Italy’s forgotten concentration camps in Libya
By Dr Mustafa Fetouri | MEMO | June 29, 2023
On 30 August 2008, Italy and Libya signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, ending their awkward past of feuding and diplomatic tensions over Italy’s colonisation of Libya from 1911 to 1943. Libya was seeking compensation, recognition of suffering of its people and, above all, an apology. Rome, as is the case with all former colonial powers, tried for years to close the matter without offering anything. The treaty, a success for Libya, might have ended the political and diplomatic struggle over the colonial past, but it will not wipe it out from history and people’s memories.
The idea of invading Libya came during the colonial rush that saw major colonial powers like France, United Kingdom and others divide the dying Ottoman Empire possessions in North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe itself. Libya was part of that empire, very close to Italy across the Mediterranean Sea and, above all, Libyans lacked effective means to fight back after the Ottoman military garrison left the country.
The rise to power of the Republican Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini in 1922, gave the occupation of Libya another nostalgic dimension as the fascists strongly believed in the deceptive idea that modern Italy was the rightful heir to the Roman Empire and, therefore, they were responsible for recovering the possessions of the bygone empire. Another reason that made Libya more attractive to fascist Italy is the fact that Italy, united just 50 years earlier, became overcrowded and its farmers, particularly in the south, were eager to own land of which Libya has plenty. Mussolini used to call Libya the “fourth shore of Rome”.
Italians thought that the taking over of Libya would not be more than a few days’ sea trip and the entire country would be conquered. However, once the first amphibious forces tried to land on Tripoli shores in 1911, they were faced with stiff resistance from the locals, who rushed to defend their country with the little means they had.
As the invaders increased their numbers and widened their presence, the resistance shifted to new tactics, using the guerrilla tactics of hit-and-run. Outnumbered and out-gunned, the Libyans, mostly nomads and shepherds, figured out that direct confrontation with one of the most modern armies at the time was suicidal and destructive.
Instead of facing the Italian army directly, they waged rather small battles, mostly at night time. Benefitting from their detailed knowledge of the land and its geography, the Mujahidin, as they were called, managed to make life really difficult for the Italian army wherever it went. Facing a ghost enemy fighting on horseback, the Italian army started to use unheard of methods of war, scoring many firsts.
For instance, Italy was the first country to use air war and Libya became the first country to be bombed from the air. An Italian pilot named Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, in a letter to his father, described how he threw the first bomb at an Arab [Libyan] camp in November 1911, just a month into the invasion. The young pilot wrote “today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane”, before pointing out that it was “the first time that we [Italian army] will try this and if I succeed, I will be really pleased to be the first person to do it.”
Pilot Gavotti, indeed, succeeded in throwing the first ever bomb from an aeroplane, ushering in the age of air war for the first time in the history of mankind. He wrote “and after a little while, I can see a small dark cloud in the middle of the encampment” in Ain Zara, today a town, but at the time just an oasis south-east of Tripoli. Ain Zara became the first place on earth to be bombed from the air. The Italian pilot did not realise what he had just done and had no idea what his bomb had done to people, mostly civilians, below. He returned to base, overwhelmed by his success in hitting “the target” and went straight to report to General Caneva that he just registered his name in history as the first person to bomb a target from the air. Carlo Caneva was the first Italian commander to announce that “Tripoli will be Italian”, as his forces launched the first attacks on Libya. He led the earlier brutal stages of the invasion before being replaced later by another, crueler General Rodolfo Graziani in 1930.
In the same year, the Italian army scored another world first when Benito Mussolini authorised, for the first time, the use of sulphur mustard to subdue Libyans. Bombing formations of fighters and civilian villages suspected of supporting the Mujahidin from the air but, this time, using poisonous gas, besides explosives.
In the 1920s, Libyan resistance intensified, particularly in eastern Libya with the rise of Omar Al-Mukhtar, a septuagenarian who suffered old age and chronic back pain, who became the national leader of the Mujahidin against fascist Italian occupation.
This forced General Graziani to revert to using collective punishment against entire civilian communities by forcing them into concentration camps across Eastern Libya. At one point, there were some 16 different camps in the Sirte desert and further east in which thousands of civilians including women, children, the elderly and young men were forced to live with their animals in desert plots surrounded by barbed wire and guarded, around the clock, by armed soldiers.
Despite this brutality, Al-Mukhtar and his colleagues fought for 20 years, until he was captured on 11 September 1931, after suffering an injury in a village called Slonta, south of Al-Bayda town in Libya’s eastern Green Mountain region.
After a quick trial, he was sentenced to death by hanging on 16 September. Hundreds of civilians, including women and children were forced to watch as Al-Mukhtar was hanged in Suluq concentration camp, one of the most infamous, south-west of Benghazi. By staging such a gruesome show, the Italian authorities wanted to terrify Libyans who might think of following in his footsteps and fight them.
Modern Libya, before the NATO invasion of 2011, used to commemorate 16 of September as a national day of mourning to remember Al-Mukhtar and remind younger generations of what happened in Libya, decades before. New Libya, however, has forgotten the mourning day, while fascist concentration camps are never really mentioned outside academic circles.
Declassified files expose British role in NATO’s Gladio terror armies
By Kit KLARENBERG | THE GRAYZONE | JUNE 19, 2023
Newly declassified British Foreign Office files have added disturbing details to the history of Operation Gladio. The covert operation was uncovered in 1990, when the public learned that the CIA, MI6 and NATO trained and directed an underground army of fascist paramilitary units across Europe, deploying its assets to undermine political opponents, including through false flag terror attacks.
Among them was a young Silvio Berlusconi, the media oligarch who served as Italian Prime Minister in four separate governments between 1994 and 2011. Listed as a member of the P2, the secret Cold War-era cabal of political elites devoted to Gladio’s aims, Berlusconi undoubtedly took some weighty secrets to the grave when he died this June 12th.
It is almost impossible to believe that inconvenient truths were not weeded from Britain’s documentary record on Operation Gladio prior to declassification. Nonetheless, the recently released material is highly illuminating. Covering a fraught twelve month period after the first public disclosure of Gladio’s existence, the papers illustrate how London’s foreign intelligence apparatus kept a keen eye on the continent as events unfolded.
The papers not only shed fresh light on the conspiracy, they underline Gladio’s relevance as British intelligence joins its America counterparts in contemporary plots involving secret partisan forces from Syria to Ukraine.
Various passages dotted across the tranche strongly suggest the British knew much more than they publicly admitted about egregious criminal deeds, including the attempted overthrow of an allied Italian government and the kidnap and murder of its leader.
A ‘clandestine resistance network’ goes to work
Gladio consisted of a constellation of “stay behind” anti-communist partisan armies whose ostensible mission was to fend off the Red Army in the event of Soviet invasion. In reality, these forces committed countless violent and criminal acts as part of a “strategy of tension” designed to discredit the left and justify a security state clampdown.
As Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a Gladio operative jailed for life in 1984 for a car bombing in Italy that killed three police officers and injured two, explained:
“You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people from outside the political arena. The reason was simple, force the public to turn to the state and ask for greater security… People would willingly trade their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This was the political logic behind the bombings. They remain unpunished because the state cannot condemn itself.”
The scandal triggered in Western capitals by the exposure of Gladio dominated mainstream headlines for months. The European parliament responded by passing a resolution condemning the existence of a “clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations organization [which] escaped all democratic controls, may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of member states [and] have at their disposal independent arsenals and military resources… thereby jeopardizing the democratic structures of the countries in which they are operating.”
