffle will have to be as broad as possible, otherwise I will HAPPILY get the hell out of here …”.
He didn’t bother to explain why “we are four councilors short”. As far as she is concerned, they are like Panini figurines: manca, celo. No one has bothered to say anything to her yet. ROOOOSAAAAAA, they are not missing, they have been arrested!
Rosa Russo Iervolino knows nothing, her hands are clean. The mayors are always the last to know what’s happening around them. Had Ms Rosa worked as a milkmaid in Posillipo, then she would have known precisely what was going on but unfortunately, however, she was engaged as Mayor.
Rosa has all the necessary excuses. She was close to Bassolino for too many years. A man that has become embroiled in major legal problems but refuses to tender his resignation. Bassolino will be the PDwithoutanL’s next upstanding candidate for the European elections. Rosetta, get Antonino to advise you. He will find a position in Brussels for you too. Together in Naples, together in Europe, just like a couple of lovebirds. Dumb ones however.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 03:23 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (5)
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December 18, 2008

The Cement Exhibition

Prophecy of native Americans

The idea of the world exhibition or EXPO, comes from far away. From the 19th century. From a time when it took months to journey from London to San Francisco. It came into being so as to allow people to see things never seen before. Technology, future, constructions beyond the reality of every day. At that time, the world was not within the reach of a click. To transport the merchandise they used ships, today it’s enough to have a mouse. Italy has had the misfortune to win EXPO 2015 in Milan. Crikey we gave a good kicking to the Turks of Smirne, the only other city that was a candidate. The others stayed well away.
In 2015 in and around Milan we will be able to admire new buildings, sky-scrapers, roads, viaducts, bridges, agricultural land that has been built on, houses for people to live in, car parks, connecting roads, roundabouts, railways, light and heavy metro lines. It is a great opportunity for constructors, those who own buildings; those who like kick backs; for the mafia and for the politicians. The parties have been arguing for months to see who can put whose hat on which EXPO armchair. I’m sure they will find an agreement. The money is always ours. The appetite too is always theirs. How much will it cost the tax-payers? We will find out only when they have finalised the sums at the end. A great expense account for the various Tronchetti, Ligresti and Impregilo. Sure they’re talking of billions of euro, at least five. And straight away they're already 2.3 billion short.
Today Ms Moratti is in Rome together with Roberto Formigoni and they are carrying begging bowls. The government will not say “no” to them and they will return as brick triumph-people. The psycho-dwarf cannot deny a favour to the patriot constructors of CAI who are sacking 12,000 of the Alitalia people. One patriot, Air One’s Toto has been struck down by the red togas (or black, or blue or yellow or rainbow) in Pescara. But it’s an isolated case (for now). In fact the patriots do Great Public Works and Deaths at Work. EXPO is anti-historical, it will be a factory of tar and cement and kick-backs. A universal feeding trough, the desert of nature.
The theme of EXPO 2015 is “Nourish the Planet, Energy for Life”. Lombardy is one of the most polluted areas of the planet. From the air you can see without interruption that the construction arrives right up to the mountains. Towering above is the great Brescia incinerator, the largest in Europe. The difference between the bordering nations and Lombardy is impressive. They are green, whereas Lombardy is mousy grey.

“Up goes the construction as though it were solid
Up goes the scaffolding – four magic walls
Brick upon brick in a logical design
With eyes already clogged up with cement and traffic”
(La costruzione, {The construction} Enzo Jannacci)

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December 10, 2008

Umberto Garibaldi, the antifederalist

Bossi is Giuseppe Garibaldi’s heir. His true dream is a national state, a centralist one, perhaps even a bit fascist. When he tells the story of the “Comuni” in fact, he is thinking of Julius Cesar and the glories of the Roman Empire. He goes to Pontida for public meetings but in private he visits the Imperial Forums and he goes on outings to Predappio.
The Lega is a federalist party, but only during the election campaign. Once the partying is over the man from Bergamo’s valleys is derided. Bossi is craftier than Andreotti, more calculating than Gelli, more “panzanaro” than the psycho-dwarf. A great Father of the Fatherland. He deserves an equestrian statue in piazza Venezia. The Lega has done more for “Roma Caput Mundi” and for national unity than any other party appearing in Italy, apart from Fascism. “Il Duce” said what he wanted to do and often he didn’t manage to do it. “Il Senatùr” says the opposite of what he wants to do and he always succeeds. A superior mind.
Since the Lega has been in government, in less than a year, they have obtained incredible results for federcentralism:
- they have eliminated the ICI tax, the only true federal tax, for the towns
- they have privatized water, that goes from being managed by the towns to the concessionaires and the multinationals
- they have removed decision-making powers from the Regions relating to environmental policies
- they have allowed the creation of a new United States military Base at Vicenza ("Padroni a casa nostra" = “Masters in our own land”) with the prohibition on a referendum called for by the town.
- they have not eliminated the Prefects but they have militarized the cities with the army
- they have taken money away from the Universities of Northern Italy, for example 40 million euro from the Politecnico di Milano, to give 150 million euro to the city of Catania and 500 million to the city of Rome, to avoid bankruptcy
- they have ignored the presence of 90 United States atomic warheads at Ghedi Torre in the province of Brescia and at Aviano in the province of Friuli
- they have increased the cost of politics
- they have allowed European Union funding of 8/9 billion euro EACH YEAR (money entirely paid for from our taxes) to go to Calabria, Campania and Sicily with no controls. And anyone like Luigi De Magistris, wanting to check up that it doesn’t end up with the parties and with organised crime, is moved away.
Garibaldi’s Red shirts made Italy. Bossi’s Green shirts have overdone it.
-If after a few months of having the Lega in government, the centralist State has strengthened like this, what is in store for us in the future? The federal tax for the North and tax breaks for the mafia?
-It is federalism that is ploughing the furrow but it is the armchair that is defending it!

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December 07, 2008

Top of the class

De Magistris, colluding pieces of the institutions and the Council of Magistrates

The one who is top of the class never gets his hands dirty. He uses his tongue.
The one who is top of the class becomes the top dog in the news organisation. He becomes Giordano, Riotta, Vespa, Belpietro. The one who is top of the class always gets a salary worthy of the one who is top of the class.
The one who is top of the class defames without defaming, informs without informing, robs without robbing.
The one who is top of the class wants the reform of the justice system, but doesn’t want to be put on trial. He’s called D’Alema or Berlusconi. He’s a cross-party top of the class.
The one who is top of the class becomes President of the Republic, is the head of the Council of Magistrates (CSM), and leaves De Magistris and Forleo to their destiny.
The one who is top of the class cares not a fig for the Clean Up Parliament law that is stuck in the Senate, but pays much attention to Grillo’s income tax declaration.
The one who is top of the class writes in the newspapers thanks to the public financing.
The one who is top of the class always turns away towards his own side.
The one who is top of the class believes so much in Mediaset, the RAI and in Eugenio Scalfari and reckons he is such a good person.
The one who is top of the class is the first one to know, but he’s also the first to finish up in Hammamet.
The one who is top of the class ignores the 98 billion euro that the concessionaires owe the State, but he talks warmly of the social card and of the government.
The one who is top of the class gets the CNR to analyse the Biowashball (it’s as though the CNN were to turn to MIT to attack Michael Moore), but not Taranto’s dioxin.
The one who is top of the class is the first to screw the State, but elegantly, without swear words and with the correct attire.
The one who is top of the class becomes a CAI entrepreneur, sacks 12,000 people, leaves debts of a few billion to the State, but is a patriot.
The one who is top of the class is often one with a concession for our stuff, roads, water, energy. A concessionaire among peers, made up of others who are top of the class. You don’t become the top of those who are top of the class without the radio and TV concessions.
The one who is top of the class is worried about the public debt that he himself has created as the Minister of the Economy, if he tells us to buy government bonds it’s because he is a responsible person.
The one who is top of the class pays taxes but only those that are strictly necessary.
The one who is top of the class needs a population of servants and ignorant people so he can live in style.
The one who is truly top of the class is lying to himself so well that he believes himself and he gets offended if someone raises doubts.
The one who is top of the class sees the speck in the eyes of the others, but ignores the beam that he is sitting on.
They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

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November 25, 2008

The asshole’s optimism generates monsters

Regional elections in Abruzzo. Costantini v Chiodi


I have purchased two washing machines, three fridges and a plasma screen. They do get in the way a bit, but I couldn’t ignore Tar Head’s appeal from Abruzzo. The blame for the recession lies on the shoulders of those who do not consume. Of the pretend-unemployed. The companies don’t produce and Fiat has its storage areas full of cars. It’s a law of nature. If you don’t buy, the company closes.
Italians, fish out the money from the mattress, you are worse than the people of Genoa. Just think of that man. Think about what he has had to suffer for our country which has become his property. Think of his villas in Sardinia. Of his thousands and thousands of billions. He deserves the cash. You know he is endlessly rich thanks to you. With the mechanism of communicating money. Advertising is the bribe that you pay on each purchase. When you buy a snack or a tin of tomatoes, you are funding Mediaset. The advertising is part of the price of the product and you pay that every day. When you consume, he gains. If Italy is poorer and he is really rich, there must be a reason. If you like, call it, P2.
If you don’t consume, he becomes sad and we will no longer listen to his famous jokes about the Obama who has a tan like Naomi Campbell and about Mangano, the hero of Forza Italia. If there’s a fall in the advertising income for Publitalia, Mediaset shares suffer even more than Veltroni does when he is doing Opposition. If it goes below a euro, who will be the one to tell Confalonieri?
It has taken twenty years to consume Italy, but he has succeeded. It’s true that he has had the support of the collaborationists Bossi, D’Alema and Violante. It’s true that hundreds of journalists have sold themselves. But let’s say it, the collapse, above all, is due to him. The 400,000 precarious workers who will lose their jobs by Christmas must not disappoint the psycho dwarf. Let them go with their families to the nearest branch of Mediolanum, the bank that is round them. Let them ask for signor Ennio Doris. Let them say that they have been sent by Berlusconi, the co-proprietor of the bank, and that they must consume. A loan, a mortgage with a facilitated rate and they’re off towards the nearest shopping centre for a quickie in the between the shelves.
Anyway there is a remedy for restarting consumer spending. Tremonti is working on a package for 80 billion euro that will be invested in public works. The 80 billion will be taken from the taxes paid by the Italians. We get rich and we get into debt on our own. A movement of cash to the accounts of the others. Take from the tax payers to give to the Confindustria.
Leave the light on even in the daytime. Leave the water tap running, the heaters at full blast. Use three condoms at a time, one on top of the other, and two boxes of Viagra each evening. Consume. Consume yourselves. The asshole’s optimism generates monsters

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 09:33 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (3)
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November 19, 2008

Faroe Islands, Denmark, the slaughter of pilot whales

Denmark’s shame


When the dolphin whales get close to Denmark’s Faroe Islands it is a day of celebration. Schools close and the children come to the beach with their parents. The people dress in traditional costume, and are eager to receive the cetaceans.




The dolphin whales arrive in groups, there are many females with their young. They are sociable animals, they are curious and they are not afraid of humans. It’s the great autumn festival for the islanders. The motor boats urge the whales into the bay which is not deep.




Then they come close up with 2 kilo harpoons that are used many times on the flesh of the animal until it is immobilised. The Faroe Island executioners can then pull out the blades and cut up live fat and flesh to get through the spinal chord. The young Danes applaud while the whales cry out. Didn’t you know? Whales cry out like humans when they are being butchered. The water takes on a beautiful colour of red blood. 2,000 whales are dragged onto the shore by the courageous inhabitants of the Faroe Islands so that they can be left to agonise. Most of them rot and are thrown back into the sea.




The dolphin whale is a protected species and the number still in existence is not known.
I invite the readers of the blog not to take a holiday in the Faroe Islands, nor to buy Danish products as long as this ignoble massacre continues.
Send an email to the Queen of Denmark to ask her to intervene and promote this initiative on your own blogs.

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November 16, 2008

She loves me, she Obama’s me?

She loves me, she Obama’s me?

Obama talks to the world by means of YouTube. Mediaset is asking for 500 million euro in damages from YouTube.
Obama is preaching the advent of social networks and direct democracy. Italy relaunches digital terrestrial and the blogger-killer law (Levi-Veltroni).
In the United States, broadband is everywhere. With us it’s in Parliament and 3,000 towns are without ADSL.
Italian politics lives on TV without contradiction. The TV has become directly political. Telepolitics. TV is destroying people’s conscience. The Internet helps to form their conscience.
The psycho-dwarf removes petals form the daisy: “She loves me, she loves me not? She loves me, she Obama’s me?” I reckon she Obama’s him.
They will never give up, (but would it be worth their while?) neither will we.

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November 14, 2008

Sentenced criminals in Parliament come of age

Al Capone

The sentenced criminals in Parliament have just come of age. In fact, they have just hit their 18th conviction. This result was made possible thanks to the performance of Giulio Camber, PDL Senator who was sentenced to eight months of imprisonment by the Court of Cassation last September after being found guilty of blatant pretence. This was the one offence that had still been lacking in the collection of photograph cards.
Until now, Parliament only contained people found guilty of the following offences:
- perjury
- corruption of a public official
- abuse of power
- personal injury
- resisting arrest and insulting a public official
- aiding and abetting
- false invoicing
- tax fraud
- giving false testimony
- receiving stolen goods
- armed robbery
- aiding and abetting
- attempted bribery and corruption
- aggravated arson
- fraudulent financing
- corruption
- complicity in bankruptcy
Hell buddy, that’s enough to frighten even the Casalesi clan. I’m having to study the entire Penal Code just to keep up.
The signatures gathered in support of a Clean Parliament have been deemed to be valid. The Senate Commissione Affari Costituzionali is currently examining the popular law proposal. Three proposals: no sentenced offenders in Parliament, no more than two legislatures per parliamentarian and direct voting of candidates.
The Committee is chaired by Vizzini (PDL) and includes Benedetti Valentini (PDL), Incostante (PD), Adamo (PD), Bodega (LNP), Bastico (PDL), Battaglia (PDL), Belisario (IDV), Bianco (PD), Boscetto (PDL), Ceccanti (PD), Cossiga (UDC-SVP-Aut), De Sena (PD), Fazzone (PDL), Lauro (PDL), Malan (PDL), Marino (PD), Mauro (LNP), Nespoli (PDL), Pardi (IDV), Pastore (PDL), Pistorio (Misto), Procacci (PD), Saltamartini (PDL), Sanna (PD), Saro (PDL), Sarro (PDL) and Vitali (PD).
I am asking the members of the Committee whether they would be prepared to express their personal opinion regarding the Bill in question in a letter or an interview with this blog. None of them are previous offenders sentenced in a court of law and this would make an excellent starting point.
They may never give up, but neither will we.

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November 11, 2008

Alitalia: the consortium of monsters

Alitalia

Brussels has decided: the 300 million euro bridging loan to Alitalia is State aid. It will be charged to the State, to the "bad company", thus all of us. Happy to have a further 300 million to pay?
The billions of euro thrown to the wind for not having let Alitalia go to Air France in the spring, who pays that? The psycho dwarf or the unemployed from the factories that are closing down each day?
The newspapers have decided: the fault lies with the Alitalia pilots and cabin staff. First they isolate them, then they demonize them, then if they can, they sack them.
Even this time, the guilty ones have got away with it. Where are the billionaire Cimoli, the Presidents of the Council, and the Ministers of Transport of the last 15 years? The real destroyers of Alitalia?
It’s politics that has that has made Alitalia collapse by using it as a reservoir of votes and a placement agency for friends and relatives.
Instead, the fault lies with the pilot and the hostess in the care of a consortium full of people sent for trial and even former prisoners among whom the only ones missing are the Lupo Mannaro and the Monster of the Green Lagoon.

PS On Monday 12 November at 9:00pm, in Bologna, the Casa della Legalità and the Bologna Meetup have organised the public presentation of the investigation into the illegality of the assignment of public housing that the politicians put into effect in spite of the rights of those in the waiting list. For all the information click here. For the video click here.

>> SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
On Friday 14 November, I invite all the people of Milan to go to the office and to school by bicycle. It’s the fastest, cleanest and cheapest way. Anyone going by push-bike does not depend on the price of petrol nor on the dis-service of public transport. The bicycle is revolutionary. I will be in Milan in the early part of the afternoon with my powerful legs. No to polluting vehicles that you have to pay for. No to childhood leukaemia. Yes to clean air and to the freedom to move about without the risk of being mown down. How many Milan town councillors and cabinet members go to work by bicycle? If there happens to be one I’m waiting for them to call me to speak. Beppe Grillo <<

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November 06, 2008

The brawny one of Arcore

The brawny one of Arcore is having another go. At the Cycle and Motorcycle Fair he stated, in reference to the Val di Susa: “We will use force against the blocks. There is no community or minority that can claim to stop a building site…”. He rabbited on about “16 billion already available” to do a hole in the Frejus. The problem is that the tunnel in the Frejus has already been done. It was done way back in 1800 and he has not been informed by Lunardi. Perhaps he was alluding to the Moncenisio. To the 23-kilometer-super-tunnel that will be finished in 15 years. A bit of work that is of no use to anyone but that distributes a flood of money.
Marco Ponti, professor at Milan Polytechnic, one of the greatest experts on the economics of transport in Europe and a consultant to the World Bank, wrote this three years ago:
”It started off with promises that the project would have repaid the costs by 60%. Then it went down to 40% and finally it was enough to cover 40% of the costs, excluding those of the “nodes” near to the cities, that are really expensive. According to my simulations, it could arrive at 20%; others estimate 23%. The system is destined for a default: the State will pay. Many of these projects will be started, but then there will be no money and they will be re-started for every round of voting. The Turin-Lyons is a monument to the waste of money: it will cost at least 13 billion [he was an optimist, editor], like 3 or 4 bridges over the Straits. To develop innovation it’s necessary to focus on technology, not on cement. As regards employment, nowadays the great public works have a modest multiplier: it’s no longer a matter of mobilizing the hired hands as was done in the nineteenth century. It is more evident that ours is a territory with a great touristic value for the future. Thus there are more fruitful ways to spend money. As long as there is not someone who is promising themselves great business by means of great public works.”
The referendum for the new American base at Dal Molin in Vicenza has been annulled. In Chiaiano the residents have been beaten up. In Piazza Navona in full view of the Police a truck arrived full of tricolor batons (not even a parking fine, crikey)
It is the government of the baton. The use of force as the politics of consensus. I don’t think that Italians are informed about the Val di Susa and the colossal waste of public resources. Tens of billions to enable a mozzarella to travel from Lisbon to Kiev while Piedmont closes down. In Piedmont one in four companies are going bust. Three thousand about to be sacked. Four thousand to be laid off. Olivetti will lose the factory at Agliè with 250 employees. Motorola from one day to the next leaves 370 technicians at home. Dayco, 470 workers laid off. Bertone, 1,200 workers laid off. 700 workers of Pininfarina (700 million euro in debts) at risk. Fiat closes the gates of Mirafiori until 16 November, 3,500 workers laid off.
The companies close down and holes are created in the mountains with other holes in the balance sheet. They will never give up, neither will we.

On your blog, spread the word about the waste of money for the TAV in Val di Susa.

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October 28, 2008

The registered letter that kills

Pasolini and the Italians

In the last few years, there has been a flurry of registered mail. Once upon a time you ran to the Post Office to pick it up. It was a worry. Now you hardly notice them. They are simply just annoyances. The turning point came with the transfer of public services to commercial companies and payments to agencies charged with the task of receiving payments. If you kill your parents you can inherit the estate. If you don’t pay for a particular tax, they confiscate your car, your house and your Little Tony records.
Andrea has written to me from Ciampino and he has attached a registered letter that was sent to him by the municipal company ASP CIAMPINO. Cost of sending the registered letter: 3.50 euro. Payment due: 0.02 euro.




Guess who pays the cost of the registered letter, the time spent on writing it, the registration, the sending? You know already: all the clients of the municipal companies or of any other public body that sends out threatening letters.
Anyone who pays taxes in Italy is super-controlled. If even one were to stop paying, in fact, the system would collapse. The checks are so severe and detailed that they can find details that have been ignored by any qualified accountant. It’s not unusual for someone who believes that they have paid ALL their taxes to receive a registered letter from the tax collection agency and they open it with terror, slowly, slowly like you do when you are looking at your hand in a game of poker. Their whole life passes in front of their eyes. Will it be the notary’s document relating to the grandfather 25 years ago or the invoice paid a month late to the electrician who ruined them for ever? When they read the amount of 18.50 euro to be paid on the tax return of three years before for a series of reasons that can never be understood (their accountant could help for a fee of 250 euro, but it’s not worth it) they rush off to pay. Less than twenty euro…. They feel as though they have won Supernalotto.
The following day the same person receives another registered letter containing judicial documents. They are not there. They rush to the post office from their workplace already sweating. Has the next door neighbour taken out a court action? Has the company given them the sack? The former wife has called them to the Tribunal? None of this stuff. It’s a parking offence to be paid BY AND NOT AFTER …. Otherwise they will confiscate the car. But on that day they didn’t use the car, they weren’t in that street, in that city. The fine is 52.50. Better pay up rather than discuss it.
If you change your address don’t leave a trace. Don’t let anyone know where you are taking refuge.

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October 25, 2008

Goodbye TFR (Severance Indemnity Funds)

Those employees that left their severance indemnity funds with the company, have seen them grow by 3,5%. Instead, those who listened to, and took the advice of the trades union, the political parties and the financial brokers and proceeded to invest their severance indemnity in pension funds, have incurred a loss of about 20%. And this is merely the beginning. With the Stock Exchange heading downhill fast, these future pensioners will find that their severance indemnity will buy them little more than their morning cappuccino coffee and seed for the pigeons. The trades union, Confindustria, the Political Parties and the Banks have managed to swallow up yet another of the little nest eggs. The average citizen has virtually nothing left for these guys to grab. All they can do now is cut the funding destined for services, Education, the Police Service and Healthcare, until we hit rock bottom like at the time of the Argentinean investment crash.

"If you are employed in the private sector and say nothing until the end of June, your severance indemnity will land up in the managed funds. That would be enough to give you heart palpitations. For the past twenty years the mutual funds have been losing people’s money. Now the pension funds are ready to repeat the same disasters. Tacit consent is nothing more than a trap. They change the cards on the table without asking your permission. It is much like betting your life’s savings on one round of the old “under which shell is the pea” game. The claim that these funds will provide supplementary pension benefits are false: all they do is hand over your severance indemnity to the mutual fund industry." Beppe Grillo, 6 June 2007.

Read the letter written by Beppe Scienza, mathematician and expert in the field of savings and supplementary pension benefits.

