activists-from-italy

"Responding to ‘Do you intend to found your own party?’ I haven't thought about it yet. To those who tell me to return to the M5S, I reply that I would only sit down at the table if they left the Draghi government.[...] If it does not return to political battles, it risks becoming nothing more than a party of power."

"(About Isis) We know perfectly well who finances them, how they are financed, which war industries help them, who gives them money, but we cannot intervene because our hands are tied, because we were put there by the same powerful forces that control these international trafficking operations. It is called a conflict of interest; you are regularly in conflict of interest and never act in the interests of the Italian people. [...] If the first casualty of war is truth, the barrage of lies that are told daily about the Libyan issue show us that we are at war, and the Five Star Movement will oppose this war in every way possible."

"What is the difference today between the PD and a bank? Banks manage our money in a murky way, just like the parties that have pocketed billions in public funding by changing the name to “electoral reimbursements”. Banks then sell toxic products, taking the piss out of citizens by saying ‘don't worry, this bond is safe’, and then many people have lost all their savings. And isn't the PD doing the same thing? Isn't it selling toxic products and passing them off as safe? Isn't the Jobs Act a toxic product? Aren't the “Good School” and Bail-In toxic products? Isn't the constitutional reform made by Renzi-Boschi-Verdini a toxic product? Isn't Renzi taking us for a ride when he says, “We will abolish Equitalia”? The M5S presented the law to abolish Equitalia in Parliament, and the PD rejected it."

"(Addressed to the Renzi Government) With this agenda, which you consider populism and we consider practicality, we demand that Members of Parliament earn €5,000 gross, or approximately €3,100 net per month, which is more than enough to live a dignified life. [...] This is a different idea that we have of the country compared to you. Don't complain, though, if you no longer have consensus, don't complain if Renzi has to be defended by his security detail every day, he who said, “the people defend me”, but perhaps meant “the agent”. Don't complain anymore if they throw manure at you – and we condemn this, for God's sake – if they don't let you enter a square without bodyguards. Don't complain! We walk with our heads held high and carry on with this battle. We ask you to be part of this project, to allocate this money to small and medium-sized enterprises, because doing your duty improves the quality of life. If you want to do it well, otherwise you take responsibility, but know that when we are in those seats, as the governing force, the first thing we will do in a single day will be this cut, and seeing you as the minority that day will be a pleasure."

"Travelling is an investment in happiness."

"I want to vote... I want to vote because I can't stand them anymore... I can't stand them anymore! [...] It's thanks to the Five Star Movement that there isn't... we have channelled participation into beautiful, beautiful democratic paths! [...] I want citizens to vote!"

"The problem, and I don't know if Italians are aware of this, is that today the Bank of Italy, which is supposed to supervise private banks and prevent them from failing, is no longer a public bank, because it is controlled by the very private banks it is supposed to supervise."

"You yourselves have now become victims of a certain system because you no longer have the slightest freedom to oppose financial capitalism. Why? Because the “bankocracy” has effectively placed its people within the institutions, which is why, in the last four years alone, dozens of decrees have been passed in favour of private banks and no decrees in favour of citizens who are suffering."

"The day the Five Star Movement (but that will never happen) were to form an alliance with the parties responsible for the destruction of Italy, I would leave the Five Star Movement."

"I would like Boschi to remain in government, firmly entrenched in her position, so that the PD loses votes."

"Berlusconi is angry with the Five Star Movement because our anti-corruption law is emptying his party."

"The M5S is a phase of my life that is now over, but if they were to come back into favour, it would depend on the Movement's political agenda. Clearly, the battles that were a priority for me were not a priority for others. I consider myself a political activist. Leaving the M5S has given me a freedom that I did not have before. I believe it is my duty and right to exercise that freedom and to take political positions that are often and willingly contrary. [...] I realised that almost no one on television has the courage to take a clear stance in favour of the Palestinian people because there is a conformism that does not even exist in the United States. [...] Israel's policy towards the Palestinians is a policy of apartheid. To date, there are no two states, Letta says, but because he does not know what to say, he does not have the courage to take a stand. Didn't Foreign Minister Di Maio do the same? I told him publicly that I disagree with the Movement's foreign policy. If I were part of the Italian institutions today, I would immediately recognise the State of Palestine. There was more freedom among politicians in the first Republic than there is now."

"[...] we know perfectly well that war exists solely and exclusively for economic interests, which are always the same, and that it is always a small number of people who determine the choices of entire populations!"

