Two days of ordinary madness

Italy

As expected, the elections' results of monday have been contested and what had started with a pretty normal and low-toned request for the usual post-counts checks, has quickly escalated as Berlusconi and his allies (less the centrist UDC party) denounced open gerrymandering.

I'll just list a few facts: before the vote, in Turin, the leftish mayor of the city announced that there were so many bus-drivers (one of the most politicized category of the country) selected as poll personnel and especially poll presidents that she couldn't guarantee the service. In Rome, the leftish mayor selected 400 members of the urban police to deal with the ballots of the italians voting from abroad. In Switzerland, 38.000 people who asked to vote never received the ballots. I have personally seen when I went to vote, the president of my poll wearing in all evidence the pin of one of the parties of the centre-left coalition. During the counting, in the middle of the night, while the centre-right coalition gained around 45.000 votes every 1000 polls reporting, the leaders of the center made a public statement encouraging their representatives at the polls "To watch out for the regularity of the operations" (something never happened before and that to many sounded as a signal). Again during the counting, a section in Sicily where the centre-right coalition had got 1.096 votes reported only 96 of them. Yesterday, full boxes of voted ballots have been found in the middle of the streets in a popular neighborhood of Rome (picture above).

These are hard facts, the interpretation of them is open.

One thing is for sure: if after 12 years of being on the political scene and 5 having the government, the centre-right coalition was unable to have a single Representative for each one of the 60.000 polls checking that the vote was not being "retouched", it does deserve to lose.

On a side note, one of the two communist parties managed to have elected two arab muslims affiliated with the UCOII, which is again closely ties with the Muslim Brotherhood: we officially have the first two islam integralist members of the parliament.

The World

But for how tense the situation can be perceived to be in Italy, that's nothing compared to the big news of the last two days in the world: Iran announced they entered the "nuclear club" by having enriched uranium to a level worth of being used both in nuclear power plants and nuclear warheads.

This, 16 days before the expiration of the UN security council's ultimatum calling for Iran to suspend any operation relative to uranium enrichment (ultimatum that, to be fair, Iran had scornfully rejected right at the first minute). As the news came out during a public speech by the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, Russia tried to propose itself, again, as mediator in the crisis, only to receive, as usual, another diplomatic slap in the face.

And so, we are yet one step closer of someone who swore to wipe out Israel from the geographic maps and from a country where someone has already theorized the "nuclear jihad" and found the probable figures of millions of casualties among the muslim palestinians as "acceptable for the well being of the islamic umma", having the means to back up their words with facts.