The resolution called for independent judicial and parliamentary investigations into Gladio in every European state. But aside from inquiries in Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland, nothing of substance materialized. What’s more, investigators heavily redacted their findings while avoiding having them translated them into English. This may help explain why the historic scandal has been largely forgotten.
In this context, the newly declassified documents may be one of the most valuable primary sources to date offering new insights into the origins and internal workings of NATO’s secret terror militias in Italy.
Take for example an aide-mémoire (see it here) prepared by Francesco Fulci, Italy’s permanent representative to the UN, which was shared at a “super-restricted” November 6th 1990 meeting of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal political decision-making body, then forwarded to senior British officials at home and abroad.
Based on a note provided by Rome’s then-premier Giulio Andreotti to “the Head of the Italian Parliamentary Commission investigating terrorist incidents,” the aide-mémoire begins by noting that following World War II, Western intelligence agencies devised “unconventional means of defence, by creating in their territories a hidden network of resistance aimed at operating, in case of enemy occupation, through information gathering, sabotage, propaganda and guerrilla warfare.”
According to the aide-mémoire, authorities in Rome began laying the foundations of such an organization in 1951. Four years later, Italian Military Intelligence (SIFAR) and “a corresponding allied service” – a reference to the CIA – then formally agreed on the organization and the activities of a “post-occupation clandestine network”:
“[Gladio] was; formed by agents active in the territory who, by virtue of their age, sex and activities, could reasonably avoid eventual deportation and-imprisonment by the foreign occupiers; easy to manage even from a command structure outside the occupied territory; at a top secret level and hence subdivided into ‘cells’ so as to minimize any possible damage caused by defections, accidents or network penetration.”
The “clandestine resistance network” was subdivided into separate branches, covering information operations, sabotage, propaganda, radio communications, cypher, reception and evacuation of people and equipment. Each of these structures was to operate autonomously, “with liaison and coordination ensured by an external base.”
SIFAR established a dedicated, secret section to recruit and train Gladio operatives. Meanwhile, it maintained five “ready deployment guerrilla units in areas of special interest” across Italy which awaited activation on a continuous basis.
“Operational materials”, including a wide variety of explosives, weapons – such as mortars, hand grenades, guns and knives – and ammunition were stashed in 139 secret underground caches across the country. In April 1972, “to improve security,” these arsenals were exhumed, and moved to offices of the Carabinieri, Rome’s military police, near the original sites.
Only 127 of the weapons storehouses were officially recovered. The aide-mémoir states that at least two “were very likely taken away by unknown persons” at the time they were buried, in October 1964. Who these operatives were and what they did with their stolen arms is left to the imagination.
British involvement in the coup effort
Fulci was eventually quizzed by attendees of the North Atlantic Council summit “as to whether Gladio had deviated from its proper objectives.” In other words, beyond operating strictly as a “stay behind” force, to be activated in the event of Soviet invasion. While “he could not add to what was in the aide-mémoire,” Fulci confirmed “weapons used in some terrorist incidents had come from stores established by Gladio.”
This may reflect the fact that political violence was one of Gladio’s “proper objectives.” A June 1959 SIFAR report unearthed by historian Daniele Ganser confirms guerrilla action against “domestic threats” was hardwired into the operation from its inception. In the Italian context, this entailed systematically terrorizing the left.
As the Italian Communist party surged in polls ahead of the country’s 1948 election, the CIA pumped money into the coffers of the Christian Democrats and an attendant anti-communist propaganda campaign. The cloak-and-dagger effort was so successful in preventing the outbreak of a left-wing government in Rome that Langley secretly intervened in every one of Rome’s elections for at least the next 24 years.
Yet the covert CIA operations were insufficient to prevent Italians from occasionally electing the wrong governments. The 1963 general election saw the Christian Democrats prevail again, this time under the leadership of left-leaning politician Aldo Moro, who sought to construct a coalition with the Socialists and Democratic Socialists. Over the next year, protracted disputes erupted between these parties over what form their administration would take.
In the meantime, SIFAR and CIA black ops specialists such as William Harvey, known as “America’s James Bond,” cooked up a plot to prevent that government from taking office. Known as “Piano Solo,” it dispatched Gladio operatives for a false flag assassination attempt on Moro that would deliberately fail.
According to the plan, the kidnapper was expected to claim they were ordered to kill Moro by communists, thereby justifying the violent seizure of multiple political party and newspaper headquarters, along with the imprisonment of troublesome leftists at the Gladio chapter’s secret headquarters in Sardinia. The plan was ultimately aborted, though it remained on the table throughout 1964.
Moro became Prime Minister without incident and governed until June 1968. Piano Solo fell under official investigation four years later, yet the results were not published until the public first learned of Gladio’s existence. Though the findings omitted any reference to Britain’s role in the planned coup, the newly released documents strongly suggest London’s involvement. (Read them here).
Italy’s then-President Francesco Cossiga requested the ministry hand over “details of UK stay behind measures in 1964,” according to a detailed February 1991 Foreign Office memo on recent developments in the scandal.
Cossiga apparently made this enquiry as a result of a judge “whose investigations into unsolved terrorist attacks first brought Operation Gladio to light,” and who took the “unprecedented step” of demanding the president testify about the conspiracy under oath. By this point, Cossiga had admitted learning of the “stay behind” force while serving as a junior Defense Minister in 1966.
His Foreign Office query strongly suggests British intelligence played a role in Piano Solo, and that the Italian President was well-aware of the plot.
Doomed Italian PM Aldo Moro’s photo while in captivity of the Red Brigades
“One or more of Moro’s kidnappers was secretly in touch with the security apparatus”
On March 16th 1978, a unit of the leftist militant Red Brigades kidnapped Moro. He was on his way to a high-level meeting where he planned to give his blessing there to a new coalition government that relied on communist support, when the kidnappers violently extracted him from his convoy. Five of Moro’s bodyguards were murdered in the process.
After almost two months in captivity, when it became clear the government would neither negotiate with the Red Brigades nor release any of its jailed members in return for Moro, the kidnappers executed the former Italian Prime Minister. His bullet-riddled corpse was left in a car trunk to rot, and for authorities to find.
Moro’s murder has inspired widespread and well-founded suspicions that Gladio operatives infiltrated the Red Brigades to push the group to commit excessively violent acts in order to foment popular demand for a right-wing law-and-order regime. More than perhaps any other incident, his killing fulfilled the objectives of the security state’s strategy of tension.
Whether or not Moro was a casualty of Gladio, a declassified November 5th 1990 Foreign Office memo authored by Britain’s then-ambassador to Rome, John Ashton, makes it clear that London knew much more about the case than has ever been disclosed publicly by any official source. (Read the full Ashton note here).
“There is circumstantial evidence one or more of Moro’s kidnappers was secretly in touch with the security apparatus at the time; and that the latter deliberately neglected to follow up leads which might have led to the kidnappers and saved Moro’s life,” Ashton declared.
What’s more, according to the British diplomat, the presidential crisis committee responsible for attempting to rescue Moro was part of the notorious P2 – the “subversive Masonic lodge” composed of political elites loyal to Gladio.
According to Ashton, P2 was just one of many “mysterious right wing forces” striving “by terrorism and street violence to provoke a repressive backlash against Italy’s democratic institutions” under the “strategy of tension.” And President Cossiga was completely unaware it had infiltrated his crisis committee.
