In August of this year I was contacted by three young girls.

They had read a letter that I wrote to a Catholic theologian concerning the silence of the Church regarding animal suffering. They asked me to help. I met the girls near Rome. I recorded everything they said. Then the girls showed me some photos and I nearly vomited with horror at what I saw. I was flabbergasted, deeply shocked. The photos were utterly horrific. I felt completely appalled.

What surprised me was that the girls said the people who look after the horrifically treated animals in the kennels refused to see me because they were being blackmailed. If they said something about the horrors they witnessed they would have found the door of the kennels shut. I asked: are we in Columbia or in Italy? What the hell are you saying? The girls answered that if the women openly denounced these horrors, their lives would be put at risk. This dog – concentration camp – business is too important. I took the photos, recorded what they said and with some friends have created a web site.

We Italians go around the world telling people that we possess between 40% and 70% of the world’s art works (in fact it is only 4,8%), that we have countless monuments, churches, cathedrals, abbeys, palaces, museums, and archaeological sites. In Italy’s “bella vita” of Armani, Valentino, and Ferrari, of sumptuous cooking, delightful wines, cinema, the arts, splendid beaches, and glorious lakes we also have these
kennels – these concentration camps for dogs.

I must have been blind not to see such awfulness. In the midst of all this beauty lies the horror of the way we treat animals. The media speaks everyday of the decaying prostrate of Papi- Berlusconi , of high class pimps, of escorts, of the glories of our country (that, according to Berlusconi, include himself as the best President of the last 150 years, and probably the greatest of world leader since the time of Alexander the Great) but never points the finger to the horror that a civilized nation inflicts onto its animals. The animals in Italy don’t exist. We are a barbarous country towards animals. As bad as Greece and Spain. We are in the G 8, in the G 20, we are the 5th world power (according to others the 20th). We tell the whole world that we are a beacon of civilization, we speak continuously of the Roman Empire, the Vatican, the Renaissance, Michelangelo, Raffaello, Venice, Florence, Rome and we have the shame of the kennels camps.
I cannot translate the interviews because they are too long but I can try to explain the logic of the kennels camps.

Let’s start at the root of the problem:

We are a nation that abandons every year over 135,000 cats and dogs. There are over 600,000 stray dogs roaming free in Italy and only 33% are caught and taken into kennels. The Regions that have more strays in the territory are: Puglie 70,600; Campania: 70,000; Sicily: 68,000. Calabria 65,000; Lazio: 60,000. The South, as you can see, is the part of Italy more exposed to this problem. The South is even the area with the highest level of corruption and criminality. The Italians living in an area were the mob exerts influence are over 13 millions. The equivalent of 22% of the Nation. The mob is present in over 610 Italian districts. The Italian mobs: Cosa nostra (Sicily) , Camorra (Campania), N’drangheta (Calabria) and the Sacra Corona Unita (Puglie) have a turnover of over 130 billion of euros. The gain of the N’drangheta in 2007, that was around 44 billion euro, equal to 2,9% of the National GDP. To understand the level of corruption it’s enough to analyse the denunciations for corruption you have in percentage this classification: Sicily 13,07%; Campania 11,46%; Puglie 9,44%; Lombardia 9,39%; Calabria 8,19%..
Black economy, tax evasion, arms trade, drug trade, extortion, racket, violence, prostitution, sex slavery, constructions without planning, transformation of the cost in a mass of cement, zoomafia, arsonism, deforestation, the poisoning of the land and of the sea with ships full of toxic and radioactive waste and now the kennel concentration camps

The roots of the problem is that we abandon puppies on the motorways. We abandon cats and dogs like used, squashed beer cans. Last year we abandoned 90,000 cats and 45,000 dogs. This year, only in the month of June, we abandoned 65,000 dogs and cats. This is the root of the problem. From this horror everything originates. But note: the abandonment creates fortunes. It makes people rich. And, therefore, we have the commercialisation of the animal alive or dead.

Let me explain briefly how this is done, how the mind of a owner of a kennel camp operates.
Let’s get into his mind set. This is what he would suggest to you if you want to create a kennel camp.

