So, as many of you are aware, somebody throw a Duomo souvenir statue to the Prime Minister of Italy, Berlusconi. The poor man was hit in the face, he lost two teeth and he bleed quite a lot.

I just want to raise three points:

  1. this is horrible. violence is not the way forward. Democracy is a space which has to be defended. No matter what.
  2. the man suffers from a mental illness and it’s at least 10 years under treatment. He is mad.
  3. all the escort and the security guards of the prime minister should be fired and replaced with someone who is able to do his own job. It’s really unbearable that just one mad man can easily throw a souvenir statue to the prime minister when he is giving a political speech. It’s a routine situation which a competent escort should be able to cope with.

One thing that Greg pointed out yesterday: when somebody throw stuff to his old head of state (an affair implicating Mr Bush and a shoe, google will tell you more…), Mr bush was able to dodge the shoe. I think if Berlusconi had tried something like that he would had cracked. (It’s too old, c’mon.)

This episode doesn’t change the italian situation. The complete incompetence of this italian government on the energy policy, on the university and research reform, on the economic investment to relaunch the country economy and on the shift to a sustainable regime still remains. More over the problems with the justice which the prime minister has with the justice are not yet solved.

So get well soon Prime Minister, get back to work and try to do something useful for the Italian people.