THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA CONSULTATION
How Italy (Worse than France!)
Gave the Judas Kiss to the United States
of America during the 2003 Iraqi War
__________________________________________
by Anthony St. John
P R E A M B L E
“Hier, nous avions le droit
d’être fatalistes par optimisme;
nous devons désormais
ê
tre audacieux par pessimisme.”
Le Nouveau Moyen Âge by Alain Minc
The noisome, two-bit diplomatic romance between the lovey-dovey set
in the United States’ Department of Hate and Italy’s Palazzo Farnesina
(Vatican, Incorporated) has been footnoted continually with outlandish
patterns of corruption, blackmail and vendetta—especially so during the
last sixty years when the United States thought it essential to put on
a back burner the pathetic Italy
thus maintaining it in a status quo hegemony with the remainder of Europe.
1989 harbingered the coming of frightening changes. The invasion of Iraq
in March 2003 shook everyone out of their National Association of Securities
Dealers Automated
Quotations system effervescence worse than February 2001 had, and the
Department of Hate reeked with disgust from the betrayals—in Europe and
the rest of the world—the new world order had foisted upon it. Saddam
Hussein was “destabilized” not because he was sitting on fawning petroleum
depositories or inasmuch as he was a mini Arabian Stalin, but because
he had masterfully inoculated the world economy, glutted with depravity
and meanness, with an “ideological virus” the consequences of which we
will not be able to comprehend yet for years to come. Remember that Marxist
quip: “If you give them enough junk bonds, they will choke themselves
to death!” Saddam played his cards accordingly, and he himself invested
in The Capitalistic System! George Bush II, The Enron President, made
it but no choice to aim his arrows at this desert fox. Bush II also wanted
to serve up an example for all the world: You dang bang better do it
our way or we’ll bomb you into dog-eat-dog democracy. What is to come
next? The poisoning of a major city’s water supply? The explosion of
a mini atom bomb? The dissemination of a deadly virus? Are you happy,
Bush I and Bush II? That goofball Gerald Ford was less fatuous! One ex-ambassador
from the United States to Italy averred on Italian television this sombre,
low, slow, threatening, vibratory murmur: “We are taking notes on our
friends and enemies.” Yankee, go home? Egads, mamma mia!
I wish to demonstrate in this analytic composition that it is not true
that Italy is an ally of the United States of America—albeit the fact
that the mass media has given us the idea that it is—and, most importantly,
that the diplomatic games that are being played between the United States
and Italy are dangerous for the future stability of Europe and the political
rapport mid the two contingents because their relationship is rooted
in deceit and seemingly insurmountable witlessness. Further, I request
that this writing be accepted with an open mind, and that the “pieces”
about to be presented be understood to be part of a larger political
mosaic the reader might begin to put together by following his/her own
research along the lines of thought, and provocation, offered herein.
This putting of the constituents together I proclaim to be Spherical
Journalism. It is not an exaggeration of an exaggeration! Let us join
with our Greek ancestors and turn over our minds undulating from the
Particular to the General. Inductive Reasoning. PIG!
Every foggy-bottomed member of the Hate Department and the Central
Stupidity Agency has tattooed—over his or her heart—the sutra exitus
acta probat.
(I suppose some swashbuckling Jesuit, mantra-monger, translated that
maxim for the fanatical Irish-Roman Catholic and founder of both the
Office of Strategic Services and the Central Intelligence Agency, General
William “Wild Bill” Donovan!) Stupidity agents, while shaving, crave
these three words as black-clad Sicilian women, in church, hypnotise
themselves with “Ave Marias.” These souls have a mission. These breaths
of life believe—usually uncompromisingly—that they are in the right.
And being so omnipotent, they seek to foster their divinely-inherited
principles on all others—especially those who are incongruent with
and hostile to their self-righteous temperaments. The only two of them
with whom I fraternized were fervent Roman Catholics. One, John Sullivan,
whose A. O. was Southamerica, told me he went to Mass and Holy Communion
every morning; the other, William F. Buckley, Jr., The Master Debater,
went frequently to noon Mass and Holy Communion on Park Avenue, and
it was the wish of every strong-willed conservative office worker at
National Review to be asked by W. F. B., Jr. and his sister, Priscilla,
to join them in church as one big, happy diehard family. (Will someone
“out there” please take a headcount for me? How many Central Stupidity
Agency agents are Irish-Roman Catholic? And, while you are at it, how
many Roman Catholic pedophilic priests are Irish? Is there a Germanamerican
Mafia (Achtung!!! Eisenhower, Schwarzkopf, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz…)? Is
there a Chineseamerican Mafia? Is there an Englishamerican Mafia? Is
there an Afroamerican Mafia? Et cetera. I hope The Devil, who knows
better than all of us that being able to ask any question one wants
to is a prerogative of a sound democracy, does not disintegrate me
with a lightning bolt—flung from the depths of The Eternal Fires—for
being so curious. Speaking about fires, is it true that 70% of the
New York City Fire Department consists of Irish men?)
The crusade to “colonize” the whole world began long before John Foster Dulles, and in modern times has been nurtured mostly by the Nixons, the Reagans, the Thatchers, the Bush Is, the Bush IIs and their camp followers notwithstanding a semi-vigorous opposition to them from a quasi Left which, more or less, is losing every day a piece of its political congruency. And maybe for the better. Of the Right and Of the Left economic “conquests” dot every area on the world map. Liaisons with dictators, assassins, despots, generals, cardinals, billionaires, other stupidity agents, bank presidents, television station owners…ad nauseam, have reaped for the United States the invidiousness it now has been slapped in the face with. Exitus acta probat! Exitus acta probat!! Exitus acta probat!!! When this global-minded caudillismo stretches out to suck in another schnook, it does so with impunity. It hooks up to the elite, the oligarchy of a country, and goes about—according to its own Standard Operating Procedures—winning over the powers that be there. Many men and women, hoodwinked by the mirage of falling in with the rulers of the world’s leading economy, scour for—at the expense of their own people’s interests—the fickle finger of fate which will carry them to some bar where they can drink from the golden, global wineskin. This brings me, naturally, my dear reader, to Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s richest man, Prime Minister and crackerjack bagman. Egads, mamma mia!
Hi ho, Silvio!, an enigmatic character in an even more cryptic country, Italia, greets you with his frozen smile which is constantly set to the ON position. That spurious beam I saw on the face of Richard Nixon in Miami’s Orange Bowl when he was President of the United States. I was seated two or three meters from Nixon and, for the entire game between the Oakland Raiders and the Miami Dolphins, he kept his glacial “from ear to ear” turned on for the national television cameras eyeing him—he knew not exactly when. He had to be grinning continually. His career depended on his popularity. Tricky Dick’s snickers were eventually converted to tears. Hi ho, Silvio’s! cold-blooded airs are bound one day to crack, too, into pieces!
His is an extremely complex story. When he graduated from Italian law school, Hi ho, Silvio!, then a man of modest means, set sail on cruise ships crooning in their dazzling night clubs. Blessed by the Mediterranean stars shinning on the rough seas, he maneuvered successfully enough to start to get very rich, very quickly taking part in lucrative real estate financing arrangements. Books have been written about the alleged special secret connections he possessed and possesses in Switzerland. Newspapers have tied him to membership in the disreputable Masonic (P2) lodge—an exclusive mum network with tentacles reaching around the world. Hi ho, Silvio! hopped, skipped and jumped to owning small television stations in Italy which he consolidated into the Fininvest Group and then, ultimately, the Mediaset organization of which he owns 47%. It is no confidential matter that he used his television stations to reach the highest pinnacle of Italian politics, the Prime Ministry, the heart-beat-away office from the Italian “does nothing” presidency. (Listen to this quote taken from a letter [6 November 2002] to the Florentine People, written by the intolerant Oriana Fallaci, in which she quotes from a telephone conversation she had with Signora Ciampi, wife of the President of Italy: “Grazie, cara signora [Oriana Fallaci], grazie d’averci informato. In questo momento mio marito [the President of Italy] è chiuso in ufficio a lavorare, ma stasera a tavola gli racconto tutto. Perché vede, qui al Quirinale non si sa mai nulla.”) His subliminal use of his media possessions received condemnation from all parts of the free world, and critics lambasted Hi ho, Silvio! for what they described as a “vulgar, indiscriminate and undemocratic” employment of the airwaves to achieve his personal ambitions. Today, as Italy’s Prime Minister, the multi-billionaire Italian frog in the pond also brandishes an enormous power over the three state-owned television networks: RAI1, RAI2 and RAI3. Italian television is often a transmuted, manipulated use of the Boob Tube sired to elicit the correct response for the ambitious Hi ho, Silvio!
Hi ho, Silvio’s! political hustle was not always a steaming plate of pasta for him. His first effort at playing Prime Minister in the mid-1990s ended in failure when he was outwitted by the Lega Nord’s racist, demagogic Umberto Bossi with whom, on his second try, Hi ho, Silvio! formed a discredited political alliance looked down upon in most leftist quarters throughout Europe! What is interesting about his first unsuccessful attempt to whack Italy into political line is the following statement Hi ho, Silvio! bitterly announced to the press in a post-election summing-up: “When I was at Fininvest, I called my few hundred managers together to get the word out to them so that the group would have an effective, organized chain of command that would help my businesses progress. But, when I became Prime Minister, I found in Rome five thousand managers, and I was unable to call the shots for them.” This stunning admission of incompetence went over everyone’s head in Italy, and it did not prevent Hi ho, Silvio! from attempting again to seize political power in his “unmanageable” Rome.
The comeback of Italy’s wealthiest man was ferocious and promiscuous. (Hi ho, Silvio!, as reported in Italy’s Corriere della Sera, is somewhat of an obsessive-compulsive personality…he carries a sponge in his pocket to clean his hands after shaking supporters’ mitts…if you work for him and he finds your hair is dirty, he will send you, with his compliments, a bottle of shampoo!…he emulates many of the dictators who antedated him and wears the same suit and tie all the time…while he is smiling obsessively, his goose-stepping lieutenants run a very tight ship for him…when subpoenaed by judges to appear at one of his trials, he tried to get away with not attending saying he could not come to court because he was too busy running the Italian government and defending it from “Italian communists” who had infiltrated the Italian judicial system…no one can even guess at the number of families that have been destroyed using legal and illegal drugs to keep up the momentum this crazed Italian wheeler-dealer demands of them...ad nauseam.) He stooped to all the dirty tricks in the political vernacular, and even visited Republican campaign specialists in the United States to get some “advice.” (The leader of one of Hi ho, Silvio’s opposition parties, Francesco Rutelli, was sanctified with the same media dolts who guided Bill Clinton’s campaign for re-election to the Presidency of the United States!) He hooked up with neo-fascist factions and other “anything’s good for business” elements who were desirous of consolidating Italy’s economic power, for once and for all, snapping a good junk of it from leftist parties in cahoots with unions and “communists” and suffering an identity crisis of gigantic proportions. Hi ho, Silvio! became a species of Senator Joseph McCarthy—bosom buddy of Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. who authored McCarthy and His Enemies for the hot-headed Joe the Yoyo—attacking Italian leftists and calling them “commies” as if all of us in Italy were living in the 1950s! Italians, penny pinchers at heart, were happy with the desperate economic rhetoric of the bullying Hi ho, Silvio! and looked to the billionaire businessman to pull them out of their pecuniary misery. The turf was ripe for a killing, and Hi ho, Silvio! mounted his steed and set out to cut off left-wing heads and arms. He was going to take on Rome again—this time with an unhinged vengeance.
Just before the election, London’s The Economist published a cover story saying, of all things, that Hi ho, Silvio! was not fit for office! Italian journalists, the best of drivelists, the best of paragraphists, reacted as they always do on these occasions and told The Economist to mind its own business. (When the 2003 Iraqi War kicked in, I called Florence’s La Nazione to attempt to verify the rumors going around that an Italian artigiano in Tuscany was the creator of all the Saddam Hussein statues in Iraq and that the interior decorating of all of Saddam Hussein’s palaces was MADE IN ITALY. The news room’s response to me was this: “Why don’t you go to Bagdad and find out for yourself?”) Hi ho, Silvio! threatened legal action. The fuss here and there successfully diverted attention from the fact that The Economist had in its possession documents linking Hi ho, Silvio! to illicit financial dealings outside of Italy. None of this, naturally, influenced Italian voters who, so desperate for a change, believed passionately that Hi ho, Silvio! was going to cut their taxes appreciably and offer every single one of them a pension! Italians, drowning in their lifeless economy, without the least of qualms, would have voted in General Augusto Pinochet if they had thought he could improve their economy! Curiously, The Economist’s huffing and puffing disappeared into thin air. (The Central Stupidity Agency has traditionally “prompted” MI5 and MI6 and the new MI8, so it is very probable that they intervened on this occasion and saved Hi ho, Silvio! for something else they had in mind to do with him. In the 8 May 2003 issue, The Economist, in a limp-wrist editorial, scolded the vainglorious Berlusconi still again. But what are the circulation figures of The Economist? When are they going to learn that there are at least three reasons the Central Stupidity Agency wants Hi ho, Silvio in office: 1) to spawn the optical illusion throughout the world of an Italy that has a stable government capable of enduring for a fixed, agreed-upon term; 2) to have right-wing, dictatorial backing in The Boot; 3) and, to hope that Hi ho, Silvio! takes in hand all six major Italian television networks so that Northamerican companies can buy them at the right time and the right price! The crux of the moot point is this: Italy is Caracasing. The Department of Hate strongly maintains that Italy is not authentic enough to “do it” democratically by itself. [They are right.] Italy is falling apart at the seams, but still adamantly nationalistic, fascist enough to want to “go it” bull-headedly alone—without outside interference. Quod erat demonstrandum: the Department of Hate is forced to prod Italy along with its unscrupulous political and economic interference. Should the United States dictate to Italy for its own good? Of course, not! The Economist would agree, too. The editors of England’s most influential weekly know that two wrongs do not make a right, and eventually this Northamerican-Italian conniving is going to blow up in everyone’s face. The Department of Hate cannot continue on the exitus acta probat trail forever. Elementary, my dear Watson!) Hi ho, Silvio! won overwhelmingly and strangely enough there was no preposterous fanfare throughout the maudlin Italy even in the camps of Forza Italia, Hi ho, Silvio’s! political machine known for its efficiency and ruthlessness. Many Italian left-wingers told me that they voted for Forza Italia to shake the apathetic Italian left out of its doldrums. Despite an operation for prostrate cancer and a withering mien which is camouflaged by make-up when he appears on television—I saw him cosmetic-less on BBC footage recently and he looks terribly puffed up and tired—Hi ho, Silvio! bulldozes on, along with his uncouth ministers and aides, disporting demagogic equivocations as Mussolini and Hitler did before them. Italians are content with Hi ho, Silvio!, yet they know not why they should not be! France cast aside Le Pen, Austria gave the heave-ho to Haider, and Yugoslavia got the message about Slobodan Milosevic. The bigot Bossi reigns supreme in northern Italy thanks to Hi ho, Silvio’s! political machinations. Inexorable economic vexed questions are about to complicate very much the life of Hi ho, Silvio! and the Department of Hate. And thank goodness. Can you think of something better governing Italy, third after Turkey and Greece on Transparency International’s Top of the Tops’ List of The Most Corrupt Countries in Europe? I can. The Papacy! More on It$ Holine$$ later on in this article. Egads, mamma mia!
Berlusconi, Hamamet!
Berlusconi, Hamamet!!
Berlusconi, Hamamet!!
Why should it be that Silvio Berlusconi holds charge over Italy and is the only Italian Prime Minister to do so longer than any other prime minister in Italy’s post-World War II history of political shame and deterioration? Why should the 17 March 2003 issue of Forbes Global list this bureaucratic simpleton as the world’s third most powerful billionaire set, incredibly, between Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch? Why should Bush I come to Italy shortly after the 11 September 2001 tragedy and hug Silvio Berlusconi on one of his television stations declaring that “Silvio is my friend,” before quick tripping in a private jet to Lugano to check on the covert bank accounts of “friends” and “enemies?” Why should Hi ho, Silvio! sponsor rallies with United States’ and Israeli flags blocking out the real low number of participants, carefully augmented by the camera angles of the Mediaset production crews, come to attend the ceremonies? Why the pro-United States stance taken by Silvio Berlusconi with every breath he takes? Why should Hi ho, Silvio! flow against the political currents of most European countries which were solidly against the 2003 Iraqi War? Is it possible that the Hate Department is blackmailing Hi ho, Silvio? It would not be the first time they drooped so low in this hideous drama edifying for neither of them. Egads, mamma mia!
Not that many years ago there was an effort made on behalf of the McDonald’s food chain to open one of their fast-food outlets in the city of Firenze (Florence). A furore of opposition exploded in the city, and Florentine iconoclasts rallied round their “culture” flags exhibiting a detestation for what might happen if the Mighty McDonald’s besmeared the sanctity of their Renaissance pantheon. Not one Florentine Father had the courage to admit that tourists, especially Northamerican ones, were not interested in eating the hamburgers they were used to eating back home, and that their trips to The Old Continent enticed them with thoughts of eating the very delicacies of the places they were about to visit. The fact of the matter is that in Firenze there are two ways to break bread: cheaply and disgustingly and expensively and exquisitely. $$$. Day- hopping tourists (and the Florentines themselves!) are not inclined to visit expensive Firenze restaurants, so when they see yesterday’s stale bread they pipe up inquisitively, frustratingly: “Where’s the McDonald’s?” And off they go. The McDonald’s people were denied by City Hall to have a license to open up one of their eating establishments. (The thief, Robert Maxwell, said it is torture to do business in Italy!) Many Florentines, who now frequent McDonald’s restaurants, saw this as a victory of sorts, and they bragged of the power they had exercised over the potent multinat and claimed that a victory for humanism was indeed more critical than one for mustard and ketchup over a grilled piece of meat. Florentine citizens forgot that their city is one of the most contaminated in Europe, by car fumes, is a hotbed of racism, and is one of the most inhospitable locations in the world. Adding to this the particular that the Florentines—all by themselves—are destroying, by their ignorance and avarice, the very patrimony they so proudly make money off in every way they can, one can only wonder why the McDonald’s chain, in all fairness, would be excluded from the Florentine landscape. After all, if $$$ is what it is all about, why exclude McDonald’s from the orgy? And McDonald’s was not, obviously, left out. The conglomerate simply bought out two other small chains, comprising a total of more than one hundred outlets throughout Italy, changed the names of the licenses, renovated the old sites with McDonald’s furnishings, and looked puzzlingly at Florentine City Fathers boiling with anger, yet speechless, over the Big Mac coup d’état!
These are the hanky-pankys used by many other multinats throughout the world closing in on the Italian business scene buying up all in sight from rich, incompetent, uneducated Italian businessmen forced to sell out the family jewels of their country to foreign investors. In an April, 2003 Forbes 400 Best Big Companies in the world, Italy shows up with eleven citations. Italy is Caracasing! (“Le aziende straniere ci stanno colonizzando. Un’azienda compra la parte che conta di un’azienda italiana e poi elimina i doppioni: i lavori più qualificati [la ricerca e la progettazione] sono riservati alla casa madre all’estero e a noi restano le attività di scarso contenuto tecnologico e di scarso valore. Il ménage va avanti finché conviene economicamente o fino a quando le attrezzature non sono obsolete. A quel punto cessa l’attività da noi: si è cosi eliminato un concorrente. Mario Barracci, San Donato Milanese.) The Italian managerial culture simply does not have the force, the numbers, and the sophistication to compete any longer against the muscle-bound tactics of hawk-like multinats. No one is thinking about the workers, their families and the futures of their children. Dog is eating dog. Is it not loathsome? Is it the same where you live, my dear reader?
And that is not all. Perhaps the biggest corporate usurpation in Italy’s
history is now in the works.
Several years ago, General Motors bought a 5% slice in FIAT, Fabbrica
Italiana Automobili Torino (Fix It Again, Tony!). Then, the ante was
upped to 20%. Now there is talk of General Motors buying all of FIAT!
What is awe-inspiring is that the FIAT Kingdom is worth about 10% of
the entire Italian economy! The GM managerial people are a shrewd lot.
They sneaked in through the back door and then went about studying the
ways to gain mastery in the poker game. They have aces up their sleeves.
They are watching to see who is set against whom, and from there (in
Victorian times mental asylum attendants allowed patients to go at it,
at each other, and when the brawl was over, the attendants held control
over the patients who had survived!) the GM negotiators will jump in
at the right moment to plunge in for the kill. Just as when Florentine
shop owners fought tooth and nail to keep McDonald’s out of Firenze,
the citizens of Torino are battling to keep GM at a safe distance. Who
is going to triumph? Regrettably, the people of Torino are not conscious
of the fact that FIAT depends a great deal on family-sized companies
in the Lega Nord’s Padania region where secessionist factions are filling
with unease the whole of Europe and infuriating the Department of Hate
which wants to keep Italy in its hip pocket—for its own good! The intolerant
and chauvinistic rhetoric of the Lega Nord each day takes on more significance
and genders more political bite for the northern
Italian jingoistic populations.
What way would be the best way to keep the separatists at bay and within
the paradigms of conformist political behaviour? The horrible thought
that they could lose their GM paychecks? Egads, mamma mia!
This next fragment is going to leave your mouth wide open with astonishment. I promise. It deals with Camp Darby, a United States Army installation located near Livorno (Leghorn), Italy, in Tuscany, and which is the largest US ammunition depot in the world pinpointed outside of the United States. It touches the Tyrrhenian Sea and United States’ soldiers like to be stationed here because they can make use of the camp’s beaches during their duty assignments. The base, naturally, is an important economic factor for city (Livorno) and regional (Tuscany) budgetary estimates. During the 1991 Iraqi War, 100% of the armaments expended in Iraq and Kuwait flowed from Camp Darby; and; 60% of the ammunition used in the Kosovo War came from this cache, too. On the base, one can also find tanks and heavy-duty vehicles stored for about-to- be use in some war. The worth of the munitions is valued at about $2bn.
Shortly before the 2003 Iraqi War ignited, London’s The Times reported that during the early 1970s, some of the more than one hundred warehouses, in which military ordnance is stored at Camp Darby, started to fall apart and chunks of concrete had fallen on highly sophisticated missiles and precision bombs—some of them housed in refrigeration! Hundreds of bomb-disposal experts were flown in from all parts of the United States Army’s world-wide bases, and 100,000 missiles and explosives were removed without causing a bang. After, repair work was completed. The Times calls this a miracle!
Since 1952 Camp Darby has been opened one day a year to the public—whether
Italian or Northamerican or whomever. The Fourth of July. And from 1976
the legal holiday has become a European affair because Camp Darby is
the only European US establishment which possesses a beach. The seas
offer a friendly environment! On it beach volley tournaments, beach twister
and horseshoe games, and other competitions are held between visiting
Army units from all over Europe for the delight of the attending crowds
which annually amount to a few thousand people. There is also a tan line
contest, a sand sculpture contest, and the election of a Mister and Miss
American Beach to further please the crowds and red, white and blue for
all a PR big bang…there are even majorettes…barbecue, hot dogs, hamburgers
and mountains of cans of beer are there, too, and at reasonable prices…no
admission charge…open 10 am-7 pm…AT&T is the sponsor…there is a country
music band…and, finally, at six on the dot, the United States’ National
Anthem plays and all rest their hands on their hearts…. Italian men,
women and children are thrilled with the events which have turned this
little piece of Italy into a little piece of the United States of America—or,
should we say a little piece of the United States into a little piece
of Italy! Now guess what follows! While thousands of Italians, geniuses,
maestros, inheritors of the Renaissance—all together, in unison!—dry
their eyes during the playing of the Stars & Stripes, a bevy of exploding
commemorative pyrotechnics goes off atop the hideout for billions of
dollars of real fireworks that are capable of blowing a good part of
Tuscany into the Tyrrhenian Sea!
What will amaze even more those of you who are going along with this
story, is the succeeding anomaly: A short time before the 2003 Iraqi
War, the Corriere della Sera picked up on The Times article about Camp
Darby, and on one of the front pages of the newspaper, printed a huge
story, with diagrams, explaining (after almost sixty years!) what was
going on at Camp Darby! Seemingly impossible! Italian newspapers are
generally kowtowers to the United States’ culture and Department of Hate,
so to see the article about Camp Darby so explicitly presented and not
hidden at the back of the newspaper to protect some United States’ interest,
was really an Italian journalistic first. (WARNING: Take Italian journalism
cum grano salis!) There were shouts of protest against the United States
throughout Italy and especially so in Tuscany which is a traditionally
left-wing-oriented region.
But why this apparent “betrayal” by the Corriere della Sera? Is it possible
that the Agnelli Family, owners of FIAT and the Corriere della Sera (
! ), were perturbed enough with the United States and GM for making significant
overtures at an eventual buyout of FIAT and the Agnelli family was incensed?
Gianni Agnelli, who died this year, was a keen pro-Northamerican industrialist
and was considered by many to be Italy’s Number One Central Stupidity
Agency agent, but anyone will tell you Gianni, in his eighties, was losing
hold of FIAT—thanks to Henry “The Carpet Bomber” Kissinger ( ? ). (Senator
Rocco Buttiglione told me that he was once at a United States’ Embassy
party in Rome with Italian commercial and political bigwigs, and for
one whole half-hour he saw Gianni Agnelli talking all alone with the
Director of the Central Stupidity Agency in a corner of the villa located
at 119A Viale Vittorio Veneto.) Gianni’s long-time friend, The Carpet
Bomber, did not attend The Chairman of the Board of Directors of
FIAT’s
funeral. He said he was sick at the time, but who in his right mind would
believe what The Carpet Bomber has to say! Is there something awry with
relations between the Department of Hate and the Italian oligarchy these
days?
When the citizens of Livorno discovered that they were sitting on a near-nuclear collection of bombs and missiles, all hell broke loose and Camp Darby was surrounded by protestors some of whom cut the wire fences around the quarters and entered it chased by Northamerican soldiers and the Carabinieri. This public relations’ mess, only days before the beginning of the 2003 Iraqi War, was further exacerbated by protestors arriving from other parts of Italy, and the crowds—one day—are said to have reached the 70,000 mark. Most remarkably of all is the fact that of the tens of thousands of protestors getting in the hair of the authorities, hundreds of them went the limit and chained themselves to railroad rails preventing the delivery of US armaments from other parts of Europe and northern Italy. Trains carrying war matériel had to be diverted to ancillary lines. Delivery schedules were interrupted and this infuriated Pentagon officials who wanted to get on as quickly as possible with the 2003 Iraqi War before the genuinely hot season set in. Throughout Italy, rainbow PACE (PEACE) flags were flying in the faces of the United States’ military and diplomatic representatives. Nothing like this had ever occurred before in Italy. For decades, the Department of Hate had thought that it had Italy well placed under its thumbs, and that Italy would not budge against the United States’ foreign policy. One factor went unconsidered: During the 1991 Iraqi War Italy’s economy was more vibrant than it is today, the time of the 2003 Iraqi War. The PACE flags are Italy’s Freudian way of saying to the United States that if it wants to use Italy as a war launch pad, it better pay for the honor. (When I was on Italian television at the time of the 1991 Iraqi War, I pleaded: “Please do not step on the tail of 1,000,000,000 Islamic people,” and I was booed all over the place in Italy because I was not being patriotic by supporting the war against Iraq. During the 2003 Iraqi War those same critics were furious with me for not wanting to display a rainbow PEACE flag! The New York Times, which I monitor daily, never reported on the protests at Camp Darby—at least in its TODAY’S NEWS ITALY. Nor did it have anything to say about the number of A. F. I.’s (American Forces in Italy) cars being blown up all over Italy in front of servicemen’s homes. The New York Times did not point out to its readers that at many off-base bars in Umberto Bossi’s hate-filled northern Italy, United States’ soldiers were greeted with this sign: AMERICAN SOLDIERS NOT WELCOMED IN THIS BAR. (Is it not wonderful that The New York Times will expend hundreds of thousands of words to horsewhip one erring Times’ journalist, Jayson Blair, while we, my dear reader, can pulverize The New York Times in only one sentence accusing it of printing, for more than a hundred years, all the news fit to satisfy the Central Stupidity Agency and the Department of Hate!!! Is not the pen mightier than the sword?) To placate this tense situation, Bush II sent a letter to Hi ho, Silvio! stating that the United States was a friend of Italy! Naturally, this communication was dutifully published in the predisposed Italian press to give the notion that opposition to the Northamerican presence in Italy is not extreme.
One does not need to be a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps commissioned lieutenant, graduate of the United States Army’s Artillery & Missile School, a battery commander, a Lance Missile project officer, a battery executive officer, a forward observer, a battalion liaison officer, or a brigade liaison officer to realize that Italy went over the top. Italy’s faux pas has sent Pentagon contingency planners amuck with phantasies of the most absurd kind. What would ensue if the next time Italy sought to express its passive-aggressive personality it mandated hundreds of thousands to Camp Darby with tens of thousands gumming up for good this time the Ferrovie dello Stato throughout The Boot thus preventing the delivery of bombs and munitions to Camp Darby from other parts of Europe and the north of Italy? Should we start preparing a Farewell Camp Darby Party—with the best firecrackers? A feast of chagrin for Livorno’s City Fathers (Livorno, traditionally, is the Tuscan province with the highest unemployment rate!) who will sadly watch Camp Darby shift position to—let us speculate!—Albania. There, the Pentagon can shoot at Italy and Europe (France and Germany?) instead of shooting at its own feet! Are we heading for World War Three? Wow! It would be great for our slumping economy! And the rich can get richer. And the poor? Poorer! And even killed! (I often think the only way out for our violent selves would be an alien attack from outer space! Then, Bush II and Saddam Hussein would have a reason to shake hands: To save Our Planet!) Egads, mamma mia!
