-- First part of the disclaimer (Italy-oriented):

According to some stupid Italian law, call it law of mafia or law of hypocrisy, it seems that I should post somewhere on this website the following disclaimer:

I corpodibacco, author of this darning blog, am not a journalist, and this blog is not a newspaper or nothing of the sort.

So, there, I just did it.

Why? I have no idea. Must have something to do with freedom of expression. But, what's wrong with being a journalist in Italy?
For example, I can write: "Silvio Berlusconi is a mafioso", or "the Italian banking system is a criminal association", or "the pope is a miserable crook", or "Italian pop music isn't even good for my dogs": These are opinions I have, and I can express them, at least according to the Italian Constitution, article 21: "Everyone has the right to freely express thoughts in speech, writing, and by other communication."

But, if I understand it well, if I was a journalist I could not write "the pope is a miserable crook" without being able to prove that the pope is a miserable crook, which isn't easy. Not being able to do so would cost me the expulsion from the Mafia of Journalists (which in Italy goes under the funny name of "Order of journalists", where all the journalists are put in order), because I'd be just offending the poor guy. Of course this thing makes no sense whatsoever. Why is the miserable crook offended only if I speak as a journalist and not if I speak as a citizen? And why should a journalist be part of a Mafia of Journalists anyway?
Oh, my country.

In the end, it all comes down to this: how do you prove your opinions? How do you demonstrate that you feel that a banking system is a criminal association? I am not speaking of actual criminal acts (there must be plenty of them though), but just of the opinion one might have on the matter, that the simple way by which our banking system is conceived makes it de facto a criminal association.

(Opinions are for definition not provable. That's the reason why it is said that "math is not a matter of opinion". Because any mathematical sentence must be proved, contrary to what my lousy teachers at school generally maintained. This disclaimer is straying off the point.)

From the mentioned article 21, the most funny of all subsections is the subsection 2, which reads: "The press may not be controlled by authorization or submitted to censorship."
True. Instead, in this sad falling country, is apparently normal practice to intimidate journalists and political adversaries suing them for defamation or calumny whenever they express strong opinions on someone or something. Example:

journalist Y: "Sir, you have many friends who are in the Mafia. You have many interests in territories controlled by the Mafia. You get most of your votes out of those territories. As soon as you seized power, you made many favors to your friends inside the territories from which you were elected. What would you answer to those who call you mafioso?"
politician X: "Are you saying I am a mafioso? Are you implying that? OK. That's it. You're done. I am suing you for calumny."
journalist Y: "aren't you going to answer to my question?"
politician X: "No, I'll see you in court. Arrivederci" (exit)
journalist Y: (sobs)
(the following day, to put a nice gravestone on journalist Y's career, if there isn't a strike for some other unrelated journalist-category issue, most Italian newspapers would title: "outrageous attack against politicians X. Enough with this punk journalism!")

Settlements for calumny trials in Italy can pay hundreds of thousands of euros or more. And yet I never heard anyone questioning these events as mafia-style intimidations, which would be the textbook definition of what this use of the law is about.

Self-censorship seem to be the only way out in Italy. Or things like this disgraceful disclaimer: which basically states that the world is divided between journalists whose opinions must be controlled and regulated, and normal citizens whose opinions don't count and so can remain under the impression of enjoying freedoms that don't exist.

-- Second part of the disclaimer (U.S.-oriented):

Italyisfalling.com is hosted on an U.S. server, and I am well aware that in a near future, down there in the happy police state that seems to be incrementally built in place of a once great republic, someone could certainly find a reason, if only felt like it, to close down this blog along others for any vague 'threat' it suddenly might represent, according to some phony propaganda to set some new paranoid set of strict rules against the bad guys.

Thus (as a disclaimer) I assure the NSA, or the "homeland security", or any other of the agencies that could be interested, that my personal opinion of the U.S. government and its policies, both inside and abroad, is that such policies are despicable, outrageous, shameful and very often at any rate criminal.
I also want to stress the fact that I am a non-violent individual who --although being a citizen of another country-- has a great respect for the U.S. Constitution and the ideas and acts of its founding fathers (that the mentioned agencies/governments are disgracing everyday with their acts and words). I therefore assure them that my dissent (and any others' for that matter) isn't in any way assimilable to an act of terrorism or to a threat to the security of any nation in the world, let alone the most powerful of them.

Finally, I want to add (always as a disclaimer) that to equate opinions with acts of terrorism shows a logic which isn't worthy of a very stupid monkey, let alone the very evolute primate we all supposedly represent.

And this was the end of my disclaimer. Sorry it took so long, but you know how it goes with this lawyerish mumbo-jumbo.