Three million Italians in jail, by Beppe Scienza
"For the Italians, supplementary pension benefits have become like a prison. The trade unionists and regime economists (Marcello Messori, Giuliano Cassola, Elsa Fornero, etc.) have pulled the wool over the people’s eyes with regard to these pension funds. Around three million Italians gave up their Severance Indemnity Funds and now find themselves locked in for good. Worse still, they have been taken for a ride by parties that simply wanted to get rich quick at the workers’ expense, such as the Anima fund management company, which had the audacity to claim that: “Investing in a pension fund is the intelligent choice”. We now know precisely what kind of choice it actually was: one hiding after another since the summer of 2007.
The trap was sprung in June last year. Since then, things turned bad, only to get worse in 2008. The chemical workers know all about this since their fund (the Fonchim Fund), in September, posted a loss of 14,8% since the beginning of the year, as do the metal industry workers, whose fund (the Cometa Fund) has lost 10%, and the railway workers’ fund (the Eurofer Fund) with a deficit of 17%. These are perhaps the worst cases due to the losses incurred by the stock-linked options, however, the other funds have also done worse that the Severance Indemnity Fund.
However, the worst part is the loss of individual freedom. For those people who moved into the pension funds at the insistence of the trades union, this is tantamount to a life sentence. As long as these people continue to work, their severance indemnity will continue to flow into these funds, whether they like it or not. Even by going on pension will only mean semi-freedom. These workers will not be able to draw half of whatever amount is left over (the so-called capital portion) because this will be converted into a monthly income, with the associated conditions being decided by others.
Unfortunately they will not even be able to hope for any concession by the Head of State, because there can be no such concession with regard to supplementary pension benefits. If nothing else, however, at least they can change cell every two years. In other words, they can move from a share-linked option to a guaranteed option within the same fund. Pity that this so-called guarantee is nothing more than propaganda, what with the “guaranteed” options having shown a loss of 3% since the beginning of 2008 (see the Fonchim Fund)! If they so wish, they can even change prison, in other words, not only the management option, but also the fund. They cannot, however, buy back their freedom: after all, a life sentence is a life sentence!
The only ones that remained free are those that left their Severance Indemnity where it was. These people are now happy and safe, watching their money grow day by day (around +3,5% since the beginning of 2008). If they change jobs or go on pension they receive all of their money immediately and they are free to do whatever they like with their payout.
Therefore, those that took the advice that Beppe Grillo and I, or even the Famiglia Cristiana Magazine gave at the time, did the right thing.
But wait! Apparently the gall of the trades union knows no bounds. Not satisfied with the loss of face they suffered in terms of the schools (the Espero Fund), just a few days ago Cgil, Cisl, Uil, and others held a meeting with a view to starting up yet another two such funds covering the entire public sector (the Sirio and Perseo Funds). This has got to be some sort of a joke." Beppe Scienza

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 04:59 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (5)
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October 17, 2008

Little aprons and Bandoleers

Corteo No Gelmini a Milano

Cutting spending on education is much like sawing through the trunk of a tree while sitting on the highest branch. Italy’s future is born in the Universities, the high schools and the nursery schools. If we have rubbish coming out of these places, then this Country will remain little more than a waste disposal site.
When we talk about education, we are also discussing employment, the firing of researchers and the 50,000 teachers with temporary contracts that will be staying at home. However, no one says a word about our young people. Nothing is said about the consequences in terms of their studies. Less funding means a drop in quality, fewer school classrooms, fewer laboratories, fewer Internet connections and fewer PC’s for the students.
In just a few short years, we have gone backwards, from the “Internet and English” touted by the second Berlusconi Government (does anyone still remember the three “I”s) to the little aprons of the third Berlusconi Government's Mrs. Germini. The fourth Berlusconi Government, if there is ever such a thing, will undoubtedly put bandoleers in every classroom.
The psychodwarf is making cuts because he has no more money. Or rather, he has no money for education. That problem does not exist when it comes to money for other things.
Catania, the failed town of former mayor Scapagnini, will soon be receiving some 150 million Euro. And the town won’t even be placed under administration.
The Rome Municipality, destroyed financially as it was by Topo Gigio Veltroni, has received 500 million Euro to help cover part of its deficit. Furthermore, with effect from 2010, this figure (FIVE HUNDRED MILLION) will become an ongoing annual allocation.
Tar Head wont make any cuts to the Provinces (which should be abolished altogether), nor to the Parliamentarians’ salaries (which are the highest in Europe), nor even to the number of Parliamentarians (the highest ratio of parliamentarians to residents, in the whole of Europe). He won’t combine the Municipal districts with less than 5,000 residents and he won’t abolish one of the Chambers.
He cannot afford to fire any of the politicians and their lackeys.
Students at the Milan Polytechnic received a letter concerning the new Academic Year. The letter informs them that:
“Legislative Decree No.112 has been published in the Government Gazette. This Decree provides that extensive funding cuts are to be made throughout the entire University system and particularly as regards staffing and also the Basic Study Assistance Fund, in other words, all of the funds that the Government invests annually in the University. As regards the Milan Polytechnic, this means a significant shortage of staff, which will particularly affect the expectations of all of those research assistants that provide their services on a temporary contract basis while waiting for an opportunity to take part in any future personnel selection exercises. As regards the extent of the funding cuts, it then becomes clear that for this Academy, the estimated 20 to 40 million Euro cut in funding may well affect the institution’s educational, research and development policies.”
The Lega’s brand of fiscal federalism is starting to bear fruit. Funding for the failed Municipalities in the South, University funding cuts in the North. Bloody hell, if that’s all it takes, even I could do their jobs.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:59 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (5)
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October 16, 2008

Alifarce

The consortium for Alitalia is starting to disintegrate. All the fault of the international crisis. The 16 saviours of the flagship company are short of cash. The top dog Roberto Colaninno had promised to put 150 million euro into CAI, the new company. Not his own money, as is the habit since the time of the takeover bid for Telecom Italia. He was counting on getting the money as a loan like every entrepreneur worthy of respect. The choice was sound. The bank that was due to assist CAI was in fact Lehman Brothers. These bring bad luck.... As soon as they found out in New York, Lehman collapsed after surviving since 1929 and panic was unleashed in the world Stock Markets. Colaninno is looking for other financiers, let’s wait for the next name to pinch ourselves.
According to Corrado Passera, CEO of Banca Intesa, the new Alitalia was due to start on November 1. If it starts next year, it’ll be a miracle. Even now, it’s not known which of the magnificent 16 will present themselves at the meeting on 28 October. It’s possible that to pull out will be Aponte, Emilio Riva’s Ilva and Fossati, but also the Clessidra fund, and even Marcegaglia wanted to give it all up, as reported by il Corriere della Sera. The foreign partner, it’s not yet known who it is and what weighting they will have. The only thing that is clear is that Alitalia has already gone bust, that Air One with which it is due to merge, has a mass of debts and Banca Intesa, the sponsor of the operation, is among the major creditors of both of them.
I am fascinated by the way that Alitalia has been managed. It is the Egg of Columbus. You take a company that has gone bust because of politics and Trades Unions. You divide it into two parts. One with all the debts to be laid onto the tax payers, that is called "bad company". And one without debts, called "good company" that is offered at a bargain price to entrepreneurs without money (Colaninno), State concessionaries (Benetton) or those interested in EXPO 2015 (Tronchetti). People who can sell it on after a bit of time with the appropriate gain to a foreign company that is straight away contributing capital. An example for every Italian. You package up the mortgage repayments, debts with suppliers, losses on the Stock Exchange and the mother-in-law in a bad company and pass that to the State. The house, any credit, the salary, interest you hand over to a good company and you start all over as new.
The Banca Intesa makes it known that “the consortium is of granite”. Never seen a granite consortium. A tombstone yes.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 10:11 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (1)
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October 10, 2008

Queues at the ATM machines

Le interviste del Blog: Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel per l'economia 2001

This morning a group of people formed a queue in front of an ATM machine. No one was actually making any cash withdrawals. They were simply talking to each other about this and that. Passers-by watched them worriedly, asking each other: “Have you noticed that there is a queue …”. Some of them stopped and diligently joined the queue. Since no one was drawing and money, the queue was getting longer by the minute. As the size of the group grew larger, so the level of fear increased, as did the uncontrolled rumours circulating that the bank had gone bust. Tellers closed, ATM machine empty. However, those at the front of the queue remained calm and continued chatting and cracking jokes. After about half an hour, one lady stepped out of the queue and approached a young man who was leaning up against the ATM machine. Then she asked him why the bank had stopped paying out money. The young man answered that he was not actually there to draw any money, but simply to sow panic.
Fear is affecting everyone, however, the stable door has been open for some time and the horses have long since bolted. Morpheus Napolitano has finally woken up and is now asking for “Ethical rules for the banks”. It’s enough to make one quake with fear. Following the psychdwarf’s reassurances, share values on the Milan Stock Exchange plunged through the floor. Why not shut it down completely for one month, and do the same with the world's most important Bourses? In the interim, meetings could be held with the world’s central banks and the G8, in order to make a number of final, mutually acceptable decisions.
For the investors, the plummeting share prices are tantamount to the holocaust. For how long can this go on? And why should it go on? The person buying the shares has already given his/her savings to a company in which he/she placed his/her trust. He/she is the one that has lost money, not the company in question. What we are witnessing is a game to the death.
Families are the ones going bankrupt, not the banks. Governments cannot make an entire banking system fail. They are in a position to create more money from nothing, and to unload it on the citizens as public debt. Money does not exist, all that there is, is debt. The citizens are the ones that end up bearing the burden of the aid granted to the banks.
When American Treasury Minister Paulson gives the banks a 700 billion dollar gift, what he is doing is dumping every American citizen into debt. They, their children and their grandchildren will continue to repay this debt through their taxes. When Tar Head states that the Italians will not lose even a single Euro, what he conveniently forgets to mention is that the Italians will find themselves indebted to the tune of tens of billions of Euro, purely in order to save the banks.
Ours is a strange society. We are born in debt, we then spend our entire lives paying off debts and then we die, leaving a heredity of debt. Debt that was created by others, namely by governments that never bother to ask for our permission. They spend our debts. Who really stands to gain anythingfrom plummeting share values of the companies quoted on the stock exchange? Perhaps it is those that are in debt and that arrange to eliminate their debts in order to avoid having to repay them?
You should also start forming queues in front of your local ATM machines. Your co-citizen’s adrenalin levels are bound to go clean through the roof.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:51 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (2)
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October 05, 2008

He who pedals is lost

Eugenio Galli, presidente Fiab Ciclo Hobby Milano

The way to beat the smog in our towns is by riding bicycles. In Milan, there are incentives for smog. Those who pollute the most, are free to drive into the town centre in their cars and poison the air, as long as they pay. This idiocy on the part of the municipality has been called the Ecopass, or the ecological pass. Those who choose to cycle into town instead, risk their lives due to the lack of cycling lanes or any other form of support. Many residents of Milan die each year, riding their bicycles, when they get run over by the cars and trucks. There is an old song that says that no flowers grow in Milan, but now, neither do bicycles.
Riding a bicycle is one of the few activities that have not yet been banned by this P2 government. That is why I am going to ask all the residents of Milan to go to work or to school by bicycle on 14 November, or even simply to go for a ride. Even people living outside of Milan are welcome to come and visit the city. I will be there, with a flaming red bicycle powered by my imposing mass of muscle. Let’s take back the air in our towns and cities.
Listen to the interview held with Eugenio Galli, president of Fiab Ciclo Hobby Milano and, above all, take a look at Milan’s cycle paths shown in the video.

"In 1980, the City Council of Milan approved the plans for the creation of a 330-kilometre network of cycle paths, which, according to the proposers, was significantly less than the average for the more advanced European cities. What has happened since then? Very little, if the truth be told! Today, the total distance covered by cycle paths, even including the odd few centimetres that are spread around here and there, amounts to a total of about sixty kilometres. The truth, however, is that Milan has no such thing as a network of cycle paths. What we’re talking about are cycling paths. I want to briefly return to this topic at a later stage in order to clarify something that we believe is important regarding Fiab. The bits and pieces that have in fact been created are pathways that are more or less in the protected area. In Milan, there is only one route that is protected and complete, one that has an origin and a destination, which goes more or less from “San Siro” to “parco Lambro”, in other words about twenty-five kilometres. The rest of them are literally bits and pieces all over the place, one hundred metres here and two hundred metres there, which are totally unconnected and, therefore, do not lend themselves to be used. Essentially, they are nothing more than a total waste of public money, in the cases where public money was used to build them. In many cases, however, these bits and pieces were not built by the municipality, but by companies, as a way to discharge certain town planning obligations. So, the net result is that what has been created is a sort of Milanese-style stew, as we like to call it here.
The existing network of cycle paths poses a whole range of significant problems, which include: significant lack of continuity since the cyclist is suddenly abandoned mid-traffic, for example in “piazzale Lotto”, and with a false sense of security! One of the many requirements for any cycling lane is that it should ensure the cyclists’ safety. Maintenance problems, problems relating to illegal occupation, because people use it to go from the florist’s kiosk back to their illegally parked cars. Problems caused by building sites. This problem has now finally been overcome, but for many years a large building site affected the cycling lane in “via San Marco” (the building site for the renovation of the building housing the “Corriere della Sera” newspaper and others), all in all a variety of obstacles, resulting in the lanes being unusable. Obstacles that may even have been temporary in certain cases, such as on market days. And then there are the design problems, for example where there are sharp bends. There are also construction problems, such as places where the materials were laid incorrectly. The cycling lane in “via San Marco” is paved and treacherous and could not be more unsuitable for use by cyclists. In many places it is weaves back and forth, another planning defect, meaning that whoever it was that planned and built the cycling lane simply failed to take into account the actual needs of the people who use it, the end-users, namely the cyclists. Those who travel in a straight line. Sometimes there are steps, humps that may be easily overcome by a motorcycle or motorcar with shock absorbers, but that pose a problem for the cyclist. This merely shows that on the only true cycling lane in the Milan also has a long list of problems, while the rest of the lanes consist of nothing more than bits and pieces. This is literally money down the drain. Furthermore, cycling mobility is not simply a case of cycle paths. This concept is one that needs to be overcome by the politicians, by the technical experts, by the media and by the residents. If the truth be told, the politicians talk so much nonsense, even those in very senior positions, that nothing surprises me any more. There is a phrase that was later retracted, but was nevertheless said. I am certain that in Milan, but not only in Milan, there are those who believe that bicycles are okay, as long as they don’t get in the way of the cars. This is nonsense though, because a pedestrian can also get in the way of cars and, in our opinion, the city needs to decide what it wants to do. Do! In other words, whether we want to create a city designed around cars or one designed around people. It is an absurd situation, which becomes even more absurd if you think that, as far as cycling mobility in Milan is concerned, we have been at a virtual standstill for the past thirty years. We are talking about serious blame here, however, since it is no use crying over spilt milk, what we are trying to do is to dialogue with everyone concerned, irrespective of political allegiance, and by “we”, I mean the Fiab Ciclobby Association. However, the objective of virtuous collaboration is to get to the point where whatever is created satisfies the existing needs and requirements. This is where the discussion regarding what Milan will do, or as happened last week, what Milan will not do, becomes an exercise in futility.
It is a major mistake to think that the use of bicycles, a means of transport that causes no hindrance, does not pollute the environment, makes no noise and offers advantages that many people are aware of today, or have already been aware of for some time because we utilise them, simply by through using bicycles, can be promoted simply by dealing with the issue of cycle paths. We are not simply asking for cycling lanes, what we’re asking for is a city that is bicycle-friendly in its entirety. For example, while we understand that we cannot expect cycling lanes to be created throughout the entire road network, what we do expect is to be able to ride our bicycles safely on the entire road network. What needs to be done? In addition to cycling paths, we are also talking about proper cycling lanes. In other words, lines painted on the tar surface. These exist all over Europe and they are becoming increasingly common even in Italy, notwithstanding the fact that there are greater bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, created above all by ministerial technical experts who apply an extremely restrictive interpretation to an issue that then becomes a sort of totem of security, which is then restrictively applied to weak mobility users, or the so-called soft users, namely the cyclists. Cycling lanes are extremely easy to create and cost significantly less than cycle paths. They can be created virtually anywhere. I am thinking, for example of the “artery”, a route that Milan residents know very well and use extensively, which goes from “viale Monza” and “via Padova” to “Corso Buenos Aires”, on to “corso Venezia” and then onwards into the city centre. Milan is a city built on a network shaped somewhat like the wheel of a bicycle and, it must be said, this “artery” is extensively used and also extremely dangerous! “Piazzale Loreto” is one of the points with the highest accident rate as regards both fatalities and injuries. This “artery” could be made safer by the creation of a cycling lane, and not so much with cycling paths. So bicycle mobility must be addressed by means of cycling lanes, cycling paths and some attention to signage. Then there is the issue of parking: Anyone arriving at their destination, be it the theatre, the cinema, the bar, the restaurant, the office or where they do their shopping, must be able to find a place to park. At the moment, people are parking anywhere, even illegally. Bicycles are locked against streetlight poles, traffic lights and parking prevention barriers, often even hindering people on foot. This situation of armed people one on one, soft users one on one, really makes no sense at all. What we need, therefore, are suitably equipped parking areas. These too must be well thought out: the kind of equipment that locks the wheel in place is not good enough, what we must have is the kind that locks both the wheels and the frame. Any cyclist knows this very well, while the designers of this kind of equipment often don’t know this. Then there is also the issue of intermodality, in other words the combined use of different modes of transport. Cyclists must also be allowed to take their bicycles onto public transport, such as the underground and street-going vehicles. This is how it works in Strasbourg, this is how it works in Vienna and this is how it works in Berlin. In Milan, and in Italy in general, the rules are very restrictive. Just today, Fiab held a press conference to latch onto the issue of dogs on trains, and we are asking what we need to do in order to enter into some sort of productive dialogue with the parties that manage the transportation system, who remain totally oblivious to the need for sustainable mobility. Utilisation of public transport also means having parking areas located near the stops. The “Milano Centrale” train station currently has provision for forty-eight bicycle parking spaces. How many will there be in the future, you ask? Well, that depends! In November 2007, in other words almost a year ago, I as regional representative of Fiab for Lombardy, together with V.a.s., wrote to Mayor Moratti, specifically with regard to the renovation work in progress at Milan’s “stazione centrale” and asking that a bicycle park be created. Just a few weeks ago, please note the delay, we received a well mannered reply, agreeing fully with our proposals, our objections and our observations, but also stating that the project in question dates all the way back to former Mayor Albertini’s administration (let’s not forget that he had a totally different level of interest for this topic, namely no interest at all) and is, furthermore, already in an advanced state (of decomposition, in my opinion) progress, at least as regards the implementation, meaning that: “Look here, it won’t be done, however, in future there will be no less than seven bicycle parks, one at each of the railway stations and even one at Linate Airport ". That’s great, but it’s a pity that we are talking about some time in the future, perhaps not even our children’s future but rather that of our grandchildren. I say enough is enough! Our association’s founder, Luigi Riccardi, recalling a phrase often mentioned by an economist, said that "The future is that time when we will all be dead". The latter aspect is the one that applies to user services: bike sharing, maps, signposting for cyclists and interactive maps are additional services that would all be extremely useful for interested users. This all points to the fact that anyone who tells you that: "Bicycles equal cycling paths", is leading you by the nose. Don’t believe them." Eugenio Galli, President, Fiab Ciclo Hobby Milan

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:46 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (2)
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September 27, 2008

Italy - Seychelles

Classifica corruzione 2008 nel mondo di Transparency International
Clicca l'immagine

Italy and the Seychelles are in joint 55th place worldwide as regards corruption in the public sector. Our Country has dropped 14 positions down the list since 2007, thanks to an increase in "abuse of public office for personal benefit".
I would like to suggest to Seychelles President James Michel that his country should consider twinning with Italy. A large country such as ours could turn that tiny earthly paradise into a very significant international cesspit.
A few incinerators, two recycled nuclear power stations formerly belonging to Enel, a bit of drug trafficking on the Indian Ocean routes, some hazardous materials with which to build some schools and as many convicted criminal Parliamentarians as they want.
Italy could even provide a legal consultancy service on how to resolve the problems resulting from corruption. Our Parliamentary attorneys, namely Alfano, Ghedini and Consolo are amongst the very best that you will find anywhere. Should any parliamentarian encounter any legal problems, these three will always be able to find the perfect arbitration award for his needs, allowing him to get away scot-free and avoid the inconvenience of having to go to prison. The Alfano Arbitration Award effectively placed the incumbents in the top four government posts beyond the reach of the law. The Consolo arbitration award is aimed at providing the same protection to all government ministers, starting from Matteoli who, unsurprisingly, is one of attorney Consolo’s clients. In Italy, the laws are being made to measure by Ghedini, who holds down two jobs and also just happens to be the psychodwarf’s personal defence attorney. He defends his employer both in court and in Parliament. Today, in Italy, every self-respecting politician appoints his personal attorney to the post of either Deputy or Senator. This in order to make sure that he doesn’t land up in jail.
In exchange, the Seychelles could host the mafia members of the 41 bis and, in the event of a guilty finding in the Mills court case, Tar Head as well. In the opinion of public prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale, the Alfano arbitration award is unconstitutional. All of Italy agrees with him on this point, except for Alfano, Ghedini and Consolo (the new attack trio against the Constitution, the “Al-Ghe-Co”) and State President Morpheus Napolitano.

Posizione mondiale, Stato, punteggio

Global position, Country, points score

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 04:23 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (4)
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September 23, 2008

Veltroni in New York

From Il Corriere della Sera dated Monday 22 September 2008: “After the intense New York days and the meetings with American writers and politicians for the presentation of his book: The discovery of the dawn, Walter Veltroni is back in Italy and is getting ready to tackle an Autumn packed with engagements.”

In one of his intense New York days, the New York MeetUp asked Topo Gigio Veltroni a few questions and they have sent me the video of this precious witness.
MeetUp
You have supported the war in Afghanistan, you are in favour of the new law on phone interceptions. You also said that incinerators cause no damage to health. You have said the same things as Berlusconi says. And earlier you spoke of a block on the country with a system like that. I want to ask you: Do you think there is still an Opposition in Italy? And do you think that you represent it?
Veltroni
What you mentioned are exactly the positions of the American Democrats, and they too are an Opposition in relation to the Right, and so… As you see, taking that parameter is not sufficient.
MeetUp
But I am talking about the majority of the population. The Opposition that walks in the street.
Veltroni
Exactly. On 25 October in Rome there will be a demonstration. And it will be a really big demonstration.
A national demonstration organised by the Democratic Party, against the Berlusconi government. So, as you can see….
MeetUp
And why did you not participate in Piazza Navona?
Veltroni
Because it was not right!
MeetUp
That’s not true.
Veltroni
We have different opinions. Democracy is like that. We can have different opinions.
MeetUp
I’ll ask you two questions…
Veltroni
No, you have surprised me enough… However I’ll expect you, eh…
MeetUp
Where?
Veltroni
In the Democratic Party
MeetUp
It’s not that I am against you. It’s just that who can believe in you any more?
Veltroni
For example, what has happened to Grillo? Since we’ve had the government of the Right he has disappeared. He has never been heard since then. When he wants to be heard, he knows how to make himself heard. He is an intelligent man.
MeetUp
The referendum that Grillo proposed, when are we going to have it in Italy?
Veltroni
But it’s not an issue of referenda.. But that can be done with a law, a referendum isn’t necessary.
MeetUp
Doing politics in Italy these days is difficult. But living politics … - to put forward a proposal and carry it out.
Veltroni
You have to win the elections to do that. It means not letting the others do wicked things and letting them instead do good things.

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September 20, 2008

Italian sharks

Clicca l'immagine

Each year, humans kill 40 million sharks. Each year, sharks kill 10 humans. If a shark comes across a human, it should get the hell out of there.
Six immigrants were murdered in a single day in Castelvolturno by the camorra. An African Italian was beaten to death in Milan by a father and son pair, amidst shouts of “Dirty nigger”, for having stolen a few biscuits. An Italian pensioner has murdered two Ukranian women. He was jealous. Hundreds of foreigners die in workplace accidents in Italy, swallowed up by a manhole or incinerated in a furnace. Young foreigners, often mere children, are raped in their hundreds by so-called “good Italian folks”. The prices are very reasonable: 20/30 Euro a pop. Foreigners simply go missing in the tomato harvesting fields of Puglia. No trace of even the bones of these people has ever been found.
Italy is the global landing strip for cocaine. All of the cocaine comes through Italy via the Gioia Tauro Harbour. A single dose costs 5/10 Euro, about the same price as an aperitif. There is so much cocaine in Milan that you can sniff it in the air, free of charge.
The army stands guard at the waste disposal dumps run by “Impregilo” and the rubbish bins, while on the street corners the camorra proceeds to kill off all the court witnesses, one by one.
If an honest foreigner comes across an Italian, he should get the hell out of there. Italians have become the great white shark of Europe. What other country has more sharks in Parliament? Dell’Utri and Cuffaro have exceptionally sharp teeth. The psychodwarf has nothing but canines in his mouth, while Topo Gigio Veltroni has false teeth (since he is only a second-class shark). Where else in the world would you find criminal organisations of the calibre of the Mafia, the Ndrangheta and the Camorra? No other country on Earth has tiger sharks quite like ours.
Since the collapse of the Towers, the Muslims have become the enemy. However, since 2001, not a single Italian, not ONE, has been killed in Italy by a Muslim person for religious reasons. The Lega prohibits the establishment of mosques, which are places of prayer, but does nothing about the spread of the mafia and the drugs in the North.
One shark will not attack another …
In Italy, simple survival is already difficult enough for an Italian, however, the foreigner really puts his life on the line. He arrives here and lands up either in a transit camp or in jail. If he refuses to pay protection money he gets murdered, he is obliged to work illegally and, in the case of a female or a minor, they run the risk of being raped.
The only ones that immediately feel entirely at ease are the delinquents. They are not at risk here. In fact, they are better off here than in their country of origin. But then they are, after all, in shark territory.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 08:36 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (3)
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September 16, 2008

Alitalia today, Italy tomorrow

Alitalia, demonstration by cabin staff and land-based staff


Alitalia is not an airline, it is a geographic expression. If Italia {Italy} doesn’t exist why should Al-Italia, with that name, exist? It has had fictitious members of the Board of Directors placed there, in shifts, in the last fifteen years placed by the psycho-dwarf or by Valium Prodi. Administrators who have destroyed the company on behalf of others and they have gathered cash for their pockets in the order of millions of euro in salaries and final lump sum payments for loyalty to the boss. The Alitalia market is fictitious, it’s equivalent to the route Milan-Rome with prices equal to that of Milan-New York.
Its directors, (how many?) are fictitious, they are lackeys, friends, relatives of politicians. Given employment. Parked in Al-Italia like in a hangar. The national Trades Unions represent themselves. They have defended the privileges (their privileges) and betrayed the employees. They believed (?) in the election promises of Tar Head and in the Italian consortia. What did they get in exchange for the failure of the Air France negotiation?
The saviours of Al-Italia are fictitious. People, who have often been convicted, investigated, on trial. In their hands, gold becomes shit and shit gets transformed into capital gains. Expo 2015, the motorway tariffs and new building land are exchange goods. Ligresti, Benetton, Colaninno, Tronchetti. They know less than nothing about aircraft, but they know how to do their accounts.
Alitalia is a paradigm, a metaphor for Italy. It is bankrupt and without a lira. A line from the Piave that goes by Fiumicino. If Al-Italia goes up in smoke, everything can. That is why it is so important. Who has reduced Al-Italia to this? Parties and Trades Unions. The Italians have the reply on the tip of their tongue. They know who it was, but they can’t get their words out yet. The bankruptcy of Al-Italia is a symptom and a prelude to the collapse of the country. The parties and the Trades Unions know this. If the books end up in the Tribunal, those responsible will have to answer. Let Al-Italia collapse then and let there be a public trial against those who have destroyed it. Starting from the past and present Presidents of the Council.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:49 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (6)
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August 26, 2008

