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?

"Oh, I know that there is no hope for my country: it is more than a knowledge for me, it is a condition, the condition of being italian -- this funny thing bound to decay and dissolution and without a hint of good future in the zodiac. Not just a spectator of this, mind you. Part of it. It is something that must be experienced to be understood. For this culture and for these people I know there is no hope left: something else will be called "italian" tomorrow and probably nobody will even know the difference. But I know. And I certainly make no exceptions to this gloomy vision because of a demagogic comedian who seems focused on attacking what is already so weak and without respect in people's mind-- trained by ten years of Berlusconi & co. to just despise the "small theater of politics" and everything around it -- so that he gets the easiest satisfaction, the easiest applaud. While the country keeps falling, steady."

-- yep, the discussion down at Blog from Italy continues. My rhetoric touches new peaks, someone should probably stop me.

What I wanted to say: I imagine a politician who would speak only about the greyness and ugliness and unfriendliness of our cities; of the diminishing of our culture, the crumbling of our fantasy and imagination; of the egoism and disruption and sadness brought by giga-malls or parking lots, or by a new soulless skyscraper; of the absence of the children from the streets; of how things are not simple but tragically simplified-- of how hard it is to recognize and keep love: and not talking these things as side issues in order to dramatize the supposed real deal, any football issue like corruption, war on terrorism, heritage of communism, gay marriage, global warming or unemployment or whatever.
No, I dream a comedian-politician that would talk only of such problems, such as they are perceived: problems as phenomena. The trees getting old and isolated. The many cars. The villages emptied out. The oppressive nature of the excessive order, and its contrary. The sweeping of death and decay and shit under too many rugs. The depressed faces of the people going to work and the sadness of the too dark clothes and of the leashed dogs. The triviality of the opinions. The everyday triviality of beauty. The too many things to conserve that are wiped out.
Without rhetoric and without arrogance and without pushing a sense of guilt in the listeners. Without advocating global projects and new authorities and key-words to open all the doors. Without looking directly in a camera and without looking elsewhere. Without making supernatural alliances with remote entities because "we are all in the same boat". 'Cause that would not be within the phenomena. I imagine someone able to speak about all these things without getting into the theoretical or into the partisan, not even by mistake not even once.

In other words, I imagine the weakest most unrealistic most absurd and most useless politician to hear or to support ever.
That one I would support, eagerly.

added at past seven a.m.: I think my political vision is kind of muddy.

talking about the sad Grillo thing of the other day, I expanded myself on the subject in an interesting discussion going on Blog from Italy, in case you were interested. So I am not going over it here. But it is interesting, though. I don't pretend to understand everything or that my interpretation of the facts is the right one... But I do see things like Grillo's v-day as key moments where the self-destructive instincts of the Italians give their best. Our imploding grotesque antique people. I know them instincts quite well. I have them in my blood type (type self-destruct). And isn't the title of this blog...? Etcetera.

Many have waken up in the last years to the real deal about globalization in politics, which in very short terms is that the left-right paradigm acted out by the leaders has no actual sense anymore, and that the real struggle is the one of the elite against the constitutions of the nations of the formerly called free world and against the people's rights (in favor of super-national authorities that are never questioned, even when they decide to bomb Belgrade or whatever.)
"Many" is not enough anyway, and in reality many is a very little figure. In Italy though it is even less, here everything is ruled by the false paradigm: every little local power, left or right, unionist or made-by-media is barricaded to defend its own role and its own little garden of historical battles, and a incredible load of energy is wasted everyday debating false issues and pretended oppositions. Example being that every italian blog who stands for the left or the right comes with a bunch of hired opinions and expected ideas (that its readership, faithful to the same ideas, will safeguard against the authors themselves), while those who blame corruption for everything (Beppe Grillo et al.) are in fact helping to trash the Constitution and the system of guarantees that seem to be the real enemy of the elite.
Thing is, comedians and politicians and media moguls and independent bloggers are hired in Italy by the "new world order" project or whatever you wanna call it without even knowing what they are fighting for. (I am sure our average politicians and rulers don't see more clearly than anyone else, their eyes and voices prove it.)
All they have to do is to sell ideas to the masses in order to go further with the project. Clear example being the recent statement by Vice Prime Minister Rutelli, someone who pretends to be on the left, when in reality he is nowhere, who said that it is now necessary to enforce a national DNA bank in order to fight crime.

Now, aside of the sheer stupidity of the idea (assuming that everyone is a criminal to help the police to investigate? thanks a lot) this statement is hypocritically (and hysterically) made possible by the numerous unsolved or hard to solve crimes that are everyday on the newspapers and that make people indignant and frustrated. So just like in central America, where the "war on drugs" is used as a pretext to implement the police state, and in north America, where the "war on terrorism" is used for the same purpose, elsewhere politicians use different pretexts: be it immigration, "global warming" or "rampant crime".