In April 1981, magistrates in Milan raided the villa of Licio Gelli, an Italian financier and self-identified fascist who founded P2. There, they uncovered a list of 2,500 members which read like a “Who’s Who” of Italian politicians, bankers, spooks, financiers, industrialists, and senior law enforcement and military officials. Among the cabal’s most prominent members was Silvio Berlusconi.
Future Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s P2 file
Moro’s “historic compromise,” under which the communists “made possible Andreotti’s government”, would be the party’s “final step before their own entry into government.” Ashton stated that this development “was anathema to P2,” which was “then in virtual control of [Italy’s] security apparatus,” and also to many non-P2 establishment politicians, and also to the US,” and sought to “eliminate once and for all any possibility that the Communist Party… might achieve national power.”
Ashton acknowledged “circumstantial evidence” of “US support for P2.” In reality, P2 founder Gelli was so well-connected to Washington’s national security and intelligence apparatus, the CIA’s Rome station had explicitly charged him with establishing an anti-communist parallel government in Rome.
Subsequent investigations showed how Henry Kissinger helped oversee the recruitment of 400 high-ranking Italian and NATO officers as P2 operatives in 1969. The US was so grateful for Gelli’s anti-communist purge that it made him a guest of honor at the inauguration ceremonies of US Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
Ashton concluded his revealing note by noting the truth about Washington’s involvement in Rome’s bloodspattered “Years of Lead” would “probably never be known.” The full extent of Britain’s involvement in terrorist attacks, government overthrows, destabilization campaigns and other heinous skullduggery under the aegis of Operation Gladio, not merely in Italy but throughout Europe, will almost certainly remain a secret as well, and by design.
It was not until 1993 that the public learned how the US and British gifted munitions to Gladio operatives to foment bloody acts of terror across Italy. As Francesco Fulci told his NATO friends at the “super-restricted” meeting, Washington and London supplied the perpetrators of mass casualty attacks including the 1980 bombing of Bologna Centrale railway station, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200.
Those responsible for these hideous crimes have eluded justice in almost every case. Several of the Bologna massacre’s chief suspects, including committed fascist and confirmed MI6 asset Robert Fiore, escaped to London. Britain refused to extradite him and his co-conspirators despite their convictions in absentia for violent crimes.
The extensive experience British intelligence obtained in Operation Gladio raises questions about the lessons the MI6 has applied to current covert operations in theaters of conflict. As The Grayzone revealed in November 2022, British military and intelligence veterans have trained and sponsored a secret partisan terror army in eastern Ukraine to carry out acts of sabotage in Crimea and other majority-Russian areas. The plan called for the training of cells of ideologically dedicated Ukrainians to “shoot, move, communicate, survive.”
THE DURHAM REPORT, THE SPYGATE AND THE INEXTRICABLE TIE WITH THE ITALIAN DEEP STATE
By Cesare Sacchetti | The Eye Of The Needle | June 2, 2023
Fraud and treason. These are the first two words that come up to our mind when we read the Durham report.
In the report written by the special prosecutor appointed in 2019 by the then AG William Barr is narrated the plot to overthrow the Trump presidency.
When President Trump claims that this was the most subversive plot in the history of America, he’s certainly right.
An institution like the FBI, which was supposed to guard the regularity of the election, was the one who instead conspired to frame one of the candidates.
After the publication of the Durham report, the image of the FBI is definitely tainted.
And the most outrageous thing that shows how the FBI is a politicized institution is the fact that the latter acted on the orders of Hillary Clinton.
At page 98 of the report, we find the beginning of this conspiracy against Donald Trump.
Everything dates back to April 2016 when a legal firm that was working for the Clinton campaign was assigned a specific task.
Find, or better cook up, dirt to discredit Donald Trump. The legal firm hired Perkins Coie, a Washington based investigative agency.
Perkins Coie was tasked to find compromising information about Donald Trump in order to show that the Republican candidate was a sort of “Putin’s agent”.
This is the birth of the infamous Steele’s dossier named after his creator, Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele was a former agent of the British secret services, which apparently did not want to do anything with him.
Steel wrote a bogus dossier where he claims that Trump had intercourse in a Moscow hotel with Russian prostitutes whom were asked also to pee on the bed where Obama had supposedly slept years before.
This is the kind of outlandish garbage that was put into the dossier and this shows us, once again, the stunning proportions of this farce.
However, this “material” was the basis that allowed the FBI to launch the infamous Crossfire Hurricane probe.
Crossfire Hurricane is the beginning of the investigation where Trump was suspected of “Russian collusion”.
After the probe started, the FBI illegally wiretapped Carter Page, Trump’s former foreign consultant, and Paul Manafort, former director of Trump’s campaign.
And the Special Prosecutor is very clear in pointing out how their surveillance would have not been authorized without the Steele report.
The FBI and the intelligence community failed to do the proper due diligence of this information and the report, at page 96 of his report, points out this as well.
Durham writes that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Evidence against Trump could not be founded because it was simply not there. And the institutions that were supposed to check Steele’s claims basically took his allegations at face value.
However, Crossfire Hurricane was launched also through the involvement of a foreign actor, which is Italy in this case.
In May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a former Trump consultant made some incautious revelations to Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat close to the Clintons.
Papadopoulos said to Downer that he had received some compromising information about Hillary Clinton from Joseph Mifsud when he had met him in Italy two months before.
Joseph Mifsud is an enigmatic character. He is a Maltese professor at the Link Campus University in Rome, which is a university known to be quite close to the Anglosphere environment.
Actually, Papadopoulos took the bait of Mifsud who is close to the American Democratic party as well.
The Maltese professor has disappeared ever since. Some sources claim that the Italian secret service are hiding him because of his crucial role in the conspiracy against Trump.
However, we will come back later on the role played by the Italian deep state.
Now we must go back to Crossfire Hurricane.
Obama green lighted Spygate
Once the investigation against Trump was launched, President Obama was immediately informed about it.
In the summer of 2016 the word was spread in the intelligence community about the “Clinton Intelligence plan”.
Obama was briefed by then CIA director, Joseph Brennan, who said to the President how the Clinton campaign was working to frame Trump by falsely associating him with the Russian government.
Obama did not stop the plot nor he tried to halt the illegal FBI investigation. On the contrary, he gave a green light to it.
The conspiracy against Donald Trump had the blessing of Barack Obama who chose to help Hillary Clinton in her plan.
Some months later after this summit, in October, former Italian PM, Matteo Renzi, paid a visit to Obama in the White House.
In that period, Renzi was busy in supporting his failed Yes referendum campaign to reform the Italian constitution and he was also seeking endorsements from international relevant figures, like Obama.
Obama backed Renzi’s constitutional reform with a public statement that it clearly looked a meddling into Italy’s political affairs.
However, according to Papadopoulos, when Obama hosted Renzi at the White House asked him to play a part in the conspiracy against Donald Trump.
And here we have to meet new characters, who are the Occhioneros siblings, Giulio and Francesca Maria.
In that period, the Occhioneros were accused of illegal espionage against Italian institutional figures. The probe launched by the DA of Rome is called “EyePyramid” and it floods the pages of the Italian media.
The two were arrested and they later started denouncing a plot against them.
Giulio Occhionero is a nuclear engineer with advanced IT skills. He wrote to the then US Ambassador, Lewis Eisenberg, and to the US Congress.
