Italians are going to vote. Europe holds its breath

On the 4th of March, Italy will vote to form a new Parliament, and all the polls are indicating that, from the ballots, no clear winner will emerge.
The populist party  5 Stars – an anti-party, anti-establishment movement, born out of the internet revolution, – should get a relative majority but it will be unable to form a government alone and, if it will form one with another party, then, it will betray its founding principle, the pillar on which it had risen.
I am running for the Senate with a center-right coalition formed by Fratelli d’Italia headed by Ms. Giorgia Meloni; by Forza Italia guided by the ‘highlander’ – meaning immortal unless you cut his head – 81-year-old Silvio Berlusconi, and the Lega of Matteo Salvini.
For candidates in the area Asia, Oceania, Africa, the chances of being elected are slim, unless one is an Australian resident belonging to the PD (Democrats of the Left). The PD has full control on the ‘Patronati’ linked to thousand of retired people, seeking their guidance before voting. This is iin clear contrast with our Constitution where at Art.48 if is written that the vote is secret.

Contemporary Italy is in dire straits, assailed by hordes of economic migrants, who refuse to allow the authorities to take their fingerprints on arrival and are without identification papers, and currently with a leftist government which is constantly telling Italians that it is a sign of the times and we should both accept and adapt to it. Well, I am one of those Italians who neither accepts, nor adapts to it.

I regularly write articles, discussing the way in which Hong Kong dealt with the Vietnamese boat people, and how the Australian and Japanese reacted to the chaotic tide of migrants in an orderly manner, then ask myself, why should Italians not be able to do the same?
Another problem is the Euro, the European currency, which cannot function without a full European union, which by now no one wants. When French President Francois Mitterrand wanted to contain German’s economic power, he and his economists thought about a single European currency. C’est magnifique! But with the passing of time, the dream has turned into a nightmare for several countries, including Italy, causing widespread unemployment and deflation.
We are regularly lectured by bureaucrats sitting in Brussels about what we should do with our National debt, and they recommend cutting spending, exactly the contrary of what is needed to revive our economy. With the Euro, our national debt is out of our hands since the Bank of Italy cannot print money and there is no end in sight for such a crisis, with all the corrective measures and tools not functioning. Furthermore, our national sovereignty had been thrown away in exchange for a belated union, and with the Constitution having been steadily compromised by several European treaties.

Let a supercomputer be my Judge!

The baffling decision by a tribunal of the southern Italian city of L’Aquila, condemning to 6 years in jail for involuntary manslaughter a group of scientists, accused to have failed to forecast an earthquake – the news went around the world, rightly covering the Italian legal system with ridicule – had been reversed yesterday in appeal.

The team of scientists called ‘Commission Great Risks’ had met on March 31, 2009, five days before the earthquake which killed 309 people, to evaluate data about a series of light tremors which were recorded by seismographs. They then assured the population, not officially but at a personal level, that all was all right, to stay calm and don’t panic. They were accused of ‘false assurances’ a crime which do not appear in any legal code of any country.

This sentence of absolution has been met with disbelief by the relatives of the victims and even by politicians. Politicians are those who should have taken care of the safety of the buildings which had collapsed and instruct all the citizens on what they should do if there would be an earthquake, like they do in Japan with schoolchildren. While it is understandable the airing of grief by the victims’ relatives and a little bit less is the indignation of those politicians while speaking to the press. It has always been easier to ‘kill the astrologer’ than planning properly for an emergency.

According to Italy’s justice system there is a first degree, then the appeal and then the losers will try the Court of Cassation. Because of this, theoretically, the scientists Bernardo De Bernardinis, Giulio Selvaggi, Franco Barberi, Enzo Boschi, Mauro Dolce, Claudio Eva, Michele Calvi may still end up in jail for this supposed crime. Only De Bernardis, a local head of the ‘Civil Protection unit’ received a suspended sentence of two years. The city of L’Aquila is historically prone to earthquakes.

The judges who had condemned the accused in the first place had clearly bent to popular pressure, which bring back to my mind my pet idea about how to pass sentences. We should take out judgement for complex cases from human judges and entrust the judgment to supercomputers. All sentences, commas, debate, counter debates should be loaded into a supercomputer and then we should ask for a sentence. In a fraction of a second – not months and years – we should get the judgment with the motivations together with the mitigating or aggravating factors. Then such judgment should be scrutinized by a team of wise men detached from the place and the people involved, holding the power to accept it or object to it. Thus no 2003 Space Odyssey and no Big Brother effect would be called into play. I do believe that this is possible and, after the initial glitches, will be good for us all. All mistakes due to human weakness, laziness, false impressions, emotions would be avoided.