First you must - preferably -. choose a territory where the law is a joke. The South is perfect.
The area of Benevento, Campobasso, Caserta, Irpinia, the region of Molise, Sicily, Basilicata and Calabria are ideal for the job. Choose an area of intense animal abandonment. Campania is perfect (read the book of Saviano or rent the CD of Matteo Garrone “Gomorrah” from your local video shop and you will understand what I am talking about)
Make sure that you have solid political contacts, right or centre or left it’s totally unimportant
Be a great friend of the parish priests. Give generously to the local churches.
Make sure you have a statue of Padre Pio in your house. Avoid the one of Francis of Assisi like the plague. He loved animals. He is not adequate.
Once the contacts are solid, try to appear like a benefactor: like Marlon Brando in the “Godfather”.
Then build a kennel in a desolate distant place. Make sure that is in an impervious area.
Make sure that the kennel, like many in Calabria, have high walls. Silence and privacy are absolutely paramount. Like the Nazi camps, visibility must not be permitted at all. You don’t want animal people to interfere with your work. It is fatal. They break your balls. They are mad and sick.
When the kennel is constructed, employ preferably foreign workers that you can keep silent. If the workers talk it’s big trouble. If they talk send them away - back to their country.
When the kennel is ready, make a deal with the town councils of the area (in the case of the infamous kennel of Cicerale, close to the temples of Paestum, 97 towns councils are involved with the operation).
Use your smart way. Oil the machine. Give decent backhanders. Make sure the local politicians are on your side. Make solid deals. Choose the stronger political party but be open towards the opposition.
Make sure that you have good relations with the local judges.
Establish contacts with the internationals multinationals of the vivisection; you can sell strays to the Mengeles of the animal world. It’s very easy.
Now go collecting dogs. The more dogs you collect the more money you make.
Each dog you catch is worth 50 euro plus a monthly or a yearly amount established with the local town council. Be smart: dog catching, plus dog maintenance, plus dog death with consequent incineration equal a lot of euros. It follows a fluent rhythm. More dogs, dead or alive, more green dollars.

Make sure that:
The idea of a national control of the kennels will never be activated, or we are lost.
The idea of a CCTV camera in the kennels is absolutely resisted.
The visits are prohibited so that nobody can see what is happening in the kennel.
Sterilization is not done properly.
The medical controls are inadequate.
The ASL (the medical organization that includes the veterinary control) is absent, irrelevant or abjectly corrupted and make sure that will write always false reports declaring that everything is alright.
Microchiping is done in a very limited way.
People who want to get a dog won’t get one because the less dogs you have in your kennel the less money you earn. Remember: adoptions are fatal to earnings; find all sorts of problems and quibbles to stop adoptions.
The lack of sterilization is extremely contained so that puppies are born and more money comes in.
The animal lovers are kept under blackmail “ If you tell somebody what happens here you will find the door shut” “Questa è casa nostra”. “This is our house”. If the animal people get too close, make sure you go out with a gun.
Nobody knows if the dogs die, if the dogs die avoid to report it so that you can continue to get the allowances.
Your kennel is full of dogs, if you have too many adoptions make sure that the bitches give birth to new puppies.
That you don’t feel any compassion, they are only animals devoid of immortal soul. Ask the local priest and he will tell you.

Don’t worry about:
The number of animals in the cage
The medical controls
The physical condition of the animals
The fact that rats eat from their bowls
Blind dogs starving because they cannot find the bowls

Don’t worry about dogs:
Devouring each other
With the local cords cut, without eyes and without paws.
With legs amputated and with monstrous injuries
Running around themselves endlessly in the cage.
Injured, cut apart, dying.
Sick with all kinds of horrific diseases and dying with tumours

Don’t worry about:
No water in the kennel, God will provide
The dogs that the activists take for a walk and when they are taken back in the kennel howl in utter despair.
The mortality reaching the level of 97%, like in the infamous kennel lager of Cicerale
The fact that the animals don’t get out of their cage for 14-15 years
The fact that the puppies born in a cage die in a cage.
The media: the journalists don’t care about dogs (they care only about the women of Berlusconi)
The animalists: they are abjectly divided. They want us to be condemned but the political powers will defend us. The law and political power will stop everything

Don’t worry about:
Ministerial inspections, political power will activate our contacts in Rome and stop everything.
Documents: they can disappear like the documents of Cicerale suddenly dissolving into thin air.
Carabinieri, NAS or the police, they come and go. We are well protected.
The judge, offers a job to a relative.
The closing by the authorities of your kennel: be smart like Calasso, who moved the dogs from Cicerale to a place called Cirò Marina, in Calabria, 400 kilometres away.
Moving the dogs. Sick or blind or dying pile them up in a big van, they will be alright, and if they die it is the will of God: the Lord gives life and takes it away.

