This article is within the EU, Italy, Turin series.

As announced in the latest article, BookBlog20260901 It takes a hamster team & citizen audit, on August 31st released a book that had planned for later this year, and also a new variant of communication about change.

Well, not really new- others did comic books- but, in this case, will be a concept, a format, and a structure, and will dovetail with the Citizen Audit section.

You can have a preview here (included the link to the above mentioned concept book).

This article is a narrative through articles and posts- shared them without the narrative, but this time will add a connecting thread to explain why selected those articles between all those that read each day.

The starting point is that next week I will have to return nearby Turin to see how things go in Turin- and, at last, will start accepting some of the invitations to events and conferences during the day- but, until will have no business reason to stay in Turin in the evening, as discussed later is past due.

There are more interesting things to do than waste time: if the local believe to be "master of the universe" and that Turin and Italy have a manifest destiny to lead, I still have, since 2012, to see the evidence: I see tinkering, but that is not what is announced, presented, even celebrated.

Evidence says something else- but it is easy for the opposition (not just now, also when the current opposition was at the helm) to forget and forgive themselves for their activities while leading the country, and then suddenly wake up and urge to do what they did not have the will, courage, socio-political ability to do.

From my standpoint, that will describe in the first section of this article, what I observed since 2012, when became again resident in Italy and started working in missions that required to be each day on just one customer, is quite simple: no government, whatever its "color palette", including when was that grand standing fig leaf that we call "governo tecnico" (a set of measures that no individual party has the stomach to push through, so we find a non-politician to put at the helm and make those political choices), did frankly more than floating or short-term interventions: otherwise, we would not have to discuss every time the same issues about future sustainability of the welfare state, reform of the administration, digital transformation, energy independence, de-industrialization, etc.

Meanwhile, in the world at large (meaning: at least Italy and Europe), both the European Union and Italy are frankly sorely in need of a reshuffling.

For the former, I will keep published the ongoing series The Future of Europe, and you can also read the 2024-2025 series #EP2024, while for Italy will wait a bit- but you can find already a lot of material published since 2012 on this website: just search.

Still, I prefer in preparation of the national elections of 2027 to publish something more structured- I started working on the storyboard.

Recovering a saying from Ancient times, after WWI was said that the British army in WWI was made of lions led by donkeys: and current Italy, not just Turin, is looking often the same.

The first section is sharing a quick summary of the context, or my perspective, if you prefer.

The second section is the heart of the narrative.

In the third one, will share considerations about both.

This article is an experiment: next week will release elsewhere a background explanation of each theme discussed in the second section.

The table of contents:
_ A_Setting the scene
_ B_News as signposts
_ C_Considerations
_ Conclusions



A_Setting the scene

Between other things, next week will see if at last locals will present "tremendous opportunities" that involve a quid pro quo (an exchange), instead of the usual "qui pro quo" (a misunderstanding, specifically a tribe-inspired misunderstanding).

As of the latter I had way too many since resumed living and working as resident in Italy in 2012, after my permit in Brussels expired- and I came to the consideration that, when offered opportunities first in Russia at St Petersburg for a German company, then in Germany for a startup, I should not have trusted the sudden appearance of local tremendous opportunities to settle into roles that included a significant organizational change (which is what I enjoy to do- evidence-based, but still cultural and organizational development).

If there are short-term issues to fix, I am still available- but as a term contractor, not giving away time and resources because there is a potential development: Turin has no credibility when talks about the future, as will show through evidence in the next section, and for a simple reason.

Talks about paradigm shift, but ends up always being a grocery shop style of living and tinkering day-by-day, the "rolling budget" was a funny concept that first heard in Turin the 1980s, but is the still a local Pavlovian reflex that killed the ability to really prioritize: in the early 2000s, I remember a customer where this approach had been formalized and was told that the budget was not set and then priorities re-assessed during the cycle, but simply each month or each quarter asked what was still needed, and, if needed, would be told..

