Caffè della VerGOGNA – edizione del 7 Settembre 2026
Il palazzo di cinque piani è venuto giù a mezzogiorno, nel quartiere di Satya Niketan, dove vivono centinaia di studenti universitari in alloggi sovraffollati. Le squadre di soccorso hanno scavato per ore con le unità cinofile, e il bilancio si è fermato a sei morti, con il timore che altri corpi restino sotto i detriti. Narendra Modi ha definito l’incidente straziante, e la parola suona come un’ammissione di impotenza in un Paese dove i crolli di edifici sono frequenti quanto le promesse elettorali. L’India che studia e spera è crollata insieme a un immobile abusivo, e i soccorritori hanno raccolto i corpi di giovani che avevano lasciato i villaggi per inseguire una laurea.
A Kiev, intanto, Steve Witkoff e Jared Kushner hanno concluso la loro missione diplomatica, e Zelensky ha scelto il realismo: la guerra continuerà. Il presidente ucraino ha parlato di una valutazione positiva dei colloqui, ma ha aggiunto che le questioni territoriali si risolveranno soltanto a livello di leader, e che la situazione resterà congelata almeno fino all’inverno. Witkoff ha parlato di compromessi necessari, di ingredienti per arrivare a una soluzione, e ha respinto le accuse di essersi mostrato troppo morbido con Putin, ricordando di essere stato a Mosca nove volte. Kushner ha aggiunto che a Mosca c’è stato un dialogo molto positivo, che Putin ha fatto molte domande, e che loro hanno fatto molte domande. La pace, in questa versione, è un questionario a risposte aperte, e i morti di Bucha e di Kiev restano fuori dal questionario.
In Sassonia-Anhalt, l’AfD ha trionfato con il quarantaquattro per cento, e Ulrich Siegmund, l’uomo che Der Spiegel ha definito «il più pericoloso della Germania», si prepara a diventare il più giovane capo di governo regionale della storia tedesca. Ex cameriere, operaio edile, venditore di profumatori per ambienti, Siegmund ha costruito la propria fortuna politica sui social durante la pandemia, attaccando le misure di lockdown. Oggi sorride in ogni video, distribuisce autografi sulle copie della rivista che lo condanna, e parla di riprendersi il Paese insieme ai suoi sostenitori. Il Consiglio Centrale degli Ebrei si è detto inorridito, e le proteste sono scoppiate a Francoforte, Berlino e Magonza, con migliaia di persone che chiedono di vietare l’AfD. Domani altre cinquemila sono attese alla Porta di Brandeburgo. Il muro anti-incendio della Cdu traballa, e la Germania che per settant’anni ha espiato i propri fantasmi si ritrova a dover scegliere tra la democrazia e l’incubo.
A Teheran, la giustizia degli ayatollah ha emesso la sua sentenza: Taraneh Rahimi, vent’anni, condannata a morte per impiccagione per aver partecipato alle proteste di gennaio; sua sorella gemella Romina, venticinque anni di carcere. Le due ragazze erano state prelevate di notte da uomini incappucciati, picchiate al punto che la madre non le ha riconosciute, con i volti gonfi e i capelli strappati. Taraneh ha confessato sotto la minaccia di uno stupro ai danni della sorella, e il tribunale ha usato quella confessione estorta per condannarla. Il cugino, che vive negli Stati Uniti, ha raccontato al Guardian che la legge iraniana prevede diciotto giorni per il ricorso, ma che nessun termine viene rispettato: sentenziano e basta, impiccano e basta. La forca di Teheran, come il palazzo di Delhi, è pronta a inghiottire i corpi di chi ha osato alzare la testa.
Il caffè della vergogna, stamattina, sa di polvere e di sangue, di sorrisi elettorali e di corde annodate. A Nuova Delhi gli studenti sono morti inseguendo un futuro, a Kiev i generali contano i giorni che mancano all’inverno, a Magdeburgo un venditore di profumi accarezza il potere, e a Teheran due gemelle aspettano il boia. Il mondo, in questo settembre, è un edificio che scricchiola, e nessuno sa più se reggerà.
Primo Levi, I sommersi e i salvati, Einaudi, Torino, 1986
Hannah Arendt, Le origini del totalitarismo, Einaudi, Torino, 1966
Elias Canetti, Massa e potere, Adelphi, Milano, 1981
Susan Sontag, Davanti al dolore degli altri, Mondadori, Milano, 2003
Zygmunt Bauman, Paura liquida, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2006
Michel Foucault, Sorvegliare e punire, Einaudi, Torino, 1976
George Orwell, Omaggio alla Catalogna, Mondadori, Milano, 1938
Amin Maalouf, L’identità, Bompiani, Milano, 1999
Caffè della VerGOGNA — September 6, 2026 edition
Ayoub was pulled lifeless from the eighty-meter well he had fallen into four days earlier, in the Algerian village of El Gasour. The boy was ten years old; the well was dry and dug with traditional methods, with a diameter of barely forty centimeters that made every rapid maneuver impossible. Rescuers excavated a trench alongside the shaft, worked day and night, and in the end recovered only a small body. The entire nation had followed the story on social media, turning Ayoub into a symbol of hope, and hope dissolved into the silence of a village in mourning. The well, as always, gave back what it had swallowed, without haste and without mercy.
In Moscow, meanwhile, Vladimir Putin received Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for three hours and ten minutes, and the communiqué speaks of a range of potential solutions to end the war. Witkoff opened with the phrase American envoys reserve for dictators: “When we retire, we’ll have incredible stories — the ones involving you will be at the top.” Putin responded with a smile and his customary liturgy of confidence, and in the end granted a seventy-two-hour truce, specifying that the Ukrainian authorities had asked for a broader ceasefire but that no such agreement had ever been reached. Peace, in this version, is an interval between two bombardments, and Trump’s emissaries have already flown to Kyiv to find out whether Zelensky will agree to sign surrender under the name of a free economic zone.
Saxony-Anhalt, meanwhile, woke up to an election that could hand a German Land over to the far right for the first time since the postwar period. Ulrich Siegmund, forty-six, a former seller of room fragrance diffusers and the AfD’s candidate, leads the polls with over forty percent, and Sven Schulze’s CDU is preparing for difficult negotiations. The Left Party has already let it be known it will support the outgoing premier in order to block the AfD’s path, and Sahra Wagenknecht announced that her parliamentarians will abstain. The Landtag of Magdeburg — once a city of the GDR — could become the laboratory of a sovereigntism that promises to close the borders and leave the euro. Germany, which spent seventy years atoning for its ghosts, finds itself confronting an electorate that has stopped being afraid.
Igho “Tiny” Ubiribo, a British influencer of Nigerian origin, died at forty-three from a pulmonary embolism following a penile enlargement procedure in Thailand. He had been injected with forty milliliters of hyaluronic acid and lidocaine, complained of chest pains, and was resuscitated for one hour and forty minutes, without success. The story, picked up by TMZ and the Daily Mail, has the cruel flavor of a parable about vanity: the man who flaunted his lifestyle died chasing a measurement no one had asked of him. Cosmetic surgery, when it pushes past the body’s limits, transforms desire into a sentence.
The Guardian published a ruthless analysis of Europe’s capacity to sustain a prolonged war against Russia, concluding that public opinion is not prepared, that the debate is at kindergarten level, and that pro-Russian populist parties represent the elephant in the room. In Italy, the paper writes, Roberto Vannacci’s National Future is “widely recognized as the most likely carrier of the Russian message in the next elections.” The British diplomat quoted by the paper accused governments of never having explained to citizens the true extent of the threat, and defense officials warned that NATO might have to focus its planning on a short-war scenario. Europe, in this reading, is an economic giant with the nerves of a child, and Russia knows it.
EMERGENCY announced a popular initiative law for the right to conscientious objection to war, titled “I Object to War.” Simonetta Gola explained that Italy has not had a conscientious objection law for decades, and that the proposal aims to guarantee everyone the possibility of refusing to lend their body, labor, and consent to war and rearmament. The initiative was drafted with the collaboration of a magistrate, a constitutional scholar, and a lawyer, and in the coming weeks EMERGENCY will provide the tools to take part. The word “objection” sounds like an archaism, and yet it is the only one that can restore meaning to a public debate reduced to slogans.
The family in the woods received the ruling they feared: the three children remain in foster care, with a gradual reunification plan, and the parents announce an appeal. Catherine and Nathan spoke of a heartbreaking decision, of doctors who had flagged a serious health risk for the children, of home schooling ignored. The story of this family, for months at the center of controversy, has become the symbol of a clash between educational models, and the Court chose the path of caution. What remains to be understood is whether caution is an act of love or yet another form of bureaucratic violence.
Franco Isceri entrusted his grief to a video, and politics responded the only way it knows how: with press releases. The father of Lorena — the woman killed by her ex-boyfriend and thrown from an overpass — called for unanimous measures, jobs in schools, and stronger anti-violence centers. Meloni wrote on Facebook that no one can believe that what has been done so far is enough, and Tajani pledged commitment. Words, in the face of a destroyed father, weigh as much as feathers, but they are the only thing a democracy knows how to offer. Lorena lies buried at the foot of that overpass together with the will to live of an entire family, and the father’s video will remain as a monument to the solitude of those who ask for justice and receive only a reply on Facebook.
The coffee of shame, this morning, has the taste of the earth covering Ayoub, and of the earth not yet covering Franco Isceri’s grief. Negotiators fly from Moscow to Kyiv, Saxony votes, an influencer chases an illusion, and a mother waits to hug her children again. The world is a bottomless well, and each of us digs our own pit.
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, SE, Milan, 1990 Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, Adelphi, Milan, 1981 Hannah Arendt, The Banality of Evil, Feltrinelli, Milan, 2001 Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, Einaudi, Turin, 1986 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Mondadori, Milan, 2003 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 2006 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Einaudi, Turin, 1976