* * *
JUST THREE INSTANCES OF UNCHRISTIAN ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITARIANISM
Italians are always copycatting others. Italy is Europe’s Number One
Pirate when it comes to burning software, music CDs and DVDs. Italian
engineers—they do it better!—are forever burning the expensive software
programs of the multinats they work for in The Boot. Bill Gates pulls
at his hairs every day when Italy’s Microsoft spread sheet losses are
calculated. Laissez-faire capitalism! There is a freefall of imitation
in Italy simply because Italians are no longer creating. Learning has
slowed down appreciably. Italians are too “rich” to cognise. It was inevitable,
then, that a San Francisco-type Gay Day would find its way to The Eternal
City—plagiarized to the hilt. This event, held
some years ago, did not please those who command at Vatican, Inc., and
a long line of chubby bishops and cardinals protested in the media against
this homoerotic blitzkrieg which challenged their authority on their
very own home turf.
When the happening was staged, I enjoyed a portion of it presented on
the then Italian left-wing TV station (RAI3), and it looked to me that
everyone was having a wonderful time, and the music and colourful get-ups
of the participants were brassy, lively and creative. I wished I could
have seen more. I felt I had lost an occasion by not seeing the affair
in person in Rome. Many human rights’ activists joined in on the frolicking,
and some of my favorite progressive Italian political leaders marched
along with the predominantly homosexual participators. The gay pride
demonstration was freewheeling and in good taste. Sadly, it was an exception
to the rule. Italy lacks these spontaneous get-togethers and it is too
bad there are not many more of them and of all types and considerations.
It is further disconcerting that homosexual groups are among the few
with courage enough to offer these possibilities to us. But, what can
we expect of a “thoroughbred” nation in via di estinzione!
Late that same evening when not only all kids but most of Italy was in
bed, Low and Behold!—and on the “pinko” RAI3—a gay Roman Catholic priest
was interviewed on the out-of-prime-time TV spot. The priest was dressed
in civilian clothes without any insignia which might tell us he was a
religious leader. The interviewer asked him about homosexuality in the
Italian priesthood, and the cleric responded that he thought at least
60% of the priests in his Roman diocese were gay and the figure was probably
even higher within the confines of the sumptuous Vatican City. The RAI3
telejournalist then quizzed the priest on another matter: “Why no priests
at today’s Gay Day?” “Because,” the un-cassocked one said, “we were afraid
we might lose our monthly stipend (1,300,000 lire; about $600 at the
time) attending the homosexual gathering.” The interview tailed off at
this point, and no further follow-up questions were sought about this
subject. An important topic for this reason: The Roman Catholic church
goes out of its way prohibiting homosexual debate, condemning homosexual
relations among its members, and referring frequently to the Bible’s
condemnation for all good Christians of such sympathies. (All homosexuals—even
gay priests—should be happy that the Roman Catholic church does not burn
them at the stake any longer as was done during medieval times!) In other
words, the Roman Catholic church is against homosexual alliances but
tolerates them among its very own clergy! Exitus acta probat? Are homosexual
priests a novelty? Have they cropped up recently because the church cannot
find heterosexuals to fill their vocations’ coffers? Is there a secret
homosexual organisation (such as the Order of the Knights of Malta or
Opus Dei) which represents the interests of homosexual priests and nuns
throughout the Roman Catholic world? Is the Roman Catholic church sponsoring
a secret club for homosexuals?
II.
Roman Catholic dioceses throughout the world are loaded up with stock
portfolios that would make Warren Buffet blush with shame. And the
property holdings of The Eternal City would make the eyes of all Walton
family members bug out with envy. With no taxes to pay on their investments,
church fathers enjoy a very special, supernatural place most mere mortals
cannot. They do not even have need of the likes of Arthur Andersen
and Company! They just keep rolling along…. Their plunges are the blue-chippers:
Lockheed Martin, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Raytheon, Rayovac, General Electric,
General Motors, et alia. Stop in and ask your local bishop to show
you his stock portfolio. What is good for the defence industry is good
for The Almighty! Here again comes an exitus acta probat. During the
2003 Iraqi War, and other bellicose entanglements we have witnessed
together since the end of World War II, the Roman Catholic church—through
its Papacy—has announced to the world its aversion to bloodshed and
the misery saddled upon the innocent victims of war. Truly noble, eloquently-expressed
Christian thoughts. Let us pray for peace. Let us pray for love throughout
the world. Let us pray the Dow Jones floats upwards towards the heavens
of the one, true, universal church.
III.
The third exitus acta probat! Science. Every new scientific discovery is looked askance at by Vatican, Inc. Oh, you poor Jesuits! Pierre Teilhard de Chardin just does not hold water any longer. Science is pushing the Roman Catholic church into a corner. Just look at the number of women who rejected church doctrine by using the birth control pill with abandon. The Pill was only a prelude to the many other difficulties with Science the church would fall upon in its modern, topsy-turvy history. Science threatens the credibility of the Roman Catholic church. Jesus Christ changed water into wine, but Bill Gates commissioned a Hungarian refugee to invent WORD! But… If you walk along the corridors of Vatican, Inc., you will see that Science is enjoying a rather prominent place among potbellied cardinals (their Mercedes-Benz limos are gadget-filled) and pristine seminarians (their Pentium 5s and 6s are at their beck and call). Even the loving, pacifist Pope, whom German bishops and cardinals insist should resign because of his debilitating health condition, uses the most up-to-date medicines and medical equipment to keep on trucking along to his next globe-trotting, mega audience destination. We know that the Pope is filled with formaldehyde-like pharmaceuticals, but his longevity is attributed to celestial interference of a divine sort. Is it not miraculous? The Roman Catholic church can have its cake and eat it, too!
* * *
If you don’t believe what I am about to say next, turn off your television,
get off your duff, and mosey on over to the National Archives, College
Park, Maryland, United States where you can find “declassified” National
Security Council documents and situation reports (“released” in 1995)
relating to the loathsome way Italy and the United States of America
have conducted themselves since the end of World War II. The Eisenhower
Library will also be useful to you if your stomach has not already
tensed up too much with indignation. While at the National Archives
pay particular attention to those parts of the dossiers that are stilled
black-lined out by the censors. And if you really are bold and exacting,
ask to see the Central Stupidity Agency’s files on Italy-United States’
relations during the last century!
You will be in for quite a surprise!
Oh, and please remember two things that pop out of the United States’
Constitution: separation of church and state and freedom to know what
is going on behind the scenes in your government!
The Central Stupidity Agency is counting on you to be lazy!
If you disappoint them, they will have less to hide from you!
When the last vestiges of the horror and killing of millions of European
peoples abated and so permitted individuals to think that some kind of
an abruption to World War II’s brutality had been effectuated, the “victors”
began chopping up into teensy-weensy, itty-bitty snippets the devastated
continent. Their egos, thus assuaged, permitted them to celebrate with
joy the “victory.” And off we all went into what would, for decades,
be called The Cold War! It might have appeared for a moment at that time
that Hot Wars were no longer in vogue!
Italy, The Problem Child of Europe (Bettina said that on CNN!), too,
had to be reckoned with. The nation was on its hands and knees. Starving
children glued themselves to Northamerican GIs to acquire the nourishment
they needed to survive. And the Italian government, in a shambles, was
forced—as a consequence of its humiliating defeat—to subscribe to the
dictates of the occupying United States’ forces. Italy, divided in two
by an ex-fascist-pro-United States-pro-Vatican faction in the south and
a contra-fascist-contra-United States-pro-Marxist coalition in the north,
sought desperately to maintain not only its sovereignty and identity,
it despairingly quested to keep in tact its dignity and reputation as
one of the world’s most prolific producers of artefacts and art. It succeeded,
somewhat, after having paid an extremely high emotional and economic
charge.
