Italy: The Problem Child of

Europe?
(Not really. Home of the Little Monsters of Europe
perhaps is more appropriate!)

Onetime in the late 1980s, in Italy where I yet live, I was

breakfasting in the dining room and eyeing the relatively new CNN
International while anchoress Bettina Luescher bleated on about
Europe's economic inability and vulnerability. Out of the blue, she
reverted to Italy, griped a few negative statistics, then parenthesized
her feelings with this poignant point, with this media corporation
Freudian slip: ...Italy, the problem child of Europe.... (The Miami
Beach of Europe?) I almost choked to death on my Cheerios. Never
again would you hear anything indelicate about The Boot on, at least,
CNN. That would be bad for business and the Nielsen ratings. And
it is not so politically correct, n'est-ce pas? Hey! THIS IS CNN!
(Have you ever wondered why CNN is always repeating THIS IS
CNN, THIS IS CNN, THIS IS CNN? It is because CNN is
insecure. Because CNN influences so many people in the global
community, and is always passing from one ethnic mood to another,
CNN must be exceedingly careful about how and what it saysand
not only does it not want to offend viewers. It does not desire to
ruffle the feathers of, say, the Pentagon, advertisers, multinational
corporations, and other potent determinants. Whatever said on CNN
has to be checked then double checked, filtered for offensive
elements, and even passed through the legal department. Therefore,
what comes out of the announcers' mouthswhether it be true or
even falsesmacks of Newsspeakism and rings like a leaden coin.
CNN's news stories reek of having been worked over incessantly. I
never believe a word said on CNN.)
I remember the day, 1 May 1983, when I arrived in Rome from
Caracas, Venezuela. I felt as if I had been plopped into an aweinspiring expanse of artistic, cultural and historical import. The
buses, taxis, traffic lights, banks and elegant shops did little to

expunge the memories I had accumulated in the high school and

university history classes I had attended in the DisUnited States.
Bubbling with exuberance, I wanted to scour the place looking for
where gladiators and Roman emperors once held courtto see if I
could find remnants of them. I wished to ascertain whether or not
that which I had learnt about Italy in schoolhouse settings jived with
the reality of them in their own environs. And because I knew that
many of the historical leftovers of ancient artefacts had probably
been undone and even compromised with the passing of time, I
realized I would sooner or later have to find what I was looking for in
the vital principle of the Italian people themselvesthey who are the
best test for us to mould our opinions about them and their
civilisation.
From that May day to the present time, an uncanny transformation
has rocked and rolled the Italic peninsula much to the regret of many
of its inhabitants. Whereas once before Italians were prone to gloat
over their unparalleled repute for being one of the world's most
prominent centres for art, culture, styling, design and religion, a
cycle of deterioration has gripped The Boot lending credence to the
belief that Italy is champion of the negative classifications rather
than being even at the top of one or two of the positive listings. Most
Italians will agree that something is terribly out of whack. There is a
horrible malaise of uncertainty in the air. Discussion is easily altered
to take up a violent bent. Stress is the norm. Italy's wheels are
spinning wildly; however, the republic is finely fixed in an eternal nogo.
Italy's geopolitical star has been spent. It twinkles no more. But
what is truly astonishing about this burn out is that it has happed
within less than one-hundred years of the European nation's almost
two-thousand-year beingness.
An absolutely, thunderously
diachronic plunk that even World War I or World War II could not
have effectuated. Instead of enjoying status as one of the leading
drawing cards of tourism and cultural fascination, Italy now must
bend over backwards to bring attention to itself and its waxing
industrial composites that not know hownor are respectable
enoughto compete with those ferocious entities vaguely
categorized today under the epithet globalization. Most Italians
know little of on-going world events. 70% of the Italians have never
flown in a jet.
The majority of us on the Italian scene will acknowledge that 1990

was an economic, social and political watershed for The Boot. It was
then that the Italian powerfulness began to ebb, and it has not
stopped falling back even today. It now treads, slowly but surely, into
an enormous black hole with no hope of escaping. The Italian
economy is being held together with rubber bands and bubble gum.
For decades Vatican, Inc and corrupt Italian governmental officials
in cahoots with organized criminalskept sticking their fingers, here
and there, into the Italian dyke that has these days worn itself out
keeping Italy from defaulting on its debt responsibilities and other
obligations it owes to itself and the world.
It is not clever to think of Italy as some autonomous piece, of the
enormous European quandary, designed to test the ingenuity of
politicians and political scientists. Italians would disagree that they
are not as particular as they assume they are. It might have been
said that all roads lead to Rome, but these days many deviations
have been constructed to steer investment farthermost away from
Italy. United States' ambassadors are always pulling their hairs out
to get Italy to get with it and conform to their ideas of justice, fair
play, reliability and racial tolerancevirtues that Italians are not
especially renowned for. Italy is indeed peculiar. Yet it is important
to remember that it is in collusion with some of its neighbors. These
somebodies are often referred to as the pigs (Portugal, Italy,
Greece and Spain: The Problem Children of Europe)grand
specialists in the Art of Corruption according to the putridness gurus
of the German-based Transparency International. (One Bavarian
economist has denoted the four as the gips [gyps]!) Angela
Merkel's austerity is not a plea to European housewives to go
shopping more scrupulously; strictly speaking, it is a hopeless
economic maneuver to cull the stigmas of flagrant corruption and
vulgar greed that are, indeed, jeopardizing the very equilibrium of
the European capitalistic system.
Consequently, it is crucial to examine Italy not per se but as a
member of a mini Mediterranean United Nations. Taking into
account that there exists a variety of splinter, populist groups
(Veneto, Fruili, Padania, Valle d'Aosta, Savoia, Sicilia, Sardegna,
Catalonia, Aragon, the Basque region, Andalusia, Galicia, and
Asturias to name just a few) in this somewhat fragmented southern
sphere of the European continentas Alain Minc compassionately
predicted in 1993 in his Le Nouveau Moyen geeven those in the
Mediterranean United Nations might one day eureka it and let it

