My analysis, if you really want to hear it, is that things couldn't have worked out better for Berlusconi right now, and not only for him. This almost perfect tie, while a major disaster for Italy, is the best way for Berlusconi to walk out of office as the strong leader he never was and never will be. Only few weeks ago everybody looked at him as the sorriest loser in the world.
Sure, the crappy electoral law he did just few months before the elections ended up giving a lot of unjustified bonus to the wrong winner, so much that the left-wing seats at the Chamber of Deputies largely outnumber right-wing's: but the difference in votes is so very small it can be fairly called a draw.
At the Senate, because the bonus to the winner is calculated for any single region and not for the whole nation (thanks to the mentioned crappy electoral law), it is a lot more difficult to give a majority of seats to a winner: in fact, at the Senate Berlsuconi and Prodi, his opponent, will have the same number of seats. As a consequence, it will be a hassle to pass any law, since everyone of them has to be approved by both Chamber and Senate. And what will happen when a given Senator will decide not to vote for a law he doesn't like? His power will become suddenly enormous. That's a too powerful temptation, when one single vote can change everything. Governability is screwed.
Now, because of this, and because of the conditions in which the country is in, and the hard work Italy would need to come out of the mud and make it in the Euro zone, it'd be no piece of cake to be Prime Minister. It is actually a lot better for Berlusconi to be in the background and let someone else do the hard work. Because of this, even though the numbers says Berlusconi could have won the elections, I say he's glad he didn't. More: he didn't want to.
Everything is really working great just like it is: with his party "Forza Italia" stronger enough in the Parliament, nobody will dare to touch his televisions and his assets. I can picture him, loudly calling for new elections, trashing the next opening of the new Parliament bragging to be the real winner and insisting that the Chambers are not justly composed. I can picture him blocking any law concerning him or his interests.
He will have a hell of a time in the part. He may even end up as the President.

So much for Berlusconi. And who else will be happy for this result? Well, what about all those forces abroad who need Italy to remain unstable, so that the European Union remains unstable? Those same kind of forces that always wanted Italy to remain unstable in the last fifty years or so? What about Berlusconi's best friends, mr. George W. and mister Putin, who strangely enough are not Europeans and are not concerned with the destiny of the European Union? They will be happy to know that, while their friend Berlusconi is not in charge when the worst decisions have to be taken (the reforms that the dreadful italian economic situation needs), not because of this Italy will actually have any real chance to prosper in the next future, nor to grow any real influence abroad.

Finally, who else will be smiling from this dark picture? Easy to say, radical left-wing parties will be smiling: because the weaker a moderate left-wing government will be, the stronger their place into it will be. Plus, it's not easy for them to be friends with an actual left-wing government, 'cause they don't look good under that light. So the weaker the government, the better.
It is a fact that under Berlusconi's spell they prosper, and eventually get a lot of votes. Not so under a moderate left-wing coalition. After all, it's obvious to anyone that they had, as always, a great deal of help from Berlusconi's televisions, having their faces showed everywhere before the elections. On the other hand, if the moderate left comes out too strong, they get totally neglected by TVs.

So, to sum up, we better wait before deciding who is the actual winner here. The supposed winners, they are all but happy. And some of the supposed losers, don't listen to what they say now. Give 'em the time to smile and they will be smiling. That's Italy, you know. In fact, have I mentioned the citizens in this picture? No, I haven't. Because even though citizens seems to be divided into two different italian countries, one against and one for Berlusconi, they are not a real issue.

The sky out is whiter than white, the city is noisy but the blackbird chirps, and I am very very tired. I am going to hit the pad. Italy just turned over in its steady fall, but no bad dreams. The rate of falling isn't changed so far.
The so called analysis is finished now, I hope you liked it 'cause that was it. I know I will want too change it later, but, it will be too late. Kisses.

O.K., if you, english readers have some further curiosity about Italy, these couple of days before elections, I know my help won't be very practical. It is too tiring for someone in the middle of it to find the words to describe why such a weak political coalition, unrealiable, a bit mafiosa and not really different from anything we already know as the coalition of Prodi, Berlusconi's opponent, can be regarded as the finest hope against the unthinkable possibility of Berlusconi winning his second term.
By the way, this possibility is still there, not only because you never know what can cross italian minds, but also in regards of the many hints of possible electoral frauds that are coming in, particularly about the votes of italians abroad.

