Italy

  • Libya: Western intervention help pave way to chaos

    When Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 by US forces, advocates of the Iraq War boastfully celebrated the event as proof that they were right and used it to mock war opponents. When Muammar Gaddafi was forced by NATO bombing in August 2011 to flee Tripoli, advocates of US intervention played the same game. ThinkProgress, for instance, gleefully exploited the occasion to try to shame those who objected to the illegality of Obama’s waging the war even after Congress voted against its authorisation — as though Gadaffi’s fleeing could render legal Obama’s plainly illegal intervention.

  • Italy: Greater unity, optimism as left backs Tsipras

    The project is called “The Different Europe with Alexis Tsipras”. It name is written on a red background. Predictions indicate it could surpass, maybe easily, the 4% electoral threshold needed to win seats in the coming European elections. In 2009, this threshold prevented both left lists, the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) and the Left Ecology Freedom (SEL), both of which received only a little more than 3%, from winning seats. This new project, however, is not a mere electoral coalition set up to clear this hurdle. In its foundation and structure it is something very different.

  • Italy: New gov't gives fresh face to austerity

    Italy’s new centre-left Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has proclaimed his intention to end corruption and economic woe. But there are doubts as to whether his government's actions will benefit the country's working people. At 39, Renzi, a member of Italy’s Democratic Party, is the youngest PM in Italy's history. His youth and optimistic rhetoric have earned him the title of “Italy’s Obama”.

  • Italy: Immigrant disaster survivors protest exclusion from funeral

    “More than 100 survivors of a shipwreck in which hundreds of African immigrants died burst through the gates of a holding center on the Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday in a protest against the refusal of authorities to allow them to attend a funeral ceremony for the victims,” on October 21. At least 366 people, mainly Eritrean, died in the October 3 disaster. The survivors tried to catch a ferry to the Sicilian city of Agrigento, where an official ceremony was held.

  • Italy: Huge march against austerity, for jobs

    Demonstrators clashed with police on October 19 as tens of thousands marched through Rome to protest against the government's intensifying austerity program. They chanted slogans against unemployment and government cuts to benefits and social housing programs. Many camped throughout the night in front of the Infrastructure Ministry.

  • Lampedusa deaths no 'accident' -- 19,142 dead in 24 years

    October 3, 2013, will go down as one of the deadliest days at the European external borders in decades. It is now thought 363 people have died in one single, tragic incident. While the continuous, everyday deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean are met by silence, the magnitude of this "blood bath" spurred the Italian and international media to report it widely.

  • Letter from Italy: While the old is dying, the new cannot be born

    Luigi Preiti, a 49-year old unemployed man from the Calabria region of southern Italy, walked towards Palazzo Chigi on April 28, the seat of the Italian government in Rome, holding a gun. As the military police patrolling the palace tried to stop him, Preiti went on a shooting spree. He wounded two policemen before the he was restrained and arrested by the Carabinieri. Apparently, Preiti’s intended plan was “to kill a politician” and then commit suicide.

  • Crisis grips Italy's economy, democracy

    Italy faces a wave of devastating International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed austerity as European leaders struggle to contain the spreading debt crisis by disenfranchising their own citizens. On November 4, at the end of the G20 meeting in Cannes, the President of the EU Commission Jose Barroso announced that “Italy has asked on its initiative to the IMF to monitor its commitment to fiscal and economic reforms”.

  • Saving the euro at workers’ expense

    The euro will survive for now — but only because working people in Greece and other European countries face greater suffering. That’s the not-so-hidden agenda behind the new US$227 billion bailout of Greece organised by the most powerful countries of the European Union, mainly France and Germany.

  • Italy: Students, staff fight cuts

    Rome’s Sapienza University is one of Italy’s most prestigious universities and Europe’s biggest with more than 140,000 enrolled students. But this northern autumn, despite the cold weather outside, Sapienza University — like many others in Italy — is at boiling point. The heat is in response to funding cuts to Italy’s public education system. Further cuts are in store if the university reform package proposed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government is passed.

  • Italy: Million march against the cuts

    A million trade unionists marched past Rome’s Colosseum on October 16 in defence of rights that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government and Fiat bosses are trying to water down. The attacks are part of the government’s “deficit reduction” measures. Under red flags, and the banners of the metal workers’ union (FIOM-CGTI), workers from metal and other industries, students and opposition politicians shouted: “Strike, strike, strike!”