Italy & Terrorism: was it a real threat?

First impressions are sometimes quite revealing. I saw the headline a few moments ago on BBC News Online Italy foils election terror plot. My first thought: what is Berlusconi’s government trying to do now to blur the facts? The BBC article that you can read here takes the threat reasonably seriously, but the Interior Minister – Giuseppe Pisanu – is from Lega Nord, never known for being especially respectful of ethnic minorities. Now, I know it is wrong to not take a terror threat seriously, but the centre-right coalition’s approach in the current election campaign has been so far from the truth that you begin to wonder what you can and cannot believe of what they say! If Berlusconi is OK with just ignoring the statistics that Italy’s economy has not been growing, how much worse is it to bend the truth a bit about a terror threat? Forza l’Ulivo!