By Piero Cammerinesi
A few years ago, the great Italian singer Franco Battiato sang ‘Povera Patria’ (Poor Country), disgusted by what was happening in Italy at the time.
Poor country, smashed under the authority’s abuses
Poor country, smashed under the authority’s abusesMade by infamous people who don’t know what shame is.They think to be powerful and is always goodwhat they do, and everything is theirs.Among the governors, how many perfectly unuseful crooks!This country is devastated by pain…Don’t they make you feel a little ashamedall those cold bodies on the floor?
It won’t change, it won’t changeIt won’t change, maybe it’ll change…But how may we forgive the hyenas in the stadiumsand those in the newspapers?
The pigs’ boot sinks in the mud.
I’m a little bit ashamed and it’s hurtingTo see a man as a beast.
It won’t change, it won’t changeYes, it’ll change! You’ll see it’ll change!
We may hope that the world will return to be more normal,Where to stare at the sky and flowers,That we won’t talk of dictatorships anymore…If a little bit of life remains for us.For now spring hasn’t come yet.
But the worst was yet to come.
And it is coming — and at great speed — day after day.
It comes with the daily betrayal of our values, our history and our traditions.
It comes with the cowardly attitude of our leaders towards the current war situation, which they neither want to pacify nor resolve, but instead want to escalate into a wider war that could soon affect all of our lives.
It comes in the form of the radical impoverishment of the welfare state — education and healthcare first and foremost — in order to arm ourselves and enrich arms manufacturers and their parliamentary supporters.
It comes in the form of hospitality, as recently reported in the news, given to Israeli soldiers who relax on our beaches, tired from shooting women and children in Gaza. We are not hosting wounded and terrified women and children, but their murderers. Moreover, we are protecting them with security services.
Ah, Italy enslaved, abode of misery, pilotless ship in a fierce tempest tossed, no mistress over provinces but a harlot!
wrote the great Dante Alighieri in his Divina Commedia.
Never have his words been more apt than they are today.
This is evident in the lack of support from our cowardly rulers for the Global Sumud Flotilla initiative, whose only crime is attempting to deliver supplies to the civilians imprisoned in the Gaza camp and draw the world’s attention to the genocide of Herod 2.0.
It comes with our unfortunate country’s supine acquiescence in the face of the shameful abuse of power exercised by our masters — for we certainly cannot speak of allies when referring to the United States of America — against a courageous and honest woman: Francesca Albanese.
She is the only person with the courage to openly denounce the rape scandal in Gaza, naming names and highlighting the powerful groups and industrialists who finance it.
Instead of being proud of this modern-day heroine, have we lost the courage to mention the Risorgimento or the Resistenza? – we have not lifted a finger to defend her from the arrogant arrogance of the US that is turning her into an outcast, unable even to open a bank account.
While other countries defend their citizens — even those guilty of crimes — with a sword against abuses by other nations, we endorse those who have denounced real crimes with our guilty silence.
The real crime is that which is committed daily against the truth of the facts.
Veritas delenda est.
Because the ultimate meaning of this story is clear:
Those who tell the truth must be destroyed.
In the Orwellian era we are living in, the truth must be erased at all costs. It is not just a matter of external facts; every lie is spiritual murder, as Rudolf Steiner aptly described.
Every lie thickens the darkness that surrounds our world.
This darkness obscures our thoughts and feelings, paralysing our will.
Are we really unable to realise this?
What more must we endure before we stand up straight?
Below is a comment by my dear friend Adriana Koulias on the article I published yesterday on LiberoPensare about Francesca Albanese.
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by Adriana Koulias
My dear friends,
A friend has alerted me of this shameful chapter in our recent history you will read below.
Indeed, dear friends, there are many shameful chapters, which, in a sense one can say, are only now being read by the entire world out of a book full of shameful chapters, which depicts a sordid story of a century of western hypocrisy, of planned wars, organised and implemented regime change, multiple assassinations and shady deals, which we are only reading today, because the Genocide in Gaza has opened the book wide and published it, revealing what the US government and its ‘poodles’ the UK, Europe, Australia et all have been doing under the radar for over a century.
If you wonder why I use the term ‘poodle’ it is not to denigrate the animals that I love by using them to illustrate human behaviour. It is to show how what is good in an animal is tragic in a human particularly a leader of a nation.