... keep going this year, we will cover it next year within the budget of the next activity.

So deeply ingrained in the territory, that a web developer told me once that when was time to pay the last part of a project (always work by milestone in Turin), often was told what would be paid is accepted and started the next project: how to convert a freelance into indentured servitude.

My role here is just simply to continue what my Latvian friends already in the late 1990s said made me different from any other Italian that they had met.

Because they classified those Italians in two groups: those who, while talking with foreigners, could find no fault in Italy; and those who, just at the opposite side of the spectrum, found no redeeming value.

I am a foreigner in my own birthplace and country, and I met others that are too: and those are the ones who could actually help avoid that, in order to save Italy, we end up getting foreign leaders and owners, risking, with out attitude to assessing people based upon pretense, of importing quite often foreign donkeys that would fare no better than our own, home groomed ones.

I never subscribed to the nationalist narrative: I am guilty of being both bipartisan, and European- but not Eurocentric.

As somebody else more important than me said recently: I care about Italy, my birtplace, not about the "italianità", i.e. I do not care about this Italian turncoat opportunistic continuity where people wrap themselves into the flag whenever need to extract value from others- while surrendering no value when that would make a difference for the "common good".

The "common good" concept here, as I wrote in the past, reminds me that funny little village in UK within the 2007 movie "Hot Fuzz", where an over-performing police agent is shuttled to a village because his performance was making the others look as under-performing, with impacts on... salaries.

We have an old saying that quote once in a while and describes quite well that "grocery shop courtesan" approach: "con la Francia o con la Spagna purché se magna"- echoing times when both France and Spain quarreled about the control of the Italian peninsula, which was divided in many small statelets that switched allegiance routinely.

Between July 2008 and January 2012 had to fight to stay in Brussels, after Italians from Rome and Turin did what my foreign community in Brussels eventually acknowledged as "scorched earth" and "nuclear weapons" to force a return to Italy, when I had started my first mission on a career path (wrote about that and what meant in terms of lost revenue and time in the past- to streamline).

Then kept being contacted from 2012 repeatedly from Brussels to start again, including curiously asking me for few years if I was still interested in a role for an international institution.

Last time I had an interview in person in Brussels? November 2011, then went to Paris before returning to Turin- and made in Paris few choices that still apply to this day: as, if anything, my Turin and Italy experience since 2012 showed that Italy is even worse now than it was when, after preparing to return 2002-2004, accepted to carry out few activities in parallel in Turin, Rome, Milan in both the private sector, for startups, and in government projects- with the net result that, as we say in Italian, "se li conosci li eviti", and instead of resettling in Italy, shifted to Brussels.

The way NATO and the European Commission are heading toward a direction that puzzles me, as will be discussed later in this article to summarize what shared over the last few weeks on Facebook and Linkedin.

It is not just due to President Trump continuous roller coasting that is making somebody rich by knowing beforehand what will happen.

When the markets started ignoring those outbursts, simply got even more unhinged and obtaining the desired effect of keeping to generate turmoil.

Making a mess with the resources that are put at your disposal to keep and protect, so that you can look as the one saving the day is sheer lunacy- be it done by a President or by a consultant try to convert into a tenure a temporary role.

Looking on a daily basis on my Morning News with Claude the continuous stream of twists and turns makes for an interesting curve to plot: maybe somebody will use that material along with data from, say, Yahoo finance, and prepare a plot analyzing that war, once done.

Anyway, our European predicament is of our own design: President Trump is just spinning, we built the wheel.

Our European wheel includes too many "insertions" from conflicting interests that undermine, in my view, the purpose of both the European Union and NATO.

Worth discussing both elements in a future article within "The Future of Europe" series.

In Italy, we have funny movies about the "Armata Brancaleone"- a ragtag band of mercenaries set in a fictional Middle Age, going even to a Crusade.

Frankly, in Europe we have been exhibiting collectively recently the same level of coherence and organization, and the recent expansion drive sounds even worse.