So, to know the shape this country is in, how much damage Berlusconi has actually done already, how little but important difference his opponents are bound to make, I'll suggest you to give a read to "Between Guatemala and Mongolia" by the german journalist Friedrich Christian Delius. The article, translated in english by the outstanding website signandsight.com, is very readable and quite accurate. Particularly when it comes to the great misunderstanding between Italy and the world, where the world tends to be blindly in love with a country which instead badly needs strong enemies abroad: enemies firmly intolerant with its continuous taking of deranged paths, so that it in the end those enemies would be the real friends we never had.

Many of the left-wing bloggers are calling 'coglione' themselves right now. 'Coglione', which means testicle, balls, stupid idiot, is the adjective our beloved Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi used today to define left-wing voters. Since we are a few days before the elections, and there's been a lot of talking about him going to finally lose his chair and all, apparently he's reacting pretty bad to the trend.
Anyway, although this is actually what he meant, Berlusconi didn't say left-wing voters are 'coglioni'. This is not what he said. He said "I think too much of italians to believe someone would be so much coglione to vote against his own interests".
Now, well, you know. I can't believe it either. Still, that's what has been happening in this country since this country was born, almost 150 years ago. No doubt it is going to happen again this time. Whoever wins. But what can you do? I know we're all coglioni.

Funny coincidence today on the first page of corriere.it.
Main news, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declares that Chinese communists used to boil little children at the time of revolution. Which may even be true as far as I'm concerned, although it's hardly an issue for a Prime Minister of the third millennium.
Just below it, questioned about import-export duties, the Minister of finance indicates: "Beijing is eating us alive."

Funny. Is this a subtle way to tell us they want at least to be boiled? That China should at least boil Italy before eating it? Or that we should accommodate ourselves to the fact that it is good and right if we let our politicians to boil us?

My boss gave up on me, because I am not a "comrade".
Everybody is a communist here along the canal. I mean among the storekeepers and the managers, everybody is recognizably from the left or the extreme left. Even if they don't call themselves "communists", it's the same, Berlusconi-wise. As many communists and former-closet communists do, they all secretly admire the shit-eater thief Berlusconi, and they just think and act like a big clan. I can spot them by a mile. For exaggerated this may sound, it's easy to say in Italy, with little margin of error, when someone who looks or talks in a certain way belongs to a certain political area. Or better, when this someone pretends to belong to a certain political area.
Well, it's incredible, considered how the traditional retailers here in Milan had always been the most bigot ones, the core of conservatism of our local society.
Now, here around in the navigli neighborhood, if you hang about bodegas and stores you just meet these non-conformist, hipsters, apparently cool and never formal shopkeepers and managers and employees who make a show of their political convictions as often as they can. Their customers, mostly making a show of their being hipsters and cool too, are so enthusiast to find "comrades" everywhere they go in the area, they can't believe it how lucky they are.

It's such a general consent of attitudes and looks it makes you sick, in a little while. When two of these fellows meet, the third or the second phrase will undoubtedly be something about Berlusconi, or the good ol' times corrupted by capitalism, or how the food it's not the same (because capitalism corrupted food), or something they both heard on Radio Popolare, and so forth.
If you have the misfortune to talk with them about politics, they will take you on the longest route to draw this big circle where everything fits into place logically: anti-capitalism, business, anarchism, individualism, communism, environmentalism, to avoid paying taxes, to make little or no difference among political parties because they're all criminals, to never pay taxes for the employees, to fire anybody whenever they feel like it because life is a struggle, because capitalism ruined society etc. To work sixteen hours a day and become greedy and crabby and stingy and addicted to work is normal too, it all fits into the big picture of how capitalism ruined everybody's life and so, shit, they are so obliged to this.

It is left to say about the employees. Are they in the same bunch, too? Well, some. But the ones that worked in the area for a little longer, they inevitably turned into disillusioned individualist, luckily only focused to look into the short supply of good-hearted or exceptional people, regardless any creed or color.

I think I already told somewhere in the blog about when Gisa worked at the pub on the other side of the canal, and got pregnant, and her boss first kept her working after late at night until the sixth month and then, when she barely could resist standing in the smoke-filled room for more than half a hour a time, he fired her, later claiming he didn't owed her any payoff money. This guy, an expert of wines, calls himself a "communist guevarist".

