A cry from the dark heart of Italy

[Neil Foxlee]

From David Malone's blog ( http://golemxiv-credo.blogspot.com/ ):

"Italy erupts - a student calls for solidarity
I don't usually lift things from other sources, but I don't think this writer will mind. This was posted today as a comment under a NY Times article about the student protests which have erupted in Italy over Berlusconi yet again clinging to power.

The post speaks for itself. This person asks for solidarity. As this student say they are not just protesting about education cuts but about an entire corrupt system. Last year I was in Italy and had long conversations with young Television Producers who described exactly what this student describes - a system utterly corrupt where there is NO way ahead except through patronage and graft. The people I spoke to said they wanted nothing more than to leave Italy because they felt there was nothing for them there. They asked me about coming to the UK to look for work in British broadcasting.

I thought then how sad it was that the young and talented should feel that their hope of a future had been repossessed from them and sold. We have let it happen in Italy and Ireland. Will we wait meekly till it happens here? Or will we join our own students and make this a protest, as this person says, not just about one set of unfair cuts but about a dysfunctional and sociopathic financial system?

WE HAVE COMMON CAUSE with this person. I wish I could talk to him/her and say we are in this together. If we can reach out and link arms then we do have the power to change Europe and take it back from the corrupt oligarchy who have sold our democracy and sovereignty, and their paymasters in the financial class.

This is not an Italian fight nor an Irish fight nor an English fight. This is a fight for all our futures against those who are trying to take that future away and sell it for their own profit and power.

Mercuzio
Everywhere in Italy
December 14th, 2010
3:05 pm

There has been totally anarchy today in Rome, only fire, tear gas and streetfights. People burning cars, police's vans, rubbish, more than 100 000 students, immigrants, people from Aquila, people fired up at work because of the politics who don't substain their industries...1500 cops, everything blocked by the Guardia di finanza, and every kind of army force. People that has came from all over the country. Political leaders have had to stay into the parliament defendend from people who wanted to reach them from the streets all around there. We are quiet like in a dictstorship. A policeman had tried to take his gun to front the aggressions and had been stopped in time.Students have errupted in the Stock exchange today in Milan. We, the students have started our protest almost two years ago, it has all intensified in these 3 months, we have blocked train stations like in Milan, Venice, Padua, Pisa, and many more...we have blocked higways like Bologna, Salerno...Universities are occupied by students, there are manifestations everyday in our cities, we have reached our monuments, we are trying to let us be listened by institutions, but no one cares about us. We aren't yet only students now, people is enjoying us. We are fighting not against a simple educational legislative act, we are fighting against our sick system: we can't find jobs, we don't have any kind of agevolation for families, for living by ourselves, only depending from the people you know a career can come. We don't have information, we don't have cultural and social possibilities, all the best of us have to go away from the country, everything is corrupted, everyone is corrupted...and at least, thanks the Vatican for not paying any kind of taxes...I think we are at the break point. Please Help us in keeping attention

Excuses for the english but we are still fighting and we haven't time."

[NormanD]

The best help is solidarity. So far - and by comparison - the UK and Ireland is small fry.

I feel that governments are never as strong, firm and secure as we might be giving them credit for. They know this too, they just hope the rest of the population doesn't wake up to it.

Someone recently posted here - it may have been you, Neil - about a deep economic abyss looming, unknown and unpredictable. I much feel the same way. Something's going to happen, I'm just not certain of what, when and how. I'm not being apocalyptic here, I've just been picking up on the small print of economics / financial correspondents who sense that the jig's up.

What worries me is the people's response - or lack of it.

[Neil Foxlee]

If you want it spelt out, rather than combing the small print, look at David Malone's blog (link above), which draws on inside info from bankers. If Wikileaks keeps going, there's due to be a big leak about a major bank early in the New Year, which will inevitably implicate other banks.

[DavidM]

..an entire corrupt system

Where to start ?

That's broadly true in many ways. Italian politics and public administration are consistently depressing. Italians excel at bureaucracy, which is, of course, a way of creating centres of power and patronage. Ostensibly, there may be perfectly good reasons for it at the outset, but bureaucracy soon takes on it’s own characteristics. It works to establish then extend itself, and in it’s complicating regulations it seeks to defer responsibility. This happens all over Italy, in many areas, but it’s predominantly true of the administration.

The political class, those who make the regulations and create the bureaucracy, are of course in the best position to manipulate it, and this happens at all levels. The administration of justice, the law, here is just the same. Slow and complicated, the legal system works best for those who have the resources to go along with it. The erosion of penalties for an offense committed, and sentenced, is a common enough occurrance for those who have access to influence.

