Comparing *any* object, you want to use equals(), there's no "probably".

No, you don't. Comparing two Integer objects, as any other object, with ==, will compare the two references to the object in order to determine if they point to the same object. The object contents won't be looked at. This is simple to learn and teach, and elegant as a design. I find no ugliness whatsoever in this.

Although you didn't mention it, you are thinking about autoboxing. Java makes efficient use of memory and, by using == to test object identity instead of equals() you can detect this optimization. This can't influence any working code (because comparing the results of .equals() and == makes no logical sense) and certainly isn't confusing.

Scala has type erasure, too, and IIRC it was designed by one of the guys who are responsible for the design of type erasure in Java.

To sum it up in poor words, the point of Gladio was to replace a left-wing government with a fascist one. This was never needed however, because the Italians were good boys and never elected a left-wing government. This notwithstanding, the Italian military secret service supported right-wing terrorism with money, weapons and judiciary protection.

Those countrymen were never aware of such activities, precisely because they were kept secret. In those cases when they become aware of them, the few persons identified as responsible for them had to spend the rest of their lives in South America or Africa to flee from Italian justice.

If we want to be precise, no bombing (or targeted murder) was ever set up by "Gladio". They were carried out by right-wing terrorists that were sponsored by "deviated" Italian secret services. But frankly, counting the victims of the "red" terror versus the ones of the "black" terror seems silly to me (others have done it, and in case you're interested, it's "a draw"). I can assure you that I despise the KGB-sponsored killings as much as the CIA ones. The point of this discussion was that the USA's only interest was a peaceful and boring Europe, and in my opinion terrorism is incompatible with peace and boredom.

Military control would have been an option of last resort, and it was never put in place. However, in certain times we got pretty close to that. It's not surprising, as the rest of southern Europe was not democratic until the 70s, and something like that went on in America's backyard.

It was an emanation of the government of the United States of America, which, as we've already discussed here, is an expression of the private corporations that pay the politicians it's made up of.

It wasn't anti-soviet. It was anti-democratic-countries-of-europe should one of them elect a government that wasn't appreciated by the USA. In this aspect, it was very soviet-like if anything.

About the "right-wingers", I don't know if "immoral manners" is the label that best describes turning hundreds of innocent people into jumbled meat, and then derailing the investigations with the support of the local secret services (very tangible stuff, both the bombs and the evidence that emerged during countless investigations, not conspiracy theory).

Eh, that's what happens when you set up secret organizations to subvert the democratic order of foreign states and end up supporting and funding terrorism. As a side effect, when you get busted, people tend to lose the faith in you.