ABSTRACT: Today one discovers arms traffickers who are not above suspicion, but below it. The unheeded accusations of the Radicals. One of the sources of funds for payment is the drug prohibition regime: arms traffic and drugs go hand in hand. The Muccioli, (1) whom the "big" press have promoted to being the strategists of the drug war, do not understand this fact. One speaks of two hundred thousand drug addicts as the victims and forgets that millions of people are the victims of prohibition, victims of the violence prohibition creates. The war against drugs is waged in the name of saving the future generations from the unbridled use of drugs. These are the same cries that were uttered against divorce and abortion. The Radicals are reproved for being verbally violent while one forgets that the violence of words is in lying and insulting, not in the "violence" of the truth brought to light. The real scandal is the respectable people, the Pharisees who try to lynch those who uncover the intolerable bestialit

y and ferocity of the system of which the former are the authors and the beneficiaries.

(IL GIORNALE D'ITALIA, Sept.7, 1987)

Dear Editor,

The RAI-TV (Italian state radio/TV, ed.) and the "big press" have discovered - thanks to the initiative of the judiciary - that the Valsella, the Borletti and Fiat are not above but below suspicion if one keeps one's eye on reality and the illegal as well as infamous trafficking in Italian and European arms.

In 1980 the Radicals in Parliament asked some questions, to which the governments in the intervening years have not replied, which pointed a finger at Valsella and the other unjust men of today. The RAI-TV and the "big" press were dumb. In August, suddenly, they indicated great interest in some hints made by a Parisian weekly. It is only one of a thousand possible examples. "A thousand" I write. And they are truly at least a thousand. From pensions to so-called emergency laws, from the Mafia to drugs, there is an immense field where great possibilities of honest and good government for our country are buried by cowardliness and the lack of democratic information.

I mentioned "drugs". And on that I would like to add something thanks to the space granted me by "Il Giornale d'Italia" [a Rome centre-right daily, ed.]. The heirs of Bergamini, it seems, are the only ones to allow us this. Those of Albertini at "Il Corriere della Sera" [the well-known Milan daily, ed.] these days have even managed to censor a short letter of Ursula Spinelli's [wife of the European federalist Altiero Spinelli, ed.] on themes regarding federalist policies... The events of recent days have thrown light on a reality that is not by chance little known and ignored by "politicians", by those in charge of the reigning disorder on the domestic and international scenes. The countries where two of the Riders of the Apocalypse in action (extermination by hunger and by war) are the same ones that pay for the production and sale of the arms produced by the rich, "opulent" industrialised world. They are obliged to do so. Those who who guarantee war despite the atrocities they bring, are in the end pr

otected by the West and the USSR. Thus in the places where tens of millions die from hunger and thirst they buy and use the arms which we impose on them. How do they pay for these arms? One of the sources, the most substantial, comes from the international drug prohibition regime. Clandestine trafficking in arms and drugs go hand in hand.

The currency used to pay the Mafia and the secret services is no longer the dollar. It is drugs. For this reason in Iran or Turkey, in Lebanon or Latin America the plantations are growing geometrically in spite of the grim buffooneries of Reagan's "war" against the "producers". Thanks to prohibition, narcotics are worth more than gold. Therefore it is natural that narcotics are produced.

A true, immense multinational army is thus nourished and fostered - that of great organised crime mixed up with state organs in the interests of prestigious "families" not only of the financial and economic Mafia. The Mucciolis, who have been promoted to the post of great strategists and politicians in the field of the war against drugs, indicate that this does not worry them, that they know nothing about it. Just like the "great" journalists of "La Repubblica" [a popular Rome daily, ed.] and the government-lining press, all united in recent weeks in covering fire against the possibility of debating this issue. Defenders of the status quo, they deceive rather than inform and are the cause of the disaster in the name of which they hurl anathemas against anyone who fights, works or thinks of other possible solutions.

There is an aspect which I hope the readers of your newspaper will be willing to entertain in this one-way polemic: they speak of 200,000 addicts (and they cynically want them condemned in the name of their own and others' salvation!). But no one has a word to say for the millions of victims of the violence due to the price and the clandestine character of prohibited drugs. Even if we reduced to a tenth of its annual victims the violence practised by poor addicts (thefts, purse snatching, hold-ups), we would still have two million victims due not to cocaine or opiates but to the law that makes them into the true "black gold" of our times. The state is forced to mobilise against this phenomenon after having created it. And while feeding it, it imposes it. And thus we get the great trials that lead to nothing except perhaps the destruction of justice and the paralysis of its administration. This is why the children of Palermo and Naples, at ten years of age, become pushers and drug users. This is why ther

e is a need, which is beginning to make itself felt, to reduce the punishment of children ten years old, and before long eight years old... All of this in the name of "saving" a future generation from the unbridled use of drugs. Just as - do you remember? - they screamed that divorce would mean the ruin of the family, the unbridled divorce of mature men in search of fresh twenty-year-old flesh to replace their wives of their own age. Or when, against the regulation of abortion, they defended the status quo because of the danger of unbridled abortion by minors no longer held back by the fear of pregnancy... How painful, how nauseating, how shameful, my dear editor!

I am criticised for making "violent" speeches and arguments, while forgetting that the only verbal violence lies in insults and lies, not in the "violence" of the truth which is being brought to light. The scandal lies in these respectable people, these Pharisees who - whether it is a question of pensions, of arms, of drugs, of famine, of water (in the Sahara, in Sicily or in Naples) - try to lynch anyone who exposes and demonstrates the intolerable bestiality and ferocity of the system of which these good people are the authors, the heirs and the beneficiaries.

They say that my action was a mid-August exploit. That is true only because in this period it is easier to avoid censorship. For the rest, I shall not desist even in winter. They can count on that. But the decisive factor will be the help of honest people.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) The followers of Vincenzo Muccioli, founder of therapeutic communities for drug addicts and opponents of anti-prohibition.