But how many millions lives did it cost? Surely the forced industrialization of Soviet Union was a great success, industrially speaking, but how much did it cost? This price was worth it?
Elections it’s not a synonimous of democracy. A formal and apparent domocracy doesn’t mean a substancial one. In Italy there is a substancial oligarchy and the role of the people is just to put a cross over a paper (or a bit more). For example the politicians are elected by the parties, the people just put the cross over the party symbol…
How they influenced the Italian politics? Dollars, pressions and last but not least covered operations (see in italian “strategia della tensione”).
Here, for example (in Italian) like the CIA and the NATO financed a righty party: http://www.ilcovo.mastertopforum.net/msi-braccio-armato-della-dc-come-l-area-oggi-vt434.html
And this one was not the most important for USA politics in Italy.
Absolutely true, but one of the merit of the fascism was the defeat of the mafia, that was KO and silenced for 20 years. It was resumed by the Allies that asked (in USA) its help for the operation Husky. After that time the problem reappered worse and better connected with the new political parties, (all antifascists) especially those near the US positions (like the DC). After the war many mafiosi made themselves to pass as “victims of political persecution” by the fascism…
I agree and in fact I said better the USA rule than the USSR one, there is no match. But this doesn’t mean that the USA “sons of a bitch” - to paraphrase a famous statement of Henry Kissinger - are not sons of a bitch. There must be a reason if in south America peoples dislike the USA and Kissinger style US politics: all the criminals, as long as “anticommunist”, installed and protected by the USA had done perhaps worse than they would be communists. And these criminals, often, are reckognized for what they are only when they revolt against the USA interests.
Some examples? The military dictature in Argentina, Contras, Noriega, Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, all Kissinger’s good “sons of a bitch, but our sons of a bitch” and friends until functional to the US interests.
In Italy the same, even if they’re more stealers than killers.
Because Italy remained under the western control (fortunatly). But we had the biggest communist party of Europe, and the communists stealed and steal like their other same/opposite parties, obeied to foreign orders like their same/opposite parties and they have the same biggest responsabilities in the actual disaster.
I’m the first to say that by the war Mussolini ruined Italy, himself and his regime (btw, France and UK forced him to approach Germany). But apart this final disaster, the fascism did more for Italian people in 20 years than this gang of foreign-directed stealers had done later in 60. There must be a reason if in the international statistics about corruption Italy results worse than Ruanda. The worst fascist hierarcs was a giant respect to the actual shit robber politician. And even if the lefty Italian historical reasearch tried to find out a wide corruption in the Fascism, there is no historical evidence about that and Mussolini personally ever resulted totally clear. Yes, of course there were some episodes of corruption among the hierarchs and in the colonies, but in the complex small facts respect to the actual shames that have been involving from years and years the highest offices of the Republic.
Elections it’s not a synonimous of democracy. A formal and apparent domocracy doesn’t mean a substancial one. In Italy there is a substancial oligarchy and the role of the people is just to put a cross over a paper (or a bit more). For example the politicians are elected by the parties, the people just put the cross over the party symbol…
I think you will find that is most democracy’s vote, definitely how it is done in the UK. We do not select the candidates their party does. In the UK we also have corrupt MP’s, political and monetary considerations with business’s and country’s to further a particular governments or individuals aims. It is not just an Italian thing to be blamed on another country.
Rich people can pay for party’s and votes and get who they wish to be elected into power, no matter the party they have to pay back in some way the financial support etc the received.
At the end of the day it is the voters in the country who make the choice not some mythical foreign power forcing them to put the ‘X’ against party ‘Y’.
Mussolini more than anyone else led Italy down the path it has ended up on. blaming others for your own past mistakes is not very productive.
The CIA did indeed deliver funds to Italian centrist and rightist parties. But was that any worse than the Soviets providing vastly more financing for Italian communists? This was indeed why the CIA did so to begin with–in response to the KGB (or was it then still the NKVD?) subsidies if the Italian left. And funding political parties is not the same as fixing elections…
I think these comments are bit on the ignorant and cliched side. I think you need to read a bit more, I suggest Rick Atkinson’s excellent An Army at Dawn followed by Day of Battle. Perhaps you’d have a little more respect for them, especially since I the city you mentioned actually held a bloody uprising against retreating German troops with little aid from the Allies and suffered horrendous reprisals, IIRC. I think there is also a good deal in there about Italian soldiers fighting bitterly in the North African mountains, sometimes well past the time where their ammunition was expended and where both sides were reduced to throwing rocks at one-another…
Soviet financial help to Western European communists was endeed very tiny. Not coz USSR was poor, but due to fact that the communist were almost banned in West after ww2. So there were no effect to sponsore the legal communist parties…Formally they existed but under strong pressure and not much popular.( and fully infiltrated by CIA) I do believe, if the first post war elections were really democrartic, communist might got the majority in govenments in such a countries like France and Italy( not to mention Israel). After the Tehrain agreements the Stalin has installed pro-russian gov in Eastern Europe while USA forcedly had excluded all the possible pro-communist powers in the West. Democraty sucked on both sides of Iron Curtain.
