Notwithstanding the "Nay" vote by the Italia dei Valori Party, the Senate has approved article 50-bis of Legislative Decree No. 773, an amendment proposed by UDC Senator Gianpiero D’Alia to the security legislation introduced by the Government.

The amendment provides for “the repression of activities involving the defence of, or the instigation to commit a crime, carried out via the Internet”. In actual fact, if approved, it will enable the Government to repress freedom of expression and freedom of opinion on the Web (additional details in the article in Punto Informatico).

The crime of defence of and instigation to commit an offence is already specified and is punishable by law. Anyone accused of this offence can be tried in a Court of law and, if found guilty, is then sentenced accordingly. But D’Alia and his masters don’t want to have to wait for the outcome of such a trial, nor for the applicable sentence to be handed down. What they want is to be able to issue an immediate guilty verdict by obliging the service provider to black out the offending site immediately. Thereafter, who gives a damn about the trial anyway.

This is an anti-democratic and unconstitutional amendment that will prevent the spread of information on the Internet in one fell swoop, thereby putting Italy in the same category as the only two other Countries on Earth that enforce such restrictions, namely China and Burma.

Under the pretext of shutting the door on sites YouTube and Facebook, on which certain very diverse groups of fanatics “sing the praises” of Raffaele Cutolo and Salvatore Riina, the amendment in fact conceals a totally different objective. The objective in question is to shut down the last link in the information chain, the Internet, which has thus far avoided the control of Silvio Berlusconi, monopolist of the private and State media services.

I have to ask myself ,why not shut down Mediaset, which sings the praises of an assassin like Vittorio Mangano? Or why not dissolve Umberto Bossi’s Lega, which instigates the inhabitants of “Padania” to arm themselves with shotguns and fight against “Rome the Thief”, from whence the party’s leaders receive their lavish salaries.

If this attempted Coup is not stopped in the Chamber, we will take to the streets throughout the whole of Italy. And we will stay out there.

If the D’Alia amendment becomes law, then my blog, as well as those of Marco Travaglio, Beppe Grillo, Byoblu, Daniele Martinelli, Piero Ricca and thousands of other free voices on the Web will be shut down. This is the effect, and the true objective I might add, of this despicable amendment, and something that Senator D’Alia has made no attempt to hide (as you will understand from the video clip submitted by an Internet browser, to which I refer you).

Have your say to Senator Gianpiero D’Alia (e-mail).