There's this valley in my region. It happens to be practically the only way to France.

There's this fast-train project called "TAV". It's fast. They are building already a line across all Northern Italy. This is a HUGE building site. Roads, bridges, walls, tracks, powerstations. A huge amount of money.

The train will pass in that valley. And by "IN" i mean within the valley, inside the mountain. They will dig a super-long tunnel, one of the longest in europe, to allow the train to save some minutes from Turin to Lyon, France.

There are enourmous construction problems (pressure in the tunnel, temperature, asbestos and uranium in the mountain), and also very big environmental issues.

Then, remember that we are in Italy. The contruction is planned to last for 20 years. That means it will probably take forever.

So, for an unspecified amount of time the people who live in the valley (one of the valley already "touched" by the olympic fever of building sites) will have to live just by huge trucks, escavators, drills and so on.

No one asked them what was their opinion about this. No negotiates. No one seems to care that technical reports say the tunnel and the connection are useless. No one acknowledges that the line is useless for goods as well, since the present-time network is under-used.

Of course, technical reports can always lean on one side or the another, but if you consider that the company who will build the french sector is owned by Minister Lunardi's WIFE, you can see there's something to be upset for.

Some 20 people were injured today, as the police charged them to remove a protest block in the building site. Among the protesters, elder people, women and children. This government doesn't want to talk. The stakes are too high.

It was a high noon in Val di Susa , the very Far West of Italy.

to know more:

• http://www.notavtorino.org/
• http://www.greenpeace.it/local/torino/
• http://www.beppegrillo.it/