hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Adil lives!
Action in solidarity with murdered unionist Adil Belakhdim on June 30 in Berlin
Do we have m/any Berlin posters on here? littleseb , maybe?
Italian politics and elections - news and discussion
- Thread starter brogdale
- Start date
Reno
The In Kraut
I read about it, but I probably know as much as you do. I have been recovering from a serious accident over the last 6 weeks, so been housebound and been mainly concerned with that.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Sorry to hear that Reno, hope you get better soon.
Flavour
hang the bankers
You heard it here first: Giorgia Meloni will be the next Prime Minister of Italy, and it's first woman leader.
Polls show they have edged ahead of the League
www.panorama.it
Polls show they have edged ahead of the League
Gli ultimi sondaggi: le intenzioni di voto
Ecco gli ultimi sondaggi di politica sulle intenzioni di voto degli italiani. La situazione sembra per lo più stazionaria rispetto al voto delle europee del 9 giugno scorsoL'ultimo sondaggio è:Swg per Tg La7 del 29 luglio 2024FdI - 29,8% (-0,2% rispetto al 22 luglio)Pd - 22,7% (-0,1%)M5S - 11,4%...
www.panorama.it
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
This sounds like it could have some interesting stuff in, anyone know anything about it?
Flavour
hang the bankers
we won't know for a few months but i doubt anything particularly sensational will come out of it. expect lots of redaction. maybe drag berlusconi's name through a bit more mud. will be highly suprised if there is anything new and shocking revealing as-yet-unknown elements to the collusion between the State, NATO and the neofascists vis-a-vis Bologna railway bombing, Ustica air disaster or Piazza della Loggia bombing
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
One fly in the ointment for her could be if FI and the Lega decide they'd rather be part of a coalition government and abandon a right bloc government - which is still polling (just) under 50%.You heard it here first: Giorgia Meloni will be the next Prime Minister of Italy, and it's first woman leader.
Polls show they have edged ahead of the League
Gli ultimi sondaggi: le intenzioni di voto
Ecco gli ultimi sondaggi di politica sulle intenzioni di voto degli italiani. La situazione sembra per lo più stazionaria rispetto al voto delle europee del 9 giugno scorsoL'ultimo sondaggio è:Swg per Tg La7 del 29 luglio 2024FdI - 29,8% (-0,2% rispetto al 22 luglio)Pd - 22,7% (-0,1%)M5S - 11,4%...
That said yes clearly FdI are taking voters from Lega, just as Lega took voters from FI. Any idea on how Lega will fight back? A move to the right or a move towards the centre?
Flavour
hang the bankers
That is a really interesting question, yes. I don't think Salvini has decided either way yet, because there may yet be some credit to be taken from publicly-perceived successes of the Draghi supergroup coalition: "if it hadn't been for me and the League being part of this government, then xyz wouldn't have happened..." but these hypothetical xyz benefits of Draghi government have to be explicitly nativist/protectionist stances. I.e. he has to be able to sell the idea that achieving the largely-shared goals of Lega/Fratelli was more realistic inside that government than out.
Of course, wherever there is popular/populist anger, Salvini will side with it, and distance himself from the government. This is what he has done regarding the introducing of the Green Pass (similar to France) that will hypothetically bar non-vaccinated people from a lot of activities. I say hypothetically because although big museums may enforce the Green Pass, I sincerely doubt that even 10% of Italian restaurants will enforce it -- they need the customers too badly and are impossible to monitor.
See also Salvini's wishy-washy stance regarding the vaccine itself. He is vaccinated -- though he got the jab much later than most politicians his age (literally just a couple of weeks ago) but has spoken out publicly about not forcing his kid (18 year old son) to get the jab and not wanting him to be "followed around by a syringe". So it's trying to play to both sides of the gallery: he's against the Green Pass and against vaccinating the young, but has himself been vaccinated (though as the headline says in that article, he still uses it as an opportunity to distance himself from Draghi by saying "I got vaccinated out of free choice (libera scelta), not because Draghi told me to"... this phrase "libera scelta" has been the rallying cry of all the protests against the Green Pass.
He's in a pretty tough spot tbh and it was predictable that Fratelli would be the only beneficiary by not being part of the supergroup coalition.
Maybe Salvini prefers to be on the right wing of a centrist coaltion rather than being the relative center of a coalition with the even-further-right Fratelli.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Cheers Flavour
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Surprisingly hard to find any English-language coverage of the big strike today, this is all I could find from a quick search:
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
From the SI Cobas fb:
Presidi, and fighting actions across Italy for the general strike of basic unionism.
More than 2000 SI Cobas workers are blocking Amazon in Piacenza.