Not actualy so much as pro-fascist press liked to portray in propogand. About 2 milloion for almost 20 years of terror. Keep in mind we loose up to 1,5 million per YEAR CURRENTLY. Russia is dying couintry , no mach for ussr.
I did actualy hear the Mussolini fought the Sicily mafia.That’s why the italian mafia has supported the Allied invasion of 1943.After the ww2 the Sicily mafiosy payed by infiltrating the USA as “refuges” and began to terrorise the average americans.
Agreed.
Same here.
And no better current example than the Murdoch press in the US, UK and Australia where Rupert happily manipulates news coverage and thus much public opinion to favour politicians who favour his interests. On the other hand his news outlets are remorseless in attacking those who oppose his interests.
But Rupert is no different to other interests with deep pockets which have the means and ability to influence the result of elections by shaping public opinion in favour of, usually, conservative causes. Against which we have the other extreme which claims the moral high ground on all sorts of issues, from condemning the invasion of Afghanistan to eliminating farting cows to reduce climate change, and is fairly effective in influencing some public opinion with none of the resources of the likes of Rupert.
Those who get the support of the latter crew also have to pay their dues, as does the current Australian minority government in enacting a carbon tax to pay its dues to the Greens despite our Labor Prime Minister having assured us all before the last election that ‘there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’.
Almost all politicians ultimately are ****s and all ****s ultimately will sell themselves to whomever will keep them in power, be they Italians, Yanks, Brits, Aussies, or that slimy little **** with the fur hat in Afghanistan who can’t make up his mind whether to stick with the Yanks etc who are sort of holding his shitty country together or to flip flop over to the Taliban who would do a much better, albeit more repressive and brutal, job of holding his country together (after the little **** in the fur hat accepts the inevitable and ****s off to some other country where he can enjoy the squillions of dollars he’s ripped out of the Yanks etc).
See my last post.
I’m old enough to remember strong suspicions that the US engineered or at least assisted in the downfall of our government in 1975 because it wasn’t sympathetic to various US aims and interests.
But currently we have China buying votes in the UN by pouring money into parts of Africa and expanding its interests in the Pacific by pouring money into minor countries there.
Meanwhile Australia is regarded with some hostility by some Pacific nations because of its arrogance in dealings with them.
All countries behave badly in pursuit of their perceived (i.e. perceived by whichever political party happens to be in power at the time) national interests and all countries try to influence the internal politics of countries of substantial interest to them, whether by the surreptitious methods of the US in toppling Allende in Chile or the overt means in toppling Saddam in Iraq. Or the UK in the Suez fiasco in 1956 or France in the absurd Rainbow Warrior sinking in New Zealand, and countless other examples.
I didn’t know that.
I’d be interested to hear more about Mussolini suppressing the mafia.
But America wasn’t alone in supporting some sons of bitches regimes etc. Israel played a big part in creating Hezbollah in the mistaken belief it could control Hezbollah. The UK and others were all in favour of Saddam for years. The US and just about every other Western country still support Israel, despite that support being contrary to every obvious strategic and plain commonsense interest those countries have in a remote bit of sand inhabited largely by a bunch of displaced European etc religious fanatics who have displaced the locals and thereby created a festering sore which for the past sixty years has caused more trouble than it is worth and fostered an opposing crew of religious fanatics who think that it’s a good idea to fly planeloads of innocent people into buildings full of innocent people in the country of Satan and to expand that war to other places. My point is simply that there isn’t a lot of rationality in the way nations and those involved in international politics behave. It all makes sense if you are a believer, and it makes no sense if you’re not.
Are you saying that the Italian communists were more responsible than the Americans for the disaster?
Which disaster?
Might there be a degree of misty-eyed historical romanticism there, in the same way that there are people in Russia and other parts of the former USSR, and in China, who resent the current conditions in their countries and believe that everything was better for everyone under the old communist regimes?
Just people who lived enough long time on earth might to compare, mate. Although i doubt our new friend lived under Mussolini rule:) me still remember the former USSR. And yes , some things were much BETTER under old regime.And hardly this is romantism. Firstly coz current regime( and this is still “regime” - as western media calls the Putin’s autocraty) really does everything like regime. Not everything and definitelly not for everyone, but in many aspects previous regime was better.