President Trump is a background noise with significant resources, but we European use him as a fig leaf to avoid coming to terms with the routine internecine bickering that is the real reason why the President of the European Commission since 2019 has been able to push through so many announces and initiatives...

... all followed by tinkering to a degree intense also for my birthplace, Turin, where (as will discuss later) the couple announces+tinkering is a Pavlovian reflex to any disruption, or Italy overall, where instead that is significantly compounded by the added tribal mutual tampering replaces strategy.

Meaning: often our leaders seem more focused on undermining their competition than asserting what they represent.

In Italy, we would need a Frank Capra directing not a movie, but a telenovela "Why We Fight".

Somebody would probably answer "la cadrega" or "il cattedrino"- nice that in Italy we have still dialects with dictionaries, so we can be more dynamic in our descriptions.

In English, would be "having a seat and holding it".

Hence, the "reshuffling" part of the title: we cannot keep tinkering our way into the future- neither in Turin, nor as a country.

Between September/October 2026 and September/October 2027 will be a pivotal year for Europe, as we will see what really happened with all the investments since 2020, and what will really become feasible in the next European funding cycle.

To recap the main concept: in Turin, in Italy, but at least since 2019 also at the European Union level we have a structural state of cognitive dissonance- we look in the mirror, and decide that we are the lighthouse of the universe on whatever we decide.

Moreover: we announce plans, and expect the universe to freeze so that, say, a plan made in 2020 can be implemented by 2026 without any variation.

If you were the CFO of a company and made such a statement, you would not last from 2020 to 2026 and beyond, you would get the boot much earlier.

I know that "The Alchemist" said that if you desire something the universe converges to make it happen- but do not see many alchemists around...

The National Recovery and Resilience Plan for Italy (PNRR in Italian), part of the NextGenerationEU initiative, was supposed to help recover social and economic terrain lost due to COVID, but, while we were at there, those resources were supposed also to have more lofty and ambitious purposes.

Such as:
_ increase Europe "resilience" (say- ability to pre-empt and react and overall adapt to change)
_ seed future revenue streams to pay back resources and leave behind a better Europe for forthcoming generations
_ restructure the way of collecting resources to finance shared initiatives
_ restructure the way of distributing them, and collective accountability
_ increase convergence between European Union Member States
_ increase European competitiveness.

Quite a menu...

Then, of course, the disruption of logistics and invasion of Ukraine added many more elements: it became one of those open sandwiches that I liked to have for breakfast while studying in Gothenburg in Sweden- piling up ingredients.

The issue was then having that ability to "digest" that pile of food.

And, frankly, at least in Italy, we ended up creating too much "recovery" and little of any those six above (and others- do not read just the initial proposal of the European Commission, add all the other initiatives between then and June 2026).

The case is still open- and I am looking forward on publishing more articles on that.

And the "ce sont des provinciaux"? Will discuss it after the narrative based on news and posts.



B_News as signposts

In Turin, one of the initiatives funded was improving the largest park in town ("Valentino"), and restructuring an existing almost abandoned building complex there, a building complex where, in the early 1980s, as a teenager, remember working selling computers and videogames during a tech exhibition.

Restructuring for what? To host the new, larger central public library.

To get something akin to blending an open air, free access Kew Gardens "in sedicesimo" with a bit of the Englischer Gartens in Munich attitude (without the monopteros, but we have a fake Middle Age castle built for a Turin expo over a century ago), plus a blend of the best of the best of modern libraries.



Since 2012 I saw that Turin had shifted from being an industrial town that makes products, to a town that announces initiatives, preferably then seeking others to provide funding as if it were the most natural thing to do, after you present the initiative as a done deal (probably with yourself in front of a mirror).

Years ago, Turin was the company town of the FIAT group (not just cars- anything that moves by land and also air, with a bit even on the sea, plus what is needed to build or maintain them).

