From now on, this is by Mr. Pugno.

Meanwhile I’m writing this post they are still looking in the muddy waters of Genova’s port for the last missing victim. I hope that the body will be found shortly in order to give the last rites to the nine victims of this accident.

Now I can’t stand anymore reading about a tragedy that “could be avoided”, that “is inexplicable”. It have to be explained, in order to avoid any more. First thing to be understood is the reason why the ship cannot perform that forward movement that could save the pilot’s tower from destruction. The “Jolly Nero” was built in 1975 as “Axel Maersk”. It has been extended twice, it has been used as a support ship in the first Gulf War, it has been used to transport battle tanks. Always with the same engine, a Danish Burmeister & Wain, one of the best in the world: a two-step engine, reversible. That means that when it comes to step back you have to quit the engine, reverse the rotation spin and restart. It takes a matter of seconds and you’re done with it. Safe and reliable, these are the perfect choice for an engine, for the performance, for a cargo ship. Even a 40-years old engine is reliable if the maintenance is done by the book. The “Jolly Nero” maintenance, according to RINA (*), has been regularly done. Now we know that the engine telegraph was out-of-order, a key factor. It’s quite possible that the valve that is used for the immission of compressed air, useful for the engine start process, just “jumped” blocking the start of the engine after the change of rotation spin.

This is not the real problem, a mechanical failure may happen. Experts says that in the reversible engines that may happen. What I cannot stand for is the way everybody is inclined to ignore that this disgrace is origined by a low safety culture.

The safety concept is to considered before you start to imagine a project, that’s called intrinsic safety, that’s the sum of factors about any building / system is safe regardless human behavior and/or external factors. Let’s think about it. Command and control centers, the likes of an airport, of a nuclear power plant or of a port are the very heart of a complex system and have to be full operational 24/7 in any condition. Was this tower up to the task?

1) The position of the tower

Even if the position of this tower has been chosen in order to ensure maximum visibility why it has been built so near the edge of the quay, so the windows at the top were up the water level? That was vulnerable, even for a small hit. If the tower’s position was ten meters from the quay edge the crash of the “Jolly Nero” will be without casualties. In the 1995 (the year this tower was built) didn’t anybody that the ships were getting bigger and taller?

2) The realization of the tower

A 52-meters tall concrete-built structure, no external staircase. With an external staircase maybe the victims won’t get trapped inside the elevator that dropped down into the sea. Even a fire was more than enough to block this tower.

3) No disaster recovery site

The Italian media spoked at length about the finding of the voice recorder units. The same units were inside the same building where the recording system was operative. Anybody who have to ensure data safety knows for sure that backups are not to be in the same site with the main data sets. Does a disaster recovery strategy cost that much?

4) No alternatives left

After the crash, in order to ensure traffic coordination, a patrol ship from the Coast Guard has to be put on berth to set up a radio traffic control and resume operations with the ports of Savona and La Spezia with a particular attention to the SAR controls. Nobody set up a contingency plan (for a terrorist attack, a fire, an earthquake and so on) in order to substitute the main control center with an alternative solution.

These three questions and many more have to be considered by the project managers, before the start of the project. I think that they care about an elegant structure, with a lesser visual impact on the seaside, that do not block the visual panoramic patterns. Unfortunately in Italy a real safety culture is still to be developed, what it takes are papers and authorizations. Who knows when we will improve?

(*) RINA is an acronym for Italian Naval Register, the authority that take care for safety controls and the respect of national and international technical dispositions about ships.

You may find the prologue here.

Chapter 1 is here.

Chapter 2.

I found myself on my back, panting hard and fast to recover the shock. My rifle was missing, so I nervously fumbled for my pistol then I finally started thinking again, a bit comforted by the familiar weight of the Beretta in my hands.

It was night. A few seconds before I was in the middle of a hot afghan day, how could that be possible? Then I saw that woman, a blonde beauty who was staring at me with her hands raised. Before I could say anything I saw an arrow hit the ground, no more than a few inches from my left foot. What the hell was going on?

«Quick! Come here!»

That lady was right, she got a good cover beside a pile of rocks. As I got there two more arrows hit the ground, right where I was a moment before.

«Lady, what’s up? Who’s firing at us?»

At first all I got back as an answer was a blank stare. Maybe she didn’t understand me or my pronunciation was too harsh for her. I was wrong on both counts.

«We’re under attack, they are the King’s Hunters. They have us outnumbered, you may be our only chance even if there another hour before sunset.»

I didn’t get the part about sunset, but the situation maked sense. I heard cries all around, men and women, all the sounds of melee in progress. It took me half a second to decide. Once a soldier, forever a soldier.

