Italy: two immigrants shot in Naples in Nazi terrorist spate

Two African immigrants, one from Senegal and the other from Nigeria, were shot by car-riding snippers in Naples. The attackers remain at large.

Unlike the media are styling this is not any "game" and there is absolutely no "justification" in unemployment or whatever: it is Nazism and it is the work of a serial murderer or murderers with racist motivation. 

Nigerian Henry Kwasu was injured and recovers at hospital, while Senegalese S. B. C. managed to escape his attackers.

In 2005 and 2008 the local mafia murdered several immigrants with the self-declared pretext of "warning" colored drug-dealers. However the victims all seem to have been innocent workers. 

Source: Repubblica[it].

Basque internationalist arrested in Palestine

Igor Goikolea was arrested by Zionist forces in the town of Ma'Sara (or Al-Masara). In the previous days two other European internationalists (with French and Italian passports) were also arrested in that same town and expelled from the territories under control of the Apartheid regime.

A protest has been called for Monday in his hometown of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Video of one of the arrests:

Sources: Naiz Info[es], Askapena[eu/es], Borroka Garaia Da![eu].

Gladio: Nato's shadow state (III): against communism by any means necessary

The third article[es] of Daniele Ganser on the Gladio affair (French version) is most interesting for the present time, especially as communist forces like SYRIZA in Greece (or maybe others in the near future or at sub-state level, as may be the Basque case) aspire to reach to power by purely electoral means.

Some, very naively, expect the state apparatus to obey them as soon as they reach power but the reality is quite the opposite and the increased Nazi penetration in the Greek police forces is the proverbial tip of the iceberg that evidences that the deep state of the Balcanic country is getting ready to counter such an eventuality by all means. 

Gladio investigations established that NATO is not merely a defensive alliance but first and foremost an anti-communist organization of global reach. They also evidence that the real command is in Washington and not Brussels, with Europeans being relegated to a secondary role as auxiliary forces of the American Empire. Role that nevertheless many exert enthusiastically. 

A key organism is the hyper-secret Security Bureau, created in 1949 and whose declared mission is to coordinate, oversee and implement NATO's security policies. It's top officer is the Security Director, main councilor of NATO's Secretary General and President of the Security Committee of NATO. This committee gathers the chiefs of security services of NATO member states and discusses matters such as espionage, terrorism, subversion and other threats, including communism. 

In other words: it coordinates all NATO secret services. However some such services seem to have acted independently from their governments with full blessing by NATO. According to Portuguese newspaper Expresso (1990):

It seems evident that NATO applies a criterion of restricted trust. Under such doctrine some governments are not active enough in the struggle against communism, so it is not useful to inform them about the activities of the NATO's secret army. 

In a closed doors meeting, whose details were revealed by Portuguese media, Manfred Wörner, then NATO's Secretary General, explained that the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) coordinates the activities of the Gladio network through the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created in 1952. 

This network was first created in Italy as early as 1947 (the same year in which the CIA was organized) and then extended to the rest of Europe: France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Greece.

Former NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns declared to the press that he had no knowledge of the network. Luns implied that every secret operation was part of NATO, emphasizing that NATO is controlled by the USA and that the Commander General of the organization (SACEUR) is always a US-American appointed by Washington (the Deputy SACEUR has been mostly British but, since 1980, also occasionally German).

Thomas Polgar, retired CIA officer, acknowledged that there exists "a sort of group in charge of planning non-conventional war". He also emphasized US control of this department. 

According to the Belgian parliamentary committee, this organization was founded even before NATO itself with the name of Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), which coordinated the allied secret services. This seems to be the same as the Security Bureau, as it's known nowadays, but was known for long as Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC). 

The first public evidence of the existence of secret anti-communist protocols was revealed in 1966, soon after De Gaulle retired France from the NATO structure (not the alliance itself) and expelled NATO headquarters from French soil. It was De Gaulle himself who denounced such protocols as a violation of national sovereignty.

According to US journalist Arthur Rowse (1994):

A secret clause of the original NATO treaty stipulated that every country candidate to adhesion must have established first a National Security authority in charge of directing the fight against Communism through clandestine citizen groups. 

Italian journalist Giuseppe de Lutiis found that in 1949, in the event of joining NATO, Italy had to sign a protocol establishing an unofficial organization in charge of guaranteeing the alignment of Italy's internal policies with those of the Western bloc by all means necessary, even in the event that the population would manifest a divergent inclination.

NATO officers have confirmed on condition of anonymity that such protocols explicitly protect far right members considered useful in the fight against communists. Even West Germany signed such protocols, in which it explicitly agreed to abstain from prosecuting notorious Nazi activists (Searchlight 1991).

The CPC was all the time directed by Washington, with a secondary role for London and Paris (before De Gaulle's walk out). In all CPC meetings there were CIA officers. A parallel structure is the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created by order of the fourth SACEUR, Lauris Norstadt, in 1952. It's more relaxed and horizontal ambient allowed Gladio commanders to share their networks more effectively.

To this day NATO still denies the existence of either the CPC or the ACC. But even former CIA officers like Thomas Polgar have acknowledged them as very real. However no public debate has ever existed in the North American federation on these matters. Just a few journalists have attempted to inquire on these matters but had no or very limited success. 

Britain must also be mentioned. In 1991 the BBC reported that the role of Great Britain in the creation of these "stay behind" networks was central. This should surprise nobody considering that London was deeply implicated in the ascent of European fascisms in the 1920s and 1930s, including that of Hitler, naturally (just that he got off the leash by threatening to invade Russia single-handedly, which would have given Berlin too much power if successful). British democracy is a mere facade, serving as cover for terribly secret entities like the MI6, whose very existence was only revealed to the public in 1994.

Almost nothing of the British dirty war is known to this day. Nobody in Westminster seems concerned: the regime has 100% of the seats or almost.

Main source[es]: Daniele Ganser "Gladio: Por qué la OTAN, la CIA y el MI6 siguen negando" (also in French). 

Previous entries: I, II.

Gladio: NATO's shadow state (I)

When Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said that the attackers of September 9th 2001 were "America's chicken coming home to roost" he was nailing it. However the chicken are not, as he implied, bearded Islamists but rather Christian right-wing extremists who make up the real shadow government in Europe, that overseas province of the USA, and now also in the homeland as well. 

Daniele Ganser has written for Voltaire Network a series of articles in Spanish (most also available in French) on the "stay-behind" network of NATO known popularly as Gladio, it's Italian name. 

The work is almost monumental but I will try to synthesize here and in future articles the most essential of it, because it is something that we must all know about, surely more important than electoral politics and the like.

The first article deals with the best known Gladio network and the only properly deserving that name: the Italian one. 

Bologna station after the NATO attack

Between 1969 and 1987, the so-called years of lead, several terrorist massacres against civilians took place in Italy, inspiring fear and serving as pretext to persecute the communists, who were blamed for the attacks (just as they were blamed for the Reichstag fire by the Nazis). Not just the Brigate Rosse were persecuted until their annihilation but many many intellectuals and activists who had no part in armed struggle were as well.

Italy had the belated luck that a judge, Felice Cassone, eventually began investigating the many issues surrounding all these massacres and political attacks. As it became known in the trial, almost 15,000 acts of political violence shattered Italy between those dates, many of them being brutal indiscriminate attacks in which 491 people were killed and 1181 injured.

Cassone indicted one man, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a fascist member of the secret organization Ordine Nuovo (New Order), who confessed that he enjoyed total protection by a whole well-positioned network in Italy as in other countries.

In the trials, General Giandelio Maletti, former chief of the Italian counter-espionage, declared that not just nearly all the Italian state was involved in Gladio but that every single attack was approved by the White House and the CIA. In his own words:

The CIA, following the orders of their government, wanted to forge an Italian Nationalism able to counter what they considered a slide to the Left and, with that goal, they could use far-right terrorism. (...) One was under the impression that the Americans were willing to do anything to impede that Italy leaned to the Left. (...) Don't forget that it was Nixon who was the head of the government and Nixon was not any common guy, he was a very smart politician but a man of very unorthodox methods. 