dawn on themselves that they have

characteristics in common than they do not.

indeed

many

more

What are some of these?

The first is that they have not yet chanced upon the notion that in
unity there is strength! What would be the consequences of a finallygot-together Mediterranean United Nations?
An irascible gettogether of individuals. The population of the pigs (gips) is
roughly 130,000,000. The desperation of Europeans is particularly
focused on a dire economic reality. A realness that agitates and
bedevils citizens more and more. What was once considered an
economical deliverance, the euro, has now become a bte noire;
Italians, formerly polled as being those most approving of the euro,
are those now who lead the beating of the drums against it! The
Portuguese, Greeks and Spanish are not necessarily trustworthy at
heeding their obligations to the currency used by the institutions of
the European Union.
A pigheaded alliance of the Portuguese,
Italians, Greeks and Spanish would bring havoc to the notion that the
European Union could enjoy a stable existence and live then, forever,
in a flourishing world of European nations joined together to share
common interests and rational objectives for their own betterment.
Blood is thicker than water and religion is denser than blood. One
must always reckon with what is perhaps the Mediterranean United
Nations' most constricting influence: the Roman Catholic church.
Although the RCc's waxing clout as an incorporeal causal factor is a
real concern to Vatican, Inc which is doing its cunningly best
especially by the use of media trickeryto right this actuality, one
must not leave out this particular point: its tremendous real estate
holdings throughout the world. It is estimated that the RCc owns
twenty percent of Italian bene immobile exclusively. The leasing and
renting of these tax-free properties do not render financially as they
once did because of the dismal, worldly economic situation all now
suffer. Coupled with the decline in donations to the RCc caused as a
result of the global pedophilia scandals, the RCc is not enjoying the
capitalization it has almost always been accustomed to even in
tougher times. The pope has called the Vatican and its bank
organized criminal organizations, and priests, bishops and cardinals
are hoarding funds in off-shore bank accounts for the love of God
who appears to work in very strange ways. The PIGS work in
tandem with the RCc even if they do not want to or are silent about
doing so. Business is thicker, then, than blood and religion!

The Maana Girls & Boys and the Protestant Work Ethic Girls &
Boys, for centuries, have not been known and prone to satisfactorily
commix in a conjointly, synergetic state beneficial to themselves and
their other surrounding mundane relationships.
The European
Union was, in great part, constituted to amend this political, social
and economic chasm that now appears to be more polarized than it
has been in by-gone time periods. The Gelid North. The Lovesome
South. The idealism of the ancient Greeks. The pragmatism of the
ancient Romans.
Today, Germany, the deputy sheriff of the
DisUnited States of America in Europe, is obsessed with trying to get
the PIGS to play fair by obeying the rules of the European Union that
with the self-righteous prodding of the DUS always behind the
sceneswould lead to a harmonization of all European Union
member statesjust another DisUnited States of Europe!
Let us return to Italy, the largest Mediterranean United Nations'
sovereign state (a 60,000,000 declining population) nowadays in the
throes of dissolution. Italy's worst enemy is the Italians themselves.
That magic wand that kept Italians under the thumbs of religious,
political and economical potentates for even centuries, has now lost
its vim and sparkle. Income inequality and social strain are worrying
to the Italian forefront. Panem et circenses is a bad joke when for
those for whom it has been devised are constantly being blasted with
media pleas to buy, buy, buy and buy more while they are being
overtaxed and desperately in search of employment and/or higher
wages. If the horrendous gap between the poor and the richas I
witnessed it in Venezuela in the early 1980smight be a benchmark,
it can be stated that Italy is not on its way to a middle approach to
wage earnings for its citizens, but more to a caudillo-like hard line
with the bashing in of Italian heads.
Observe that this dilemma is one that is thought to be adequate to
being resolved with spread sheets and economic theorems that are
patiently waiting in the wings for their grand entrance. Nothing
could be further from the truth of the matter. Italy is not in crisis;
Italy is a crisis! It is a complex situation in which the haves and the
have nots are in a psychical brawl drawing vitality from the one, the
other, and slowly but surely bringing Italy to a virtual collapse. It is
not that Italy might be saved by the imposition of some mathematical
formulae or economic gambits thought up by bank managers and
pecuniary gurus. No, Italy's most formidable affliction is its very
own citizens:
the Italian workers who are vying with their

recalcitrant Italian overlords who neither pay them to facilely

consume nor even, what is worse, regenerate the Italian race.

Authored by Anthony St. John

26 December MMXIV
Calenzano, Italy
www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior