A note to the reader: with this post Italy is falling is back on line after almost six months. This blog will be updated again, although probably less frequently. It will mostly revolve around politics and the Italian society and other related depressing issues. There won't be personal stories of the author anymore. Those have all been moved down deep and may resurface in the next future. That day I will maintain my word and give their whereabouts to those I had promised to be the same shit.

OK.

Corriere.it published two days ago a digest version of the written testimony of Abu Omar, kidnapped by CIA and Italian agents in Milan almost four years ago and who is still in prison today.

Abu Omar was a cleric at the mosque of Via Quaranta in Milan. This mosque is said to be a den of extremists, although illegal activities remain to be proved. Anyway since the kidnapping of Abu Omar there isn't a single Italian newspaper omitting to label him as "terrorist" or calling him "famigerato" (infamous). As of today, though, no charge was officially brought against him, and his alleged involvement with Iraqi insurgents is only on the news, but not anywhere in the tribunals. As always, if I may add.

Omar's kidnapping is everything but simple to understand. First of all, "Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?" (Chicago Tribune, July 3rd 2005).
It is also important to understand this scenario: The Italian police had been monitoring Omar's activities for months before the kidnapping, and apparently the Italian secret service was active during the kidnapping. So, why nobody alerted the Italian justice that the CIA was interested in interrogating Abu Omar and was about to put its hands on him?
Again, from the invaluable Chicago Tribune article:

When Milan prosecutors applied for an arrest warrant for Abu Omar, the only charges listed were "association with terrorists," aiding the preparation of false documents and abetting illegal immigration.
Although police had grounds for Abu Omar's arrest, the tap on his phone and the microphones hidden in his apartment and the Via Quaranta mosque made him far more valuable as a window into the comings and goings of other jihadists.
"When you find an important member of an organization," the senior prosecution official said, "you don't arrest him immediately, you follow him. When Nasr disappeared in February [2003], our investigation came to a standstill."

The thing is, the CIA could trust Berlusconi's government to a certain extent, but not the Italian police and magistrates who, after all, had to operate according to law.
The way I see it, the real question is: why did the CIA kidnapped this man, officially to force him to collaborate, when in fact he was a collaborator already, and under surveillance of the Italian Justice? He who was considered helping jihadists to organize the Iraqi insurgence?
And was he in fact a double agent? (That wouldn't be news, given that the supposed mastermind of the London bombings used to work for the MI6.) And also, what was the real purpose of having him tortured? To obtain from him valuable informations (the informations that the Italian Police was already obtaining by having him under surveillance) or instead, to make sure that that informations were confined to the underground world of rendition flights?

"That's how I've been abducted from Italy and tortured in Egyptian prisons."

The following testimony leaked out of Egypt because the Italian magistrates are incriminating those CIA and Italian officials who perpetrated Abu Omar's unlawful kidnapping. Therefore, according to rogatory international laws, this procedure forced the Egyptian government to let this piece of evidence slip through.

The overall response of the Italian government to this investigation so far has been adamant: they simply classified as "Secret of State" any evidence on their side to impede the Italian magistrates to get any proof of what really happened (how was the Italian Secret Service involved by the CIA? Why nobody alerted the Italian police and magistrates of the operation? up to what level was the Italian government informed? was this case isolated? etc.)
The official version, according to the CIA, is that Mr. Abu Omar was consenting and collaborative during his arrest. Anyway, his testimony states exactly the contrary. And worse.

So, I translated and added few notes to the text. Corriere.it wasn't going to translate it for its phony, pampering international version anyway.

I, Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, know as Abu Omar, Islamic kidnapped in Milan on February 17th 2003, still detained in the prison of Tora in Cairo, am writing my testimony from the inside of this grave: I grew thin, my illness got worse, I am in very critical conditions. My face was transformed because of torture.

I'll explain the kidnapping now. I was walking from my house... going toward the Mosque for the noon pray.
(...) I had 450 euros in my pocket (400 to pay the rent) [unrelated note: don't get yourself any strange ideas. This is an incredibly low price to pay the rent for. In Milan rents range from 900 to 1500 euros a month and even much more: Omar must have had a very good deal with his landlord], my Italian passport of refugee, Permit of Stay, mobile phone, health insurance card, house keys. ... Getting out I saw a white van passing in front of me. In front of a public garden I saw a red FIAT. The driver came toward me running. He pulled his badge out: I am of the police. I gave him the Permit of Stay and my Italian passport. He got his mobile phone out and called someone. He looked American: blond hair, pale complexion...[corriere.it here notes that this officer is in fact Luciano Ludwig Piron, an italian policeman of German ascent who admitted his involvement in the kidnapping].
Then the white van stopped near the sidewalk. I couldn't understand anything, I just saw two individuals lifting me up: they looked completely Italian... my kidnapping was witnessed by an Egyptian woman too [Corriere.it notes that this eyewitness was in fact already verified by the magistrates].