Gradually, Turin lost most of the activities, direct and indirect- and the logistics areas started becoming empty concrete and brick boxes.

Even the local Istituto Bancario San Paolo Torino that had been based there for centuries, and where I had my first banking projects in 1987-1988 (banking general ledger) was merged with a recently assembled bank blending existing smaller banks, and shifted to Milan, leaving in Turin a new skyscraper that many locals nicknamed the mausoleum for the manager that accept the shift toward Milan (or so was told while I was still abroad).

Then, Turin at last discovered that the "Motor Valley" developed in Emilia-Romagna by following a different model was attracting foreign companies.

So, somebody launched the "automotive valley" initiative- but following the approach that described above.

Net results?



Yes, it folded. And also other prior initiatives to revive the Mirafiori town-in-a-town that was the center of automotive production in Italy, such as TNE (Torino Nuova Economia), were declared a failure even by some of those called to their board (on TNE, I read a book discussing that within an interview, with the title "Chi ha fermato Torino? Una metafora per l'Italia"- worth reading, if you have time).

Well, this is the current status of automotive in Turin: plenty of announces that Mirafiori would be revived, plenty of starts and then stops- while, at the same time, announces that existing plants to recover in other European countries have been chosen by Chinese companies, instead of Turin or Italy:



But, for good measure, now also the competitiveness of Italy overall within the industry-of-industries is being questioned, after German companies had to reconsider their role:



Turin has been trying to reinvent itself as "the" location for conferences, events, fairs- and, courtesy of the high-speed train connection with Milan (less than one hour, when it works and it is on time), new high standard hotels are being develop in Turin, while foreigners using the Italian tax law to pay a pittance in taxes increasingly have been attracted by Turin and its architecture- at a fraction of the price that they would have to pay in Milan.

Turin has long been hosting a training center for the UN staff- but the UN has to reconsider its presence worldwide, under new budgetary constraints.

Again, when discussions about consolidating to Geneva started, of course Turin launched the now standard campaign about becoming "the" location (I should write a book on that "format"- is so repetitive, as if had been invented by somebody who used to work at the FIAT assembly who suddenly was hired as a marketing expert).



My work experience in German Switzerland in banking had as an added bonus some new connections- including an American friend working there at the WMO, and both visited each other's town a couple of times, and in Geneva he showed me the different locations etc of some international institutions.

If you have never been to Geneva, you can probably just follow what Zurich says about Geneva (and in Geneva they used to reciprocate), and think that they are pretentious.

Still, as in Brussels, is a small town with a high density of organizations within the domain of multinational entities.

There was a funny joke that was said in Zurich at Credit Suisse by somebody from Bern.

He asked me: you know why Bern is the capital of Switzerland? Because they met, and French and German side, agreed that Lugano should not become the capital- nobody trusts Italians.

Lugano and Geneva did not want Zurich, too boasting.

Zurich and Lugano did not want Geneva, too full of themselves.

Then, was discussed Bern.

Nobody had anything positive or negative to say, hence Bern it was.

Turin used to be know as a boring, gray industrial town- having dinner after late in the evening was as difficult as it was in 2000 in Bern to find a restaurant at 8pm where I was not told "let me see what we have left in the kitchen".

Now Turin is something different- but lost most of what supported its infrastructure- and not just the physical infrastructure, also services and the fabric of society.

Anyway, we could not miss the AI train: so, beside stating that we were there at the beginning, and reminding the role of Olivetti creating the first personal computer (but missing the commercialization train), Turin wanted the national AI competence center.

Instead got the Artificial Intelligence for Industry competence center- and since then local never fail to remind anybody visiting that Turin considers itself the leading town for AI in Italy.

I will hear next week the feed-back on yet another confirmation that this obsession is not shared by others in Italy:



Anyway, also Rome recently made a curious choice.

We selected the former Defense minister of Ukraine as basically advisor on innovation in defense (meaning: procurement).

