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Italy I would like to refer to is not Italy stretching from the Alps to
Sicily about which we all know not only what we studied at school, but the
daily events we take part to as well. I will use the ancient name of Italy
to talk about that country going from Reggio Calabria to the Piana di Metaponto,
where Scanzano Jonico is situated, the latest dustbin being designed by
the Italian Republic. It is now an official dustbin (even though obligingly
going to be retracted after the resistance of its inhabitants and their
politicians threatening to turn their back on Forza Italia and Berlusconi).
In this State of ours we celebrate and cheer everything, from the pigeons
fed by the tourists in Piazza San Marco to the beef ribs produced in Val
di Chiana, from Raffaello's frescoes in the Chapel of Scrovegni to Juliet's
balcony, from Lupa Capitolina to the Torre degli Asinelli, from Milan, capital
of the Western Empire and former bishop seat of Cardinale Colombo, to Pavia,
capital of the Longobard reign. What they never talk about is pre-roman
Italy, its civilised not imperial civilization, which was imperially destroyed
by very civilised Romans; they never talk about its ancient name, which
the Romans themselves must have considered as connoting the most vital part
of the country to include in that name also Rome and the colonies being
founded in Pianura Padana.
Virgil's humble Italy (at the time of the poet and imperial August) was
far humbler in its southern part, in these regions that had given their
primitive name to the whole peninsula, and which the Romans called Lucania,
a dark land rich of thick woods, and Bruzio, the land being inhabited by
their fierce enemies, the Bruzis (or Bruttis), that land where we live today.
The Romans destroyed their original identity. Since the time of that civilised
destruction, for over two thousand and two hundred years, these regions
have had a humble aspect. Their political history is joined to that one
of the strongest nearby regions: Sicily, Neaples, Taranto. Their social
and human history is different. Being closed between inaccessible hills
and a long coast, during the Middle Ages these populations wrote again their
identity, created new traditions, worked out new myths, worshipped the Virgin
Mary more than other saints, founded a new economy.
It would be nice to learn (or remember), for example, that until the times
of the Borboni, no other Italian and only few Europeans ate as much meat
as Calabrian and Lucan people did. Surely they did not eat steaks coming
from Val di Chiana, but from undistinguished pigs and vulgar lambs reared
in the premises, as well as game; hunting was an activity our ancestors
were very good at. The lack of meat, "we could have meat about once
a year", is a conquest, a poetic narration belonging to the patriotic
history of the United Italy.
Chestnuts are very expensive today, but there was a very large production
in state woods in the past. The price was determined by the work necessary
to collect and shell them. While wheat was abundant in Campania, Puglia
and Sicily, it was lacking here. Producing wheat was very tiring and hazardous.
The only happy area to be taken into account for the production of wheat
was Marchesato di Crotone, where on the hills it was rainy in winter and
wet in spring owing to Sila lying behing.
Marine was really active in the Stretto, because of the trade between Sicily
and the mainland. Messina port was a nerve centre in the Mediterranean courses
for the export of silk and supply of lemons, which were sailors' medicine
to prevent scurvy. The ancient Marine was so active that the Christian fleet,
going to sail from Messina to face the Turkish fleet (for that renowned
battle of Lepanto in 1571) accepted Bagnara women who offered to take part
in the battle with their boats. These boats must not be so small as we could
imagine, if they sailed from Messina to Greece allowing our sailor women
to fight hard.
Fishers, boats and fish were present along the coast. Sea boroughs must
be inhabited by agile and frank people since, until the first half of the
eighteenth century, pirate raids from Saracens were overhangingly menacing.
The transport of the catch of fish to the hilly centres is marked everywhere
by little villages set along the paths going up from the coast to the hills
and mountain. On the other hand, the sea was the only way of communication
in the past. Speaking of that, we must not forget that Calabrian and Lucan
Italy exported a great deal of goods such as, for example, firewood, timber,
figs, oil, wine and above all, silk and sugar.
While denying itself, the following Italy plans to dirty and pollute - more
than it has already done - the primitive Italy. Surely the government assault
will be pushed back. But there are things polluting more than uranium waste
such as when unadvisedly accepting values which do not match to our peculiar
identity. We have interiorized the idea of periphery, captiously stirred
up by Italy and Europe. The answer to be given is not stopping being European,
but being still ourselves, thus trying to build up again our cultural identity,
destroyed by the union, as our ancestors did in the past.
