"Operation Freedom": the country of assholes

Often talking to Turkish friends of the current chairman of the Italian Parliament, they are astonished, like all the non-Italian people with whom I happen to make these speeches.
Unfortunately the Turkish friends know what it means to manipulate the information. According to the 2009 report of Freedom House, freedom of the press in Italy was described as "partly free". Such score in Europe was reached only by Turkey itself. But quiet, dear Turkish friends, starting from today is Italy the only European country permanently without press freedom.
The "Camera" (the lower chamber of Parliament) passed a text which provides a drastic reduction of the opportunity by the judiciary to use phone tappings and by the newspapers to publish any information derived from ongoing investigations. Turkey also is thinking of a similar law, it is true, but until now they have not done anything.
The current chairman of the Italian Parliament, Silvio Berlusconi, was one of the most frightening performers caught in the phone tappings in the last 30 years in Italy. Despite this, thanks to substantial block of the media, particularly televisions, these performances are unknown to the average Italian citizen.
Therefore, dear friends, the Turks and of any other country in the world, you will have to listen to phone tapping (with English translation) that I propose here below occurred on 21 June 2007 between Silvio Berlusconi, then leader of Opposition in Parliament, and Agostino Saccà, then director of RAI, Italian state television controlled by the Parliament.
Despite this chilling performance, less than a year later Berlsuconi again won the elections in Italy for the third time and consequently now his government is preparing to ban the phone tappings and muzzle the record on judicial Italian press. Berlusconi calls it here "Operation Freedom".
About a year ago, that is about a year after that phone call, I left my job in television in Italy. For me there was no need to wait for Freedom House report to know that in Italy there is no freedom of the press. Not only that, in Italy there is also something more, the "preventive self-censorship", that means that assholes self-censor even before there is need in order to not give displeasure to the boss. We have become a nation of assholes. The "cultural freedom" mentioned by Saccà is this, the freedom to let him put it in our ass as a privilege.
Enjoy the listening.

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