In 1988 the Italian Senate created a commission to investigate the matter. It was a difficult process, as witnesses did not want to speak, documents were destroyed and the Right sabotaged the investigation all they could. However in 1990 Gladio was confirmed as a very real thing. 

However the conscience of this terrorist network existed since long before. In 1974, another judge, Giovanni Tamburino, brought General Vito Miceli, commander of the SID (military secret service, later SISMI) to trial, accused of creating a secret organization that gathered civilians and officers alike, whose goal was to stir an armed insurrection in order to illegally modify the Constitution and the composition of the government.

Miceli, who had also been chief of NATO's Security Bureau, declared in anger:

Did I have a super-SID under my command? Of course! But I did not organize it myself in order to stage a coup, I merely obeyed the orders of the USA and NATO!

Giulio Andreotti

Sadly Miceli got away on bail and the network remained poorly known until the revelations of quasi-permanent Prime Minister Andreotti in 1990, who acted only on demand of the Senate and in a climate of many investigations, which even put the very godfather of Italian politics in jail for some time. It was the only occasion in which Gladio was revealed in full.

Andreotti edited his first written declaration. However Senator Gualtieri, President of the Commission, had made copies of the original version. When compared, it became obvious that Andreotti had edited all the references to international connections and the existence of Gladio in other states. 

It was such a poor trick that in his final version Andreotti admitted that Gladio was a network extending through all NATO, which in Italy was originally agreed between the CIA and the local secret services as a "stay behind" network against possible Soviet invasion. 

This cooperation was structured within NATO's Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1959, which was part of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). In 1964 the Italian secret services got incorporated also to the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC). 

However Andreotti's report was in some contradiction with the declarations of Vinciguerra in the sense that the veteran politician claimed that Gladio was not involved in the terrorist attacks. He also declared that every single Prime Minister was informed of the existence of the stay-behind network, causing major embarrassment to the other Prime Ministers of the First Republic. Only the then President Francesco Cossiga acknowledged the fact, declaring his "pride" for contributing to its creation in the 1950s and to be able to keep such a secret for so long. 

Subsequent political turbulence forced his resignation in 1992.

Meanwhile Andreotti had confirmed in public audience that Gladio was a NATO structure and that it existed also in other member states, mentioning by name Germany, Greece, Denmark, Belgium and even France.

The Senate Commission concluded that:

Those massacres, those bombings, those military operations were organized, instigated or supported by people who worked for the Italian institutions and, as was discovered more recently, by individuals linked to the US intelligence structures.

Those are the "chickens" who came back "home to roost". Let's not forget that G.W. Bush' administration was almost exactly that of Nixon.

Italy: raids against NO TAV activists

The movement against the High Speed Rail (NO TAV) in NW Italy has been subject to police harassment, intimidation and criminalization in the last weeks, as reported by Struggles in Italy:

[en] Police operation against No TAV: charges of terrorism and subversion

Posted on 2013/08/01 by Struggles in Italy

 

In the Susa Valley and Turin, tens of homes and even restaurants owned by No TAV activists from the group Comitato di Lotta Popolare have been searched in an extraordinary anti-terrorism and subversion police operation. Police were looking for “explosives, blunt objects, items suitable for cutting fences and audio-visual and digital devices that could lead to the identification of possible accomplices.”

Searches and arrests have taken place under article 280 of the Italian Criminal Code rather than the more usually employed articles 270 and 270bis. This represents a significant reframing of the No TAV struggle by the judiciary, with consequences to be found in the actions of the police. Charges associated with article 280 (“subversion of democracy”) are easier to bring than those associated with article 270 (“criminal organisation”). For article 280 charges (which can attract custodial sentences of up to 30 years), a judge only requires a couple of injured police officers. Article 270 charges, on the other hand, are difficult to bring against anarchists (who are often involved in demonstrations) as they tend not to be involved in a formal organisation. In addition, the use of petrol bombs (Molotov cocktails) is treated most seriously by Italian law.

These searches and arrests are related to the protests that took place on July 10, when stones and firecrackers were thrown at the heavily fortified building site and many demonstrators were arrested. After the arrests, many demonstrations took place in solidarity with those arrested. A few days later, all were released.

