About Abu Omar again. His story I already covered in this post, but there's another sickening part of it I wanted to go over.
It's the one told in this old article from corriere.it, and it is so incredibly insulting I don't know what to make of it.
Well, the article is one and a half years old, and the story is almost four years old already. So maybe it is just the stench all around it.
What you gonna do. I was busy with other shit back then so it's now or never.

The article considers the point of view of one of the CIA agents who directed and organized the unlawful kidnapping of Abu Omar on Italian soil and who is now investigated by the Italian justice.
What is more disturbing is the tone of this article. It is difficult to describe, but very common in the Italian media. It is a bit of childish, a bit of intimidating, and all superficial. A typical deceiving propaganda piece even unaware of being propaganda.

"Bob" is the CIA agent in question. He is described as "never arrogant, sincere, practical", he "comes from the streets, loves action". Guido Olimpio, the journalist writing this piece while standing on his knees, draws Bob's bio as he was the character in foreground of a novel. And not the criminal that he certainly is (keep reading).

...and what he learned on the streets he took with him inside the "Company", the CIA. Since he was born in Honduras... he speaks perfect Spanish, one more reason to send him over in Central America on a mission. A special theater of operations. He... moves among despotic regimes, corruption, guerrilla groups. He loves action... He infiltrates an opposition group managing to gain control of it: they yell 'death to gringos', but they don't know it is a real gringo who is assisting them.

And so the brown-nosing vomiting goes on. Then Mr. Olimpio comes to the actual Abu Omar case and Bob's role in it.

Many of the inquiries about radical terrorism succeed thanks to his technical help. Spying devices so small they can be hidden in a copy of the Koran... pictures, names, electronic traces left by satellites in Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Iran.
For the U.S. intelligence Milan is an outpost of Al-qaeda and Abu Omar is the emir. They follow him since his days in Albania, when he was involved in a plot to destroy the U.S. embassy in Tyrana [note: As a matter of fact, Abu Omar used to work for the CIA back then, as we explained, a detail Mr. Olimpio seems to ignore].
The CIA decided to get rid of Abu Omar on the eve of the Iraq war, worried he could organize a retaliation against U.S. targets [note: Abu Omar was under surveillance 24/7 from the Italian justice and the CIA. I firmly doubt he could organize an actual attack against sensitive targets without having himself and all the other supposed terrorists easily caught, with a lot more evidence of him being a terrorist than any form of torture could ever provide]. It is Bob who sets the trap up, with the help of the "cavemen", the removal-team sent by Langley...

Abu Omar ends up in an Egyptian prison and Bob goes with him because he has to take part to the first terrible interrogations, accompanied by torments and tortures [the italic is mine].

So, this adventurous agent, this noble figure is actually one who not only helped to kidnap but also to torture Abu Omar.
It is all admitted, all natural. Everything is fine under the sky. "Bob" and the other thugs. Funny how all the evil is admitted but they won't give you the names.

What those tortures are about you can read it in the other article I already linked twice. It's all material for one of the many hypocritical tribunals, if they weren't just the lousy show-tribunals they are. I don't feel like commenting with anything else.

I read that folks are disappointed by Tom Cruise's wedding here in Italy. They say he acted like a snob. Strange. Hollywood stars are usually so humble and totally not self-centered.

Tom married some Katie Holmes, who is, as singer Laura Pasini brilliantly remarked the other day, not the daughter of John.

My personal feelings for such events are, predictably, of complete disgust, boredom and bitter amusement.

First of all, even rocks should be aware by now that this marriage is once again a set up, that the guy is still in the closet but either totally gay or totally in love with his own image.
Second, what the fuck do they want getting married in Italy?
They fly in to a castle, hang there a quarter of hour, get the soul of Scientology to bless them, take pictures and fly away.
The only thing they know about Italy is that supposedly here there's something called La Dolce Vita. But where was it? Somewhere between the sky and the earth, probably.

Now, Tom and Kate: Thanks for nothing, guys. Once again it has been proved that all those fuckers who claim to love this country don't know shit about it, neither they really want to look at it.
You want to come and use Italy as the nice background of the phony postcard of your life? Be my guest, you're just another tourist. The only difference is that shameful lot of fans screeching and crowding the outsides like peasants at the princess' marriage, cheering for you everywhere you go.
You did fine ignoring them. I would have too, 'cause that's what they deserve.
Plus nobody was really participating. We are all a bunch of hypocrites around here, didn't you know it?

