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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Anti-and pro-war protests paralyse Rome |
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by Ivano Stocco
(No verified email address) |
11 Nov 2001
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It should be noted that the US dominant media has been reporting that the peace demonstration in Rome yesterday was smaller than the Italian government organized pro-war demonstration. All European sources report just the opposite, that the official, pro-war demo was much SMALLER than the antiwar demo. Sundays's News-Gazette simply repeats what seems to be a grossly inaccurate report by the AP, in the service of manufacturing consent among Americans for Bush's war. Don't be misled. Stay logged on to IMC for the news that is too inconvenient to the elites to be published by them. ML |
Parallel rallies were held in Rome yesterday - one for war and one, over three times as large, against - in response the Italian government's decision to participate in the war in Afghanistan alongside the US and Britain. The protests, in conjunction with a weekend-long national train strike, shut most of the Rome city core down.
Supporters, bussed in by 520 couches paid for by Forza Italia, the far-right party led by Silvio Berlusconi, Europe's wealthiest man and the current president of Italy, gathered in the Piazza del Popolo in downtown Rome mid-afternoon under the banner "To not forget" and declared the day "USA Day". In addition to supporters of Forza Italia, there were also supporters of Gianfranco Fini's Allianza Nazionale, an anti-immigrationist party in the mould of the Austrian Freedom Party or the French National Front; the New Socialist Party of Italy, the party with links closest to Italy's fascist past; and the Lega Nord and Liga Veneta, separatist groups calling for the independence of Italy's wealthy north.
The approximately 40,000 persons in attendance waved Italian, American, and European Union flags, paid for also by Forza Italia, as well as green and white flags of "Padania", the mythical north Italian "nation", while listening to a speech by president Berlusconi and Schubert's L'Ave Maria sung by Andrea Bocelli. Berlusconi commented repeatedly during his speech: "Oggi noi siamo tutti newyorchesi" -"Today we are all New Yorkers".
Down the road, at Piazza Esadra, also known as the Piazza of the Republic, anti-war activists gathered too at mid-afternoon - approximately 130,000 in total, the largest yet anti-war turnout - before marching for five kilometres through central Rome. The demonstration, organized by the Rome Social Forum, one branch of a national committee that has been the backbone of Italy's anti-globalisation movement, included farmers, immigrants, trade unionists, civil servants, environmentalists, unemployed persons, socialists, anarchists, and members of Rome's over 30 "social centres", disused factories, garages, or industrial estates occupied by youth to hold concerts, promote anti-establishment learning, and house refugees. Also in attendance, although not in numbers as large as previous protests in Italy, were ex-Tutti Bianchi (White Overalls), now "Disobedients", who were the largest and most active group at the recent anti-G8 protest in Genoa.
Luca Casarini, leader of the Disobedients, called for the 3,000 Italian soldiers summoned to duty in Afghanistan last week to "dissert as a matter of conscious".
Leading the anti-war march were the Women in Black, who held a large banner reading "No to the war - military, economic, and social" and who chanted "Non a nome mio", we oppose the war in our name, the same slogan used two weeks ago at a 40,000 person rally in London held by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the spearhead of England's historic Peace Movement.
At one point in the march Women in Black were nearly forced to disperse when two men tried to block their path shouting "Duce! Duce!", the fascist salute to Mussolini during the '30s and '40s. However Carabinieri, Italy's national police, arrested the two men and the march was able to continue. Another skirmish was quickly cleared when some anarchists, who tried to burn two American flags, were chased away by a troop of Kurds.
Italy's decision to enter the war in Afghanistan is the first time since World War Two it has intervened militarily and in a partisan fashion in another country. This violates, according to anti-war activists at yesterday's protest, Article 11 of the Italian constitution, which forbids the country to go to war. |
