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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/21/290090/italy-risks-new-round-of-destabilization/
Berlusconi targeted, overthrown by CIA?
Webster G. Tarpley
Feb 21, 2013
This coming Sunday and
Monday, Italians will go to the polls to choose a new parliament and
thus a new prime minister, while setting the stage for the election of a
new president of the republic shortly thereafter.
Most indications are that the most numerous faction in the coming
parliament, with just over one third of the votes, will be the Common
Good coalition, composed of the Democratic Party (the remains of the old
Italian Communist Party), the Left Ecology Freedom movement of Nichi
Vendola, which includes various paleocommunists, and some smaller
forces. This coalition is led by Pier Luigi Bersani, a colorless
bureaucrat. Ironically, despite its leftist rhetoric, the Common Good is
the formation most likely to continue the austerity policies which are
currently tearing Italy apart.
Coming in second with almost 30% should be the center-right
coalition around the People of Freedom, the party of the irrepressible
former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, joined by the Northern League
of Umberto Bossi, a xenophobic group which also articulates the
resentments of northern Italy against the south, the Mezzogiorno.
Another important leader is Giulio Tremonti, the former Minister of
Economics and Finance. Berlusconi, a wealthy businessman and three-time
prime minister, was most recently in power from 2008 to November 2011.
Berlusconi’s fall had been prepared through a series of lurid
revelations about his personal life, including an attack by the CIA
document dump known as Wikileaks. Berlusconi’s second-place status
represents a remarkable comeback, and the last polls show him closing on
Bersani.
Third place with almost 20% is likely to belong to a new and
unorthodox political formation, the Five Star Movement (5SM), where the
dominant personality is the former Genoese comedian Beppe Grillo, a
colorful and talented demagogue. The 5SM is anti-politician, anti-euro,
anti-infrastructure, anti-tax, and anti-mainstream media. Like the GOP,
they want to reduce the public debt, meaning they want deflation. Grillo
proposes a guaranteed annual income for all Italians, a 30-hour work
week, and a drastic reduction of energy consumption and of production.
He demands free Wi-Fi for all. Without modern production, how can these
benefits be provided?
Grillo wants to abort the infrastructure projects - like the new
high-speed train tunnel between Turin and France and the bridge between
Calabria and Sicily - upon which Italy’s economic future depends. He is
long on petty bourgeois process reforms like term limits, media reform,
corporate governance, and banning convicted felons from parliament, but
short on defending the standard of living for working people. On a
bizarre note, he has praised the British response to the 2008 banking
crisis. As many as 100 members of the 5SM, many of them total political
novices, and more than a few adventurers who have jumped on board
Grillo’s bandwagon, may now enter parliament, with predictably
destabilizing consequences. Grillo could be the vehicle for an Italian
color revolution along the lines of Ukraine or Georgia.
In fourth place, with less than 10%, is expected to be the current
prime minister of Italy, Mario Monti, a former eurocrat of the Brussels
Commission who has led a brutal technocratic austerity regime since
coming to power in November 2011 through a coup d’état sponsored by the
International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, and executed by
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano with help from Mario Draghi at the
European Central Bank.
Both Monti and Draghi are former employees of Goldman
Sachs, the widely hated zombie bank. When Monti seized power, he was
widely acclaimed as a savior and enjoyed an approval rating of 70%; his
approval has now fallen to about 30%. Like Gorbachev, he is unpopular
at home but remains the darling of foreign leaders. Even the London Financial Times is bearish on Monti, accusing him of starting his austerity regime when Italy was already in recession.
Among the also-rans are Civic Revolution of Antonio Ingroia, a
merger of the Greens with Antonio Di Pietro’s anti-corruption forces
left over from the “Clean Hands” movement of the early 1990s, which
targeted politicians but did very little to attack the larger corruption
of the Bank of Italy and the big banks.
Another smaller list is Stop the Decline, led by the strange Oscar
Giannino, backed up by a clique of US-educated professors of neo-liberal
austerity economics. This list was paid to poach votes from Berlusconi.
But now Giannino has been hit with a scandal based on his false claim
of holding a master’s degree from a Chicago university.
The Italian political landscape is extremely fragmented, so public
opinion polls - which cannot by law be published after February 8 - are
more than usually unreliable. Under the Italian system, the political
force which comes in first gets 54% of the seats in the lower house.
Multi-party coalitions must get 10% to enter parliament. If the 10% is
not achieved, the individual parties fall back under the rule which
prescribes that parties not in a coalition must get 4% to win seats.
Italian politics, which for many decades after World War II had
eight parties, has undergone massive Weimarization, especially since
Monti’s coup. There are now no fewer than 25 political parties or
organizations. This time around, there are four new parties, including
those of Monti and Grillo. Two parties, including one led by Gianfranco
Fini, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, and another by former
Defense Minister Ignazio LaRussa, have split from Berlusconi. Two
parties have also split from the Democratic Party, including the
libertarian Radicals of Marco Pannella and Emma Bonino.
Banks hope for Bersani-Monti regime to continue austerity
The banking community, as represented by Mediobanca and others, is
hoping for a Bersani-Monti coalition government to continue the savage
austerity policies that Monti’s technocratic ministers have been
imposing over the last 15 months. Bersani’s party and its predecessors
have always seen their business model as begging the big banks to let
them join the government, in exchange for which they will break the
labor movement, suppress strikes, and impose budget austerity across the
board. Incredibly, Bersani has been one of Monti’s warmest admirers.
Bersani has not learned the lesson of Weimar Germany, when the Social
Democrats (SPD) supported Hunger Chancellor Heinrich Brüning’s austerity
program, wrecking the economy and the political system, and opening the
door to National Socialism.
Mediobanca concedes that a Bersani-Monti tandem will be weak, and
might need more support from smaller parties, leading to instability
with early elections likely in the short term. Although the Common Good
will have a majority in the Chamber of Deputies due to the majority
bonus, there is no bonus in the Senate, where most members are directly
elected by winning their districts. This is where the Common Good plus
Monti may fall short.
Some might say that Italians can choose among a genocidal professor,
a party hack, a genial satyr, and a scurrilous clown. How did the
current situation arise?
During the Obama years, the first goal of the US
intelligence community has been to destroy the Berlusconi government,
for geopolitical reasons. Based on Berlusconi’s close personal
relationship with Putin, he had secured for Italy an important role in
the construction of the Nordstream pipeline, and an even more important
participation in the Southstream pipeline -- both projects which
Washington wanted to sabotage.
Berlusconi also made overtures to President Lukashenko of Belarus,
much demonized in Foggy Bottom. The State Department wants to turn the
European Union against Putin’s Russia, but the pro-US eurocrats and
eurogarchs complained that Italy was becoming an advocate for Moscow
within the Brussels bureaucracy. Lucia Annunziata wrote in La Stampa
of May 25, 2009 under the title “The Shadow of a Plot” that
center-right circles believed US-Italian relations were being hurt by
“the excessive closeness of premier Silvio Berlusconi to the Russian
Prime Minister Putin.”
The London Economist commented: Italy is one of the countries
which have gotten much closer to Moscow than Washington desires,
starting from the [August 2008] crisis in Georgia. By 2010 at the
latest, US agencies were fully mobilized to overthrow Berlusconi.
State Department campaign to topple Berlusconi, 2008-2011
One part of this effort involved Gianfranco Fini, the former
neofascist whom Berlusconi had made President of the Chamber of Deputies
in 2008. Fini had been a member of the official neofascist party. In
July 2010, after a faction fight, Fini was expelled from Berlusconi’s
party, managing to take with him 34 deputies and 10 senators in a move
which weakened, but did not destroy, Berlusconi’s governing majority. It
was later revealed that Fini’s actions had been closely coordinated
with the US embassy in Rome.
During 2009, David Thorne took over as US ambassador to Italy.