As soon as I got myself out of cover the more and more I felt strange about my steps. I was strangely light and the shadows given by starlight and moonlight weren’t right. As I looked up I understood the reason why and almost I stopped breathing. Two little moons. And a set of stars that I’ve had never seen before. No, that wasn’t Kansas at all. Then an arrow got me square in the chest, pulling me back one pace. I pulled that thing free from my armor vest, barely noticing how its point was broken. The attackers stormed through the thin line of defenders, screaming aloud.

It was time to kill, once again.

You may find a good summary of his public history here, but even a good article is not enough to understand the weight of Mr. Andreotti.  If you take a look at the italian pages of Facebook or if you read our newspapers you may feel a mix of emotions, something between relief and disbelief.

It looks like a collective exorcism, a rite of passing between different generations in our country. Mr. Andreotti was on the political scene for more than 60 years, something between a man of power and a state priest of unholiness.

Aart Klein – Cemetery at night

When I think about this man this image pops up in my mind. Mr. Andreotti never killed a man or a woman but was involved or deeply informed about every goddamn italian major crime. We got Mafia, Camorra and N’drangheta, three organized crime cartels that span their influence worldwide. All of them are in a criminal partnership with the local and national government, give-and-take ploys that undermine the very essence of our nation.

Does Mr. Andreotti knows about them? Yes. Does he got any kind of advantages from them? Yes. Does he benefits from their crimes? Indirectly, yes.

From 1969 to 1985 we got a period of terrorism, we call these the “lead years” from the lead in the bullets. We got bomb in trains and railway stations, people killed in the streets, kidnappings, armed robberies… name a crime, we’ve had it more than once. What’s peculiar of our situation was the involvement of our secret services, of some of our worst statesman.

In those years Italy got a strange role. We always were in the NATO, right? We collaborate with our allies, we do whatever it takes to be a part in the fight, don’t we? It’s quite difficult for me to say a loud “yes”. We were involved with dictators like Mr. Gheddafi in Libya, with Mr. Arafat of PLO, we export weapons and ammo in a looong list of countries under UN ban (South Africa,Lebanon, Syria, the aforementioned Libya and so on).

Yes, you guessed it right. Mr. Andreotti knows about that.

Was he evil incarnate? A demon disguised as a little man? No on both counts. He was a man of power, a man with the self-appointed mission of being at the helm of my country. He wasn’t alone on the bad side. Plenty of people, from his minions to a variety of parasites, were at his side for decades.

His death is a symbol. He was nothing but an old man, curved by his illness and lost inside too many memories in his mind. A good metaphor of Italy.

You may find the prologue here.

Chapter 1.

«We’re in deep sergeant! This is a trap!»

The explosion of an RPG concluded my sentence, like a giant exclamation point. The radio went off, maybe damaged. For a few seconds smoke and debris clouded my vision. All around me my teammates were shooting with all guns in every direction, searching for the insurgents that got us in their crosshairs.

Half of our platoon was a couple hundred yards from us, just over a little bump. For what it takes they could be on the dark side of the Moon. Got my hands full with four soldiers injured and our lieutenant knocked out by a rock in the first five seconds of the ambush. Help was surely under way but even a handful of minutes could be too much in a war. At my right side PFC Armstrong was spraying bullets with his SAW, to my left five other soldiers were gunning with their rifles while corporal Ambrose, our medic, was doing his best to keep our injured under cover. What a way to close my rotation in the AfPak theatre, I was just five weeks from going back home.

The insurgents are concentrated in the north, north-east direction. At least forty men, one on five with a RPG launcher, more than enough to put a small party like us in serious trouble. We were on an investigation mission, with two civilian observers from some government agency. One of them for sure was already dead, killed by the blast of the first RPG at the very start of the fight.

«…incoming! Repeat, incoming on our coordinates! Brace your…»

The radio message was covered once again by the explosions. Our stuff from a drone, enemy artillery, I didn’t know then and I cannot say it now. All around me the earth trembled until I felt myself pulled off the ground. Then a blue light came from nowhere, invading my eyes and my mind with a blinding force. And I fell down, down, down…

Prologue.

Usually you don’t get mail from dead people, not to mention packages.

Two months ago I got a little white box, a package from Ulan Bator. I had to think for a moment to remember that’s the Mongolia’s capital, I was amazed to receive something from such a country. Then I looked to the sender’s name and almost got myself a stroke. Howard Washington, a man dead five years ago. After a while I checked the postage stamp date, hoping for one of those incredible error made by the italian mail system, for a package held for years by the bureaucracy. No errors. The date was from the previous week.

Once back at home I was hoping for a joke. A dark, stupid joke.

