Wow! What a long comment! Thanks for taking the time to write it:-) Good to hear that you’ve been wading through my blog. Thanks for reading, and do feel free to disagree or correct inaccuracies.

“I’m also a great fan of Saviano – it’s people like him who justify this country’s existence, show us what we could be instead of what we are.”

- Great to hear, and I know you are not alone, thankfully.

And I know that Saviano is one heck of a courageous man. One of Italy’s modern day heros.

“Re police: it’s also very dangerous being a local cop/magistrate in a mafia/camorra town unless you play by the “unwritten rules” – so bringing in the army is partly smoke-in-our-eyes partly makes sense: they’re not locals, don’t have vulnerable wives/children on the spot as “hostages” so are less easily blackmailed into passivity.”

I also know, and have written about the dangers of being a cop trying to deal with the mafia. The mafia is somewhat glorified, but the fact is they are ruthless and will stop at nothing – including killing children, if they are really angry. They have so much control that this does not happen too often luckily.

As for the stuff on good old Berlusco, I knew most of that, including the mysterious stable hand, and I refer to Wikipedia in Italian often because it is so much more detailed than the versions about the same Italian subjects in English.

Berlusco is an Italian par excellence, in that he knows how to work the system to good effect, and now that he has power, he’s been tinkering with the Italian system to ensure that it cannot be used against him. He has his own lawyers in parliament, making laws! The Alitalia situation is riddled with convenient modifications to Italian laws, for example – I discovered this from a very detailed documentary on the subject by RAI 3′s Report program – excellent impartial journalism.

Mr B is a clever man, but does not think about Italy, aside from using it as a place to squeeze money from. But he does employ a lot of Italians, and keep many others in employment, which cannot be said of many of Italy’s politicians.

I am interested in more sinister background info, but I’m not sure what I can do with it. However, it would be interesting to know of these sources and to discover how many have been translated into English. Telling people out of Italy about the situation here may make a difference in Italy – but only if it is as sharp as Saviano’s work. Even then, the change needs to come from the inside – but, with the exception of Di Pietro, no Italian politician today wants to do much – and many do not have to, they know they will be voted back into power, and they know they have nice fat pensions. Images of Nero twiddling thumbs while Rome burns spring to mind.

I will be writing to you about “stuffing the region with radioactive waste”. I want to know more about this and to try, not that I can do much, to spread the word that nuclear power is far too risky in today’s Italy. And there are great alternatives, which I have written about, and which could do a lot for Italy’s tarnished world image.

Again, thanks for commenting.

Kind regards,

Alex

I’m also a great fan of Saviano – it’s people like him who justify this country’s existence, show us what we could be instead of what we are. What Saviano’s doing is slamming the camorra’s misdeeds into full view, naming names and calling for a moral-revolt the camorra’s devastations – and the high-visibility he has achieved is pressuring/shaming politicians to ACT, push judges/cops to stop playing blind, grow serious balls and make arrests – but it’s helluva-dangerous, Saviano’s fuelled by dark rage and sorrow at what the mob has done to his home-region and his people’s lives (stuffing the region with radioactive waste amongst other things…) so it’s a personal crusade, almost a kind of private war on his part – throwing his angry denunciations right in their face, telling both them and the world what mean vicious bastards they are, what cowards they are. Takes great courage, pride and anger… to call it dangerous is an understatement.

Re police: it’s also very dangerous being a local cop/magistrate in a mafia/camorra town unless you play by the “unwritten rules” – so bringing in the army is partly smoke-in-our-eyes partly makes sense: they’re not locals, don’t have vulnerable wives/children on the spot as “hostages” so are less easily blackmailed into passivity.

You mention Maroni, Fede pooh-poohing Saviano… you should check out Berlusconi’s own background some time! First things that come to mind: no-one quite knows where the money that brought him up from cruise-ship crooner to property-development magnate (Milano Due) to TV tycoon originally came from – however, his father was a bank-clerk in a bank connected with Michele Sindona. And Berlusca was on Licio Gelli’s P2 list.

A guy called Marcello dell’Utri is/was one of Berlusconi’s right-hand men, his stable-hand at his Arcore villa – name of Mangano – has Sicilian mafia written all over him. Check out those names on wikipedia… preferably the Italian version. Noting that in Sicily, Berlusconi’s PdL share of the vote in the last elections was 65%+ as compared to around 46% elsewhere. Hmmmmm…

If you’re interested in more sinister Italian- background info, names of books that illuminate dark corners etc etc and more-than-meets-the-eye stuff in general, just send me an e-mail…

All the best -

Lisa