A tranquil Italy of fear

The mayors are in the front line against violence, but not that of the rapists. That of the tourists who come to Italy to spend a quiet weekend of fear. An inexperienced tourism. People who are exposed to risk in their tent or their camper. An attitude that ruins Italy’s reputation abroad.
A German couple with a little dog, park their car and camp on a beach at Torre Annunziata. They are beaten up, the woman is raped by three ITALIANS who according to the report, each go for two rides round in a car with her. The little dog bites one of the three ITALIANS and in revenge has his throat cut.
Giosuè Sparita, centre left mayor of Torre Annunziata has been keen to point out that the two tourists “with a bit of extra attention could have avoided the horrible episode of violence”.
Two Dutch cyclists stop at the outskirts of Rome. They put up a tent in a field at Porta Galeria, in the South. They are beaten to within an inch of their lives by two RUMANIANS with sticks. She is raped by two RUMANIAN shepherds (one has been expelled some time ago). The woman lost almost all her teeth. Now she is in hospital together with her husband.
Gianni Alemanno, the Centre Right mayor of Rome, said about the episode: “If two tourists come to Rome by bicycle and if they go and camp in a place that has been abandoned by God and by men after having asked advice about where to put up their tent from a bunch of immigrant shepherds, OK, it’s difficult to guarantee their safety. What they did was seriously imprudent.”
In their own countries Dutch and Germans, but it’s the same for Danish and Irish people, set up their tents in a meadow and sleep peacefully. With us they are raped twice, by the delinquents and by the authorities. Camping in the outskirts of Rome “abandoned by God and by men” where there are roaming “bunches of shepherds” or on a beach in Campania without “taking certain precautions” for the local delinquents is more dangerous than sleeping in a forest in Tanzania.
The Italian in HIS OWN HOME has bars at the windows, armoured doors and anti-theft devices and the tourist comes to Italy in a tent without a pit-bull and firearms?
Abroad they think that the film Gomorra is fiction, but in fact it is true. The tourists, before setting off, should be obliged to watch it with open eyes like the protagonist of Clockwork Orange.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 04:43 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (10)
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August 24, 2008

Workplace Deaths: "Spiral of Solidarity"

Here is a testimony from the book entitled "Morti Bianche"(Workplace Deaths), written by Samanta Di Persio and available free of charge on this blog.
"My name is Vanessa Sciancalepore, cousin of Michele Tasca. On 3 March 2008 a tragedy occurred at the Truck Centre of Molfetta, a company specialising in the cleaning of tanker trucks. The causes of the drama that brought tore our family apart are not yet certain. All I know is that the first worker who climbed into the tanker, which belonged to the Government Railway Company, in order to commence with the cleaning operations never emerged again. The tanker truck needed to be cleaned out because it had apparently been used to transport sulphur. Subsequently my cousin and his colleague climbed into the tank simultaneously. It would appear that while they were climbing down into the tank they lost consciousness because of the high levels of some lethal substance contained in the tank. The substance that caused the deaths could perhaps have been hydrogen sulphide. What is certain however is that Michele died as a hero because he was trying to save another worker.
All of these people died while attempting to save each other, a veritable chain of solidarity that cut short the lives of Michele and another four men, namely, the 60-year old owner of the Truck Centre, Vincenzo Altomare, 44-year old Guglielmo Mangano, 24-year old Biagio Sciancalepore and 37-year old Luigi Farina, all of whom were specialised workers.
On that fateful Tuesday, my sister returned home at around 18h00 and said: “Vane, Michele has been involved in an accident and it seems to be very serious”. When I heard her words I felt the blood draining from my face. I felt afraid and didn’t want to believe what I was hearing. My response was: “Oh my God!” I charged off in the direction of the hospital. I wanted to go and see my cousin. While I was trying to find him, I kept on telling myself that he would recover. When I arrived at the entrance to his ward, they refused to let me in and all I could see were my mother and my aunt, who were in tears.
At that moment I realised that the situation was indeed critical. On the day of the accident, my mother and my aunt had been together, doing some household chores. A friend of the family had come to inform them that some sort of tragedy had occurred at the Truck Centre and that a number of people had died, but that Michele was not amongst these. So they immediately tried to call my cousin on his mobile phone. A doctor took the call, saying that the youngster was in a very serious condition. My mother and my aunt then ran to the hospital but they only managed to get a glimpse of him as he was being transferred to another hospital. Michele will be remembered as the last of the workers who died on that fateful day. Initially the doctors did not hold out any hope for him, but when they noticed that he was still breathing, he was initially taken to the Molfetta Hospital and subsequently transferred to the Monopoli Hospital trauma centre. At 05h30 on the morning of the 4th March my cousin’s heart stopped beating as a result of the serious injury to his lungs. I only discovered this an hour after his death.
I had spent the whole of the previous night praying for his recovery. For the whole night I had held the rosary beads in my hand, hoping that he would awake once again, even though in my heart of hearts I knew that this was impossible. This was certainly the longest and most painful night of my entire life. It will be difficult to ever forget this event.
It is impossible to find appropriate words to describe the immense pain that one feels at such times. The last time I saw him he was laid out on a hospital bed. His blue eyes were closed, he almost appeared to be sleeping and his head was heavily bandaged. Only a small tuft of hair peeped out. I was not allowed to touch him. I just wanted to hug him, to tell him that I loved him and that he would be okay. But it didn’t happen. Now, some months after his death, it hurts so much not being able to see him and the pain is enormous. Missing him has become a kind of torment. Simply looking at him in family photographs is not enough. I sometimes almost believe that I hear his voice or see him on the street, but it is all in my imagination. I go to sleep at night hoping to wake up realising that it was all a terrible nightmare, or hoping that he will come to me in a dream. Michele was a special guy and I say this not simply because he was my cousin but because this is the truth. He had a pair of huge and very expressive blue eyes. He was fun to be with, upbeat, well mannered, sincere, gentle, sensitive, reserved and a hard worker. He started working at a very early age, initially as a barman and then as a tanker truck cleaner. Even while he was still at school, during the summer he worked part time as a seasonal worker in a number of hotels, working as a cook. He worked at a variety of summer and winter seasonal jobs in order to be able to pay off his car. He loved house music and cars, and his favourite soccer teams were Milan and, of course, Bari. He had no bad habits other than perhaps the fact that he was a smoker. One thing that I am certain about, however, is that he loved life.
I cannot recall him ever being sad and his smile was his trademark, even during the very rare arguments in which he was involved. He never caused any fights and always tried to make light of everything. He was always ready with some or other crack and it was impossible to get mad at him and not to love him. Michele and I were extremely close, we got on well with each other and we often went out together. He was thoughtful and would never leave me all alone. Every time that he returned home after one of his seasonal jobs, he always brought me a little present. Michele and I were the same age and we were inseparable. At our age, we dreamt of many things, but certainly neither of us ever considered the possibility of one of us dying. When one’s life is marked by a tragedy such as this, things inevitably change. I feel more afraid. My aunt has once again begun to smile, even if only outwardly. One’s work takes your mind off the pain, however, now and again you find yourself staring into space and the memories of that day return to haunt you. I keep asking myself how something like this could have happened.
I get angry with the Italian Government because of its failure to be strict enough in enforcing the regulations, and so everyone tends to do whatever they wish because they are never punished. I would like to see the Government doing more to tackle these problems before such accidents occur rather than stepping in only once it is already too late. But I have also noted that the Government still fails to step in, even after the event. They promised us the sun, the moon and the stars and they promised us jobs, but now, three months later, they have apparently forgotten all about us. I lived in Germany until some three years ago. Things are very different over there and not once did I ever see a worker not wearing his safety helmet or missing other safety equipment. Obviously the penalties and the inspections are imposed using very different criteria to those applicable in Italy.
Why should we have to run the risk of being killed at work? The only justification I have been able to come up with in response to such pain is that God, and Michele’s dad who passed away 20 years ago, wanted to have him at their side. Perhaps my cousin was too good to live in a world so full of cruelty, falseness and injustice. However, my torment continues: why did this have to happen to him? Everything around me reminds me of him and sometimes, at night, I almost begin to believe that the brightest star in the heavens is none other than Michele himself and that he is watching over me."
Samanta Di Persio from the book entitled "Morti Bianche".

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August 18, 2008

It runs on and on and on, the locomotive…

Click on the image

Dante De Angelis, railway worker, has been sacked for having expressed his opinion on the Eurostar train accidents. Two trains split in the space of a few days on 14 July and 22 July in Milan. For lack of maintenance and for wear and tear according to De Angelis, because of an error in doing manoevres by the personnel according to Trenitalia.

Dante is a Workers Safety Representative (abbreviated to RLS in Italian) . He had already been sacked in 2006 for having underlined the lack of security of trains and was taken back on after 7 months with no pay. On 15 August he was moved from his place of work without having even received a letter of termination. A treatment that is not even reserved for rabid dogs. Giancarlo Cimoli and Elio Catania who have contributed to the current situation in the Ferrovie dello Stato {State Railways} have been moved away with handshakes of millions of euro. (Why is that, dear politicians? Why?) Dante with a kick up the backside.

The longstanding magazine of the engine drivers “Ancora In Marcia!” {Still going forward} wrote: “The sacking of De Angelis takes on the qualities of a sort of revenge by the top directors of the State Railways who are subject to criminal proceedings because of a denunciation by the RLS.” The General Secretary of the Autonomous Police Trades Union, with many members in the ranks of the Railway Police has the same opinion: “Even in the name of the more than 5,000 operators of the Railway Police who each day are in service on the trains and at the stations to guarantee the safety of the citizens who travel, we are expressing full solidarity with the engine driver and RLS Dante De Angelis who has denounced the problems connected to the breaking of Eurostar trains and the maintenance. The problems associated with the safety of Eurostar trains and the maintenance are known also to the operators of the State Police who use the trains for their work and anyway some investigations, being carried out by authoritative newspapers, confirm that problems exist. Even the magistracy, as far as we know, is investigating some recent accidents.”

Meanwhile while Dante is being sacked, another train, the third in a month has split in two. A goods train in a tunnel in Salerno. Fifteen RLS representatives have denounced the fact. We expect them to be sacked by the former trades unionist soft-and-gentle Mauro Moretti, who is today the CEO of the State Railways.

De Angelis cannot be sacked for having cast doubt on the safety of Eurostar, it’s his job. The blog is supporting the immediate return to work of Dante at Trenitalia. Passengers need people like him, who is thinking of their safety and not of his armchair of power. Furthermore, the blog will deal with high speed trains and the criminal proceedings against the top brass of the State Railways.

“Ma intanto corre, corre, corre la locomotiva…” {But meanwhile it runs on and on and on, the locomotive…}

Attached: Notification to Dante De Angelis of disciplinary action and his response to Trenitalia

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 09:29 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (2)
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August 16, 2008

Workplace Deaths: "Poison from the heavens"

Here is a story drawn from the book written by Samanta Di Persio, entitled "Morti Bianche" (Workplace Deaths) and available on the blog free of charge.
"I was twenty years old when I lost my father. My youngest brother was 17 at the time and my eldest brother was 23. No one is every prepared for the loss of a parent, especially when you’re still young and above all when the person dies in a violent manner. My father, Domenico Bonan, died only nine months after the doctors discovered a tumour in his lung. In October 1999, after suffering a bout of coughing that had left him breathless, we went to see a doctor, thinking that the problem was merely a bout of bronchitis, however, we were given the terrible news that he had cancer. He was told that he had three months left to live, but if he was prepared to undergo chemotherapy treatment, the pain would have been more bearable and he could even have lived for a little longer. The location of the cancer, which lay between his lungs, meant that it was inoperable. They managed to keep him alive for another six months. In July 2000, he left us at the age of 56 years. From the time that the fulminating cancer was discovered, to the moment of his death, there was no discussion held between we children and our parents regarding what my father was going through. The glances were enough. One of the reasons for this was our character, which is somewhat private and reserved, but the subject was also avoided in order to avoid disturbing the family’s “peace of mind”. We were well aware of what was happening to us as a family, just as we were aware that we were doing everything that could be done. I must also admit that we were hoping that this would turn out to be nothing more than a terrible nightmare.
For almost thirty years, my father had worked in the chrome-plating department of a company called Tricom. A number of his colleagues, around twenty of them, had died before him. Their ailments had all begun in the same manner, namely, some coughing followed by bleeding from the nose. My father thought that he could still get out of there in time. All he would say was: “I can’t wait to go on pension!” He was convinced that by leaving that place he would be safe. However, that was not to be. My father loved to keep busy and he always found something to do in order to keep himself occupied. If I were to blame him for anything in particular it would be that he should have spent more time with us children.
On the day he died, I made a conscious decision to try to find out what went on in that factory. There were far too many evident signs that would lead one to think that: “Something is wrong there”. Even as far as the country in which I Iive is concerned, my father’s death was a “fait accomplis”, after all, he worked for Tricom! I began gathering witness statements from his technical colleagues, asking for tests to be carried out and legal action was instituted with my family acting as plaintiff. I carried out a number of site inspections. I realised that the various departments were not isolated from one another and that this single, large area that housed the packaging department, the chrome plating department, the painting department, the cleaning department, etc. It was perfectly possible for anyone to fall ill because no one wore any gloves or masks and there were no protection systems in place. The company’s management provided nothing of the sort and no one was ever warned about the actual risks to which they would be exposed. Even the purification plant was not working, or rather, it was only operational in the event of an inspection. Not at all surprising when you consider that the same man who had been the town’s mayor for the past twenty five years was also employed at the plant and, therefore, just a few days prior to each inspection, he would see to it that any dirt was simply swept under the carpet. From the testimonies we obtained, it emerged that just prior to these inspections the workers were supplied with masks to protect them against the dust (however, these were inadequate in terms of protecting them against exposure to any chemical substances), the operating temperatures in the tanks would be lowered to the point where no fumes were emitted, the few available suction systems would be switched on and all of the large doors would be opened in order to create some sort of airflow. Nevertheless, the mayor is now also under investigation for crimes relating to multiple cases of culpable homicide, causing grievous bodily harm, failure to apply precautions or protective measures with regard to environmental disasters and workplace accidents. In addition to hexavalent chromium and nickel, chemical analyses also revealed the presence of no less than seven different types of cyanide, lead, sodium carbonate and soda compounds, sulphuric acid, etc. When I saw the working conditions that the workers had been forced to endure simply in order to be able to feed their families, I was well and truly dumbfounded. A continuous mist was rising from the tanks that were being used for chrome plating and the operators were being exposed to this mist for the entire duration of the job. A number of people had complained about burning and streaming eyes and a burning sensation in their stomachs and throats. The panels located on top of the tanks forced the workers to lean out over the edge of the tanks. The tanks themselves were so badly corroded that pieces broke away as soon as they were touched. All this, I repeat, without any form of protection against possible splashes or fluid leaks. A number of witnesses told us that when a work piece came loose inside one of the tanks, the workers were obliged to climb up onto the edge of the tank and remove the offending item using something like a pair of pliers. Furthermore, this operation had to be performed hurriedly so as to prevent any production stoppage. There are even reports of workers having fallen into one of the tanks and I remember my father telling me about it when this happened to him and he then had to come home to wash up and change his clothes.
The entire working area was awash with hexavalent chromium and the workers walked around in the sludge. The cement floor had been eaten away and the toxic substances leeched into the ground beneath, even polluting the underground watercourses. All the former workers’ families remember the strong nauseating smell that used to accompany the workers upon their return to their homes.
Another disturbing element that emerged was the way in which the company disposed of the greenish effluent produced by the plant. Instead of being duly purified prior to disposal, much of the effluent was simply loaded into tanker trucks and dumped around the district. These operations were most probably performed at night since a number of the operators told us about certain tanks being full at night, only to be found to be mysteriously empty the next morning. They thought that the effluent was being dumped into a nearby canal, which also proved to be badly polluted, but actually, the only pipes discharging any liquids into that canal were storm-water drains. In other words, the rainwater running off the roof of the building was impregnated with all of these toxic substances as a result of the lack of any form of scrubbing systems. Unfortunately all of these facts only emerged after the death of a significant number of workers and the pollution of underground water sources by the hexavalent chromium. Apparently a number of inspections had been carried out by the USL (National Health Service) and each time the inspection reports revealed certain shortcomings, but the political backing allowed these to be simply overlooked. Everyone was aware of what was going on, but no one was prepared to speak out. Sufficient to say that the company was only given the official go-ahead in 1983, when it had already been operational since 1975. Town residents recall that the children used to go out and play in the fields, returning home later with their legs stained with green. A male nurse who once tried to report this occurrence was intimidated in an attempt to prevent him from saying anything.
Today, only my family and a few others are continuing to fight for recognition of the injuries that were caused to our loved ones. Unfortunately we have not received much in the line of support, neither from the general public nor from the judges, who are only interested in archiving the case. If all of the families involved would only do their bit, I am sure that there would be no problem in securing a conviction for culpable homicide, but I believe that they are unwilling get involved due for two factors. The first is a lack of faith in the institutions, and the second is total indifference, perhaps liberally laced with fear. Meanwhile, the guilty parties who should be elsewhere, paying the price for the injuries that they have caused to innocent parties, are instead walking around free with their heads held high."
Samanta Di Persio from her book entitled "Morti Bianche".

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August 15, 2008

The truncheon against the Police

This letter, sent in to us by a Police Services trade union representative, should make us worry, and very much so at that. At the start of this current legislature, Police Chief Manganelli made a speech in parliament, wherein he denounced the current state of affairs as regards the Justice system. What he said, in effect, is that while the Country’s policemen regularly risk their necks, the criminals are released early and, in fact, often avoid jail altogether. Manganelli was simply ignored. Just as Judge Bruno Tinti stated in “Toghe Rotte” (Broken Togas), 95% of all crimes go unpunished, thanks to certain laws created by Berlusconi, which were designed specifically to protect himself and his henchmen. What is also true, however, is that the centre-left also did its part by approving the 2006 pardon, an action that was necessary. Just as all cats are grey in the dark, corrupt public servants belong to all of the parties. While the Police Forces are being lambasted, the Army is replacing them on the streets. There are currently some 6,000 soldiers on the beat, but this number could well rise as high as 60,000. Three billion Euro cut from the Police budget (a Mafia-style warning perhaps) and a justice system that is being held on a short leash. They are preparing themselves for the possibility of another Argentina.

“Dear Beppe,

The position taken by the COISP (Police Forces Trade Union Independent Co-ordination Committee) as regards many of the initiatives introduced by the current Government has been extremely critical, because these initiatives are contrary to the both our Constitution and common sense!

We do not agree with the use of the military in order to ensure law and order and public safety. We are also against certain provisions that smack of “racism”, as we are against the introduction of the position of the mayor-sheriff, against a number of private, self-protection provisions, such as the vigilante patrols and absolutely against the unjustified and absurd cuts that have been made in the area of law and order. We are talking about three billion Euro in cuts! In addition, those cuts have come precisely at a time that is particularly disastrous for the Police Forces.

I feel obliged to point out that all, and I repeat ALL of the representative trade unions within the security and defence sector took part in a demonstration in front of the offices of the Italian Prefecture, while handing out fliers informing citizens about the absurdities being perpetrated by the current Government. These brutalities clearly also fly in the face of certain of the election promises made by the centre-right alliance during the period leading up to the last elections. Quite obviously the national television stations failed to give us adequate coverage or, for that matter, appropriate interest. In the interests of fairness, it must be said that only the local press and television stations gave the matter fair coverage.

At this moment in time we are busy deciding on what action needs to be taken. What remains firm, however, is the principle that, while we are deciding on the form of the next demonstration, we will continue in our efforts to keep the situation in the public view as regards the incoherent and contradictory nature of these state promulgated provisions.

Above all else, we must continue to energetically denounce this latest decree, namely the so-called “anti-layabout” provision, which has resulted in us being heavily penalised when compared to all of the other public institutions. The regulation provides that any Police Force employees who are ill must accept a 20 Euro per day salary deduction for the first ten days of sick leave (taking only the employee’s basic pay into account). This confusing provision also stipulates that the rule should not be applied in the case of employees that are off work due to work-related illness or injury on duty. The problem here is that “work-related” status may only be granted perhaps even six or seven years after the event. Meanwhile, the salary deduction is applied and stands firm. The legislator is obviously oblivious to the fact that you have mortgage payments to make, that you have a wife and kids to support, that you have car payments to make and that you have taxes to pay and costs to carry, just like any other person living on this planet. Minister Brunetta, the architect of this havoc, has exploited the general public’s legitimate disapproval as regards certain types of absenteeism and has decided to use this to justify the adoption of a provision that is patently punitive and discriminatory against all public servants and even more so, as I stated earlier, against members of the Police Forces.

Our Council was pleased to note and express its heartfelt appreciation to Dr. Di Pietro for his strenuous and tenacious defence of the members of the forces of law and order! Furthermore, we were equally pleased to note your stand, as expressed in the national press, where you rightly scoffed at the demagogic and hypocritical provision in question, namely, the deployment of soldiers in our towns.

I wish to thank you once again.” Fausto Fanelli –Member of the National Executive of the COISP.

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August 14, 2008

The choice of the “other world”

For the August holiday , a great book: “Manuale per una morte dignitosa” {Manual for a dignified death} by Andrè Ruellan. In a period of insecurity and of degradation, of wretchedness at our door, there’s need to look forward. Not to let ourselves be gripped by discomfort and resignation. To treasure the few certainties that are left to us. To nurture them carefully. What certainty is more certain than death? Why ignore it during life? “life is never too long to learn to leave it” The Great Consoler however has to be helped. The location of our eternal permanence is to be decided in advance and in the tiniest detail. The choice of the other world has not yet been taken from us by the Governments or the institutions. Play your hand before the “rien ne va plus”.
”There are so many other worlds and they have unequal values: many of them stay this side of what is asked of them, and almost all imply a hateful inequality between the destinies of beyond the tomb. We use the term “hateful” because the reasons for arriving at any paradise are based on conventions and they vary according to the religion followed. In this light, certain misadventures are to be feared. For example, let us take the case of a Christian who has spent his whole existence in the rigid observance of “thou shalt not kill” and who at the moment of death is a victim of an orientation error and is sent to the other world of the Vikings. Once there, he will have no chance to enter into Walhalla, the place reserved for warriors, and so he will see himself pushed into hell, that offers a decidedly unpleasant stay.
On the other hand, when that arbitrary inequality does not exist, you find yourself a more worrying leveling: the “Aralu” of Mesopotamia takes all the dead without distinction, whatever their virtues, but, once they are there, they spend their time eating dust and chattering their teeth in obscurity. That is to say that, on the face of it, the choice is not easy.
However, in the mean time, as long as the preparation for death has not been ignored, you will have tried to get to know some influential dead people. This method is the one that offers the greatest guarantee of security, and it is the only true hope that we can cling to if we think of the exchange of dossiers that can take place between one office and another. This is particularly valid for the Chinese other worlds, that are terribly bureaucratic, but it is still valid for all the others, given that, for example, the Christians recognise the efficaciousness of prayer in this environment. For them, the saints, are people who have definitely to be frequented if you want to sound the trumpets rather than burn in the flames. Once these precautions have been taken, you can start to study the proposals of the various religions. There are two possible attitudes: follow to the letter the moral principles of one of these and thus prepare for yourself a dwelling of blessings – with the help of an excellent dead person; or otherwise choose a religion that has a supportable hell, which assumes that you will behave in life like a pig and a savage. The first solution requires strength of will; that makes for an exhausting existence, but at the same time it shortens it in an advantageous way. The second, instead, is very difficult to apply since the people of the underworld have on the whole been described by sadists and in general, it’s not great ending up there. In spite of all that, it’s always possible to aim at a transitory hell, like that of Mazdaism or of Islam, rather than going voluntary to risk an eternal hell, like the Hebrew Gehenna or the Christian hell.”

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Maintained Self-Sufficient

When young people leave home to affirm their autonomy, they don’t normally ask their parents for money. If they do it is at the discretion of the parents to give it. If the sons in question want to be autonomous for life at the expense of their parents, the situation would be embarrassing. A special situation. An autonomous one who is maintained. A contradiction. Either you are autonomous or you are kept. A third way does not exist.
Anyone who crosses the borders that separate Piedmont and the Region of Veneto from the Aosta Valley and the autonomous Province of Trento has the impression of changing State. To go into France or into Austria. The substance is in the dosh, the brass, the dough, the cash. The Special Statute Regions have the right to collect taxes that other Regions just dream of. The beneficial effects can be seen in the life style of the (autonomous) inhabitants, apart from Sicily where there’s the mafia’s pay-as-you-go. Do you want a reasonable mortgage for the house? There’s the Region. The motorway free? There’s the Region. Petrol with a discount? There’s the Region.
In Italy, some geographic areas are more equal than others with the money of the others. The Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia receives four billion euro a year. The province of Bolzano three billion, eight hundred million. Sardinia six billion. The Aosta Valley one billion three hundred mullion for 125 thousand inhabitants. Sicily eleven billion, three hundred million. The Province of Trento three and a half billion. If the law is, or should be, equal for all Italian citizens, the same should apply for the tax treatment. If I am born in Mondovì, Piedmont, I must have the same services as the one born in Arnad, Aosta Valley.
The villages bordering on the Regions of Plenty want to be admitted. That happens in Veneto and in Piedmont. The citizens who aspire to being autonomous are holding consultative referenda. They too want to be kept a bit as well.
For every “up” there’s a “down” and for every Region with a Special Statute, there’s at least one Region with a Subnormal Statute. It is that one that chases away the euro for the others and has third world services.