In truth the above named nations have one master, the US government run by the shadow leaders – the corporations who are, many of them, involved in the tragedy of Israel’s war to destroy Gaza and to remove all its citizens for economic gain.
Poodles love their masters, they are affectionate, fawn over them, follow them about, and trip over themselves in their desire to please them. That is a wonderful quality in an animal, but a terrible one in a national leader dear friends, in this case Italy.
I like to work with pictures so imagine the US and its masters, (who have fingers in all the pies in the western and eastern world) telling their poodles to sit, roll over and lay down, and , with tongues lolling, and grins of love and affection, anxious to do more and more to please them, they do so, because the leaders of these countries might not be fed if they don’t!
When it comes to an individual who has threatened the master, these poodles will do almost anything to protect them, even if it is shameful and demonstrates their loyalty quite openly. The Italian Government has rolled over and refused to help Francesca Albanese fight the unlawful sanctions, and other European countries have done nothing to help either, their tails wagging to the beat of their American masters.
Perhaps this woman, articulate, intelligent, whose moral fibre is coupled with a tenacity and vigour, gets under the skin of those pompous men and women who have no souls, no courage, no moral fibre, are not as articulate or intelligent or have any tenacity to do what is morally right…perhaps they are looking at their bowls and envisaging no dinner and no treats!
‘What was she to expect?’ They tell themselves! ‘She dared to expose many companies in the US who have aided and abated the Israel Government in their plans to colonize and exploit the resources of the Palestinian people, companies that we also support and plans which we agree with and also benefit from!’
The evil sanctions placed on her as an individual are meant to punish and silence her, because in her case, assassination would be too obvious wouldn’t it? Particularly now that so much has become known regarding the assassination of JFK at a time when he wanted to declare the Israel Lobby a foreign influence group, not to mention the assassination and its connections with mobsters affiliated with Israel, with Mossad, the CIA…etc…to go more into this would lead us too far from the nature of this post. Suffice to say, assassination in the current atmosphere, would not be so easy.
I have translated the article below using Google. One can’t read it without recalling Christ entering the Temple and throwing out the money changers. For Christ in us feels the shameful treatment of a human being trying to do what is right morally as shameful. One can’t read it without sensing an iron will moving through one’s soul and the image of Michael arising with his foot on the neck of the dragon.
Every human being who has stood up to Corporations and Governments on behalf of others, and who have fought the fight against injustice and against corruption, sometimes sacrificing their own lives, have been celebrated often only later, perhaps after they are long dead, and those who persecuted them can no longer prevent it. But we should celebrate the courage of people like Francesca, while they are alive. We should support them now, by being conscious, by not allowing the Corrupt US Government, in this case Rubio and Trump, who are simply puppets of corporations linked in one way or another to Israel, or its international poodles, to silence what they are doing to one individual, Francesca Albanese. She is suffering the heavy repercussions of American sanctions which are trying to suffocate her voice in the world and these are the companies that are in her report – a good many tech companies the usual suspects Black Rock and IBM etc:
This has happened before. Many American companies supported another genocide, namely, the Holocaust in Germany:
The companies included:
General Motors, IT&T, and Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor Company, Coca-Cola.IBM.Standard Oil, Singer, International Harvester, Gillette, Kraft, Westinghouse, and United Fruit….
I leave you to make up your own mind, my dear friends.
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On July 9, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, was hit by severe US sanctions. The reason? In her latest report to the United Nations, she detailed the complicity of many companies and institutions—particularly those based in the United States—in Israel’s genocidal plan to empty the Palestinian territories for the purpose of colonization and exploitation of their resources. The sanctions against Albanese include not only a ban on entry to the US but also a freeze on her assets. To examine the true impact of these punitive measures, yesterday (September 4), the Parliamentary Intergroup for Peace between Palestine and Israel convened a conference in the Senate, where Francesca Albanese spoke about the effects of the sanctions on her personal life.
The meeting took place in the Caduti di Nassirya Hall of the Senate, with Albanese herself present, along with Domenico Gallo, a former judge of the Court of Cassation, Nazzareno Gabrielli, general director of Banca Etica, and Duccio Facchini, director of Altreconomia.
