I can't say I am not surprised by the overbearing victory of our local criminal tycoon Silvio Berlusconi (ecstatic face in tiny picture). Honestly I thought he didn't even want to win. Besides I thought the center-left was more in control of the transition.
The fact remains that the center-left, kicked out of power after only one miserable year, with its ineptitude has paved the way to five more years of Berlusconi's invincible domain of criminal activities, peculations, embezzlements, conspiracy, collusion with Mafia, dumbing-down TV shows and all the rest.
Freed by the soberness of his former allies, such as Casini, now out of the games, and strengthened by the huge support given (as customary in time of disappointment toward politics) to the xenophobic party Northern League, Berlusconi will have no limits. Everyone is guessing it is going to be really tough on a country already crippled and falling like Italy, that still had to recover from the past five years of Berlusconi's governance (since the year of center-left governance in the middle basically served nothing and accomplished nothing.)

I wonder if this defeat will finally make the idiotic arrogance of the leaders of the center-left (grinning face in tiny picture) go away. You would think that losing with almost the 10% to Berlusconi again should do it. But I have a hunch that not few of them are actually happy of the outcome.
First of all, with their moronic single party they racked the 33%, which within the italian left is quite enough power in few hands. But most importantly, with this election they managed to erase from the political scene the "extreme" left, the green party and communists (serious face in tiny picture), which for the first time in thirty years or so are going to be out of the parliament.
I think back at the Democratic Party they couldn't dream anything better than being left as the only left, even if they have nothing of the left except the desire to be in control and the arrogance of those who think they have a exemplary, romantic past.

Well, Italy is screwed anyway, economically but more importantly spiritually and morally. The majority hates to be italian, others who love to be italian do so for the worst reasons. Everyone seems ready to sell everything only to get out of debt and buy a new car, a new political season, a favor. The political oligarchy is disgusting from the first to the last man not only because they are so corrupted, because they are always the same faces, because they are not capable of doing anything good that lasts, because they are a burden to this country, dragging it backwards against happier forces of conservation and change (both badly needed by this country).
They are disgusting because they are a mirror inside which our worst face reflects itself. I am sick of looking at that mirror, actually.

To see you tryin' to be a part of
A world that just don't exist.
It's all just a dream, babe,
A vacuum, a scheme, babe.

-- Bob Dylan

There are two new parties in italy that as always are made with the ruins of the old parties with the same old guys running the show and pretending to be new guys, like comedians changing their hats. Elections are coming again and our unlucky cities are filled with depressing billboards with moronic slogans and ugly smiling faces (what the hella you smiling at, dickhead?)

To make the matter even more idiotic the supposed two new parties that will be dividing the italian cake soon want to be commonly referred to as "PD" (center-left) and "PDL" (center-right).
The only possible comment left being "oh, go to hell!".

I won't even try to reason with the inexistent tricky shit coming from Berlusconi's front. It's the usual nonsense that works so well with my people in times of disgrace.

Except maybe I could comment this ad I saw today. I swear its message is identical to one of a popular italian insurance company. I wonder what is the link.

But the pd side has its own horrific thing going and I am forced to consider it as I walk by in disgust, head down like in a 1984 novel.

The grinning shitface is Veltroni. Here in an unfortunate side by side with a "divine comedy" billboard. Veltroni is supposedly the new leading candidate of the center-left, although nobody elected him as such (apparently we are stuck with him because all the other center-left wing bosses burned themselves out in the past few years. But we are supposed to be glad about it, I forgot why.) Funnily enough, Veltroni is one of those pretending to be the "new" although he's been around in the political scene, in positions of power, since the 1980's.

You might have noticed how PD's billboards seem to be all composed the same way: "don't do this. do that".

The first is: "Don't change a government. Change Italy" (reference to the fact that the center-left was in the government last time, and failed, yet now there should be no rotation of powers for the good of Italy. But, first of all, even if the center-left wins, the new government is going to be such a dramatic change anyway since Veltroni is "new", right? and I thus imagine that his clan will be all brand new too and shit? So I am going to change the government, right? Second of all, Veltroni, if I only could change Italy, none of you new guys would be in the picture anyway.

The second is another nonsense: "Don't think which party. Think which country" (I don't know why, going to elections to elect a party, one should not think of which party. Anyway, I am sure, this message suggests to everyone's mind the sweet idea of emigrating to, let's see... Switzerland, Austria, Morocco, Denmark, Australia, Thailand, etc. Not being able to emigrate, being stuck here, one walks by more depressed than before, as if passing in front of a travel agency.)