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August 10, 2008

Insurance in favour of employers

There’s no danger
Click on the image

In the book "Morti Bianche" by Samanta Di Persio, that you can buy at a free price on the blog, I wrote in the preface that those who die at work today are still lucky. The family, if all goes well, still get some compensation. Very little, almost nothing, but at least something. Tomorrow they will have to pay the employer. If their relative falls into a cement mixer, they will have to buy another one. If he dies in a fire, the damages will have to be reimbursed. And so on. To work you’ll need obligatory insurance in favour of the employer. Del Papa of Umbria Olii wants 36 million euro from the families of the victims for the damage suffered by his company in the explosion. I expected that the Confindustria would have taken a strong stand, a call to decency by Marcegagaglia at least to keep up appearances. Instead the Confindustria expresses all its support for Del Papa. The reason is clear, if he manages to succeed, the other industrialists can do it too. Cadavers at work “non olet”. Del Papa is one who opens up the piste. The others are vultures.

Decisive position by the Confindustria Perugia about the Umbria Olii disaster. The association of industrialists has made a statement on the Del Papa situation by issuing a press release:
” Umbria Olii of Campello sul Clitunno is an important company for the territory of Spoleto, a reality that until 2006 was a European leader in refining olive oil for food. This is why the Confindustria Perugia is appealing to the sense of responsibility of everyone so as not to overturn the efforts in which the entrepreneur is engaged to take the company back to the top of the sector. The recent criticisms, coming from all parts, relates to the defensive approach taken by the president Giorgio del Papa, confirm and amplify the unjust media process that has already practically led to his condemnation without appeal. In this climate, Confindustria Perugia, while deeply understanding the pain and the thoughts of the families of the victims of this tragic accident – wants to be a participant in the happenings and the future of Umbria Olii If Del Papa, while carrying out his functions as President, has committed errors or violations of the regulations, these responsibilities should be verified only by the competent bodies in the. appropriate places
It is not possible to agree with the position of those who make out that Del Papa’s choice in defending his company and the very entrepreneurial activity itself is in contrast to the culture of the people of Umbria. Del Papa, in spite of the thousand difficulties and even though he could have been sure of getting “Cassa integrazione” {payment for workers made redundant}, he has called all the skilled workers back to work and they with great commitment are sharing the efforts of the entrepreneur. The employees of Umbria Olii, themselves, in an open letter, have recognised that the company is following the right path in relation to the workers and the market, and with particular attention to safety at work and to the defence of the environment for which considerable investments have been made. To us it seems a contradiction to declare one’s own worries for the economic and employment difficulties of the area of Foligno, Trevi, Spoleto and of the Valnerina – as the Union has recently done, and then to create concrete obstacles against the relaunch of an entrepreneurial activity that has contributed for a long time to the development of that local area. We believe that the time has come to do away with the demagogical attitudes that have often been the characteristic of so many positions about this painful event, including the suffocating search for a scapegoat, damaged by such a dramatic and tragic event that has put the continuation of the company in such great danger.
This climate is not beneficial to the victims and their relatives, nor to the search for truth. With thoughts still going out to those who no longer are living, our wish is that the people of Umbria can find unity in an agreed action that on the one hand aims at safeguarding the company and the future of those who work with it, and on the other hand to ensure that any errors, by whomsoever they have been committed, are verified, as rapidly as possible and without pre-conditions, so as to be sure that such tragedies as happened at Campello are not repeated.”

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August 08, 2008

Workplace Deaths: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here"

Here is a story drawn from the book entitled "Morti Bianche" (White Deaths), written by Samanta Di Persio and made available free of charge on this blog.
"The accident involving Antonino Mingolla occurred on 18 April 2006. My husband was working for a company called Cmt, a firm that had been awarded the maintenance contract for the Ilva plants. Due to his many years of experience in the field, he was appointed as deputy site foreman. On that fateful day, he and his team were scheduled to replace a valve on a certain pipeline that removed the gases produced by the blast furnaces. This task required that the workers wear masks connected to air tanks located on the ground. Prior to the commencement of the maintenance operations, Ilva was required to make the area safe, in other words, shut off the gas supply and flush the pipeline with nitrogen in order to remove any remaining traces of the gas. The flushing occurs through a number of flues. The valves were then to be shut by Ilva employees prior to handing over to the outside company for them to begin with the necessary work. In order to ensure the “safety” of the operations, the company normally handed out the masks they kept on hand, which were fitted with gas detectors, but apparently, on tat day none of these detectors registered the presence of any gas.
The pipes on which the people were working are enormous. They are three metres in diameter and are suspended some twenty metres above ground level. There were walkways located adjacent to this pipeline. On the one side was the entrance with the staircase leading up, serving both as access way and escape route. In the spot where my husband was working, there was a two-metre by four-metre walkway, fenced off by a handrail. Each time Antonino needed to move around, communicate with anyone at the other end of the working area or simply move away in order to keep an eye on the workers, or if he perhaps felt unwell, he was obliged to clamber over a three-metre pipe.
This was an untenable situation and one that was anything but safe. When a company puts a job out on tender, they should oversee the work in order to ensure compliance with the safety regulations, even as regards temporary operations. Are we honestly expected to believe that neither Ilva nor Cmt committed any safety violations?
Notwithstanding the fact that the conditions were not up to the required standards, my husband and his team nevertheless began with the maintenance procedure. If the truth were told, this was the way it had always been. They started disconnecting the pipes to insert the blank flanges that run on rails, in order to prevent any gas from escaping while the valve was being worked on.
Already early on during the day, they had encountered certain problems with the insertion of the blank flanges. At around 10 o’clock, one of Antonino’s colleagues began to feel ill due to the emission of toxic gaseous substances into the air.
When I spoke to him, he told me that he had changed the gas tank. The procedure for changing the tank was the same as it had always been previously and involved the workers moving back to a safe zone. That morning, instead, when he put the mask back on, he began to feel ill as a result of dizziness and nausea. What I think is that there were high levels of carbon monoxide in the air, which also landed on Antonino’s mask and he eventually died at four in the afternoon. His shift was due to end at 15h00. He stayed on for an extra hour due to his sense of duty and because he wanted to see the maintenance job through to its conclusion.
Only the court case will be able to establish the precise dynamics of the accident with any kind of certainty. For the time being, there is only a lot of passing the buck.
Antonino and I were the same age; we were both 46 years old at the time of the accident. We had two adolescent children who are now 15 and 16 years of age respectively. We had made a joint decision that he would go out to work while I would stay at home and raise our children. I try to provide the children with everything they may need so as to ensure that they can live in a carefree manner and, I must say, they have been extremely understanding. I feel honour bound to carry on fighting, together with the other families that have been left all alone, both by the trades union and the politicians. The only trade union that has given us any kind of support at all is the organised SLAI COBAS trade union of Taranto, who advised us to set up the “12th July Association”. Ilva has never approached us, not even as regards the conciliation attempt set up by my attorney.
Antonino was afraid because there had been far too many accidents of late. For example, I remember on of the stories he told me. On one occasion, a worker standing next to my husband fell off the scaffolding, under which ran the conveyor belts. They asked that the conveyor belts be stopped so that the man’s body could be recovered, but Ilva could not halt their production. From the year 2000, through to 2007, 16 men lost their lives in that place. That place is and always will be Dante’s Inferno, so it is appropriate to quote the phrase “abandon hope all ye that enter here”. It was only thanks to a bit of fear and irony that my husband was able to continue going to work. I am concerned about the fact that around 1,300 people die every year due to their work, that too many of these have no voice and are not ever mentioned. We are talking about an average of 3.5 deaths every day. My prayer is that no more bodies be separated and broken because these are human beings and should remain intact. What I wish for is that the hope for justice never dies, because it is difficult to face court cases where, against a colossus such as Ilva, I feel somewhat like an insignificant little ant. I cannot believe that the statute of limitations on these cases actually expires after just seven years.
During this period, hearings may be postponed for no reason and the delays increase without any valid reason, for example, when certain witnesses fail to show up. There is no respect or protection, not even after tragedy for which my husband bore no blame. There are 13,500 people currently working for Ilva, and another 8,000 currently working for associated companies. There is no other option but for them to join the other families involved in the Associazione 12 giugno and the many other associations that would like to join forces, so that we can give each other strength and to travel throughout Italy to tell the story to anyone who may wish to fight at our side."
Samanta Di Persio, from the book entitled "Morti Bianche".

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August 07, 2008

One flew over the strikebreaker’s nest

Army in the city
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Ignazio La Russa has deployed the army. Three thousand soldiers in the cities of Italy. If before this, the law enforcers always went around in twos, now they go around in fours. Two soldiers and two carabinieri or police. The mixed teams are already at work. In Milan, where Piazza del Duomo is controlled not unlike Kabul (there’s even the dog and his controller), in the first two days there have been three actions by the army, all decisive.
- First intervention: a man uses his elbow to smash a the glass of a fire alarm in the metro. “A patrol of police and military from the army arrived rapidly on the spot(*)". The guilty one was identified and denounced.
- Second intervention: two young people on a scooter didn’t stop when told to do so by a police car “The scooter was blocked by carabinieri and military in a mixed patrol at the “delle Cave” park. The chase started in via Forze Armate (where else? [editor]) and ended when the scooter entered the green space. Once inside the park, however the two youngsters got a flat rear tyre and while they were pushing the scooter towards the exit they were blocked and identified by the new mixed patrols of carabinieri and military (*).”
- Third intervention: a drunk was arguing with a shopkeeper “Military at work even in via Padova, where they are patrolling together with police officers. Yesterday they intervened to sort out an argument. But the intervention in this case was minimum. It was enough for the soldiers to turn up and bring back the calm(*)."
The deputy mayor “camerata” Riccardo De Corato was exultant: We have obtained the first important results, both in terms of deterrent and in terms of bringing back the serenity and the quiet life in problematic areas.”
The Police have always less money, they don’t have petrol for the police cars and overtime is not paid. This is why they bring out the army because the State has a ragged arse. And they make out that cuts in Police funding are increasing security. The Army is used like the strikebreakers of once upon a time.
At the Venice Film Festival the police won’t be there. The police officers have not yet received a euro for overtime in 2007 done during double shifts. If they are not paid they will not go to the Lido.
The Ministry instead of euros proposes “compensatory repose”. The 200 officers will probably be substituted by parachutists of the Brigata Paracadutisti Folgore. Cacciari has already said he is OK with that in the name of governability. One flew over the strikebreaker’s nest
(*) Corriere della Sera, 6 August 2008

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August 01, 2008

The death of Riccardo Rasman

No comment

The Rasman trial will take place in October in Trieste. The blog will follow the main hearings.


”The police officers came here at two thirty in the morning. They told us that Ricky was dead, that they had taken him to the mortuary in via Costalunga. We asked what had happened. They told us that he had thrown firecrackers and damaged the ear drums of a girl who lost blood. They had called the Fire service, they broke down the door of Ricky’s one room apartment and that Ricky collapsed. That’s what they told us. We asked why they hadn’t called us, but we got no reply to that. Only five days later, on November 1, they let us see and we understood why not…. From the photographs you could see that he had been massacred with blows to the face, they had broken his cheekbone, then there was the signs of being gagged, blood from his ears, nose, mouth, you could see really well. We went into that apartment only in March, it was a disaster, there was blood everywhere, a blood stain on the way to the kitchen. Then from the photographs I understood that they had moved him with his head towards the door so as to hide the blood stain that was there. There was a fracture, his hair was full of blood, there was a fracture even behind his neck, there was blood on the table, on the walls, on the bed sheets, behind the bed on the ground, there were blood stains on the mat underneath which we even found pieces of flesh, hidden. Under the bed we found a piece of wire bent four times into a figure eight. Then the autopsy found that he was tied with wire even round his ankles, his wrists. The signs still on his body are typical of those made by wire and not with handcuffs and then not counting the blows on his back: here there were signs 4 centimetres wide left by the impact of a chair, surely to hit him they even used a chair, thus Ricky received so many blows that you would need to ask the police how come they let themselves go like this. For two firecrackers? Given that it was really Ricky that had thrown these two firecrackers! Why is it that according to us they are not to be found in the acts. We deposited the affair with the wire but they didn’t. Not even did the girl have an injury to her ear drum as they said in the beginning. Ricky was never in that one room apartment. If he was there he was accompanied by his father or by myself. He never went on his own because he didn’t live there. He stayed with us, all the time. With the fear that he had for some time, so much that he never wanted to go anywhere, the doctors had taken away his medication. The doctors when they wanted to see him, they came here to the home of his parents. After signora Pollanz called 113, the police asked for information about this Rasman. Police officer Miraz, the first to go to the one room apartment said: “this Rasman, I know him.” Then on the photos you can see the collars of the shirt dirtied with blood. Sure already in 1999 they came here to our house to beat up Ricky, round about September, a neighbour who got annoyed called the Police because Ricky listened to the radio in the car. He himself came armed with a stick with his wife and a dog to threaten him, soon after the Police arrived here to beat him up. So they knew him. Perhaps they were not happy that Ricky, put on trial for that happening was absolved. The mental health centre showed that Ricky was a person who suffered, he was a 80% sickness invalid because of his military service, during which time his fellow soldiers had destroyed his psyche by playing tricks of every type on him, they destroyed his personality and Riccardo wrote in the acts that he didn’t react when then did harm to him out of respect for the mothers of those who harmed him, so as not to make them suffer. He was good natured: he received harm rather than give it. He was in care, however it was not a cure. I and my father we were always going to the mental health centre but for this reason we annoyed the doctors because we wanted Ricky to make progress, and we had taken him to Preganziol in Pisa then luckily Ricky seemed to be a bit better, so much so that he had started to do some small jobs however I believe they had him in a bind, they told him that if he had treatment outside Trieste they would not have given him treatment. So he always had highs and lows, he didn’t have a normal life, for the medication, the doctors didn’t come to the house, it was Ricky who had to go to the mental health centre, but with that illness he couldn’t be regular… He slept so much in his life, I wonder what disturbance he could have caused, he slept so much poor thing.. everyone knew him to be a respectful person, well-mannered, even though he was ill, we was polite towards everyone…. The police officers were absolved without seeing what we had written in the acts… In that week in the daily paper "Il Piccolo" there was an article that said that they had done their duty so that they came out of this situation with their heads held high because it’s not just a matter of having a trial, now it’s time to do other investigations, because things are still not clear, thanks to our lawyer Giovanni Di Lullo who on 28 February this year presented substantial documentation and so the judges could not archive the case. They have to explain why they broke down the door of the home, how much confusion he could have done with a little radio like that is not known, there are too many things that don’t make sense. For us it’s just a fabrication, mud, just lies, lies, lies. They took down the pictures in the entrance before breaking down the door. Why did they take down the pictures? Because they knew that they wanted to act with brutality, so as not to ruin anything, because it was better to move a bottle than the pictures from the wall. The bottle is more dangerous. Then we discovered that it was they who had placed the bottle, since Ricky didn’t have any glass bottles. That evening the only bottle that we found was the Coca Cola one, the only one that Ricky could have drunk. So it was just lies, lies, lies! Calumny. Anyone who has told lies and calumny must respond to the law because it’s not possible to slander a dead person.” Giuliana Rasman

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July 30, 2008

Starving Old Folk (except one)

Cutting social pensions


January 2009. Second year of the Psycho Dwarf Era. 760,000 people lose the social pension. The true Italians rejoice. The income will be taken away from the exploiters of the people. A true manoevre of the Left. The social Right applauds. The people of the Lega show (with pride) their middle finger to the old ladies who are sucking the blood from the lombardo-veneti entrepreneurs.
Social pensions to all those over 65 and with less than 10 years contributions will be cut. Housewives, unemployed, immigrants who have come back to Italy to spend their old age, monks and nuns. This mass of do-nothings are getting 395.54 euro a month. From next year they can spend their afternoons rummaging through the bins holding the leftovers of the local markets.
Tremonti is more advanced than Cavallo, the Argentine Minister of the Economy. In Argentina, before the collapse of the State, pensions were reduced by 30%. Tremonti is cutting them by 100%. Every year the Psycho Dwarf will save about 300 million euro (300,648,400).
The old folk can die of hunger. Meanwhile there’s the 300 million donated to Alitalia, the 329 millionin fines to the European Community for the abusive Rete 4 (up until now), the billions of euro a year for assisted publishing to pay the salaries of Scalfari, Mieli, Belpietro, Ferrara, Polito, Padellaro, and Feltri, the pensions to parliamentarians after two and a half years. When the State calls, the old folk can kick the bucket. They say that the law was done for the 23,113 immigrants who live in Italy. For 2.6% of social pensions. And so as not to be seen as racist they wanted to take no prisoners.
Starve them all to save one. He is the richest man in Italy.

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July 25, 2008

Bolzaneto: interview with Giorgia Partesotti

In Italy there is not (yet) the death penalty, but there is the right to torture. The crime of torture is not set out in our criminal code. In Bolzaneto unarmed young people were hit, threatened, tortured. If at least the actual perpetrators are put on trial, those with political responsibility are for ever safe, in the Government and in the Lower House. They will never go on trial.

”My name is Giorgia and I come from Padua. Seven years ago I was 20 years old and I went to the G8. I left home thinking I would visit another city that I’d never seen, where there was the seaside, spending a bit of time with my friends, then however I found myself in the middle of a massive demonstration that seemed more like a war. I found myself in the middle of the “black block”, burned out rubbish bins, cars jumping into the air, urban warfare, I was not used to that. I had never done such a big demonstration. On Saturday, the next to the last day of the demonstration after the death of Carlo Giuliani, I was going to try to pick up my backpack, and I found myself in the middle of a cordon, that the police had split into two, so the people had started to run away to the right and to the left. I had the misfortune to turn to the left and there the police started to move towards us and started to hit us and they took us to piazzale Kennedy. In piazzale Kennedy it was full of police and they asked us for our identity cards and they didn’t give them back. They loaded us onto a little truck. They brought us to the Fiera, the centre of the Carabinieri where they started to insult us, saying that they should rape us as they had done in Kosovo, that we were prostitutes and various things like that.


After that we stayed there I don’t know for how many hours. They tied our wrists together with plastic handcuffs. In the truck I was seated and behind me there were other young people who told me not to listen, leave it be, because they hit me with a cudgel, on my legs, arms and back. I had my hands in the air, I think my photo has been seen everywhere, in the newspapers, on the TV News with my hands in the air and with a cloth on my head for the tear gas. Behind me there was a guy from Morocco that I don’t know whether he is still alive. They took us to Bolzaneto; we were standing in the same position. They started hitting the guys dressed in black. They made them kneel in lines of 3 and they made them sing: "Faccetta nera". Those that didn’t understand because they were English were just hit. They sprayed pepper spray in the cells. We wanted to cry but we weren’t allowed to cry, we weren’t allowed to talk, we weren’t allowed to do anything.
At a certain point I sat down because I couldn’t stand any more and there was another guy at the side of me who was from Verona who if you are watching this video, please contact me. He was really destroyed because he was dripping blood, he couldn’t stand but they didn’t let him sit down … then there were loads of other guys who arrived with a broken foot, who couldn’t stand but had to stand up anyway , who needed a doctor for an insulin injection, but no doctor could come in, so you could hear him shouting out in pain all the time, there was one guy in a wheel chair who had been beaten as well.. Basically a series of things that were really not humane, in the end I don’t know after how long, they took our finger prints, they brought us together casually saying “what shall we give this one?” the other policeman responded “but we’ll put down a bit of everything, devastation, looting, offence to a public official” all accusations that I didn’t even know existed, I couldn’t ask because if I had asked they would have replied that I had to stay quiet.
After an interminable length of time, they got groups of us, they handcuffed us and they took us to the Varese prison. In comparison, the prison was a school outing because the officers of the prison knew that it was temporary and that we had done nothing and that we would have been released shortly. They treated us better. They gave us something to eat. Certainly it wasn’t a great experience. Then I was lucky as the arrest request for me arrived too late for the judicial timing. So after 4 hours of prison they let me go. In the end I was one of the victim-witnesses at the trial. I gave testimony and I recognised all those I had to recognise. It was emotional and that’s it. I never again want to go into a court of law for any reason.

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July 24, 2008

Fake death and fake jail

Fake funerals, office workers in coffins in Korea.
Ko Min-su is a successful Korean businessman. He has founded “Korea Life Consulting”, a company with the objective of reducing the number of suicides in South Korea that is at the top of the developed nations with 24.7 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants.
The big Korean corporations, like Samsung and Hyundai, regularly send their employees on “well-dying” {how to die well} courses at a cost of 300 dollars. The experience involves the reading of your last wishes in a dark room in front of those participating at your own funeral and lying flat in a closed coffin for 5 minutes, with a white flower placed on your bosom. After this experience (many people cry inside the coffin) even the most depressed managers come back bouncing and their productivity increases. Any work is better than a good death.
Up until now, 50,000 Koreans have participated in their own funerals. Ko Min-su has registered the course in 17 nations and is preparing new sessions. One with a fake cremation and another with a fake lock up in prison. Ko Min-su believes that the official or the manager after a few days of fake prison will no longer be led into temptation. After that he will no longer corrupt, rob or lie.
The Italian market for fake prison has the potential to explode. A business without limits. With Regional Presidents, Senators, Deputies, public officials, managers and bankers you’re spoilt for choice. Italy is the last in Europe in the classification of transparency, at 45th position after Malaysia.
The first ones to try fake jail could be the surely innocent ones, just to remove any temptation from them: Fassino, D’Alema, Berlusconi, Dell’Utri, Tronchetti, Buora, Geronzi, Scaroni, Mastella, Cuffaro. The number of presumed innocent in Italy is so high that we should straight away build some fake prisons to contain them all. The course leaders should be magistrates, to make the experience more real. Luigi De Magistris and Clementina Forleo are the ideal candidates to transform the fake jail into harsh prison.
De Magistris and Forleo anyway have a lot of free time, they have been cleared of any guilt, but transferred for environmental incompatibility. Thus they can no longer investigate those who are surely innocent. Once upon a time, they were assassinated, now they are moved.
Fake jail for all and impunity (“fuck the Italians”) for the Band of Four.

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July 21, 2008

Naples - Korogocho

Father Alex Zanotelli, Chiaiano
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Father Alex Zanotelli, who is, in my opinion, a splinter of the heart of Christ, wrote and sent me this letter from Naples. The emergency business is the future of the Campania Region, a life insurance for rotten politics. The emergency justifies the means and the final objective is always money.


