FIFTH COLUMN | History

In Prague the dear beloved Soviets
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FIFTH COLUMN
Of Marcello Veneziani
Like today, in the night between 20 and the 21 August fifty years ago, Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia and crushed the Prague Spring dream of freedom. They will talk about it adequately on TV and in the newspapers? They will also remember this shadowy side of '68? They will remember the infamy of those who defended them and took their side, as the Italian communists did? Or they'll say it's been too long now, and therefore we can talk about fascism and Nazism every day, dead 73 years ago, but we can no longer talk about communism, which is much more recent and present?
It should also be remembered that a part of the Italian communists dissociated themselves from the PCI and condemned the Russian invasion, as the Manifesto group did. But with a small detail: they did not dissent to embrace socialism with a human face but to pursue a much more inhuman socialism, the Chinese one, with Mao who with his cultural revolution was much bloodier than Stalin and Brezhnev. In a debate in a hall of the Chamber opened by Napolitano, a few years ago I remembered the silence of the PCI regarding the revolt, the contempt towards the insurgents and the silence of the party and L'Unità towards dissidents, come Jiri Pelikan, which was then "adopted" by Craxi's PSI. Fassino pointed out to me that, on the contrary, the PCI had supported Prime Minister Dubcek and socialism with a human face. Right, until Dubcek was in power, tolerated by the Soviet Union… But later, when the tanks arrived, and there was the revolt, an embarrassed silence fell and the orthodox thesis prevailed, supported precisely by the communist right of Amendola and Napolitano, that those who show solidarity with the insurgents are playing the usual lurking reaction game. The Italian communists aligned themselves with the Soviets, like in Budapest before, in '56, and to Gdańsk and Szczecin afterwards, in the '70s. Furthermore, we must not forget that until 1978 the funding for the PCI and L'Unità continued to come from the USSR, and the contributions from the Italian-Czechoslovak Association continued to arrive. That's how it was in '68, the Soviet tanks lost a few r and for the local communists they remained the dear beloved Soviets... Read More

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Actuality | FIFTH COLUMN

Benetton Maletton
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FIFTH COLUMN
Of Marcello Veneziani
The Benettons not only produced sweaters and managed highways but were the first local factory of global ideology. They were not only sponsors but also precursors of the ideological alphabet, symbolic and sentimental of the left. They were the bridge, it's worth saying, between the multinational interests of global capitalism and the Americanization of the planet, with their profits and their marketing and anti-racism messages, against sexism, in favor of society without borders, lgbt, transgressive and progressive. Their campaigns, entrusted to Oliviero Toscani, they tried to unite the shock side, which often bordered on bad taste and a punch in the stomach, with the progressive humanitarian message: multiracial society, without borders, without distinctions of sex, of religions, of ethnic groups and peoples, with special attention to minors. Remove barriers everywhere, except at toll booths, where it comes to taking tolls. Benetton recently also carried out humanitarian campaigns on immigrant boats and launched a video "against all resurgent racism". The connection between sermons on the skin of the desperate and selling sweaters or charging cars tolls is mysterious. Read More

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Actuality | FIFTH COLUMN

Count of miracles
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FIFTH COLUMN
Of Marcello Veneziani
He will be a walk-on, but Giuseppe Conte makes an impression at Palazzo Chigi. So far in his seventy-day trip around the world he has never made a mistake, a phrase, a statement. The only gaffe belongs to his previous life, when he wrote CVs to bulk up a bit. Now there's no more need to argue, in two months he created an enviable CV, reality surpasses rumor. In his speeches perhaps he will keep to the obvious, on the generic, doesn't decide much, it merely entertains, repeat, simulate; but the little he said and the very little he did, he said it and he did it well, without ever going unbalanced. He kept himself on edge with a prodigious balancing act, than even the tightrope walkers at village festivals, those that in our Puglia we called tarall'e Zucchere. He managed not to displease Di Maio, Salvini and Mattarella, indeed he gave the impression of agreeing with each of them. It is Padre Pio's last miracle to demonstrate that nothing is impossible, even that a Count suddenly becomes prime minister, without firing a shot. And don't be attacked by anyone, print included. Read More