Mr. Occhionero in his letters reveals the plot of the Italian authorities against him. According to him, his servers were hacked by the Italian postal police along with their respective IT division, the CNPAIC.
The goal of this operation was to plant some of Clinton’s email on the servers of his firm in the United States and then trying to associate these emails to Trump because of Occhionero’s relations with the Republican party.
So Occhionero in this story played the role of the classical patsy, chosen to frame someone else.
If his version is correct, the plot against Trump proceeded on two parallel ways: on the one hand, there was the American side of the FBI that was illegally spying on Trump campaign; on the other, there were the Italian authorities that were acting jointly with the US institutions to associate Trump with the Russian government.
In the first months of the conspiracy, we find tangible trace of this collaboration between the US and Italian authorities.
In April 2016, Kieran Ramsey, former legal attaché of the US embassy, wrote a letter to Nunzia Ciardi, director of the Italian postal police.
Ramsey’s letter to the Italian postal police
Ciardi is an interesting character because her name surfaced in the Italian mainstream media in 2021 when she was interviewed about the surveillance of the “no vax” activists.
It is still not clear to this day what was the extent of this surveillance and who authorized it considering the fact that the “no vax” activists were not committing any crime.
However, Ramsey wrote to Ciardi and he thanked her for the collaboration of her office in identifying the location of Occhionero’s emails.
It was April and Occhionero was still not investigated by the DA of Rome. Nevertheless, his name was in an official letter signed by the legal attaché of the American embassy and addressed to the Italian authorities.
The Italian engineer thinks that the kind of cybernetic attack that was enforced against his servers could not be operated without an ISP, Internet Service Provider, TIM, in this case.
And only a government could force to participate an ISP in this kind of hacking operation.
This also explains the visit paid by William Barr in Rome. Barr came to Italy to investigate Italy’s role in the Spygate case.
And here we can see once again the deep tie between the American and the Italian deep state. A “special relationship” that dates back to 1945 when after the loss of WW2, Italy has been living in a condition of limited sovereignity.
Italy has not been enjoying an autonomous foreign policy like the other countries who joined NATO. Italy’s foreign policy was mostly dictated by Washington and when Rome did not want to comply was threatened and harassed like what happened to former Italy’s PM, Aldo Moro, who was warned by Henry Kissinger to halt his policy.
Therefore, the Italian deep state finds itself in a condition of subordination to Washington. US governments used Italy as a strategic platform to keep up the old unipolar order of the past century.
This probably explains why Washington chose Italy to carry out its subversive plans against Trump. The Italian deep state is a sort of rogue agent, or just muscle for the US side to use in these kinds of “tricky” situations.
This also explains why Italy, once again, played a fundamental role in another subversive plot against Trump whose name is “Italygate”, which we exposed in this blog in December 2020.
After all, the Italian establishment can rule Italy only with the protection of the Washington guarantor and it must execute the orders of the latter.
When Trump stepped into the political arena, both sides saw a lethal treat. Trump had no interest in pursuing that relationship with the Italian establishment.
His mission was to free America from the rule of the Washington lobbies, which had been controlling Italy for decades.
Trump ended this axis. He severed the umbilical cord that tied the Italian deep state to the American one.
This is why the Durham report closed a cycle. A cycle where the walls were closed in on those who committed treason against the President of the United States.
Although the report does not explicitly mention Italy’s role, Trump has probably the proof about the involvement of everyone in this coup d’état. And this not only haunts the nights of the several people in Washington.
It haunts the nights of several people in Rome too.
EU in crisis: Eurosceptism persists in Italy, Greece, France, and Poland
By Ahmed Adel | April 17, 2023
Although Euroscepticism has existed since the inception of the European Union, the UK’s departure from the bloc in 2020, the only sovereign country to have left, demonstrated to other member states that it is possible to leave. Many member states are frustrated by forced immigration quotas, scandals such as Qatargate, and a lack of strategic depth by the bloc as it prioritises the interests of the US instead of Europe. Seemingly, it appears that Italy, Greece, Poland, and France are the most Eurosceptic countries.
This lack of strategic depth led to the decline of European economies because sanctions against Russia have been self-sabotaging. When paired with the aforementioned scandals and migration issues, as well as the loss of legislative control, it is understandable why Eurosceptism persists across the bloc.
According to OddsChecker, an online bookie comparison site, Italy was ranked as the country which is most likely to leave the EU,” specifically with odds of 3/1 or 33 percent. It is recalled that in the September 2022 election, the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, was ousted from power by the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party. In the same manner, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had previously condemned the hostility by Brussels against the UK’s decision to leave the EU, describing its actions as an effort to “humiliate the British people who have freely chosen Brexit.”
The next likely country after Italy is Greece, with odds of 6/1 or 16.67 percent. Although Eurosceptism has always been prominent in Greece, it especially accelerated during the sovereign debt crisis, with discussions of a possible “Grexit” entering the mainstream.
Eurosceptic party SYRIZA lost power to the liberal-conservative New Democracy party in 2019, but Greeks are returning to the polls this May. Although it is expected the ruling party will maintain power, the gap between the two parties has now narrowed from ten to five percent over the past year as Greeks are angered by having to pay the most expensive energy bills in Europe and in their majority are against weapon transfers to the Ukrainian military.
Poland comes in third place, with odds of 7/1 or 14.3 percent. President Andrzej Duda, of the ring-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, has been continuously criticised for limiting freedom of expression and LGBTQ+ rights. However, since Poland positioned itself as a regional player in the context of the war in Ukraine, much of the criticism from Brussels has alleviated.
None-the-less, although Brussels might have quietened its criticisms of Poland, there is still a high degree of eurosceptism within Polish society, something which will grow as the negative effects of the war in Ukraine are crippling the country, resulting in war weariness.
War weariness has set in so much so that Poland, and neighbouring Hungary, took unilateral action to ban grain and other food imports from Ukraine. This is to protect their local agricultural sector, something which still received the wrath of the EU.
“In this context, it is important to underline that trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable. In such challenging times, it is crucial to coordinate and align all decisions within the EU,” said a spokesperson of the European Commission.
Poland’s ruling nationalist PiS party are seeking re-election in the 2023 parliamentary election, and people in rural areas, where support for PiS is usually high, are angered about large quantities of Ukrainian grain, which is cheaper than that produced in the European Union, staying in Central Europe due to logistical problems, thus making prices and sales for local farmer’s plummet.
Meanwhile, the fourth most likely country to leave the EU is France, with a 12.5% chance. French President Emmanuel Macron, another liberal like his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has been facing endless largescale protests against pension reform. Protestors have sworn to not stop until Macron backtracks on his plans.
At the same time, the French President was branded a “madman” and accused of insisting on a “political coup de force” by Boris Vallaud, leader of the PS deputies in the National Assembly.
When speaking about Macron, Vallaud told LCI and Le Figaro : “When you discredit social dialogue, when you step on the social partners (…), when you do not respect the parliamentary institution, when you brutalise it (…), when in the street you have people demonstrating by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, yes, it is a democratic coup because you are diminishing democracy.”
What makes eurosceptism all the more interesting is that it spans across different political ideologies, with only liberals in support of the failed European project. In the case of France, it is mostly comprised by anti-Macron elements, whilst in Greece it is represented mostly by SYRIZA, a radical Left party. This is contrasted by Italy and Poland, where right-wing politics prevails.