Thorne was a Yale roommate of John Kerry, who has just become US
Secretary of State. Thorne, like Kerry and the Bushes, is a member of
the infamous Skull and Bones secret society, and is the twin brother of
Kerry’s ex-wife. Thorne’s first meeting on becoming ambassador was with
Fini, and not with Berlusconi. Fini is also reported to be a close
personal friend of Nancy Pelosi, when Speaker of the House had the same
job as Fini. (Il Fatto Quotidiano, September 15, 2010)
Fini, true to form, is now a part of the pro-austerity With Monti
For Italy coalition. Bur despite his US backing, Fini may be close to
the last hurrah. He had rented a theater in Agrigento, Sicily for a
major appearance, but found the premises empty except for a few dozen
supporters.
When the Fini operation failed, the CIA turned to exposés of the
wild parties at Berlusconi’s mansion in Arcore, near Milan, feeding an
immense international propaganda campaign. In December 2009, Berlusconi
was struck on the face and seriously injured by an alabaster model of
the Milan Cathedral. Italian judges, some of them politically motivated,
pursued scores of legal actions against Berlusconi. One of these
judges, Ilda Boccassini, was a sympathizer of the left countergang Lotta
Continua well into the 1980s. Wikileaks documents made public in
December 2010 confirmed the deep hostility of the State Department to
Berlusconi.
Giorgio Napolitano, Henry Kissinger’s favorite communist
The coup that finally ousted Berlusconi in November 2011 was managed
by Giorgio Napolitano, the president of the Italian Republic and thus
the head of state. The Italian presidency has often been almost a
ceremonial office, but it acquires significant powers when governments
fall, which is frequently. Napolitano has vastly expanded these powers.
For most of his life, Napolitano has been an active member of the
Italian Communist Party. He belonged to the right-wing faction around
Giorgio Amendola - Napolitano was known as Skinny Giorgio, and Amendola
as Fat Giorgio. It has recently been revealed that between 1977 and
1981, Napolitano conducted secret meetings with the Carter
administration’s ambassador to Rome, Richard Gardner of the Trilateral
Commission. These meetings only became public knowledge in 2005, with
the publication of Gardner’s memoirs, Mission Italy. This puts
Napolitano in contact with the US embassy during the kidnapping and
murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, in whose death US
intelligence agencies played an important role.
Henry Kissinger once called Napolitano “my favorite communist.” Business Week
referred to him as the point man in Italy for the New York Council on
Foreign Relations. The Italian press has dubbed him King George. But
thanks in large part to Putin’s support for the Italian prime minister,
it took the CIA two years to overthrow Berlusconi. In the end, only
economic and financial warfare, plus Napolitano’s treachery, would prove
decisive.
Mario Monti: Bilderberg, trilateral, Goldman Sachs
In October 2011, the Yale-educated economist Mario Monti, a
eurogarch of the Brussels Commission from 1994 to 1999, was president of
the Bocconi University of Milan, a business school. He had worked on
the Santer, Prodi, and Barroso commissions in Brussels. He was and
remains the European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, founded by
David Rockefeller, as well as a member of the secretive Bilderberg
group. He was also a consultant for Goldman Sachs and Coca-Cola.
While Berlusconi was under siege by the Anglo-Americans, Napolitano
plotted for months to make Monti the kingpin of a regime of technocrats -
supposedly nonpartisan experts who did not represent any political
party and could therefore more readily impose pitiless austerity. This
was a formula the International Monetary Fund had been trying to force
on Italy for 30 years and more.
A modern coup d’état using spreads, not tanks
The indispensable ingredient in the Napolitano-Monti coup was a
broad-based and coordinated attack on Italian government bonds by Wall
Street, the City of London, and their European satellites. This attack
involved threats by ratings agencies to downgrade Italian debt, backed
up by massive derivatives speculation against the bonds using credit
default swaps (CDS) to increase the interest-rate premium - or spread -
paid by Italy compared to Germany in borrowing. (The agencies were later
investigated for fraud by Judge Michele Ruggiero of Trani.) Of course,
the European Central Bank could at any time have wiped out the
speculators by purchasing large quantities of Italian bonds in the open
market and driving up the price.
But Napolitano and Monti knew that they could count on the new boss
of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi to sabotage the Italian bonds.
Draghi took over from the Frenchman Trichet in the night of Halloween
2011, and the attack on Italy began immediately on November 1.
During the summer of 2011, Berlusconi had resisted
demands for draconian austerity, perhaps because he knew that Italy was
too big to fail and that sooner or later Wall Street and London would
have to back off. He was vilified for a lack of civic virtue. During the
final attack on Berlusconi, Italian bond yields reached 7%, and the
famous spread peaked at 575 basis points over the rate on German bonds.
The New York Times cited reports that Draghi “had restricted…
purchases of Italian bonds to put more pressure on Mr. Berlusconi to
quit” and to extort more austerity from Italy. “If so, the pressure
worked.” (NYT, November 9, 2011) The parliament was in panic.
On November 8, 2011 Napolitano appointed Monti, who had never been
elected to any public office, as senator for life. This also meant
immunity from prosecution for life, unless and until the Italian Senate
voted to take this parliamentary immunity away. Also on November 8,
Berlusconi concluded that he had lost his parliamentary majority. On
November 10, 2011, the new senator for life Monti met with Napolitano at
the Quirinal Palace for a two-hour discussion of economic “growth” by
means of “structural reforms.” Napolitano still ridiculed rumors that he
would make Monti the next prime minister. On the same day, Obama called
Napolitano to assure him of US support in his management of the
post-Berlusconi crisis. Just this month, Napolitano visited Obama with
the obvious goal of getting more US support for Monti.
Berlusconi and other politicians like the anti-corruption activist
Di Pietro were pressing for early elections to let the Italian people
show what they wanted. But Napolitano was intent on carrying out his
cold coup: “markets trumped traditional democratic processes,” wrote the
New York Times on December 2, 2011. On November 13, Napolitano
officially charged Monti with forming a government of non-party
austerity technocrats, and Monti won a vote of confidence in the Chamber
of Deputies by 556 to 61. Only the Northern League opposed Monti. This
lopsided vote recalled a similar one carried out in the resort town of
Vichy, France on July 10,1940 in which the National Assembly voted
dictatorial powers for Marshal Pétain, effectively replacing the Third
French Republic with a fascist regime. On that day, the vote -- managed
by the infamous Pierre Laval -- had been 569 in favor, 80 against, and
18 abstentions.
Monti’s cabinet was composed of little-known figures, mainly from
northern Italy, with Catholic, academic, or military backgrounds. One
who has become infamous is Labor Minister Elsa Fornero, a professor who
cried in public over her own cruelty when she presented her anti-retiree
measures. There was the impression that the Monti cabinet were bit
players reading lines that had been written by the IMF and the ECB.
Presidential powers from von Hindenburg to Napolitano
Napolitano was following in the footsteps of German Reich President
Field Marshal von Hindenburg, who pushed aside the Reichstag
(parliament) as the maker of governments when he named the austerity
enforcer Heinrich Brüning as chancellor in March, 1930. After this
point, no German government could obtain a governing majority, and all
relied on Hindenburg’s emergency powers to stay in office -- including
von Papen, von Schleicher, and finally Hitler in the first weeks of
1933. These were all called presidential governments, as Monti’s has
been. By relegating the parliament to irrelevance, von Hindenburg
contributed mightily to the atrophy and death of German democracy.
At the time, I called attention to the obvious coup d’état by
Goldman Sachs and its allies, with a similar operation in Greece around
the same time. Paolo Becchi, Professor of the Philosophy of
Jurisprudence at the University of Genoa, noted that Napolitano “telling
a technocrat from Brussels to form a government is nothing but a coup
d’état ordered by powerful forces, partly from outside Italy, and
managed by the President of the Republic.” Up until now, the bankers had
been willing to govern indirectly, masking their power with the faces
of politicians.