Me and Howard got some common friends, people who served with me in the Italian Air Force or with him in the US Army. Nope. As I opened the package my eyes recognized the once familiar handwriting of Howard, his strange habit to add capital letters here and there to hide a message in the text. In the white box I found a letter and a battered paper notepad, standard military issue. I will not told you about the letter, not now. In the notepad I’ve found an amazing story and Howard’s request to tell it to the world, piecing together his sparse notes.

Lance Corporal Howard Martin Washington, MIA and presumed dead five years ago. Disappeared anywhere in the Helmand province, Afghanistan. His comrades found his broken rifle, his leather gloves and traces of his blood. Nothing else. Howard was an huge man, 6′ 4″ with broad shoulders and a gorilla-like muscular mass, always ready for a brawl or can of beer. His friends at the battaillon were ashamed, there was an extensive search to find his body. Even the local village chiefs do collaborate, everything to put away the pressure. “Heavy Metal“, that was his nickname, became another statistic in a bitter war.

(to be continued)

Giorgio Napolitano

In Short.

We’re talking about the re-election of Mr. Giorgio Napolitano as our President. You’ve already heard the news, I will not repeat the obvious. With the re-election Mr. Napolitano got back all of his powers, including the choice of disband this Parliament and place a call for a new round of general elections. It’s interesting to note that this is the first time that a President of the Republic get a second 7-years term. Our Constitution doesn’t put any limit about the number of terms, being the President a non-operative role according to our laws. Italy is a parliamentary republic, like Germany, not a Presidential republic like USA or France. With the “new” President we will have a new start to get a national government, nobody knows at this moment who will be the Prime Minister. What we know is that we got a number of emergencies to be solved ASAP.

Not so short.

According to our laws the election of the President of the Republic is not based on popular vote but is a task assigned to so-called “Grand Electors“. They are all the Senate members, all the House of Representatives members plus three electors from every italian region. Total is 1007. For the first, second and third round of vote a qualified majority is needed (two-thirds of the total), from the fourth round a simple majority is needed (504 votes). The role of the President is not operative, basically it’s a father figure with the main task to protect our Constitution and the final point of reference for all our powers. He’s the honorary chief of our armed forces, the chairman of the high council of magistrature, he formally assign to the leader of the winning party the task to form the new government and so on. He got two real powers; he can disband the Parliament and place a call for a new round of general elections and, due to his high political profile, act as a counselor to the national government in bad times.

So it’s not a surprise that we got in this position well-experienced men (sorry, no women so far). Given the rules described above it’s no surprise that every election is the result of a lot of diplomatic work, usually developed well away from the media. In the first round usually every party choose a different candidate for the presidency, a way to look for alliances and a move to start the unofficial debate between leaders and wannabees. In the history of our Republic the politic scene has been always fragmented, so a qualified majority is to be considered almost impossible to get. Most part of our Presidential elections comes after the third round and the secrecy of the individual votes stimulate a variety of bad behaviors (i.e. senators who announce that their vote will go to the “X” candidate, then they will vote for another or not vote at all).

After the 2013 general election we got four groups in our Parliament; a center-left alliance, a center-right alliance, a party named “Movimento 5 Stelle” and a party named “Scelta Civica”. In order to elect a president an alliance between two or more groups was needed to reach the number of needed votes (504 or more). Being the biggest group the choice of the center-left was the most important, a very important move in the political game. And here comes trouble, big time. In the center-left group there’s a main force, the PD (“Partito Democratico”), that have to set up this choice. Easy to say, harder thing to do. Inside PD there was no agreement about a single name, there are many different little groups who are in a state of war with each other. So the choice was to be shared with their worst political enemy, the center-right group, the pathetic idea was to find the biggest number of votes for a candidate. Meanwhile “Movimento 5 Stelle” (from now on M5S) held an obscure consultation to find their candidate thru the meaning of an internet-based poll; they got a list of ten names and the winner was a very popular journalist, Ms. Milena Gabanelli. After her polite refuse they asked to the second classified, Mr. Gino Strada (a surgeon and a very popular social activist), who refused too. Finally the third classificate, Mr. Stefano Rodotà, accepted the role.

Stefano Rodotà

A word about Mr. Rodotà; he’s a very respected jurist, former representative and former president of a political party, PDS, that was a logical predecessor of the leftist part of PD. For M5S this kind of choice was intended to build a bridge to PD, in order to set up the conditions for an agreement. By other means, this move could be read as a trap, concocted to exploit the inner troubles of PD. We will talk about it at length in another post. Anyway M5S confirmed its choice in every round, blocking their votes on Rodotà. Meanwhile the center-left group and the center-right coalition held their informal talks and an agreement was reached on another name, Mr. Franco Marini from PD. Their idea was a bipartisan election, a 700-strong mass of votes to put Mr. Marini in charge and start to build a new national government.