Interrupted freight traffic in the ports of Naples and Genoa, pickets in much of the logistics chain; it stops most of the local public transportation.
We lock everything down!!!
Presidi, and fighting actions across Italy for the general strike of basic unionism.
More than 2000 SI Cobas workers are blocking Amazon in Piacenza.
Interrupted freight traffic in the ports of Naples and Genoa, pickets in much of the logistics chain; it stops most of the local public transportation.
We lock everything down!!!
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
SiCobas Piacenza
SiCobas Piacenza. 4,045 likes · 6 talking about this. Pagina dedicata al dibattito politico e all'attività nel piacentino del sindacato che ha riportato al centro del dibattito la lotta di classe in...
www.facebook.com
"General strike: for the first time in world history an Amazon warehouse is blocked.
The Draghi government wants to exploit the Pnr to restructure the entire labour market on the Amazon model, made of ultra-precariousness and repression of workers.
This is why we need to destroy this model enemy of rights and workers.
In the video, the arrival of Piacentino workers in front of Amazon."
Dunno if they're right about it being the first ever one, but fair play to them anyway. Also, christ, if that's the blockade for a single warehouse, would take a bold scab indeed to try to get through that lot.
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Flavour
hang the bankers
Yeah not even the Italian media are given the Amazon warehouse blockade much space to be fair. All concentrating on the marches in Rome and Turin. Doing their best to delegitimize them by mixing them up with the No Green Pass lot (who are of course present, but this isn't their day -- the No Green Pass protestors are a regular occurrence every single Saturday in Turin, Rome and other cities, but this, today, is an old school union general strike).
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
On which note, I gather that the anti-green-pass lot attacked the CGIL headquarters at the weekend - again, not much English coverage but there's this:
www.aljazeera.com
SI Cobas statement on all that here, seems pretty sound from what I understand:
Clashes break out in Rome amid anger over COVID-19 ‘green pass’
Among the protesters were members of extreme right-wing groups who extended their arm in a ‘Roman’ fascist salute.
SI Cobas statement on all that here, seems pretty sound from what I understand:
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Strikers attacked in Prato, 4 hospitalised:
www.stamptoscana.it
Si Cobas Prato denuncia: "Aggredito picchetto operai, 4 all'ospedale" - thedotcultura
Prato – Una denuncia da SiCobas Prato riguarda una aggressione che sarebbe avvenuta oggi pomeriggio a Prato, ai…
www.stamptoscana.it
Video here - obvious content warning for violence:
Flavour
hang the bankers
Something which I might have talked about here before, but if not, a good time to bring it up again, especially regarding the textile industry (especially in Prato), and more generally with regards to so-called unskilled manual labour: as well as being episodes of class struggle, they are also often intertwined with tensions of a national/ethnic character.
That is to say: the exploited masses on the picket lines are often not of Italian heritage, and thus more easily-ignored by the racist Italian press.
The majority of all the temporary farmhands across the country are immigrants from Africa and South Asia. Their struggles are well documented and there have been lots of visible media campaigns denouncing extreme exploitation in some of the poorest regions (e.g. Sicily and Calabria) -- there it is easy to tie the idea of horrendous exploitation of immigrant labour into the bigger problem of the Mafia -- then you sort of shake your head and say "fucking Southerners, mafiosi" -- that is what often happens. But the reality is this is happening across the country, everywhere, and not just in agriculture.
The other thing to bear in mind, which makes these class struggles even more complex, is that the exploitative boss class are not always necessarily Italian themselves, as in this particular class in Prato, which has been famous for decades for its massive Chinese community. There has historically been lots of awful exploitation of Chinese workers by Chinese bosses -- the Italian media either ignored it completely or wrote it off as "internecine quarrels" despite it obviously being class warfare. See, for example, the disastrous fire in Prato in 2013, where 7 Chinese workers died after being locked inside their factory as it burnt down. Think I've mentioned it before. Anyway.
Now things are getting even more interesting, as in the case of the conflict today in Prato, because the Si Cobas protestors were of Pakistani origin, and the bosses of the factories they were picketing were -- no surprise -- Chinese. This aspect is not mentioned in the article you link, hitmouse , but I think it's important. See also: the picketing truck driver killed a couple of months ago, who was Moroccan. The point is that class struggles are overlapping in new ways with antiracist struggles. And certain immigrant groups (in this case, for example, Chinese bosses, but it could just as easily have been another more "settled" immigrant community who have built up capital in Italy over recent decades -- there are a few) are now, in some cases, the exploiters, while other immigrant communities remain more-often-than-not the exploited class, at the "bottom of the ladder", so to speak. Pakistani, Bangladeshi and sub-Saharan Africans being more often in the position.