He was considered a political competitor of President Zelensky while Brussels, Paris, London support the latter since 2022.

So, it sounded to me as an encore of the case of Tunisia during the Craxi government (in that case, the competition was with France).

Or even the disaster of Libya: we intervened in a war against a government that, dictatorship or not, was closer to the Italian national interest, to enter in an Anglo-French quagmire that remembered a bit of Suez in the 1950s, including asking to the USA to help us again, and resulting, as all the 2000s "interventions" so far, into not producing the desired outcomes.

So, we joke about President Trump starting a war without considering the aftermath, but we Europeans have been digging into the same opportunities to make a mess repeatedly.

We Italians like to play "king maker": but frankly the title of that book "Chi ha fermato Torino: una metafora per l'Italia" applies here too.

Anyway, somebody probably did not do the proper job in vetting interests and connections- as, just few days after, was announced that the first investor in a new initiative of the former minister was...



My comment?



Routinely non-Italian newspapers remind how if anything President Trump administration is friendly with President Putin (and is trying to become friendly with North Korea leader too: autocrats seek autocrats, it seems): so, having Palantir so close there makes for some thinking.

A while ago, remember that a European state was reported having passed misleading information to the White House to see if would reach Moscow- it did.

Obviously, some Italian newspapers (including "La Stampa" of Turin), now started instead reporting negatively on President Zelensky- so, not just Rome, also Turin is enjoying this round of "king making".

And today Italian newspapers reported another issue:



If you were to read my online daily MorningNews, you would see that first France, and today The Netherlands have shifted outside the USA the part of the gold reserves that was held there.

MorningNews is free, is an experiment on agents and agentic AI with limited autonomy that started publishing each early morning using Claude since mid-March on GitHub, and announced on Patreon daily since few months ago.

It helped also what happened to Switzerland: paying a deposit for something, declining a different programme, and finding funding transferred to something else:

"US circumvents Swiss blockade on Patriot money by diverting funds from F-35s Despite the suspension of Swiss payments for the Patriots, Washington is using funds earmarked for F-35 fighter jets to finance defence systems, creating political and financial tensions"

Still, I think that Italy has a potential- a potential that our élites, so focused on being "the leader", play as the mad young kind in Game of Thrones: spend more time undermining those who could potentially cast their shadow on them, than actually focusing on the issues.

And the news that shared above are just a fraction of the news about companies lowering their footprint in Italy, or moving abroad altogether, etc.

So, and not only because in the late 1990s was my first return project in automotive in Turin (two days a week as facilitator on datawarehousing finance- frankly more a matter of communication and synchronized swimming, than technology): I wrote in the post below I hope that Tata acquisition of the civilian side of Iveco will be completed soon as without too much disruption, as otherwise would affect also the sale of the defense side to Leonardo and Rheinmetall:



Maybe in October will write about the potential of Italy, after the dust from recent choices settles, and in November about Europe, as by then few of the long list of recently announced initiatives will start having impact.

Anyway, as wrote at the beginning, locals in Italy are still following their usual approach that is considered a "strategy" that they assume is so subtle that nobody can understand it.



C_Considerations

As for the "ce sont des provinciaux": if you read my previous material, you might remember that that was the comment a woman in a café in the métro of Paris the first time I went there, in the early 1980s, as part of a tour organized by a political European integration advocacy group I was a member of.

Because I had asked for directions, with my French learned in Turin, and she said so to another woman sitting at the counter who was asking who we were- mistaking the Turin accent for somewhere in France but far, far away from Paris, specifically Marseille.

Funny to see the face change when I said that we were from Turin, Italy.

Well, when worked again in Paris in the early 1990s, I was told that I had picked up the accent of a Paris district (our offices were in the 13th).

Then, in the late 1990s, while living in London and working in Paris... I was so much used to speak, read, think, blend in London and, also while abroad, mixing with British and Americans (I do not why, but mainly from military, diplomatic, and related circles)...