On July 19, another demonstration, a march through the woods to the perimeter fence of the building site, turned very ugly with 63 injured, two detained and seven arrested. Among them was Marta, an activist who has reported harassment and humiliation by the police. She was left for four hours with a split lip (despite a police doctor having ordered immediate admission to hospital) while police officers spat at her and insulted her.

Tension is growing in the Susa Valley. Police jeeps carrying officers have been seen close to the No TAV camp in Venaus and other police vehicles are guarding different parts of the valley. No TAV activists believe that the new wave of searches and charges indicate the judiciary’s desire to increase the level of repression. There have been no more arrests but there is now the threat of most serious charges being brought, charges which could lead, without evidence, to long pre-trial detention orders.

As a footnote – reporting of the No TAV struggle, in all its variety, by the mainstream media is extremely biased. By presenting a partial story to the general population, the media (such as La Stampa, a newspaper based in Turin) encourages people to take a particular view, with no alternatives countenanced.

Italy: racist attacks against Congo-born minister

Some days ago in Cervia, a small group of Nazis threw bananas to the Italian minister of Integration, Cécile Kyenge (pictured), born in Congo.

However much worse was that in the previous days, notorious politicians of the North League (secessionist and racist even towards Southern Italians), threw outrageously racist attacks against Kyenge. 

First a former councilor, Dolores Valandro, using Facebook, asked for someone to rape Kyenge, after she defended the immigrant community from generalized attacks upon an isolated rape crime. Valandro was expelled from the party and sentenced to 13 months of prison and three years of political disqualification for inciting to commit sex crimes on racist grounds. 

Then, on July 13th, the vice-president of the Senate and former minister under Berlusconi, Roberto Calderoli, compared Kyenge with an orangutan, raising demand of resignation by the majority of the chamber (to no avail).

Source: Público[es].

Italy: march for housing rights brutally repressed

From Struggles in Italy:

Demo for the right to housing in Rome ends in clashes, one injured

Posted on 2013/07/03 by Struggles in Italy

 

A 20-year old young woman lying on the ground with her face covered in blood: this happened yesterday in Rome, when a rally demanding more public housing was brutally charged by the police.

The movement for the right to affordable housing is very active in Rome, with hundreds of occupations, rallies and assemblies to prevent evictions, and public initiatives calling for affordable housing. On July 1, associations and collectives called a demo in the city center, demanding a moratorium on house evictions, which affect the weakest and the poorest in times of economic hardship.

The rally was not authorized to enter Piazza del Campidoglio, home of the Mayoral Office, allegedly because of a planned concert; however, a rally of the ultra-right wing formation La Destra had been authorized to take place in the very same square. Anti-riot police blocked the path of the demonstrators as soon as they reached Piazza Venezia, before they could approach the area in question.

The police charges were very violent, with batons used on unarmed and defenseless protesters. One of them, Stefania Giorioso, had to seek medical help and needed 15 stitches in her forehead. She has since publicly denounced the brutality of police on national television. Mayor Marino later visited her in the hospital, as a gesture of public reconciliation.

Following the episode in Naples earlier in May, this is the second time under the new cabinet that police have attacked left-wing protesters in order to protect far-right activists.

The Empire forces Bolivian Presidential airplane to land in Vienna, evidencing its totalitarianism

In the most scandalous diplomatic incident since there is any sort of international law, the Presidential airplane of Evo Morales was forced to land in Vienna yesterday night. 

The versions so far contradict each other in the details but it seems that:

1. France, Italy and Portugal did not allow the airplane to cross their air space.
2. Spain allowed the transit only on the condition that it stopped in Canary Islands to be subject to military registry. Later it also forbade the transit altogether. 
3. It is unclear by now if the landing in Austria was a mere emergency landing for lack of other options or if it was forced by the military of that country. What is clear is that the Austrian authorities searched the airplane thoroughly in clear violation of international law.
4. By this time France and Portugal first and Spain later on have already lifted the flight ban, obviously after getting the approval of Washington.