The result is an almost universal distrust of politicians, and a sense that the law is largely remote and a tool for others to use. Even though the words “The Law is Equal for All” is written on the walls of every courtroom in the land, the evidence of what people see tells them otherwise. In the Jovanotti song I posted here some time ago he sings “Here rules don’t exist, we only have exceptions.”

It’s easy to understand the student’s frustration and rage. Being at the bottom of the system looking up it must seem like Kafka’s Castle. Having gone to the trouble and expense of working towards a degree, only to realize that it’s just another certificate and the doors are only being opened to those with better connections is, naturally, infuriating. Here they regularly talk about the best brains going overseas because the opportunities at home are so scarce.

The other element to this picture is cultural. Italy is a country of old men. Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, is 74. My friends who work in the universities tell me that the average age of an Italian universitiy professor is 63. Those who manage to claw their way up to positions of power hang on until the very end. It’s the family mentality. That has it’s good points in other areas, but in this regard it’s a real curse. No one wants to let go of power. Once again, the students don’t see much chance for their future.

That's all I can manage to write just at the moment. Here's an article from Bill Emmott from a few weeks ago;
http://www.billemmott.com/article.php?id=288
In particular;

The second principle to accept is the fact that Berlusconismo has come to be shared by many people in Italian politics and in other centres of power in the country, whether on the right, centre or left. Partly, that reflects the fact that Berlusconi did not invent all these ills: he exploited and amplified existing traits and tendencies.

[Jonathan E.]

Thanks for the "inside" view, David. Not meaning to belittle the situation or be rude about Italy or Italians, but hasn't it been somewhat this way for near ever? It seems almost like the caricature of Italy, at least from the historical outsider perspective. I once had a very good friend from Italy, and he'd left for much the same reasons mentioned by you and the Italian student; this was over thirty years ago.

The current economic fate of the PIGs (as they're known in finance circles) has been foreseen for sometime.

Whoever originally mentioned it, I'm expecting the "deep economic abyss" that Norman mentions as "looming." The period of "normality" that we've mostly experienced over the past thirty years or so is, I think, finished. Of course, it wasn't really normal; much of it was a boom/bubble — now we're seeing the bust. Many in the Third World never even got their boom; the SAPs imposed by the World Bank and IMF have been screwing them hard ever since that time. We'll all be Third World soon.

The effect of WikiLeaks on the financial situation may eventually lead to a better solution, but it's hard to see how it will prevent the preliminary crash, especially so since that crash appears inevitable given the fundamental structure of the system.

[David Flower]

is there not also a sneaking admiration amongst an awful lot of Italians of all stripes for Berlusconi as the supreme example of someone who has played the (existing) Italian game to perfection in a way they might, given the chance? I've heard this said quite a bit

[DavidM]

Jonathan wrote;

...but hasn't it been somewhat this way for near ever?

In as much as it's a cultural issue, that of the older generation hanging on to power and the younger one having to seek patronage, then yes that's certainly true. I think David Malone's blog is mixing up two issues; one is the student's frustration at the miserable prospects ahead of them and the other is the financial crisis, which probably only indirectly affects the student's lives. Nonetheless, both can be grouped under the banner of "our sick system."

David wrote;

.. a sneaking admiration amongst an awful lot of Italians of all stripes for Berlusconi

That's a real question. Where I live, in the ex-communist stronghold of Toscana, almost no-one I've ever spoken to has admitted to voting for Berlusconi. He does well in the urbanized richer part of Italy, the north, where perhaps his dumbed-down highly commercial television stations do a good job of selling his party's image. The fact of being a successful businessman, and one seemingly from outside of the old political order, is certainly attractive to some Italians, whose cynicism about politics in general is strong. It's always been a bit of a mystery why so many people actually voted for him, as, a bit like George Bush, he generates such strong dislike on the other side.

But then, the sad fact is he embodies most of the faults of the old political order; connections, patronage buying and manipulating markets. Now after 15 years on the political scene a lot of people, including finally some of his coalition partners, are getting tired of his hollow promises. The scandals about personal behavior, the "abrogation of moral authority" to use a Clinton-era phrase, has eroded his standing, and the polls, for what they're worth, show that he's loosing ground.

[DavidM]

A bit of further reading, something which I only came across last night.