What remains is that the pace of this global change towards technologically-driven authoritarianism is faster then ever, and should be the first serious reason to worry in this strategic moment for everyone who pretends to be interested in politics.

Just a glimpse: US doles out millions for street cameras; cameras to scan emotional behavior are being designed; US presidency gets another surveillance “blank check” (and they want more); China gets from the US a massive human tracking system; and my city cries for its own too; while scientists seem to devote themselves to design new weapons against citizens and new weapons to terrify other citizens; while internet is being used to stop dissidence in a simulation of free speech (Mao Zedong style); soldiers tell about atrocities but nobody listen to them; and a new hoax to justify satellite weapons is being prepared. Etcetera.

This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which is implicit in the anarchist or pacifist vision of society. In a Society where there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity of gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

-- George Orwell, Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels, 1946

"Create new post" says the blogging interface. Yeah, it's been a long time since I have last discussed the Italian politics and I would love to reopen that scary box. It's not like there aren't things to talk about, since the departure of Berlusconi and the advent of Prodi. The funny verminy stories about the Vicenza U.S. military base being the more juicy of them. I just want to clarify that my avoidance of said subjects does not depends on a major sympathy felt for the new rulers. In fact, if possible, my sympathy is even less for Prodi's government than for Berlusconi's, because I know this sort of guys better, and I recognize better the indulgence of which they enjoy, and the lies that they spread. Even if they're more honest, if a concept like honesty would ever be possible in politics and particularly in the Italian politics. Besides it would be much more interesting and useful to criticize the "friend" than the "enemy", if one would still believe in criticizing politicians.
The thing is, after having hoped for so long for the fall of Berlusconi, everything still seems so hopeless in the Italian panorama that one doesn't really finds a reason to sweat for how rotten things are. They are just rotten, that's all. What's worse, they are rotten while having more energy or initiative. And I always felt that the little that was left of good in Italy was so because of a lack of initiative and energy.

Another issue that I would love to bash on everyday, sort of like aioros does, is the one of the childish and ludicrous and hypocrite and mafia-like ways of the Italian journalism, which, every single hour of the day and almost without exceptions proves itself to be composed of individuals well-intentioned to dumb their fellow citizens down --a inch more every year until they'll touch the rock bottom and below, into total unconsciousness.
It's hard to find the necessity of all the everyday collections of naked women aside of the news titles, of all the collections of commonplaces and condensed knowledge without anything left of intelligent --or of all the news item like this one, that are totally irrelevant even under a sociological aspect, and only are there for morbid insensitivity.
But everything falls into place when one simply realizes that the global project is seriously the one of total unconsciousness, so there's really nothing new or special about the Italian journalism. It just is journalism. Tiredly dragging us all towards a future when the only arbiters will be the empty words of taste and not the written laws.

So where the occasional political observer goes these days, when he feels all the tiredness of the worn out scenario he knows already? It probably goes to the blogs, the last throes to be felt by the dying collective body -- thanks God and the CIA and the NSA for inventing them.

I hadn't seen coming such an amount of humor and wit and cleverness from George Orwell, whom I imagined more bleak and sorrowful and depressed than this. I'm almost done reading instead a (quite huge) book filled with precious reasoning and useful thinking and historical material, and some of the essays contained in it are small masterpieces of the genre. Many of the political ones are -simply put- still very useful tools today, when the authoritarian "New world order" and a "totalitarian world" are in my view nearer than ever.

One essay, dated 11th december 1945, is instead about the decadence of the english language, as Orwell saw it happening chiefly by the spreading of political and technical jargon. The funny and wittier part of the article is when Orwell picks or makes up pieces of bad writing and puts them aside with simpler and clear-cut pieces of literature (such as the Ecclesiastes, for instance). Quotes from communist pamphlets and psychology and history essays are put together to prove the ineffectiveness and the "slovenliness" of modern english, whose obvious faults are: dying metaphors, verbal false limbs, pretentious diction and meaningless words.
Then Orwell puts down six simple rules to keep your written language at bay from contemporary decadence, and I thought I could share them with you. I personally saw in them all the potential and actual defects of my own writing.

1) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used in seeing in print.
2) Never use a long word were a short one would do.
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

In another part of the essay Orwell writes:

...political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck.. this is called elimination of undesirable elements.
Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

I mean, everyone can see how the examples Orwell gives (and of the bad use of the language that defends them) could not at all still be used in our world today, could they.