These dynamics and tensions are visible in all industries, and certainly in all the larger population centers which attract greater immigration.
firenze.repubblica.it
That is to say: the exploited masses on the picket lines are often not of Italian heritage, and thus more easily-ignored by the racist Italian press.
The majority of all the temporary farmhands across the country are immigrants from Africa and South Asia. Their struggles are well documented and there have been lots of visible media campaigns denouncing extreme exploitation in some of the poorest regions (e.g. Sicily and Calabria) -- there it is easy to tie the idea of horrendous exploitation of immigrant labour into the bigger problem of the Mafia -- then you sort of shake your head and say "fucking Southerners, mafiosi" -- that is what often happens. But the reality is this is happening across the country, everywhere, and not just in agriculture.
The other thing to bear in mind, which makes these class struggles even more complex, is that the exploitative boss class are not always necessarily Italian themselves, as in this particular class in Prato, which has been famous for decades for its massive Chinese community. There has historically been lots of awful exploitation of Chinese workers by Chinese bosses -- the Italian media either ignored it completely or wrote it off as "internecine quarrels" despite it obviously being class warfare. See, for example, the disastrous fire in Prato in 2013, where 7 Chinese workers died after being locked inside their factory as it burnt down. Think I've mentioned it before. Anyway.
Now things are getting even more interesting, as in the case of the conflict today in Prato, because the Si Cobas protestors were of Pakistani origin, and the bosses of the factories they were picketing were -- no surprise -- Chinese. This aspect is not mentioned in the article you link, hitmouse , but I think it's important. See also: the picketing truck driver killed a couple of months ago, who was Moroccan. The point is that class struggles are overlapping in new ways with antiracist struggles. And certain immigrant groups (in this case, for example, Chinese bosses, but it could just as easily have been another more "settled" immigrant community who have built up capital in Italy over recent decades -- there are a few) are now, in some cases, the exploiters, while other immigrant communities remain more-often-than-not the exploited class, at the "bottom of the ladder", so to speak. Pakistani, Bangladeshi and sub-Saharan Africans being more often in the position.
These dynamics and tensions are visible in all industries, and certainly in all the larger population centers which attract greater immigration.
Prato, scontri con mazze di legno al Macrolotto per una manifestazione dei Cobas
Uomini di origine pakistana e cinese si sono affrontati durante una protesta
firenze.repubblica.it
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hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
An article that talks about that aspect a bit more:
www.today.it
Gli operai in sciopero massacrati con mazze da baseball
Succede a Prato durante una manifestazione davanti alla Dreamland, azienda a conduzione cinese dove, come denunciato dal sindacato Si Cobas, i lavoratori pachistani in sciopero sarebbero stati aggrediti senza alcun motivo. Si specifica che la Dreamland di cui si parla non è la Dream land srl...
www.today.it
I remember seeing a bit of speculation that the Moroccan/Egyptian origins of a lot of workers was a factor that helped with earlier disputes in the sector, because it's easier to make the argument that collective action can get results if you're talking to someone who's just lived through Tahrir Square or whatever, don't know how far that applies to Pakistani workers though. The AngryWorkers lot have definitely made the parallel between struggles by mostly Arab migrant textile workers in Italy and mostly Latin American or African cleaners in London, obviously UVW or IWGB have a long way to go before they'd be on the same scale as COBAS though.
bimble
floofy
interesting to see the above. I know nothing about the context but just saying, was in middle of Rome city yesterday (monday lunchtime) and saw a huge march go past, by what seemed to be striking workers from a bunch of different companies (communications & logistics i think) maybe collectively in one union, they were demanding fair pay and against the 'green pass' vaccination rules which have led to sackings. Maybe 5,000 people idk, stopped all traffic down one of the main streets and police showed up as far as i could see just to divert traffic. Strikers / demonstrators were majority white btw.
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bimble
floofy
On which note, I gather that the anti-green-pass lot attacked the CGIL headquarters at the weekend - again, not much English coverage but there's this:
Clashes break out in Rome amid anger over COVID-19 ‘green pass’
Among the protesters were members of extreme right-wing groups who extended their arm in a ‘Roman’ fascist salute.
SI Cobas statement on all that here, seems pretty sound from what I understand:
ok thats interesting, that is a very different thing to what i saw which was totally peaceful and had hammer & sickle flags and no fascist salutes.I suppose the covid-related sackings create strange bedfellows.