(Traduzione dall'Italiano di Marinzia Cordiano)
Surely the pedantic teachers of the nineteenth-century positivism deceived
themselves - someone being naively still revered by some home socialist
followers of Pertini - when they imagined that human history was a virtuous
and linear process. In the old world where I was born, Mafia did exist,
even if on the fringes of the town layout. It existed in the provinces of
Palermo and Trapani that had been the breeding-ground of all European revolutions
for a millennium. The rest of Sicily was "babba", good, hospitable;
it was surely suffering but from very different problems. Also Mafia existed,
even if mantaining a very low level, in some places of the province of Reggio
Calabria, in the villages near the Stretto, in some little towns of Piana
and at Siderno, Caulonia, Grotteria, Platì, San Luca. The humble
part of Calabria survived around and was mild, resigned and starving. Today
Mafia is something global. It lives and flourishes on drug peddling all
over the world. After the United States, Cosa Nostra is the greatest economic
power in the world. Drug is in the centre of the civilised world along with
the six fleets sailing the seas to carry the order of the USA capitalists
everywhere. The rest we can see is not substance but chance.
The South lends a legion of soldiers and some captains too, being tribally
drawn up with Mafia, to the production and peddling of hallucinogens. In
the planetary empire of narcotics, Platì's Mafia is just a pawn in
the game. There are always people, however, especially among the servile
Italian journalists, who love looking at the mote in southern people's eye
and cannot see the beam in the eye of the inhabitants of Tuscany and Padania.
That's the way of the world today, in spite of Victor Hugo and Les Miserables,
worn out relics of the civil consciousness of the past. Platì is
guilty, the rest of Italy is civilized, virtuous, blameless. Just as well
they are, but we are not, as our home Rigoletti can see!
As flashlights to and from a far lighthouse, on the top of a hill, ghosts
of ancient truths cross my mind being intermingled with today cheerful lies.
Faith, civil courage, public dignity, struggle for the moral and material
emancipation of every man, woman, family, need of both private freedom and
social equality alternate to deceitfulness, ambiguity, fraud, cheat, abuse,
usury, ungratefulness, mockery, the overweening importation of reaganian
ethics and the askarism marking the local side of the union history. Among
the ghosts I can see a true man, the bishop of Gerace. If I were a believer,
I would kneel close to him, praying for my people's salvation as they have
lost their humanity.
(Traduzione dall'Italiano di Marinzia Cordiano)
An only cause can be blamed for the southern disaster: since the very first
day of its union the national state has wanted a negative selection of the
political class to be imposed to southern people at any rate. That class
has to save face to the national union, supporting, with its electoral weight,
the economic efficiency of the regions of Tuscany and Padania. If the interests
of southern regions coincide with theirs, that is well. Otherwise, so much
the worse for the south! That is the material constitution, in force for
145 years. In the south only stupid and vain men, rascals, cold-hearted
and servile people are entitled to gain the direction of public affairs.
They pretend to be men but they are Rigoletti instead, jokers being paid
to entertain the master who, as a sign of his condescension, even cuckolds
them.
But it will be said: the representative apparatus of the other regions works
well with this system. Who denies that? What is to be rejected is that a
system which does not work here is to be still working , on the ground that
it works elsewhere. Beyond the circumlocution, the dyscrasia is in the fact
that in Tuscany and Padania, the public activity is close to the civil society,
while, in the south, the public body has been arranged in order to favour
Tuscany and Padania, not to be close to our civil society. In addition it
is blocked in its spontaneous evolution as excesses ( general saving) are
eternally drained to the north by a banking system which is bijective. In
this social formation of ours, condemned to the stagnation, we have a public
sector which is extraneous in that it is conceived for an evolved and rich
social formation.. For us it represents the only progressive economic force,
the only one being capable to reward the employees properly, sometimes the
only one to offer new occupation. All that gives the politician an innatural
power, which is unknown elsewhere. A power depending on an extraneous State,
not suited to the southern civil society. What is extraneous or internal
to the state system also represents the watershed between the supporters
of the united and indivisible Italy and the people who do not believe in;
between people who gain on Garibaldi's legacy and people who suffer from
such legacy; between the children of poor people who die for their homeland
with an innocent rifle in their hands and the children of poor people, without
country nor God, with a gun in their hand still burning for the versed blood.