... that a French customer where I was working on recovery and completing a negotiation called the office asking for the Canadian- they answered that in the office we had Portuguese, Americans, Lebanese, French, Iranians- but no Canadian :D

So, that quip about "they are coming from the provinces" is a good summary of what will discuss about some recent cases where both Turin and Italy showed that inclination: trying to show that they belong, but ending up in being spotted as different.

Why that quip was so important, being said in Paris? Well, as shared in the past, I was amused when in summer 1990 was in my induction training in Paris: as there were two classrooms, for some classes.

One with the banner "Paris and Ile de France".

And the other with "Province and rest of the world".

I do not know now, but also in the late 1990s, while working again there, there was a mental, not just physical distance between Paris and all the other parts of France.

In my business contacts, having worked across countries, industries, technologies, cultures, I prize as much knowledge and willingness to focus or develop in a specific domain and then keep holding the torchlight on that domain.

Nothing really changed locally: still plenty of announces about brilliant future "tremendous opportunities", both for the city, the country, and, of a smaller scale, myself.

Coupled with little practical results- and, actually undermining opportunities with announces not just of success, but also how the locals (be it in Turin or Rome, albeit will focus on Turin) have been successful in making a significant gain that was expected as a manifest destiny.

Sometimes, even before the actual negotiation started.

Frankly, both as management consultant, negotiator, account manager, and just as an observer and practitioner of cultural and organizational change, I have never seen that attitude result in a win.

And I must say: since I returned home in the mountains, I contacted and interviewed and attended webinars, workshops, courses, meetings only remotely.

But whenever my parents are around, usually quite often join them for a coffee in the morning in one of the cafés in the valley.

And I must say to my connections in Brussels: yes, Italians are still doing their routines and their "social engineering" attempts, but with the ability to build plans limited to those that do not extend further than two-three rounds of gossiping feeding the next two three-rounds of gossiping.

Analysis of impacts and signal intelligence are not their forte, and times and again boasted about something that was just in their dreams.

Including investments from foreigners.

If you project yourself and your motivation on your counterpart during a negotiation, there are really limited chances that you will actually understand their position and what are the key factors in closing a deal.



Conclusions

Frankly, when I was in Rome I did what did in any other town in Europe where was a "frequent traveler", also if did not live there: assess the environment.

Including meeting with many just to listen to which cameos their shared about their local social, business, political experience.

Another thing that saw in Italy but I and others had already observed in Brussels from my fellow Italians: what politely some English called the "patience in long-term inquiries", which actually becomes, if nothing else works as what started is a figment of imagination, and you cannot accept mistakes as that would mean that you turn into a scapegoat, the favorite game that we spread across Europe centuries ago: entrapment.

I shared in older posts when I was still living in Brussels some of the most hilarious cases- hilarious for the reader, frankly not for myself- still worth reporting.

A funny case that shared online in the past when two English women in their 20s picked up myself and an Anglo-Turkish young man whose parents were officers working for NATO, and the girls tried to make us drunk- by equalizing drinking, albeit did not know that I had been "trained" in London on that side.

But actually the one "assigned" to me tried all the night to extract business information from me, and even when she was completely drunk, continued, so I asked to her friend if she ever stopped, and she (herself a bit tipsy) said something on the line that she was really committed on her work.

There were less pleasant attempts, and in Italy really appreciated the difference between the UK and Italian approach in recruitment vetting and investigations: class that you cannot buy.

So, I look forward to have few more months of the local antics.

Locals might well assemble enough tribal resources to make their own stories, pay somebody to confirm it, and have somebody certify it: but after continued damage is done as since decades, in the end they have little of substance, hence the local attitude to make up and build up- what anyway, eventually, is shown to be inconsistent.

No wonder that even recently read an article reporting the statement of an officer of the tax police leaving Turin and stating how deep is the integration within the territory and local economy of one of the Italian mafias, the ndrangheta (from Calabria)- echoing what not too long ago was said by a magistrate while taking office in Turin.