"My dear ones,
I write this letter to you, with my body racked with anger, from the very depths of Naples, namely the Sanità District, at the peak of this sweltering summer. The anger that I feel is all consuming because nowadays it appears that the Lies have become the absolute Truth. My lament is so well expressed by a Jewish believer in Psalm 12:
“Everyone lies to his neighbour:
their flattering lips speak with deception,
all hiding that which lies in their scheming hearts.
They slither like reptiles,
and the most vile emerge,
dregs to the very end.”
When, after Korogocho, I chose to come and live in Naples, I could never have guessed that I would end up fighting the very same battles. I came from the Nairobi rubbish dump, situated next to the Korogocho squatter camp, to find the battle being waged by Naples against the rubbish dumps and the incinerators. I firmly believe that Naples is but the tip of the iceberg, a problem that is about to smother us all. In fact, if everyone on this planet, more than six billion human beings in all, were to live like us rich people (11% of the world’s population consumes 88% of all the planet’s resources!) we would need the equivalent of another four such planets’ worth of resources, plus another four such planets’ worth of rubbish dumps on which to dispose of our refuse. The poor people of Korogocho, who live virtually on top of the rubbish dumps, taught me a valuable lesson on how to recycle everything, how to re-utilise everything, how to repair everything, how to re-sell everything and, above all, how to live in a restrained manner.
It was a great lesson that still today helps enable me to read the current situation as regards the refuse situation in Naples and Campania, a region that, over the past twenty years, has literally become a national dumping ground for all sorts of toxic waste. As a matter of fact, certain members of the Camorra, in conjunction with certain secret Masonic lodges and local politicians, had already decided that they would dump toxic waste in Campania, back in 1989 in the “La Taverna” restaurant in “Villaricca”. The reason being this decision was that it was already becoming increasingly difficult to dump our refuse in Somalia. Thousands of articulated trucks arrived from all over Italy, loaded to the hilt with toxic waste, which was then buried by the Camorra in the Triangle of death (Acerra-Nola- Marigliano), in the “Terre dei fuochi” area (North of Naples) and in the countryside of the Casertano area. This toxic waste is now “bombarding” the newborns in particular with dioxins, nanoparticles that cause tumours, birth defects and leukaemia.
The documentary programme entitled Biutiful Cauntri explains exactly what I am talking about.
To this disaster, we must also add the new disaster that is the Country’s politics, which has now become subject to the whims of the economic-financial potentates. As a matter of fact, since 1994, no less than 10 different Special Commissioners, appointed by the succession of different national governments, have overseen this Region’s waste management system. Over a period of 15 years, these Special Commissioners have spent more than two billion Euro on the production of more than seven million tons of so-called “eco-bales”, which in reality have nothing to do with anything remotely “eco” in nature. They are bundles of rubbish, nothing more and nothing less, all wrapped up in plastic, which cannot be incinerated nor can they be buried because they would pollute the underground watercourses. A significant number of these eco-bales, stacked up just outside the town of Giugliano, are currently busy poisoning the wonderful countryside known as the “Taverna del re“ (The King’s Tavern) with their percolates.
And so we have now reached the point of disaster! Today, the Campania Region has the same high incidence of tumours as has the Northeast of the Country, which at least has the factories and the jobs. We, with no factories and no work, have nevertheless been condemned to face the same bleak future. Our situation is an ecological disaster - and I say this in anger – but rather an ecological crime, the fruits borne of political decisions made for the benefit of huge financial interests. Nor does the proof lie in the fact that, upon the collapse of his most recent government, Prodi proceeded to sign two provisions: one authorising the burning of the Giugliano eco-bales in the incinerator at Acerra, while the second authorised the transfer of “Cip 6” funds (additional charges levied on our Enel utility bills supposedly to help finance the development of renewable energy sources) to the 3 incinerators in Campania that “convert shit into gold – as stated by Guido Viale- The more shit there is, the more gold we can make!”.
I became even more angry when the Berlusconi government signed the new decree into law, namely Decree No. 90 concerning waste disposal in the Campania Region. Berlusconi is forcing us, by military might, to set up another 10 rubbish dumps and construct another four incinerators. Were these four incinerators ever to become operational, the Campania Region would be obliged to import refuse from elsewhere to keep them going. The Acerra incinerator alone could burn 800,000 tons of refuse per year! It suddenly becomes patently clear, therefore, that we are not really interested in introducing differentiated refuse collection, because if this were to be implemented seriously, (say at 70%), those additional incinerators would no longer be required. For the past 14 years the political will to implement a system of differentiated refuse collection has been totally lacking. It is not only the Neapolitans that are not interested, but also those politicians that are hindering the process because they feel obliged to obey the orders received from the very same economic-financial potentates that are behind the construction of these incinerators. Furthermore, all of this is enforced with military might, thereby preventing any form of resistance or dissent, upon pain of imprisonment. The consequences of this decree are devastating for the Campania Region. ”If it is true that all citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law (article 3 of the Constitution), then the people of the Campania Region must be less equal and must somehow have less social dignity –states a recent Appeal to Campania’s Parliamentarians. That which is classified as “toxic” elsewhere, even in terms of European Union Regulations, does not hold true for Campania, and that which is classified as “hazardous” elsewhere, cannot really be so. The regulations governing the protection of the environment and the safeguarding and monitoring of the population’s health are obviously not applicable in our area. As regards the matter of the prosecuting any violations of the laws regarding waste disposal, the local Judicial police and the magistrature have fewer powers at their disposal than do their counterparts in other parts of the Country, and the new special Courts will not be able to protect the rights of the residents of Campania, as do the courts elsewhere in the country, due to this jurisdictional discrepancy and novelty ...
That is why I went to the Acerra incinerator in person, to voice my objections at Berlusconi’s press conference, organised so as to take place at the very heart of the Beast, as the people have named it. There were only a few of us there, perhaps only about one hundred people (After the thrashings handed out by the forces of law and order on 29 August 2004, the people of Acerra are understandably terrorised and are afraid to take to the streets). We tried to express our objections regarding what was happening. We distributed our fliers to the press: “Day of Public Mourning. Democracy has died in Acerra. This fact is regretfully announced by Prime Minister Berlusconi and Undersecretary Bertolaso.” During the course of the press conference (which we were prevented from attending!) Berlusconi asked Fibe for forgiveness for all that the company had been obliged to “endure” in order to build the Acerra incinerator! (I remind you that Fibe currently stands accused in an ongoing court case). What a slap in the face for the Judges! Bertolaso announced that, just the previous day, he had signed the agreement enabling Fibe to complete the work that the same company had begun earlier! Then he announced that he would be entering into private negotiations to select one of the three possible Italian companies and one foreign company to handle the waste management. The Italian company will almost certainly be “A2A” (the Milan and Brescia multi-service provider) and the foreign company is Veolia, the largest multinational company as regards water treatment and the second largest worldwide as regards waste management. It will almost certainly be Veolia that snaps up this tasty morsel and so, after the waste management contract, they will also snap up the water provision contract for Naples. How shameful is that! It is a supreme victory for the very same economic-financial potentates whose sole aim is to make money at our expense, we who eventually become little more than the latest guinea pigs. In fact, I am convinced that Campania has today become a prime example of what Naomi Klein refers to as the Shock Economy in her book of the same name! Wherever there is any sort of serious emergency in progress, the economic-financial potentates will be allowed to do certain things that would not otherwise be permitted under normal circumstances. If this strategy works well in the Campania Region, it will spread to other Regions too. (New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has indeed taught us something!)...
Please don’t abandon us. This is a matter of life or death for us all. I write to tell you this with a heart that is full of anger. Let’s fight it!" Father Alex Zanotelli, Naples, 12 July 2008

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 11:07 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (35)
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July 20, 2008

Brunetta and absenteeism amongst the parliamentarians

Fantozzi, absenteeism and the twice-employed

Public servants have a terrible reputation. All sorts of things are said about them. The terms Permanent Absentee, twice-employed, recommended by the politicians and rude to the public immediately spring to mind. Public Service Minister Brunetta has now decided to clamp down on absenteeism. The home visits by the sick leave inspector will continue to be mandatory, even in the event of only a single day of sick leave. No one will be allowed to get away with anything any longer. Brunetta makes the point that the inspector may drop in at the ailing public servant’s home at any time whatsoever “in order to facilitate his visitation roster”. For every occurrence of illness there will be a cut in “ all fixed and ongoing earnings or remuneration, as well as any associated benefits”, amounting to 25-30% of the total remuneration.
I like Brunetta very much because he is a real hard-arse who demands respect, just like Napoleon, with whom he shares a similar stature. I am absolutely sure that his directives will be somewhat like a lightning bolt even for the public servants “par excellence”, namely the parliamentarians.
According to an investigation carried out by the Sole 24 Ore newspaper, with reference to the Chamber and Senate data as at the end of 2007, it is possible to find out exactly who was absent during parliamentary voting sessions. Brunetta should immediately arrange to send the sick leave inspector to Arcore. Silvio Berlusconi is in fact top of the list of absentees with his 98,5% absentee record in the Chamber. We are well aware that he is never satisfied unless he comes first in everything. The current PDL spokesman, Capezzone, tallied up a total of 67,6%. In the top ten there is also Sandro Bondi, in seventh position with 87,5% and, in fifth place, the ex P2 member Cicchitto with 89,9%. All the little P2 members are running away from work. Brunetta should have them followed because we would all like to know where they go, what they do there and whether or not they are perhaps meeting with Veltroni.
The situation is no better in the Senate as regards the PDL. Marcello Dell’Utri with his 41,1% absenteeism rate takes the top spot. Just marginally below him, in second place, is twice-employed Ghedini with his 38,7%. This is the attorney that is paid for by the taxpayer and earns a parliamentarian’s salary for defending Berlusconi in every courtroom in Italy. He is without a doubt the king of the twice-employed, a legend of his own time. Here’s a little tip for Brunetta: send a sick leave inspector to the Milan Court immediately, because he is bound to catch Ghedini red handed, in the act of defending the psychodwarf against certain accusations in the Mills case.
If all the public servants had the same absenteeism percentages as the missing parliamentarians, we could just as well shut down all of the ministries and no one would be any the wiser. But does Parliament truly exist at all? If any parliamentarian is absent for even just one day, Brunetta should send out the sick leave inspector immediately. In the event that the person in question is either a condemned criminal, a statute-barred offender or someone under investigation (which will be true in most cases) then let the inspector be accompanied by a member of the Carabinieri (for his own protection).

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July 16, 2008

The Del Turco Theorem

The psycho-dwarf is right. For him the arrest of Del Turco is the “usual theorem”. The Del Turco Theorem in fact says:
”The sum of the two parties (PDL and PDminusL) constructed on the catheti is equal to the area of the tangents {kickbacks}constructed on the hypotenuse.
How much is the hypotenuse worth?
Modern Italian economic theory supplies a response with the Craxi theorem:
”The percentage of public financing, called hypotenuse, corresponds to 30% of the immaterial transactions.”
The Craxi theorem cannot be proved scientifically, but just in nature, as the financing is under the table.
An empirical proof of the Craxi theorem is to be seen in the public debt. If you do an approximate calculation of the size of the kickbacks given to the parties in the last 20 years you get by generously rounding down 1661 billion euro that is equivalent to the current public debt.
The Del Turco and Craxi Theorems are at the basis of Berlusconi’s special restricted theory of relativity (called restricted because of the dimensions of the guy).
”Justice is relative and it is applied only to others.” The researcher dealing with the statute of limitations, Ghedini and his spokesperson in the government, Alfano make it clear that for “others” the meaning does not apply to public office, to mafia people, bankers and all the institutions in the widest possible sense.
The Argentina Theory finally explains the effects of the conjunction of the Del Turco, Craxi and Berlusconi theories:
”When the kickbacks are greater than the threshold of the general poverty of the citizens, the system fails.”
The consequences of the Argentina Theory are illustrated in the Theory of Piazzale Loreto:
”When the system fails, the person responsible is hanged by their feet or escapes to Hammamet.”

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July 11, 2008

Nadia

The price of food has gone up by almost 30%, that’s said by the Italians who do the shopping. We need to believe them. Industrial production is collapsing. that’s said by the industrialists. We need to believe them.
Morpheus Napolitano will sign the lodo SchifoAlfano, the space shield for the Band of Four. The psycho-dwarf will finally be safe from prison and Napolitano, Fini and Schifani will be able to, if they so wish, commit crime without risk. The Band of Four doesn’t know the cost of bread, and perhaps not even champagne. It’s immune from the rise in the cost of living. Out there. Far from the palaces, people are ever poorer, but from today, more aware that they are them, and we are just nothing.
Nadia has written to me. She’s an Italian woman who is struggling every day for herself and for her family.
Go for it Nadia. You will win. We will win.

”Dear Beppe,
Good day. My name is Nadia and I’m 30 years old. I work in a supermarket on the check out, 12 hours a day. I’ve recently become a mother. My son is 9 months old. I am on maternity leave. I had a salary of a thousand euro, and now I get thirty per cent, about 350 euro.
I am married and my husband is a security guard and thanks to a few hours overtime he manages to earn 1,200 euro. We live in rented accommodation and we pay 800 euro in rent. We have tried to find a place with a lower rent but there’s nothing for less. We have had to ask for a personal loan to deal with the first expenses that the young have to face when they are creating a family. The overall repayments are 573 euro and I have an overdraft of 2,000 euro in the bank.
I have asked the nursery run by the local authorities for a place because the private one is too costly. But as our income and as we are a working couple my son has been turned down because he has 25 points and there are 255 children ahead of him. The charges for the private nursery (which is open until 5:30pm), I have discovered, is 500 euro a month. I can’t afford that.
My mother-in-law is not well. My parents can’t help me because my mother is blind and my father has a pace maker, having said that my father has to look after his own health and take care of my mother.
Soon, the period of maternity leave will end. I have tried to create a part-time job. But the first thing they ask is Have you got children? I say - Yes – and they slam the door in my face. Soon, the period of maternity leave will end and I will have to resign given that I will manage to get unemployment benefit, how will I cover the bills, the "Biagi" law for which he gave his life, what use is it? If it is not applied, is it possible that in 2008 you have to work 12 hours, because if I have a son I have to be treated like that and I don’t have the possibility to change and to improve my position. I am a woman beyond being a mother and I have the right to work as is said in the Italian Constitution. Italy is a democratic Republic founded on work. The Republic recognises the right of all citizens to work and it promotes the conditions that make this right effective.
The family is an important institution for the Italian State. There was the Family-day. Why should I be in a bad way in the country where I was born, I am starting to get depressed I no longer want to go out I feel like a failure what future can I give my son if in a bit I will no longer have the money to buy milk. Is it possible that no one will listen to me, what is my situation like that it doesn’t make the news, but if I am ignored and the desperation makes me take an extreme action then yes. In order to be heard I have to go to those limits!
I have to shriek out my suffering, but I need someone who can give me a voice. HELP I AM DESPARATE! I could seem like a whinger but I wouldn’t have fallen so low if I weren’t really desperate. I know I’m not the only one to be in difficulty, but this is not a good reason not to ask for help in fact how I am doing the others can do. If there’s someone with children they can understand me – for a child you fight to the death.” Nadia

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July 04, 2008

White deaths and blowjobs at work

Samanta Di Persio has written a book entitled “Morti bianche” (White deaths), which will be published soon on this Blog, free of charge. She sent me the testimony provided by Mrs. Franca, who is battling (unsuccessfully I might add) to get some sort of justice for her husband and her son who were both killed at work, and she is fighting against statute barring, pardons and “ad berlusconian” laws.

People are dying at work, but the real problems facing the country concern blowjobs.
“Today the workplace fatality counter stands at 533 victims and the real bitterness lies in knowing its destiny, because it is destined to increase. The present Government, like the previous one, are to busy with other things. They would have us believe that the real emergencies needing to be addressed do not include the deaths of men and women that are simply exercising their right to be able to take home a piece of bread. We are stuck on the issue of tapped telephone conversations proving that, today, the primary objective is to recommend certain dancing girls, actresses and ballerinas …but we are not entitled to know all the details … However, who will explain to Mrs. Franca Mulas that the world is running back-to-front, that those who make the mistakes will never be called to account, and that those who have lost a husband and a son will never see justice done, in addition to never having received any form of compensation. Our dearest Prime Minister, the prosecuted one who spends every Saturday afternoon with his attorneys, emerges unscathed from all the court cases, statute barred, “ad personam” laws, pardons and all. The sweetener is some or other legal decree, consolidated act or sneaky little law, no matter whether or not, or if they are ever applied, meanwhile, life on Earth is very different.
Gianfranco took Franca away from their native Sardinia so as to be able to provide a better life for their family. They arrived in Bergamo. He found a job in the building industry and his 17-year old son Luciano is engaged as well. This is a large family and everyone must do their bit in order to maintain a certain dignity.
Franca: “On 28 April 2000, Gianfranco and Luciano left home early in the morning. They had to get to Briosco (Mi) to renovate an old wooden roof. My husband was driving the crane and, at around 07h30 he loaded a batch of beams, which were wet and came loose from the crane. There were two men working under the load at the time. He shouted at them to jump out of the way. One of them managed to jump aside, but the other was struck head-on and died immediately. That other person was my son Luciano. He was 22 years of age at the time. Following the accident, my husband was charged together with the company partners. I won the case and I won the appeal case, but still no one has compensated me for the damages I suffered. In addition to the pain I have suffered, I have also had to pay out tens of thousands of Euro in attorney’s fees.” Franca’s life was not only turned upside down by the tragic death of her son, because a little more than one year later, another tragic event was about to occur. “Over a number of days my husband had been working at Varese, once again on a renovation project. He had told me that the scaffolding they were obliged to work on was not up to standard and he asked me to call the ASL (National Health Service) to get them to send over one of their technicians to do an inspection. I called them and they responded by registered mail, stating that they did not have any staff available to carry out the inspection. On the 23rd July one of the platforms flipped and my husband, who had been standing on the scaffolding at the time, was thrown off. The 15-metre fall tore him away from me just like my son had been earlier.”

Now Franca is all alone, attempting to raise 5 children and having to endure the hardships of two court cases. One of these, scheduled for December, will be statute barred by that time. This is a woman in anguish, resentful because she had been hoping for some sort of justice. She has had to endure being told: “You have had two family members killed on the job, heaven alone knows how much money you have received!” Franca has received no compensation and indeed no justice either. At the time of the last hearing, the Public Prosecutor had forgotten to notify the witnesses to attend the hearing. Not even a newly graduated attorney would make such an elementary mistake. Nevertheless, using this calibre of person is precisely the reason why so many cases are eventually dismissed due to the expiry of the statute of limitations. There are many other cases that are precisely the same as Franca’s, sufficient to say that each year there is an average of 1300 workplace fatalities, few of which are ever afforded nearly the same media attention as that afforded to the Thissenkrupp case, which has certainly helped to ensure that the investigations are expedited in order to reach a speedy verdict, rather than being forgotten. No one will ever be able to give Franca back her heroes that died on the job.” Samanta Di Persio

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July 01, 2008

No country for lambs

”A wolf and a lamb, motivated by thirst, find themselves drinking from the same stream. The wolf was higher up the valley, while the lamb was drinking at a certain distance, but lower down. Hunger however pushed the wolf into picking a quarrel and so he said: “Why are you daring to mess up the water for me?
The lamb trembled and said: “How can I do that if the water is flowing from you to me?”
”That’s true, but 6 months ago, you insulted me with nasty words.”
”Impossible, I was not born 6 months ago.”
”Well then” continued the wolf “it was definitely your father who used those terrible words against me.” Then he jumped on the lamb and ate him.”
Fedro
Fedro’s fable is today’s Italy.
- Giorgio Del Papa, CEO of Umbria Olii, has sent to the family of the Campello sul Clitunno victims, (4 workmen died at work) an injunction asking them for compensation of 36 million euro. To die at work, a worker has to be at least a multimillionaire. Read the injunction.
- Silvio Berlusconi after approving law in the Council of Ministers, a law that makes him safe for the duration of the legislature from every trial. And after having launched a draft law that freezes one hundred thousand trials for a year so as to avoid the conclusion of the Mills trial against him: “However it’s certain that we will explore in depth with every effort so that the interests of the few do not prevail on those of almost everyone, continuing in the direction that was indicated in our manifestos and that is made concrete in our actions.”
Crimes suspended by Berlusconi: kidnapping, extortion, robbery, burglary, mugging, associating to commit crime, rape and sexual violence, unauthorized abortion, fraudulent bankruptcy, exploitation of prostitution, tax fraud, usury, falsification of public documents, corruption, revealing official secrets, computer crime, sale of products with counterfeit brand names, possession of pornographic or paedophile material, carrying or possessing weapons even in secret, culpable homicide caused by violation of traffic regulations, calumny, defrauding the European Community, fire-raising, trafficking refuse, adulteration of food substances.
- Agostino Saccà, director of RAI Fiction, now reintegrated back into RAI: “We are starting to see a ray of light in so much darkness. I’m keen to get back to work as there is so much to do.”
- Giulio Tremonti: “The current government has worked on the Alitalia dossier with constructive substance.” The Intesa San Paolo plan with the blessing of the government sets out 4,000 sackings, double the Air France number. Alitalia has lost about two million euro a day since the block on Air France. A mountain of money that by the end of the year will amount to about 540 million euro to be paid for by the taxpayer, including the Roma Ladrona {Rome the thief} folk of the Lega.
- Antonio Scajola: “Only the nuclear power stations make it possible to produce energy on a large scale, safely at competitive costs and while respecting the environment. By June 2009 we will define the new ‘national energy strategy’ that Italy has been waiting for, for twenty years.” Nuclear power stations do not make it possible to produce energy on a large scale, they are not safe, the radioactive waste is extremely dangerous, they are not competitive when you relate the costs to other ways of producing energy and they don’t respect the environment.
- Ennio Italico Noviello, top researcher in Rome’s CNR, declared that Brescia had proposed selling its incinerator (the biggest in the world) to Campania “The proposal was to sell it for 25 million euro, less than the amount needed to complete the one at Acerra. A proposal justified by the fact that the plant is polluting the whole of Lombardy. In Brescia there is not one cattle farm without dioxin. That plant has won a prize. But on the scientific committee of the body that assigned it the prize, there’s one of the companies that created the plant. Brescia is the most polluted point in the world, just look at the satellite. Brescia’s incinerator can burn 750 thousand tons a year, but the environmental disasters there have been documented, demonstrated and verified from all viewpoints. Even the European Commission has intervened. It is incredible that someone is proposing that incinerator as a model.”

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June 22, 2008

Autumn

"This autumn we take to the streets against the Government " Walter Veltroni.
We stay,
as in autumn,
in the trees,
Veltroni.

Text freely taken from “Soldati” (Soldiers) by Giuseppe Ungaretti

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June 19, 2008

No one can judge me

The blog is publishing the official letter, kept secret up until now, sent by Berlusconi to his letter-carrier Schifani. A scoop. Tar Head and His Retriever then agreed on a version for the Senate that would have made Ceaucescu blanche.

”Dear president,
As you know, this morning the senators Berselli and Vizzini have presented in relation to the so-called “security decree” an amendment aimed at establishing priority criteria for handling the most urgent trials and those that cause particular social alarm. I want to underline that the trials relating to myself are neither urgent nor do they cause any social alarm. If that had been the case, Italian citizens would not have elected me, otherwise they would be idiots as in fact they are.
In that amendment, it established the absolute necessity to offer priority treatment by the Judicial Authorities to the most recent crimes even in relation to the modifications put into operation for fast track judging and immediate judging.
This subject area is well known to me and it has my disinterested approval. I can bear witness to this as a “prescritto” that knows the facts.
This suspension of a year will allow the magistracy to deal with more urgent crimes and not those that relate to my position and in the meantime it allows the government and parliament to put in place the structural reforms that are necessary to imprint an effective acceleration of the criminal trials, even with the full respect of constitutional guarantees, eliminating the court chronicles, imprisoning journalists and as extreme rationalization for the defendant, in the case of Silvio Berlusconi, to challenge the judges.
My lawyers, that I have had elected for my necessary protection in Parliament, have informed me that such an arrangement in the regulations would be applicable to one of the many fanciful trials (I swear on my children, that I have always been in the dark about the existence of this Mills) that the magistrates of the extreme Left have thought up against me for political battles. I am saying to you, in private, they are the usual shitty communists.
I have thus taken a view on the situation of trials and I have been able to make out that it is the umpteenth amazing attempt by a prosecutor from Milan to use the justice system for political and media ends, supported by a Tribunal that is also politicized and settled into the accusatory theory.
I am innocent. Craxi is an innocent dead man. I have not been a member of the P2. The registration number 1816 was assigned to a Freemason who had the same name as me. A P2-man, a “golpista”, a whoremonger. ”
Baciamo le mani, Silvio Berlusconi.

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June 12, 2008

Bricks of Gold, Truncheons of Lead

photo by Salmoirago

Demonstrators from the group: “No Expo” who were standing up to the building speculation, tried peacefully to hand to Mayor Moratti, some golden bricks.
Police in anti-riot gear charged the young people. To whom are the police responsible? To the citizens or to the real estate companies that have devastated Italian cities? To beat up unarmed young people with truncheons and as can be seen from the photo, to treat a young woman as a dangerous delinquent. It’s not for this that we pay the State Police. Maroni Zanna Bianca strikes in Milan. The Lega, of what is hard, now has only the truncheon.


photo by Salmoirago

photo by Salmoirago




P.S. La Casa della Legalità {House of Legality}(www.casadellalegalita.org), is organising for tomorrow, Thursday 12 June 2008, at 8:30pm at the Starhotel - Corte Lambruschini, Genoa, a meeting called: "Tangentopoli genovese - corruzione, conflitti di interesse, voto di scambio, infiltrazione mafiosa" {Bribesville in Genoa, corruption, conflict of interests, exchange votes, mafia infiltration} with Christian Abbondanza, Roberta Anguillesi, Elio Veltri.

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June 08, 2008

The plague is all around us

Click the image



Naples is only the tip of the iceberg. Italy is a peninsula that is crisscrossed by mountains of refuse, embellished with plains full of toxic waste, broached by rivers of hazardous liquids and surrounded by a sea of shit.
Naples is reflected everywhere. Unauthorised landfill sites, unbearable stenches, putrefying sores left out in the open, and poisons dumped in the farmers’ fields have all become a feature of the Italian landscape. It’s enough to take a bike ride out into the country in order to discover these new treasures. All you need is a camera and a protective mask that is able to keep out the pestilent smells. We can all become rubbish hunters.
Naples is not alone. Naples is anywhere where there is a corrupt local council. A party that uses the “exchange” vote in order to swell the ranks of employees in the refuse collection companies. Wherever there is a company that pays criminals to dump refuse in the fields, combined with fertile ground. Naples is reflected wherever the residents turn a blind eye because of fear, indifference or absence of State control. Wherever there is some or other mayor, councillor or parliamentarian who gets himself elected thanks to the payment of refuse collection bribes, or close links with the environmental mafia.
Refuse is the symbol of the second Republic. It is the parties’ most lucrative business venture. The black hole of State concessions and the municipal services organisations, which are quoted on the Stock Exchange and are filled to the brim with public officials. The parties are a like a veritable octopus. They have devoured the entire Italian industrial system. All that remains are the incinerators and the waste disposal business.
Naples is reflected in Castellamonte, in the green hills of the Canavese area, where certain mayors and managers and employees of the refuse removal and waste disposal company ASA have landed up under investigation or under house arrest. The Prosecution has accused them of having dumped the rubbish on farm fields and ploughed it into the ground, or having stored it in unauthorised landfill sites. Naples is reflected in Piemonte where, even before the findings of the inquiry was made public: “The mayors have taken sides with the people under investigation” and “The workers support top management”.
Naples is reflected in Lombardy, in the Gorla Maggiore and Olgiate landfill sites. In the Rubbish Connection inquiry. Instead of being processed, the rubbish from the South was being laundered by mixing it in with industrial waste, after which it was being reflected in the documentation as being non-hazardous waste and sent off to Grottaglie, in the Province of Taranto.
Naples is reflected in the five hundred thousand cubic metres of rubbish lying in an unauthorised landfill site in Puglia, which has polluted the Cervaro River.
Naples is reflected in the degradation of the “Parco dell’Etna” national park where the unauthorised dumping sites enjoy greater protection than does the nature itself, resulting in a frightening example of degradation.
Just a few words are all that would be necessary in order to change everything: “Differentiated waste collection” and “Rubbish is a resource”. The plague is all around us. Naples may well represent your area, your councillor, your mayor or your party. An epidemic transmitted by indifference.