(Traduzione dall'Italiano di Marinzia Cordiano)
This chapter is quite scholastic. You can skip it if you want.
Man is very different from other beings. Some people think that every man
is the product of a divine plan, others believe that man is only more complicated
and intelligent than other living beings. Anyway, it is sure that man lives
in groups. "Man is a political animal", that is to say a social
one, as Aristotle wrote 2400 years ago. In fact, since some age in its evolution,
every group, inevitably, has been given a political structure, some laws
and rules being imposed even by strength. No group is eternal, neither law
is. When the group grows bigger and becomes a nation (and from now onward
every group will become a global nation) few laws of the past - the Tables
- are made larger to become codes; huge codes with hundreds of thousands
and perhaps million of rules. The two movements here mentioned, along with
other collateral movements, constitute what we call history; a word that
originally meant only story and that today is redundant of complex meanings
and originates several and often diverging interpretations.
As other beings living in group, every human group tends to settle in a
territory permanently, and as a rule it defends that territory at the cost
of its members' life ( living at that moment). Very often a group attacks
another group so as to enlarge its own territory and take possession of
other people's resources, or to subdue the autochthons and exploit them
( that was frankly called slavery by ancient people while today it is hypocritically
named civilization or, if you like, western civilization).
Not always is the struggle between groups or nations fought on the battlefield.
There is also a commercial struggle. In the exchange, both the buyer and
the seller gets his advantage (that is the same measure for both). That
is both true and false. If we stop time, mentally and bookishly, in order
to ignore the past and the future, the exchange always seems to be equitable.
If, on the contrary, we observe the exchange in its temporal sequence, no
exchange can be defined equitable. The contractor that by chance is stronger,
charges the price. This phenomenon escapes our notice as we are accustomed
to living day by day. It is a constant instead, statistically proved, crossing
the whole history and even the time of every man's life.
Not only today but for a long time, surely since the Phoenician ships had
been sailing the Mediterranean Sea, a more technologically advanced group
has achieved a prize from the exchange, but it has usually established the
obsolescence of productions that are more expensive and less useful than
those it offers to the foreigners as well. A plastic can is much less expensive
and more practical than leather bags made of goat hide. But when plastics
makes leather bags obsolete, also local craftsmanship, who produced it,
dies as a consequence. This death is contemplated and admitted by laws.
The civilized West, through weapons and blackmail, imposes to uncivilised
people not to limit the competition of their goods and to begin with free
trade. After that they are free to die.
The international competition between old and new products is one of the
sources - the main source, I believe - of the antinomy between development
and underdevelopment. Today, development surely means industry. Industry
does not need a lot of space, to dominate trade is enough for it. Just a
single factory of cotonati produces more kilometres of fabric than ten thousands
hand looms produced in India two centuries ago. Who owns factories fights
openly or undergroundly for other groups not to have them. On the other
hand, the capital concentration necessary to install a modern factory is
possible only where the factories have already been existing for centuries.
Also we have to take into account the technical knowledge, which does not
spread if school does not spread before. In short, industry has produced
big discrepancies among groups, thus enriching rich groups and making poor
groups become poorer.
(Traduzione dall'Italiano di Marinzia Cordiano)
The Mafia of today is enrolled in the paradigm development versus underdevelopment.
With an addition, however. The penetration of goods in pre-industrial villages
has made the ethics of profit spread also in those places where a normal
profit production is at low or very low levels. That is surely the case
with the South. Southern Italy craves for the profit the more intense way,
the lower profit production is. The ethics of the profit was described by
Joseph Schumpeter and Max Weber over a century ago. Weber compared profit
to the predatory wildness of animals. It is therefore the unbridled desire
to make money even at the cost of passing over traditional morality even
eluding or breaking the law.
For big capitalists it is easy to use government and laws to make money.
