Everyone’s busy today quoting Machiavelli and “The Prince” out of context, but I guess most ignore the real-life character Machiavelli had in mind while writing about mercenaries: Francesco Bussone, aka “Il Carmagnola” (1385c – 1432) /1 Carmagnola took is name from his birthplace, a small town south of Turin, where he was born from a very poor peasant family. He entered into the service of mercenary warlord Facino Da Cane not even a teenager and rose rather quickly from the ranks /2

The murder of Guido Rossa, a communist worker and union leader killed by the Red Brigades on Jan 24, 1979, still haunts the memory of the Years of Lead as perhaps its darkest moment 1/ Rossa was, even outside his political work, a strong, even admirable character. His home base was Turin, but he accepted to transfer to Genova to work at Italsider, the city giant steelworks, and support communist unions there. /2

My little threads on the Borghese coup have raised an unexpected interest and some understandable comparison with the recent events in Washington, so I think a clarification is warranted here: /1 According to available documents, the Borghese coup was "executed" mostly by right-wing hardliners. However, the coup's ultimate goal was NOT to establish a fascist state, but instead a strong "centrist" status quo /2

The Borghese coup part #2. As I've mentioned in the other thread, some questions regarding the attempted coup were unanswered for years and are beginning to be solved only now. /1 The main open points are: 1) Was the coup "genuine" or just some sort of provocation? 2) Who were the coup's sponsors? 3) How really prepared were the conspirators? 4) What was Borghese's real role? 5) Who stopped the coup and why? /2

By a weird coincidence, the Capitol Hill pantomime happened more or less exactly 50 years and one month to the anniversary of the "Borghese coup"- one of the most mysterious opening acts of the Italian Years of Lead. /1 Junio Valerio Borghese (1906-1974) was a Roman aristocrat who, during WWII, had become famous for planning and leading several daring submarine attacks against Allied navies /2

The nonsense happening in DC last night is important for a lot of reasons, mainly two - it shows how Trump is different from Berlusconi, his probable inspiration; and is a textbook example of how chaos most often than not helps status quo/centrist/stability 1/ Our own Silvio went to power with large and stable support from NE right-wing industrialists who had felt excluded from power during the 1st Republic (1945-1992). He was also popular with the NE and Center professional and commercial middle classes 2/

To say that Lombardy's management of COVID was a mega-disaster is an understatement. Lombardy had one-third of all Italy's COVID deaths and one-fourth of all cases. And now Lombardy is lagging behind almost all Italian regions on the COVID vaccination plan. 1/ As for today, Lombardy's vaccination rate is 3% of received doses. Comparison with neighboring regions is frightening - Veneto is at 15%, Piedmont 14%, Trento 34% (!), Bolzano 17%, Emilia Romagna 9%, and Liguria 10%. And we're only three days into the campaign 2/

Few days after begrudgingly admitting that the Lombardy disaster may have been caused by its own semi privatized healthcare, NYT makes a u-turn publishing this nonsense, where it's all WHO and Italy's bureaucracy's fault /1 nytimes.com/2020/11/29/wor… Despite bordering Bergamo to the east, and despite following the same protocols and having as much contact with China, Veneto had one-third (and possibly one-fourth) of the deaths per 100.000 people. /2 lab24.ilsole24ore.com/coronavirus/#

Interesting statistical paper from Nature, ranking in effectiveness the most common COVID19 governmental interventions. It's quite technical but the images are self-explaining /1 nature.com/articles/s4156… The confidence interval of some entries is not "good", but the results are clearly food for thought. For instance, it confirms that making PPEs widely available and convincing the population to use them is way more effective than tracking/tracing cases /2

Clarification #2: growing COVID19 fatalities are just ONE of the problems Italy is facing now (the world will face soon). But the most urgent is that the majority of the infected who survive still require hospital care. 1/ ilsole24ore.com/art/coronaviru… Some math: as for 3/12,15113 Italians got infected. Of these 1016 died and 1258 have recovered. Of the remaining 12839 still infected, 5036 (40%) stay home, even if often the symptoms are not mild. 6650 are ill enough to be hospitalization, and 1153 need ICU to survive 2/

More details on the Bologna bombings revelations. The massacre was decided in Feb. 1979, long before the actual attack (Aug. 1980). So one attractive reason for it (a cover-up for the Itavia 870 shoot down in June '80) turns out to have been false 1/ corrieredibologna.corriere.it/bologna/cronac… The action cost was huge - almost 5 million of current Euros. The money came from different sources and made some very circuitous trips from South America to Switzerland. The investigators have found plenty of evidence about this flow of money, who is somehow linked to 2/

Bologna's tribunal formalizes the findings of the latest (and largest) investigation on the 1980 Bologna Train Station Massacre. It's now official that the bombing (85 dead and 200 wounded) was organized and sponsored by P2's head Licio Gelli 1/ ansa.it/english/news/2… Gelli worked together with Umberto Ortolani (shady financier who was the real boss of P2), Mario Tedeschi (far-right journalist, senator and disinformation master) and Federico Umberto D'Amato, a member of the "Secret Affairs" office of the Ministry of the Interiors 2/

@jimineuropa @alexandreafonso @SevaUT @_gabriel_U I agree on few points here but strongly disagree on other. I'll elaborate later @jimineuropa @alexandreafonso @SevaUT @_gabriel_U The idea Hitler didn't invade Switzerland because Switzerland collaborated with the Nazi is attractive and has been discussed to death but it clashes with some fact 1/

The current events weirdly remind me of Italy-Libya-US crisis of April 1986, when Reagan tried (and failed) a decapitation strike against Gheddafi, and Gheddafi orchestrated a fake missile attack against Italy to cover the fact he had been saved by Italy's PM, Bettino Craxi. /1 This chain of events began in October 1985 with the "Sigonella Crisis", when US Delta Force and Italian NOCS came within seconds from actually shooting each other when Italy refused to handle the Achille Lauro OLP hijackers to US forces it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_di_… /2