Home / beppegrillo.it rss archive / August-26-2007


State Gaming Dens
photo by vittoriocristianoTwo of the journalists of Genoas Secolo XIX, Menduni and Sansa, for some time now, have been denouncing the non-payment of taxes on the part of State Monopolies. Hold tight. Its 98,000,000,000 EURO.Where has this money ended up? With the parties, with the Mafias, with private citizens? Tangentopoli compared to this seems like just a joke and Valentino Rossi like a child who stole sweeties. Visco if you are there can you knock once, given that the DS federations are proprietors of the Bingo halls. Fini and Alemanno, so busy with the costs of politics, ask for information from the Board members of the concessionary companies for the slot machines.What follows is the letter from Menduni and Sansa to signor Tino, the Director of State Monopolies. Dear Dr. Giorgio Tino,We would like to ask you this question orally but it seems impossible to talk to you. For months we have been trying ot contact you, we almost start to think you might not really exist....

Caruso Precarioski
Repeat with me in a loud voice one hundred times:Caruso is not left wing -Caruso is a Forza Italia spy -Caruso is a Confindustria militant.Done? Do you feel better? Can you see more clearly now?Carusos statements about Treu and Biagi have done more damage to the precarious workers than Montezemolo and Tremonti.The heat has gone up to unthinkable levels.They have used Caruso to cancel out Napolitano, those killed at work and the precarious workers. However I am taking the opportunity to thank the supported typographers Feltri, who have promoted the book Schiavi Moderni with their articles. It has already reached 200,000 copies downloaded and all the bookshops want it. Its truly this summers book. Cicchitto has said that the book is culturally contiguous with terrorism. Schiavi Moderni is the collection of witness statements of precarious workers, of young people without a future and no longer of desperate young people. Where is the contiguousness? Cicchitto and the P2 were...

V-Day in the world
Im publishing the response to the post Ambassador - don't take it out on me! that I have received from the head of the press office at the Farnesina {Ministry of Foreign Affairs}. I cant discuss the details of the response. Perhaps signor Merola would like to do that by writing a comment to this post. I would like to thank the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.For a few days we've had a map of Italy showing the Italian cities where 8 September will see the collection of signatures for the Clean Parliament popular initiative. New ones are added each day. From today Im also publishing the foreign cities supporting V-day with leafleting (for the moment in English, Spanish and Italian) in front of our Embassies. I am also asking the Ambassadors starting with Surdo in Moscow to join with us. Well, Im on holiday, and when people recognise me they greet me with the V sign. V-day V-day V-day.Im replying to what has been written by Sig. Michele Merola. It is not true that there are...

There are so many (Modern) Slaves, millions of millions
Il Corriere della Sera attacked Beppe Grillo and his book: Schiavi Moderni {Modern Slaves} with Pietro Ichinos editorial on 14 August and with 2 articles today on page 10. Thanks so much.This book must be really annoying. They make out that I am a stirrer-up of hate, a falsifier. Ichino asks to have a public face to face with me. Let him come to Bologna on 8 September and hell have it. Before that however, he needs to mug up on the book. Its the precarious workers who wrote it, not me. Its got commentaries by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize winner for Economics, and Mauro Gallegati, a university professor. Do we want to talk about law 30? Do we want to reform labour law? Do we want to sit on our hands and do nothing? Its up to you. The problems still there and sooner or later itll explode. In todays article called Precariato Globale {Global precariousness} in la Repubblica, Luciano Gallino writes: A first element is the number of people who have a precarious job, either because...

The 8 speed penguin
photo from channel4.comThe 8 speed penguin is on sale in the best sex games shops in Paris. However the product with most sales is the ladys rabbit. Its sold like hot cakes. Even the duck for the bath has been a great success. Its Do It Yourself sex. The loneliness of the modern woman. Technology helps. The Mp3 vibrator is the consolation of empty beds. The voice of Bogart or Pitt makes you dream. The rest is done by the vibrator. Theres no limit to the market for sex toys. It has pushed out the old sex shops.China will soon find out and will become production leader. With trade marks that guarantee like Mattel. Manufacturing defects could cause damage that is decidedly worse than lead poisoning. What if the penguin gets a faulty gear box and reaches 76 speeds? And what if the voice on the MP3 player, in error is that of Mastella singing: Roma non far la stupida stasera {Rome, don't be silly tonight}? In such a case, the physical and psychological damages could be incalculable....

