Italian disaster - from www.beppegrillo.it

Every nation experiencing sunset has its own symbols, something that represents its epitaph. Italy has rubbish and truncheons. The two words occurring most frequently in our everyday language. When, in the future, we will be remembering the dissolution of the Second Republic, we will smell the stink of the rubbish tips and we will see the blood of the demonstrators. At Terzigno and at Bosconero, Italian citizens are being chased with truncheons. The ones beating up men and women with their hands in the air, are not dangerous non-Europeans, nor are they members of the Camorra, but people paid by the Italians to defend those very same men and women. The rubbish tips, transformed into an issue of public order, in reality are derived from corruption, from bad administration, from the total “I-don’t-give-a-toss-ism” about the territory by the politicians. By all the politicians … every distinction at this point between a Bersani and a Berlusconi, between a De Luca and a Caldoro, is just taking us for a ride. The separation of different types of rubbish and the recycling of raw materials, of water, of glass, or plastic and the use of what remains for composting is not impossible. It’s simply that the will to do this is missing. It’s not the people of Campania that stink but Parliament, the government, the Region of Campania, the Confindustria of the incinerators.

Manganelli, the head of the Police, ever more a body separated from the real country, said: “There’s bitterness for the fact that topics that other people are called on to resolve find the police forces in a supplementary role. We are certainly not the enemies of those who demonstrate, we are doing our job. Given that it’s necessary to “sversare” {get rid of this toxic waste} at Terzigno, we will act in such a way that this is possible even though it might be at the cost of using force.” Whatever it costs, “sversare” has to happen. And beating up has to happen. To whom are the police responsible? To Maroni or to the Italian people? What does a police officer feel like after shooting a smoke bomb at eye level or after beating up an old person, as happened at Cagliari, during the demonstration of the Sardinian shepherds, or after beating up a woman at Terzigno? Does he feel at peace with his conscience just because he has obeyed the orders of his superiors? This is a war between poor people, on one side there are the citizens, on the other side there are young people who are underpaid with a uniform and often no other job alternatives. If things go on like this, it’s clear to anyone, even to Manganelli, that there’s no way out. Violence against unarmed citizens generates more violence in a spiral in which only the innocent ones pay. The people of Italy are a straw dog, they put up with things, they almost always put up with things. Then, suddenly they catch fire.