This post follows part I of my comment and translation of the testimony Mr. Abu Omar, kidnapped by CIA and italian agents, wrote from his prison in Egypt. Please read part I first.

They gave me only stale bread to eat, the one with sand in it that rottens your teeth. You cannot wet it and you cannot refuse it, because they have to keep a skeleton alive... They used to interrogate me in the office near the cells, so that the other detainees could hear the screams and cries caused by torture... my hair and beard turned all white...

At the beginning the guards undressed me, threatening to rape me, shocking me with cattle prods: one grasped my genitalia and mashed them when I would not talk... then they stretch me down on an iron door that they call 'the wife': there I got kicked, shocked with electric wires while they showered me with cold water.

They never gave me the Koran: it was always dark in the cell, but I just wanted to kiss it, to hold it tight.

Because of the beatings I completely lost my hearing from one ear... I also suffered a torture called 'the mattress'. In the torture chamber they put a soaked mattress on the floor attached to the electric current. Then they tied my hands and feet behind my back. One sat on my back with a wooden chair and the other one turned the electricity on. I was always scared and often I fainted. Now I cannot go on describing the tortures I suffered.

I forgot to say that the first times they tortured me they cursed Italy, because it gave me political asylum. They told me: Italy handed you over to Egypt. Nobody came from Italy to liberate you from torture.

That's right, my country handed this guy over to the torturers. And then tried to cover it all.

I know many will argue that, because this guy is jihadist and a terrorist he is exaggerating his conditions to obtain a political point against his enemy.
Unfortunately, the experience since this whole madness of torturing began is that Muslim victims tend to underplay what they went trough. They often omit all the sexual humiliations, the rapes, the religious offenses, the use of menstruating women or bleeding pigs during the tortures and so on.
If you want detailed examples of what torture means today, and why many details in the movie "Road to Guantanamo" were therefore certainly underplayed by the victims, check this incredible collection of news items about the matter. Remember, everything has been authorized by the American Attorney General already so you cannot impeach anyone for this.

Aside of the fact that Abu Omar was a CIA informer and thus he's no regular jihadist or terrorist, what if in fact what he says is just all true or underplayed? Can you go to sleep with that? What if the 'wife' and the soaked mattress are actually there, and others are now undergoing the same treatments, right now as you read these lines?
And what if all this underworld of torture fueled by the CIA is there only to create an enemy which isn't real? Does anybody remembers George Orwell?

And so, what is more sickening with this story? The fact that the war on terror is basically a fraud, staged by governments, and therefore all these crimes are inexcusable?
No, they would be inexcusable anyway.
What is more sickening, that those who elect themselves as paladins of security, freedom and democracy are in fact spreading fear, totalitarianism and arrogance? It probably always was like this.
Maybe the fact that 'someone' offered Abu Omar two million dollars not to testify about his kidnapping and therefore discharge the Italian secret service?
Or, finally, the fact that this whole story is used here in Italy -- as we write -- for the political struggle against the old establishment of the secret service, now that the newly installed political elite pledged a reform in a more 'modern' 'anti-terrorism' declination? Because we all know what that modern declination is, right?
The Orwellian technological control of the population that is taking place everywhere in the very lucky western nations? You must have noticed that.

No, I don't know what is more sickening. Maybe the joyful phony bliss of the Italians, who are still so mysteriously convinced to be "good" and "tolerant" and "different".
The inventors of fascism.

I am quite happy to learn that Peter Handke has been awarded the new Düsseldorf 's Heinrich Heine Prize. Not that I think prizes are really representative of someone's art or greatness: but this can so much piss off all the creepy attackers of Handke's work and it's very welcomed.

Yes I am quite happy for it, regardless the opinions of a once-great-novelist Salman Rushdie, who called years ago Handke 'moron of the year' for his opinions about the Yugoslavian war, starting the whole pillory against him, and regardless the so called 'philosopher' Bernard-Henri Levy, who recently stated that Handke's plays should be banned from all theaters of France; for the Comedie Francaise too, that cowardly and accordingly removed Handke's plays from the scenes, and for the many others who insulted or neglected him and his work without even reading it, because he (while accomplishing new great results with it, particularly with the splendid recent novel 'Der Bildverlust') asked for a country and its people, the Serbian people, room for listening and understanding.