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June 05, 2008

It can’t rain all the time

Click the image

Telecom Italia is one of the companies with the biggest debts with a share value that has crashed down to 1.391 euro, a forecast of zero growth in the next 2 years, the worst activity on the Stock Market in its sector. In 1999 Telecom, would have been able to buy Vodafone and perhaps even Telefonica, its probable future owner.
Bernabè, its current CEO, was sent away by D’Alema who made a gift of the country’s biggest company to the “captains courageous” using the mechanism of the leveraged buyout. It had a nice ring. It meant that Telecom was bought using debts. Colaninno and Gnutti didn’t have the money and they got the company into debt so as to be able to buy it. In this way the merchant banker D’Alema sent up in smoke the country’s greatest asset.
It would have still been possible to save Telecom if in 2001 the unhappy Tronchetti had not arrived on the scene. If the “captains courageous” still had rags on their backsides, he just had one of Afef’s used thongs. Tronchetti became the boss of Telecom with the complicity of the banks with only 0.11% ownership. The way he managed it reminds you of Attila. Externalise. Sell. Sell off parts of the company, from Telespazio to the foreign subsidiaries (while the competitors were investing in the emerging countries) and cutting the services so as to distribute the profits, stock options and the highest salaries in the sector in Europe. The Telecom security division has ended up in prison for spying (the men Tronchetti trusted), while Adamo Bove, who was collaborating with the Milan prosecutors, slid off a fly over. But this is a story that I will come back to.
Yesterday we got to a first epilogue in this colossal destruction of value with the interview of Bernabè to The Financial Times and the announcement of the sacking of 5,000 people for a starter. The rest of the meal will be much more weighty. Bernabè said that he will cut structural costs by 40% in the next few years. How many employees is that equivalent to? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Bernabè has a hot potato in his hands. If he doesn’t sack people, he’ll end up like Alitalia. But the tens of thousands of families who will end up in the streets (or who are already in the streets) who will they have to thank?
When Tronchetti ended his extraordinary adventure in Telecom he said: “If you look at the Pirelli results, it perhaps wasn’t worth having the Telecom adventure. But the professional balance is positive.” The professional balance is that of the management, of Ruggiero (17.277 million € 2007) to Buora (11.94 million € 2007), now a director of Impregilo (sic), to that of Tronchetti in particular. Pirelli-Telecom has in fact been worth to him 295 million € from 1999 to 2007 in stock options and salary.
Buora, in response to a question about maxi-pay packets, replied that he is completely indifferent: “It doesn’t interest me.”
It does however, interest me. And I believe that it’s of interest to all those who have been sacked and who will be sacked. I believe that it’s of interest to their families, to the mortgages that they will no longer be able to pay, to their offspring to be fed. I believe that it is of great, of vast interest, for the thousands of Italians to know about the motives why the Telecom managers got richer and yet they were destroying the company. An interest of such proportions to deserve a class action against the previous Board of Directors of Telecom.
Every person who has been sacked and who wants to join in can write to the blog.
It can’t rain all the time!

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 11:45 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (22)
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May 31, 2008

Monnezzopoli

Click on the image: Chiaiano, professor Marfella

The Public Prosecutors Office of Naples has ordered the arrest of 25 people, all of which are public officials and employees of companies with links to the Refuse Emergency Committee (Cdr). The arrests made the headlines on the day that the news first broke, but within just a few hours it was relegated to the inside pages (Corriere) or became an irritation, as in the case of La Repubblica’s headline: “Refuse, now the magistrature has begun to cause problems”. The Veltrusconi newspapers have stood together in defence of “Monnezzopoli” (The refuse scandal). The managers of the Cdr plants in Naples, Benevento, Caserta, Avellino and Salerno were placed under arrest, namely the Cdr technical manager who is solely responsible for the procedures relating to the Acerra, the Managing Directors of the Fibe company, which is part of the Impregilo Group, and Ecolog, which is part of the State Railways Group, and Marta Di Gennaro, Bertolaso’s right hand man.
The psychodwarf’s continuous presence in Naples raises certain doubts. His decree making provision for a Super-prosecution Department is yet another example of clockwork injustice, one of his long standing specialities. 75 deputy prosecutors and acting prosecutors have rejected the decree as being unconstitutional. Naples’ jurisdiction over the entire Campania Region will result in the paralysis of all the investigations, since all of Campania’s justice departments will be required to “interact with a single Public Prosecutor’s Office, thereby risking that a drop in efficiency and increased delays will affect the co-ordination of police activities by the public prosecution”. The court proceedings that are currently in progress will be entrusted to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, retroactively. This is tantamount to snatching the investigations away from the people who began them, thereby causing chaos in terms of the processing of procedural documentation.
Bertolaso is embittered and talks about refuse as if it was a lost love: “The intervention at Chiaiano was good”, “The intervention by the magistrature has created problems, not only for itself, but also for the local communities”.
The inquiry that led to the arrest of those 25 people commenced in January 2008, which was already too late, but also had nothing to do with the psychodwarf’s decree.
In addition to the abovementioned 25, there are another 28 people committed for trial for crimes including corruption and fraud relating to the provision of public waste disposal services. Amongst these are the former Managing Director of Impregilo, the former Managing Director of Fibe and the salt statue that is Bassolino. The court case is due to commence in July. This blog will be monitoring the proceedings with much interest.
25+28 equals 53, or “old man” in terms of the ancient “Smorfia Napoletana”. Since I am rather superstitious, this worries me, also because the number 71, which also happens to be the age of a certain old man, totally co-incidentally you understand, in the Smorfia means “man of shit”.
Monnezzopoli is coming.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 11:31 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (5)
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May 24, 2008

Two sitting side-by-side on the sofa

Tar-Head and Topo Gigio, the dwarf and his tall shadow. These two individuals have agreed to export the bullshit electoral law to the rest of Europe. If it is true that in Italy it is no longer possible to vote for a specific candidate and no one any longer says anything, then why not make pigs of ourselves in Brussels as well? If the citizens no longer has the right to select the person that will be representing him/her back home, he may just as well lose this right in Europe as well.
The marvellous extra parliamentary duo also wants to set up barriers for the European political elections as well. The higher the barrier is set, the fewer the parties that will be going to Brussels. As a result, many more of the European Parliamentarians will bear the PDL and PD-without-the-L stamp of approval. Vacuum packed Carfagne and Finocchiare put forward on everyone’s behalf. The barrier was introduced in Italy in the interests of governability. This makes no sense in Europe, where they value representation.
One page at a time, one quill at a time, they are busy taking away the citizen’s opportunity to participate in public life. It is a case of “either them or the citizens”. This is a concept that they have understood very well. The People’s Laws are being ignored. The referendums are being mocked, from the one on the abolition of public financing to the one regarding nuclear power. The army in place of dialogue in Campania. Military secrecy as regards the landfill sites and nuclear waste dumps.
The sofa at Palazzo Chigi is actually the new Parliament. A place where, when Tar-Head calls, Topo Gigio always answers with: “What are you telling me nooooooow…….”. The new bullshit European law will be promulgated, because it is precisely what is desired by the sofa politics. One simply lies down and the stretching-out phase begins.
The Europeans, however, must be informed that these new European Parliamentarians have nothing to do with us. We cannot afford to keep them in the dark. If so, our reputation would go down the tubes. For this very reason, should the new law be passed after the European elections, I will request an invitation to go to Brussels so as to publicly disassociate myself from the likes of Tar-Head and Topo Gigio’s elected individuals. Secretaries, recycled ministers, sentenced criminals, lovers, wives and debutantes. The money is ours, subject to their choices.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 01:56 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (9)
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May 13, 2008

Nonno cocaina

They’ve arrested “Nonno Cocaina” {Grandpa cocaine}. Now he’s in prison in San Vittore. An official of the State Police together with a number of officers made a sudden entry into his apartment in Milan. Giuseppe, 73 years old, with the help of his wife, Angelina, aged 70, sold cocaine sweets that they wrapped up by hand and hid in the sewing machine. A retailer. Nonno Cocaina and his wife lived on 580 euro between them. They sold cocaine to survive. The arrest has been validated. Age for poor wretches is not a mitigating factor. But it is for Previti. The Police found 200 grammes of cocaine and a few thousand euro in cash. Before getting carted off to prison, Giuseppe managed to organise for the 580 euro pension to be paid to Angelina. Dura lex, sed lex.
I don’t want any more sweets, but I do want containers…
Gioia Tauro is the Mediterranean port with the highest number of containers in transit and it is the most important in Europe for the importing of cocaine from Colombia. To increase the capacity of the port, they are planning to invest 1.5 billion euro. According to a recent report of the antimafia committee, organised crime “controls or influences a relevant part of the economic activity connected to the port and uses it for illegal traffic”.
On the one hand there is a constant movement of ships teeming with cocaine and on the other hand an old man who sells cocaine. Who would you start with?

Let’s zap Forbice just as he zaps us. Free information in a free State.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:51 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (11)
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May 11, 2008

Topo Gigio and the shadows

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Topo Gigio has appointed the 21 shadow ministers of the shadow government. We need to understand why. After having delivered Rome into the hands of Alemanno, he has simply become a shadow of his former self. If Tar Head’s government is the government of the Bagaglino variety company, then the opposition is the shadow that walks. Dead mouse shadow walking. The shadows will not present any problems for the operator, at worst they may provide him with some shade.
Veltroni has made a very careful choice. There is shadow Enrico Letta representing Welfare. Enrico is a nephew of uncle Gianni Letta, Undersecretary in the office of the Premier. As far as Letta is concerned, Italy is a family business. Then there is Unipol-Fassino-five legislatures at Foreign Affairs. And then there is the shadow party of the incinerators, consisting of the Colaninno-Bersani-Realacci trio.
At the ministry of Justice there is the well-known Lanfranco Tenaglia, to oppose the shameful laws of the past and the soon to come sickening laws. Antonio “Kriptonite” Di Pietro has been left out. They are even afraid of his shadow. If Di Pietro horrifies Tar Head and little veal head Bondi, then he must make Veltroni as scared as hell.
In any event, Topo Gigio’s shadow government has at least one function, namely, to allow the emergence of new talent that could pick up the Country’s reins at some point in the future. New faces, such as Garavaglia, Minniti and Lanzillotta.
However, a number of shadow ministers are obviously missing from the shadow government, which appears to be a Club Med for failures. Bassolino, shadow minister of refuse, and Violante and D’Alema, shadow ministers of Mediaset, a real resource for the Country and for democracy, who have protected it for the past fifteen years against all of the court decisions handed down.
Times have changed. Once upon a time, the real and true opposition went underground. Today the opposition stands in a cone of shadow.
This is the One-party Italy. A government supported by shadows.
The opposition is in the hands of the citizens. Stay tuned!

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:22 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (0)
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May 09, 2008

The Tin-Cap

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A member of the Local Police Force sent me a letter. He works as a “Tin Cap” in Milan. If the controller is starving, then the controlled party is able to buy him off. His boss is in a position to de-motivate him. Carmine makes two good points:
"Social standing does not pay the bills"
"It is a very simple matter to resign, and then to go and work for the same private individual whom he was investigating previously".
"Please excuse me but I cannot take it any longer and I feel that I must say something.
I am a member of the Local Police Force (Traffic Warden) in Milan and I am on duty 365 days a year, working a variety of shifts that range over the full 24-hour period. I am a person that is normally happy with his lot in life. I don’t live in unashamed luxury, anything but…., and I thought that I was fairly well-off all told, until I happened to glance through the 2005 income tax data divulged online before it was withdrawn.
It is said that public servants don’t do very much, however, they also earn little or nothing, something that no one ever mentions. In fact, notwithstanding all the qualifications I have, namely, public safety officer, public official, investigative police officer, etc., I now find out that, excluding overtime payments, I am at the bottom of the earnings list as regards taxable earnings and compared to all those people around me. If the Country continues to starve its workers, slaves, call them what you will, financial police officers, carabinieri...how can it expect these essential activities to run smoothly?
As regards the investigations carried out by the Financial Police, it is shameful that a certain percentage of all revenues accruing from the battle against tax evasion are paid out to the administrative personnel of the various ministries, while nothing is paid to the Financial Police, which is the true executive arm of the process. Working as investigator, face to face out in the field, is an arduous task and, given the current level of unacceptable practices, the people feel increasingly entitled to attack those in uniform and the public institutions. How can we honestly expect any member of the Financial Police, who investigates cases running into millions of Euro, to live on starvation wages and still continue to carry out his/her task diligently? It is far easier to simply resign and go and work for the very same private individual whom he was investigating previously.
”Social standing” does not pay the bills. It would be better not to have any fancy qualifications but to earn a salary that is commensurate with the cost of living. I came across jewellers who declare lower earnings than mine, while other anonymous people, people with no qualifications whatsoever, declaring much higher earnings than me.
The politicians complain about the high cost of the Public Service, however it is evident that they are subsidising the senior employees within the Public Service, those that have never been anywhere near the rock face, those who have never been there nor will they ever go there, those who know nothing about the daily grind nor about the endless bureaucracy involved in certain mechanisms. Money is being thrown away on managers and outside consultants, friends of friends that are far removed from the real problems within the institutions. In my opinion, all of this is being done very scientifically in order to ensure that there are no operational and legislative instruments, nor any resources (money) left over for the troops. In this way, the latter group, the “foot soldiers”, will become de-legitimised and de-motivated, distracted by their financial concerns, namely the bills, the mortgage,...etc. Forget about “On your feet Italy”!!!
I would be quite happy to pay 70% Income Tax if I was in a position to declare the same level of earnings as Berlusconi, Montezemolo & Co.
Regards." Carmine

Ps. I am hereby publishing the updated list of convicted criminals in Parliament 2008, with the associated crimes. Circulate the banner by means of your own blogs. Read the list from time to time so as not to forget.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 06:10 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (16)
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May 07, 2008

His Fullness

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"I feel that Grillo personifies, better than many other characters, the worst of the Italian. He is the arch-Italian of the worst." Eugenio Scalfari

The bank clerk, Eugenio Scalfari was born in Civitavecchia in April 1924. He collaborated with the fascist newspaper “Roma Fascista”. After the war he grew a beard so that the partisans wouldn’t recognise him. He became liberal and a banker with the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. His love of banks and of money has stayed with him for all his life. He became a radical and a journalist. He wrote his great piece: “Has Russia already won the great challenge?” In which he states: “In 1972 the USSR will have already got to the top not just as an industrial power but also for the average standard of living of its population. All the common sayings about the greater efficiency of private initiative and of the enormous waste of wealth that is inevitably accompanying collectivism, fall like a house of cards in the light of the results gained in forty years of the soviet economy.”
After a short reflection, he became a socialist and a town councillor. He became a deputy and a signatory to the document against commissioner Luigi Calabresi.
He applauded when non-parliamentary groups laid siege to the il Corriere print shop: “These young people teach us something (….) the assault on the print shop can be a warning for all those great journalistic chains that are used to (….) hide information, to manipulate public opinion.” To be coherent, he founded La Repubblica, part of a chain that is used to hide information, and to manipulate public opinion. He becomes the great old man of the left with his great wallet on the right. Year after year he becomes a De Mita follower, a republican, a communist, a PDS-guy and a PD-guy. Wherever he goes the grass stops growing. The latest success has been Walterloo.
He has a great opinion of himself that he shows in his Sunday sermon in La Repubblica and every time he is offered the possibility. In the book, “Incontro con Io” {Meeting with Me} he revealed: “I have finally reached my fullness” Montanelli said: “I know many scoundrels who are not moralizers, but I don’t know any moralizer who is not a scoundrel. Of course, with no reference to Scalfari. Just as a reminder.”

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 06:26 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (48)
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May 04, 2008

Compulsory statute-barring

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If a parliamentarian is accused of some crime, it is in his interest not to be found guilty. It is perfectly human. That is precisely the reason for the introduction of the shameful laws that no one is ashamed of any longer. Laws that have also landed up benefiting all of the extra-parliamentary delinquents as well. A case of all or none. The statute of limitations is administered in the name of the sovereign criminal population. The reduction of the deadlines for statute barring is one of the preferred remedies for avoiding incarceration. The average period of time required for a court case to be concluded in Italy has now reached ten years and, with a good attorney like Previti on your side, a court case can go on for much longer. How many crimes go unpunished as a result of the statute of limitations? Who says 20%? Who says 50%? Who says 70%? You are all been too conservative! 95% of all crimes are statute barred, meaning that the offender will never be sentenced. He may well be guilty, but the legal system has run out of time. Court cases are delayed due to a lack of staff, due to the three-tier judicial system, due to the dossiers from the eighteen hundreds lying abandoned in the corridors, left to the rats instead of the computers, and due to the lack of finds. Statute barring makes these delays even shorter than the miniskirts. They have now gotten briefer than a tanga. Statute barring has become a right that is not denied to anyone, least of all people like Andreotti and Tar Head. It has become a decoration, much like the title of Commendatore or Cavaliere. Cavalier statute-barred by the Shameful Law. Now doesn’t that sound good? Bruno Tinti, Assistant Prosecutor with the Turin Public Prosecutors Office, writes in his book entitled Toghe Rotte (Broken Togas) that: “…it must be said that all contraventions relating to accident prevention, environmental, ecological and pollution matters, as well as all crimes involving corruption, financial fraud, tax fraud and others relating to abuse within the family and family welfare violations, all crimes involving false testimony, all crimes involving fraud, even those against the State or Public Bodies or the European Union, all these crimes, as well as many others that I have not even mentioned, will never be punished. No court cases relating to these crimes will ever be effectively concluded. No one who has gotten involved in one of these crimes will ever go to jail”.

Statute barring is like the wind
that absolves all the delinquents
the worst of these being in Parliament …

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 12:30 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (11)
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May 01, 2008

The Whipping Post

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To telephone Zapping: freefone 800 055 101, from Monday to Friday between 7:40pm and 9:00pm.
The income tax revenue agency has published online all the incomes of Italian citizens in 2005. Anyone can have free access, without being identified. This was suggested to them by the Ndrangheta, by the Mafia, by the Camorra and by the Sacra Corona Unita. Padoa Schioppa and Visco, with Prodi’s blessing and by the Centre Left “united and so never to be defeated”, put it into execution. The kidnapping of people will be facilitated, the ransom can be in proportion to the income declared. Organised crime will no longer have to investigate, to presume. They can go in without risk of failure by connecting to the tax collection site.
The good-for-nothings and the tax dodgers anyway will have nothing to fear. Those who pay taxes will be punished, those who pay a lot can be kidnapped, subject to extortion, robbed.
The robberies in the villas can finally be carried out in the whole of Italy and they won’t be concentrated in Lombardy and Veneto.
Family hatreds will find free reign. Those who haven’t given a loan to the family and have a high income will be finally unmasked.
Madness. This is madness. After the Great Pardon that liberated the prisons, this former government of vile, presumptuous and deficient people supplies to the criminals, information about income and the home address of the tax payers. Paying taxes like that is too dangerous. It would be better to have a conviction for tax evasion than to be knifed or kidnapped. The tax relationship is between the citizen and the State and it must remain like that.
Let’s send an email to the next Minister of the Economy, Giulio Tremonti asking him to re-establish the rules of civil life and to block the access to sensitive data to anyone.
In the next few days I will try to find out who was the inspiration behind this mess. It’s right that everyone can get to know and that they can be responsible for any possible consequences.

P.S. From tomorrow and throughout the month of May you can still sign for the referenda promoted on V2-Day. Signature tables ready for Thursday 1 May: Altamura, Busto Arsizio, Castellana, Foggia,Gubbio, L'Aquila, Milano, San Benedetto del Tronto, Soleto, Solofra, Viareggio

Spread the word <a href="http://www.beppegrillo.it/iniziative/mineconomia.php?s=user" target="_blank" ><img src="http://www2.beppegrillo.it/iniziative/immagini/mineconomia_banner.jpg" border="0" alt="No alla colonna infame"/></a>

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
3. Download the V2-day flyer
4. The V2-day video

Click to see the video

Click to see the video

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 09:43 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (35)
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April 27, 2008

V2-day and Petronilla the orang-outang

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V2 day was a success because almost 500 locations in Italy and abroad participated, because 1,300,000 signatures were collected in a day, because 120,000 people listened standing up for 6 hours in the hot summer sun, economists, environmentalists, labourers, mathematicians and also Beppe Grillo. But V2 day was an enormous success, extraordinary above all for the reaction of information. For the comedy of the information, with TV news programmes that dedicated 3 minutes to Rome’s orang-outang called Petronilla and not even a second to V2 day. Five minutes to the white shark in California and not even a second to two million people who supported a popular referendum.
The information of the regime has been the best sponsor of V2 day. Unmissable some of the ways I was framed from below so as not to make the people visible. It is the same technique used by the Polish communist regime for the visit of John Paul II on his first visit to Poland. There were millions of people but it seemed that he was speaking in a vacuum.
People, if it weren’t for you I would feel at a bit of a disadvantage. I would start to think that the mad one is me. That it is right that a politician possesses three national TV channels. That Italy is considered by international institutions to be semi-free in relation to information. That in Parliament there are 70 people who are convicts, “prescritti” and on remand. Yes, the mad one is me and you too, you who came out into the streets on this beautiful sunny 25 April.


Piazza San Carlo Turin, 25 April
We are freedom mad. Thanks, thanks again, I could spend hours shouting “thank you” to you from the window. I know that you can hear me.


V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
3. Give your support to V2 day



4. Download the V2-day flyer


Click to see the video

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 08:10 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (28)
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April 21, 2008

Sciur padrun da li beli braghi bianchi

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The Trades Union of Journalists, the FNSI, has decided to anticipate V2 Day. On 23 April, the FNSI will have a celebration to commemorate its centenary. Basically it will be its own Funeral Day.

The president, Roberto Natale made it clear that: “the date is not arbitrary…. We certainly haven’t waited for Grillo to put forward certain issues, and some of his responses do not convince us. More than the abolition of the Order of Journalists, we want a radical reform. Rather than the elimination of public contributions, we are convinced that they are necessary to reduce certain clientele, but it’s not OK to say that every public euro is a waste, is theft.”

So, basically Natale did not wait for V2 Day to raise certain issues (which issues?) and my responses don’t convince him (and this is a serious affirmation given that he has asked me no questions). Natale does not want to abolish the Order of Journalists, but instead he feels the need for a radical reform (what?). He doesn’t want to reduce the public contributions of a billion euro a year that keep alive, for example, Il Foglio and Libero, but he proposes reducing certain clientele. Well, here’s the rub, I have never spoken about clientele. Dear Natale, what are these clientele? Act like a journalist on the occasion of the centenary and inform us.

The Funeral Day will have the following programme:
- Visit to Morfeo Napolitano for an audience with the participation of all living presidents of FNSI. Rather than an audience, more like a funeral Mass.
- Commemoration at Rome’s Capranica Theatre on the topic: Journalism: from yesterday to the future”
- Special participation of the leaders of the federal Trades Unions: Cgil, Cisl, Uil and Ugl.
- Special participation of the Undersecretary Ricardo Franco Levi, the author of the “Levi-Prodi” proposed law that suggested closing down the Internet.
- Special participation of the Minister of Labour Cesare Damiano who will talk about the triumphs of the law number 30.
- Special participation of the leader Topo Gigio Veltroni, called Walterloo, who will explain how at one time he relaunched l’Unità with the Figurine Panini albums.

The FNSI has invited Testa d'Asfalto for his machine gun imitation aimed at the reporters in the hall, but it hasn’t yet had confirmation. Natale has even revealed the ideal participant for the Funeral Day: “The 100 years are an important milestone, but rhetoric is ready to attack at any moment. For this reason we have thought about having as our interlocutor a precarious worker.”
The secretary Franco Siddi certainly didn’t hold back: “The centenary is an occasion to respond with greater energy to today’s challenges, from the renewal of the contract to the freedom of information.”
First the brass, then the freedom.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 01:13 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (0)
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Eight months suspended sentence

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An eight-month suspended sentence for the death of a young man. I received a letter from the mother of Andrea, who died in his workplace at age 23 of a squashed head. She makes some serious allegations. A court case was held to investigate charges of culpable homicide. There are two possibilities here: either the company managers are innocent or they are guilty. If the former is true, then they must be absolved, however, if the latter is true, then an eight month suspended sentence represents the failure of the justice system in Italy. I am very keen to read through the sentence.
Luca Cordero di Montezemolo claims that workers in general are now feeling closer to Confindustria that what they are to the trades union. He is wrong, the workers are equidistant from both. They would dearly love to tell them both to fuck off. Temporary employment has resulted in Italy having the lowest salaries in all of Europe and the workplace becoming a death sentence. Reducing the safety measures is economically worthwhile. A human life is worth less that production.

