13 Dec 10 | Uncategorized
This morning 350,000 Facebook users vanished into a black hole. Facebook banned Popolo Viola’s page (Purple People), the organisers of the biggest anti-Berlusconi protest, only to reverse its decision this afternoon.
One of the pages administrators expressed his suspicions about the page’s closure, noting it happened “just as the Purple People was organising the protests tomorrow, December 14, during the vote of confidence to [Italian Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi,”
The Purple People movement, born and bred on the web, has attracted hundreds of thousands of keen followers. After the first No Berlusconi Day protest, which took place just over a year ago, its popularity spread. Now the grass-roots organisation has a huge network of local organisations in Italy and abroad (there is even a London branch).
The reasons for the Facebook blackout are still unknown. The page’s administrators say “We are waiting to get to know the motivations of what happened. We will keep you informed about the developments”.
The activists themselves speculated that the outage could be linked to tomorrow’s vote of confidence in the Italian parliament. A vote that could cost Berlusconi his presidency. Last week, leaked Wikileaks cables revealed that Berlusconi was worried about the activists, whom he defined “extremists to be kept under control”. Although others, including a reporter at Fatto Quotidiano newspaper, suggested that internal quarrels within the Purple People caused the temporary suspension.
08 Dec 10 | Uncategorized
Lucia Annunziata, one of Italy’s most renowned TV journalists, who famously took on Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi during a heated interview, took part in a lecture organised by the Italian Society of the London School of Economics last night.
Questioned about the future of freedom of expression in Italy, she disputed the widely held assumption that Italian journalists are limited in their power of speech. Annunziata argued that “being a journalist is deciding day by day what to write and what to say. Nobody ever prohibited me from doing that.” About the Italian national broadcaster she declared: “RAI have always been linked with politics and always will. When Berlusconi’s government will be replaced with a new one, they will have plenty of people who will sing for them just as well”. “There is no lack of freedom of expression in Italy”, she concluded.
RAI Berlin Correspondent Marco Varvello, who attended the event as well, took an altogether different stance on the issue. “Editorial policies have changed for the worse. You can say what you want, that’s true. But if you do it, you don’t know whether you will be asked to write or speak again next time. As a foreign correspondent, I can tell that there are some issues which are being totally ignored by Italian media”. Asked how long will it take for the media scenario in Italy to change: “I don’t know”, he stated. “Even if we take Berlusconi out of the picture, we now have this stigma. It will be very difficult to get rid of it.”
06 Oct 10 | News and features
As pressure mounts on Mauro Masi, CEO of Rai TV, Giulio D’Eramo looks at why journalists see the government-owned network as a threat to freedom of expression
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01 Oct 10 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Cecilia Anesi and Giulio Rubino
A rally “for life” takes place today, starting in Terzigno, a small city of a complex of three, with Boscoreale and Boscotrecase, a few kilometres away from Naples. Protesters will come from the whole of Campania region, since many feel Terzigno’s fight against a new landfill is their fight for an alternative way of managing waste.
Citizens of the three towns, located at the bottom of Vesuvius National Park, have been in turmoil for days, as the Italian government attempts to open a new landfill in the park.
Vesuvius National Park already holds a major landfill, built by the government two years ago, breaching the law that institutes national parks. Moreover, this landfill contains a mix of unprocessed solid and toxic waste, and although this breaches EU regulations in matter
of waste, the landfill was built — as others — by issuing an “emergency decree”. Moreover, the same emergency decree (dlg 90/2008 issued by Berlusconi’s Government) turned landfills and incinerators into “military areas” protected by state secrecy laws (issued by the Prodi government) and thus inscrutable for the people, civil authorities and the press.
A week ago the “Movimento per la difesa del territorio/Area Vesuviana” (Movement for the defence of Vesuvius Area) noticed the increase in the number of waste trucks that were entering the landfill. Naples was once again covered in rubbish, and the government had to quickly find a solution before a media scandal would explode again.
The solution was found in sending as many trucks as possible to Terzigno’s landfill. Hundred of citizens of all ages started blocking the entrance, scared that as soon as that landfill was been full the government would inaugurate a new landfill in a quarry few hundred metres away.
On the second day, riot police were called in the scene. On mainstream Italian media the protesters were shown for a few seconds, and although the reasons of the protest weren’t explained in depth, it was possible to see some seriously injured people. The blocade was violently removed by riot police, and the rubbish trucks were escorted inside and outside the landfill as if they were carrying gold. People were prevented from peacefully demonstrating, and from physically blocking with their bodies the access to trucks into the landfill.
Locals claim to have the right to protest, as it is the state that is acting against the law — firstly by opening a landfill in a national park, secondly by making it wihout following EU regulations, thirdly by breaching the internationally recognised right to health and life, and last but not least, because the government is not acting transparently and democractically by preventing both citizens and the press from entering the landfills of Campania.
Moreover, people have the right to protest because it is a fundamental right included into the Italian Consitution, and Berlusconi’s government is simply ignoring it.
But, as the citizens of Terzigno and other places of Campania will say, when the State thinks as a business and acts as a dictatorship, democracy can be proclaimed dead.
www.wasteemergency.com
