A Strategy to Stem the European Calamity

This essay is dedicated to three fun-loving youngsters, Lucio, Fabiola & Fiamma, with the wish that they, in their world, will not suffer the brutal stupidity all of us have been subjected to...

I harbor no delusions that what I am about to relate to you in this essay, my dear reader, will be taken into any considerationthat it will even be read by any one other than yourself. Notwithstanding, I am obliged to pen it for posterity. If digested, it will be considered Politically Incorrect by many. I relish that thought. The endeavor is divided into two parts: ( A ) a scathing attack on the chicaneries I witness every day in Italy; and, ( B ) a proposition that I hope will be thought of as an intelligent beginning towards a partial solution to the self-destructive muddle Europe now finds itself immersed in. I find it de rigueur to flog The Bootthe European sovereignty I know best. (Italy and Greece are not the only PIIGS [Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece & Spain] falling apart at their seams in Europe but we have to admit Italians and Greeks do it best! N'est pas? In fact, Italy does it six times better than Greece!) I regret this. But Italy needs a swift kick. This Mediterranean regime is a child playing with fire. It thinks itself clever when, in fact, it is more often than not ludicrous. Henry Kissinger stated that Italians were victims of a unique, peculiar form of stupidity: their presumptuous furbizia (cunning, shrewdness). An example of this would be the following: In Italian newspapers, when Italian-Americans are

honored in the DisUnited States, they will be cited for their Italian heritage. But when Italian-Americans rob banks in the DUS, they are referred to as Americans. Perhaps it was Schopenhauer who best hit the nail on the Italian personality head: The most demonstrable character trait of the Italians is a perfect impudence. This consists in not feeling too unequal for whatever taskfrom where comes their presumptuousness and gall; and, in not feeling too superior for any causefrom where comes their meanness. And nasty Italians can be. Listen to what an Italian journalist has to say about his compatriots: I have learnt that in Italy you must speak well about everyone. When you say something bad about a person, an uproar breaks out. The capacity to multiply hate by those individuals whom have been spoken badly about is infinite. I don't hate, and I don't want to be hated. I don't want to circulate malevolence. I live in a nation of professional haters. Let us try to understand Italythat enormous burden for the European Union and its very self! It is the EU's third largest economy and its number one corrupt bon ton (www.Transparency.org). The perverted Italian economy is a can of worms that no one dares to openfor which no one wants to follow the trail to the can opener. This wedge, this brain power is surely not anymore decent enough to satisfy even the megalomaniac phantasies of Vatican, Inc, organized crime someones, and the Italian oligarchic caste system, this triumvirate of old farts, which has lead Italy deeper into The Black Hole of Greed, Corruption & Stupidity. Ignorance is not always bliss, Your Excellency! (Please, please...will someone enlighten me? How is it possible that Mario Draghi, president of the Banca d'Italia [The Bank of Italy], the most corrupt and mismanaged financial institution in Europe, has come to be the president of the European Central Bank? Vatican, Inc funny business? God works in strange ways, you say? Is it possible that no one else in Europethey in the knowhankers to be prez of the ECB because they ken that the euro is bound to go out of business? That an Italianthe Italians and Greeks have been the least supportive of the eurowill be left holding the empty euro bag? So appropriate, I say!) Il Principe, Gianni Agnelli, himself proclaimed that Italy was worse than a banana republic! Please read Alen Mattich's editorial in the Wall Street Journal (11 October 2011) in which he accuses both Greece and Italy of cheating, cooking their books, in order to qualify, in 1997, for entry into the European Union. Sono tremendi! Would I be being Politically Incorrect if I implied that Europe poses a terror to the world more epochal than Iraq and Afghanistan

combined? Would I be being PI if I implied that European nations, at their throats for more than two thousand years, out-doing themselves in the last century by slaughtering an estimated two hundred million combatants and civilians, might not be primed to assume an orientation of leadership congruent with the realness of this our world? Would I be being PI if I implied that the European continent is a hornet's nest, The Black Hole, par excellence, of Greed, Corruption & Stupidity? Would I be being PI if I implied that the debased Greece and Italy are blackmailing the rest of the members of the European Union knowing only too well what the consequences would be if they both defaulted? Would I be being PI if I implied that Europe is running out of economic and political zip, and has been doing so for well-nigh thirty years? Would I be being PI if I implied that Greece and Italy might have been brought to the precipice of nonpayment by banksters to ensure the dissolution of the European Union? Would I be being PI if I implied that there exists a probability that the north of Europe and the south of Europe will be fragmented into two hostile groups of nations doomed to bring about an overturn or usurpation in European political affairs? Are we on the road to World War III? Not an explosion but an implosion?