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FIFTH COLUMN | Non-fiction

The League of Brothers of Italy
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FIFTH COLUMN
Of Marcello Veneziani
When Salvini and Meloni were not yet born, was born in Italy, from the womb of The Bourgeois, the League of Brothers of Italy. The father was naturally Leo Longanesi. He dreamed of giving birth a national movement, conservative, popular and bourgeois, that he wasn't neo-fascist, liberal let alone Christian Democrat. But it was seriously post-fascist, since he noticed Longanesi: “Our democracy has only one evil, there is only one defect: that of existing as an opponent of fascism; to live it finds no other justification than that of fighting a dead fascism with Mussolini. Thus we witness a struggle of vertical corpses against a horizontal corpse.". Fantastic. It was the 1955 e 63 years later we are at the same point, even with the grillini in government.
Then and now, there was a need to invent oneself, a movement that represented a large and excluded world, or poorly represented, antagonist to the left, to clericalism and progressivism. We were in the Christian Democratic era, the communists had not yet been admitted into the antechamber of governments, Regions did not exist, Italy was recovering greatly at least in terms of well-being, he had found an acceptable compromise with the past based on oblivion, there was an economic boom and Italians were giving birth a lot, especially in the south. What should we say now, that the world has changed, we are in the European Union, debt is skyrocketing, the regions have destroyed us, we are full of migrants and empty of young people and elites, Italy is duller than then, they no longer have children and the dead outnumber those born? That we need a League of the Brothers of Italy... But the League exists and, if within a month the mood of this psychotic country still doesn't change, it is now even the first party. At his side, small and vainly looking for his visibility and his role, there is what remains of AN and the MSI, called Brothers of Italy, actually led by a sister from Rome, good and incisive on TV. Read More

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Actuality | FIFTH COLUMN

The physicist against the homelands
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FIFTH COLUMN
Of Marcello Veneziani
Even the physicist Carlo Rovelli wanted to align himself with the Permanent Theme: attack patriotism because it turns into nationalist poison, Nazi and racist, and sing praises to humanity without borders. He wrote a long article yesterday in Corriere della Sera entitled "The only nation is humanity".
But why do we have to translate love of country with its violent and racist degeneration, it is not possible to love and protect your own nation, their civilization without degrading into xenophobia and racism? When we talk about religion, perhaps we reduce it to fanaticism and religious persecution? When we talk about family, of paternal love, maternal branch, we must necessarily reduce it to the abuses and abuses sometimes committed in its name? And changing sides, because when we talk about equality we don't immediately associate it with the memory of the Jacobin Terror or the horrors of communism in all its regimes? Or when we talk about freedom we perhaps reduce it to the abuses of freedom that lead to violence, to drugs, to oppression and arbitrariness?
The patriotic love, the natural and cultural bond with one's nation and its traditions, it is a fundamental need of the human soul and belongs to every era and every civilization. There are various ways of understanding that bond. Today, the most coherent way is not to close oneself in armed tribes against each other, but integrate nations into broader contexts, like Europe, and recognize mutual legitimacy and value of nations, yours like mine. But you can love humanity starting from your own city, from their own land, from your country. Feel solidarity starting from those who are closest to those who are further away. Read More

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FIFTH COLUMN

In the hands of who we are…
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Image result for i believe in god almighty fatherFIFTH COLUMN
Of Longinus
Is called Francesco, ha 73 years, he is a retired worker and lives in Maldola, a small town in the Forlì Apennines. His daughter Elisa, 45 years, She has been brain damaged since birth. The day before yesterday morning, all 8.30, before entrusting her to the minibus that would take her - like every one, and 12 years – in a Service Center, Francesco fired a gunshot into Elisa's head, who died instantly. Then, Francesco turned the gun on himself and shot himself. He is now in very serious condition, while Elisa's mother is still in severe shock. Francesco was afraid he couldn't do it anymore, he was worried about not being able to continue to support Elisa's expenses and above all he was anxious about his daughter's future. What would happen without him and without his wife?