I don't know if the Heinrich Heine Prize is meant to be a political one, since many European literary prizes unfortunately tend to be political (the Nobel Prize for Literature, for example, it's shamefully, stupidly political). The point is that Heine himself suffered criticism and censorship during his life, in his quest for an outspoken truth, but he managed anyway to be first of all a poet. I think that this is the best award Handke could receive, if only to accent this, that he remained first of all a storyteller and a poet, and his politcal opinions have not reduced his talents.
Heine was a poet, a satirist, an endless traveler just like Handke proved to be. And just like Handke do, he always kept his eyes wide, to see, understand, and live to tell. (I must have said already that Handke is my favorite living writer so I'll leave it at that. End of the post.)

-- in picture: Peter Handke in Kragujevac, 1999

There are many who suffer for the fate of the animals, but most of the people either do not care, or they think it's something not important compared to the fate of humans (of course, there's also the small minority who hates animals or think they are there only to be hunted and annihilated, but they're just too incomprehensible for me so I'll leave them out of the picture).
Now, among those who do not care that much about animals are those who think that the fate of humans in term of justice, freedom, fights against all sorts of exploitations and so on is the most important thing in the world, in front of which the point of view of animals disappears. They're particularly disappointing to me, because while they pretend to be very caring about the destiny of those who suffers, they just fail completely to see the suffering inflicted to all the animals. What are they sensitive for?

They just don't get the point, if you listen to me. Humans are everywhere, the world is filled with them. It is obviously a successful species. It doesn't need that much help to get to be even more successful. But it has left only the crumbs for the animals. Those animals that are not bred in captivity by humans to be eaten or used for food in different ways, are forced into degrading and shrinking environments without much hope to make it after this century as a species.
I can't help it. When first I read the story of the bear from Trentino few days ago I just hated this world because it is so less and less meant for animals, and I am too sorry for them. I know life is generally meaningless as Nature conceived it, and cruel to everything that is alive, but I feel sorry for the animals because they keep trying to be successful but it's sort of too late for them.

The bear I am talking about is a two years old male bear of a monitored kind, Slovenian origin, who trespassed the Italian border from the Adamello National Park, in the region of Trentino in Italy, to Baviera in Germany, few days ago. Out of his relatively human-less environment, probably looking for a female bear on heat, the bear found himself in a much more developed area, with lots of farms and villages. So he killed chickens, pigs and other animals to support himself. In the region of Baviera it is not allowed to hunt bears, particularly of this protected species. Nonetheless, the authorities decided to allow the hunting of the bear, and the regional minister for the environment, Werner Schnappauf (Csu), said the bear was getting 'too dangerous' and had to be killed.

Today it's on the news, the bear has probably been killed by some poacher encouraged by the authorities, who's probably stuffing his fucking trophy right now.

It's a fact that the bear killed eleven sheep, and plundered many hives. In spite of that, a bear it's not really dangerous in this situation if for one thing: it is economically dangerous. It is not a Grizzly bear we are talking about, but a young brown bear scared by humans who doesn't know fowls are there for humans only. Farmers are pissed off because they lose their living properties, and politicians are scared to lose farmers' support. But let's consider the recent unfortunate extermination of thousands of chickens and other birds because of the avian influenza scare: the region of Baviera compensates financially the losses caused by the bear just like it does with those caused by the avian influenza, so where is the fucking problem? They should have taken their time and captured the bear with soporific bullets or something like that, sending it back to Trentino. Although I admit the whole scheme must be too complicated and expansive for the lazy mind of a politician, when it's so easy to simply suggest to all animal killers at large to just feel free to go on and take the problem away, having some fun.

Poor bastard bear who didn't know shit, of our borders and our crazy attitudes, and our staggering fast way to communicate each other something silly he did, walking into Baviera.

*** update: apparently, the bear has not really been killed. It has been spotted alive again. This post does not make much sense then.

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.}

Italy had its new government today. Prodi is always so fast to make up his teams, I must give him that. Now in control of schools will be a physician, infrastructures will be ruled by a former magistrate and policeman, a very-important-nobody without ideas will take care of culture heritage while his right-hand man takes care of televisions, the creepy lay nun will have her ministry for the family, an ignorant fat-ass chair-lover will be directing sporting activities, and, most wildly, in charge of justice will be a weak yelling meddler, Mastella, formerly on Berlusconi's side and now powerful only because his senators can undermine Prodi's majority. Mastella, as new Minister of Justice, will enjoy the help of some of the members of his small party, already condemned for corruption, disturbance of property, embezzlement, forgery and etc. Thus, everyone will be competent for something. I am very reassured.

-- in picture: faces of the new government. Courtesy of Repubblica.it