As they flung me into the van, I tried to react, but they started punching me in the belly and all over my body. Inside everything was dark. They tied my hands and feet... I was shaking for the blows and I started foaming from my mouth. Then I heard the two Italians arguing, one of the two was screaming: they ripped open my clothes and gave me a cardiac massage.
About four hours later, always with hands and feet tied together, they moved me into another vehicle, I don't even know if it was another van or a small airplane.

After another hour of travel I realized that I had come to an airport, from the noise of the planes. I heard many steps, seven-eight people walking toward me. The ripped my clothes off with knives and dressed me up again at incredible speed. They also removed the blindfold for few seconds to take pictures. There were many people with commando military outfits. They blindfolded my entire face and head with a large tape, with holes for the nose and mouth... The plane took off, it was beastly cold. I was restrained and stifling. They put me an oxygen mask on.... When we landed, I was bleeding from my hands. (...)

In Cairo an Egyptian Official told me: "there are two pasha in this room, two very important officials of the secret service".
Only one of them spoke, in Egyptian, and said: "do you want to collaborate with us?" The other one, probably an American Lieutenant, wasn't speaking but then I overheard him saying: "if Abu Omar agrees, he comes back with us in Italy".

My cell was six feet long and three feet wide, no light. It was in a building of the Secret Service.
They tied my hands and one foot, made me walk, I fell and they laughed. They went on with electric shocks, fists, slaps. They brought paper and a pen asking me to write down my life outside Egypt, they showed me pictures of Egyptians, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, all Italian residents... I had problems with my bones and respiration. The interrogations went on for seven months, until the 14th of September 2003, but they felt like seven years.

After another trip, they brought me to another building where I felt a bunch of hands hitting me all over my body. They told me: "even the blue fly doesn't come in here." There was an incredible stench... I remained six months and a half inside that place, Amn-El-Dawla... The cell was without air, bugs and rats walked all over my body... when the guard entered the cell, I had to kneel, otherwise it was the electric cattle prod for me.

(to be continued in the second part, where the worst of the torture will be revealed, and also why this story made me sick to my soul.)

We are talking about our travels, so I mostly listen to Gabrielle T. as she lists all the places she visited, and all the things she did managing to be a mother of three children and, as she says, a famous politician in France. "I am actually very well known in my country" she tells me, like I wouldn't believe it. "You would be surprised."
She doesn't know I can believe everything anyway, because I am always a toy in the hands of my imagination. Looking at her, it however seems possible.

We are sitting in a restaurant in Zagreb, under a pergola. From inside the restaurant comes the usual dull keyboard sound and all around us customers sit at their tables eating in silence. The risotto with mixed seafood we ordered takes us occupied for a while.

"I've been in the United States once," I say to her, trying to look interesting. "You know, for a few months, traveling around..."
"I would never go to the United States!" She says. "Never!" She stresses her point with a ironic gesture of her fist, shaken up and down.
"Yeah, my mother says the same thing. Not attracted at all. But it is a beautiful country."
"Oh, I can imagine." she says, meaning that there is no way she can be convinced to go there, and that the giving up is worthed anyway.
"You may not like many things of them, but sure they have a beautiful land," I propose. I know I am slightly annoying her with this, but I think that she can take it. "They have a beautiful language too," I add.
"I hate English language. American especially. For me it's just work."
"I like it, and I like their literature. And just think about their music. Well, you can't see everything under a political light, do you?"
"Everything is political."

Oh, how I hate that phrase. I've heard it too many times. And so we are going to talk politics. After all a part of me wants to, more than she does probably, because I need to challenge a communist whenever I find one, not that it makes me happy. I just have to.

