An Appeal—to

the
United
Nations’
Secretary
General
Kofi Annan—
on behalf of an
Enfeebled Italy

Rome did not fall in a day. Italy will not, either. Italy is falling
apart at the seams. Wherever you look you see the symptoms
of an Italy in dissolution—materially and immaterially.

River beds and sewers are stuffed with debris…there are

fissures in foundations everywhere…roofs leak in offices and
homes…flood walls are in ruins…in the autumn, Italy becomes
the Land of Landslides…cigarette ashes are on the floors of
hospital delivery rooms…cockroaches scurry about on the
surgical wards…coffee cups are contaminated with microbes…
Italian cars begin to fall apart only months after they are
purchased…telephone, electric and gas bills are Russian
roulettes…trailer trucks zoom through residential areas and
spew black smoke in the faces of children…cars are upped on
sidewalks, cracked and broken…one arrives at an airport or train
station asking not when departure time is, but how late the
plane or train is…public telephones are mostly disconnected
and/or vandalised…streets and highways are impregnated with
breaks and holes…lights in buses and apartment hallways are lit
in the middle of sunny days…monuments are crumbling; or, air
pollution is corroding them…downtown areas are gas
chambers…school bathrooms and heating systems often do not
function…there are not adequate sports facilities for children…
stamps come, frequently, without glue on their backs…Swiss
ladies have clauses in their health insurance policies to escape
in an air ambulance flight to Switzerland if they become ill…
banks offer 5% interest on savings then, after a month,
decrease the interest to 2% without advising depositors…crooked
churches threaten to collapse…construction sites—left abandoned for
years—dot the countryside…floods, then droughts, damage crops…filth
is in the air and on the ground…stadiums are wrecked habitually by acts
of violence…hills are polka-dotted with garbage…supermarket shelves
often are missing products…television programming is the worst in
Europe…thousands of companies are in debt or going bankrupt…
fountains are clogged with scum and refuse…repair work is shoddy…
trees and plants are dying whichever way you rivet your eyes…urban
planning is non-existent…public places are pervaded with tobacco
smoke…motor scooters zoom to a standstill…STOP! signs are GO!
signs…ad infinitum…

Rivers of photocopied sheets—blown-down to spy size—accompany

students to their examinations…thirteen-year-olds, during final exams,
ask to be excused to go to bathrooms where they cellphone their
mothers at home to get the answers to perplexing questions…software,
C.D.’s and video-cassettes are replicated illegally with aplomb…
politicians burp on television…prices keep rising; nevertheless,
newspapers report inflation is under control…no one knows what the
public debt is; they are afraid to hold it in view…children go to study
tired of watching television and playing computer games…Italians are
intoxicated with illegal and legal drugs; every Italian home is equipped
with a mini-pharmacy…there are no qualified workers to content
hundreds of thousands of job openings…Italians are the most over-
weight people in Europe…they are dressed to kill: the most elegant
bankrupts in the world…they are, according to the International
Monetary Fund, the most dishonest in the European Union…singers steal
music from others…every third mille lire banknote is a fake…the cost of
a cup of coffee keeps going up; nonetheless, the size of a coffee cup
keeps going down…kids go to school, defy all in authority, call a strike,
order teachers home, and when they are asked why they have walked
out, they respond defiantly: “We don’t know. But, we know we must do
it!”…business is good—for the few…La vita è bella—for whom?…Italy is
spinning its wheels—going nowhere…from the mouth of a nine-year-old
Florentine girl: “When I grow up I want to live with Alessandra. But,
please understand we are not lesbians.”…from the mouth of a forty-year-
old Prato bus driver smoking while driving: “I’ll smoke wherever the ****
I please.”…from the mouths of thousands of Veronese calcio fans
screaming in delirium: “WE HATE EVERYBODY!”…“Of course, that is
stupid. But, it is Italian stupid!”…television audiences are paid off to
clap at the right moment…games are fixed…players are drugged left and
right…banks lend money in excess of legal interest rates…ad
nauseam…

Dr. Annan, is it possible that Italy—in via di estinzione—will be the first

“Wall Street” dynasty to fall after The Fall of the Berlin Wall? Is it
possible that Italy—corrupt and unreliable—will be called one day “The
Venezuela of the European Union?” Is it possible that Italy—bending
over backward to be something it is not—will implode upon itself much
the same way Venezuela imploded in the faces of Henry Kissinger, David
Rockefeller and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.? Is it possible that the Post War
and post-Post War stranglehold on Italy will one day blowback (implode?)
upon Washingtonian blowhards (imbeciles?)? Is it possible that one day
it will come to be that the United States and The Old Soviet Union
managed to sting each other to death—like two scorpions in a bottle—in
their quest for global pre-eminence, with their savoir faire to breed
resentment all over the world? (Who cares about Venezuela and Italy?
Do you?)

Quo vadis Italia? Quo vadis Europa? Le Nouveau Moyen Âge?

I beg you, M. Secretary General, to help Italy come to its senses. In April
of this new year, Italy—well on the way to coiling itself up in the armor of
hate, xenophobia and racism—will be again called upon, at another fork
in the road of its turbulent history, to choose the best passageway. That
election promises to be one of the most important in the last fifty years
of the Italian political drama. Italy has in its hands the power to
legitimize a dangerously ill-conceived rightist movement—ready to
metastasize as the worst of any cancer may and succored by fringe
elements, bent on loathing, in other European states living under the
threat of economic and political instability. Will the fatal choice be made
to hand Italy over to a demagogic squad (Berlusconi’s) brimming with
vituperation and squashing tactics? The consequences for all of us
would be tragic. Italy’s march to the extreme right must be thwarted by
all individuals who respect the principles of democracy and who admire
all others who differ from them.

Written by Anthony St. John on the first of January, 2001 in Calenzano,

Italy