Babsi today wrote about a typical milanese episode (I've lived similar episodes also in Rome, but to me this sort will always be associated with Milan, like a certain damp cold weather and the smell of monoxide).

It's the one where the ticket controllers get on a bus in a small commando team and start checking on the tickets of the passengers, behaving like bullies and blatantly treating certain categories of passengers differently from the others.
They yell, they drag around, they use the force and a whole range of intimidations, or they limit themselves to sermons about the importance of always carrying a "good ticket". When they cannot bully you and yell at you (because you're a citizen) they can always make you fell ashamed of yourself in front of everyone.
The trick always worked and will always work, because many middle-class citizens mistake their own radical fear of being put to shame in front of the others for instinctive respect of the law, although the truth probably is that they would sooner break the law if only they could resist or be indifferent to shame (cf. Kafka's Process). Or, as it is with tax cheating in this country (and a lot of other stuff), if only the crime itself wasn't considered a shame.

Pathetically incapable of professionally doing their job by politely asking for documents and writing down the tickets and normally fine the passenger, using a normal tone of voice and human decency, the milanese controllers are very often ego maniacs who just adore the tough part of their job more than anything else, and have orgasms listening to the barking sound of their voices in the silent bus.
When I was a teenager those in my category where the favorite victims of ticket controllers. Youngsters by the shabby appearance where easily the ones to be mistreated if found without a ticket. Now, only a handful of years later, it is all different. Shabby youngsters carry iPods and cell phones, and the most undesirable of all passengers, the most vulnerable is obviously the immigrant, or B-citizen, whatever you want to call it.

Babsi tells her story with her usual efficiency, and I felt I had to tell about my own by commenting to her post. I am translating here excerpts from both the sources.

Babsi:

At the bottom of the trolleybus, a boy. The boy who's turning a blind eye to them and who has a wool jacket with patches on the elbows. Ticket, they say to him. Without the "please" that was reserved to me. The boy acts dumb. Hey, the ticket, kids one. Where are you from? Egypt? And where do you get the tickets? In Egypt? The boy utters a long guttural sentence: I am sure that he is understanding and he is insulting them. Or that he is cursing. Always the same one, almost pensionable; He is looming up in front of him, standing astride at this point, and insisting: or you just thought to come to Italy to fool the Italians, eh, dark boy? "Morocco", says the boy. "Morocco, not Egypt". Resurgence of national pride. Oh, Morocco. It's the same. Here it's paying for the ticket. The second interferes: so, do you or do you not have it? He doesn't have it. I don't know why he doesn't. Because he doesn't have a buck, probably, but I lived in London washing dishes and I asked for money at the Earl's Court subway station to pay for my tickets (...)
They're back to grill the boy with the patches on the elbows. I.D., says the old one. E-D? tries to parrot the boy. Oh, when there was Mussolini the things went all right, snaps the man in uniform... I clear my throat. Excuse me? When there was - who? I surprised him. He's looking at me resentfully. Don't you get in the way, miss. I don't get in the way. I'm interested in civility and good sense. I breath in despite the fever. "Apology of fascism, you know."
Now everyone is looking at me: the moroccan boy, the woman in pink, the six controllers, the one who's yelling in the cell phone no se puede. "When there was Mussolini, gentlemen, should be taught at school - I swallow - how much this country was violent and illiberal". Silence. "Not - I swallow - on the buses." My man in uniform is outraged: on the buses, miss, one should pay the ticket! That's all! (...)
Three controllers out of six make the boy get off the bus: the rough way.

Me:

(...) I was fined plenty of times during my junior and high school years. Once I was chased down half Viale Padova by a controller, up to the inside premises of school, many times I was grabbed by the jacket, yelled on my face, carried down the 56 or the 92 or the 33, underwent the sermons I hate, I lied and gave false identities and shrugged and laughed in the face and trembled of fear and shame.
Still today that I always pay the ticket in every city of the world, when I see uniforms instinctively I shiver and look for escape routes.
Always hated controllers because of their intimidating air. Never solved the ambiguity, whether the State was always right, even when it came with the shitty face and the bullying policeman-like behavior and all the rest, or whether it was never right, because of the great lie that was held together all around.
Finally, I don't care for the apology... I find the law-enforced anti-fascism very cretin (it certainly doesn't keep people from being or becoming fascist in new and old ways), but the way I see it bullying and barking voices are more than sufficient reasons to put oneself in the way, since they represent all the possible worse, all the possible fascism to expose and impede. If only to get in the way was anything useful-- or even if it wasn't useful at all. Provided to have clear in an instant which side one is on... and instead one loses precious seconds to understand it.

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.

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.)

