Funny how blog celebrity Beppe Grillo commented yesterday the story of the couple of Erba who killed their neighbors, and by doing it he used the same, chief, well-tested and reassuring interpretation of the mainstream media about it. One wonders then, what a blog like his one is needed for if not, once again, for straightforward, hugely reassuring purposes.

(And obviously the only reason to remark this fact is that Beppe Grillo's blog is so fantastically popular. So far I took this as the most significant evidence of the unfortunate, blatant average backwardness of the italian blogland: not really for what Grillo writes, which is at worst trivial or predictable, but for the plebiscite of links and readers and comments that surrounds him : Plebiscites are such a boring, bad sign.)

I hadn't noticed that the Guardian, and probably others, had covered the killings of Erba that recently where all over the place on the italian newspapers. The gist of it according to the Guardian seem to be that the couple murdered their neighbors because they were too loud (so also reports Italy Logue, where I first learned of the Guardian cover of the thing, and pretty much all the other media sources here in Italy).

Of course as always the truth is more complex, less absurd, and the real fun is not to simplify it. The truest things always come out if you look closely.

For example details of the story say that Rosa Bazzi, the killer from upstairs who apparently started the massacre dragging her husband into it, was raped when she was ten years old (if you can imagine that). Because forms of violence so often morph into similar or specular forms of violence later on, I see easily the same kind of brutal ignorance of the Italian province behind the two connected events: and the typical reserved and very-decent, extremely repressed behavior (that suddenly explodes) of the people of northern Lombardia in particular.

It's true anyway that "too loud neighbors" was the explanation the couple of murderers alleged for their "insane act".

Yet I think that everyone who wants to know knows, and particularly those who live in the same area or region of the event (a region where the infamous racist & powerful party "Northern alliance" was born), that a great deal of the reasons for this crime must be searched within the fact that one of the two murdered women, the main target of the attack, lived with a man from Tunisia.
And Rosa from upstairs cut the throat of a two years old little boy ("who was crying, and I suffer of headache" she said) who was the mixed-blood son of the said couple.
Not to recognize this simple fact, that they felt entitled to destroy that family because it was a racially mixed family, means to once again censorship one essential flavor of the Italian and European life of this century, losing yet another occasion to look directly at ourselves, our fading Italian world, what we really are.

Via bellavite.de, utterly sad news coming from Monza (near Milan). A bunch of hackberry trees are cut down to make room for underground parking places.
I know, it happened zillion times, that's what we human do, especially when we live in a country which has no environmentalist politics whatsoever. Mafia and middle-class rule in Italy, oh they do.
The story comes with a photo, which could be mentioned among the most depressing photo of the year. Judge by yourself (photo by Giuseppe Motta).

Couldn't the bastards find some different and more respectful solution? They're so greedy and lazy and hypocrite...
I would like to have a little chat with those residents and sales-managers who asked for this

Erich Priebke is a former Nazi Officier of the SS and a mass murderer. He is 93 now, and held in house arrest since 1995 for having ordered the execution of 335 civilians in Rome during WWII, as revenge after a partisan group had killed 33 German soldiers. Ten to one it's the ratio fascists like.
Please read his story in wikipedia, it's istructive.
He's been spotted two days ago at a friend's house on the Maggiore Lake, in Cardana di Besozzo, a resort place near Varese.
Folks over there protested for his presence and his obvious being "on vacation" while serving his life sentence. Now he's been sent back to his house in Rome.

It's a shame that such a criminal can go on vacation while serving. Still, I would not have protested anyway. As a matter of fact, the judge changed his mind because of people protesting, which is a pathetic evidence of the state of justice in our country. The judge did allow him to go to visit his friend's house for the holiday because of some benefit, which he should not have in the first place. End of story.

But today is the 12 of August. On that same year 1944 when, on March the 23th Priebke ordered the mass execution in Fosse Ardeatine in Rome, in Sant'Anna di Stazzema the 12 of August another mass murder went on. Nazi SS soldiers killed 560 civilians and burned them. The massacre remained unknown until 1994 (!) because all the members of this community village died and apparently nobody was alive to tell the story.

What happened is that, after Priebke fucked himself up by chatting with an ABC journalist in Argentina about his past and the inquiry against him began, another magistrate, who was investigating on the case, Antonino Intelisano, looking for documentation on Priebke found a forgotten metal case with evidence of the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre.
Other guilty officers have been investigated since then and recently sentenced for that heinous crime.

So indirectly, Priebke fucked up also some of his former longevous nazi comrades by chatting with that american journalist.

This year in Rome it's hot, and damp. Hope he spends a bad August.