With Brussels failing to deal with migration issues in Italy, Greeks having a general tendency to be Russophile, Poland being lambasted for not implementing liberal policies, and the French having a desire to be an independent country in the vision of Charles de Gaulle, Eurosceptism is not only a persistent issue, but one that will continue to deepen.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
No More Double Standards and Impunity. West Provokes Russia. Result: Nukes in Belarus on NATO’s Borders
Strategic Culture Foundation | March 31, 2023
The historic – and unacceptable – deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in several European NATO states as well as the recent announcement by Britain of supplying depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine is the prologue to Russia’s decision to place tactical nukes in Belarus. The Western outcry following Russia’s decision is absurd and hypocritical.
The pattern is familiar and speaks of incorrigible arrogance. The United States and its NATO allies make reckless escalatory moves that are unprecedented in their aggression toward Russia; then Moscow makes a reciprocal move, and yet the Western governments and their dutiful news media become apoplectic with rage over Russia’s “threatening conduct” and nuclear blackmail.
Maybe one day, Western leaders will eventually choke on their own illogical apoplexy.
This week there was frothing and fuming in the West about Moscow’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, despite the move being fully in accord with the Minsk government, a longtime ally of Russia and fellow member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The CSTO is organically comparable with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), having a shared defense commitment between allied states that were formerly members of the Soviet Union.
In ratifying the deployment, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused by Western powers of jeopardizing international security, threatening European neighbors and violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Belarus borders three NATO members: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
But the decision by Russia to install tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus (which Moscow would reportedly retain control over) was in response to the NATO move to supply its anti-Russian Kiev proxy with depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Britain announced last week that Challenger 2 battlefield tanks sent to Ukraine would be equipped with DU shells. It is understood that the United States is also ready to supply depleted uranium armor-piercing munitions to Ukraine with its Abrams tanks. Video footage from London’s Ministry of Defence shows Ukrainian troops being trained by British and American officers in handling DU shells.
Depleted uranium is a high-density metal – much denser than lead – which can penetrate modern armor. It ignites after penetration and turns into vapor at extreme temperature. While DU shells are not explosively fissile and do not cause nuclear blasts, they do release harmful radioactive contamination into the environment. Arguably, the munitions are therefore a form of nuclear weapon in the same manner as a low-yield “dirty bomb”.
The United States and Britain fired tonnes of depleted uranium shells during their decade-long illegal war in Iraq. NATO forces also used DU weapons in their war of aggression against former Yugoslavia. In both cases, the resultant radioactive contamination was correlated with high rates of cancer and birth defects in the civilian populations.
The Americans and British have never been held to account for their war crimes. That impunity partly explains their arrogance in regard to pumping weapons into Ukraine against Russia and in particular the latest iteration of radioactive uranium shells.
For the British regime to claim that DU weapons are “normal” munitions and acceptable to deploy potentially for hitting Russian territory is a demonstration of its depraved deception and utter lawlessness. It also shows that London and its NATO partners are willing to recklessly escalate the conflict in Ukraine against Russia by breaching a dangerous threshold regarding nuclear weapons.
Under Russia’s defense doctrine, it may use nuclear weapons if its national security is threatened by either nuclear forces or conventional forces. The U.S.-led NATO alliance is pushing the envelope in a way that is seemingly incorrigible, or tantamount to psychopathic behavior.
Perversely, this abysmal situation is distorted as somehow Russia taking a provocative step in placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
What Moscow is demonstrating is that the Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over. Moscow offered a diplomatic channel to create a security treaty in Europe, but that was haughtily dismissed by the arrogant imperialist powers. The result was the military-technical measures that Russia undertook with its intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Arguably, Russia could take additional reciprocal measures that go further. The involvement of NATO members in massively arming the NeoNazi Kiev regime should, it could be contended, be met with military defensive action to destroy supply chains entering Ukraine.
This is the perspective for a proper understanding of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It is not Russia upping the ante to jeopardize security and peace. It is NATO powers that are erasing the boundaries in a way that they are accustomed to doing for several decades.
Let’s recall that it is the United States that has rescinded several arms-control treaties including the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, and the Open Skies treaty, and it is Washington that has chronically undermined the last-existing one, the New START governing strategic weapons.
There is also the existing anomaly of the United States storing nuclear weapons on the territory of five NATO members. They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey. These countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, so arguably the basing of nuclear weapons in these states is a gross violation of the NPT, which is what the West is accusing Russia of in regard to Belarus.
Last year, too, Poland offered to house American nuclear weapons on its soil. That offer was not taken up but is presumably still on the table. Why is there not an outcry over that egregious destabilizing of arms control?
As usual there is a surfeit of Western double-think to go along with rank hypocrisy. The illogical mentality is a product of arrogance and hubris.
Furthermore, two NATO members Britain and France have their own national nuclear arsenals supposedly separate from Washington’s command. These two powers are actively hostile toward Russia through their arming of the Kiev regime.
Additionally, all 30 members of the NATO alliance are committed to assisting the United States in deploying nuclear forces with their conventional militaries under the alliance’s provision called Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics (SNOWCAT).
In sum, clearly, the issue of arms control and security is badly out of balance, but it is the conduct of the United States and its NATO partners that has led to the imbalance. The arrogant presumption of impunity held by Washington and London in particular is a destabilizing factor that creates double standards that are completely unacceptable in a world supposedly under the rule of international law and the United Nations Charter.
The conflict in Ukraine can be solved if Western powers were to abide by international law and halt the weaponizing of the Kiev regime. Going forward, Ukraine must be a neutral state and NATO must halt its aggressive expansion. A serious policy of nuclear arms control must involve the withdrawal of such weapons from European NATO member states and the inclusion of British and French arsenals as part of a wider detente framework. Note, however, that the conditionalities for peace are in large part an onus on Washington and its Western allies to do the right and reasonable things. The disturbing question is though, can Washington and its imperialist lackeys be reasonable?
Until enlightened conduct prevails, Russia is quite correct to be intolerant of any double standards that the Americans, British and their NATO minions presume. Every aggressive move must be boldly and smartly reciprocated. Without that countervailing action, there is impunity, which is even more dangerous.
Holding Western powers to account is a powerful weapon of attrition because it exposes their corruption and fraud, their duplicity, and their fatal arrogance. Increasingly, the Western public is seeing the endemic bankruptcy of their supposed rulers.
Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus – escalation or legitimate response?
By Drago Bosnic | March 27, 2023
On March 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will start deploying its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Construction of designated storage facilities for the weapons is planned to be completed by July 1. The decision to transfer nuclear weapons to Belarus was made after Minsk issued a formal request, essentially mirroring Washington DC’s nuclear sharing agreements with several NATO member states. And while the decision was officially made after the United Kingdom announced it would supply depleted uranium munitions to the Kiev regime, the actual reasoning might have to do with much more sinister plans by the United States.
Namely, Warsaw and Washington DC have been floating the idea of transferring some of the US nuclear weapons stockpiled in Europe to Poland. The move has been mentioned several times in recent years, including in early October last year, when Polish President Andrzej Duda mentioned it in an interview with Gazeta Polska. The US has nuclear sharing agreements with the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey, with approximately 100 (mainly air-launched) tactical nuclear weapons deployed in all five countries. Greece also took part in the program, but discontinued its participation in 2001, although it’s widely believed Athens still keeps the necessary storage facilities functional.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko advised against UK plans to deliver depleted uranium munitions to the Kiev regime and warned that Russia would soon supply Belarus with “munitions with real uranium”. However, Putin himself stated that “even outside the context of these events”, Belarus still has legitimate security concerns and that “Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] has long raised the question of deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus”. This clearly implies that threats to Minsk transcend the immediate danger of depleted uranium munitions deliveries to the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev.