"So do you believe in a upcoming global revolution?" I ask her.
"Yes, I do. I think it is going to happen."
"Yeah, maybe islamists will do it, 'cause they're the only ones who are opposing western nations, but not to build communism, you know? They have quite fascist states in mind."
"Communism it's an idea, it can live longer"
"The problem with communists is that they want everybody to think just like them," I'm saying at a certain point. "You know, it might be a commonplace, but there must be something into it after all. I wish communists took into consideration individual freedom more."
"Do you think that the world you live in is free?" Gabrielle T. asks. "Are the cities free or in the hands of global brands, banks and corporations? Are the people really free to travel, or just to be tourists or immigrants? Are we free to think or are we manipulated by the global media?"
"You can't use others' flaws to justify your own. Global market and capitalism are flawed, evil, but this doesn't justify the alternatives to be flawed as well, at least in theory. Otherwise I don't see what the alternative is. Just like it was no excuse to Stalin if Hitler and Mussolini also sized Poland or deported people and used a network of spies against their own citizens."
"That was not the real communism!" Gabrielle T. says. "I am not here to defend Stalin, I have a different idea of what communism must be!"
"Yet it is written that communism is a dictatorship! Either you rewrite Marx, or you change the name of your ideology, because as it is communism is meant as a dictatorship!"

We go on like this for a while, people from nearby tables turn to look at us as we raise our voices, and then the argument settles down. We haven't lost our good humor while arguing, and the evening remains pleasant, but it suddenly becomes clear that going on like this would move us away one from the other without a good reason. That's just another evidence of how much politics divide people, whereas disregard for politics does no harm.

Walking away from the restaurant and down to her place, we look at the city preparing for the night. In the main square downtown, a set of majorettes makes us smile of the sweet silliness, the useless and elegant, provincial skills of their choreography. I drop casual remarks about how all the city centers look identical because of the presence of brands all around. Gabrielle T. nods in assent, but she's obviously wondering why in the hell I am saying this now. As a matter of fact I don't know, because although I am certain of what I don't want politically or socially (almost anything) I have no idea of what I want instead, and so I can understand all positions and no position at the same time. I can challenge everyone's position and I can't propose any alternative.

Then I am into bed in a room at the end of a long corridor. A huge wardrobe makes the room smaller. Gabrielle T., on the other side of the apartment, is working on her papers for a presentation. I try to sleep without conviction. The real question is why do I get passionate about politics, communism and all that stuff? I know why. It's all personal. It's all because communism was the name behind the authority my father used against me, since when I was a little kid. That's all. This isn't something you can explain easily, but I wish I could.

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.}

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

I don't really care about football/soccer (or, in our language, "Calcio", which, as everyone knows, means "kick") and I could accept to talk diffusely about it only if Calcio was a forgotten sport of the past, like, say, the race of the chariots.
It's not even true I could talk diffusely about it, 'cause I have no clue really, although I immensely like the prose of old-school Calcio experts like the past Gianni Brera, when I happen to read it.
Otherwise Calcio bores me, and as a moderate fan of the "unlucky" team Inter (only because my grandfather was) I know italian Calcio to be a stupid fraud. I always felt it was very depressing to see people going nuts for it, since here in Italy it was all so obviously fixed, and when not fixed, too violent.
So, I am not surprised by, nor interested to, such news.

Anyway: (blah blah) important investigations are going on against Juventus, Milan, Lazio, Fiorentina and other minor Calcio teams. It seems that Juventus football team, that absurdly won this year's championship today, was in control of all the nominations of referees in the Italian championship, and shared its puppets with a bunch of friendly teams to fix the championship. They also gambled on it, but mostly it was probably considered "necessary" to cheat because big teams are listed companies, and lots of money are at stake.

So, years of "stunning" results and astonishing "luck" of Juventus and Milan and other teams should be revisited, I guess. But it's too late. I know that nothing significant will happen, and that next year it will be all the same fraud over again.
It's all so depressing, to see how in Italy everything, everywhere is rotten, although clearly Calcio it's the most obvious place to find rotten stuff here.
Yet even if you don't care for it, even if you somehow knew it was so ( if only because "everything else is" ), it gives a little pain to forcefully acknowledge the greedy immorality that pervades everything.

Oh, well! What should I say? Calcio... Let's not talk about it anymore.

-- in picture: Google trends. It's hard to find a search term more popular among italian Google's users than "calcio". Try with "figa" "sesso", "droga", "Berlusconi"...

Every country has its own rhetoric to endure. In Italy, after twenty years of Fascist bombastic rhetoric, and fifty years of hypocrite anti-fascist rhetoric, and ten years of unbelievable Berlusconi's rhetoric, it seems like we're back to the anti-fascist one, which undoubtedly is the lesser of the evils. But, how much sick the rhetoric about the Resistance can make me?