Following them, also low-class people would do it. Moreover newspapers and
tv, helpful with those who finance them, have done as much as possible to
guarantee capitalistic ethics. But low-class people do neither produce laws
to favour themselves nor use government as a servant. The Mafia of today
is the political impotence assuming the form of criminal capitalism.
(Traduzione dall'Italiano di Marinzia Cordiano)
Let us forget the origins. Talking about that again may be superfluous.
The Mafia we do know had been developing since the last postwar period.
The old Mafia did not have a venal character, or it did only apparently.
Today the southern Mafia is a legion of world animal spirits, especially
in the financial sector. For over 25 years it has been making huge resourses
available to the capitalism of Tuscany and Padania. Without fearing to be
contradicted, we can say that, from the Alps to Lilibeo, the development
of the new urban equipment is to be referred to the money imported by Mafia;
million of billion of old liras. Without the money of Mafia the Italian
economy would have already been bankrupted. Everybody knows that, even those
people who deny. It is as though the capitalistic power had said to the
political power: "You can make strict laws by all means, as long as
you let us use money freely …".
Mafia produces finance both abroad and at home: then it devolves the result
to the national financial system. The latter cashes but pretends not to
see. Actually it pays the journalists lest they might show the intimidated
Italians the existence of a mafioso and corrupted South.
Also the government sees. And given that everybody knows it has seen, it
makes itself seen with the banquet, opening the game of the three cards.
"Who finds it, he wins it.." Nobody finds the right card. Is it
in Milan, Rome, perhaps in Zurich or Frankfurt? Who knows! We are looking
for it in the burrows of Platì. It is easier and even more media.
Television will inform us we have won. We do not believe and go on having
dinner or it will be cold.
On the other hand only naïve people are not joking. Mafia pours material
comfort on Italian people, especially on the southerners. Moreover it assures
to the South that social peace and adhesion to the national state that could
not be possible otherwise. Let us speak properly. Nobody is now willing
to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. As far as the souhern disaster
is concerned, the ancient rule counts: " Lord, help the man who has
already been helped as the poor man has learned.."
Mercoledì 18 febbraio, a Palermo: Nazionale italiana contro Repubblica
Ceca. Un bel primo tempo. Al secondo tempo, un allenamento. Anzi, neanche
questo. Solo un riempitivo. 21 mila spettatori paganti l'intero biglietto.
Se una cosa del genere fosse avvenuta a Milano, i fischi sarebbero arrivati
in Cielo, a disturbare gli Arcangeli e i Serafini. Qui, silenzio assoluto.
Spremersi le meningi, impiegare il proprio tempo e spendere dei soldi per
convincere i meridionali che anche loro hanno dei diritti serve a poco.
Forse a niente, probabilmente è solo un perfido gioco della vanità.
Il limone è un nobile e prezioso frutto. Ciò che dona è
assolutamente unico, impareggiabile. Gli esseri umani lo spremono, ne utilizzano
il succo e quindi lo butano via. Così è il paese meridionale
per gli italiani restanti.
Salvataggio della Parmalat. Tutti sono impegnati a tal fine: il governo,
le banche, la televisione, i giornali, l'opinione pubblica. Si sventolano
le bandiere, squilla l'Inno di Mameli. Si piange. Qualcuno dovrà
pagare, ma non certamente le banche o coloro che ci avevano investito i
loro soldi. Il cerino gira. La gente sarà convinta e alla fine pagherà.
Come sempre, pagheremo tutti, specialmente quelli che non c'entriamo. Sentiremo
il dovere di farlo. E' la Patria, quella di Cavour, che neppure parlava
italiano, ma alla fine lo imparò, quella di Garibaldi, che un po'
lo masticava, e quella di Vittorio Emanuele, che morì senza averlo
imparato. Viva il limone!
Il limone richiama dai precordi della memoria alla superficie della mente
la Jonica Agrumi. Una piccolo ladroneria della gente del Sud, giustamente
affossata. Mai arrivata in Tv. Niente Bruno Vespa a lacrimare. Forse qualche
lacrima dalle parti di Caulonia. Ma Caulonia è Magna Graecia, il
ricordo di un lontano passato, una Città Senza Arte. Senza turisti
tedeschi. Sì, c'è anche il mare, ma le donne fanno il bagno
ancora con il reggiseno. Non certamente l'Italia civile, rinascimentale,
risorgimentata delle antiche Romagne, con i seni al sole, la nobile Italia
di Berlusconi e di Prodi. Un luogo esotico, straniero, quasi Africa. Buona
forse per "Montalbano sono!", ma forse no. Il Sud diviso tra neorealismo,
mafia e folclore. Nonché banche, banche, banche. Banche dappertutto.