Now my boss. She's addicted as everybody else here to her work, since the unlucky day she found out that the more she worked the more money flew in. And she's addicted to the infamous Radio Popolare, obviously, and she makes a face every time I say something negative about someone from the extreme left, or the "real left" as she calls it. But I can't help it. I am from the left, but I also think with my own head.
So she gave up on me. Well, she gave up also because I let her down twice, when she needed me after my shift and I really didn't feel like it.

She made a scene one day.
"I consider your behavior hallucinating"
"Why, what?"
She looked at me like she wanted to send me at the stake. Then she started mocking my voice, making it the voice of someone very spoiled and lazy:
"No I don't feel like working, I can't come"
"Listen, you don't have to mock my vo--"
"I don't feel like working, I don't need it"
"All right. Go on."
"I can't stand you. You are so haughty. You obviously don't have any belief in it"
"Belief in what?"
"The thing, the bookstore. You just don't have any faith in it, it's obvious."
"Wha- You can't expect me to have faith in your own assets, do you?"
"Oh! You're so haughty!"

Everybody is a communist here along the canal, but I can't take it anymore.
I had my share of milanese communism all my childhood and adolescence, I had plenty of it, I could write entire books about this very crafted way they have to turn everything into a moral problem, in order to force you to be just like they want.
I am not like them, and I want to be as much different as I can.
I reckon this bookstore thing is really not going anywhere. I kind of have no faith into it.

Two news items from the super-vague and boring English news section of News Agency ANSA attract my attention today.
Considered that, as somewhere else I argued already, ANSA never reports what really happens in Italy because they don't want to disappoint anybody (i.e. government and finance forces), I see it as a pretty significant event that today you can find two anti-government news items in the even more censored English section of their Stalinist-like agency.
Elections are so close they must have felt the moment right to take a side, in expectation of serving the next government at their best. The sly foxes.
For much that I want Berlusconi to fall down and even more down, those signs of journalism subjection are always creepy to look at. Anyway, nothing really new here.

First news item, it's about the racist and moronic Northern League government party, a pretty powerful organization devoted to separate Italy in two parts (north and south), in order to keep the north richer and the south in misery, and make even more miserable the life of all non-Italian non-rich individuals who share the misfortune of living in our falling country. But you already know that.
The news is that their party is about to be suspended by the European Parliament, because of the too many racist and anti-Islamic stances. What the article don't say, is that the average Northern League elector will be proud of that. What they don't say but they know very well, is that the moderate right-wing elector will be very much pissed by this.
Well, what do you know. I've always been against suspensions, at least since when I was suspended from school when I was twelve (for saying 'fuck off' to the teacher, alas), and in this case I am against too. Because it is pretty hypocrite to suspend them now, they always said and did even worse during the years, way before European elections. The point is that Berlusconi was their strong ally, and nobody wanted to disappoint him for so little as some racist shows against immigrants whose train seats had to be 'disinfected' after the use (just an example of the happy political fights of this shameful organization).

Second news item, it's about another trial against Berlusconi. It's yet another story of corruption of magistrates and politicians, and dirty money's intelligent routes, nothing new from our beloved PM. Isn't it something all Prime Ministers and Presidents do? Well, probably not, but still, who wouldn't do the same in his position?
Once again, the only remarkable thing about this news item is that ANSA is giving it to the international public. They really want everybody to know they never supported Berlusconi. Oh, it would be nice to believe them, unfortunately we are out of gullibility right now. Under elections it goes away like bread, as we say here.
And with this we are finished with boring political journalism stuff for today. I am sorry I have inflicted it to you.

PM Silvio Berlusconi is cheering up the masses here in Piazza del Duomo in Milan. The yelling supporters of his party "Forza Italia". I am listening to him rambling about communism right now, now that he finished the couple of jokes he opened with.
As I listen to him aired from radioradicale.it, I realize I cannot stand his voice anymore, which is strange because I always had at least one good laugh out of it. I guess my subconscious is just not prepared to the idea he might win again and make a mess of this country for five more years.
So, only to better be prepared, I write down my memo in 7 points of what to do straight after his victory.

1) join "Forza Italia"

2) turn self into vacuum parts dealer

3) make friend with at least one mafioso neighbor

4) buy Television

5) buy gun to defend own property

6) talk more about freedom and less about books

7) sell own books to buy tuxedo

Ah, Now I feel I am better prepared.