I am getting nervous. I am sitting on a nuclear bomb on the day when Italy is voting a referendum against the nuclear energy (and against water privatization and immunity of premier, I mean, not trifles). This is a paradox!! Fine. Let's put besides the coincidence. I am anyway sitting on a nuclear bomb. How should I feel?
Since 2 days ago the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), the biggest nuclear aircraft carrier of the world is anchored in the waters of Naples, a short stop before heading to Libya within the plan of increased military operations. In a while its planes will start bombing on Libya.
I can see the monster from my window. Since 2 days. Do you find it normal? A nuclear accident is totally excluded? How? And what if Vesuvius decides to wake up today? And waking up hits a underground fault and causes a tsunami? Are we ready to say goodbye to the gulf of Naples after thousands of deaths? An italian expert of nuclear wrote in a column today that a nuclear accident is as likely as the possibility that 7 shepherds from Afghanistan hijack a plane into a tower. But with a difference: the permanent damage of the contaminated area.

It's time to reorder thoughts after the trip to Tunisia. I will try to assemble travel notes and impressions. I met a lot of people, making almost always the same questions and I received different answers. Strange place Tunisia, at the moment. There's a lot of smoke in the eyes and the changing is slow, so slow. There's a starting gun ready to shoot but it seems the start will not come by now. Much work must be done first, I fear that only once those who are the alleged winners will be sure of the victory, the starting gun will shoot. And at the moment, people are still too much convinced to be those who made the changing possible and this is too dangerous for those instead who planned everything and now must start cashing.
These are some travel notes collected during my underground conversations:
<<The people's demands are legitimate, but this is not a revolution. Blood in Tunisia has always been paid and has never changed anything. I wonder why today there is a change. I fear the answer is in geopolitical plans that do not belong to Tunisia. Colonialism was in need of new foundations>>.
<<Those who drove the fall of Ben Ali are people of the establishment that wikileaks proved to be linked to CIA. And they are still in power. That's why I was surprised when i saw him falling down. I asked myself: were we who made this? We were just the strength they needed to push him down, but this way we put ourselves back in the cage>>.

Instead of sweet drops of champagne on the face I have always preferred to lick bitter tears. When it is time to celebrate, I am already elsewhere. Anytime you celebrate something, you forget dark corners. And I prefer to see reality from dark corners than being under spotlights. Not because I am shy. Normally I am not. But just because I rather prefer to know what it is hidden in dark corners, and there is where I like to be.
Maybe that's why when in Tunis people where celebrating the fall of the regime, I was wandering in the dark alleys of Naples. And today that in Naples (and Milan) people are celebrating the victory of the leftist candidate on a "de facto" regime, I am wandering in the dark alleys of Tunis. Allergy to happiness? Faith in a minor god? Weak thinking?
Not exactly. I think reality is often not what we can see. So that, celebrations are not an accomplishment of reality but rather a kind of collective rave. And if I really need some buzz, I stay far from politics.

Me personally, I am not seeing any revolution. I can't see crowds of people walking around dancing. I can't see women walking around with head held high. I can't see people putting flowers in the guns. I can't see people dressing as they like. I can't see people closing western industries that emit deadly odors. I can't see people imposing people's dignity before interests.
I have never been in Tunisia before, I can not say what was here in the past. But I have been in Algeria, in Syria, in Jordan (and in Serbia during Milošević). Therefore I guess I can have an idea of it. For sure now is a little bit better. A tunisian friend I met in the recent days told me:
<<Before Ben Ali's fall, whenever we went out at night to write on a wall in secret, in the morning we found it cleaned up. By the police? Not at all. By neighbors who feared being blamed by the police. Now people do not bother to clean up the walls. But the police arrests us wall-writers as before>>.
I can add another example: when police stops you and asks why you have a camera in your hands, now you can answer that you are here visiting your brother and chatting with your tunisian friends making videos out of it and it's enough. Before, I guess it was not so.
I am in a little town at the outskirts of the desert in the south of Tunisia and I find a bit of rest to write. Bernardo is working in the local department of the university of Gabes.

Today it's a sad April 25. From my window there's a stunning silence. It should be a day of happiness, of celebration of the anniversary of the liberation of Italy from Nazi-fascism in 1945. It's a day of celebration in Italy officially, people don't go to work and schools are closed. But today is also Easter Monday, so it is holiday anyway. Some fascist group tried to have fun of it: "happy April 25!", they wrote on posters, referring to the catholic feast. So from my window comes only a sad and melancholic neapolitan song today, coming from the lanes below.
I wonder why this silence. It seems like people are stunned. That's why nothing moves. Just that moment before the wolf attacks the lamb. Everything for a second stops, leaves of the wood are immobile, the wind ceases, no sound in the air. And after a while everything is done.
Finding myself in despair, this morning I opened internet and I found some really stupid and discouraging comments by the self-called "antifa"s. This word (initial for "antifascists") appeared for the first time in the 1923 in Germany by the German Communist Party. That's why, because at that time Nazism was yet not on the stage. But I still wonder why today German anarchists have to call it "antifa", since "fascism" is a proper italian word, and "nazism" is much more meaningful, coming from the word "nation", something that refers to everybody's condition. "Antina", was not better? Anyway, this is not the point.

I am back to Naples since a few days. I found a flat and since a few days I have been living there. Finally I have a place on my own. And everything looks fine and the amazing view from the window is making me in a good mood. However I can hardly find the time to make a normal life since we are in studio mixing the music of "KATIRLAR DOGURUNCA".

It's strange to find a place now, after 13 months of wandering hosted by so many people. Now that Italy is crossed by thousands of young migrants looking for a new home. But I am not an alien. My life too is affected by what is going on. For instance from my window I can see the port of Naples, where is based one of the commands of the Nato operation on Libya. 