"My name is Graziella Marota and I am the mother of Andrea Gagliardoni, who died on 20 June 2006 at the Asoplast Company of Ortezzano while performing his duties as a straightforward worker.
A pressing machine squashed his skull within a matter of just a few seconds. That is the day that my life changed. I now live with pain and anguish, however, that pain and anguish has now been replaced by great anger, which is what has allowed me to continue with this battle against the so-called “white deaths”. In actual fact, I have as yet been unable to understand why this adjective is used to describe workplace fatalities.
An initial preliminary hearing regarding the accident was held at the Fermo (AP) court on 4 April 2008. In the dock, facing charges of culpable homicide, were the Managing Director of Asoplast, Giuseppe Bonifazi, and Mario Guglielmi, Managing Director of the Schio-based Mag System Srl company that manufactured the abovementioned machine, a model T A 1000/S C/8.
The former was in the dock for not having provided the worker in question with appropriate equipment and for having deactivated the only safety system in order to speed up production.
The latter, instead, was in the dock for having built and applied the EC brand mark on a machine that does not comply with the safety requirements specified in attachment 1 of Presidential Decree 459/96 and the UNI regulations, and that was in any event inadequate in terms of safety.
With these charges on the table, I was expecting a sentence that would serve as a deterrent for any employers that are still breaking the law, thereby jeopardising human lives, namely the lives of their workers.
However, the entire court case was concluded in just a few minutes. The accused requested to do a deal and Public Prosecutor Bartolozzi decided that an eight month suspended sentence would be appropriate for both accused.
However, Andrea is no longer with us, they cut him down in his prime ….. he was only 23 years old.
Now more than ever before, I scream out in pain and anger against the scandalous sentence that shows total irreverence against all of the workplace martyrs. I will continue in my relentless battle in the hope that something will change in the future."
Graziella Marota, Andrea’s mother

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 12:42 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (3)
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April 16, 2008

They will never let go, us neither

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It was the autumn of 2007 that Asphalt Head made a gift of pasta to hundreds of pensioners in the outskirts of Milan. Fini and Casini had abandoned him. An old glory on the sunset road. Veltroni has performed a miracle. His first political action has been to exhume a political cadaver. Remember the photo of the two in a hand-shake after a strictly private conversation on the new election law? They seemed like Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele II at Teano. The psycho-dwarf had an incredulous air. He couldn’t believe that the PD-folk were such arse holes.

At that time there was a Centre Left government made up of tiny parties. No one was consulted by Topo Gigio about a law that would have made them disappear. Topo Gigio has been the best ally of the PDL. He brought down the government: he did, not Mastella. He lost the elections in a disastrous way. He has eliminated the Left and the Greens. It can be done. If I were Berlusconi I would make him deputy President of the Council. Anyway better a true enemy than a false enemy. The Great Pardon, Mastella at the Justice Ministry, the failure to repeal the “ad personam” laws, the isolation of De Magistris and Forleo, to whom do we give the blame? What’s the difference between the Berlusconian 5-year term and the Prodian 2-year term?

The election law is unconstitutional. They have treated us like animals that can only make a cross on a symbol. And the cross we have placed all the same whether or not we are conditioned by anti-democratic media. They represent interest groups. Those who control them, control the country.

The breaking point will be the economy. We are in a recession. Our GDP will not grow in 2008. The worst result of the world economy apart from Africa. If the GDP isn’t growing, the number of jobs gets lower. Zero growth means between one and two million fewer jobs. The three card trick, that has been going on for years, of transforming a job into two positions for precarious workers, cannot continue.

A vote for the MPA and the Lega is a signal of “every man for himself”. Each for himself and God for everyone. Just as an example, if Soru had presented a secessionist list in Sardinia he would have won hands down.

Millions of people on the right and on the left will not have representation in the new Parliament. They are precarious workers, ecologists, unemployed people, young people. To leave them out of Parliament while inside there are a hundred that are convicts, “prescritti”, under investigation and on remand is not a good idea.

Without the freedom of information there is no democracy. They will never let go, us neither. V2 day. V2 day. Freedom of information in a free State.

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April 13, 2008

100 and no more than 100

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Travaglio and Gomez sent me the list of names of sentenced criminals, statute-barred offenders, people under investigation and those remanded for trial who will be elected to Parliament. In fact, the party secretary has already elected them. All in all, there are 100 names on the list, including a number of marvellous new entries. Top class personnel. No one else in the world is able to choose a crew quite like Berlusconi (56) and Veltroni (18) can.
In other countries, such as Finland or the United States for example, it would be sufficient to nominate one of the criminals on this list to ensure that the party would lose the elections. Here in Italy, things are totally different. A sentenced criminal in your crew could help to win you the elections. Such a person brings with him/her the votes of the Mafia groups, the lobby groups and the tax evaders. More simply put, this kind of nomination is merely the price of silence. Italy is the Country of Machiavelli. If the end truly justifies the means, then the criminal justifies the votes. Finally sentenced criminals and statute-barred offenders always get a reward for good behaviour. Offenders remanded for trial or awaiting appeals, instead, are granted parliamentary immunity.
Parliament is a free zone. Meaning that anyone who gets in gets off scot-free. This is a place where the law has no access. The Italia dei Valori party is the only one whose nomination list has no black marks. Antonio Di Pietro is like kryptonite for Tar-head. Next Monday, these 100 people will be able to take up their seats in Parliament as Senators and deputies of the Italian Republic. None of you will have elected them. In return for their social conduct, they will receive a fabulous salary and earn the right to a pension after serving for little more than two years. Make a note of their names because that your taxes will be used to pay them.

Classification of parties by number of sentenced criminals, statute-barred offenders, people under investigation and remanded for trial (*):

- PDL 56
- PD 18
- UDC - Rosa Bianca 9
- Lega Nord 8
- Partito Socialista 3
- Sinistra Arcobaleno 3
- La Destra 2
- Aborto No Grazie 1
- Italia dei Valori 0

Print out the list of names and offences and circulate it. Sharing information is a duty.

(*) Source: “If you know them then you avoid them” by Marco Travaglio and Peter Gomez

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April 10, 2008

The least worst

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The least worst is the son of the worst. It is his creature. Without the worst the least worst could not exist. The worst is the reference point for the Italian. It’s useful for orientation. The Italian always tries to do better than the worst. The least worst is a leap in quality. The Italian chooses the least worst dentist, he reads the least worst newspaper, listens to the least worst TV programme, works for the least worst company, votes for the least worst party, gets his operation in the least worst hospital, eats in the least worst restaurant, drives on the least worst road, breathes the least worst air, lives in the least worst apartment, uses the least worst notary, gets to be buried by the least worst funeral directors in the least worst tomb.
The worst is the best alibi of the least worst. Rather than the worst, the least worst is always better. Anyone can do better than Alitalia, than Asphalt Head, than Telecom Italia, than the RAI. Without the worst, who would have voted for D’Alema, traveled with Air One, listened to Rete 4 or made telephone calls with Wind? However… there’s a but, why do you have to choose between the worst and the least worst? Why this blackmail? I don’t want a least worst life. I demand a normal life, in fact I want it to be beautiful, optimum, excellent. Perhaps I won’t succeed, but I must try, I’m obliged to try.
The least worst has brought us the Great Pardon, the mess up, convicts in Parliament, incinerators, the Campania-Chernobyl, Mastella as Minister of Justice, a public debt of 1630 billion euro, the lowest economic growth in Europe, the precarious work, gagged information, an unconstitutional election law, Forleo and De Magistris treated like criminals. All the sons of the least worst. The worst and the least worst are like Siamese twins. Inseparable from birth. If one dies, the other follows straight away.
The best voter of the psycho-dwarf was the left of D’AlemaViolanteFassinoLaTorre and of Topo Gigio who, new leader, publicly invites him to define together the new election law excluding the Government allies. The best voter of the DS-dioxin-now-PD is Asphalt Head. Without him, how could they justify their existence? For 15 years the worst has been their battle horse, 15 years of Italy continually sinking, of decisions against the worst never taken. But what could we have expected differently? Worst or the least worst it’s always worse.

PS This evening at 9:00pm I will be in Pescara at the Palaelettra (via Elettra, zona stadio) to support the civic list "PescaraInComune". Watch live on the Web starting at 9:00pm.

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
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April 03, 2008

Sick of Terminal Bureaucracy

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Italian bureaucracy has grown like an immense fig. Whoever gets into contact with it is suffocated by a boa constrictor. Step by step they become a wet rag, a piece of raging meat, a madman looking for a vendetta. The terminal bureaucracy is the true flower in the button hole of our political class. People who wouldn’t know how to manage a public bathroom become mayors, undersecretaries, Ministers, local cabinet members. Promoted to the top of their incapacity. Never responsible for anything in relation to the citizen, the one who pays them their salary. The only defence is to avoid every contact. Ignore them. Pretend that bureaucracy does not exist. That it is a farce to pay salaries to a few million Italians integrated into the system. When that is not possible, as for Alessandro, there’s just the black hole waiting.

”I signed up to AIRE (Anagrafe Italiani Residenti all'Estero = List of Italians Resident Abroad) at the Consulate at the end of November last year. At the beginning of this year, the Consulate called me back to tell me that having consulted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for cases similar to mine they were told that there’s the need for the proof of residence and not just the self-certification. In my case the Permanent Resident Card.
As they asked me to, I sent this to the Consulate via fax. I phoned them to make sure it got there. They confirmed receipt. A few days ago, on 27 March , after the important date of 16 March, the last date for the Consulates to send off the envelopes for the votes I hear the response that yes I am signed up to AIRE but not to the election lists. They have to fax the request to my town of residence in Italy. That same day they fax the request.
The town hall that should reply in 24 hours, does not respond. They send another fax. Nothing to be done. At this point I call the town hall directly. They give me another fax number. Everything seems to go well but the town hall did not give authorisation to the Consulate to let me vote abroad. We have gone past the established time limits they say
I call the town hall back. They confirm this version of the facts. They put the blame on the Consulate for not having sent the fax in time. It is discovered that as well as the request for elections, the Consulate sent the town hall my request for being included on the AIRE for the first time (the one that I did at the end of November of the previous year). Because of a directive from the Minister of the Interior, the town hall can do nothing more. There is also a directive from the Minister of Foreign Affairs that would allow “generous” town halls to accept last minute requests.
I understand all the bureaucratic problems. However I don’t understand why the citizen cannot enjoy his right to vote. I would have to return to Italy, something that has no sense and that would obviously be very burdensome. I felt like a citizen of “serie B” for two reasons:
- I was resident in the wrong town. If I had been resident in another town, they would have given me permission to vote, as I have seen happening
I don’t have equal rights with other Italians because in fact I cannot vote and perhaps I will hear people saying that it’s not good that you don’t go and vote. I want to vote, not as a concession, but as a right. I also want to be able to choose to not vote, but the voting envelope has to arrive at my house, otherwise I won’t feel that I am being treated like a citizen.” Alessandro Calia, Devon, Pennsylvania

Tell people about the march. Copy and paste the code
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March 24, 2008

Start from the beginning

An Italo-Australian from Agrigento came back to Italy after forty years. He got a wicked nostalgia. He left his country in 1968 with Mike Bongiorno and Pippo Baudo on TV, and Andreotti in Parliament. Alitalia was on strike. He had to go by ship. The commuter trains were full, filthy and late. He remembered the road works from that time, happening everywhere. He remembers the Salerno-Reggio Calabria about to be finished. In his time there was the crisis of the Mezzogiorno {the South of Italy}, the problem of the mafia and the neo-fascists. He’s found everything the same. Exactly the same.
In a TV programme there was even Mino Reitano, Peppino di Capri and Gianni Pettenati singing “Bandiera gialla” {the yellow flag}. “And Pannella?” He asked me. “Is he still there?” I assured him that he’s still there and that he does a beautiful thirst strike. And Albertazzi and Raimondo Vianello? Are they OK? I told him that they are often in the prime time evening slots. “And Fede and Vespa” he went on “the TV News people?” “They have a different boss but they disinform even more than before, they have experience that is overflowing.” I replied. At that moment on the radio, Tony Dallara was singing “Come prima più di prima”{Like before but more so} and Mina was at the top of the best selling charts.
The emigrant thought I wanted to pull his leg and he started zapping the TV channels. To confirm his ideas. There was a debate about the modernity of the work of Manzoni with readings chosen from “i Promessi Sposi”, Benigni reciting The Divine Comedy and the Pope speaking from the balcony. The last car the emigrant had was a mousy-coloured Fiat Cinquecento, with a folding top. “And Fiat, how’s that going? And its current models? I took a moment, frightened of his reaction. And I showed him an advert for the new car of the year – the Cinquecento Fiat. “Mago Zurlì?” he whispered. I wanted to lie, but I didn’t manage it. “Presenting Zecchino d’oro this year as well. But there’s no more Topo Gigio. He’s now gone into politics.”
He sent me a postcard from Sydney where he went back straight away. An old postcard showing the rubble of Belice in Sicily after the 1968 earthquake, the same as today.

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March 22, 2008

Imagine three days at Bolzaneto

Imagine three days at Bolzaneto. Then imagine some police barracks in the hills on the outskirts of Genoa. Then add Fini, the Deputy Premier, in the role of director behind the scenes in the Police’s operations room. Imagine Castelli, the Minister of Justice, on an after hours guided tour of the barracks. Let’s say that he sees some young guys in the spread-eagled position. Legs apart, arms up against the wall. Imagine him then going to bed and sleeping.
Imagine the police torturing unarmed young men and women. Italians and foreigners. Imagine broken arms, smashed teeth, broken jaws. Imagine women being forced to undress in front of a number of policemen. Add some threats of rape. Imagine truncheons between the legs. Imagine detainees being forced to shout: “Che Guevara was a son of a bitch”. Imagine unarmed individuals lying on the ground. Imagine ribs broken as a result of kicks. Imagine split skulls. Imagine terrorised individuals not allowed to sleep and not given anything to eat.
Imagine Italian politicians proposing a moratorium on the death penalty. Imagine Bonino and D’Alema, as happy as larks. Imagine an Italy that, twenty-one years on, has not yet ratified the UNO convention banning torture. Imagine an Italy in which the crime of torture is not a punishable offence. Imagine the torturers of Bolzaneto being accused solely of abuse of power. Imagine that such abuse of power is set to fall under the statute of limitations in 2009. Imagine Europe classifying us as a nation of clowns, neo-fascists and post-communists.
Imagine Berlusconi and Fini arranging a new G8 at Arcore. Imagine the citizens, many citizens that want to take part. Imagine the crime of torture not yet acknowledged in Italy. Imagine Castelli being woken up in the dead of night in order to carry out an inspection. Imagine the politicians responsible for the events at Bolzaneto being punished in terms of the law. Imagine a Parliament that acknowledges torture as a criminal offence.
Imagine a midnight train taking you to a faraway place, to some country that is civilised. Imagine a gentle breeze blowing in through the open window.
V-day 25 April. Freedom of Information in a free State.

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March 15, 2008

The Olindo and the Rosa of Alitalia and Malpensa

I confess! Last night I watched a television programme. I was in a hotel room in Rome and the television was switched on at the time. I am aware that this is not an excuse, but rather an admission of guilt. On the programme Anno Zero, they were screening a debate on the sale of Alitalia and the future of Malpensa. Fassino, Bianchi, Formigoni and Maroni all took part in the debate. They reminded me of Rosa and Olindo, involved in the Erba case. Each of them loudly proclaiming his innocence. They were not even there and anyway, even if they were there, they were busy with other things. Paid by us in any event. Doing fuck-all as always, the lot of them. Maroni, Minister of Labour for five years during the five-year reign of the psychodwarf. Formigoni, Governor of the Lombardy Region prior to losing his virginity. Fassino, who is fast approaching his FIFTH term in Parliament. Bianchi, incumbent Minister of Transport. While listening to the debate, it became patently clear that the blame for Alitalia’s decade-long period of bankruptcy (it is now ten years since he was ordered to submit the accounts to the Courts) fell squarely on the shoulders of the pilots and the airhostesses. And that the Malpensa hub was built in the ideal place to encourage passenger travel. Any airport with bribery as its foundations was unlikely to do very well. Without any access roads or infrastructure, and with very few international connections. People living in Turin depart from Caselle and those living in Milan depart from Linate. Previously, only the socialists ever went to Malpensa, now it is only Bossi and Castelli who go there. The arrogance of these destroyers of Italy is endless. Italians paid billion upon billions of THEIR taxes for a cathedral in the Varese area and for the indecent, partisan management of THEIR national carrier, and now these same people try to give us a lecture on public television. This type of information must come to an end. Let us rather hear what the experts, the citizens, the workers, the inquests and the dossiers have to say. Let the politicians stay at home. Public opinion would never accept having Olindo and Rosa acting as judges and television studio guests. Please shut up. At least let us have some silence and shame on you for having destroyed Italy.

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March 11, 2008

Would you know how strange it is to be a slave in Milan…

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I went for a look round Milan. The fashion shows have moved. They are no longer held between via della Spiga and via Montenapoleone, but in via Triboniano. In a camp for nomads near the cemetery Cimitero Maggiore, recently done up new thanks to the Milan city Council’s “Rule of Law Pact”. The models come from Romania, beautiful and young, about 15 years old. The youngsters are not made up, but raped, beaten and kept without food. Then they go out onto the catwalk, perhaps a bit anorexic, for a clan of foreign delinquents who admire them nude. Completely nude. The more beautiful they are, the more their value goes up. They pay up to five thousand euro for a young girl to be a prostitute on the streets. Once upon a time, women walked out nude in front of the Nazis who selected them for the gas chambers.
Milan wants EXPO 2015 and it doesn’t know how to protect young girls, and they are hardly more then children, in its own territory. In Milan, slavery has come back. The CO2 capital has overtaken ancient Rome in badness. The young girls are merchandise on the pavements for local paedophiles. The demand is high, you can see that in full daylight. Fresh imported meat.
The camp of models however cannot be searched, and even less can it be kept under control. It’s reported in il Corriere della Sera “a few weeks ago the prosecutor Ester Nocera, had wanted to order a search in relation to a prostitute who was tired of humiliation and beatings, but a high level police officer opened wide his arms. And the reason is easily explained. Either there’s a mass search of the camp in via Triboniano or a search is useless, because a system of look-outs warns of the arrival of the officers and warns those that can to make people and things disappear in real time.”
State Police, Carabinieri, Magistrates, local Police, Guardie di Finanza, Guardians, Army: how many are there of them in all? Hundreds of thousands, but not enough for the camp in via Triboniano. The thought of a citizen is lost. How is it possible that the young girls are treated like beasts not far from Piazza del Duomo, that everyone knows about it and nothing happens. A maleficent nothing. Perhaps Italy no longer exists, perhaps we are in extinction.
Article from il Corriere della Sera


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March 09, 2008

Respecting the Rules and breaking the silence

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The ceremonial surrounding the President includes the use of the “warning”. The severe action of the President of the Republic is always preceded by an intense internal rumbling. The warning is Napolitano’s final resource and he uses it sparingly. Just in serious circumstances. When he is obliged to guarantee respect for the Rules. Then he breaks his silence and warns. Immediately before that, the sky becomes black, the Honour Guard of the President go to the bar in via Nazionale and his wife takes the dog to the Parioli.
The Rules that Napolitano watches over are guaranteeing the political-economic-constitutional-lawmaking framework. Those who govern us must operate with serenity of mind.
Rule number one: politicians are above the law.
Rule number two: the conflict of interests does not exist.
Rule number three:the “par condicio” only applies to Veltrusconi.
Rule number four: the public concessionaire of 3 TV channels, Silvio Berlusconi, can be a candidate at the elections.
Rule number five: the referendum on the election law is optional, and in fact, it will happen a year after the elections.
Rule number six: the popular initiative laws to expel convicted felons from Parliament can/must be ignored and the 350,000 signatures from citizens buried in the cellars of the Senate.
Rule number seven: the election law that does not allow for the choice of candidates is constitutional.
Rule number eight: Bassolino, D’Alema and Fassino are companions who make mistakes.
Rule number nine: Corrado Calabrò, president of the Communications Authority is “super partes” and also a good person.
Rule number ten: The Head of State who minds his own business will live for a hundred years.
Anyone who allows themselves to query the Rules “is lacking in respect”. At a certain age you sleep in the afternoon and the “violent tones” are not good for our former democracy.

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
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March 07, 2008

Upon the death of Brother Clemente

Upon the death of brother Clemente 1(*)


One day, if I 2(*) don’t continue to flee
from party to party, you will see me sitting
on your stone, dear brother, crying over
the flower of your gentle existence o fallen one.
The Mother 3(*) in her final lonely years
talks about me with your mute ashes 4(*),
but I, in my delusion, reach out my palms to you
and say farewell from the rooftops of Ceppaloni 5(*).
I feel the gods against me 6(*), and the secret
cures that created storms when you were alive,
and I too pray at your tranquil harbour.
This is what remains today of your many vows!
Dear Clemente, at least return the bones 7(*)
to the arms of the melancholy Italians.


Loosely translated text from: "In morte del fratello Giovanni" by Ugo Foscolo.


1(*) Somewhat euphemistically, the Author is referring to the political death of Italian statesman Clemente Mastella (Ceppaloni 5 February 1947, still alive)
2(*) The poem is attributed to long-time childhood friend Pierferdinando Casini (“Ferdy”), who shared Clemente Mastella’s (Clem) political battles for decades
3(*) The meaning to be attributed to the term “Mother” constitutes a point of discussion for the scholars. While many believe that is a reference to Silvio Berlusconi, others suggest that it is an allusion to a lady of ill repute
4(*) “Mute ashes” is the nickname given to Governor Antonio Bassolino. Just like the ashes that, in fact, do not speak, so Bassolino has never said a word to the magistrates regarding the environmental disaster in Campania
5(*) The town where Mastella was born, and of which he is lifelong Mayor. It is famous for the torch parade by the town’s inhabitants in support of Mastella’s wife, Sandra Lonardo, subjected to house arrest as a result of being accused of extortion
6(*) The “gods against him” are the forecast percentage votes for his blackmail and government party, the so-called UDEUR. Indeed, in 2008, for the first time ever a party is showing a negative voting intention. Any party accepting the Udeur will be losing somewhere between 10 and 12% of possible votes
7(*) “The bones” are actually the infamous Christmas nougat sweets manufactured by Mastella himself, using the public funding granted to his party. Every Italian would like to get their hands on 100g of these.

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March 04, 2008

When a worker dies

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When a worker dies, politicians on the Right, the Left and the Centre are indignant. When a worker dies, the day after Prodi makes a decree.
When a worker dies, Topo Gigio Veltroni makes the industrialists candidates, “but also” a survivor of Thyssen Krupp.
When a worker dies Ichino says that “We are missing a culture of rules”. When a worker dies, the President of the Republic suffers and is hopeful on TV.
When a worker dies, Maroni says “It’s not the government’s fault because the laws exist.”
When a worker dies, no one talks about law number 30, of the precarious workers, of the blackmail that they are subject to, of the law of the boss and of the empty fire extinguishers “otherwise you go home”. When a worker dies, today Fassino and D’Alema, yesterday Berlinguer and Pertini.
When a worker dies, the boss has already put money on one side.
When a worker dies, the widow and the children finish up on the street.
When a worker dies, the Trades Unions declare a two hour strike in solidarity.
When a worker dies, the fault is the helmet, it was his fault.
When a worker dies, the fault is that if he complained about the lack of safety, he would be sacked because he was a precarious worker.
When a worker dies, it is almost always an assassination.
When a worker dies, he was doing a risky job, it had to happen.
When a worker dies, they give incentives to the companies that reduce accidents and they don’t close down those that produce deaths.
When a worker dies, it’s because safety is too burdensome for the Confindustria.
When a worker dies, it’s a business fact, someone has gained out of it.
When a worker dies, if he had been a politician he would have got by for a hundred years.

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
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3. Give your support to V2 day


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February 26, 2008

The Veltroni Incredibles

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Topo Gigio is diabolical. He has copied the slogans and the programme of the psycho-dwarf’s government. At the beginning he was offended in public and then he understood. Topo Gigio has simply thinned them down – but only slightly. A “but also” here and a “let’s start again” there. A conflict of interest splashed about everywhere. The enthusiasm of Testa d’Asfalto {Asphalt Head} for his follower (because if someone copies your programme it means they approve it and therefore that they are on your side) has reached the point of a declaration of eternal mess ups. Topo Gigio is keeping him on tenter hooks and is working in the meantime.
Day after day he’s forming a government team with the psycho-dwarf’s men. It’s like a a campaign acquired from Moggi, it’s always him that arrives first: the Roditor Cortese.
Veronesi, called Cancronesi, will become the Minister of Health. Ichino, expert on the workers’ rights in the front line in favour of the precarious workers (he would like to have ever more of them) will be Minister of Labour. Ms Bonino, who has watched over the uncontrolled flow of Roma people into Italy and over the flow of European Funds to the mafias, will continue her activity as Minister for the European Community. For the Minister of Industry, they’ve signed up Matteo Colaninno, president of the young industrialists. His father, Roberto, friend of D’Alema is one of the captains courageous with ragged trousers who started the destruction of Telecom purchased with debts. And he has also (“but also”) convicted for the Italcase catastrophe and sentenced to 4 years and one month with the prohibition of holding public office for 5 years.
The word is about that Topo Gigio wants to complete his team with Mastella’s son at the Ministry of Justice, Geronzi at the ministry of the Economy (having been pointed out by D’Alema and Bersani), Romiti’s son at the new Ministry of Val-di-Susa-Messina Bridge-new-incinerators with ample provision for the use of truncheons.
They also say (“but also”) that Topo Gigio has chosen his spokesperson, one who is in competition with Fede, Mentana and Feltri all together. He is the formidable Riotta
There’s no interruption of a dream, no emotion extinguished.