There arose, in this milieu, an incredible aura of compromise through deceit that was to define Italy-United States’ relations for decades—until the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Is Wall Street going to fall?) The crystalliser of this despicable ambience was the notion that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—decimated from its victory over Germany (the Soviet ambassador in Caracas, Venezuela told me that as many as 40,000,000 Soviets might have been slaughtered during the World War II battle against fascism)—was out to conquer the Universe and that little old Italy was high on its list of pawns-to-be-toppled. Surely, Italy’s geographical position is fundamental to the considerations of both military (Camp Darby!) and economic strategists. We all would agree. Yet evidence is there to support the belief that all of Europe was not in the mood, nor had even the military fettle, to slap on more war paint during that period of déjà vu. It is an insufferable discredit that we may attribute to the Department of Hate and the Central Stupidity Agency for not having the noodles to realize this fact and for which the United States of America will endure, forever, the impertinence of the European Union.And this is where “Wild Bill” comes in! General William Donovan. See him riding up there, on the horizon, his trusty mount, Purity. See him defending the United States of America for all of us. A part of the “Wild Bill” curriculum vitae reads so: soldier and hero…frustrated in his efforts to become a Dominican priest…graduate of Columbia University Law School…intimate friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt…Columbia’s quarterback when it won the national championship…cavalry officer against Pancho Villa…leader of suicide attacks against German machinegun emplacements during World War I…founder of the OSS and CIA…New York State attorney general…defeated (thank goodness!) in New York governor’s election…unsuccessful (thank goodness!) White House aspirant…worldwide “secret agent” for FDR…et cetera. Immediately after World War II, “Wild Bill” rode (floated?) around Europe planting his spies here and there. He even visited Asia to set up secret networks! The Henry “The Carpet Bomber” Kissinger of his day! Remember, “Wild Bill” was the progenitor of a unique Northamerican style of Universe conquering. He was an overzealous individual and you best better have not tempted to contradict him.
“Wild Bill” was particularly “fervent” when it came to the Roman Catholic church, so it should come as no surprise that a trip to Rome for him was a sort of incorporeal event. In New York, the right-wing Cardinal Francis Spellman served as his spiritual adviser, and “Wild Bill” was a member of the Order of the Knights of Malta—two ID bracelets that easily opened Vatican, Inc. doors for him. Our truly outstanding roving citizen made contacts with Jesuit “intellectuals” in Rome and had his brain washed by doctrinaire church officials who wanted to see that “Wild Bill” understood clearly, perfectly that the USSR’s Marxism was not on their muster of favorite dogmas. He fell hook, line and sinker and Vatican, Inc. was off to scaring the entire Universe—through “Wild Bill”—into believing that the Red Menace was out to teach your dog to bite you. (Paul Joseph Goebbels [1897-1945] Nazi propagandist: “The bigger the lie, the bigger will be those who believe it.”) But what was really unscrupulous about Vatican, Inc. was the way it eked out, bilked illicit funding from United States’ taxpayers for decades bluffing that The Communist Conspiracy was out to suck in all of Europe and, then, all of the Universe! (17 May 2002, portal email to Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic: “My dear friend, Jacques, is it possible that Jesus has winked His approval to Vatican, Inc. to siphon donations—collected from Roman Catholic poor boxes all over the world—to boost Italian pension funds and to subsidize the public debt of the bankrupt Italy, and that without these funds the European Union would be responsible for rescuing the corrupt Italian economy? [The Devil made me say it!] Frère Jacques! Frère Jacques! Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Bim, bam, bom!!!) Funny money from Washington was passed to Vatican, Inc. and then to the Democrazia Cristiana political party from where it was drawed off to corrupt DC politicians and their Mafia cohorts with the aim of “defeating the communist devil.” Theories of communist collusions in The Boot were sweetly whispered in the ear of the mouldable “Wild Bill” who scurried to return to Washington with his stark raving mad communist plot stories, and then passed this “Virus of DisInformation” to the likes of Senator Joseph McCarthy, William F. Buckley, Jr., William Colby, James Jesus Angleton, Allen Dulles, James Clement Dunn, William O’Casey, John Sullivan and other exitus acta probat patriotic, spiritual doyens—all members of the Northamerican Conservative Goon Squad. Italian party hacks and their Vatican, Inc. sidekicks chuckled with delight to see “Wild Bill” wrapped in his lunacy, and on one occasion, they even dreamt up the preposterous story that the communists were storing arms all over Italy and were preparing to take over the Italian government by force! The need for another hoard of military ordnance, to equal that of the communists’ “stash,” was fictionalised by the Vatican, Inc.-backed DC, and the sales profits went merrily to Switzerland and Vatican City. (See why, now, I think Vatican, Inc. would be the best Italian Prime Minister!) And why not? The Red Menace had to be quashed, did it not? Eisenhower “warned” us about the threat of the military industrial complex. Only a do-do would deny that much of this spending had been great guns for the world’s stock portfolios—including, naturally, those of Vatican, Inc.! At this crucial point in world history, we see two vultures feeding one upon the other! (“Gli americani credettero di esportare in Italia la loro democrazia, ma finirono per impiantarvi un regime. La colpa è anche degli italiani. Gli americani li avrebbero voluti migliori, ma dovettero accettarli come erano: e si servirono di politici che chiedevano soltanto di servirli.” Ennio Caretto and Bruno Marolo.) Will someone please tell me where the separation of church and state is? Is it not time for a United States’ Senate investigation? (I hope the Islams, the Jews, the Mormons, the Protestants, the Amish, the Anglicans, the Baptists, the Calvinists, the Dunkers, the Episcopalians, the Huguenots, the Mennonites, the Methodists, the Quakers, the Shakers, the Unitarians, and the Zwinglianists read this article before Cardinal Michele Giordano, the archbishop of Naples, Italy, does!) Egads, mamma mia!
A ONE ACT PLAY:
THE RETURN HOME OF
SECRETARY OF STATE-GENERAL
COLIN LUTHER POWELL
TO
ALMA VIVIAN,
HIS BELOVED WIFE
COLIN
Hi, hon. I’m home.
(Colin kisses Alma)
ALMA
Hi, sweetheart! How was your trip?
(Alma kisses Colin)
COLIN
You know how those whirlwind diplomatic tours go. I had more peace during the Vietnam War.
ALMA
Did you get to Italy?
COLIN
Sure did.
ALMA
Pasta?
COLIN
Honey, you can’t believe what great cooks those Italians are! I ate like
a horse. Really great pasta.
ALMA
Did you see the Pope?
COLIN
No, hon. But I did have a spiritual conference with Cardinal Giordano.
ALMA
Did you tell him about your doubt?
COLIN
Sure did, hon.
ALMA
What did he have to say?
COLIN
Well, even if I am responsible for killing millions of innocent people during a nuclear strike, God would not blame me for my actions if—and this is a big “if”—the attack was for a better cause. Michele said something like exitus acta probat. That’s Latin, hon.
ALMA
But, Colin, if you push The Big Red Nuclear Button you are going to have to live with that terrible thought for the rest of your life.COLIN
I know, hon. Michele told me it wouldn’t be easy. But I would have made the just decision—especially if I was to eliminate The Evil Axis people. I will have to suffer and suffer even more. My nights will be filled with sweat-blotched sheets. But all will be for Duty, Country and God. Michele scuffed at me thinking I would suffer so. He said they might recommend me for canonization. Imagine! St.-Secretary of State-General Colin L. Powell! Wow! It will be worth the suffering!