“There is nothing unusual in such a decision, as the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, and in Europe. In six states – the Federal Republic of Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Greece – well, not in Greece now, but there is still a storage facility,” Putin stressed, further adding: “[Russia and Belarus] will do the same, without violating our international obligations on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons”.
He added that Russia is indeed mirroring the United States in this regard and that it’s not transferring the ownership of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, but that it’s simply deploying them to the country and training the Belarussian military to operate and use them in the case of a wider escalation by the US and NATO. The Russian military has already provided Belarus with the necessary upgrades to be able to deliver tactical nuclear warheads. At least 10 (presumably Belarussian Air Force) jets have been assigned and equipped to carry such weapons, although neither side specified what type of aircraft received the said upgrades.
Belarus operates several types of nuclear-capable fighter jets, including the recently acquired Su-30SM and the Soviet-era MiG-29. In addition to air-launched nuclear weapons, Russia already deploys ground-based assets in Belarus, including the “Iskander” systems capable of launching nuclear-tipped hypersonic and regular cruise missiles. Minsk also operates its own “Iskander” units, meaning that those too could be equipped with tactical nuclear warheads, further bolstering the country’s deterrence capabilities. This is particularly important as Belarus has also been targeted by US/NATO covert/black operations in recent years, including an attempted Maidan-style color revolution in 2020.
“We have handed over to Belarus our well-known and very effective ‘Iskander’ system that can carry [nuclear weapons],” Putin stated, adding: “On April 3, we will start training the crews and on July 1 we will complete the construction of a special storage [facility] for tactical nuclear weapons on the Belarussian territory.”
In addition to the “Iskander”, Belarus still maintains a number of Soviet-era nuclear-capable assets, including a substantial arsenal of “Tochka-U” tactical ballistic missiles. These could serve as a secondary delivery option given their shorter range and inferior accuracy when compared to the “Iskander” which boasts a 500 km range, high precision, extreme maneuverability at every stage of flight, as well as a hypersonic speed estimated to be at least Mach 5.9, although military sources indicate that it can go up to Mach 8.7. This makes the “Iskander” virtually impossible to intercept, as evidenced by its performance during the SMO (special military operation). The system also provides a significant advantage over NATO forces in Eastern Europe.
President Lukashenko strongly indicated that Minsk could host Russian nuclear weapons as soon as NATO implied it could deploy US B61 nuclear bombs to Poland, highlighting that his country’s Soviet-era infrastructure for such weapons remains intact despite US pressure to destroy it during the 1990s. Belarus is home to a growing arsenal of state-of-the-art Russian military units and equipment, including strategic assets such as the S-400 SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, as well as the advanced Su-35S air superiority fighter jets and MiG-31 interceptors, including the K/I variants capable of deploying the already legendary “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles, which are also nuclear-capable.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Russian governor’s son flees house arrest in Italy
RT | March 23, 2023
Artyom Uss, son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Region, Aleksandr Uss, has fled house arrest near the Italian city of Milan, the ANSA news agency has reported.
The Carabinieri – an Italian law enforcement agency that also acts as the military police – is searching for the alleged fugitive, the agency added.
According to ANSA, Uss is believed to have broken his electronic tag before fleeing his home on Wednesday afternoon.
The developments come just days after a court of appeals in Milan approved the 40-year-old’s extradition to America. Uss was detained last October at Milan’s Malpensa Airport on allegations of sanctions evasion and money laundering. The New York district attorney had earlier issued an international arrest warrant for him.
Uss, who had been held under house arrest since his initial detention, denied the allegations and his lawyer had told TASS that they intended to appeal the extradition decision. According to ANSA, Uss was preparing to contest the court’s decision when he disappeared.
The US has claimed that the governor’s son allegedly purchased American military technology before selling it to sanctioned Russian entities. He is also accused of smuggling oil from Venezuela to customers in China and Russia.
In October, a Russian court ordered Uss’s arrest on money laundering charges. Moscow has since demanded that he be extradited to his homeland.
Governor Aleksandr Uss has claimed that the charges against his son are politically motivated. Lawyers for Artyom Uss have also suggested that Washington may want to use him in potential prisoner exchanges with Moscow.
Medical clinic treating people injured by COVID shot opens in Italy
By Ken Hall | LifeSiteNews | November 28, 2022
LUCCA, Italy — A private medical clinic has opened in Lucca, Italy that is devoted to caring for patients who have been injured by the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.
The clinic was opened by a group of doctors and health workers who were recently reinstated to their positions after newly-elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government removed discriminatory legislation that barred vaccine-free Italians from working in healthcare.
An Italian medical rights group celebrated the clinic as “helpful” and “welcoming,” but a left-wing political party from Tuscany has attempted to pressure the mayor of Lucca to publicly disavow the clinic seeking to help heal those suffering from COVID vaccine injuries.
The local Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) released a statement saying “we believe the mayor needs to take a position, and distance himself from what is happening on this front in our city.”
The statement was made even after the party admitted that the group who started the clinic did so with the intention of helping the vaccine-injured, and that the group also wanted doctors to have freedom of conscience protections when practicing medicine.
Italy has flipped the script on COVID restrictions since the election of Meloni, who has admitted that Italy had the “most restrictive anti-COVID measures in the entire Western world,” but was still “among the countries with the highest numbers of deaths and infections.”
She vowed that her government “will not replicate that pattern in any way,” promising to never “limit fundamental freedoms.”
Under previous Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the then left-wing government had enacted severe measures against Italians who chose not to take the COVID jab, restricting them from many aspects of public life under the guise of the “Super Green Pass.”
Under the restrictions, all Italians were required to be jabbed or provide proof that they had previously recovered from COVID in order to work, and all those over 50 years old had to be vaccinated or they would be fined by the government on a monthly basis.
In response, Italians protested in massive numbers, and it is believed that support swelled for the populist Meloni as a result of her opposition to such measures.
Milan Prosecutor Approves Extradition of Russian Governor’s Son to US
Samizdat – 26.11.2022
ROME – Milan prosecutor’s office submitted to the court a positive decision on the extradition of the son of Russian Krasnoyarsk Territory’s governor, Artem Uss, to the United States, the Il Giorno newspaper reported on Friday.
Artem Uss was arrested in Italy on a US warrant on October 17. Alongside four other Russian citizens, he was accused of money laundering and evasion of sanctions. The 40-year-old has denied any wrongdoings and rejected voluntary extradition to the United States.
According to the media, Uss during Friday’s hearing stated that he had never been to New York and his last visit to the US had occurred 25 years ago, when he was 14 years old, adding that information provided by the US Department of Justice was false.
The prosecutor’s office also reportedly rejected appeal of Uss’s lawyers to put him under house arrest in Milan.
Uss’s lawyer Vinicio Nardo refused to give Sputnik his comments on the case.
On October 28, Moscow court issued a warrant in absentia for the arrest of Uss for money laundering and put him on the Russian interior ministry’s register of wanted persons.