"I can't manage to be completely vegetarian. I can give up meat for months, but then I inevitably fall back into old habits. Nevertheless, I have reduced my consumption considerably, which is good from a physical, mental and political point of view. Physically, because eating less meat makes you feel better; mentally, because eating dead animals is not good for the soul; and politically, because the social and economic consequences of meat abuse are unimaginable. [...] Eating less meat is a political choice that each of us must make. It is difficult, at least for me it is, and that is precisely why legislators (the M5S environment and agriculture committees are addressing the issue with various bills) must urgently address the issue."

"Italy should treat terrorism like cancer. Cancer is fought by eliminating its causes, not by dealing exclusively with its effects."

"We should stop considering terrorists as inhuman beings with whom it is not even worth engaging in discussion. This is a complex but decisive point. In the era of drones and total arms imbalance, terrorism is, unfortunately, the only violent weapon left to those who rebel. [...] If my village is bombed by a remote-controlled aircraft, I have only one way to defend myself apart from non-violent techniques, which are the best: to load myself with explosives and blow myself up in a underground station. I am neither justifying nor approving this, far from it. I am trying to understand. Due to their nature as subjects who respond to violent actions against them, terrorists cannot be defeated by sending more drones, but by elevating them to the status of interlocutors. This is a difficult but necessary task, otherwise the phenomenon will only grow."

"Nigeria, go to Wikipedia: 60% of the territory is in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists from Boko Haram, the rest is Ebola."

"It is important for us to identify a common enemy today, and that enemy is centralised power: a sort of centralised, Northern European Nazism that is destroying us. They are creating – with the Jobs Act and the TTIP, among other things – a sort of Walmart generation, or 300 euro generation, which will produce more and more slaves. They essentially want to colonise Southern Europe."

"(After the announcement of Maurizio Lupi's resignation from his position as Minister of Infrastructure and Transports) Do you know what corruption means? It means breaking into many pieces. Corruption has broken this country into many pieces, crumbling it and guaranteeing abundant feeding troughs for a few and crumbs for everyone else. Corruption has produced cancer in the “land of fires” and the abandonment of Italy by its best young people; it has caused sleepless nights for fathers who do not know how to pay for their children's studies, panic attacks for recent graduates who do not know how to find work. Corruption has produced the tragedy of entrepreneurs who would rather hang themselves than tell anyone they are going bankrupt, and the tears of sick people forced to wait months to find a bed in a hospital. Corruption has turned Italy into a jungle where criminals obtain contracts, million-pound bank accounts, dream homes and luxury boats moored on the coasts of Liguria, Sardinia or in some port in the Gargano. Liguria, Sardinia and the Gargano, where thousands of Italians wait for crumbs from a corrupt state that cannot even protect them from the rain."

"If the poor or migrants were banks, you would have already saved them."

"(Addressed to the MPs of the Democratic Party) I would like to remind you that the Five Star Movement does not receive a single euro of public funding for political parties. Zero! What you have screwed up, and you are not even able to pay for the party headquarters in Rome. And tell that freeloader Orfini to cough up the money. Secondly, we want to know how much money the criminal Buzzi gave to the Democratic Party through Mafia Capitale and whether he was present at your fundraising dinners. Until you answer, shut up."

"(Addressed to Minister Gentiloni, on possible military intervention in Libya) A sovereign country, Minister Gentiloni, tells the truth even if it is uncomfortable, it is not something you can hide under the carpet, sweeping it under the rug and trying, as always, to tell convenient lies, as if it were methadone that you give to a public opinion that is in fact dormant, anaesthetised, accustomed to everything."

"We must not go to war in Libya because if we go to war in Libya, the only result we will achieve is to reunite terrorist factions, tribes and counter-tribes, all against Italy, which has already betrayed them once and a second betrayal would never be forgiven. So, if you want another Vietnam, go to Libya, the responsibility will be yours alone, otherwise we should not go to war in Libya, especially if there is no government of national unity."

"In this Parliament, even as subjects of the United States of America, the concept of “preventive war” has been theorised and endorsed, which is an international disgrace that has caused damage in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and everywhere else. Today, you are moving from the concept of preventive war to war “without the knowledge of the Italian people”, all without their knowledge, and we do not trust the words of the Prime Minister, who has always contradicted himself. We cannot trust your words either, but we do trust the Italian people, who are more alert than you and who know that this war would be yet another infamous war and could lead to a new Vietnam. The Italian people do not want this war."