The only comparable (actually worse) violations of International Law in recent times have been the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the USA (and vassals), in which no declaration of war was ever made. Excluding undeclared wars, we really have to dig in examples of very ancient times like the imprisonment of Richard Lionheart in Germany or the kidnapping, deceit and murder of Atahualpa by Pizarro.

And which is the pretext, the trigger of this unbelievable violation of sovereignty? The mere suspicion that whistleblower Edward J. Snowden might have traveled in that aircraft. 

The Empire of Terror versus Chaos and Freedom

Gladio ensign

Why is the Empire, not just the USA but also its boot-licking European vassals, so extremely overreacting, not even doubting to show their darkest Gestapo sewers' reality as a few individuals like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden challenge their secretive core in demand of transparency, of freedom of information, of democracy?

As I see it, the reason is that the secrets that have surfaced are just the tip of the iceberg: there is much more to hide like, for example, all the Gladio network of terrorist-spies that acts as underground government through NATO and some other associated countries, the fact that the Al Qaeda is nothing but an imperial sockpuppet or the truth of 9-11 (and many other "terror attacks") being actually false-flag self-attacks.

Most people even today refuse to believe, in spite of all the evidence, that the 9-11 attacks were performed by the USA itself, as a self-coup to impel the imperial totalitarianism both inside and outside its borders, serving as pretext for military invasions outside and emergency rule inside. But what if papers demonstrating this or other similarly outraging maneuvers would come to light? What if internal evidence shows beyond any doubts that we do not live in "democracies" but in fascist regimes with a mere formal varnish, that we are ruled by a terrorist mafia?

The Empire is therefore most nervous and is sending a clear signal to all would-be whistleblowers and researchers of the "deep state" to cower in fear: we will persecute you everywhere in the World, just like Rome did with Hannibal.

Of course many others are just silently killed in "accidents", "suicide" in jail by hanging with their hands tied to their back, or, as happened to Petra Kelly and her husband (former NATO general Gert Bastian) are shot in the most mysterious circumstances and police decrees it was "domestic violence". Other less important ones may lose their jobs, as happened to a CNT research journalist and librarian when she researched the Gladio network in the context of Spain, or, many years before her, Interviú journalists who dared to do the same. 

The shadow of Gladio, the "deep empire" is long and merciless. But then there are billions living precarious short lives on Earth, and many feel the need to do better than being cowardly accomplices of this machinery of terror... and the Empire cannot silence them all. This is surely the case of Snowden, who in spite of all, must feel he is for the first time in his life doing what he must, filling his existence with a wider meaning.

No, Chaos science does not allow for a perfect order in which everything is under totalitarian control forever, as in '1984': one gap after another will tear the dark curtain to rags. Such nightmare can only be a provisional situation, much more in the extremely complex and information-rich society we live in.


News refs.: Naiz Info[es], EXSKF, LINyM[es].

Italy: 100,000 march against unemployment in Rome

At least 100,000 Italians marched today through Rome in demand of jobs and tax equity. The march, called by the unions, was even backed, somewhat hypocritically by one of the two parties which support the coalition government, the Democratic Party. Of course this is nothing but posing for a photo but still the march clearly indicates that the anger in Italy against the Capitalist socio-economic chaos is growing at the same time as unemployment grows. 

Source: Webguerrillerohttp://periodicodigitalwebguerrillero.blogspot.com.es/2013/06/100-mil-trabajadores-italianos.html[es].

Italy: protests againts big luxury cruises in Venice

Venetians, with the support of many other Italians, have taken the canals with their boats in sustained action of blockade of large cruise ships, which damage the lagoon and pose a serious risk for the city itself (any accident would be a major catastrophe).

A related claim was to oppose the increased military encroachment of the city. 

Last week, they marched by land to the boarding docks but were violently repressed by the Military Police (Carabinieri), which used batons and rubber bullets against life jackets and toy rubber boats. So they took to the water, as their ancestors used to. 

It’s reported that every year the big cruise boats pass right through the middle of the most delicate city in the world around 3,500 times, with vibrations so strong that residents in the nearest houses have strengthened their walls with glued canvas.

