That photo takes me back about 25 years when I went to a job interview. Ability to paint realistically was the requirement. Walked into the studio and there were bodies everywhere in all sorts of peeled stages and positions. I thought I had walked into a medical school. It wasn't creepy at all because the studio was bright and very well lit. Turns out the interviewer was the dude who did the bodies for Silence of the lambs. I was just surprised that his studio was Upstate NY instead of hollywood. I didn't get the job because I was a Christian.
Let me give you a quick example of the height of insanity to which Italian taxation has risen. If you live in a building that has a balcony or balconies - and any of those balconies cast a shadow on the ground, you must pay a public shadow tax!
I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection. No, I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.
It has everything to do with communists. Allow me to explain.
Beginning in about 2014, Matteo Renzi, the imbecile ex-mayor of Firenze (Florence) acting as the leader of the Partito Democratico (synonymous with the Italian Communist party), somehow managed to get himself elected as Italy’s Prime Minister. To give you a proper frame of reference, Matteo Renzi was so far left, he would make Barack Obama look like Barry Goldwater.
At the same time that Renzi was leading Italy into oblivion, strange things were happening in Italy’s economy. Banks were failing, but not closing. Retirement ages were being extended. For some reason the pension funds were dwindling or disappearing. The national sales tax we call IVA (Value Added Tax) rose from 18% to 20%, then to 21% and again to 22%.
And in the midst of all this financial chicanery, the Chinese began furiously buying up Italian real estate and businesses in the North.
Now, the reason I mention Renzi and the Chinese together is that strange things were also going on between the governments of Italy and China. A blind eye was being turned to the way the Chinese were buying businesses in the financial, telecommunication, industrial, and fashion sectors of Italy’s economy, all of which take place in Milano.
To be brief, China was getting away with purchases and acquisitions in violation of Italian law and EU Trade Agreements with the US and the UK - and no one in either of those countries (not Obama in the US or Cameron in the UK) said a thing in their country’s defense. As a matter of fact, much of it was hidden from the public in all three countries.
In 2014, China infused the Italian economy with €5 billion through purchases of companies costing less than €100 million each. By the time Renzi left office (in disgrace) in 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded €52 billion. When the dust settled, China owned more than 300 companies, representing 27% of the major Italian corporations.
The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy, all of which had been secretly (and illegally) propped up by Renzi using pilfered pension funds! Soon after, the China Milano Equity Exchange was opened and much of Italy’s wealth was being funneled back to the Chinese mainland.