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The pleasure of dishonesty

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Italy is a paradise. You just have to get the information before you come. Anyone, like Andrea who might want to invest in a farm-based tourism activity finds the natural habitat with us. However they have to act in illegality to avoid denunciation, loss of capital, and in the most serious cases, even prison. They have to build without permission, illegally get funds from the European Community, pay suppliers without getting invoices, and not register the building with the land registration. And once the work starts, not pay any tax and wait for the amnesty. To live in Italy is a pleasure, the pleasure of dishonesty.
Dear Beppe,
I was born and brought up in Bologna and for 9 years I’ve been living in California. My wife is American and I am trying to teach my two children, Alisa and Alessandro the language and the culture of Italy. Each year we come to Italy to spend our summer holidays so that my parents can see their only grandchildren and also because I don’t want to be cut off from my roots in the country where I was born and brought up. My wish is to come back to Italy to start an activity so that North Americans can see the marvels of our country.
Four years ago, my wife and I bought a property in Abruzzo to make into an agricultural tourism centre, Bed & Breakfast and/or Country House. I have planned the structure that includes a farmhouse building for living in and two other buildings. The plan was approved last October. I dealt with the local Town Hall for the paper work and the building instructions. I have tried to approach the Region, the Province and the Mountain Community to find out if there are any grants or any low interest loans that would make it possible to complete the work in an acceptable time.
In slightly over a year after the purchase of the property, my problems started. I was denounced by an estate agent that had, against the wishes of the owner, put onto their website, photos of the land and the buildings of the property. Given the distance separating us, I proposed to the agent, via my lawyer, a transaction in a reserved form equal to 3% of the price paid. The estate agent took me to court saying that the price paid was not what is registered and saying that he knows very well how things go in Italy! After this difficulty, that is still not sorted out, I decided to make a road to provide access to the old buildings, so that the construction firms can get access even with heavy machines. I got three estimates from three different companies from Teramo and choose the one that offered the best price. When the work was finished I received an invoice which was more than double the value indicated according to the price per metre and the estimate. I refused to pay the sum asked for and the second legal wrangle started.
My legal adventures are not finished because to finance the work I am obliged to sell an apartment I own in Bologna that was gifted to me by my father in 1993. I engaged a Bologna estate agent to sell the apartment. After about 6 months they find a “serious” buyer. In November I go to Italy to sign the sale proposal and to arrange for my mother to have power of attorney so she can sign the preliminary and final contract on my behalf. Negotiations continue until the buyer, because of the gifting, can’t get a mortgage from the bank. Through their notary, they propose that I revoke the gifting. I refused this because of the related costs and risks that I would have incurred. After some discussions with the estate agent, I asked them to respect the agreement that had been signed. But the buyer renounced on the purchase because of the impossibility of getting finance. As a person who is correct and honest, I asked the agency to give them back the 10,000 euro put down as a deposit and I managed to find another interested buyer. OK, this week I have received a letter from a law studio in Genoa that orders me to pay their client the sum of 10,000 euro for the withdrawal caused by my blatant non-fulfilment of the contract
When I announced this latest denunciation, my wife, as a serious and correct Anglo-Saxon, told me to sell the lot, to give up my dreams and hopes, because a country of dishonest opportunists, does not deserve our presence….
I read recently that out of 26 inspections on 26 agro-tourism activities that are partially financed with money from the European Community, only 6 were functioning! The other 20 have become luxury country residences restructured with tax payers money. The problem is always the same. A thin thread that separates what is legal from what is not. And the politicians who should intervene are at times active participants.

I hope that things can change. Only then can I, together with many other small investors, contribute to the development of the most beautiful country in the world, bringing our experience and knowledge as emigrants. Sincerely.” Andrea from Palo Alto, California


V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
3. Give your support to V2 day


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Posted by Beppe Grillo at 10:39 AM in Wailing Wall | Comments (11)
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February 21, 2008

It’s possible to give more…..

”I’ve never asked anyone for anything. However, I’ve got 6 children, all depending on me, and a V day behind me. From the moment that it became known that I got a shortfall of 80,000 Euro, I lost the respect of my fellow citizens. What image am I giving around the place? I am the shamed one of Genoa. No one ever gives me a loan now and when my wife sends me to buy the milk, I have to pay in cash! If freedom has no price, a V day anyway costs me a mound. My relatives want to have me locked up, they don’t acknowledge me any more. Put a hand on your wallet and buy the DVD of V Day to finance the next V Day on 25 April on the freedom of information, the most important. Anyone wanting it can get it free (free, a word that makes me shiver) , but they have to do that by making a deal with their conscience and with my brother. Who gets mad!” Beppe Grillo

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
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2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
3. Give your support to V2 day


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February 16, 2008

German brothers, declare war on us!

Otto von Bismarck


My appeal to the German people published in the weekly Die Zeit.
”Italy is launching an appeal to our German brothers. Declare war on us. We will surrender willingly. You won’t even have to fire one rifle shot. We will throw violets and mimosa to your Franz and Gunther as they march through. You are our final hope. Meanwhile, while you reflect and prepare your armoured tanks, we would like you to take care of our public employees. Every day we are sending you by train our rubbish from Campania. Our politicians are toxic waste, we just need to add a few extra wagons, shut tight, so that they too, arrive at Berlin or Cologne. Please take them too. When they arrive, thermo-valorise them straight away. They are more contagious than Ebola or the West Nile virus. We will pay you well. I give you my word that you will not get in exchange, bonds from Parmalat, the greatest collapse in history, or from Cirio and not even shares of Alitalia, that is losing a million Euro a day. I can even reassure you about the State bonds: they won’t be part of the payment. Italy has the biggest public debt in Europe, about 1,626 billion euro. If they had to reimburse all the different types of Treasury Bonds, the Italian State would declare itself bankrupt and the people would be shooting in the streets.
I would like to suggest to you a few names for the sealed wagons. You know many of them, they are even famous abroad, like Berlusconi who offended one of your representatives in the European Community labeling him a kapò. A man who has created himself with a tiny bit of help from friends. In Italy, friendship is sacred and if the friends are called Bettino Craxi, who died as a fugitive from justice in Tunisia, or Marcello Dell’Utri, convicted for tax fraud and false invoicing and the creator of Forza Italia, or Licio Gelli, convicted for having infiltrated his organisation, the P2, in all sectors of the Italian State, you can close an eye. Friends are never betrayed, above all if they exchange the favours. Craxi, for example, made an ad hoc decree that allowed him to have 3 national TV channels with which he could do political propaganda for his party and Gelli signed him up in his organisation of delinquents. Berlusconi also owns Mondadori, the most important Italian publishing group. He was judged thanks to the corruption of the judges by his trusted lawyer, Cesare Previti, who then ended up in prison. If Merkel were to own 3 TV channels and 40 of the daily and weekly publications, she would not need to do the Grosse Koalition. She would have 80% of the vote at the elections. Why don’t you suggest it to her?
With us, the conflict of interests is a funny story that the Centre Left has been telling us for years. Its leaders in reality, pass their time talking about banks and insurance on the telephone, someone goes sailing, someone goes to Arcore to reassure Berlusconi. They are called Violante, Fassino, D’Alema. The latter two are being investigated by the Milan prosecutors. The judge is called Clementina Forleo. Her parents died in a strange accident after they were threatened and she has been made out to be mad by the media, put on trial and transferred. I would also like you to take Veltroni, the new one that is left over, a politician that got his training in the 1970s and he has been given a new coat of paint with the new colours of the Democratic Party (PD). A new brand that is a substitute for the Democrats of the Left (DS) that had replaced the name Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) that came after the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Our politicians are chameleons. They change name and colour but they stay always the same. They hope that the voters will forget that Italian politics has been the worst in Europe in the last 20 years.
I wouldn’t want you to forget Mastella who lives in Ceppaloni. A gentleman who has amused the world. He believed he was the Minister of Justice, but he had a token role. They made him a minister with a giant lollipop and a precise mission: to do the Great Pardon. The first action of the Prodi government was to liberate 24,000 prisoners and the not-put-in-prison hundreds of public officials connected to the parties. Mastella spent so much of his time being photographed in prison with the inmates that they adopted him. He had to resign because his wife ended up under house arrest for abuse of power as a public official, together with an imprecise number of leaders from his family-led party. Dini, a former President of the Council, is extra-toxic waste. He is 77 years old and his internal organs, in particular, his brain, are decomposed. His beautiful wife has been convicted for bankruptcy and sentenced to 2 years and a few months. In Italy, that’s a merit point and he is rightly proud.
I’m asking you to do a raid in Parliament to fill the wagons. You will find 24 who have been convicted and have had their final appeals, for crimes that go from association in armed gangs, to fraud, to giving false witness, to mafia association. Added to these magnificent 24 there are those who have been convicted and have as yet had no appeal or just one appeal, in all about a hundred ruffians. With us “Prescritto” means that the conviction arrived too late to end up in prison. The world champion for this crime is the 90 year old Giulio Andreotti, to be accompanied to the wagon in a wheelchair. He has been convicted for being close to the mafia, but out of time. This is why he was promoted to being a life senator. Perhaps you came to hear that the Governor of Sicily was found guilty in January, for having acted in favour of certain mafia people, and he got a sentence of 5 years, as well as the prohibition on holding public office. He ate a plate of pasties to celebrate. (He thought he would get a lot longer) and then he was forced to resign. But he won’t serve a day in prison even if he gets confirmation of the conviction at the final appeal (with us there are 3 levels of conviction). Two years are done away with for every citizen and three are a pretty little gift from the Great Pardon law from the eloquent Mastella (he’s got a waist measurement of 200 centimetres, he eats like a warthog). To make up for that, Cuffaro will go into Parliament, appointed by his party. In fact, our electoral law, imposed with a sleight of hand by Berlusconi before giving up the position of President of the Council in 2006, sets out that deputies and senators are appointed by the party secretaries and not elected by the Italians. In Parliament, there are many wives, lovers, clerks, lackeys, yes-men, convicts, mafia people, and camorra people. The citizen can just make a mark on a symbol.
Many say that we will end up like Argentina. In reality we have already done so. But we are ashamed to say so openly. There are almost 6 million precarious workers in Italy who work one month on and one month off. The luckiest earn 800 euro a month. They are young men and women who will never have a pension. Every year the number increases. Italian industry is Fiat and little else. The big groups are State concessionaires, motorways, telecommunications, energy: they are monopolies. Foreign investments in Italy have collapsed. Spain has overtaken us. In European classifications we are always next to the last or last. Each time we are competing with Greece. Italy has the highest number of frauds in relation to the European Community. European funds, about 9 billion a year, finish up almost all in 3 Italian regions: Campania, Calabria and Sicilia, where the Camorra, Ndrangheta and Mafia are in command. A black hole of mixing between politics and organised crime. I could go on for hours, but I don’t have the courage or the space. Let the train start off as soon as possible and invade us. The Italians are on your side. “Cry for me, Deutschland”. Beppe Grillo

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
3. Give your support to V2 day


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February 14, 2008

Federico

Two truncheons smashed on the body of an 18 year old. Terrorists? Non-Europeans? Common criminals? No – those paid by us to protect and keep order. One of them said to an operator of the 113 service: “We’ve had a half hour battle, we hit him hard, it’s just that now he has fainted, I don’t know, he’s half dead….”
The parents of Federico Aldrovandi, killed in Ferrara after being stopped by a mobile police unit, have done everything they can to let the truth emerge from the authorities. The film clip that Federico’s mum has authorised me to publish is terrible. Federico is left for hours on the asphalt without a white sheet to cover him. Treated worse than Christ on the Cross. You can hear voices and laughter from the one who takes the wallet. It has to be seen to be sure it doesn’t happen again.
I hope that the police say something. Police officers risk their life every day for our sakes. They mustn’t have colleagues who are assassins.

Look at the blog of Patrizia and Lino Aldrovandi

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
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3. Give your support to V2 day


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Posted by Beppe Grillo at 08:42 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (3)
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February 12, 2008

The eternal present

Letters like this are arriving at the blog every day. They leave an emptiness inside me. I feel robbed of a future together with the one who writes. No one is talking about the future any more, of tomorrow. We are living in an eternal present. And we believe that this is life, without the possibility of change. Chin up! Let’s change this country.!
”Yesterday was a splendid sunny Sunday, one of those days that makes you want to go out, to see everything in that magnificent light.
But (we know) not everything can go as you imagine it. So you see that your wife is strange, you see her thoughtful, and with shining eyes. You go up to her nervously and timorously and ask what has happened. At this point serenity collapses. You start to tell yourself that you can’t go on like this, that it’s not right that even on Sundays she has to go to work and on Monday to clean the shops for a few Euros. She never has the time to switch off. I never take her out. I never give her a surprise. With that miserable pay packet we can’t get by any more.
She’s right. It’s unpalatable, tough, mortifying. At 36 years I’m a failure. I don’t get as much as 1500 Euro. With a mortgage of 700 Euro a month, utility bills, the car, taxes and school dinners (yes I have two splendid children), payments on the car, petrol, condominium expenses and so on. We don’t even manage to do regular shopping.
So, “angry” I take the two children and go out with them. I take them to the park and then to the fun fair. I let them enjoy themselves like I haven’t done for ages. On the way back I looked at them in the mirror of the car. I heard them chattering and laughing, and I started to cry. Yes at 36 years old, I cried like a child. Then at a certain moment the youngest one, saw that I was crying and said: “What’s up dad?” I replied: “Nothing. I’m happy because I see you happy.” I’m a liar. I should have replied that I was sad because I had spent the last 16 Euro on the fun fair, that I was sorry because Father Christmas couldn’t stretch to a playstation, that I didn’t know how to pay two utility bills, that the fridge is empty, that mum is right, I never give her a surprise.
Dear Beppe, I’m letting off steam and you will have received thousands of similar letters, but today I decided to write to you because while I was in front of the press, I remembered that about 10 years ago I had a tiny accident. A spring from a trolley for the containers suddenly came away and flew across my forehead. They gave me one stitch, and a few months later a cheque for 250 thousand lire arrived. The idea flashed across my mind to put my hand underneath, in the press and that way I could pay off the utility bills that are outstanding. But I was afraid.” Alessio

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
3. Give your support to V2 day


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February 10, 2008

Silent consent, as practiced by SKY

Theft has now evolved into silent consent. This is how it happens. The customer is advised in a discreet manner that his/her silence will result in higher costs and will increase the revenues of the service provider that has sent out the notification. People usually overlook the letter and either fail to read it at all, or only read it distractedly. That is the point when silent consent to dip into the reader’s wallet comes into play. Silent consent, when perpetrated on large numbers of consumers, generates significant additional income for the company concerned, with virtually no additional costs.
SKY recently inserted a letter into the free magazine that it sends out to all its subscribers. However, not everyone even opens the magazine, which is sealed in a plastic pouch. And, even having ripped open the plastic pouch and paged through the magazine, not everyone bothers to read the letter. The letter is not enclosed in any envelope and appears to be simply another insert.
All those people that fail to say anything will be paying an additional 90 cents per month.


“Dear Customer,
…
We hereby advise you that, with effect from this month, the existing SKY Magazine will be replaced by the new SKYlife Magazine.
This copy of SKYlife is included in the price of your subscription. With effect from March, you will be able to decide whether to continue receiving it at an additional cost of 0,90 Euro per month, which will be reflected on your monthly invoice, or whether to continue receiving only the SKY programme schedule summary at no additional cost to you, this by calling the toll-free number 800 835 005 or by filling in the applicable field in the Do-it-yourself section on the SKY.it website.
…
We thank you for your time and wish you “Good reading” with Skylife.
Cordially yours,
Angela Gemma, Customer Service Manager”


I am not sure whether or not the law allows the imposition of any payment for services that have not been requested by means of silent consent. If it does, then it needs to be changed. Whoever uses this tactic of silent consent is acting improperly towards the customer.
SKY is making us pay an extra 90 cents per month for our silence. As far as SKY is concerned, we are not customers, but simply sheep waiting to be sheared. We should all cancel our subscriptions unless SKY changes its attitude towards us and shows a little more respect for the customer.

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February 03, 2008

White Eyes on Planet Italy

The honest ones are Italy’s real problem. Without this vile category of individuals, we would be able to live in peace, without denunciations, without scandals and Mastella’s wife banished to Ceppaloni. Italy would be pacified and serene.
The honest ones are the true “dropouts”. It is they who are the disadapted ones. All the other citizens have white eyes, without pupils. They see reality through Fede, Riotta, Vespa, Mentana, and Ferrara. The honest ones have normal eyes. They see the world as it is, not as it should be. They are dangerous. Aliens to be exterminated.
Italian society is standing up to them with effective actions, even though they have not yet cleared it all up. Different categories are producing antibodies of their own. The honest journalists have bodyguards, like Saviano, or they can only write in assisted newspapers that no one reads, like Travaglio. The judges that are equipped with pupils, the ones that see Berlusconi and D’Alema for what they are, end up on trial. The CSM always does, without discounts, what is in the interests of the country. The category of politicians is almost perfect. The honest ones are no longer a problem, they have disappeared. Geronzi’s eyes are the whitest in Planet Italy. A guarantee for the bankrupts and the AIDS bond. With him, the banking system is safe from the contagion of the dregs of the honest ones, who anyway have been marginalized and have taken cover abroad.
If information, politics, and finance are all under control, unfortunately, there are in existence in the population, fringes of delinquents who are anti-system, anti-incinerators, anti-convicts in Parliament, anti Dal Molin NATO base, anti mafia, anti camorra, anti TAV in Val di Susa, anti privatization of water, anti conflict of interests.
Insidious people who, through a clear demonstration of honesty, really want to go against the interests of the country. Antidemocratic people. Honesty in Italy is subversive. But in the face of this annoying anomaly, a remedy will be produced. The five year Berlusconian term of office that is awaiting us, will finally take the infected part of the nation and restore it to health. After that there will only be white eyes and pretend hair like all the rest. The honest ones will become a legend.


V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
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3. Give your support to V2 day



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Pardoned for having committed the crime

Italy is an advanced democracy based on the law. Our laws are our strength. There are so many of them, somewhere around 300,000/350.000, that no one knows them all. For every provision on the statute books, there is also one to the contrary, an exception to the rule, a legal interpretation. The number of attorneys in Rome alone is greater than the number in the whole of France.
For the past number of legislatures now, the Italians have been getting themselves elected in order to improve the laws. They want to legislate to cover crimes committed before they were elected. First comes the crime, then the self-pardon. Innocence, notwithstanding the fact of having committed a crime. Their actions are also somehow a social act. Together with a certain Prime Minister, by way of example, anyone guilty of financial fraud is automatically absolved of any guilt. This is now an ex-crime, which can now be committed in all honesty.
The psychodwarf led the way in terms of self-legislation. Democratically speaking, the same facility must now be extended to one and all. It works in the same way as the self-certification process. Based on his/her personal requirements, anyone is now free to introduce an appropriate law to suit him/herself, personally approve the law, and then submit it to the Municipality. In the event that this law clashes with that submitted by another citizen, the next step is to apply the law of the jungle. Should one of the two contenders happen to pass away in the interim, the survivor would, in any event, be entitled to a pardon. This is what often occurs, albeit it a more tacit manner.
Self-legislation would cause the soft underbelly of the State to emerge, namely, the part that, quite rightly so, does not wish to be tried for its crimes while everyone else always gets off scot-free. All this without having to pay for any costly matters such as having to bribe judges or buy off the journalists, something that not everyone can afford to do. A simple sheet of normal paper, a do-it-yourself law and a signature, and then you are free to commit any crime.
The election campaign has already begun: “Free and honest theft for everyone”!

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February 02, 2008

A blunt projectile

NBS (New Bullet Services) wrote to me offering a full made to measure bullet home delivery service. I think that this is an excellent opportunity for everyone, not only for politicians and journalists, but also for the common citizen. Support from the institutions jumps into action the minute a duly wrapped bullet is delivered. The neighbours look at you with pity, reverence and even a spot of jealousy. We now immediately move away from the old phrase “Do you have any idea who I am?” to the more in vogue “Do you have any idea what calibre of bullet I just received?” From mine’s harder than yours, to mine’s a bigger bullet than yours.


"Dear Mr. B. Grillo,
Any real VIP needs a bullet. Status symbols and pardons for crimes committed are now passé, just like the Ferrari and the holiday home at Porto Cervo.
What makes all the difference today is receiving a bullet, however, it must be delivered professionally. Dear Mr. Grillo, have you ever asked yourself why it is that bullets are received one at a time and only one per person? Have you ever stopped for a moment and wondered about the simultaneous nature of the deliveries and, above all, about the receipt of said deliveries? Given that the Postal Services are busy with everything other than the transportation and delivery of mail, how is it possible that the bullets are always delivered to different people yet they all arrive at precisely the same time? In addition, nothing is ever said about the calibre, whether or not they are explosive (Dum-Dum) or with an X cut into the tip, or whether they are made for war or for hunting purposes? Have you noticed that no one has ever been apprehended for sending a bullet to someone?
Well Mr. Grillo, enough is enough! Let’s approach this new era with a certain level of professionalism. Our company is offering you a number of special services and all you need to do is to select the one that is most in keeping with your status:

YES! I WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE (tick the letter of your choice):
a) A truly well-worn bullet (slightly scratched over time) wrapped in a badly torn piece of bribe-type paper
b) A buckshot bullet (ideal for those wanting to appear to be mafia victims)
c) A variety of different war-style bullets with attached silencer, in a “extreme suburbs” package (“'bbanda da 'a Magliana” model)
d) Bullet accompanied by a stencilled threatening letter
e) Bullet hole on a load bearing wall of your own home, with a variety of traces and a dead cat
f) Assorted bullets, threatening letter and apprehendable scapegoat (subject to negotiation following a visit to the site)
g) Brief gunfight in front of the house, with not less than 20 cartridge cases, bloodstains containing traces of at least 3 different types of human DNA (ideal for ensuring the arrival of the renowned Parma RIS unit)
h) More extensive fire fight with bomb-type sound effects, at least 40 cartridge cases littering the ground, various bloodstains including up to four people’s DNA (one of which is female) and tyre tracks, as well as 3 bullet holes in the wall and one person apprehended (with Olindo-type expression)
i) Tension strategy service, complete with brief kidnapping (subject to negotiation following a visit to the site). Cordially yours, " New Bullet Services

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January 29, 2008

The Trip to Rome

The psycho-dwarf is threatening a March on Rome if there’s not straight away a vote according to the rubbish law that he got them to approve so hurriedly in 2006. The law that was kept alive so happily for 2 years by the Centre Left REMOVES from the citizen the right to have a preference vote. It means, for example, that Cuffaro and Cirino Pomicino can be elected as Senators by Casini and by Berlusconi and the citizens can just stay and watch.
Asphalt head definitely said about putting off the elections: “Millions of Italians would pour out onto the streets to ask for that.” Bossi has piled it on: “If we don’t go and vote we will have a revolution. There are just a few weapons missing but sooner or later we will find them.” Some sympathiser has sent him calibre 38 bullets to get him started with munitions. In a normal country they would at least be under house arrest.
The probable future head of the government, whose number of “non-convictions for time out” we’ve lost count of, has a couple of trials ongoing. One for corruption in judicial documents together with the lawyer David Mills that should be finishing in April. It’s an extraordinary coincidence with early elections. And for which he risks getting a sentence of 6 years in prison. Another for presumed slush funds relating to the Mediaset TV rights. In no democracy in the world could a person be a candidate for the premiership with two trials ongoing. Think of Obama or of Hilary accused of corruption. I’ve got the suspicion that Italy for some time now, is not a democracy, but a docile dictatorship.
To the march on Rome, a strong and implacable response must be given. Italians!!!!!!!!
Everyone for the “Trip to Rome”. If the psycho-dwarf sounds off his trumpets, we will make a noise with our bells. If there is a march, I will organise a mass tourist outing in the Eternal City. The route will file past the Headquarters of the parties. An occasion that cannot be repeated to see the ruins of politics. And to take photos of our employees. An event to be recounted to our grandchildren. Better than the fall of the Berlin Wall. Italians!!!!


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V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
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Posted by Beppe Grillo at 08:25 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (11)
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January 27, 2008

The great legislator

The psychodwarf has already kicked off his election campaign. At his age, he has very little time left over in which to destroy Italy completely. In the Senate, he has just completed a purchasing spree with Dini and Mastella. An option has been taken on Topo Gigio Veltroni. He has successfully completed his task of tearing apart the majority. He will be taking over D’Alema’s position in the “prison of liberty” and he will go on to write many books on Africa for the Mondadori publishing house. He will also, from time to time, be dribbling around the Arcori villa with Ronaldo and Cafù.
Tar-head already has his election programme ready. A “very simple law”, which will limit the scope of telephone tapping "only to investigations concerning terrorism, the mafia and the camorra". An act owed to the delinquent politicians, with five years of prison for anyone who illegally taps into telephone conversations, or who divulges the content. And, in the event that the content is published, a "two million Euro fine for the editor".
I fail to understand why all this prudence is necessary. Why allow telephone tapping in the case of the mafia? Let’s get rid of that as well. And in the case of the camorra. As far as terrorism is concerned, it would be worthwhile to specify left wing terrorism and leave it at that. Right wing terrorism doesn’t count. Telephone taps only for the communist terrorists. If the psychodwarf is going to create such a bullshit law, he may as well go the whole hog. Just imagine what would happen if one of his friends, who also happens to be a friend of a friend, receives one of those telephone calls….. and the judge is not for sale. How embarrassing that would be.
The scene surrounding Prodi’s defeat at Palazzo Madama is merely a mirage. They are claiming that Valium lost out. Not true, because everyone lost out. Everyone who contributed to the destruction of the Country was present in the house. No one was missing. They were celebrating, eating mortadella, spitting, boozing, uncorking champagne bottles, passing out and insulting. For a few hours the Senate was the biggest waste disposal dump in Italy. These men are our employees. We must take back control over our own lives. It is, after all, not as miserable an existence as they would have us believe.
The psychodwarf has been holding Italy hostage for the past fifteen years. No one would be able to bear another five years of the same. Not even him, with or without the telephone taps.

Posted by Beppe Grillo at 07:30 PM in Wailing Wall | Comments (1)
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January 20, 2008

Convicted and Content