In addition to the danger to the city’s buildings and infrastructure, the boats are a huge threat to the health of the inhabitants themselves. Indeed, each and every cruise boat produces the equivalent of 14,000 cars’ polluting gases. It’s as though the traffic of an entire city crosses Venice several times a day, every day of the year. This pollution is making an already compromised situation much worse, as the chemical plants of the nearby town of Porto Marghera are already poisoning the lagoon, its environment and its people.

Just like the proverbial elephant in the china shop. 

Source: Struggles in Italy.

Italy: major unions bow down and renounce to the right to strike and direct worker representation

This is the formal consolidation of fascist-like vertical unions, intended only to keep workers submitted to the tycoons' power. 

From Struggles in Italy:

June 1st saw the beginning of a new era in Italian labour policy, with a new agreement about union representation signed by the three union confederations and Confindustria (the national association of industrialists). The agreement came after a long build-up and a few months of informal meetings with industrialists, for instance, taking part in the May Day rally organized by CGIL, CISL and UIL in Bologna.

Despite the general consensus around it, this agreement seems to be a victory only for industrialists and union bureaucrats. It was welcomed by many, including Prime Minister Enrico Letta and Maurizio Landini, national Chair of FIOM (the union representing metalworkers). Ironically, those who would be most harmed by such an agreement are its most fervent supporters – this seems to be, apparently, the case of Landini.

The text of the agreement has not yet been made public; from what is known, it would underwrite the new power balance in labour relations, effectively weakening the right to strike. High-ups in the union confederations now have official recognition and a new and powerful tool in their ongoing struggle against workers’ grievances and against the most active unions – a struggle that so far has been characterized by political immobility and by acquiescence to industrialists’ diktats.

From now on, only those unions that signed this deal will be authorized to represent workers in bargaining. Agreements between unions and employers will need only to be approved by 50%+1 of all unions at the table, regardless of the size of their membership. Consequently, a few small unions (that is, a few among those that signed the deal) could form a majority and approve an agreement, thus deciding matters for all other workers.

Workers will still have some say through a referendum process. However, as the cases of Pomigliano and Turin clearly showed, these consultations often come with heavy pressure: the threat of losing one’s job is so strong that it can often determine the outcome of the vote. Unions, of course, exist precisely to free workers from such threats, through the strength of collective organization.

Once an agreement is signed, unions cannot change it. This rule is enforced through a sanctions mechanism. Workers still have the right to strike, as laid down in the Constitution of the Italian Republic. However, the unions that are supposed to guarantee this right can be fined or sanctioned for it.

Base unions and left-leaning FIOM officers have protested loudly. Among them are Giorgio Cremaschi and Sergio Bellavita, who strongly criticized their chair, Landini. As Bellavita declared: “All power is given to the leadership of union confederations – a leadership that keeps mistaking the protection of their own organization for the protection of workers’ rights.”

This deal is not valid for FIAT. Sergio Marchionne, FIAT’s CEO, withdrew FIAT from Confindustria in order to have “a free hand” with unions. This decision has already brought about the expulsion of FIOM from its plants, and the adoption of a very regressive contract.

Marchionne, with his anti-union behavior, has now opened up a way of operating that is being extended across the whole of Italy. What is worse, this is happening with the complicity of CGIL and FIOM, its metalworkers’ wing.

Italy: students defeat riot police and conquer freedom of assembly (video)

Very impressive:

This happened on May 27. Students had called an assembly at the Piazza Verdi of Bologna and the governor had forbidden it (in yet another example of lack of any real democracy in Europe). The students bravely conquered their right of assembly and police run away. 

That's exactly how Ben Ali was kicked from Tunisia: after many protests repressed by police, one happy day, the protesters, much more numerous than the armed forces, turned around and took their rights, their freedom. 

Source: Madriz Rebelde[es].

Italy: massive protest in Rome, worker partial success in Milan hospital struggle

Thousands demonstrated today in Rome against the austerity-for-the-poor bourgeois doctrine and the coalition government that wants to implement it. 

→ Video at Euronews.

In Milan, after months of harsh struggle, workers finally reached a semi-satisfactory agreement with the direction of San Rafaele Hospital, by which all workers will remain under public jurisdiction and fired workers will be readmitted. In exchange workers accepted a salary cut of 9%. 