ALMA
Oh, Colin, I am so happy for you! All you need to do now is become President of the United States!
(Alma and Colin walk off together to the bathroom)
THE END
* * *
Every time a new United States’ ambassador comes to Italy, something
special happens. Nothing! No fanfare. No photographers or TV cameras
to greet
the new emissary. It is as if they do not want anyone to know that he/she
has arrived in town. Your rarely see a United States’ plenipotentiary
in the Italian newspapers. I cannot remember if I have ever seen a United
States’ ambassador speaking at length on Italian TV, and it is out of
the ordinary to see one even if he does not utter a single word. Most
United States’ diplomatic dignitaries do not speak the language of the
country they are assigned to. On the contrary, ambassadors to Venezuela
from the USSR and now from Russia and ambassadors to Italy from the USSR
and now from Russia, spoke and speak fluently in their apportioned roles.
I am disappointed that this is the case because an ambassador is a linchpin
who performs a very important part solidifying a rapport between the
two countries he has been called upon to represent. And he just might
make it so that people think that happy days are here again. And why
should we not expect to discover that two nations, brought together with
common economic, social and political motivations, are capable of enjoying
a mutual friendship based on loyalty, respect and dignity? When Melvin
F. Sembler came to The Eternal City last year to begin his reign as United
States’ ambassador, it was ridiculous to note that for eight months before
his arrival, Italy had been without a United States’ ambassador! Speculation
has it that the embassy at 119A Viale Veneto was being “rebunkered” because
an underground map of public sewage facilities near the embassy was found
in the possession of some suspicious characters—they say! Terrorists?
I honestly believe that the United States’ ambassador to Italy cannot
be seen in the open because so many Italian people would want to blow
him/her off the face of the Roman landscape. And, for me, this is an
enormously inconsolable thought even though I think Melvin F. Sembler
is a pinhead nominee of the wretched Bush II who, along with his father,
Bush I, have done more harm than good for the United States of America.
If the United States’ ambassador has to hide behind every Roman column
and ride along secret routes, something is intrinsically wrong with the
Department of Hate and United States’ foreign policy. There is no respect
for its government anymore. And without admiration one cannot lead. One
might pretend to lead, but it will be necessary to resort to making people
fear what you do. This is very dangerous. Listen to what Ambassador Melvin
F. Sembler said in English to Italian word journalists, who asked him
if he spoke Italian ( ! ), when he arrived in Rome for the first time
carrying with him ambassadorial credentials: “I speak Bush!” How’s that
for an arrogant and addlebrained quotation! Would you not think that
the highest ranking United States’ government official might be possessed
of a tad more of humility? No, not a Bush I or Bush II appointee. These
characters want to play hard ball. They expect Italians to bow down before
them who stick the “liberation” of Italy—almost sixty years ago—in the
faces of the now tired of being liberated Italians. Melvin, you are an
imbecile!
IF I, Anthony St. John, WERE THE UNITED STATES’ AMBASSADOR TO ITALY…
I.
I would order immediately—with the consent of the President—all ambassadorial and consulate personnel in Italy to the new United States’ Embassy in Afghanistan.
II.
I would require all new personnel attached to my offices throughout Italy to speak Italian.
III.
I would demand immediately that all members of the Central Stupidity
Agency serving in Italy be returned to Washington.
IV.
I would make a compartment of a Ferrovie dello Statto train my ambassadorial office and travel throughout Italy Mondays through Fridays.
V.
I would create a television program, An Afternoon Communicating with
the United States’ Ambassador to Italy,
to be presented every Saturday from 4pm-6pm, with phone-in and cultural
spots.
VI.
I would apologize to the Italian people on behalf of all previous United States’ ambassadors who served in Italy and did not communicate with the Italian people.
VII.
I would create the United States’ Embassy of the Italian and Northamerican Peoples—open to all without being a clubhouse for representatives of special interest groups.
VIII.
I would seek to open a dialog—in italiano, finally!—with the Italian people.
IX.
I would seek to bring Italians and Northamericans together in a spirit of friendship and respect.
X.
I would seek to enhance throughout the world the role of both Italy and the United States of America as examples of peace and goodwill.
Please don’t think I suffer from some delusion of grandeur! If you knew how inept United States’ foreign policy was being concocted here in Italy and the rest of Europe, my dear reader, you would start running for the Presidency of the United States! Read up on the Birdbrain Ambassador to Italy Peter “Pistol Pete” Secchia, a Bush I nominee. “Pistol Pete,” the dimwit diplomat, in a rare media opportunity, appeared on an exercise bike in his Rome office with a chart before him with the present tense of the Italian verb “to be” written clearly for him and Italian readers!
* * *
ANOTHER ONE ACT PLAY:
WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING
I am in bed with a luscious Irish lass, Meg O’Flaherty, and we are talking
about sweet nothings. We’ve been nuzzling a lot.
Meg uses The Pill, and she has told me on and off again and again and
again that as far as that is concerned, the Pope can go #§£!
himself. OK, Meg.
MEG
Do you love me?
ME
I love you more today than I did yesterday, Meg. And you know it. Remember, you kissed me and stopped me from shaking, sugar dumplin’.
MEG
How much?
ME
Meg, you’re not going to ask me to marry you in church again, are you?
MEG
I just want to be sure.
ME
I told you a hundred times I would marry you in church. Don’t you believe me, honey?
MEG
But you’re an atheist!
ME
So what?
MEG
Won’t you feel funny?
ME
No. I love you. And so what if I have to wear a monkey suit and go to church for you once in my life to get married? Where’s the problem?
MEG
Oh, you make me so happy, darling!
ME
That’s what we’re here for, love!
You know you make me think about that gorilla joke when you speak about
church, hon.
MEG
What joke?
ME
Well, this Irish guy is observing a gorilla in her cage at the zoo. Another guy comes over to him and tells him that he will give the Irish guy $25,000 if he makes love with the gorilla. The Irish guy tells him to go to hell. When the Irish guy returns home, he tells his wife about the story. She is shocked, too, but she tells her husband that that $25,000 sure would come in handy at home. She convinces her husband to make love with the gorilla. He returns to the zoo the next day, sees that guy again, and tells him he will make love with the gorilla under three conditions: 1. He will do it only once. 2. There can be no cameras turned on during the love act. 3. If there are children, they will have to be baptized Roman Catholics!
MEG
(laughing crazily)
That’s really funny, honey!
ME
I knew you’d get a kick out of it.
MEG
Let’s get back to our wedding.
We have a lot of planning to do.
ME
Go to it, sugar pie.
MEG
I can just see you at the ceremony!
ME
I’m going to bring a pin.
MEG
A pin? For what?
ME
For when the priest asks me to love you forever—that’s for what! I’m going to stick myself so I don’t burst out laughing! Only kidding, honey bunch!
MEG
You better be kidding, goofy!
ME
Can we have a Jesuit perform the ceremony?
MEG
Why not?
ME
Thanks, Meg.
MEG
I love you.
ME
I love you, O’Flaherty.
THE END
* * *
I know a nine-year-old girl, Ambretta, and she has thirty-nine Barbie
dolls. A good many of these toys are tattered and torn and most of
them have been
discarded on shelves or in colored plastic bins where they are collecting dust,
lying abandoned. It is Ambretta’s itch to collect even more of these playthings.
She never tells her friends how much she enjoys her Barbies, rather she is
more interested in informing them of the number of dolls she has so far accumulated.
Ambretta is a very sad child. She does not know how to entrust, and if she
relinquishes, there is always an ulterior enticement hidden behind her charade.