Lead Exports
photo from spiegel.deDuisburg shows that we are still doing well with our exports, we are exporting lead bullets and mafia. In Italy the market is saturated. The European Union is a natural outlet. A young man from Catanzaro has written a letter to Romano Prodi and to the blog. Its a sign of hope. Young people of Calabria you are not alone. Duisburg shows that we are still doing well with our exports, we are exporting lead bullets and mafia. In Italy the market is saturated. The European Union is a natural outlet. Dear President of the Council, The day after the Duisburg murders, I listened to the appeal on the National news programmes to the youth of Calabria, in which you exhorted them to react against the Ndrangheta. I felt that you were talking to me as I am young and from Calabria (Im 34 years old and I live and work in Catanzaro) because the happenings in Duisburg have had a profound impact on me and then because I want to send out 2 appeals: one to others living in...

Dangerous falsifications
On 15 August il Corriere della Sera published an editorial by Ichino that insinuated that I am directly involved in a defamatory campaign against Biagi and Calabresi, to stir up social hatred that could lead to violent actions. Professor Ichino cites my blog: In spite of that, on his Internet site a few weeks ago he allowed himself to pile it on by scoffing at that very person (Biagi), together with another victim of terrorism, with his own satirical version of il Corriere containing the following short article entitled: Biagi like my husband Calabresi: a martyr; text: Gemma Capra has no doubts: "Theres a need to end the insults against those who serve the State". Otherwise theres the risk that there will be a repeat of what happened to her husband Luigi Calabresi, killed simply because he allowed the anarchic railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli to get a breath of fresh air, or to Marco Biagi, killed simply because he helped the entrepreneurs exploit the workers better.The following...

The city and the rainbow
photo from spaceview.com If advertising is an invitation to consume, what is left but advertising for those who cannot consume?Advertising is a good of visual consumption available for everyone. The more we see, the more we fall into line, we feel reassured. Advertising is the enemy of the rainbow. Once upon a time the sandwich men were paid for carrying round advertising messages, today people do it for free, and if they could they would pay.For how long have we been living without breathing immersed in advertising shit? Its a brown mess that submerges the cities, the people in designer clothes from tip to toe, objects, the sacred and the beautiful. We pay because advertising is paid for with the product, to see our cities transformed into boobs and bums and great brand names. The Mayor of San Paolo has banned advertising. Renzo Piano has written me a letter. If any Italian mayor wants to imitate Gilberto Kassab let them knock once. Dear BeppeIn San Paolo in Brazil, Gilberto...

Believe, Obey, Pay taxes
photo by ontypesA person convicted for kick-backs announces the tax strike. A person with multiple time-outs, former P2 member, follows him, but you have to understand him: hes got the Saturday night viagra fever. The press offices talk about it as though it were serious. The political journalists do political analysis. The economic journalists do economic analysis. The citizens who can, dodge taxes. The ones who cant, pay even for the others. But Rossi and Capirossi go abroad. The great tax dodgers have always dodged and Bossi, for them is superfluous, almost annoying. The public debt is going up like a rocket. The growth is among the lowest in Europe. No one bats an eyelid. In this making a racket about nothing, the just tax has arrived.The shadow leader of the government made the announcement at Rimini. In fact the Secretary of State of the Vatican Tarcisio Bertone declared: Everyone must pay taxes because it is a duty and this must be done with just laws. What these just...

The red line
On the horizon theres the red line: the end of oil. Where is it placed? At 15, 30 years? We know for certain that we will see a post-oil world. Similar to but different from the post-bomb scenarios. No one can say with certainty how much oil remains. Almost all agree that half has already been used. The cheapest, the part nearest the surface. To extract oil costs energy. If it takes 2 litres of oil to extract one, then its not worth it. The oil in the Mariana Trench is not economic.What will happen after the end of oil, and above all what will happen before that? States work on energy. At a well thats drying up, only the strongest animals get to drink. The armed States will drink the oil, and towards the end, when the well has become a puddle, they will fight each other. Alternative energies cannot in the medium term, be a substitute for oil. There will be a transition period of at least decades. Before the economy of oil, there were one thousand million of us. Now there are...