Let me conclude telling two stories: one of “familismo degenere”, of degenerate familism, the other of pure horror.

The first is about the kennel - lager of Cicerale.

The owner’s name is Cafasso, one of the most hated men among Italian animalists.
This is the net that was created to cover the operation: Cafasso was a local councillor of the Comunità Montana di Torre Orsaia. The mayor and the ex mayor of Cicerale were both part of the operation. The judge Martuscelli was passing the usual absolutory sentences: like the three monkeys: no see, no hear, no say; Nese, the director of the infamous medical - veterinary organization ASL –3, who had the wife of the judge among his stuff, kept saying that all was in order. A nephew of a judge worked in the kennel of Calasso. The brother of the judge was a dog catcher working for Calasso. The carabinieri and the NAS were for obvious reasons impotent to act. A net of families, collusion and silence.
( document of the 29, 07. 2009, signed by Arkus, la Zampa e la Mano, Amicicani e Lega Nazionale in Difesa del Cane sezione: Puglia)
Result? The desperate puppy that you can see in the photo: http://www.lasaggezzadichirone.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cucciolo.jpg

The other story regards the town of Modica in Sicily.

In March 2009, Giuseppe Brafa, a child ten year old, was killed by a pack of strays in a the borough of Scicli in the town of Modica , not far from Ragusa. The population was obviously shocked. But nobody said that the reason of the death of the child was caused by the fact that in Sicily there is a mass of antisocial bastards who abandon over 68.000 dogs every year. This was the reason behind what happened - that nothing was done to capture the dogs. The dogs are not there by their own will: it is human responsibility; they don’t originate from pure nothingness. A priest, Don Salvatore Cerruto, started preaching against animals in the church of San Giorgio, in Modica. “We live in the society of idols. The animals are taking the place of the human person”. (La Repubblica 18.03.2009).In a few words, the holy man is saying: if you are a person who respect other living beings you are a lascivious heathen. You worship monkeys, peaces of wood and phallic symbols. After the sermon the lynching parties were taking shape; then the mayor of Modica, Antonello Buscema, started shouting in his barbaric slang: “Scendo il cane e lo sparo” that translated – literally - in the language of Shakespeare sounds like: “ I go down to the dog and I shoot him” And the shooting started. They were shooting dogs all over the place. You can see photos of Carabinieri shooting dogs on the beaches in (La Repubblica 18.03.2009). At that point the Minister of the Interior, Roberto Maroni, intervened putting stop to the slaughter. It was too much.

The Sicilian genius, the writer Vincenzo Consolo, winner of the Premio Strega, was adamant: exterminate the strays. “The animals are adored by people who would like to see foreign workers dead”, he said.
(La Repubblica 17.03.2009). From the lascivious heathens we have moved to the neo - Nazi animalists. The literate genius, heir of Tomasi di Lampedusa and Pirandello informed us that if you respect other living beings you are automatically an abject racist. You never stop learning in life. Once I read that a Sicilian councillor, incredibly named Nerone, proposed a deal: the head of stray dog or a stray cat in exchange of a certain number of euros. I think 25 euros. That way he was trying to solve the problem of the abandoned animals in Palermo. The news was reported even by the English Independent newspaper (“Dog’s Sicilian enemy”) He was immediately sacked but he tried.

Gandhi said: tell me how you treat your animals and I will tell you to what sort of nation you belong.

In Italy we have a law dated 14th August 1991 that states: “The stray dogs found, caught or protected in adequate structures cannot be oppressed.” And article 544 of the penal code states: “Whoever, for cruelty or without necessity, causes the death of an animal will be punished with imprisonment from three to eighteen months.”

What surprised me was the Italian magazine L’Espresso ( 01 .10. 2009 n.39) that produced a very moving report on the slaughter of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, eight pages with photos. They could see the horror of Taiji but not the terror that takes place daily in our country. Dogs and cats are nothing. Five millions families own dogs but nobody reacts, only animal lovers.

Only international awareness can limit this horror. Help us only in one way: www.ahimsa.it/canili gomorrah foto.html
 

And please, inform your contacts about what is happening in Italy.
Help the dogs you see in the pictures.

Italy was the cradle of Europe. This cannot be tolerated.

Paolo Ricci.

www.lasaggezzadichirone.org
www.nothuman.org