From Son of Dave's column in The Stool Pigeon;

In Italy, and elsewhere, a rat is never born a rabbit
December 1st, 2010

Published Issue 29

Touring in Italy. Gorgeous. Sensual. Completely corrupt. I like it because Italians make the best hats. Good felt is made from rabbit fur. After days and weeks studying what keeps that fantastic country limping along at halfspeed, my confusion led to dementia and I broke open a couple of horribly crowded bunny hutches, acting like a crazed animal rights activist on NO2. Be free little rodents! Forgive me my hat fetish.

Borsalino, the hat makers, are not to be confused with Paolo Borsellino, the anti-Mafia magistrate who was blown to a mist in his car in 1992 by the P2 (and/or Mafia) to discourage his investigation. We drove past that crime site en route to Palermo, Sicily for the first show. We drove through the king’s garden of prostitutes (Favorita Park) and my handsome Italian tour manager explained to me that, despite the hype, the Mafia are not the cause of the country’s disease. The real criminals are in government at the very top. I was hungry to understand, although I’d hoped to see bodies being thrown off bridges and crime bosses playing cards in dark cafés.

The gig in Palermo was at Candelai, an infamous whorehouse-turned-music-venue. A great place. The dark-haired daughters of seventies hookers shrieked and wrapped themselves snake-like around the wallet in my trousers, like their mothers taught them, but I fought them off and escaped with my evening’s pay and relative innocence intact. Palermo is too saucy.

The last stop on the tour was in Napoli where we had perfect coffee and Sfogliatella pastries in Scampia, home of the modern Neapolitan Mafia. Last year 27 people were killed in one month alone in a fight to control the drug trade in Naples. Still my well-oiled tour guide assured me the problems come from higher up. I believed him.

Whatever happened to protest songs? Banished to folk clubs or grumpy thrash nights and told to shut up because politics doesn’t belong in music. Can’t imagine The Clash getting popular now. It seems Italy especially could use a loud voice from the everyday people, who wade through waist-high piles of garbage and lies. But all they get is Mariano Apicella, a peon of Berlusconi, hired to write popular songs that glorify the old douchebag.

Corruption seems more visible in Italy and less cleverly disguised than here in Queenland. How I’d love to find a banker swinging under Blackfriars Bridge with MI5 fingerprints all over him (see Roberto Calvi). There’d be a good shit-disturbing song then.

Operation Gladio: the first thing to look up in your paranoia portal. The Italian right wing, with the cooperation of British secret services and the CIA, blew up scores of civilians at Piazza Fontana, Bologna in 1969, purposely to blame it on the socialists. This simple trick is called a False Flag Operation, a popular and proven Western method of manipulating us, used often since World War II. Blame the ‘enemy’ and seize more control at home. The next time they find a car full of explosives parked in Piccadilly and miraculously avoid a huge bang just before or after an election, askyourselves: is it really so far fetched to think it could have been put there by your own government? No, I can’t prove anything about that car-loadin particular. I can only point at the bunny hutches and laugh insanely at
my futility and hypocrisy.

The Napoli gig was in a high-end blues club. A what? Elite people make a corrugated metal room in the richest part of town with bad B.B. King murals and faux poor-man décor, then dine at linen-covered tables while the bluesman-di-giorno shouts and jumps up and down for their amusement. I screamed at them and blew confetti into their fine wines, but they were too busy eating to care. Few applauded. They are completely in control. They own the blues like a Van Gogh. But at the end of the night I took the dirty money, wiped the sweat out of my dead bunny hat and slunk off ashamed.

Pull over! I didn’t want to get on that budget airline without doing something weird in Italy. I saw it there, a rabbit factory where thousands of them are bred in bloody cages for their fur. Why was a giggling man in a battered fedora breaking in and setting five of them free? Hard to say. Why does he complain so much about corruption while suckling from the pigs that he moans about? Well, just because the enemy is completely integrated doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Home in London, I took a hard-earned 500 euro note in to be exchanged for pounds. My local post office laughed and sent me away. The high street banks nervously refused to touch it. I had to take it to a bank on The Strand and sign a form admitting ownership, while the note was sent for tests and the serial numbers checked against a long list of known forgeries coming from Italy. It passed, unfortunately for this column. But the bank earned about £70 in the exchange.

A Mafia man would approve of that racket.

...............

The song he refers to is this one;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzn1iFkKt_I&playnext=1&list=PLD745B792BCA2EC8D

What they're singing translates as "Thank goodness, we have Silvio". I defy anyone here to watch it the whole way through.