They denounce Meloni, but the despots of the Covid State are the real fascists
By Paul Collits | TCW Defending Freedom | October 5, 2022
ACCORDING to the dictionary, fascism is: ‘A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc, and emphasising an aggressive nationalism and often racism.’
That’s all right as far as it goes. But I would add two other elements – the reach of fascism (and totalitarianism more generally) into people’s private lives, and the corporatist state model as fascism’s operating system.
The election in Italy – technically the home of fascism – of a Right-wing politician, Giorgia Meloni, was all too much for the dreary Left. Here in Australia, the Guardian’s Van Badham has given us the headline: The election of Italy’s fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni is a public reminder that women can be just as awful as men
I have previously noted Badham in the context of women in politics. Here our interest is in Meloni’s other defining characteristic, her alleged fascism. Comparing perceived Right-wingers to Hitler is, of course, an old trick. But fascism is again all the rage with Meloni’s election.
Two of fascism reporting’s traditional attributes are the frequent misuse of the term (do most journalists even know what it means?), and the clueless irony of accusations of fascism by those who exhibit all the signs of being, well, fascists themselves.
I was not familiar with Badham’s Covid writing, and a quick internet search suggests I would not find it rewarding. More broadly, the Guardian has been at the forefront of Covidmania, what with all the death reporting (which it still runs) and the modern Left’s endless appetite for lockdowns and all the rest.
It is becoming tedious to report that (of course) the Guardian is funded by Bill Gates. So, no prizes for guessing the rag’s line on anti-vaxxers, and on all matters Covid.
Only this week, it reported on the vaccine review conducted by ‘respected’ public servant Jane Halton, aka Bill Gates’s girl in Canberra. Her conclusions? Keep the vaccines coming! We aren’t out of the woods yet. A ‘twindemic’ is coming this British winter.
Jane reckons we are not yet at ‘Covid stable’. Yes, the commissars of the Covid State do actually talk like this. She says we should keep advertising the (unnecessary, dangerous and ineffective) vaccines ‘till 2024’. Why stop at 2024?
Seriously, how does this woman have the gall to keep telling blatant, self-serving porkies? (To see why I say self-serving, just search her CV; she has a massive interest in prolonging the narrative).
To say that the Guardian’s reportage of Covid remains breathless would be to indulge in understatement. (‘Twindemic’ and ‘Covid stable’ are vying for Covid Bulls**t Term of the Week at this point).
Mercifully, the Guardian is still keeping us informed of Gates’s moods, with one recent headline stating: ‘The strain is the worst of my lifetime’: How Bill Gates is staying optimistic.
Thank God Bill is staying optimistic. He has doubled his wealth in his proclaimed ‘decade of vaccines’, and now, in effect, runs global public health. The New World Order is running to plan. No wonder he is optimistic. And to have the Left media on side as well!
The point is that fascism as an ideology has far more in common with the Left than with the conservative or libertarian versions of ‘the Right’. The American conservative writer Jonah Goldberg realised this some time back, when he published his excellent book Liberal Fascism.
Fascism has more in common with anyone (like the World Economic Forum) supporting public-private partnerships, than with Meloni-type pollies – since fascism is, above all else, an ideology of the corporate state, big government and of global crony capitalism.
The irony of Left-wing media siding with Big Capitalism is exquisite, or would be if it were not so deadly. The Covid State IS fascism, nothing more and nothing less.
The ‘fascist-adjacent’ Meloni actually wants to get rid of the vile Green Passes (vaccine passports) in Italy. Hint to the Left – this is precisely why she was elected.
This is despite Meloni’s apparent support for elements of the Covid State in the past. It would be hilarious if Badham accidentally spoke the truth about Meloni. Perhaps Badham is like the broken clock, right twice a day. But for the wrong reasons, and she would not understand if I tried to explain it.
Supporting Covid policies in the past is the only link to fascism that I can see in Meloni, and it is tenuous at best. The alt-media as a jury is still very much out on the new Italian PM, not least because of the Covid stances referred to above. She also sounds too good to be true.
But it seems Meloni has clearly seen the error of her Covid policy ways. (Like the economist John Maynard Keynes, who is famously said to have stated: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’) Fact is, Meloni’s party alone in Italy stood up for freedom when it mattered in 2021.
Nicholas Farrell in the Spectator last year saw the irony, and was bemused by the non-opposition from Leftists to the Green Pass.
He wrote: ‘Here is your starter for ten. Which Italian political party believes that individual liberty is sacred? Answer: The party invariably defined by the international media as “far Right” or “fascist” and jointly Italy’s most popular party in the opinion polls – in other words, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).
‘Here in Italy, birthplace of fascism, the 44-year-old leader of the Right-wing Fratelli d’Italia – Giorgia Meloni – has been busy promoting distinctly anti-fascist values. In defence of human liberty, she has spoken out passionately against the decree issued on 22 July by Italian Premier Mario Draghi which will introduce the “Green Pass” to Italy.
‘As of this Friday, all Italians over the age of 12 will be banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they are equipped with this digital pass that proves they have had at least one Covid vaccine.’
But the legacy media cannot resist all the ‘far Right’ nonsense in its reportage on the Italian election. Here is Roberto Saviano in the Guardian: ‘The Brothers of Italy (a delightfully sexist name for a political party) leader denies she is a fascist, but clings to the Mussolini-era slogan “God, homeland, family”’.
It is hard to say which is the more ludicrous – bagging the support for nation, religion and family as dangerous, or branding it as fascist.
For patriots, deplorables, populists and conservatives everywhere, such a motto might be summarised thus: ‘Not all that we want, but a fine start’.
Throw in some ‘climate inaction now’, ‘woke comes here to die’ (with apologies to Ron DeSantis) and ‘crush the Covid State’ and we might just have a platform worth supporting. And a platform that is not remotely fascist, by the way, on any definition.
Saviano also claims that Hungarians have lost all their rights under Meloni’s assumed mentor, Viktor Orban, another hate-figure for the Left and globalists everywhere.
Lost rights? This is rich coming from the Covid State’s chief media promoter. Here is the irony again. It is the truly fascist Covid Class that has disempowered people across the world. The Guardianistas obviously don’t do irony, or read dictionaries.
Hated by the woke: The conservative woman who could be Italy’s leader tomorrow
By Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack | TCW Defending Freedom | September 25, 2022
According to the BBC ‘Italians are deciding whether to choose their most right-wing government since World War Two’ in their elections today. Giorgia Meloni, the woman at the helm of The Brothers of Italy party, has had pretty much everything flung at her. All but called facist by the BBC for her ’embrace’ of ‘God, Fatherland and Family’ her sins include condemning the world of LGBTQ and a tough stance on unfettered migration from Africa. Comparisons with Mussolini abound. Yesterday in the Telegraph David Selbourne put another slant on it, writing ‘that at the heart of Meloni’s strength in the poll ratings is the rejection by many people, decent and indecent alike, of today’s “progressive” orthodoxies, whether in Italy, Poland, Hungary, Sweden or elsewhere’.
In June, TCW’s own Campbell Campbell-Jack tracked Meloni’s rise and the reasons for it. He concluded that the woman who shouts out ‘I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am an Italian, I am Christian, and you cannot take that away from me!’ is a principled anti-globalist conservative. No wonder the media smear and hate her. We republish his considered article here.