Anything sorts itself out,
except the difficulty to be, which never does.
      -- Jean Cocteau

Every now and then during the day I call myself stupid for something that crosses my mind. Memories of past scenes from the story of my life pop up unexpected in my head and drive me into a concealed embarrassments that can be shaken away only by calling myself "stupid" briefly, unheard. Of course the embarrassing events of the past are not really embarrassing for any sane person but me, but that's how it works. Petty stupid things dominate me in that moment, like a wrong word, a trivial mistake, someone I disappointed for something. I mean, years ago, even.
It's stuff nobody probably remembers, not even me until bits of it come to surface again. When they do, I am cutting a tomato for lunch, or browsing a website, or reading, or htmlzing a website, or pruning the woodbine, it doesn't matter. The memory unfolds, and I regret it.
I don't seem to be able to control at all the embarrassment that follows, so useless and neurotic, all by myself, if not by blaming my weakness, my oddity, my confidence or lack of confidence. There must be some pleasure in it, but I don't really know which is.

It's like that thing that keeps happening when I'm in bed alone, about to fall asleep.
-- No not masturbation, another one --
When I'm in bed alone, and I get drowsy over the book I'm reading, and I know I am about to fall asleep, suddenly, in the wrong moment so to speak, I realize that undoubtedly I will die, sooner or later, maybe in a short while-- I will cease to exist and there will be absolutely no place left for me, for my mind, my personality, my body, my feelings, my voice. All blacked out. Nothing left.
I mean, it's not something that will happen if I am not careful. It will just happen, for sure, one hundred fucking percent. Me no more. And all the rest of the planet going on.
At the unbeatable plainness of this vision my heart start banging in my chest fast, and I have to move about in the bed to push the whole thing away. Insane person! of course it's no use to worry about dying, I repeat to myself, since it has to happen anyway. I think about genes, and about all those rules of Nature I like so much to read about, and I wonder why I don't seem to be able to get along with it. Should I take drugs? I wonder.

It's all because you have too much spare time, says a voice. For your wanderings, it says. Because you lead an absurd life, it says. It's because, says the voice, you are closed up into yourself, cowardly worried to be deluded, unwilling to cooperate with your future, your destiny --all that sort of crap, says the voice.
I wonder about the voice, then I stop -- maybe I am opening the fridge, or jumping onto the tram, or washing dishes -- and I have a sudden revelation.

Sudden Revelation: to do nothing is the only way to understand how everything is vain.

That's when my mother calls. The cell phone vibrates in my hand, showing her name. I haven't heard from her for weeks. I haven't called, neither she has. For a moment I have the vision of her face, her figure walking down across the grassland to the ulives behind the stone wall, followed by dogs. She wears a captain hat, and looks away.

(to be continued. Second part is ready but it all came out too long)

"There is an indifference that is more helpful than your blabbering about being humane, as the right hand pets some of us like Mother Teresa, and the left hand swings the sword of the tribunal against others. Little devils of goodness. Humanity hyenas. There is no one less open to suffering than you official humanitarians. Marsbodies that appear as the protectors of human rights... The people here have become as evil as they are not. And the war has made you tourists as evil as you are."

-- Peter Handke, Dugout Canoe, The Play About The Film About The War

You may be taught to believe that it is great how wealthy people donate amounts of their money and time to some "humanitarian" cause. But it's not. It's disgusting, instead. First of all, it is useless: the world is more and more divided among the lucky ones and the unlucky ones, so the system obviously doesn't work. But also, it is a race for hypocrisy so disgusting and shameful it can't even be called evil: it must be called shameful, so that we don't waste time with exceptions, like those who do it not because they're "evil" but because they're "good", those who didn't mean it that way, those who went there in person, those who just wanted to do good, those who "wanted to see", those who couldn't find a place for them at home, those who made so much money they "felt it was right to...", etc.
For example, on the past week's issue of TIME.

( Parenthesis: I made the mistake months ago to subscribe for $5 to TIME magazine in order to access their archive on line. I wanted to read some stuff happened on the year I was born. The stuff wasn't interesting at all, but I have been receiving their crappy magazine every week since then, although I have canceled my subscription as soon as the trial period expired. And every time I read it, I know there is something in it that gives me the creeps. )

So, on the past week's issue of TIME there was a list of the supposed 100 "most influential" people of the world. Well, typical TIME's crap, I guess. "Influential" according to their lousy point of view of course.
I browsed the article terrorized to find Berlusconi's face in it. Luckily there wasn't.
Among them though, looking upward so that his double chin doesn't show, with his "I'm so committed" smile, was obviously Bill Gates (and wife). They were on the cover of another disgusting issue of TIME with Bono few weeks ago already, and it was all about how much good they were all making to Africa. The caption about Bill Gates went: "Giving money and Hope to the world". See, he "gives money to the world". He's not part of the band of brothers who drain money from everywhere wishing for a crowded unhappy world where everybody uses his cheap products. He actually gives hope.

