Man meets small spiky object. Object wins.

Berlusconi's bloodied nose is already an exquisitely political space, populated on the one hand by those who see the Capo's body as sanctified ground and therefore untouchable (i.e. his supporters) and on the other hand by those who see his body as sanctified ground and therefore untouchable (i.e. the opposition). Of course no politician is going to say that small spiky objects should be thrown at one of the caste, and I don't expect them to. But it really shouldn't be that difficult to point out - as so far only two politicians have done - that Berlusconi has devoted the last 25 years of his life to painting his opponents as evil baby-boiling communists, a violence that has been greeted with a Jane-Austenesque meekness by a series of opposition leaders, most notably Walter Veltroni, the man who adopted spinelessness as an ideological stance and lost the last election as a result.

As a man of the 20th century, Berlusconi, and his advisers, know full well that violence can be instigated through the kind of name-calling populism he's based his political career on, and Piazzale Loreto - not to speak of a certain Romanian balcony - is proof that it can, and usually does, backfire on the instigator. And it's odd that, during the act of Berlusconi worship performed by yesterday's main news TG1, no one saw fit to mention the fact that half an hour earlier in Piazza del Duomo he'd been screaming Shame! Shame! to a bunch of hecklers, whipping himself, and his relatively modest audience, into a frenzy of hatred. Chi di spada ferisce, di spada perisce, as they say in Italy.

The two politicians are Antonio Di Pietro (Italia dei Valori) and Rosy Bindi (Partitio Democratico), and I take my hat off to them both. And if a small plaster model of the Colosseum bounced off the head of Daniele Capezzone one of these days I wouldn't be the least bit upset. (How's that for instigating violence?)

Butchery

Of the 93 protesters beaten to a pulp, pissed on, verbally abused and then framed by the Italian police after being woken from their sleep at the Genoa G8 summit in 2001, at least 59 were foreign. It's well known that none of these foreigners contacted their embassies. Apparently, they didn't want to. They even signed forms in which they claimed to have no fear for their physical safety and no desire to speak to their countries' representatives.

The problem is that all 59 forms have now been revealed by investigating magistrates to be photocopied, completed by the same two hands, and bearing illegible signatures. Many of the forms don't even have the birth dates of the people who are supposed to have signed them.

Genoa's deputy police chief, now being tried for the events of the night following the death of protester Carlo Giuliani at the hands of the police, has called the attack on the sleeping demonstrators 'an act of Mexican butchery'. It's salutary to remember that butchery of this kind can take place in any country in which it's tacitly, and explicitly, condoned by the government, as this was. While the public Berlusconi was flower arranging in Genoa's prettier squares, his less savoury doppelgänger was putting the boot in at one remove.

The smiler with the knife under the cloak, as Chaucer put it.

Schlock

I went to see the new Quentin Tarantino film last night with Sally. The two of us were alone in the cinema apart from a group of teenagers, mostly boys, nerdy types as QT must have been, who behaved in a fairly respectful way and then went home, no doubt to squeeze their spots and dream about Butterfly.

The film had all the essential ingredients, raunchily attractive women in hot pants discussing sex, car chases, gory and apparently gratuitous violence, an intellectual's attention to tacky period detail, deliberate anachronisms, lap dancing - everything you expect and love (or hate) from Tarantino, in a particularly stripped-back form. Underpinning all this was an extraordinary simple but effective structure: essentially, the same story told twice but with all the difference in the world, which is where the film's moral purpose (because, of course, it has one) comes from.

I won't say any more, because I wouldn't want to spoil it for you, but it's extraordinary how something that is so much sheer fun in such a superficially mindless way can also be intellectually satisfying.

Now just let me squeeze that spot.