Chissà perché?
C'era una volta la Locretta. Poi andò nel bosco e il Lupo cattivo
se la mangiò.
In compenso fiorisce la procura della Repubblica, che prima era del Re.
Il re era di Torino, i soldi erano di Milano, le navi erano di Genova, l'Impero
era in Abissinia. "Faccetta nera, sarai romana… Noi ti daremo
un altro Duce e un altro Re". Le tasse erano di tutti. "Chi per
la patria muor vissuto è assai."
Per sottrarsi alla morte, 30 milioni di meridionali hanno cambiato patria.
1,5 in rapporto a 1 che è rimasto. Ma non temete, non ci uccideranno!
Ci lasceranno vivere a pane e acqua. Parola di Sua Emittenza, nonché
di Sua Condonanza. Poi, quando il Professore prenderà il posto del
Cavaliere, ci sarà tolto il pane e ci sarà raddoppiata la
razione di acqua.
I meridionali sono colpevoli. Cementificano le coste, cosa che non è
mai accaduta in Romagna e nel Veneto. E le riempiono inoltre di rifiuti
- perfino di rifiuti tossici. Cosa che in Romagna e nel Veneto non può
accadere perché i loro rifiuti li vendono a Napoli e a Sorrento,
ovviamente a spese dello Stato, cioè degli operai e degli impiegati
che pagano le tasse.
Bella Italia, amate sponde. Montalbano sono. E Berlusconi non è il
primo e non credo che sarà l'ultimo.
Pietro Bastogi fu ministro delle finanze tra il 1860 e il 1861. Nel 1862
il parlamento nazionale gli concesse l'appalto delle Ferrovie Meridionali.
Lo Stato pagò e i profitti andarono a lui. "Amate sponde."
Privativa dei tabacchi, concessa intorno al 1865 a un illustre banchiere
genovese. A cui lo Stato prestò i soldi che lui avrebbe prestato
allo Stato. Con un termine bancario si direbbe una partita di giro. Ma forse
si trattò di una partita di girotondo. O forse di una partita di
raggiro. Ritornello. "Chi per la Patria muor…"
Il re prese dei soldi? Pare… o forse non pare, ma se pare non si dice.
Per tali meriti, quel re fu detto il Galantuomo, ed è lo stesso che
sta a cavallo sull'Altare della Patria, dove si conservano anche le ossa
di una rappresentanza dei seicentomila e passa italiani di tutte le regioni
che, dopo aver dato i soldi al re, morirono in nome e per conto dell'Italia.
Cose della vita. La vita passa, gli Stati restano. Hanno sempre la stessa
faccia. Nel nostro caso tosta. Italia bella!
Ne cito un altro e poi basta, se no mi toccherebbe scrivere per mesi di
fila. Carlo Bombrini, governatore della Banca Nazionale, l'antenata della
Banca d'Italia. Anche lui genovese. Rubò per trent'anni di fila.
Distrusse Napoli e tutto il Meridione. Quando morì, il patrio governo,
grato, coprì di tasca dei nostri antenati il buco di cassa da lui
lasciato. Ritornello come sopra.
Napoli chiedeva la Coppa mondiale di vela. L'Italia non aveva i soldi. E'
andata alla città di Valencia. In Spagna i soldi della mafia meridionale
non finiscono sempre in tasca ai Tanzi locali. Qualche volta li spendono
anche a favore di città in disagio.
Parma è la città europea dell'agricoltura. Mercé l'opera
del grande Luigi Einaudi e di altri palamidoni padani, e con i nostri soldi,
nel dopoguerra l'industria conserviera italiana, che era ubicata nell'hinterland
napoletano sin dalle origini dell'industrializzazione nazionale e che contava
più di duecentomila imprese e circa due milioni di addetti tra produttori
agricoli e manifattori industriali, è stata trasferita di peso a
Parma e dintorni. La camorra? Napoli è un paradiso abitato da diavoli,
lo sanno tutti. "Faccetta nera, sarai romana…"
Abbasso Napoli, città di Cirino Pomicino e delle chiaviche. Viva
il Parma, il parmigiano, il Chievo e il chievigiano. Città d'arte
e di gente perbene.
