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October 10, 2009 (LPAC)— Nino Galloni, economist, former general director of the Italian Labor Ministry, and longtime friend and collaborator of LaRouche's movement in Italy, addressed a conference today at ENI, in Milan, dedicated to infrastructure projects, quoting Helga and Lyndon LaRouche at the beginning of his keynote speech on the Sicily-Tunisia undersea tunnel.

"The first time I discussed this project," he said "it was at a seminar in Wiesbaden with Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, on large-scale infrastructure projects and the need for a new world economic order.... Such projects are all the more important in the present crisis, since we are all orphans of great projects, such as [Enrico] Mattei's," citing the founder of ENI. The conference took place in San Donato Milanese, before an audience of 100, including corporate management and engineers from ENI, SAIPEM, and other companies.

Galloni exposed two frauds: the "recovery," and the fraud that great projects cannot be undertaken because there is no financing. He said, "There will be no recovery. On the contrary, the present crisis of the financial system is systemic. Money is being invested into finance rather than in the real economy, and into such traps as derivatives. If we go on this way for years, we will have the total collapse of the economy," he said. Projects such as the Sicily-Tunisia tunnel would connect Italy to North Africa and on to the Sub-Saharan regions, with which one could expect an increase of trade, but "instead of financing them, private companies are waiting for the recovery to happen," and banks prefer to promote short-term financial investments. Among the possible solutions to this credit crunch, he mentioned a 50-50 share between states and private companies in order to finance such projects.

The next speaker, Engineer Pietro La Mendola, introduced as "Mr. Nuclear" since he comes from the National Committee for Nuclear Energy (CNEN) and Nuovo Pignone (at the time when Italy used to still have nuclear energy), was very polemical, this time taking on the environmentalists: "We are persecuted by medievalists" (as he called them, referring to their desire to return to the Dark Age) "who promote solar energy cars; how about solving medical problems with blood-letting and clysters, at best with a tribal dance?" he said, provoking laughter and applause from the audience. He compared the Sicily-Tunisia tunnel project to other such projects, including the Bering Strait Tunnel project, and emphasized the importance of high-speed rail.

The last speaker addressed the Mose project in Venice, to prevent flooding, and indicated also the European Union's role in sabotaging infrastructure projects, saying that the EU would challenge projects that inhibited the breed of various birds and mosquitoes (sic). At the end of the conference, representatives of LaRouche's movement spoke with some of the panelists and industrialists attending.