Italian politics can seem bewildering and distant to many people in Britain, but yet the recent actions of Italian coalition government formed by “The Freedom Party” and led by the countries PM and financial tycoon Silvio Berlusconi needs to be examined and publicised.
Because fascism and extremism is returning to Italy, with the full knowledge of this government.
The Freedom Party gained power in 2008 with a coalition of far right extremist political parties, and these fringe extremist parties are now making their presence felt.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Milan, where they hold the majority in local government and municipal and county control.
This is how a member of an Italian anti-fascist organisation describes the situation:
“The Italian extreme right wing organisations involved are different groups; all have been recently officially admitted to be part or partner of the Berlusconi's party called PDL/Partito delle Liberta – so-called "freedom's party", the Italian national and local government of Berlusconi is doing nothing against those groups.
Their ideology and neo-Nazi symbols and Celtic crosses are spreading and so is their violence.
In the last 2 years Italy has experienced many dangerous attacks to its democratic process and has seen an escalation in the support of fascist ideology and xenophobic violence against minorities: migrants, Roma people, GLBT communities.
In recent times, both for economical and political reasons, Berlusconi's government has been showing signs of evolving into an authoritarian government which is causing growing alarm for the Italian people and their democracy.”
Already a number of neo-Nazi and fascist events have occurred this year which were full of neo-Nazi and white power symbolism and were openly supported by members of the local government. Even though they were widely publicised and persons of news worthy stature attended, no national media organisation reported on the events.
And there is more to come:
- there is a national Italian neo-fascist demonstration scheduled in Milan on 22nd May organized by Forza Nuova and its leader Roberto Fiore in which there will also be European delegations from Spanish and French neo-Nazis. Hungarian Nazi-extreme-right-wing Jobbik’s leader Laszlo Toroczkai will also be attending
- the European neo-Nazi convention, so-called "European Hammerfest 1990-2010, 20 years of European Brotherhood" is scheduled in Milan on 29th May, 2010.
The Italian anti-Racists/anti-Fascists organisations are calling out for international help and support to make people aware of what is occurring in their country with the full knowledge of their government.
It is already widely accepted that the Italian government is paying little attention to attacks on ethnic minorities and the situation appears to be getting a lot worse now that these extreme far right groups are in positions of power.
We urge everybody to contact their local MEPs about these alarming developments, and ask them to voice our/your concerns at what is occurring.
Find your MEP
In 2008 a event occurred that highlights the growing racism in that country. This video demonstrates Italy's racism and how the populous are now becoming indifferent to extremist acts..
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Hungarian gypsies face uncertain future
Growing poverty, violence and prejudice against Hungary's Romany gypsies have exposed the fissures in Hungarian society and have left the country's gypsies facing a bleak and uncertain future.
A heavy rainstorm overshadowing his concert in downtown Budapest didn't bother the young Romany singer and special ambassador of the European Union. Ferenc "Caramel" Molnar, seemed more concerned about clouds hanging over the future of fellow gypsies, also known as Romany. They are suffering of a new wave of fire bombings, the rise of the far right and poverty.
Caramel, whose nickname refers to the color of his skin, is among the few Romany gypsies to have been able to escape rampant poverty after winning the Hungarian talent search show Megasztar, to become a megastar himself. The 28-year-old sang about life's challenges this weekend at a picnic for Romany and non-Romany in a Budapest park.
The first-ever gathering of its kind was aimed at easing tensions between the two communities. And that is necessary, explained Caramel. Two decades after communism collapsed, Hungary's gypsies face new challenges.
"Of course I was very young when communism disappeared. But I can say that the transition has brought poverty and stress to many Romany," he told Deutsche Welle.
Yet, he wants to encourage the Romany gypsies to build a better future, despite discrimination and violence that killed at least nine gypsies in the last few years.
Special ambassador
Caramel is one of the EU's special ambassadors for the 2010 European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion.
At the weekend concert, rain-soaked crowds watched him perform a mixture of Romany and Western style music and songs. "Let's sit around the table," was a slogan at the open-air event, where Romany and non-Romany lined up for traditional Hungarian goulash soup with bread.
"This is a symbol of unity," explained chief organizer Eszter Eva Nagy, a 27-year-old non-Roma Hungarian.
But Nagy admits that her youthful ideals often seem far removed from daily reality after the Movement for a Better Hungary, or Jobbik, entered parliament last week as the country's third largest political party.
Hungarian Guard
Jobbik has been criticized for verbal attacks against gypsies. The party also supports the banned paramilitary group Magyar Garda, or Hungarian Guard, which marched through Romany villages in uniforms and flags resembling Hungary's pro-Nazi regime during World War II.
Jobbik denies wrongdoing, saying it works in the interest of Hungarians.