Now, mr. Veltroni, dickhead. First of all, to whom are you telling what to do and not to do, to think or not to think? Who do you think you are?
Second, it was only past month that your pals were in the government and they crumbled miserably after a year of governance and you still pretend to know what is to be done or not to be done? Please. I could stand a more humble approach, like "we'll listen to you guys this time" or whatever. But this, you know. Is too sad. Why don't you go away from our streets? They say you already know you are going to win. That your globalist-corporate-banking ties are too strong and that unbreakable deals have been made securing the center-left as the winner already (obviously to unfortunately later pass horrible things on our heads, for the greater good, as always). So why don't you leave us alone? Why don't you bless us with a magic moment of forgetting all about you? Please?

Apparently some reactions to the story of the possible 2006 election fraud in Italy: justice is investigatiing, the parliamentarians are fighting over it, and Berlusconi is accusing the communists. Everything is OK.
What will actually happen? Nothing, of course, nobody is kidding here.

Right after the elections, in the spring of 2006, italyisfalling.com stated clearly that the supposed defeat of Berlusconi (who was losing with an incredibly slight minority at the senate and in fact coming out very powerful when everyone thought he was done for) could in fact be considered a positive outcome for him, in a very difficult moment for the country.

During the astonishing night and day after the vote, with Berlusconi calling for a recount and even for the invalidation of the elections before the results were out, we, with many others hinted at possible electoral frauds, although not in the sense Berlusconi was tactically and hypocritically suggesting.
The results were not coming out, with unexplainable delay: and when they did come out, they had numbers completely different from the exit polls, which is always a sign of rigged elections (Cf. Diebold/Sequoia U.S. elections 2000-2006).
That night Berlusconi was still nominally Prime Minister, and his faithful minister for Home affairs, Pisanu, was in complete control of the vote count. Twice he left the control room during the night to go to report to Mr. Berlusconi at his mansion, with a highly irregular if not illegal procedure. Nobody ever explained why he did that, or what the long delay was for.

But, do you know what happens, right? If you cheat not to win when everyone is expecting you to loose, but you cheat to loose the less possible, you make it very hard for your opponents, the winners, to call you on your responsibilities. Just like for the 2006 midterm elections in the U.S.: The winners cannot be too harsh on the losers, something the citizens wouldn't understand. And also, calling for a fraud with the risk of not being able to prove it, could actually turn out to be the worst possible way to win, and, in the Italian case, to start a new government with a hard way to go.
This is probably why, during the night of the elections, the Italian winning leaders declared their victory with the most harried, stiffen expression on their faces, apparently with the intention to never publicly discuss again what really happened during that night.

But why am I going over this today, months and months after the vote?
As it happens, far from home this Sunday afternoon I was watching for the n^th time in my life a rerun of Stagecoach (with its beautifully translated Italian title Ombre rosse, "Red shadows") on channel 7. During the commercial break I switched on the third channel were a journalist, Enrico Deaglio, was telling about his new documentary, Uccidete la Democrazia!, "Kill Democracy!" about the supposed electoral fraud of the 2006 Italian elections.
Wow. For a while I forgot about the Ringo Kid and Dallas and the rest of the bunch, doctor included, and listened to him, amazed.

This journalist was explaining how, for the first time in our history, the 2006 political vote counted one million and a half "white" vote less than the projections. The "white" vote are all the voting papers where the voter didn't mark anything, no name or symbol. Those votes don't count and no one can claim them for its party or coalition.
The journalist argued that, because the drop in the number of white votes was considerable and homogeneous all over the country, no matter if coming from a "red" or "blue" region, this could play as fair evidence that something strange happened at a superior level, in Rome, at the ministry of Home Affairs where all the local results converged to be counted.
Small cities have been counted where, said the journalists, the Home Affairs reported an absurd, unsound zero "white" papers. This in a disillusioned country were the "white" vote is always on a rise.

So, while Berlusconi was calling for a fraud perpetrated by "communists" on a local level, supposedly it was him, in Rome, perpetrating a fraud using the "white" papers for his own party and this way reducing his loss considerably, later finding himself in the perfect position to undermine the new weak government.

All yet to be proved, of course. But asking questions seeming the only logical way to approach the truth.

I switched back to "Red Shadows": The doctor was smiling: He had just managed to assist the successful birth of Mrs. Mallory's newborn baby girl, and in silence was getting back to his bottle. Around him admiration and gratitude were expressed with the same silence. He was obviously in need to get back to his usual condition of dealing with the world: getting stoned. Nobody could patronize him about that anymore, because he had done dutifully right.

