That dangerous den of Communists, which is the Istat, the Italian National Institute of Statistics, has just released data not exactly encouraging on poverty: 8 million are now the poor in Italy, 13.6% of the population. The Istat had been repeatedly attacked by ministers of Berlusconi government on charges of spreading information pessimistic and defeatist. Typical of dictatorships to attack those who say the truth, especially truth that you can not rebut or reduce to an opinion as the one that is in the statistics.
All the premier men are used to deny the evidence, a practice that is particularly easy in the televisions controlled by the regime. The statistics just releases by Istat refer to all Italians who have less than 1,000 euros per month. That may sound not so low, but try to live with it paying not only food and lodging but also transportation, medical expenses, clothing.
Thinking about it for a moment we can understand that now in Italy 1000 euros per month is actually the poverty line. It's a threshold in which could be included many other people, hundreds of thousands of young people without jobs or underpaid. The reason why they do not technically fall in it is because in many cases they still live with their parents or receive help. The question facing all of these and previous data on the public accounts, the total wage of families of Italy and many others, all negative, is how will ever be possible to overcome the crisis if the majority of people are becoming poorer and thus spend less and less.
Another question is why a country where so many are getting poorer and just a few increasingly wealthy elect as head of government a millionaire who seems to pass much of his time participating in parties with many female guests. Maybe because people believe that wealth is a magical power that can be transferred from one person to an entire country. How to call such a conviction? Tragic naivety?
In all this the anti-crisis decree in parliament, such an important name to a mishmash of unrelated rules solely in support of business and not of families and workers, has become a joke between votes of confidence, changes and modifications, but they had stuck inside it another gag law, this time against the Court of Auditors, so that it cannot check the costs of government. The goal is to eliminate any independent body able to criticize the government or simply to tell the truth: the judiciary, the newspapers, even for the Istat they will soon find a permanent solution.
And Italy will become, more than it already is, a train heading for the precipice with the operator who repeats to the blind passengers that everything will be all right. Meanwhile he has a helicopter ready to flee in one of his villas in Bermuda.
Francesco Defferrari
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