THE Left is worried so be prepared to hear a great deal more about the ‘far-Right’, ‘hard-Right’, ‘Right-wing extremist’ Giorgia Meloni. Press mentions of Italy’s rising centre-Right star almost always include a reference to Mussolini or assertion of her Brothers of Italy party’s ‘neo-fascist origins’. She is characterised as a figurehead who ‘threatens to send Italy down a dangerous authoritarian path’. The Guardian warns, ‘Success of far-Right Brothers of Italy raises fears of fascist revival.’ It is clear that the prospect of her party gaining ground in Italy’s next general election is sending shock waves through the mainstream media.
Named after the opening words of Italy’s national anthem, the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) is a national conservative party which is growing in prominence and is being touted as having a good chance of leading the government after the election, which must take place next year. Meloni also chairs the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, an alliance of centre-Right parties in the EU.
In recent local elections the Brothers of Italy took 10.3 per cent of votes in nearly 1,000 local contests, significantly more than the 6.7 per cent won by the rival League party led by Matteo Salvini. This reverses the result of the 2019 European elections in which Salvini took 34 per cent and Meloni just 6 per cent.
Meloni is now in the driving seat in a Right-wing coalition alongside Salvini and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Polls make their Right-wing alliance favourite to win the 2023 election and if the Brothers of Italy takes more votes than the League, Salvini has agreed she will become prime minister.
Meloni is not the type of conservative to whom we have grown accustomed. She is a national conservative and this frightens the Euro-elites because her aim is to put conservatism back into its traditional sphere of national identity. She sees the nation state as the sole means of combating globalism and protecting freedom. ‘The Nation is the place where our values are safeguarded and transmitted.’
Globalism takes power from the people and transfers it to supra-national organisations run by and in the interests of the elites. Globalists thus see national identity as a hindrance to their totalising ambitions which has to be overcome. We see this in the continuing media and political stress on diversity with its consequent fracturing of communities through identity politics pitting one single identity group against another, each fighting for its own rights and caring little for the good of all. National identity is being continuously eroded throughout Europe.
National conservatism is the opposite of what we have fed to us by the mainstream parties of Right as well as Left. Most centre-Right parties favour liberal conservatism with free-market economic policies, deregulation and controlled spending the overriding priorities. Most European parties nominally of the Right, such as the UK’s Conservatives, are run by economically liberal conservative elites who have deliberately marginalised the social and cultural issues which concern their electorate. We are used to continual promises to cut immigration to ‘the tens of thousands’ yet it keeps growing, as this suits the economic interests of the establishment by keeping wages low and weakening opposition to globalist aims. What the people want is sidelined or ignored.
Meloni has gained support by demanding that the EU leaves the global compact on migration. Whilst welcoming immigrants who would be able and willing to integrate into a European country with a Christian heritage, she is staunchly opposed to taking in any more migrants and refugees who cross the Mediterranean from North Africa. The party advocates a naval blockade of North Africa to stop illegal immigration.
National conservatism emphasises patriotism, nationalism, cultural conservatism and monoculturalism. Meloni sees national conservatism as the only real democracy because only by defending the nation state do we defend the political sovereignty of the people who belong to that state. Nations composed of people sharing the same historical and cultural memory are the bedrock of democracy.
Meloni is quite clear on the dangers of political correctness. ‘You see, political correctness is a shockwave, a cancel culture that tries to upset and remove every single beautiful, honourable and human thing that our civilisation has developed. It is a nihilistic wind of unprecedented ugliness that tries to homogenise everything in the name of One World. In short, political correctness – the Gospel that a stateless and rootless elite wants to impose – is the greatest threat to the founding value of identities.’
Meloni sees the protection of ‘religious and moral values, the noblest purpose of all political action’. Democracy without cultural values degenerates into a free-for-all plunge into decadence, something we can see around us in ‘Pride Month’ where a Pride march can be little more than a celebration of perversity.
Meloni is dedicated to the freedom of the individual. Although she had a Covid vaccination herself, she was vehemently opposed to the Green Pass scheme by which all Italians over the age of 12 were banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they could prove they had received at least one jab.
‘The idea of having to use this Green Pass to be able to participate in communal life is chilling, and the ultimate step towards the realisation of an Orwellian society,’ she tweeted when Mario Draghi, Italy’s technocratic non-elected Prime Minister, announced the policy. ‘It is an unconstitutional act of madness that Fratelli d’Italia rejects outright. For us individual liberty is sacred and inviolable.’
National conservatives are painted as obtuse nationalists, thinking only of the good of the home nation. Modern national conservatism defends the identities of nations as the basis for new forms of co-operation. It does not want to impose its own interests at the expense of other nation-states. What it actually wants is co-operation between independent nation-states once again able to defend the freedom, identity and sovereignty of their peoples. Brothers of Italy defends Viktor Orban’s Hungary and Kaczynski’s Poland, nations under attack from the European progressive mainstream. The aim is to build a true, real Europe of peoples and identities, not an abstract Europe run by nameless bureaucrats.
Meloni sees Europe facing challenges today that will shape the future and the very survival of our shared civilisation, challenges which we have to face together. No wonder the established elites vilify her.
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9/11 and the Zionist Question: Is Noam Chomsky a Disinfo Agent for Israel? (Part 2)
The Kevin Barrett-Noam Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective
Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 14, 2016
… Chomsky in discouraging skeptical investigation of 9/11 reveals himself to be a Trojan horse that has succeeded in subverting the Left from within. … Read full article
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- How reporting facts can now land you in jail for 14 years as a terrorist
- Bill Gates, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla Ordered to Testify in Dutch COVID Vaccine Injury Lawsuit
- The vindication (and brutal punishment) of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinian Christians offer “Kairos,” an alternative Christmas Day sermon – Not a Ceasefire Day 76
- The Faces of AIPAC: the largest pro-Israel lobbying org in the US
- Gazan Christians mark 3rd Christmas under genocide – Not a Ceasefire Day 75
- Israeli scams children with cancer out of millions fundraised for their treatment, BBC finds
- Casey Kennedy Fired from AG Scientific Amid Zionist Troll Campaign Over Track AIPAC Work
- The Hasmoneans: The Jewish Dynasty That Gave Us Hanukkah Is a Symbol of Murder, Not Heroism and Hope
- Int’l NGOs may be blocked from Gaza starting Jan. 1 – Not a Ceasefire Day 74
- From Churches to ChatGPT: Israeli Contracts Worth Millions Aim to Influence U.S. Public Opinion
- Who is the Pro-Israel Clique behind TikTok’s US Takeover?
- Medical Crisis in UK Prisons – 800 Doctors Warn of ‘Imminent Deaths’ Among Palestine Action Strikers
- No Tricks Zone
- Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue Warns “Germany Won’t Make It” If Winter Turns Severe
- Merry Christmas Everybody!
- Two More New Studies Show The Southern Ocean And Antarctica Were Warmer In The 1970s
- Der Spiegel Caught Making Up Reports About Conservative America (Again)
- New Study: 8000 Years Ago Relative Sea Level Was 30 Meters Higher Than Today Across East Antarctica
- The Wind Energy Paradox: “Why More Wind Turbines Don’t Always Mean More Power”
- New Study Reopens Questions About Our Ability To Meaningfully Assess Global Mean Temperature
- Dialing Back The Panic: German Physics Prof Sees No Evidence Of Climate Tipping Points!
- Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon Challenges The Climate Consensus … It’s The Sun, Not CO2
- Regional Cooling Since The 1980s Has Driven Glacier Advance In The Karakoram Mountains
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