Italy and Belarus on the street

Here is an example of how advanced a country Italy is.

Ignore the fact that the two candidates for a prime minister post, Romano "sausage" Prodi and Silvio "conflict of interest" Berlusconi were both born in their thirties, as only one other leader in the EU (hat tip to Beppe Severgnini for this).



No, thank you very much, sir! we are a modern democracy, and if leaders in their seventies are all we can produce, we will witness fair and peaceful elections on April 9, when we will experience a 12-year flashback and go back to the 1994 Berlusconi against Prodi duel.

We are not Belarus, where former president Alexander "I will die as a president" Lukashenko has just reconfirmed himself by means of yet another spoof election. The last dictator of Europe has no intention to leave his post it seems. Why bother with elections anyway if you have to have the same face around?

But the belarussians do not seem to agree and they have taken to the streets of Minsk, where police has had to break up their peaceful march under orders of the ever-reigning president.

Hell, why, they cannot even put out doubts of vote rigging (for that's what it was, by word of EU observers and not the opposition leader!) and they're immediately arrested and beaten.

But that's Belarus, and we're Italy, a showcase of democracy, the world's shopwindow of tolerance and peace... NOT!

Here is what some peaceful Italians were doing in Milan during a peaceful street march only a couple of weeks ago.

Basically, anti-fascists (read: communists, since we do not have too many fascists any more down here) put a couple of buildings, several cars and one newspaper kiosk on fire, injuring several passers-by, during a street march that turned into a large riot.

Now, I do not know and do not care what they were marching for. But think about the paradox: in Belarus they march against a president who has allegedly rigged votes in an election, and the army comes down in riot gear and arrests them. In Italy they march against the fascists (?) and start putting buildings on fire and injuring passers-by. Then the army comes down in riot gear, many of them get injured as well and someone even complains that the so-called demonstrators were arrested.

The clashes were so serious that they prompted the US government to issue a travel warning, saying US citizens in Italy are in danger because they may become targets of street clashes. But don't worry, they say, "such warnings are common in other friendly countries, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia." And what was our reaction? you guessed it: we're outraged!!!

I would hereby like to express my solidarity to the population of Belarus, and apologise on behalf of all democratic Italians for the awful use some of us have made of their basic right to hold a march.

At the same time, I feel ashamed to be a citizen of that very country where those people who made a mess of Milan were born.