I always sympathized with the doctor, like I think every decent person who ever watched this legendary film did. I wished my country was a little like him: always stoned (as it is), but capable of getting out of it when necessary.

Yes, struggling for once to make right what is wrong before getting back to the usual lovely state of drunken stupor: That would be a chance for the falling country.

Just let me do a pretty obvious consideration here, and to pose a quick question, after yet another attack against Italian military forces in Iraq in a few weeks, and another Italian soldier dead.

The new left-wing government promised a retirement of the troops from Iraq since before the elections. Even though former Prime Minister Berlusconi himself promised it, swearing he didn't want to go to Iraq in the first place, it is clear that it will be this new government to actually do it. Thus, as the mainstream interpretation goes, comes the terrorist attacks against Italian troops, to "accelerate" the process.

Now for the obvious consideration, from what I see: 'accelerate the process'? this is nonsense. It is obvious to me that the attacks are not possibly meant to "accelerate" the retirement of our troops, but to slow it down, and make it awkward. In fact, it is much harder now for the new government of this very middle-class country to hurry a getaway from Iraq while our troops are under attack. Although our military forces have a tradition of chickening out, this is going to inevitably look like too much of a chickening out.
Now, they promised to retire from Iraq, and they have to do it: but then, with the attacks, they are going to pay a price in popularity if they do it. Whatever the government decides in this situation, to stay a little more or to go away sooner, comes out bad.

So, the quick question: who calls for this attacks? What forces want to undermine the newly formed left-wing European governments just when they're about to unthread themselves from the bloody coalition of the willing? Are those the same forces that, after having realized how Zapatero was about to win in Spain and to retire the Spanish troops right after, tried to make it hard to him at the last moment with the attacks in Madrid? is this all a psy-op to transform decent retirements into humiliating retirements? And, finally: who stands to gain from this?

Not a so quick question, after all. But I think it's worthed a thought or two.

-- in picture: Italian soldiers on a road in Iraq. Some say all Italian professional soldiers are fascists, but I don't believe it. Yet I would like to know what's with all those roman salutes they exchange when they're far from the cameras.

Who said that Milano was a nice place? Once again, the middle class has won and we all got five more years with a new reactionary phony mayor, the slimy former Berlusconi's Minister of Education Letizia Moratti.
Another mayor who will have no problem in cutting down trees, I guess, or financing more ugly housing projects, encouraging the fashion & design mafia as long as it is not concerned with the ugly city itself, but just with the money, and so on. One mayor that will, for five more years, encourage her citizens to just keep on working hard, head down, be a little greedy, be a little racist, be a little acquiescent, and coward for the rest. Most important, another mayor that will encourage every social category, of every creed, color, political idea, to be even more sealed within its own borders and to look conspicuously to everyone else from there. Good.

Good ol' Milano. Sometimes I wonder why its citizens want it this way. I guess it is because of the extreme prgamatism of the milanese tradition, where money and houses and cars and the like are the only solid stuff we all can think of.
Well, amen. Not that I thought there were actual alternatives to this picture, I'd only love to see some new approach at it, just for the boredom it causes me.

-- In picture: the new mayor cheers us from her pit

I wish we wouldn't have to write about Berlusconi anymore, but it's impossible... Politically wise, Berlusconi is the equivalent of someone who crashes a party, ruining everyone's business but his own, and who his therefore forever talked about in all the subsequent parties.

This will probably be commented by many Italian bloggers, but, anyway: Apparently, the day before being kicked out of office Berlusconi wrote a letter to all the Heads of State of Europe, to undermine his successor's credibility as his last official act in public office. By doing this, he also undermined the remains of Italian credibility, although that's obviously none of his concerns.
According to L'Espresso, Berlusconi wrote to Blair, Zapatero and co. something like this: "I am going away, but I will be back when the votes will be recounted. I am the one who won the elections, and if I'm going away it's only because of the faulty Italian electoral system."

It must be noted that Berlusconi's government "corrected" the italian electoral system few weeks before the vote, so he can't blame anyone but himself. Also, in the meantime votes have been recounted finding nothing, no Florida case. But that's not the point.
The point is, if Italy was a Democracy, such a thing would not be possible. There would be enough respect for the rules and for the vote to keep one's personal resentment out of the question. But Italy is not a democracy, it is a oligarchy¹, and in the oligarchic mode of rule the going down families are always allowed some little dishonest see-you-later trick.

_{1. I know, I've said that before, what do you want. Everyone has his own obsessions.}