L' IT italiano, il centro superiore per la ricerca, va a Genova. Miliardi
di euro, più di mille scienziati a disposizione degli studenti. Ovviamente
con i soldi di tutti. Come per l'Ansaldo e le compagnie di navigazione.
Invece del ritornello, adesso un'esclamazione: ma come, non era Catania
il centro nazionale della ricerca superiore? Ci consola il fatto che il
Presidente della Repubblica non debba pagare il caffè quando va in
visita in una Città d'Arte.
Volendo, a questo punto, è possibile intonare la Canzone del Piave.
L'Unione Europea è un'area daziaria e monetaria continentale. Come
area daziaria, essa realizza il protezionismo sul latte e sulla carne, e sui loro derivati,
nonché minori, e a volte insignificanti, forme di protezionismo a
favore di altre produzioni, come il grano, l'olio e gli agrumi. Detto protezionismo
ha il fine di ottenere il consenso delle popolazioni rurali di Francia,
Germania, Olanda, Belgio e Padana alle politiche protezionistiche di tutta
l'industria europea. Le popolazioni rurali dei restanti paesi e delle altre
regioni non contano. Se contassero, anche i produttori di arance marcerebbero
su Roma, come fatto i produttori di latte, in difesa di una loro QUOTA.
Ma la loro QUOTA è (per esprimerci con la doverosa decenza) un palloncino
gonfiato.
Come area monetaria, l'Unione Europea mira a liberarsi dell'uso del dollaro
per pagare il petrolio. E questo va bene per la grande industria che ha
bisogno di consumare olio combustibile. Per le popolazioni invece il vantaggio
è poco o forse zero. Infatti i governi caricano sulla benzina e sul
gas un'imposta di fabbricazione quattro o cinque volte maggiore che in USA,
Canada e Australia.
Non produciamo latte, non stampiamo moneta, paghiamo la benzina otto volte
il suo prezzo. Portiamo i nostri soldi alle banche milanesi, che poi per
prestarceli pretendono 2.721 inchini. "Faccetta nera, sarai romana…".
Tifiamo per la Reggina. e aiutiamo le banche calabresi a crescere. Non sono
meglio delle altre banche, ma quantomeno possiamo vedere che faccia hanno
i loro padroni.
Articoli, saggi, libri: Vedere in Internet la rivista Fora! https://www.eleaml.org
(*) Nella seconda metà degli anni Ottanta Il Volantino è stato edito da Sergio Lupis e Nicola Ziatara. Era distribuito manualmente ai cittadini di Siderno e della Locride. La tiratura era limiatissima (100 copie), ma il testo veniva fotocopiato e molplicato dagli stessi lettori. In appresso ha avuto soltanto qulche uscita del tutto sporadica e occasionale a cura di Zitara.
Siderno, 11 febbraio 2004
"La rivista elettronica Fora accetta e pubblica gli eventuali articoli,
i saggi e gli altri testi inviati solo se si presentano consentanei con
la linea del Separatismo meridionale, per la fondazione di uno Stato indipendente
e a base liberal/socialista. Questa formula, ormai abusata, nel nostro caso
si specifica con l'abolizione del lavoro dipendente a favore di forme di
collaborazione aziendale (società anonime di capitale, società
cooperative) fra i produttori. Insomma, niente padrone. Il lavoro e il rischio
d'impresa sono unificati in una sola figura giuridica.
"La Rivista ha facoltà di decidere circa la pubblicazione totale
o parziale delle collaborazioni firmate.
"Si prega di non inoltrare corrispondenza nella forma di "lettera
al direttore", che pretenderebbero una risposta ad personam. La rivista
non ha un'organizzazione adeguata a fornire detto servizio.
"Grazie e saluti."
Nicola Zitara
Ai sensi della legge n.62 del 7 marzo 2001 il presente sito non costituisce testata giornalistica.
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