"... Born in 1907, Laura Capon came from a family of upper-middle-class Italian Jews. They were living in Rome when Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922; and when she and Enrico married in 1928. Laura, who had been studying science, enjoyed following her husband’s work and related breakthroughs in physics. She helped my grandfather write his first textbook. Five years of forced wartime secrecy from 1940–1945 temporarily broke the flow of discourse between them. She shared more about those details in Atoms in the Family, but my grandmother doesn’t mention how Hitler’s Holocaust robbed her of her father Augusto Capon, an admiral in the Italian Navy. Because of his position, my great-grandfather didn’t believe he was in danger, even when the situation under Mussolini continued to deteriorate. The elderly Admiral Capon refused an offer from Enrico’s older sister Maria to take shelter at her home outside of Rome along with some other Jews."

"The founder of the Civic Disarmament Committee (CDC) of Chicago interpreted the US gun problem in light of her experience working for nuclear peace and universal human security in the early Cold War. As the spouse of Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who conducted the first successful experiments in nuclear fission at the University of Chicago in 1942. Laura Fermi had witnessed the birth of a new global order. Like Enrico and many of the scientists who contributed to the Manhattan Project, Laura Fermi became active in the nuclear peace movement after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fermi learned to organize activists first in the peace movement and then, beginning in 1959, as a local environmentalist, years before the cause gained national attention. ... At the end of the 1960s she turned toward disarming civilian populations and abolishing handguns, reasoning that disarmament was as feasible for American citizens as limiting nuclear proliferation had been among nation-states. Others working in nascent gun control groups marveled at her incomparable wit and humor and her tireless passion for peace. She liked to tease audiences that they should "never underestimate the power of little old ladies in tennis shoes.""

", a first-year student of physics like Fermi, was not a usual person; his main interest was directed to that part of the world which is not made of human beings. ... ... He had organized a group of students among whom Fermi was prominent in an "Anti-Neighbors Society." The society's single aim was to pester people. The tricks they played ranged from placing a pan of water on a door left ajar which would give a shower to the first person going through, to exploding a in a classroom during a solemn lecture. For the latter prank Rasetti and Fermi, who had built the bomb, risked being expelled forever from the university. They were saved by their teacher of experimental physics, Professor , a tolerant man with keen judgment, who stressed their scholarly achievements at an especially convoked disciplinary meeting of the faculty."

"... I reached the door and read the sign: '. " ...." The name brought back the memory of a slim and swarthy young Sicilian leaning against the tall in my parents' backckyard, isolated and quiet among the numerous merrymakes at my wedding reception. It was the summer of 1928, and earlier that year Majorana had joined the small group of students being trained in "modern" physics by Enrico Fermi and Franco Rasetti. Fermi had told me marvels about him: he was a wizard at mathematical calculatons; in physics he was a genius, like Galilei and Newton. Nature had bestowed upon him exceptional intellectual gifts ... but not the power to cope with life. After a few years of association with the group, Majorana stopped going to the physics building; despite his outstanding work he isolated himself and eventually became almost a recluse. Then, after a dramatic return to the academic world and a few weeks of teaching at the , he mysteriously disappeared in 1938, forever, perhaps a suicide, or perhaps a hermit in the secrecy of some convent. Forgotten for many years, his name was now a beacon attracting to Erice the brilliant in science, the young as well as the old."

"Nothing is more anarchic than power. Power does what it wants. (Italian: Nulla è più anarchico del potere, il potere fa praticamente ciò che vuole.)"

"Seriousness is the only quality of people who have no other ones. (Italian: La serietà è la qualità di coloro che non ne hanno altre.)"

"If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief."

"My independence, which is my strength, implies my loneliness, which is weakness. (Italian: La mia indipendenza, che è la mia forza, implica la solitudine, che è la mia debolezza.)"

"Nel mondo reale il pericolo principale non è rappresentato dalle forze della natura, ma [...] dalla violenza dell'attuale globalizzazione neoliberista. Anzi la natura stessa è vittima di questo processo se è vero, come ricorda il biologo Edward O. Wilson, che le specie stanno scomparendo con una velocità di tre all'ora."

"Il ragazzo morto non era uno dei nostri, era un black block."

"Our debate has themes of great significance: the fight against poverty, quality education as a source of personal and social opportunity, and action for the protection of the environment. These themes are held together by the common thread of inclusion, with a human individual at the center of the political action of this organization and of every member state. An “inclusive humanism”, expression I love to refer to, which recognized the equal dignity of each individual, which is a real achievement of modernity. Italy openly invokes an effective multilateralism, because only collective and coordinated action can help us face the multiple challenges before us. We need a multilateral concept based on cooperation, transparency and the principle of equality between states, aimed at correcting the dysfunctional aspects of globalization. But the inspiring source, the polar star that must guide this multilateralism, is respect for the human person, starting with the recognition of his or her dignity, personal and social. Without this foundation, multilateralism becomes a mere technique, which can be useful but cannot expect to guide solid choice and values."