Not only. Last sunday I went to Manduria, a small village in the countryside, 100 km south from Bari, where they set a refugee camp to put some thousand of Tunisian immigrants come to the Lampedusa island in the last weeks. I went there with my mother to see, to ask, to share, to understand and to bring some cakes and drinks for some of these guys.

What happened yesterday night once I arrived in the port I think it is something worthy to be told. Europe is living in a full-blown paranoia. In these days on the Italian media they use words like "invasion", "assault on trains" (for those who are escaping going to France), "mass escape from the immigration centers", "hordes of immigrants are running around in the country". After the tunisian regime fell, tunisian citizens started shipping to Lampedusa, a small island close to Tunisia but still italian territory. During the past regime, tunisian coasts were patrolled by tunisian coast guard, but now that chaos is ruling in the country, thousands of young people are taking now this opportunity. So a few thousands young Tunisians are now on this small island and the italian government is doing nothing but pushing immigrants and italians on the island to desperation. Food and water started missing and I guess they are just waiting for the tension to be unleashed in order to criminalize immigrants and implement a kind of biblical exodus (call it "deportation") for future memory. Shall we bet?

Anyway, let me go back to Igoumenitsa, yesterday night. I walked alone with my contrabass to the port and all around in the empty dark streets, tens of young africans were roaming around the port, like desperate stray dogs. I said "hello" to somebody, they asked for coins, cigarettes and then I went.

Where are you from? Where do you live? These are usually hard questions for me. Once upon a time I decided I would have replied that my place is there where my contrabass is. That's why this time I feel like I am not in Istanbul anymore. I am in a small town on the west greek coast, just in front of Italy, waiting for a ferry to Bari. The contrabass is with me, I am bringing it back. Istanbul-Bari by land is not that terrible, I have to say, after all. One night bus to Tessaloniki and one 4 hours bus to Igoumenitsa and then waiting for a night ferry. Thinking of going back one day soon? Who can say?

The window is broken. Who did throw the stone? I am not saying who had the right to throw. I am saying who did throw. I am not looking for guilts or merits, I am just trying to understand who did throw, because this will make me understand what is going on. The Mediterranean area turned crazy all of a sudden and I can't distinguish between actors and spectators anymore, who is playing and who is watching, who is winning and who is losing, who is choosing and who is the choice of someone else. In other words it is like a compass altered by a coin. Given that we were going in the wrong direction until now, although the compass is indicating North, I am afraid the North is not. I can't say it for sure, cause I am not a navigator, but according to my instinct there's something wrong.

Since I wrote the post "What repair, Mr. Obama?", the way I look at the arab revolutions changed and probably never will be like before. That day I had just a few signs to make me write those things. Actually starting from the following days it has been familiar to find similar thesis in the main media, such as New York Times, Deutsche Welle, Al-Jazeera and many more. At the same time these media started bringing new evidences of what I was writing about, since mine was only a kind of logical deduction, much more than a demonstrated argumentation. However, at the same time, stronger and more radical, time by time, has become the opposition of some people that absolutely opposed to those arguments of mine, without being able to give me any valid reason to give up and change my mind, after all.

On sunday more than 1 million people were demonstrating in the squares of the main cities in Italy, joining the protest called "se non ora, quando?", that means "if not now, when?". This protest was referring to the resignation of Berlusconi expected to come and it has been organized by women movements asserting that is enough with the contempt of the idea of woman in Italy, enough with poor social policies for women, enough with gender discriminations. Things that are true. And things that are worthy to protest against. Anyway I didn't join the protest. I could have been there, I am not against these demands, on the contrary, but at the end I let myself be busy in other things. In other words, as you can understand, I was not excited by this protest.

I was not excited because I consider this protest late. Too much late. And because I think it was poorly oriented. In the protest the attention was on the inexistent policies for women but also on the offensive idea of woman in Italy diffused by the mainstream media, the advertisements, the daily behavior of influent public people. Women are one of the unluckiest victims of the 30 years long brainwashing of berlusconism on the country. Together with migrants, this is definitively proved. 

I can remember the beginning of the brainwashing, at least when I faced it.

Italy is an exclamation mark in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. So it sounds normal that everything happens in the area, in the countries bordering this sea once called "mare nostrum", should somehow affect Italy. I always tried to imagine Italy linked to the societies of North Africa more than to Europe. And this is often true, especially for the South of Italy. Once upon a time the North Africa was only the other side of the same sea. In Roman time, those who were living in North Africa were citizens of the empire, often nothing less than the citizens of Rome "caput mundi" themselves. Then came the Arabs, came Islam, and conquered the North Africa and we Italians started thinking of us as the last bastion in defense of our civilization against theirs. I don't know who had this idea first and why this happened. Anyway I never felt son of the crusades. Because I don't believe in god, I am not racist, so why should I prevent myself from meeting those people who live on the other side of the sea? And then, meeting them, I have learnt that the things we share are incredibly more than what we can imagine, beyond any alleged ethnical or religious difference. We are just sons of the same sea, of the same sun, of the same olive trees, and many more things. 

And finally we discovered that even the dictators can fall down. They just take a flight and after long years they escape abroad. And this time nobody brought democracy, people just came down in the streets and said "enough!". What kind of lesson on democracy we Europeans have to give the arab countries, I can't see. This time the lesson we have to accept. And we Italians especially must say sorry, since Italy supported Ben Ali since the beginning. So, if I am not wrong, Italy supported for 23 years a man who was finally forced to escape by his people after more than 100 dead people killed by his police. So Italy supported a bloody dictator.