Something important and necessary might be changing in Italy. If you follow the link behind the logo to the side, you will find yourself on the website of an initiative against the Mafia.
The initiative is organised by a group of students, who are sick and tired of having to live under the yoke of this horrible infestation, this illness called the Mafia. They have come to recognise that this old fart club, this league of ancient, stinking criminal arse-holes, should be rooted out once and for all. And they see taking away the Pizzo - one of their most important means of survival – as the best way to accomplish this.
Pizzo is the Italian term for “protection money”. Anyone who holds a business on, let’s say: Sicily, for instance in Palermo, has to pay this Pizzo. It “protects” him against any harm that might come to his shop. The entrepreneur is usually coerced into parting with his money by violence; violence against his business, his car, his family or his house, or even against the property of his clients. So usually the unhappy shopkeeper will start paying up, because that is the only way to stay out of trouble… and probably to stay alive too, because these Mafiosi do not have a soft spot for their victims. They see them as easy milk cows, as people who are to be extorted. The Mafioso won’t really care at all, except for the fast money, for which someone else has done all the work.
Mafiosi have a collective attitude which serves them to justify their crimes; because “it has been like this since we can remember“, so why change? Yeah, why change from being a criminal good-for-nothing dip-shit – who has to steal to survive because he is too stupid to learn a grown up job – into a decent man? Why be honest if you can be a stealing moron?
Well, because for one, the entire world pisses on Italy because of the Mafia. Especially now with a man like S. B. (which stands for Silvio Berlusconi of course, not for Sick Bastard) at the helm. He doesn’t help to even slightly move the country into the direction of a more positive image or reputation either. Italy is in very deep shite, and it is about time that the Italians did something about it. Just a loose question: Is there anyone left who doesn’t see Italy as a rat-hole, waiting to be cleaned up with the utmost vigour? Not me, that’s for sure!
The resistance against the Italian criminal inclination, which saturates the people (by acceptance of the Mafia) as well as the public sector (by acceptance of a megalomaniac Sick Bastard as their supreme “Civil Servant”), is slowly growing. Also internally. The AddioPizzo initiative has positive results already: a considerable amount of businessmen is refusing to pay up and is filing charges against their extortionists instead. (With all the consequences attached…) The anti-Mafia rebellion is gaining such momentum, that even abroad, here in the Netherlands, we are starting to see these initiatives popping up in the press. The “Vafanculo Day” was one, this AddioPizzo is another.
In my own neck of the woods in North-East Italy, Friuli, traditionally an anti-Mafia stronghold, there is increasing concern about the image Italy has outside the country. According to my fellow Friulani, it is in deep dire straits and it has to change, in a positive way, quite “subito”. Some of my family feel highly embarrassed by their governors and they badly want Italy to clean up its act. They don’t want to “fare una bruta figura“, and of course, they hate my cynical laughter every time this topic crosses the table. But, my lack of belief in the Italians aside, they genuinely wish for a real government, with real laws, and real civil servants, just like they have in the rest of Europe.
We’ll see. I know the Italians as a change resistant people, so getting rid of the Mafia or the corrupt government won’t be easy. But however conservative they are, the initiative to exterminate the Mafia is commendable. I will give them my support as soon as I have crossed the Alps this summer. I suppose they need anything they can get their hands on.