A story like many, it will be said. Yes, like too many. At the beginning of March, in Florence, a man of 84 years, Warring, he took his hunting rifle and shot his wife Gina, 82 years old and to his daughter Sabrina, 44 years, tetraplegica. Him too, like Francesco, he was afraid of the future.

Another Francesco, Instead, who has no fear of the future, and therefore of death, because he shows that he does not believe in Hell either, much less, in the immortality of the soul, it desecrates the contemplation and prayers of monks. Read More

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FIFTH COLUMN

The first emergency to face
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Image results for no mosquesFIFTH COLUMN
Of Longinus

“I invite you to fight the unbelievers, cut off their heads with your swords, blow their heads off with your explosive belts. It is necessary to break the skulls of the unbelievers and drink their blood to achieve victory”, he said to children aged between 4 and i 10 years the president of the Islamic cultural association 'Al Dawa’ of Foggia, as shown by the wiretaps arranged by the investigators and published by the newspapers. The magistrates explain that the man was talking “of the obligation to destroy churches and transform them into mosques, identifying Italy as the target of terrorist activity”. The man was arrested, they seized assets worth 370.000 euro and its center, also used as a place of prayer. In Turin, in recent days, an Italian-Moroccan was arrested for “participation in the Islamic State terrorist association”. E’ considered the author of the first ISIS propaganda text in Italian. Some Italians who converted to Islam are also involved in the investigation, as well as citizens of foreign origin: the alleged accusation is of having carried out a campaign of radicalization and proselytism on the web. The investigation began at the end of 2015, when the Italian-Moroccan agreed to a two-year prison sentence, with conditional suspension of sentence, for incitement to commit crimes for terrorist purposes for the publication on the web of a series of ISIS documents. Even in Milan, Napoli, Modena, Bergamo and Reggio Emilia, searches were carried out by the police against individuals believed to be linked to Islamic extremist circles.

In Italy, people of the Muslim religion are estimated to be 1 million and 700 thousand. In this data – deducted from the nationality of origin – neither are the converted Italians counted (around 80 thousand, the estimates say) nor former foreigners who have acquired Italian citizenship. Based on data from Study and Research CentreIDOS, there are 8 officially recognized mosques, including the Great Mosque of Rome, active from 1995 in the Monte Antenne district, the largest in Europe, built thanks to the economic investment of the Saudi royal family, which still contributes to its existence today. I cultural centers, acting as places of worship – some large, many obtained from basements, warehouses, cellars, garage – are estimated, because there is no precise map, in approximately 800. Islamic cultural associations are approx 400. Read More

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FIFTH COLUMN

Hell is empty because all demons are on Earth
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Image results for good politicsFIFTH COLUMN
Of Longinus

The author of this column could indulge himself at this moment. Comment on the vote of 4 March or make predictions about the new Government or deal with the two illustrious losers, who can't stand aside and have become two loose cannons: Berlusconi and Renzi. The first is interested more than in the leadership of the centre-right - now definitively lost to Salvini and which doesn't matter much to him – to have control of the executive, decisive for the legislative protections of its companies and their stock market listings. The second who – between a game of tennis and skiing – is racking his brains to immediately get revenge, knowing he could count on his troops in Montecitorio and Palazzo Madama, which I am sue in the sense that they were chosen by him and are faithful to him (at least on paper). Berlusconi, more than Renzi, seems at the mercy of events. Of course, he didn't expect the boom of the League and, recovered from amount which he received right in the face, he is plotting with his only possible interlocutor: Renzi, precisely, as the everlasting Maurizio Lupi underlined in recent days, than after five years of supporting the opposing party, he returned tosheepfold, re-elected, passing through the fourth component of the center-right, that more than one gamba it appeared to be onetoothpick. The vote buried the agreement that had already been made: the reissue of Covenant of the Nazarene, revised and corrected, which relied on an electoral law tailor-made for this outcome.

Having said this good news and stopping here for the moment, Longinus – which is called that for a reason – wants to deal with an apparent out-of-dateness, which we will see how it also affects the vote of 4 March and what outcomes it may determine. Read More

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