Political Thoughts in Random Order

Almost a week today Berlusconi was hit with a souvenir of the Duomo, right in front of the same church. Result: two broken teeth, broken lip, broken nose. I do not wish to comment on that: too many words have already be spent on the topic. I will only say that hearing of it from my shocked and almost crying granddad, it did sound like a bit of a joke.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. I take the fact as the action of a unstable person who - like most of us - got fed up with dwarf in front of him and - unlike the rest of us - reacted by throwing something at him. The end. But watching TV this past week I learned that this is far from being what happened. No. What really happened is that the opposition has being "creating a climate of hate and violence never seen before. They have instigated people to hate Berlusconi as a person and not as a politician and this is extremely dangerous." Maybe. True, I did miss two months of the panthomime that is italian politics but the few political discussions I did follow seemed as rude and uncivilized as ever. No big change there. So?

So every single member of the government has been emphasizing the role of such "climate of hate and violence" in the aggression. So much that one wonders if they are just playing a well rehearsed part or if they have been totally brainwashed. Mis Maria Stella Gelmini - with her bright purple glasses - has stated, full of passion and true adoration as she was, that the opposition is invidious of Berlusconi, his strength and personality, his immense political power and his being generally amazing. Quite a sad show if you want my opinion. This woman, I remind you, is the minister for education. The first thing she did as soon as she was elected (no, not elected, whatever) was to cut funding to universities, the second to cut the number of teachers in primary school, the last to cut the number of subject taught in high school. Probably the least liked minister of education in the past decade, and we had some seriously bad ones.

Anyway, back to the point. The aggression could happen also because of some inefficiency of the security around our prime minister. No doubt on that. 24 men failing to protect the only person they needed to protect, means that something went wrong. Even if only slightly. Last time I watched TV, an eminent member of Berlusconi's party was vehemently arguing against the silly journalistic idea to give a bit of attention to the faults of security. It's not relevant he shouts, we should focus only on the climate of hate and violence created by the opposition against our prime minister. Why is maintaining such climate so important for the government, I wonder?

But now we get to the interesting point. A week before this mess took place, a consistent amount of people (their website says a million, but I couldn't check it.) in Italy and around Europe took part in the No Berluscony Day. To organize so many people you need internet, don't u? Also, apparently on Facebook there were a few groups against Berlusconi, we are told these groups were very violent in tones. But don't try to search these groups now, they don't exist anymore. Because Facebook is the new devil (communism was a bit outfashioned it would seem), so the government is taking emergency measures to be able to control the web and close down dangerous sites. I don't know exactly how they will define a site dangerous, but I can easily imagine some of their criteria. Checking the PDL website it would appear that exponents of the party has already contacted Facebook managers to ask for collaboration in this attempt to stop this climate of violence. Still waiting for major reactions to this news. So far very few people seem to care about this.

In the meanwhile the law for short trials seem to be likely to pass, hence the whole of the parliament has agreed that rather than having hundreds of criminals outside prison it is better sorting out a law at personam to keep Berlusconi safe another 3 years.

In the meanwhile someone placed a bomb in a corridor of Bocconi University in Milan. It exploded at 3am the day after the aggression to SB, causing minor damages to a wall. A note with it signed FAI. TV news has been talking for days about this FAI = Federazione Anarchica Informale, supposedly responsible for about 20 bombs in the past 10 years. The whole thing sounded a bit wrong so I checked. Guess what? This Federazione Anarchica Informale does not exist. What exist is the Federazione Anarchica Italian who does not claim responsibility for, but on the contrary condemn the bomb.

Now, I'd better go and read their website more in depth before it is shut down.

Almost no mention of Copenhagen during this week.

John Barleycorn must Die.