The bogey man
Il Babau (bogey man) by Dino BuzzatiIn the single-thought Italy, the equation native-of-a-country-outside-the-European union = delinquent has become a given. The first suspect is always a foreigner. This sensation, whether or not it is true, the Italian lives in real life every day. At the traffic lights with the windscreen cleaners and the beggar. In the city centres with children on the ground asking for charity. In the streets with underage boys and girls forced into prostitution, true mass paedophilia. If the Italians who are behind this, were chemically castrated, we would be wiped out. With theft by Roma children in broad daylight at the Central Station in Milan or at the Termini Station in Rome. The illegality of the poor, of the exploited, of those who have nothing to lose, of the child slave is ever more evident. Ever more dark, ever more oppressive. In any conversation, out comes the story of the black man from North Africa or the ferocious Slav. The daily news bulletins...

The Politics of Nothing
The theatre is empty. On the platform, there are psycho-dwarfs, ballet dancers and pimps moving about. You can feel the loneliness of power in the news that arrives from nothing. Its metaphysics, not marketing any longer, its air, fried air. There are no spectators in the hall. Only journalists in the dressing room for masturbators. Its the politics of the masturbators. I recite, I dictate and I read my work. The public financing of newspapers helps the ejaculation. Theyve got power in their blood and also in the blood of their blood. Its a hereditary disease. The politicians are carriers without symptoms who transmit the virus. Senators and deputies are almost always sons, nephews, cousins of the ones who have gone before them. The true caste is in the blood, brown and not blue. The parliamentarian brings his son to palazzo Madama to show him the place that hell leave him as an inheritance. The citizen takes his son to the bank to show him the mortgage that hell leave him...

Rome-Copenhagen, one way ticket
Bureaucracy as such is not a bad thing, in fact it is necessary. If it doesnt get too widespread. Italy is suffering an overdose of bureaucracy. A job with public services is not just a salary. Its an extra position, an extra step in the passing of papers. A phone call, an extra document. Apart from the Provinces, how many other bodies are useless? A public structure has to produce something to show it is legitimate. If its function is of no use. It produces useless bureaucracy. Useful however in making the public go mad. Lets emigrate to Europe while we have the chance. Im publishing 2 letters, two ways of viewing the public good.Dear Beppe, My name is Barbara and Im 36 years old. For the last 2 years Ive been Nichys mum . Nicky has Tuberous sclerosis, a genetic illness that is as horrible as its name. It causes learning disabilities, epileptic fits and so on. But Im not writing to you to tell you how desparate I feel. Im writing to you to invite you to spend a couple of days...

Ambulances and official cars
The newspaper lUnione Sarda reports that the convoys of politicians are more important than the ambulances. They have priority. The injured person has to understand, to accept the priority of politicians. If he goes into a coma itll be for the fatherland. It doesnt matter that what is described is true, its worrying that it could be true. It can happen and it does happen. The official cars with the siren sounding that are taking our employees to their holiday homes using the emergency lanes really do exist. Stop them. You in the queue. You are extra. Ask the parliamentarian for his driving licence and vehicle documentation. The reason for violating the highway code. He will reply: You dont know who I am. Keep calm. Reply: one of our employees. If he insists, make a note of the registration number and denounce him for abuse of power. First read him his rights: "The people should not be afraid of the ones who govern, but those who govern should be afraid of the people. Our employees...

The power of silence
image from the film "Dead Silence"98,000,000,000 euro that the State Monopoly concessionaires dodge in taxes is not news. In fact no one talks about it. The power of silence is the true power. In Italy there are 5 newspapers and 7 TV channels that administer information. They construct it and they deny it. The citizen is a domesticated seal, saying yes and saying no and never understanding anything that is happening. 98,000,000,000 euro of tax dodging deserves a reply. Visco and Prodi must reply. Otherwise they are justifying the tax dodging. Those who pay taxes cannot be taken for a ride, they are paying even their not-tiny salaries. The blog has published an initial letter to Giorgio Tino, the monopoly director. No reply. Today Im publishing another one. If no one replies, the blog will go on. Tino dont grumble. V-day, V-day, V-day. LETTER TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE STATE MONOPOLYDear Dr. Giorgio Tino, We are worried about you. For months we have been writing to you from the...