The actual impact of the punitive measures is enormous, Albanese explained. Indeed, the Italian jurist cannot travel to her office at the UN headquarters in New York to meet with the person who appointed her. Furthermore, she cannot have a bank account, either in the United States or in Italy. Her current Italian account has been frozen, and when she attempted to open a new one at Banca Etica, the institution had to reject her request. “Otherwise,” explained Nazzareno Gabrielli, with great regret, “the bank would risk secondary sanctions and a hefty fine; furthermore, all dollar transactions would be blocked, thus impeding its international transactions.”
Furthermore, due to the US measure, Albanese cannot engage in any transaction of economic value, not even with a private individual—even if it were just accepting a coffee at a bar (if it were offered by a US citizen, he would risk 20 years in prison and a billion-dollar fine). Thus, Albanese concluded, these sanctions have had the effect of creating a void around her, which she also senses in Italy – people are afraid of the possible consequences.
Domenico Gallo then explained the technical aspects of the US measure. On July 9—less than a week after the publication of Albanese’s report exposing the companies profiting from the genocidal colonization of Gaza and the West Bank—US Secretary of State Marco Rubio included Albanese in the list of individuals targeted by Executive Order 14023, signed on February 6 by President Trump and directed against the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had dared to indict the Israeli Prime Minister for genocide. That order bars entry to the United States to officials and employees involved in the ICC’s investigative work, as well as their immediate family members, and also provides for a freeze on their assets. Furthermore, a clause in the order allows the Secretary to subsequently include anyone he deems could facilitate the ICC’s work—such as Albanese with its investigations.
Gallo did not mince his words: the infamous Executive Order 14023, eliminating the role of the ICC, is—according to the eminent jurist—a “subversive act that violates fundamental human rights, an international coup d’état.” Therefore, Gallo concluded, Francesca Albanese’s defense should be to have that order included in a mechanism blocking its validity in Europe due to its extraterritorial nature. But this requires a Europe-wide mobilization.
Albanese had already denounced, before the Senate on July 30, the illegal and intimidating nature of the sanctions imposed on her. “I am the first international official to suffer this punishment—and I hope I will be the last,” she added, as the sanctions are “an attack on the heart of multilateralism. And, given my Southern Italian origins, I know well what allows one to defeat this mafia logic: silence.”
Indeed, the silence surrounding the US sanctions against Albanese has only been partially broken by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, UN Human Rights Council President Jürg Lauber, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who vigorously challenged the legal basis of Rubio’s measure and Trump’s executive order itself. But they were the only ones to do so: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, and the European Parliament itself have not expressed condemnation.
Italy, too, has stepped aside, refusing to defend one of its fellow citizens who was unjustly targeted. In his speech to the Senate today, Senator De Cristofaro called it “shameful” that the Italian government “is not batting an eyelid.” To try to justify Italy’s silence, Foreign Minister Tajani recently went to extreme lengths: Francesca Albanese was targeted not because she was Italian, but because she was a UN official, Tajani said in a recent interview; therefore, it’s not Italy’s responsibility to defend her, but rather, the UN’s.
Hence, it’s important to break the silence surrounding the serious abuses of Secretary Rubio and President Trump, with initiatives such as the conference held yesterday in the Senate and promoted by Senator De Cristofaro and the parliamentarians of the inter-parliamentary group. All institutions must loudly denounce the intimidating use of sanctions by a single country to influence entire multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations Special Rapporteurs and the ICC itself.
But why did these disastrous sanctions arrive only after Albanese’s latest report, and not before, for example, after his Anatomy of a Genocide, which relentlessly denounces Israeli crimes committed in Gaza?
Maryam Jamshidi, associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Law, explains. With his latest report, Albanese has successfully struck the US where it is most sensitive: precisely in the untouchable mechanism of profit accumulation. Jamshidi cites Secretary Rubio, who vehemently protested the letters Albanese had sent to several US companies, informing them of their violations of international law and giving them the opportunity to respond before the report’s publication. Rubio described these initiatives as “economic warfare” that threatens the core of US national interests. Indeed, Albanese’s report, by demonstrating how these companies participated in and profited from Israel’s illegal actions and crimes, threatens the image and balance sheets of these companies, which could now face consumer boycotts and even criminal prosecution in national jurisdictions.
With love and respect deeply felt,
Namaste.
