Category Archives: Erosion of Democracy in Europe
Silvio Berlusconi: 11 overwhelming questions
Silvio Berlusconi and the dark aspects of Italy: why writing a book about them? Silvio Berlusconi is “not just any old charlatan”, as the Nov. 21, 2011 Newsweek cover reads. As I have said time and again, Silvio Berlusconi’s ventennio (his twenty years in office) is a privileged observatory as far as the future of democracy is…
Who Killed Giovanni Falcone? ‘Don’t say murder, don’t say kill, it was destiny, it was God’s will’
Twenty-eight years later: Falcone and Borsellino are victims of Totò Riina’s ‘negotiating by bomb’ strategy. Victims and martyrs indeed, and of course heroes. Nevertheless, I always have a bitter taste in my mouth every year at the celebrations, and the feeling is not because of the inevitable rhetoric. Hypocrisy lurks in the air: slowly, too…
The Ballad of the Covid-19 Gaol, part 2
Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, May 4,2020 Outside in my street… .. there is no one around, of course. A blistening sun is shining on the terrace from where I am writing the weather is very warm, inviting you for a stroll downtown or a walk in the parks already green. But, still, there is no one…
The Ballad of the Covid-19 Gaol, part one
The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland Part 1: It all began where the streets have no name – looking back at one month of quarantine (Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Easter…
A love letter to the British Leavers and Tories after the 2019 elections
Dear British Leavers and Tories, I humbly remind you that the English Empire collapsed one century ago and so your attitude of superiority which fuels Brexit is quite pathetic today: I remember that the day of the opening of the Chunnel one of your papers wrote “we already smell garlic”. So now please leave the…
World Cup 2018 – out of the cup, into the mud: corruption,violence, beauty in Italian football
All the World is a football Stage Italian football is the mirror of our society: it means organized crime connections, both at top management level or at mafia and camorra rank; it means corruption, in match-fixing, slush funds creation and drug use; it means another weapon of mass consent in the hand of the demagogic political candidate.…
‘Trattativa stato-mafia’ verdict: The Berlusconi government’s deal with the devil confirmed, good omen for his recent official ‘rehabilitation’
‘In 2013 I wrote a whole chapter dedicated to the trattativa stato–mafia in my book about Berlusconi when just a few believed it had happened. Proud of it. A post will follow with the chapter. Thank you Di Matteo‘ is my first tweet after the sentence (trattativa stato-mafia means state-mafia negotiations). So here is the chapter in…
Elezioni 2018: le foche ammaestrate e il cavaliere oscuro
The tame seals and the dark (ex) knight (article in Italian). La news più fake: Berlusconi Presidente. Passando occasionalmente davanti ad un televisore acceso ieri sera, ultimo giorno di campagna elettorale, ho avuto una visione surreale: l’ex Cavaliere, in uno avanzato stato di sfacelo che chirurgia plastica e trucco pesante non riescono a celare del…
Clean Hands’ 25th anniversary: and they lived corruptly ever after
1992 is modern Italy’s D-year. It is the time of the death of the decadent First Republic and the birth of the more degenerate Second one, which is probably about to end these days. It is the year of Mani Pulite (Clean Hands, or Tangentopoli), an investigation that revealed the corruption of politics and business…
Who killed Giulio Regeni?
Of Arab Springs turned dictatorships, state tortures and murders, commercial bonds over human life: one year after, we don’t have to live and let Giulio die. Shocked, outraged, bewildered, overwhelmed: that’s how I feel today, on the sixth anniversary of a revolution (the Egyptian Arab Spring) turned fascist dictatorship and on the first anniversary of…
The book "Silvio Berlusconi's Italy" is finalist at the London Book Fair's International Literary Competition 'The write stuff'.Vittorio Vandelli’s prize winner book: “Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy”
