(no subject)
It does not seem possible that Italian politics could become more repulsive and heartbreaking. Berlusconi and his enemies are playing a destructive game that does nothing but harm to the whole nation. The opposition is using the magistracy quite openly as a tool to attack the government, and its press organs are less than a step away from open subversion. I suggest you do not believe the stories that come out of the foreign press; they just believe everything that the opposition tell them. And then there is the issue of Rupert Murdoch, a man who makes Berlusconi look a saint, and who, in his war with him, is quite happy to publish the most obscene libels against Italy (such as the Times' libellous report that Italian forces are paying protection money to the Taliban) and make deals with the most extreme left in order to get him. The horror stories about Italian unfreedom and corruption are part of the party political struggle against Berlusconi, and quite untrue; but Berlusconi's own people have now adopted a strategy of "if it moves, shoot it" that no longer distinguishes even between enemies and occasional opponents. A judge who decided against Berlusconi in a civil case has been stalked by Berlusconi journalists, and a leading TV commentator has been charged with having had contacts with Czechoslovak spies during the cold war - even though the very Czechoslovak reports quoted showed that the man had never actually been recruited. (The curious thing is that a secret police report on the Mitrokhin archive charged several Italian diplomats and three leading journalists - Sandro Viola, Giuliano Zincone and Alberto Cavallari - with being Soviet spies; and that has neither been published nor pushed, even though the evidence is a lot stronger.) The bitter hatred on both sides is so poisoning the air that a Cabinet minister has seriously warned both sides that this is the kind of atmosphere where someone will end up being assassinated, because both sides are stoking up hatred and unreason.
And if any twit is silly enough to compare this to even the worst that is happening in Britain or America, it is clear that they have not understood the contents of what I have written. The ferocity of Italian political hatreds begins where the worst of tea-partiers and Daily Kos hate-mongers end.
Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, ma bordello!
And if any twit is silly enough to compare this to even the worst that is happening in Britain or America, it is clear that they have not understood the contents of what I have written. The ferocity of Italian political hatreds begins where the worst of tea-partiers and Daily Kos hate-mongers end.
Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, ma bordello!