I suppose one day she will collect boyfriends and then even husbands, too.
Her joy comes not from being satisfied with what she has, but in craving much
more than what she now is invested with. Ambretta told her parents she would
study catechism in order to receive her First Communion if one qualification
was actualized: that a big party would be held in her honor so that she could
receive a bunch of presents and money and Barbie dolls from friends and relatives.
Her mother and father readily accepted Ambretta’s blackmail. They are heavy
bettors. They never have enough money although they possess two cars and an
apartment by the sea. If you told them that in March, 2001 the garbage dump
at Fresh Kills, which had been the destination of the 12,000 tons of garbage
produced daily by the City of New York, was closed and that the garbage was
now being transported to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and even as
far as 480 kilometers away, and that each and every trailer truck carrying
that garbage could load 20 tons, and there is needed 600 trucks to remove New
York City’s garbage, and that if these 600 trucks were ordered neatly in one
row, that line of trucks would extend 15 kilometers, Ambretta’s mother and
father would whistle this: “So what?” This is not their problem because, after
all, we live in a liberal, maverick economy and if the kitchen is too hot for
you, friend, you can just step outside. Thank you, Steve Forbes!
It is very sad to see these creatures so anxious and unhappy. They appear to be rolling along determined. They are pushing on. They swear things are apt to get better. They call themselves optimists. They will ridicule you immediately if you express any doubt about what they think. In this terrifying business there is but one thing to do: bang your head against a brick wall until it falls down for you. You must be firm, unwavering. All of us together, hitting hard, will get things back in order. You must believe. Trust. Have confidence. And, above all, you must have that mighty Patience! They speak as some Pope does.
Over the years I have been watching millions of other people who, with no more patience, are stealing to have just one Barbie doll and would give their right arm to scrounge through the enormous garbage collection of the City of New York. About them I have noticed something very interesting: They are, with their dirty feet and ripped clothing, truly courageous individuals with a formidable strength of character. Ambretta is a wishy-washy weakling next to them. Not only does she have what she needs, she has more than is required. Things are done for her. She does not have to go out and steal her next meal and that of her family. She is overloaded with that which is necessary and unnecessary. She is heartrending. Ambretta has no ambition. She has no reason to live—except to collect. She would call those “less fortunate” than her louts and she would not be able to stand close to them for more than seconds because their smell would offend her sensibilities and so she would have to escape from them. And they would laugh at her. They know she is frail. She depends on others to do what must be done for her. Ambretta believes with all her heart that she is superior to beings who have less than her. There are millions of Ambrettas in Italy. And they stroll along in a fog of complacency thinking all the while they are secluded by some magic coating—which has sealed them for centuries—and will shield them from all tribulations, mainly economical and political, in the time to come. It is not that they are grateful that the United States of America is at their military beck and call, it is more that the United States is very much privileged to be able to have the option to protect the Italian culture and The Papacy—the control centre, the nerve centre of the world’s Number One religious conviction. Berlusconi may be ingenuous, may be a felon. That does not matter. He is insignificant in the shadow of Vatican, Inc. In effect, very few strings are pulled by Berlusconi, and when they are, they are yanked for a Higher Good.
I do not know how many Barbie dolls Oriana Fallaci possessed, but in many respects Fallaci is a grown-up Ambretta. They are both spoiled brats. One is nine and the other is in the eleventh hour of her bitter, frustrating life. Poverina, Oriana! If you read what she has to vomit, you will be struck by her exceptive fashion to distinguish herself as one who is charged with the urge to be reflective of narrow interests, who possesses desires to own and dominate, who speaks harshly and arrogantly, who is prone to carry on in an unyielding, obstinate and persistent manner, who is difficult to deal with being exacting and crazed to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable, who is oppressive and contemptuously overbearing towards others, who is flawed with a tendency to change by unfair means so as to serve her own purpose, who is psychologically unsettling and obsessed with excessive and blind patriotism, and who is inclined to querulous and often perverse criticism. In short, a sharply unpleasant person. An old cantankerous fart is Oriana Fallaci! Ask her friends. Ask her fellow workers. Who wants to be with Oriana Fallaci? Umberto Bossi? Not even The Carpet Bomber! He threw the snotty one out of his office.
In her latest foray armed with hate and racism, La Rabbia e L’Orgoglio, our beloved belva scratches, with her paws, an extremely sensitive democratic first principle: the right of all people—even atheists!—to believe in what they want to believe in. Oriana is out to show to the world that her Christianity is strikingly superlative to the Muslim creed. She goes on in her tome insultingly and haughtily—as always. And she presents the terms for a Holy War that she, and her Christendom, are ill-prepared to foster unless…
From her luxurious Manhattan apartment, Oriana is expecting that the United States of America should call itself to arms and that all Northamerican mothers’ sons, who should be sent to protect her Christian home base, Vatican, Inc., should ante up now and go to it against those heathens who are inferior to Oriana’s peerless race. You see, my dear reader, the “Holy” Roman Empire is worth your blood spilling! And, of course, the Florentine Culture is even still nulli secundus! Fallaci sees Islamic people worming their way into Italy with the fixation set in their minds to take over all in sight. In her categorical state of suspiciousness, she invents and babbles on about a ruin that will be caused by swarms of Moslems infiltrating the Italian peninsula taking over all in their way! She is so filled with fear and hate one wonders how she can even articulate her ideas clearly without putting her foot in her mouth. And, Oriana is one of the Florentine greats! She lives in New York! And from her air-conditioned Big Apple apartment she wants to send phalanges of United States troops to beat up on those scummy Islamic ones who turned her Twin Towers to ashes. Oriana relies upon her Northamerican hosts to defend her and Christianity. She has no intention of asking Ambretta and her boyfriends and husbands to submit to the dictates of her off-the-wall passions. She wants more ashes. Northamerican ashes. Oriana Fallaci, go home!
My dear reader, would it not be easier to just, brick by brick, change residence our dear Vatican, Inc. and let it fall plump into the elegant Beverly Hills? Why not? There, Roman Catholic fatso cardinals can sign up with Weight Watchers! And Bush II—he said Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher!—can serve as altar boy for the Pope on Sundays! Great for business, no?
My fellow Northamericans, the Europeans are looking to do you in! You defeated them horribly in World War II. They have never forgotten that. They want to see you sink in your own superciliousness. As far as I am concerned, their sick wish is coming true for them. Have you not realized this yet? And, if they do not thrive in their desire to see the United States humiliated, the Asians will carry out this rout for them. Do you think that the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Japanese hold fond memories of your bombings and killings? Don’t be stupid! Go home, Yankee. Make a Dunkirk! Build a Northamerican-Centralamerican-Southamerican axis based on respect and love for all citizens. Bow in shame before the Central- and Southamerican people for the way you have treated them for centuries. They are not your slaves. They want to be your friends. Cry with them! Embrace them! Only they will be able to save you from your Death Wish. Grow up! Show the rest of the world, a good part of it that wants to see you dead and buried, that you can mature and flourish. Give life a chance. Work hard to build a better world starting right in your own back yard! St. Paul said, in the Bible, charity begins at home. Start there. Then go on from there. And, above all, have a nice day!
Let us pray?
Or, let us dust off our copies of
Das Kapital
* * *
Post Scriptum
From A Book of Aphorisms and Quotations
By Anthony St. John:
116. “Northamericans have been obtuse for more than two-hundred years. Europeans have been obtuse for more than two-thousand years.”
Is it not disgustingly obvious?
1 July 2003
The Day Silvio Berlusconi Assumes
the Pro Bush I & Bush II Presidency
of the European Union
Egads,
Mamma mia!
