Quo usque tandem, Bertinotti, abutere patientia nostra?
The Italian Senate has failed to approve the foreign policy program of the government Prodi by 2 votes (158 instead of the 160 necessary for the qualified majority) and one again the responsible force behind this defeat is Bertinotti's Rifondazione Communista. Much as in the final crisis of the German Weimar Republic, a communist party that plays into the hands of the fascists. In Weimar, the communists - on order from Moscow - treated the social democrats as "Sozialfaschisten" and opened the way for Hitler's takeover. The most outrageous element this time is the fact that Romano Prodi's foreign policy has tried hard to redress the the mess initiated by Berlusconi's whole-hearted approval of the G.W.Bush's Iraq adventure, and to guarantee a say of Italy in the chorus of international concertation on security policies.
Italy's new Catilina is a man with a classical educational background, Fausto Bertinotti, and he should well understand the quotation above...