Today I’m going to do a little future gazing, and imagine how Italy will be in 2015, the year of the Expo.
Well, first of all let’s imagine that in 2011 Silvio Berlusconi sadly passes away, having refused advice from his, American, doctors and gone ahead with plugging his head onto the body of a recently departed male model in the world’s first full body transplant.
At first Berlusconi felt like a spring chicken. Dressing in Versace, he passed many nights out and about in the bars and clubs of his beloved home city, Milan. However, alas, Berlusco’s new body rejected the head resulting in Berlusco passing from this world to the next.
Soon after the demise of Berlusconi, Ingnazio La Russa, who had been buttering up the Italian army for years, donned the title of General, and put on a uniform emblazoned with so many medals that their sheer weight caused him to list towards the right. La Russa had straightened the Leaning Tower of Pisa because it leaned to the left.
In the same year as Berlusconi’s new body rejected his head, La Russa led a military coup and took over as Italy’s first official dictator since Benito Mussolini. Soon after Berlusco’s parting, La Russa put pressure on the Vatican to have Berlusconi made into a saint. Italy’s new Pope Rocco Buttiglioni I is said to be in favour of La Russa’s proposal.
Prior to La Russa’s accession to power, the presence of troops on Italy’s streets had increased massively. Soldiers in holiday style uniforms had been sent to watch over Italy’s many holiday resorts and had been shooting unruly tourists in increasing numbers, especially those who insisted on playing Beppe Grillo’s latest release ‘Brutto Paese’ – ‘Ugly Country’, on their iPods.
Soldiers were everywhere. Indeed, the old polizia had been integrated into the army. This meant that camouflage uniforms were to be seen throughout the living museum. We had a solder stationed outside our appartment building and had to tell him exactly where we were going at least two weeks in advance. For many, this made popping out for a coffee somewhat difficult, and had led to the closure of many of Italy’s bars.
Special military education advisers had been appointed to oversee Italy’s schools to ensure that the Mussolini curriculum, as it was known, was strictly adhered to. Before starting lessons all children, who were now required to wear black uniforms, had to do an hour of fitness training in their schools’ playgrounds. Then, before going to class each child was required to salute the large statue of Benito La Russa which graced all public premises. Large photos of La Russa were displayed in each classroom.
Corporal punishment had been reintroduced into Italy’s schools and children were regularly whipped for minor infringements of the rigorous school code which had been developed by Alessandra Mussolini, the new minister for education.
Beppe Grillo, who had put himself forward as a political candidate and tried to stand in opposition to La Russa just before he became General La Russa and seized power, was forced to leave Italy and now resided in Nice on the Cote D’Azzur. He ran a website called ‘The Real Grillo’ after his original site had been removed from the Italian internet as a result of a law passed by the late Berlusconi which effectively banned anyone from saying nasty things about Italy.
Grillo’s efforts were futile in that La Russa had censored Italy’s internet and any sites which were not 100% in Italian were banned from the Italian web.
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
From 2012 all of Italy’s journalists had been forced to swear allegiance to La Russa, with those refusing disappearing mysteriously ending up, so rumour has it, in various different types of salami.
Milan was no longer a fashion capital as a new law forbade anyone of alternative sexual orientation from owning a business, working and even driving. Pope Rocco Buttiglioni I was staunchly behind this new law.
So it was that the 2015 Expo was about to start. Only it was not an official Expo seeing as General La Russa had withdrawn Italy from the European Union, the United Nations and the G8, thus causing world powers to remove Italy’s permission to hold the 2015 Expo, which had been moved to Poland.
La Russa was not perturbed by this, and instead decided to use the Expo to show off his new Italy to the world. Only the world was looking in the other direction.
While the world had been considering what to do with Italy, all of the country’s immigrants had been rounded up by La Russa’s number two, Vice General Roberto Calderoli, and he had shipped them all back to their places of origin.
Now, instead of disenchanted Africans attempting to reach Italy’s coastline in rickety boats, mafia run boats were now transporting disenchanted Italians to Africa. Well those than managed to get by the UAVs which were patrolling Italy’s waters and firing upon boats suspected of transporting disillusioned Italians.
And me? Well, Blog from Italy had been banned from Italy’s web waves and I had moved to France too, where I had set up a new website promoting French businesses in English, and secretly supplying information to Italy’s small but dedicated ‘Meet Up’ resistance network whose few members managed to hook up to Facebook via clandestine satellite links.
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Yes, I know it’s a little far fetched. At least I hope so. However recent stories in Milan’s newspapers about closing bars at 10pm and the possibility of using soldiers to keep partying Italians in order down in the popular Ticinese area of Milan have got me wondering. Note that in the Corso Como area of Milan, which is a very popular area for those spending a night on the town, including Berlusconi, troops are patrolling to keep order.
Italy appears to be toppling towards the extreme right. The recent incidents at the Bulgaria – Italy football match do not bode well.
Another odd thing is that there often seem to be uniformed solders present at political press conferences at the moment. The question is ‘Why?’.
