Prof. Mario Caligiuri. DR.
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: What is the situation in your country Italy in the context of the Covid19 virus epidemic?
Prof. Mario Caligiuri: At
the moment, the Italian situation is the most serious in the world, in
terms of the number of people infected and dead, even more than in
China. The conditions are extremely difficult and in Lombardy they are
even tragic. But the truth about the numbers is not told. For example,
in China, from February to December 2019, 21 million mobile phones are
turned off. I don’t know if that means anything. In Italy, according to
the High Institute of Health, the percentage of deaths due to
coronavirus alone is about 2%. In Russia, the number of infected persons
is very low and no deaths have been reported so far. In Japan, the
country was quarantined immediately after the official news of the
postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to next year. It is only in recent
weeks that strict measures have been taken against the pandemic by
European countries with the exception of Sweden, and the United States,
where the number of infections detected has made it the number one
country in the world. While the figures are indicative, they must be
interpreted and put into context. And the conclusions will be made at
the end, several months from now.
You mention three very disturbing
elements, such as the fact that 21 million mobile phones have been
switched off in China, that only 2% of Italians have died from the
coronavirus and that Russia has very few infected people and no deaths.
That’s a lot of things to constitute a coincidence. In your opinion,
what is the truth behind this mysterious Covid 19 virus?
In all great tragedies, there are those
who suffer them and those who profit from them. The most important form
of confrontation we will soon have to deal with is information warfare,
which is boundless. Behind the mysterious Covid 19 virus, in my opinion,
there is no conspiracy but a manifestation of nature that found us
unprepared, especially in a historical phase in which man, through
genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, has taken on the
appearance of a God who grants life and death. What’s going on brings
everyone back down to earth.
Don’t you think that there has
been a huge lack of anticipation on the part of European governments
with regard to the pandemic we are currently experiencing?
The first meeting of the European
Commission to address the issue took place on 6 March 2020. The epidemic
has been known with certainty since at least December 2019 and, as
early as the end of January 2020, the World Health Organization
underlined the very serious risk that this epidemic represented. Nothing
more is needed to understand the neglect and unpreparedness of a large
part of the European ruling class.
Why has Europe abandoned Italy when China is trying to help it?
This confirms that every nation, beyond
purely gratuitous assertions of principle, thinks first of itself.
Rather than a Europe of the people, the European Union is based on the
economy. China does its policy legitimately, as it does in Africa:
propaganda and long-term investment.
Has Europe not shown its limits with the coronavirus crisis?
Irreversibly, if it is not in a position
to confront the terrible economic crisis, which predicts a 4.5%
reduction in GDP by 2020. But it could be even worse.
We have seen scenes of collective
hysteria in supermarkets and superstores. Hasn’t this coronavirus crisis
put individualistic consumption patterns to the test?
According to the philosopher Slavoj Žižek,
global capitalism could undergo a profound transformation. For him, a
radical change is needed and the coronavirus represents « the death of
capitalism and an opportunity to reinvent society ». The whole social
system, from media education to media literacy, is based on the
promotion of consumption. Algorithms are the most powerful agent of
political change in this century and are programmed in the capitalist
logic of favoring the consumption of goods.
The health sector has been
abandoned in the face of shortages of necessary equipment such as masks,
respirators and hydro-alcoholic gel, which are sorely lacking, and the
depletion and even suffering of health care workers. Don’t you think
that the neo-liberal model that places profit above all else is to be
questioned? Can we manage health as we manage any economic sector?
There is no doubt that health cannot be
managed as an economic sector. In Italy, it is assigned to the regions,
70 % of whose budgets concern health care. In our country, in 1997,
there were 575 acute care beds per 100,000 inhabitants. Today there are
275: less than half. Health in southern regions is often problematic,
while at the national level, the private sector is very strong. All this
confirms a banal truth: for many people, health is just a way to make
money. The many exceptions, which we gratefully admire in Italy these
days, only confirm the rule.
Are not peoples of Europe paying the price of austerity, deindustrialization and relocation?
After the Second World War, the idea of
Europe ensured 75 years of peace, the longest period in history without
conflict on our continent. During this period, however, economic and
bureaucratic logics prevailed, especially after the fall of the Berlin
Wall. The most aggressive logics of profit prevailed even more, which
also explains the planetary spread of mafias. To cope with the pandemic
crisis, the United States should see its budget deficit double, in
Germany more than a thousand billion is injected, in France 300 billion
and in Italy around 50 billion. When they will start to draw
conclusions, there will be people in Europe who will suffer more and
people who will suffer less. And the results will be unpredictable.
What do you think of the lack of
competence of certain politicians who are managing this crisis on a
do-it-yourself basis? Hasn’t the coronavirus exposed entire governments?
Politics is unforgivable for weakening
public health. The ruling classes of the Western democracies
underestimated what was happening. China used the iron fist, South Korea
used technology. The ruling classes in these countries have proven to
be more effective. Three years ago, Daniel Bell published the book « The
Chinese Model », in which he theorizes that democracies are inadequate
for creating effective public elites. We are living it. It is to be
hoped that there will be an awakening soon, otherwise times will be
really difficult because each private and public organization works
mainly according to who leads and represents it.
Don’t you think that after this crisis nothing should ever be the same again?
It doesn’t seem obvious to me. We need to
see how the political system will be re-articulated. In Italy, there is
no alternative to this homogeneous political class. The new actors are
no better than the old ones and have not reduced the inefficiency,
social injustices and indefensible privileges of politicians. As an
example, I would like to remind the position of the Five Stars movement
on vaccines that they felt were doing more harm than good. If we don’t
change all the musicians, the music will always be the same. But we
don’t see any new musicians on the horizon.
It has been noted that in
countries such as France, Belgium, etc. the population does not respect
containment. Don’t you think that the issue of individual rights, the
lack of discipline, complicates the solutions to eradicate the
coronavirus?
Certainly,
but we must consider that this is a new situation and that social
networks, rather than helping to understand, contribute to anxiety and
confusion. Misinformation is the most significant fact of this era.
Several years ago, I theorized on the society of disinformation, which
is achieved by the excess of information on the one hand and the low
level of education on the other. Today, many people understand this: why
flood people with information, which is often useless and erroneous,
when those who receive it do not have the critical and cultural tools to
interpret it? This could be considered a very effective form of
censorship. That is, the deprivation of the information necessary to
understand reality.
How do you explain the lack of
international cooperation, with the exception of China, Cuba, Venezuela
and Russia, which send doctors and/or equipment and medicines, in the
fight against this virus?
International cooperation usually works
when there is something to take rather than something to give. Cuba is
praiseworthy because, thanks to Fidel Castro, it has created a quality
public health system at the service of the people. In the West, private
health services are excellent, but they are certainly not for everyone.
Both the political system and the
economic system, which some told us were infallible, have shown their
vulnerability to a virus. What can we learn from this?
In particular, democratic political
systems are in great crisis due to the insufficient selection of elites.
Democracy is only a process in the hands of narrow oligarchies
supported by the media, which give credibility to a system that fails
even to guarantee the essential rights of citizens, from safety to
health, from work to education. The economic system itself has confirmed
the limits of a development model based on capitalism that has now
imposed itself on the entire planet, including former communist states
such as Russia and China.
On a completely different note,
Operation Rubicon is a global scandal. How do you explain the CIA aided
by the German BND spying on Allied states? Aren’t intelligence assets
being misused?
Aldo Moro, the Italian statesman killed by
the Red Brigades in 1978 while he was prisoner, had already stated that
the German federal secret service was conducting activities in Europe
on behalf of the United States. Nothing new or shocking. Years ago, the
revelations of Edward Snowden, as well as those of Julian Assange, had
already anticipated these events. Our President of the Republic,
Francesco Cossiga, who was a great connoisseur of intelligence,
maintained that it was normal to spy among allied and friendly
countries. There is nothing shocking about that, because these are
normal, unconventional foreign policy activities.
You are a great
intelligence specialist. How do you read the connivance between drug
traffickers as well as serious crime and jihadists? How do you assess
the intelligence cooperation between the northern and southern
Mediterranean countries?
The convergence of interests between drug
traffickers, criminals and jihadists is a very dangerous scenario,
especially at this time. Few believe that states rightly focus on the
fight against the coronavirus and therefore crime and terrorism are more
far-reaching, especially at the IT level. In addition, one of the
consequences of the economic crisis in the coming months will be an
increase in social distress. With democratic ruling classes designated
by election or competition, we will certainly be in even greater
difficulty with mafias and terrorism, which choose their leaders on the
basis of merit and individual ability. Intelligence is the deep state,
the continuity of the state, independently of political majorities.
Intelligence has never before had the task of stabilizing democracy and
giving continuity to public institutions. It is precisely for this
reason that cooperation between the intelligence services of European
and African countries is a strategic step forward to transform the
Mediterranean from a sea of conflict and social unrest into a sea of
meetings and changes, to give new horizons to humanity in the 21st
century.
Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen
Who is Prof. Mario Caligiuri?
Mario Caligiuri is a full professor at the
University of Calabria, where he founded the first master’s degree in
intelligence, the first course in intelligence and the first centre for
intelligence studies at Italian universities. He is considered one of
the leading international scientific experts in intelligence. His
writings include intelligence and the humanities: Una disciplina accademica per il XXI secolo (2016), Cyber intelligence; Tra libertà e sicurezza (2016), Intelligence e magistratura; Dalla diffidenza reciproca alla collaborazione necessaria (2017) and, with Giangiuseppe Pili, Intelligence studies; Un’analisi comparata tra l’Italia e il mondo angloamericano” (2019). For the Italian intelligence magazine « Gnosis« , he recently wrote two very important essays: The unsustainable lightness of the democratic elites (2017), On artificial intelligence and the new world order and A priority commitment to intelligence (2018).