The difference? What I write about Italy is based on data that anybody can check: and when I publish it, I certify also the release date- for anybody to check also in the future.

Moreover, when in May released the first AI models containing 300+ articles from my website, but just on summaries, shared also the process- while routinely I keep sharing the full content of articles for anybody interested to dig deeper (or to train their own model).

All in public sites where the material will stay and represent a continuous stream of feed-back on how Italy and Turin and Europe became what they are, from the perspective of somebody with few decades of experience in assessing and analyzing organizations and the data associated to their organizational culture and behavioral patterns

A while ago I had been asked what I was thinking to do about my legacy- frankly, since decades my interest in AI was in part due to the idea of sharing the knowledge that I had acquired to ease access and allow to avoid pitfalls to those who followed- but certainly current AI access is easier than with the tools that I selected in the 1980s, tools that had anyway an advantage: were deterministic, not probabilistic- ask three times in different sessions and with memory deactivated the same question to the same AI, and you will see that instead produces a similar yet different answer.

My writing depends on reality, not what tribes adopting mafia-style attitude in Turin, Rome, or elsewhere in Italy pretend.

And the release date is certified by the presence on different channels- not rebuilt ex-post as the "truths" that I saw routinely Italians integrate in their opaque sense of justice.

We are fast at criticizing transparency in other countries judiciary- and yet, at 61, lost count of how many twists and turns about truth saw spitted out from our judicial system about minutiae such as organized crime infiltration, terrorism left and right and accomplices or manipulators thereof within the Italian State.

Since 2012, what all that material has been providing is a documented narrative of failures of the locals to cope with their own cognitive dissonance.

The only result so far that has been obtained by the local antics is simply that I have frankly seen how cheap are Italians in selling themselves to the highest bidder, only to then flip around if there are better opportunities.

So, in a twisted way, I am almost grateful to this massive Italian incompetence: because removed any personal association with any individual in Italy.

You saw in this article just a slice of the local failures.

The annoying and childish habits of the locals does not cover just the private citizens or even private organizations- also public bureaucracies and organizations in Italy have that habit: hence, as shared in the past, why abroad some were reluctant to share information with their Italian colleagues.

As a riposte from UK once, when Italians complained that they had not received information about an ongoing operation outside Italy: they said that they never knew who would receive the information, once shared with the Italians (hinted at leaking toward Italian tribes and organizations, including organized crime infiltration- at over 10% of the economy, has to be taken for granted).

If my fellow Italians in Turin and Rome assumed that those attempted entrapments would make me stay but tamed and subservient, means that they do not know even the history of Ancient Rome that they use to say "we had an empire" when foreigners criticize them.

Examples? Being paid twice an invoice and, when gave a credit for the second payment, being told that then that I was too honest; I might be honest, but I am not an idiot, as was not when in Brussels somebody that presented himself as an officer of the Bosnian navy offered to sell me a car of dubious origin, or when two young girls in a public place in Brussels stopped me to ask for money to take the bus to Schumann (200mt away- showed them the direction to walk and moved on), or when a German tried to prove that I could be a neonazi by organizing a visit to an exhibition about WWII at the war museum in Brussels that was frankly giving plenty of space to nazi uniforms, and little to those of the USA and allies.

My fellow Italians should all read some books about Ancient Rome- and ask themselves if they could do anything like what was done then- and I am not talking about roads, bridges, and conquests.

I am talking about falling and raising back countless times.

Historians associated that to a specific battle, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battaglia_del_fiume_Allia, that resulted in the invasion of the city of Rome.

I think that, until Italians stop doing gaming and scheming along tribal lines, decay will continue- and we really risk turning into a de facto colony.

Let's see which other news will bring the next week.

For now...

... have a nice Sunday- and, if you have commentary or request on which themes should be approached in the future by my hamsters (as each issue will be a business change history focused on one theme), let me know!