Authority is admired more in Italy than it is meted out expeditiously and justly. That gap is excruciating for Italians. Italians are among the most ignorant European citizens...The level of schooling amid those 25-64 years of age is amongst the lowest in Europe...Only twenty-five percent of the Italian population has an elementary school diploma...One of every five fifteen-year-old boys or girls cannot read...Ten percent of the Italians have a university degree...Five percent of the people between the ages of 16 and 65 are considered extremely unlettered...Sixty-six percent of the Italians are labeled either high or medium illiterate...Only 38 persons out of 100 read at least one book a year...Italy lacks public libraries...Italians have little faith in othersmostly Italians themselves...Italian teachers are the lowest paid...Italy is Europe's leader of individuals lacking functional literary skills...Guess who

spends the least on university education?...What country believes more than any others in Europe that Science does more harm than good?...Six of every ten young adults in Italy live with their parents because they are unemployed or cannot afford to buy a home...What European body politic spends a bit more than Greece on research and development?...What nation has won, per capita, the least amount of Nobel prizes?...Who leads Europe in the absolute poverty classification?...The Italians have one of the lowest mean incomes...One of the lowest foreign-born populations...There are more guns per capita in Rome than in New York...Greece and Italy have one very interesting statistic to share: They evade taxes more than any other nation in Europe...Italy's government leads in public ownership and involvement in business operations...Its wages are amongst the lowest...It leads in fatal work injuries...The Greeks and Italians work more than any other country in Europe but produce less...The racist Italians are world leaders in stomach cancer (slow food?) and diabetes...They top the high employment and meager work opportunities' list (Why saturate Libya with bombs when unemployed Italians could be dropped into this African nation possessing such an enormous potential?)...With the highest number of police personnel...They are the least courteous in Europe...In the anti-Semite Italy, you'll find the highest number of car thefts...In 2011, there were 644 personal transport accidents in Italy during which drivers, after killing 95 and maiming the others, escaped the scene of the accident without offering aid to those individuals they had hit and run over...Where are all those police?...Italians are the least charitable...Champions of Hypocrisy (Gian Franco Funari)...Only the Greeks are more corrupt than the Italians...Italy suffers the highest number of robbery victims...They head the list in having the least amount of living space...The Italians use pesticides with abandon...Mammals are threatened appreciably in Italy...The Boot has more passenger cars than any other European nation...Twenty percent of the Italian population is over 65 years of age...If you see a Greek or Italian woman with tears in her eyes, ask her how many times she was slugged by her boyfriend or husband last night...Women in Italy are lowest in the database of their nation's leaders...Antepenultimate in the number of members in their Parliament...Endmost in number in the work force...After the couch potatoes in the DisUnited States and the DisUnited Kingdom, Italians lead the world in watching television...Italians are drugged on legal drugs, illegal drugs, television and their medieval history...They are so obsessed with Look, they scan over the intrinsic values of life...Italians are on the way to extinction...How is it possible that a nation with a

tradition of two thousand years, The Cradle of Western Civilization, could arrive at the impasse it exists in now? Not even knowing how to regenerate its own race?...Are we to seriously believe that this conglomeration of negative factorsItaly holds the world record for negative achievementsis up to competing with the vicious French and German economies, much less the global community? Obviously not!

