How paranoiac should we be?

Critics in Europe are very uneasy about the new Italian ECB chief, the Greek premier and the prime minister-designate of Italy’s past or present relations with the Goldman Sachs bank. Key European crisis figures Mario Draghi, Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti all have backgrounds with ‘Government Sachs’. Euronews

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) said international adviser Mario Monti, who yesterday was asked to lead a new Italy government, has “discharged all his obligations” to the firm. Goldman wishes Monti success in the “extraordinarily important task” he has assumed, according to an e-mailed statement today. Bloomberg

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There is this wonderful Spanish saying, "when you see your neighbor's beard on fire, put your whiskers to soak", whose American version would be, "what goes around, comes around". I think both versions of this sample of folk wisdom apply to what has just happened in Italy and Greece, where the pressure of the financial markets have caused two governments elected by universal suffrage to be brought down and replaced by technocratic governments which have been chosen by "experts" to apply "austerity measures" to the population of these countries, without consulting the voters. If instead of the gnomes of finance, this had been done by military officers, we would call it all a coup d' état... now we are not quite sure what to call it.

Now mind you, I am not defending Silvio Berlusconi, the most sinister clown to grace Italian politics since Mussolini, but frankly friends and neighbors, the Italians did vote him into office and have not been given the opportunity to vote him out and are now being governed by Mario Monti, a very nice man, a very intelligent man, but someone that nobody voted for and who happens to be closely linked to Goldman Sachs, of all people. Now that in turn, if you have any attachment at all to representative government, universal suffrage, and stuff like that, rivals the advent of Berlusconi as the most sinister thing to happen in Italian politics since the rise of Il Duce.

Meanwhile, back in Wall Street, mayor Bloomberg has cleared Zuccotti  Park and now, lost among all the exciting news of financial meltdown, it seems that the government of Israel is set on starting a war with Iran, against the opinion of their own military and intelligence community, who would have to be the ones to fight said war... and of course, our Nobel Peace Prize winner, president Barack Obama, isn't "taking any options off the table."

All we need now, to create a "Rapper's Delight" of conspiracy theory delirium, is for somebody to discover how Lloyd Blankfein is set to make money on a war in the Middle East.

As they say, “you couldn’t make this stuff up” nobody would believe it if you did… June 1914 must have been a little like this… Certainly the most historically “pregnant” period I have ever lived (I was born in ’44) and that includes the fall of the Wall… because there was another system perfectly intact (ours) when that went down… now there is nobody here but us chickens boss.DS

Massimo Tartaglia and Berlusconi's busted face

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said he is considering tougher limits on freedom of expression and pledged to crack down on social networking sites that “instigate” violence against the prime minister.(...) The internet is one of the few sources of news and information in Italy that aren't subject to some form of control by Mr. Berlusconi. His family media empire owns one of the two major Italian news magazines, two daily newspapers, and three of the seven major TV channels. Three more of Italy's major channels are run by his government. While there are a number of independent newspapers, Berlusconi has sought to limit their room for maneuver, bringing lawsuits against newspapers that have reported on his extramarital affairs and allegations that he used call girls.
Christian Science Monitor

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Till Berlusconi took it over Italy occupied a special place in my mental landscape. If not the "mother" of western civilization -- that would be Greece -- it was the "stepmother" of western civilization, perhaps the "wicked-old-stepmother" of western civilization.

Some of the affection was a Hollywood construct, of course. Soon after WWII, Hollywood was quick to give Italy a fresh coat of paint, so  that, while, after all these many years, Germans are still the favorite Hollywood villains, Mussolini's people were given an immediate free pass, complete with "Roman Holidays" as the "moon hit your eye like a big pizza pie" and with Sophia Loren trotting her marvelous gazongas to the tune of "presto, presto do your very best-oh, live a your life with a zip and a zing".

But it wasn't all Hollywood horse apples. There were Antonioni, Fellini and Berlinguer, Vitorio and Marcello, Adriano Celentano and Mina, Alberto Sordi, Alberto Moravia and Rita Pavone too. They weren't all a dream...

Then the land that spawned Leonardo da Vinchi  excreted Silvio Berlusconi, a toxic mixture of Rupert Murdoch, George Bush, Count Dracula, Ronald McDonald and Wayne Newton. You could say that Italy doesn't do things by halves.

I truly cannot think of any leader since Adolph Hitler who has single-handedly  taken such a fine country and so spoiled it and despoiled it as Berlusconi has Italy: George Bush doesn't even come close, half the job was more than done before he could lay a hand on the United States.

Then the other day a computer geek named Massimo Tartaglia took an alabaster  model of Milan's cathedral and tossed it into Berlusconi's face making rather a mess of that much lifted part of the "cavilieri's" anatomy.

Something that a 19th century anarchist would have pulled off with a pawnshop pistol or a homemade bomb, injuring or killing innocent bystanders, a crazy Italian geek did with simple souvenir. Humanity has advanced.

Signor Tartaglia immediately got himself a fan club in Facebook of about 200,000 members until Berlusconi's government got it taken down. There is a new one which has just opened and is picking up a couple of hundred fans per hour and was just over seven thousand when last I looked. Here is the link if you wish to sign up.

Something in Massimo's nose of a Roman emperor and  his mad eyes make me think that it might be a bit too soon to write Italy off just yet. DS