A long, hot, Italian Summer (Part I)

Sooo, the blog has been quiet for a while…The English summer has been so sunny and warm I couldn’t bring myself to stay in the house, I just had to go outside in the streets…(Yes, I am being ironic). Anyway, what’s been going on in the Motherland over the past few months…? “Bad weeds never die” an Italian saying goes. Well, for once it wasn’t true. This summer Francesco Cossiga died. Not much different from a Tampax: he was always there when the bloodbaths happened, he’s been described by a blogger.

Member of the Democrazia Cristiana (“Christian Democracy”…I mean, doesn’t the name say it all? Stay away from them if you want to stay alive!), he was Minister of Internal Affairs in revolutionary 1977 when police officers in plain clothes shot 19-year old student Giorgiana Masi at a demonstration in Rome. The honourable Mr Cossiga stated for years that she had been killed by her friends at the demo. Obviously. I mean, why do people go to demonstrations after all, if not for killing one of their friends? You guys, always blaming the police for everything!

He was in charge when Aldo Moro was kidnapped and later killed by the Red Brigades. Many say that Democrazia Cristiana let Moro die because he was too much of a revolutionary for them (he was a Christian Democrat too, but wanted to make an agreement with the Communists). Don’t wash your dirty linen in public, we say, let the Red Brigades do it! It may cause a little trouble but it comes out spotless!

After the bombing

He was Minister of Internal Affairs again in 1980 when Bologna train station was bombed by a Fascist group, killing 85 people and injuring 200. He was close friends with Fioravanti and Mambro, later condemned for the bombing. Oh, I know what you’re thinking now, but let me say this: Don’t be so narrow-minded! Some Fascists can be nice people, can’t they?

During the infamous G8 summit in Genoa in 2001 Cossiga was there, this time just “as a private citizen”. Mmmh. They probably gave him a tour of Bolzaneto’s temporary detention centre (opened for the occasion), where people were beaten up and forced to sing Fascist songs.

In more recent years, when asked to comment on the troubles caused to poor President Berlusconi by the Onda Anomala student movement, he dispensed his wisdom in an interview to the right-wing newspaper La Nazione: “We need to send infiltrators among the students. These infiltrators must be ready for anything. Let them riot for days; let them loot shops and burn cars. Then, with public opinion on their side, police forces should send everyone to hospital without pity. Don’t arrest them, the magistrates would release them straight away, just beat them up! And beat up those teachers that incite them too. Not the elderly ones, of course, but the young ones. Do you realise the gravity of the situation? There are teachers who indoctrinate children and take them to demonstrations: A criminal attitude!“.  How very charming and illuminating, indeed.

GOOD RIDDANCE, ITALY!