It doesn't really bother me when it comes from our politicians: "our Constitution was born from the Resistance against fascism", "in the Resistance are the roots of our Republic", "Democracy wouldn't exists in Italy if it wasn't for the Resistance": for those voices are as weak as they are remote to me. Sure, they can be heard more distinctly now that Berlusconi, that hideous prick, is not in charge anymore, but to me they're just meaningless symbols used to draw their phrases to their ends, they don't count.

But, when it's from voices of friends, people I know, or bloggers whose writing I enjoy (sometimes), I really have problems with it.

With my friend R., for example, I just stopped arguing about it, because the Resistance it's just so perfect a myth in his imagination there's no possible actual debate about it. In his idea, if you have objections about the absolute relevance of the Resistance against Mussolini in our lives (something that happened sixty years ago), you are probably someone who would not fight against Fascism now, if it showed up again.
Bad argument, you know? Because, what do you know, really? Maybe fascism will be here and you won't recognize it because it will have a face friendly to you, and unfriendly to me. It will be called like your favorite party, or your favorite website, and you will be in the crowd clapping. Life is so unpredictable.

And Babsi: "The history of Italy cannot prescind from those sentenced to death [in Fascist prisons]" (it never did, actually); "This country is really ugly because its memory is short and it doesn't respect those who founded it (...) I sort of despise those who do not honour communist partisans"
Communist partisans. No thanks, I do not honour them. So, Babsi, despise me, please.
Not that I think that their contribution and sacrifice to Italian History it's not important. It obviously is, although there was Liberal and Christian partisans involved too. Most remarkably, there was the considerable help of U.S. and U.K. in the matter too: 'cause without their help against the Nazists, no "Resistance" alone would have make any difference. So if you want to honour Communist partisans, it means you should also honour the American and British flags, or generals, which is probably something you don't want to do in this particular moment.

It's not like Fascism and the fight against Fascism are the only things that existed in history, anyway: because romantic and generous events (whether the idea we have of them is plausible or not) are countless. Should we feel them all?
Personally, I have better dreams.

No, I don't honour Communist partisans: because I did not come into this world to honour anybody. This sort of honouring is a waste of time and a bitter lie to me.
I think you can only respect and honour someone you knew personally. Stendhal, for example, honoured and respected, in his own words, "only one man: Napoleon". For the good reason he knew him in person, because there is no another way to judge anybody.
Sure, you can sympathize and dream and wonder and be thankful to many persons you read of. I am thankful for the existence of a bunch of characters from the novels I read, for example.
But this social and political "honouring" and "respecting" is just sick hypocrite demagogic bullshit and it deserves all possible mistrust.
If I was living at Mussolini's times, it would be different. But I'm not. Fascism, for me, is all that wants to submerge me in its rhetoric. Disney, for example. Football teams. The fight against Cancer, against Terrorism. The heroes of the Resistance.

I don't feel this urge of constantly picturing myself among the partisans to feel I'm less privileged, or to imagine that I actually have enemies, or that I don't live in the privileged world that keeps all the rest in poverty as I do, or that I am not unfit to the battle as I am.
I'll leave these chimeras to those who enjoy them. Let me live my times without this lie, please, 'cause they're hard enough.

Finally, about the point made by all the mentioned rhetorical phrases: I couldn't disagree more. Italian democracy it's not based on the Resistance against anything. The Italian Republic, as it was born from the hashes of Fascism and WWII, it is based on the complete surrender to Mafia, the American ideology, the Atlantic Pact, and all sort of various patronages (the Vatican, camorra, 'ndrangheta, magistrates, Unions, corporations, FIAT, nepotism as a method, etc): it is based on the strict limitation of any individual freedom outside of these patronages.
Second, it is based on the Yalta divisions, according to which Italy was a country to be split among the communist party and the democratic-Christian party, with the latter at the government and the former at the opposition. Berlusconi's perfect dream is Stalin's dream. A country where, as noted already, nothing was supposed to change, ever, because the equilibrium among west and east Europe was too weak to stand an authentic Italian democracy. Stalin didn't want it just as much as Truman didn't.
Third, Italian democracy is a lie, because Italy it's not a real democracy but an oligarchy (I think I have remarked this point already). So, am I supposed to be thankful for this oligarchy? Because there's still freedom and a little justice, should I honour those who froze this country under this oligarchy with its phony factions?

Sure, I go under a lot of pain when I see our Constitution tore apart by the arrogance of folks like Berlusconi.
But not because this Constitution, and this mafiosa parliamentarian democracy, are something to be thankful or respectful for. It's only because, as experience teaches us, the worse is always to follow, that's all.