The independent Budapest-based European Romany Rights Center (ERRC) suggests however that these and other groups are contributing to an atmosphere of hatred towards the roughly 800,000 Roma living in Hungary.
ERRC Programs Director Tara Bedard told Deutsche Welle that there have been fire bombings against Romany families in recent weeks. Nobody was injured, but she explains that the violence was similar to earlier, deadly, attacks.
Violence continues
"In the last two years, nine people, nine Romany, have been murdered in Hungary. The persons believed to be responsible for those attacks have been taken into police custody. However, the trial of those individuals has not yet started.”
And the arrests did little to ease tensions, she said.
"Since those individuals were taken into police custody, numerous attacks have taken place in the meanwhile. Most recently in March and April there were a number of attacks targeting Romany in two different locations in the country."
Activists say Romany gypsies, who often lack adequate housing and basic facilities, are suffering from attacks and discrimination across Europe at a time when people are seeking scapegoats for the continent's economic difficulties.
"There is a lot of hidden tension," explained Nagy. "And if we can speak about those things, or if we can just spend one nice afternoon together with another, different person, I think it's something we want to reach."
Inspired by Obama
Nagy said she was inspired to organize Saturday's rare picnic by her experiences in the United States, where she worked as a volunteer for President Barack Obama's election campaign.
Just as Obama became the first African-American president of the US, Nagy hopes qualified Romany will one day be able to take a more prominent role in Hungary's political life and help create a more peaceful future for the country.
That's music to the ears of Caramel, relaxing after an eventful concert.
"Still, we have all kinds of people here. Black and white people. They are able to talk with each other."
It shows, he says, that not all hope is lost for Hungary - and Europe.
DU World
Caramel, whose nickname refers to the color of his skin, is among the few Romany gypsies to have been able to escape rampant poverty after winning the Hungarian talent search show Megasztar, to become a megastar himself. The 28-year-old sang about life's challenges this weekend at a picnic for Romany and non-Romany in a Budapest park.
The first-ever gathering of its kind was aimed at easing tensions between the two communities. And that is necessary, explained Caramel. Two decades after communism collapsed, Hungary's gypsies face new challenges.
"Of course I was very young when communism disappeared. But I can say that the transition has brought poverty and stress to many Romany," he told Deutsche Welle.
Yet, he wants to encourage the Romany gypsies to build a better future, despite discrimination and violence that killed at least nine gypsies in the last few years.
Special ambassador
Caramel is one of the EU's special ambassadors for the 2010 European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion.
At the weekend concert, rain-soaked crowds watched him perform a mixture of Romany and Western style music and songs. "Let's sit around the table," was a slogan at the open-air event, where Romany and non-Romany lined up for traditional Hungarian goulash soup with bread.
"This is a symbol of unity," explained chief organizer Eszter Eva Nagy, a 27-year-old non-Roma Hungarian.
But Nagy admits that her youthful ideals often seem far removed from daily reality after the Movement for a Better Hungary, or Jobbik, entered parliament last week as the country's third largest political party.
Jobbik has been criticized for verbal attacks against gypsies. The party also supports the banned paramilitary group Magyar Garda, or Hungarian Guard, which marched through Romany villages in uniforms and flags resembling Hungary's pro-Nazi regime during World War II.
Jobbik denies wrongdoing, saying it works in the interest of Hungarians.
The independent Budapest-based European Romany Rights Center (ERRC) suggests however that these and other groups are contributing to an atmosphere of hatred towards the roughly 800,000 Roma living in Hungary.
ERRC Programs Director Tara Bedard told Deutsche Welle that there have been fire bombings against Romany families in recent weeks. Nobody was injured, but she explains that the violence was similar to earlier, deadly, attacks.
Violence continues
"In the last two years, nine people, nine Romany, have been murdered in Hungary. The persons believed to be responsible for those attacks have been taken into police custody. However, the trial of those individuals has not yet started.”
And the arrests did little to ease tensions, she said.
"Since those individuals were taken into police custody, numerous attacks have taken place in the meanwhile. Most recently in March and April there were a number of attacks targeting Romany in two different locations in the country."
Activists say Romany gypsies, who often lack adequate housing and basic facilities, are suffering from attacks and discrimination across Europe at a time when people are seeking scapegoats for the continent's economic difficulties.
"There is a lot of hidden tension," explained Nagy. "And if we can speak about those things, or if we can just spend one nice afternoon together with another, different person, I think it's something we want to reach."
Inspired by Obama
Nagy said she was inspired to organize Saturday's rare picnic by her experiences in the United States, where she worked as a volunteer for President Barack Obama's election campaign.
Just as Obama became the first African-American president of the US, Nagy hopes qualified Romany will one day be able to take a more prominent role in Hungary's political life and help create a more peaceful future for the country.
That's music to the ears of Caramel, relaxing after an eventful concert.
"Still, we have all kinds of people here. Black and white people. They are able to talk with each other."
It shows, he says, that not all hope is lost for Hungary - and Europe.
DU World
Hunt for neo-Nazi’s deadly chemicals still continues
Toxic substances bought by neo-Nazi Ian Davison to manufacture ricin remains unaccounted for after he was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for his part in a terror plot.
Detectives claim only a small proportion of the substances purchased by the right-wing extremist have been found and officers will interrogate Davison in his cell to find the rest.
It is thought the remaining hoard of chemicals has the potential to kill hundreds of people.
Davison was a founder member of the Aryan Strike Force, a white supremacist website with members around the world who shared the ideals of Adolf Hitler.
The 42-year-old racist manufactured enough ricin to kill nine people and kept it in a jar in his kitchen for two years.
But on May 14th he was jailed for 10 years at Newcastle Crown Court, alongside his teenage son Nicky, a fellow member of the supremacist group, when he became the first person in the country to be convicted and jailed for producing a chemical weapon.
Davison Jnr was sentenced to two years in a young offenders’ institution.
Judge John Milford said the website was operating on an “international level” and he told Davison: “The internet deploys many benefits on mankind but presents those with extreme views to exchange and feed their view with the like-minded. This is exactly what happened on this particular website.”
Davison Snr, of Myrtle Grove, Burnopfield, County Durham, previously admitted producing a chemical weapon, preparing acts of terrorism, three counts of possessing material useful to commit acts of terror and one count of possessing a prohibited weapon.
chronicle live
WARNINGS AGAINST NEO-NAZISM, RACISM ISSUED IN TEREZÍN (Czech Rep.)
Warnings against rising neo-Nazism and racism in Czech Republic were heard from speakers at the ceremonial event held Sunday to commemorate the victims that passed through the Terezín ghetto and the local Gestapo prison. Some 1000 people attended the 64th annual meeting at the National Cemetery in Terezín. "As a Jew and citizen of this country I feel threatened by neo-Nazis. The protection of democracy has to begin in time. Romanies are the target of the attacks today, Jews will come after them and then the others. Action needs to be taken," Terezín Memorial director Jan Munk said. Munk pointed to growing aggressiveness and hatred that can be seen in the streets of Czech towns, referring to far-right marches. He appreciated, however, that the reactions of state bodies to this danger are stronger. Andela Dvorakova, head of the Czech Freedom Fighters Association, said it is necessary to fight for freedom more than before. She pointed out that neo-Nazism has been spreading not only in the Czech Republic but all across the world. Senate chairman Premysl Sobotka recalled that the Nazis got to power at the time of the Great Depression when they won the support of a big part of the public through demagogy and populism. "We are passing through a global crisis now, too. And we can see political extremism rising again. One must take a lesson and not trust those who promise simple but unrealistic solutions," Sobotka said.
For Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, the Terezin ghetto is a personal issue because his relative passed through it and most of them did not return. Fischer noted with disappointment that recent simulated elections at Czech secondary schools showed that the far-right Workers' Party of Social Justice (DSSS) is rather popular among students. According to the elections, over 7 percent of secondary school students support the DSSS. Eighty-three-year-old Bohumil Porges from nearby Roudnice nad Labem takes part in the meeting commemorating the victims regularly. Being a Jew, Porges was deported to the Terezin ghetto in 1943 and then moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp. "I was lucky to survive. And I also had a place to return. My parents were from mixed marriages and so they did not deport them," Porges said. "Most of my peers with experience from Terezin have already died. However, I am still in contact with the brothers of writer Ota Pavel - Hugo and Jiri," he added. The Nazis dragged some 155,000 Jews from all over of Europe to the Terezin ghetto in 1941-1945. Some 117,000 did not live to see the liberation of the country. About 32,000 people passed through the Gestapo prison in the Terezin Small Fortress. Some 2600 of them died in Terezin, further thousands in other Nazi camps. The Terezin Memorial has paid tribute to the victims since 1947. In 1991 the Ghetto Museum was opened. It documents the Jews' fates.
Prague Monitor
For Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, the Terezin ghetto is a personal issue because his relative passed through it and most of them did not return. Fischer noted with disappointment that recent simulated elections at Czech secondary schools showed that the far-right Workers' Party of Social Justice (DSSS) is rather popular among students. According to the elections, over 7 percent of secondary school students support the DSSS. Eighty-three-year-old Bohumil Porges from nearby Roudnice nad Labem takes part in the meeting commemorating the victims regularly. Being a Jew, Porges was deported to the Terezin ghetto in 1943 and then moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp. "I was lucky to survive. And I also had a place to return. My parents were from mixed marriages and so they did not deport them," Porges said. "Most of my peers with experience from Terezin have already died. However, I am still in contact with the brothers of writer Ota Pavel - Hugo and Jiri," he added. The Nazis dragged some 155,000 Jews from all over of Europe to the Terezin ghetto in 1941-1945. Some 117,000 did not live to see the liberation of the country. About 32,000 people passed through the Gestapo prison in the Terezin Small Fortress. Some 2600 of them died in Terezin, further thousands in other Nazi camps. The Terezin Memorial has paid tribute to the victims since 1947. In 1991 the Ghetto Museum was opened. It documents the Jews' fates.
Prague Monitor
BLACK ACTOR KILLED IN RUSSIA, HATE CRIME SUSPECTED: OFFICIALS
AFP
English Defence League EDL Website Temporarily Taken Down
So far the only items emerging about this incident are coming from the far right anti-Islamic groups and sites.
More news will be posted as soon as we find out.
The EDL Website came back online at 10.00 am.
A $95,000 question: why are whites five times richer than blacks in the US?
A typical white family is now five times richer than its African-American counterpart of the same class, according to a report released today by Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
White families typically have assets worth $100,000 (£69,000), up from $22,000 in the mid-1980s. African-American families' assets stand at just $5,000, up from around $2,000.
A quarter of black families have no assets at all. The study monitored more than 2,000 families since 1984.
"We walk that through essentially a generation and what we see is that the racial wealth gap has galloped, it's escalated to $95,000," said Tom Shapiro, one of the authors of the report by the university's Institute on Assets and Social Policy.
"That's primarily because the whites in the sample were able to accumulate financial assets from their $22,000 all the way to $100,000 and the African-Americans' wealth essentially flatlined."
The survey does not include housing equity, because it is not readily accessible and is rarely realised as cash. But if property were included it would further widen the wealth divide.
Shapiro says the gap remains wide even between blacks and whites of similar classes and with similar jobs and incomes.
"How do we explain the wealth gap among equally-achieving African-American and white families? The same ratio holds up even among low income groups. Finding ways to accumulate financial resources for all low and moderate income families in the United States has been a huge challenge and that challenge keeps getting steeper and steeper.
"But there are greater opportunities and less challenges for low and moderate income families if they're white in comparison to if they're African-American or Hispanic," he said.
America has long lived with vast inequality, although 40 years ago the disparity was lower than in Britain.
Today, the richest 1% of the US population owns close to 40% of its wealth. The top 25% of US households own 87%.
The rest is divided up among middle and low income Americans. In that competition white people come out far ahead.
Only one in 10 African-Americans owns any shares. A third do not have a pension plan, and among those who do the value is on average a fifth of plans held by whites.
Shapiro says one of the most disturbing aspects of the study is that wealth among the highest-income African-Americans has actually fallen in recent years, dropping from a peak of $25,000 to about $18,000, while among white counterparts of similar class and income it has surged to around $240,000.
In 1984, high-income black Americans had more assets than middle-income whites. That is no longer true.
"I'm a pretty jaded and cynical researcher in some way, but this was shocking, quite frankly, a really important dynamic," said Shapiro. "This represents a broken chain of achievement. In the United States context, when we are thinking about racial equality and the economy we have focused for a long time on equal opportunity.
"Equal opportunity assumes that some people who have that opportunity are going to have pretty high achievements in terms of their jobs, their work, their income, their home ownership.
"The assumption in a democracy is that merit and achievement are going to be rewarded and the rewards here are financial assets. We should see some rough parity and we don't."
The report attributes part of the cause to the "powerful role of persistent discrimination in housing, credit and labour markets. African-Americans and Hispanics were at least twice as likely to receive high-cost home mortgages as whites with similar incomes," the report says.
Although many black families have moved up to better-paying jobs, they begin with fewer assets, such as inheritance, on which to build wealth. They are also more likely to have gone into debt to pay for university loans.
"African-Americans, before the 1960s, first by law and then by custom, were not really allowed to own businesses. They had very little access to credit. There was a very low artificial ceiling on the wealth that could be accumulated. Hence there was very little, if anything, that could be passed along to help their children get to college, to help their children buy their first homes, or as an inheritance when they die," said Shapiro.
Since the 1980s, US administrations have also geared the tax system to the advantage of the better off. Taxes on unearned income, such as shares and inheritance, fell sharply and are much lower than taxes on pay.
"The more income and wealth people had, the less it was taxable," said Shapiro.
There were also social factors, the study found. "In African-American families there is a much larger extended network of kin as well as other obligations. From other work we've done we know that there's more call on the resources of relatively well-off African-American families; that they lend money that's not given back; they help cousins go to school. They help brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, with all kinds of legal and family problems," said Shapiro.
The Guardian
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