An Italian case, unfortunately
In the last year and a half, Italy has not only suffered the direct effects of the coronavirus pandemic but also those of the choices made by the number two government of Giuseppe Conte, fully invested with the responsibility of containing the spread of the disease.
Forbidden drugs, home care reduced to simple acetaminophen, quarantine and masks imposed with an obsessive and, for many but not for everybody, dictatorial attitude. All this while waiting for the new savior of humanity, the vaccine-god who does not make you completely immune from infection but can still kill you with the side effects of it, as if the vaccinated victim is in spite of himself forced to a cruel Russian roulette.
Of course, there is only the name of Russian, because the Sputnik V vaccine never arrived in Italy, except in the small autonomous republic of San Marino. Italy has in fact shown considerable zeal in finding countless reasons to refuse the only vaccine in the world that does not have a series of side effects ranging from unpleasant to deadly. This should say something, to us Italians, about who rules us in Italy and about the real nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many Italians still live immersed in the fear of the epidemic, a fear wisely spread by the media, and look to those responsible for all this with the blind trust of those who are subjected to their own personal Stockholm syndrome.
Certainly not all the Italians, but the part that has kept their nerve is a minority compared to the others and must move with caution to heal a situation that risks becoming gangrenous. As the tireless Maurizio Blondet already pointed out in December 2020, the “dictatorship of the chickenshit” is in fact the most ferocious [1]. Among other things, not all those who have maintained a balanced view of this tragedy are motivated by common interests of homeland, since the opportunity is too good and the times too propitious for the smartest Quislings, who have never lacked in our poor Italy.
Added to the epidemic were the inevitable economic difficulties that the lockdowns brought with them and, as if that were not enough, between 2020 and 2021 the Italian judiciary was hit by two scandals that the Italian press has not, curiously, really investigated if not in the brave investigations of “il Giornale” directed by Alessandro Sallusti. Both the “Palamara case” (from the name of the magistrate involved, Luca Palamara [2]) and the “Hungary lodge” show how the Italian judiciary is in deep suffering and the suffering of the Italian judiciary is, in the end, also the suffering of the Italian people.
Giuseppe Conte is no longer Prime Minister since February 13, 2021. He was replaced by the erotic dream of the Italian Left, that Mario Draghi former governor of the European Central Bank that the real communists, the ancestors of the current Italian Left, would have gladly sent to a Gulag. The extraordinary commissioner for the pandemic emergency has also changed: from Domenico Arcuri (who came under investigation) to General Francesco Paolo Figliuolo [3]. The Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza and the Minister of the Interior, Luciana Lamorgese, are still in office.
Because of the many deaths in the early stages of the epidemic, especially the elderly in retirement homes but not only, some Italian lawyers have interested the judiciary for any responsibility of the government of Giuseppe Conte. One year later I asked one of them, Augusto Sinagra, if there were any news.
Sinagra is old, very old in his venerable age, but what his eyes have seen for many years now should not be underestimated and his words must therefore be read carefully.
1) Professor Sinagra, can you remind readers why in 2020 you and other Italian lawyers interested the judiciary on some of the Conte government's choices?
A) I and the lawyer Alfredo Lonoce of Lecce, and then once again with the signing of other lawyers in Rome and other courts, have denounced Giuseppe Conte, Roberto Speranza and Luciana Lamorgese for a variety of crimes and, for the manner and measures adopted regarding Covid-19, assuming in addition to wrongful death also the hypothesis of multiple unintentional homicide.
2) What reactions have there been? Where are the investigations?
A) I do not know, and I cannot procedurally know if and which investigations have been ordered by the so-called Court of Ministers which acts in the dual role of Public Prosecutor and Judicial Board. I know for sure that these complaints are sleeping peacefully at the Court of Ministers.
3) Roberto Speranza is still Minister of Health. Could there be consequences on Mario Draghi's government, perhaps following new legal actions?
A) We must first ask ourselves the preliminary question if there are agreements between Dr. Mario Draghi and Roberto Speranza and of what kind and nature. Of course, if criminal responsibilities, which would be very serious, were against Mr. Roberto Speranza, the government will have to suffer. But this is a mere hypothesis because everything would depend on the Head of State.