Flavour
hang the bankers
You saw the union general strike march, bimble. There will have been some No Green Pass mixed in with it but they weren't calling the shots (as they do on their regular Saturday protests which have nothing to do with sacked workers)
P.s. hitmouse when you are reading these translated articles bear in mind there are some alarming false friends that are lost in translation -- "massacrato" (translated as "massacred") does not mean killed in Italian, but just badly beaten up.
p.p.s. i've read the workers at the Dreamland factory in Prato work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week -- despicable
P.s. hitmouse when you are reading these translated articles bear in mind there are some alarming false friends that are lost in translation -- "massacrato" (translated as "massacred") does not mean killed in Italian, but just badly beaten up.
p.p.s. i've read the workers at the Dreamland factory in Prato work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week -- despicable
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Oh yeah, I thought something like that had gone on, I deliberately changed "massacred" to "attacked" in the headline but missed it was also in the main text.
By the way, if bimble or anyone else is around in Rome next Saturday, the CGIL and similar unions have called a national antifascist demo then in response to the attack on their offices:
Mai più fascismi
Il 16 ottobre manifestazione nazionale a Roma di Cgil, Cisl e Uil: "Attacco a tutto il sindacato, al mondo del lavoro e alla nostra democrazia"
Dunno what people to the left of the CGIL are saying about it, I'm not the greatest expert on Italian politics but I reckon I can see the potential downsides to asking for the fascist organisations to be dissolved by the law when the law is in the hands of Draghi, with support from Salvini and Berlusconi.
Flavour
hang the bankers
It would be a massive mistake to ban Forza Nuova as an organization. Martyrdom. Plus, for fuck's sake, Fratelli d'Italia are only ever-so-fucking-slightly less openly fash than Forza Nuova, and they are practically the largest party in Italy now in terms of polling, and you can bet your last euro that any punitive legislative action against far-right groups from this unelected technocrat government will only drive FdI's polling higher and higher. Said it before and I'll say it again: Meloni will be PM
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
And am I right in thinking that CGIL/CISL/UIL are very heavily into partnership with the Draghi government, in a way that means that they, and anyone associated with them, are really not going to be seen as a credible alternative by anyone pissed off with how things are going?
Flavour
hang the bankers
Yes, basically. They support the Green Pass, which, as of today, is mandatory for all workers -- this is the most extreme Covid legislation anywhere in Europe. Now, around 80% of Italians are vaccinated and therefore have the Green Pass, but there are some important section of the economy where that number is much, much lower, including truck drivers and port workers, notably in Trieste (the ex-Austrian port in the far north-east through which much of Italy's imports come)... hence protests. Note these are NOT the CGIL/union/antifascist protests which will be happening tomorrow in Rome.
Covid: Wave of Italian protests against mandatory work pass
Thousands gather outside major ports, angry that the "Green Pass" is now mandatory for all workers.
www.bbc.com
Flavour
hang the bankers
Totally. So do I. And it is bringing the No Green Pass protests out of the fringes -- because a lot of vaccinated people don't agree with these new rules either. The tricky bit is sharing a march/protest/criticism of the government with the hardcore anti-vax who were and are admittedly the foundational core of this movement. Because there's lot of criticism to be made of the government here: the vaccine is not a magic pill which will just end the pandemic, it's not some binary issue, and we leave ourselves open to the effects of any future pandemics and indeed all the other massive ongoing health issues while there is no significant investment in the healthcare sector.
The italian version of the NHS has been in severe decline for decades through underinvestment, and it is quite obvious that fewer people would have died from the initial and devastating wave of Covid last year if we'd had a health service that was better prepared. So that's where I think the criticism needs to lie: okay, the government seems to think it has a foolproof plan for "getting us out of the pandemic", but then what? Is that it, all problems solved? Of course not -- we need huge public sector investment in order to cure all the other literal ills of society.
The italian version of the NHS has been in severe decline for decades through underinvestment, and it is quite obvious that fewer people would have died from the initial and devastating wave of Covid last year if we'd had a health service that was better prepared. So that's where I think the criticism needs to lie: okay, the government seems to think it has a foolproof plan for "getting us out of the pandemic", but then what? Is that it, all problems solved? Of course not -- we need huge public sector investment in order to cure all the other literal ills of society.
Flavour
hang the bankers
Relatively good news: the centre-left coalitions' candidates (mainly PD but others too) have won the Mayoral races in all the major Italian cities (Rome, Milan, Naples, Turin) ... the largest city which the right-wing coalitions' candidates have won is Trieste, which has 200k people.
Five Star movement effectively demolished -- I think maybe they held a couple of small towns in Sardinia and the South, but essentially nothing. They're fucked.
Five Star movement effectively demolished -- I think maybe they held a couple of small towns in Sardinia and the South, but essentially nothing. They're fucked.
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