Europe might survive destitute of Greece. But a Greek plus Italian insolvency is the dream of revanchists and Sun Tzu aficionados, and the demise of the two would necessarily import an enormous financial asymmetry that would reap unsought global repercussions. At face value, there exists no intelligent motive to discard Greece and Italy. This European shamethis sixth and smallest continent except Australia is not short on disgrace!would make the European community more of a laughing stock than it already is. Tens of millions of Italians console themselves with the fact that many other European countries suffer what they suffer. It is demonstrable that Greece and Italy must be towed not only into line, they have to be channeled into a fail-safe harbor where they might recuperate from their childish proliferation of degeneracy and dissipation and commence to be sound of mind and bodyonce again a model for the world and a source of pride for all members of the European Union. But in what manner? The answer is uncomplicated. So much so that all reading this essay will chime in saying Why didn't I think of that before? (I know why!). Europe has to bolt away from itself, from its essence. Which is? The heart and soul of Europe is an incongruous compounding of violence and treachery and exaltation and righteousness. No will deny, apart from Europeans themselves, that the pro-con scales of justice and good sense are considerably weighed against these profiteers of history and culture. They have done just too much to prove that their instincts are very often contrary to their self-professed ideals so much recorded in the Old World's literature, philosophy and religious doctrine. To escape from this eternal brainwashing will be both liberating and fun loving. But first...

What occludes the European continent from bettering itself and what is crucial to the letting-go of horribly rigid holds on itself, is the notion of nationalismthat naughty word that brings immediately to mind the Past of Europe, so frequently deliberately neglected, so often tossed casually into the bin of forgetfulness with expectation of elimination. The History of Europe is a bloodbath intermingled with scarce moments of heartsease before the next carnage. Each European nation possesses an impression of itself which is determined by its relation to another European country often defined in terms of superiority (physical and mental) or inferiority (corporeal and intellectual). When members of the European Union congregate, whether for business or pleasure, they view each other not in a spirit of concord, but with the observation, often suspicious, of what their relationships together were in the Past. In this ambiance of historical fragmentation and political and economic incoherence, it is exceedingly problematic to join hands not only in a spirit of sodality, it is still further sticky to hone ideas, profitable resolutions which would tender to the European Union the metier and integrity it requiresnot just the mere semblance of it being so. A coalescence, in real terms, of European nations is not longer an option. To live on Europeans have no choice but to unify and do so in every sense of the word. Monetary abidance is not sufficient. Political and social cooperation must forge progressively, radically altering the mire of slothful bureaucracies that impede a successful amalgamation of all European Union memberscitizens who, at this date, care to remain fixed at home having no real intention to dislocate across their boundaries to live in harmony with other European nationals. To encourage this movement of individuals from one country to another within the confines of the EU, a very serious inventory, a stocktaking of each nation's qualities and shortcomings must be tabulated. Honest assessments of a member country's true intellectual and commercial value must be grouped and then contrasted with the other associate commonwealths. If one sovereignty is lacking one quality, another could tender an offer to help. If the Italian railway system is deficient, the Germans or French could step up to aid Italy. Italy, on the other hand, might provide the expertise needed by the Germans or French in a field the Italian people are competent. So on and so forth... This sharing would invigorate people to go beyond their own borders to seek employment in another part of the EU. With a valid employment opportunity available and waiting for a worker, the

motive to apply would obviously be a great deal more captivating. The process would mix the minestrone of European peoples, and solidify the integrity of the EU making it more competitive and dynamic. If the European Union fails to commingle, there are two trends already in motionwhich might lead to very dire consequences:

1 Europe might become the economic playground of China as so predicted by Professor Martin Jacques in his thought-provoking When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World, (Allen Lane: An imprint of Penguin Books; London, 2009) or,

2 Europe might risk a disintegration of itself into regions ruled by organized crime consortia and vagabonding gangs as so prognosticated by Alain Minc in his piquant Le Nouveau Moyen ge, (ditions Gallimard; Paris, 1993)

Have a nice nightmare, Western Civilization I

(Europe) & Western Civilization II!!! (The DisUnited States of Northamerica)

Authored by Anthony St. John Calenzano, Italy October, MMXI www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior

The author wishes to express his deepest appreciation to City, an Italian complimentary daily handout, the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, and, above all, to Professor Peter Baldwin, professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America & Europe Are Alike An Essay in Numbers (Oxford University Press; London & New York, 2009) without whose exhaustive statistical information on Italy

this essay would have proved to be the less persuasive. It is hoped that Professor Baldwin will not wake up one morning in his Californian home and find the head of a dead horse in his bed; or, if he is visiting Tuscany, it is trusted he will not find the caput of a wild boar.