4) Could you explain what the “Palamara case” and the “Hungary lodge” are? Isn't it curious that two scandals of this type exploded in the judiciary within a short time of each other and at such a sensitive time?
A) Following the previous answer, it must be clearly stated that the “Palamara case” and the case of the “Hungarian Lodge” have revealed nothing that was not already known. I am personally convinced that in the famous book-interview wrote by Alessandro Sallusti [4], Palamara told only 20% of the illicit that have plunged the judiciary into a smelly abyss, reserving 80% for the understandable needs of his personal defense, judicial or extrajudicial. As for the “Hungarian Lodge”, Niccolò Tommaseo's “Prayer of the Magistrate” comes to mind [5] when he speaks of “whitewashed sepulchers”.
5) Vaccinations continue to flourish but phrases such as “We will draw out the unvaccinated house by house” are heard. Words are important and therefore I ask you: aren't this and other similar idioms perhaps contrary to our Constitution?
A) Beyond any constitutional illegitimacy that is manifested in all evidence given the threatening content of the announcement that implies the idea of compulsory vaccinations carried out by force, there is that whoever makes these announcements must make peace with brain and logic, since it was the new commissioner for the emergency himself, General Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, who publicly declared that the so-called vaccines are “experimental” products [6], as the European Medicines Agency has repeatedly warned. On the other hand, it is not known on the basis of which authority one is pushed to make such serious and irresponsible statements. Perhaps someone should remember what the so-called 1946 Nuremberg Trials was.
6) But do we still have a Constitution? I ask you because it seems to have been shelved for fear of the virus, even if there are always many people who fill their mouths with “the high values of resistance to Nazi-fascism” and so on...
A) The constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms have been and are compressed under the pretext of the virus. I cannot answer about the values of resistance and anti-fascism because I do not know what they are. Certainly, beyond specious juxtapositions, Fascism was and fortunately is a very different thing from Nazism which deserves a full condemnation. But what matters is that for some time now the Constitution has been trampled on and not applied also due to the effect of an instrumental jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court on the subject of improbable “transfers of sovereignty” in favor of the European Union. Otherwise, there is that the violation of the Constitution is a constant that goes back a long time. Fundamental constitutional principles are systematically violated such as, for example, the defense of savings and the family, the principle of equality and above all the social and economic policy set out in the Constitutional Charter which is the opposite of the economic policy of unbridled neoliberalism. Just think of the social function of ownership and the company or the participation of workers not only in profits but also in the management of the company itself.
7) You are a venerable age and have seen Italy change a lot during your life. How did we end up like this, dominated by fear to the point of accepting everything for almost two years now?
A) Yes: it is true, I have known a different Italy and I find it difficult to fully answer why the country, in a few years, has reduced itself to this state of very serious political, social and economic decline. There was a lack of moral tension, a sense of participation, absolute respect for public affairs, as well as a sense of the homeland and the individualistic selfishness that characterizes Italians. There is a substantial difference between what is a people and what is only a population. Here, we are only a population, and this is why the obtrusive overt words of Goffredo Mameli still recur: “We have been trampled and derided for centuries because we are not a People, because we are divided” [7].
[1] Sorry, Italian only:
https://www.maurizioblondet.it/la-dittatura-dei-cacasotto-la-piu-feroce/
[2] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Palamara
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Paolo_Figliuolo
[4] Italian only:
[5] “Do, my Gosh, that amidst the contradictions and the talkative wrath of men, I can discern the truth; that in severity I do not pass the limits of the Law; that not even the guilty are mistreated by me more than what is necessary to make them better. Do, my Gosh, that when my conscience warns me that I cannot punish, I have the courage to say: 'I find no fault in this man'. Let my life be blameless and not like a whitewashed and soaked wall inside.” – Niccolò Tommaseo (1802-1874)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Tommaseo
[6] Italian only:
On YouTube, Italian only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zRy5BxVMUA
[7] Mameli’s Hymn: