NAPLES -- The controversy becomes ever more intense between two political figures whose expressions of political, ideological, and cultural distance are, by now, characterised by attacks and continued insults that border on ridiculous. The linguistic and verbal timebomb that aims to be the means of defence for each side’s stance is becoming embarrassing. 

  It is not difficult to glimpse in these debates, the ever-present opposition by some towards the South which seems to have a willingness to abandon itself because it is regarded as a place of incompetents and people who neither want nor know how to propel themselves towards broader horizons. This is commonly believed. And I, once again, will not stand for it! 

  The problem with the distribution of funds and their use is becoming a joke, even banal I would say! Six million euros of development and cohesion funds for the Campania region have been blocked for months. 

  Is it political willpower, a problem of slow bureaucracy, or the very slow, ill-concealed willpower to definitively destroy the South?

  Cultural initiatives, building organisation, planning and programming are all at a standstill, and yet time continues on in its direction; a too slow and destructive time for a South that would like to create all of these things but is not allowed to. A battle must be organised because jobs are at stake and so people’s desperation increases. The need and necessity to leave becomes an emergency because somehow, you need to live, you need to feed your children, you need to survive in this desert that slowly unfolds before you. 

  Beyond chatter and opportunism, us from the South want our rights to be respected. We can no longer wait and we no longer want to surrender ourselves. The 6 million euros destined for Naples and Campania need to reach us. The quicksilver stuck to all of Campania is bubbling with beautiful and good things. 

  Against every political counter position and bias, against all vulgar chatter, we need to arm ourselves and go forward to insist on what is ours, that which will be able to make the south a horizon of meaning in which economy, finance, entrepreneurship, cultural, social, and civil leaps are a complete manifestation of the greatness of a rich territory that nothing and no one will further be able to defraud. 

THE SMILE OF THE NAPLES SUN 

I close my eyes for a moment

and from the sky I observe the land of dreams, 

Naples!

What did I miss? 

I saw a lot of light,

a lot of men, a lot of women

dreaming and singing.

The sun, the moon, the stars, 

everything and everyone embraced by the sea

rich and small waves like musical notes 

which caress Ischia, Capri, Procida, 

while Vesuvius, 

albeit threatening from above, 

observed and listened to the song 

of his sun-loving children.

Naples, 

a place where even 

pain becomes melody, 

a song for those who,

pale-faced

feed on poison and a little Paradise.

Naples, 

who watches you and loves you; lives 

who watches you and abhors you, dies

because he does not value the dreams and the beauty

that moves life. 

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