The worker struggle has been led by grassroots assemblies called by the anarchist USI-AIT and the grassroots USB unions. All major unions, with the partial exception of CGIL, were absent in this fight. CGIL signed a much worse agreement which was rejected by worker assemblies. 

→ Struggles in Italy.

Italy: socialized university bookshop evicted in Milan

The Ex-Cuem self-managed anticapitalist bookshop was evicted by order of the dean of the Milan State University, Gianluca Vago. 

The former CUEM bookshop's closure caused the book business in the unviersity to become a monopoly of CUSL, an emporium linked to the fundamentalist-fascist organization Communione e Liberazione, heavily implicated in corruption scandals and strongly supportive of the neofascist Silvio Berlusconi.

For this reason students decided to occupy the former CUEM bookshop, offering many alternative and cheaper forms of access to literature for students, including book exchange schemes and availability of scanning of books into digital format. 

All them are deemed criminal by the Capitalist Regime as they threaten the profits of the big oligopolistic companies of the oligarchy.

Source: Struggles in Italy. 

Related: a similar eviction in Bologna University earlier this year.

Italy: workers force police to retreat in healthcare strike march in Milan

Yesterday health workers across Lombardia went on strike, with protests in the streets of Milan that resulted in scuffles with the police. 

The moments of tension came as police attempted to curtail the right to demonstration violently, impeding the marchers access to the regional government building. However workers and patients (recently evicted from a popular occupation at Milan's State University) drew their own batons and forced the police forces to withdraw, reaching their desired endpoint for the march. 

The trigger of the protests was the firing of 244 workers at San Rafaele Hospital, however the shadow of further cuts and redundancies looms over the public healthcare in all Italy.

Source: Struggles in Italy.

Italy: police again joins the fascists again a popular protest

From Struggles in Italy:

(...) a group of protesters attacked the students’ rally unprovoked, with the complicity and support of the police, who charged and chased the students without identifying those responsible for the violence.

The events took place in Naples, in Piazza Plebiscito on the morning of May 7. About 100 students were protesting in front of the Prefecture: they were demonstrating their solidarity peacefully with the students brutally charged by the police at the State University in Milan the day before (May 6), and were waiting for the arrival of Maria Carrozza, newly nominated Minister of Education.

A few meters away, around thirty former workers of the Consorzi di Bacino were also demonstrating against their job losses, as they have been doing for several months. A group of neo-fascist extremists entered their ranks. They were led by Salvatore Lezzi, a local member of Forza Nuova who was tried in 2003 for alleged involvement with organized crime. Neo-Fascists started taunting the students, then attacked them.

Policemen who had been standing nearby then immediately charged and dispersed the students with anti-riot batons. Two more charges followed, as police chased students in the alleys behind the square. One student was injured. Several other students and researchers were identified by police; they were all released but they reported intimidating behavior during their questioning. Police attacked left-wing activists once more during the afternoon, for no apparent reason, as they had regrouped and formed a rally in Via San Sebastiano.

This episode of violence closely follows the violent repression of student protest in Milan and it comes as a sinister start for the term of Angelino Alfano, the Minister of the Interior coming from the ranks of Berlusconi’s party.

(...)

 

It seems that, sadly enough, this is the new norm in all Europe: fascist terrorism with police protection under a pretext of residual democracy.

Italy: thousands demonstrate against fascist arson aggression in Pisa

The autonomous space Newroz (New Year in Kurdish language) of Pisa was burnt on Sunday, apparently by a fascist hand. 

In response, yesterday, several thousand people marched through the streets of the Tuscan city under the slogan "there are some things not to be burnt".

The march stopped before the Prefecture (top police command) hanging on it a banner demanding the freedom of Seda, a member of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Turkey (MLKP), which is actively persecuted in Turkey since 2007. Seda may be extradited to the authoritarian Turkish state, where he would face tortures and a trial without any guarantees.

The demonstration also visited several buildings occupied by the worker people, such as a municipal building recycled to serve as emergency housing for homeless families, a university social center, etc. They also sang songs of solidarity with Kurdistan. 

Source: No Pasarán![es].