Now, the bankers wanted to seize power directly: “But it was
necessary at least to keep up appearances. With an attitude which is
typical of all the followers of Cataline [who attempted a coup against
the Roman Republic in the time of Cicero], Monti’s main concern was to
seize power with legal means.” Becchi added: “In the moment when
political power is brought down to the level of financial power, a coup
d’état is always possible, and so easy to carry out that almost nobody
realizes it.” (Libero, December 1, 2011)
Monti’s economic measures aimed at shifting an initial
€24 billion over three years of the cost of the economic depression away
from bankers and speculators and onto the shoulders of working people.
The minimum of years on the job to obtain a pension was raised from 40
years to 42 years and one month for men. The minimum age for old-age
pensions was raised from 60 years to 62 and then to 66 in 2018.
Increases in pension payments would generally be frozen. The property
tax (IMU) was increased by 30% and extended to resident homeowners, who
had previously been exempt. The value added tax (IVA) was raised from
21% to 23%. As camouflage, a luxury tax on yachts, private planes, and
Ferraris was introduced. Only the Northern League and Di Pietro voted
against these measures.
Then came a push to make Italy a hire and fire society on the
American model, striking down protections that had been in place for
decades. Taxi drivers, pharmacists, doctors, lawyers, and notaries were
deprived of minimum fees for their services, and their professions were
deregulated.
Thanks to Monti’s measures, the Italian unemployment rate has risen
from 8.5% in November 2011 to 11.2% in February 2013, the worst in 13
years. Almost 3 million Italians are out of work, with 644,000 or 29% of
them laid off on Monti’s watch. Youth unemployment is now at an
all-time record of 37%. By December of 2012, industrial production,
after falling every months since Monti took power, was down by 7%
compared to December 2011.
Grillo: Endless referendums, endless instability
The early Northern League told Italians and foreigners and
southerners were responsible for their problems. Grillo blames
politicians and political parties. Bersani’s support for Monti’s
austerity, combined with Berlusconi’s personal excesses, has focused new
attention on the comedian Beppe Grillo and his 5SM. Grillo may well
emerge as the big winner of these elections. Grillo has a recent
precedent: the comedian Guglielmo Giannini, who in 1944 founded the Man
In the Street (uomo qualunque) movement, an Italian precursor of French
poujadisme.
Giannini appealed to the angry postwar petty bourgeoisie with
populist themes of anti-politics, anti-politicians, anti-corruption,
anti-government, deregulation, and anti-taxes. Grillo uses many of the
techniques of Giannini, such as obscene and abusive slogans, or mocking
the names of his opponents: for Grillo, Monti becomes Rigor Montis.
Grillo, ignoring the lessons of the Weimar Republic, recommends
hyper-democracy as a method of governing. The basic approach to all
controversies is to organize a referendum. This can work at the level of
local government, where some of Grillo’s supporters started, but might
lead to chaos if applied nationwide. Grillo wants a referendum on
whether Italy should stay in the euro, an idea which appeals in Italy to
a few ultra-lefts, but mainly to reactionaries. Grillo (like the
framers of Weimar) focuses on the need of government to make sure that
all voices receive representation, but neglects the equally imperative
need on to promote majorities capable of deciding issues and exercising
power.
Grillo mayor fails to solve pre-school issue in Parma
The first big success for Grillo came in Parma, traditionally the
turf of the PCI/Democratic Party. Here Grillo’s candidate took over as
mayor early in 2012. Within less than a year, Grillo was greeted by
protests over the rising cost of living, especially for the mayor’s
raising of the price of pre-school for working families, while
eliminating multi-child discounts. Up to this point, Grillo had enjoyed
all the advantages of the Muslim Brotherhood under Mubarak, or of Jesse
Ventura running for governor of Minnesota, meaning the ability to
criticize without any responsibility.
When confronted with an attack on his own record, Grillo responded
with petulance, suggesting he cannot take criticism. Grillo has been
declining television interviews, preferring to give speeches to large
crowds in the piazza of many cities. But observers note that this is
also a way to avoid probing questions from hostile journalists. In any
case, big crowds do not necessarily indicate election majorities. Grillo
portrays himself as a victim of the mass media, even though enjoys
extensive coverage in the current phase. He is rich, but campaigns in a
mini-van to increase his populist appeal.