Not surprisingly, more than a half of the names in the TIME's list are of American fellows whose supposed merit is to give away part of their money to some "association". The fact is always citied among the great things they did in life for which they turned out to be influential.

It's interesting to learn why affluent men of rich societies tip around more than women. Even if they do it with all the discretion in the world, the reason is always public. Psychologist Geoffrey Miller explained why in his impressive and fascinating book "The Mating Mind" (a must read, first book I ever read to give a reasonable explanation to why creativity exists): tips and donations are part of a sort of "peacock tale" extended behavior. It is all about the show of fitness we use to extend our right of choice in our circles under many forms. Everybody does it, in a way or another, you know, just to be "influential" in his own way, just as we all do creative things or test jokes around to allure the other sex, or friends.
The way I see it, though, to donate to Humanitarian Associations is particularly hateful in the picture, even though is almost a must now, especially in the US. Because the unhappiness of the world is transformed into your personal triumph, and everybody would be disgusted and ashamed by the deal if it wasn't for the physical distance between the tragedies you throw money at, and the living rooms where you can announce how you threw the money.
After all, all you gave is just your money, but nothing permanently good can come from the money itself.

I always thought that most of humanitarian associations devoted to the developing of "peacock tales" of affluent or middle-class men around the world should be banished and neglected, so that the evidence of the problems our richness create around wouldn't have any excuse.

Now, when I read that this is a world where in survivors camps peacekeepers in Liberia exchange beer food and cigarettes -- and trips to town on large SUVs -- with sex with boys and girls and kids recluse into the camps, I am not really surprised. I can perfectly imagine how and why this happens. What strikes me though, is that nobody seem to notice how this is obviously in the nature of "Humanitarian" help. It is bound to happen in this context.

In the "Humanitarian" world, in fact, everything is supposed to relay on the "Humanity" of the people involved, because nothing else in the order of things is ever discussed: not the unjust world, not the wars, not the price some pays for our Oil or Gas or goods and all that sort of stuff. It all relays on the fact that someone is "Human" enough to go there and do something without changing anything in the long term. "Human" enough to go there and face all the problems knowing there's nothing effective to do about them, grinding his teeth for the moment he will be cheered getting back home -- that "human".
But "Human" is also sex desires, greed, perversions, deceit, the fascination of one self's power, the unbearable sight of others' pain, the long hot days idling far from everything you know, the routine of misery, the temptations of corruption etc. It's all so human, just like craving to be influential is. Because being human never meant being good, how come we always forget it.

-- in picture above: another engraving by Bruegel

Oh, once again. Another book I would like to throw into the Venice lagoon from an helicopter, in thousands copies, to clog the high tides.

"Legendary for fabulous food, persistent men, and a lyrical language, Italy has inspired many great love affairs—with the country itself. From the notorious occupants and cuisine of Sicily, to the ancient marvels of Rome, to the couture of Milan, women throughout the ages have invented and reinvented adventure in this diverse and voluptuous land..."
(From Italy, A Love Story: Women Write About the Italian Experience)

Jesus, "women write about the italian experience"... who are these women anyway? Do they have eyes? Do they have any brains?

I've had enough of this absurd nonsense about Italy. Will this undeserved fortune ever come to an end? Will all this cretin commonplaces ever be over once and for all? Will all the Caravaggios and the Tuscan hills and the Sicilan sea urchins ever dissolve in a great blaze of oblivion? Will this country ever be generally known for what it is, a sinking piece of rotten land that should be run over by a giant road roller? And will my smart countrymen ever have the courage to discourage these ideas instead of riding them when they're abroad?

I'm sorry. But I know how sadly disappointing Italy can be, for real. I have been ashamed of my passport too many times already. From China to Russia, from America to Africa, so many keep looking at this damn country without seeing it. And then when they're here, they just can't believe it. Who really comes to stay, who has eyes to see, cannot but be disappointed.
I have seen too many dreams go into pieces in small ugly apartments (half the size and double the price of, say, Honk Kong cheap housing projects), at working places (ending up touring Russian tourists in Venice exchanging bribes with the local Venetian mafia, for instance), at art schools (where not the great history and tradition of Italian ancient masters is taught, but a pointless rootless modernity that despises and neglects anything "traditionalist"), in the love making beds (where silences and long faces and misunderstanding and long boring evenings rule above romanticism and sensibility)... the list continues.

The sick richness of some parts of this country (the 60% who voted Berlusconi in my city, for instance), its eternal incapability of respecting any law, the unbelievable exploitation of labour, the general mounting egoism and indifference, all the generations of broken dreams that populated this lost land... when all of this will ever be part of the picture taken?

Well, I guess, not until people in this world will blindly keep on summoning such visions, of remote golden lands supposed to save for us all the good ol' things forever. But those places are not from this earth anymore. Only admitting this could give us the force to regain those places back from hell. And I hate the compromising way this post just found to end.