Franco Marini

Mr. Marini is another good man, and old political fox that could fit the role of the President. But the idea of his candidature was flawed. There was no general agreement about his name, not to mention the consequence of a government with center-right and center-left united. So Mr. Marini’s name falls in the meat grinder, his candidature destroyed inside the center-left alliance. Now it’s important to understand that the position of the leader of PD, Mr. Pierluigi Bersani, was far from strong. Inside his party there are as many as four main groups, plus a number of little associations, all of them screaming for power. After the failure of Marini’s candidature Mr. Bersani plays his last card, the name of most respected leader of the recent past, Mr. Romano Prodi.

Romano Prodi

His name was acclaimed by the PD assembly, then voted with the 100% of ballots. It was a little triumph, a strong name to be proposed the day after to the general assembly, a leader fit to help our country out of its current troubles. The next day the shit hits the fan, bigtime. As many as 101 PD voters deny their support to Mr. Prodi, consuming no less than a political killing of the party. With no solutions less all the parties with the exception of M5S ask Mr. Napolitano to accept a second mandate.

The result is a total failure of the italian political system. A general assembly unable to choose a president, parties and coalitions unable to reach an agreement for the common good, millions of italians left astonished by this show of incompetence. When the final vote was cast there were two images that will remain in my memory; the triumphant smile of Mr. Berlusconi and the attitude of Mr. Bersani, with both hands over his face to hide his expression. So we have an 87-years old in charge and we’re running blind to a new government that will as far as possible from the approbation of italian people.

Hello world, this is Italy.

This doesn’t mean that everything is OK. I’m still a lot worried about my personal issues and stuff and I’m more and more worried about my country, Italy.

For the next few months this blog will be devoted to explain to english-speaking readers what the hell is going on in Italy, what they can expect to happen in the most unusual european country of all history, the only place where drama is not so dramatic and where comedy won’t stop crying.

Meanwhile I’ve to come back as an author too. So every now and then I will post some story, parts of a bigger story I’m setting up. You see, I’m in a bad situation but the word “surrender” does not find a place in my mind. I came from a long, long line of grunts, people who simply can’t understand when it’s over. It will be over when my heart will stop, not a moment before.

See ya.

Why Renzi? Why not Berlusconi, or Bersani, let alone Mr. Grillo? For our friends who are so lucky to live outside italian borders, a little remainder. Matteo Renzi is currently the major of Florence, his previous experience was being president of the Florence’s country. These are administrative roles, all about the city of Florence. He became famous acting as a renovator, a young leader that always ask to the elders to give him room, to let him be at the helm of his party (PD, Democratic Party). In 2012 he challenged Mr. Bersani for the national leadership of the center-left coalition and losed.

The basic question is: being an administrator in a 550,000-sized town is enough to get what it takes to lead a 60+ million country?

The secondary questions are: yelling about the need for a change is enough to set up a program to lead Italy?  Being on stage 24/7  for the national media is enough to became familiar for the audience but is it enough to get respect?

You have to think about Mr. Renzi as the perfect sample for “talking about nothing” when you see him almost everywhere on the national media, when polls about his popularity are diffused at least weekly, when he shows up even in the news programs. The only thing he haven’t done so far is being in the meteo forecast but there’s still time before the next round of general elections. What is he talking about? Nothing but himself and the common bla-blah that everybody can get from a newspaper these days. New ideas? Zero.

So, what all this fuss is about? Nothing but hot air.

It’s also time to debunk a common-used myth. The one about “us” and “them” when it comes to common citizens and politicians. It’s quite easy to depict “them” as enemies, parasites, criminals. It’s a common practice for populist to point the finger at “them” and start a infinite list of accusations. “They” are the bad side of society, without “them” we could  live in paradise.

This is nothing but bullshit (excuse me for the language). “They” do not come from another planter, nor “they” are from another country. Politicians are like us, in every way possible. It’s our fault if they get re-elected, it’s our fault if “they” use the State in order to facilitate their friends and companions. It’s not “us” and “them”. It’s us against us.

Italian society is not build around the concept of a community, about the idea of common good known as State. We’re in the logic of tribes, little and big, each one in competition with all the other tribes for resources and trade. So our politicians are no more than little feudal lords, each one with his/her court. In a situation like this one is a miracle that we continue to grow up talents, people who got what it takes to be bright as stars.

Nominally we are a Republic, a Democracy. We have all the instruments needed and we use them every now and then. But in the background you can still smell the fires and you can always hear the voices of the lords, murmuring new ways to twist and turn our laws. It’s true that we’re gonna change. The result is not so predicable, nor it’s so sure that it will be for the best.