According to Elisabetta Gualmini and Piergiorgio Corbetta in their
survey of the Grillo movement entitled Il Partito del Grillo (Bologna:
Il Mulino/Istituto Cattaneo, 2013), about 60% of Grillo’s support comes
from angry, male, sometimes unemployed generation X technicians, IT and
software personnel, and small businessmen born between 1969 and 1978,
and thus aged between 35 and 44. There are few pensioners, few
housewives, few women of any background. Over 50% describe themselves as
extreme left, left, or center-left, while about 30% self-described as
center-right to right. Grillo represents a protest movement that cuts
across the other political parties.
An ominous symptom is the dictatorship of Grillo inside the party.
In recent weeks, Grillo has ousted a regional councilor from
Emilia-Romagna for complaining on television of the lack of democracy
inside the 5SM. He also expelled a Bologna city councilwoman for taking
part in Ballaró, a widely viewed television talk show, after Grillo
banned such appearances, presumably to keep the spotlight on himself.
Previously, he had expelled three candidates from Bologna and a member
of the Ferrara city council. Grillo considers the 5SM is a trademark
which he owns. The dissidents are generally excommunicated by means of a
tweet. Does Grillo write the tweets, blog, scripts, and speeches by
himself, or is he controlled and supported by a syndicate?
Grillo’s Svengalis: Casaleggio associates
Some say Grillo is a synthetic candidate. According to published
accounts, Grillo’s Svengali and teleprompter is political consultant
Gianroberto Casaleggio, 58, of Casaleggio Associates, a company
specialized in political and media consulting and strategies for
Internet marketing - more or less the methods which have put Grillo
where he is today.
Casaleggio and Grillo confer by telephone on average three times a
day. Casaleggio, like Grillo, sports the hair style of an aging freak,
trying to look like John Lennon, but unlike Grillo usually wears a suit.
(Tommaso Caldarelli, Giornalettismo, May 25, 2012) Casaleggio’s office
is near Piazza Scala in Milan. The dominant partner at Casaleggio
Associates is Enrico Sassoon, currently the director of the Italian
edition of the Harvard Business Review.
Sassoon has worked for Pirelli, and is currently a leading light of
the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy. Sassoon is also on the board
of the Italian branch of the Aspen Institute, where his colleagues are
mostly members of the Bilderberg group. Giampietro Zanetti, a Berlusconi
backer, writes in his blog: “Who is behind Grillo? Bilderberg and the
Aspen Institute!”
Casaleggio, who once advised Di Pietro and Olivetti, believes that
“by 2018 the world will be divided into: the West with direct democracy
and free access to the Internet, and the enemies of freedom like
China-Russia-Middle East.” In 2020 there will be a new world war, with
the population reduced by a billion, then catharsis, and finally rebirth
in the name of Gaia, and world government.” (Marco Alfieri, La Stampa,
May 26, 2012) Is this really what Grillo’s voters want?
Grillo and Casaleggio are the authors of a book called We Are At War
- meaning that Grillo is the Guy Fawkes or Ludendorff of a war against
political parties as such. The need to destroy political parties is one
of the favorite themes of various disinformation channels of the US
intelligence community, who see this as part of the effort to smash the
national states and impose the Empire. A coincidence?
In 2012, the big political news from Europe was the emergence of
Alexis Tsipras and Syriza to fight austerity in Greece with program,
leadership, organization, and strategy, and not with utopias of
participatory democracy. Grillo is the opposite of Syriza on most
points, meaning that Italy now risks a new round of destabilization.
Which method will prevail?
Première
étape : L’attaque a commencé contre la colline de Mando, qui surplombe
la plupart de la région de Qoussair, et contre un pont important qui
relie les deux rives de l’Oronte. Le but était de localiser les
positions des groupes armés et d’empêcher leur infiltration à l’ouest de
l’Oronte. Les villages de Bourhaniyé et Radwaniyé, proches de la
frontière libanaise, ont été pris d’assaut pour isoler les lignes de
ravitaillement des miliciens de l’intérieur du Liban.
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