I can suggest some books in Italian, look for foreign or in English edtions:
“La guerra del Fascismo in Sicilia contro la Mafia”, articolo di Michelangelo Ingrassia su Storia del Novecento (non ricordo numero e data)
G.F. Di Marco “Clima di un’impresa storica” Palermo 1937
G. Tricoli “Il fascismo e la lotta contro la mafia” Palermo 1989
A. Petacco “Cesare Mori. Il prefetto di ferro” Milano 1975
AAVV Bonifica integrale e colonizzazione del latifondo in Sicilia, ISSPE, Palermo, 1983
Alfredo Cucco “un Siciliano per la Nuova Italia”, ISSPE, Palermo,1987
You don’t live here and you can’t know… just a few information: the 30% of young people until 30 years is unemployed. Other 3 millions people under 40 don’t work, don’t study and don’t look for a job (demoralization, impossibility to find something). People that works a month or two for years is calculated in the statiscs as “employed” for ridicolous political purposes. This generation won’t have pensions. 20% of population live in absolute or relative poverty (official statistics by ISTAT). This generation could not afford sons or houses. This generations is much poorer than the previous. The corruption in public administrations is simply widest and to get a public job, or see your rights respected you MUST to know the right person in the right place.
The economical growth is 0, something % and this nothing should restore an enormous public debt. The internal consumption is going every day lower. With the Lira Italian products were competitive, with the Euro the prices had doubled and the Italian products too expensive here and abroad. This country is going badly for 20 years, but the last 10 are the the worst and the future is even darker. Do you understand?
Lucky Italia. Russia have 60% of who libes in poverty. And Kremlin’s mafia still proud that “communism dead” and now we live in “democracy”. Your are not alone sir. But i hardly can blame the USA for al desasters, howerev america definitelly responsible for impose the carrent oligarhy regime of Yeltsyn in 1990-y ( as the lesser evil that communism) but that fact doesn’e deny that WE carry the major guilt for our shit politicans. Every nation is deservs those politicans which they have. Your are not not an exclusion.
DVX
Italys average retirement age is 57 or 58 (Cant remember if it has been raised) the UK is 65 raising to 68 shortly, this is to help pay off the pensions deficit we have.
Our employment inactive currently stands at 22.7% (May 2011, Government Office of National Statistics) of those between 16 and 64 years old. They live on state benefits as they say there is no work (there are jobs but they would earn less than they get from the state so the jobs are taken by cheap foreign workers). Companys want people with experience but there are no apprenticeship or training schemes to train them so skilled foreigners are brought in to fill the skills gap.
Manufacturing Industry has been shipped abroad where labour is cheaper so reducing British Exports, where it has not been shipped abroad it has been bought out by foreign companys. this all adds to our increasing trade deficit and therefore to our huge National Debt.
You have then ended up like we have now with a state benefit system that is running rampant, less people wishing to work, chronic uncontrolled immigration (legal and illegal). Higher taxes, having to work longer before getting a pension, inflation running higher than wages so increasing poverty.
Don’t think that it is solely an Italian thing based on what other countrys have done. Ours has been done by our elected Governments being crap and not budgeting correctly. We are the ones to suffer.
As an example our last Labour Government ran up a Defence Budget overspend of over 30 Billion pounds on a Budget of just over 40 Billion. That is they allotted 40 billion Pounds to Defence but spent 70 Billion Pounds, and people say the bankers were reckless with their money.
This confirms that the plutocratic system is failing like the communism is failed. The third way “nor communism nor plutocracy” perhaps was the better solution.
Thanks for those references.
I’ll see if I can find English translations, as my Italian is limited to restaurant menus. 
That’s consistent with our political manipulation of employment statistics, based on international standards.
Labour Force Survey
3.9 The definition of employment used in the Labour Force Survey aligns closely with the concepts and international definitions outlined above. Employed persons are defined as all persons 15 years of age and over who, during the reference week:
worked for one hour or more for pay, profit, commission or payment in kind, in a job or business or on a farm (comprising employees, employers and own account workers); or worked for one hour or more without pay in a family business or on a farm (i.e. contributing family workers); or were employees who had a job but were not at work and were: away from work for less than four weeks up to the end of the reference week; or away from work for more than four weeks up to the end of the reference week and received pay for some or all of the four week period to the end of the reference week; or away from work as a standard work or shift arrangement; or on strike or locked out; or on workers' compensation and expected to be returning to their job; or were employers or own-account workers, who had a job, business or farm, but were not at work.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/0/47BFB611A97C91F2CA25710E007321C6?opendocument
Surprisingly, as soon as we adopted that standard instead of full time employment our unemployment rate dropped dramatically. :evil:
Things are a lot better here.
Maybe you should think about migrating. We took a lot of Italians before and after WWII. Many of the post WWII migrants were Italian POWs who spent their captivity working for farmers and others and impressed their involuntary employers to the extent that the employers sponsored them as migrants after the war.
Of course, we also got the Italian mafia, but they were pretty soft compared with the ****s we’ve got from Asia and especially the Middle East and the former USSR.
I understand, and I understand it from the perspective of someone who lives in a country lucky enough to be riding the China boom by exporting raw materials to China. But I also understand it from the perspective that, as Australia has done for close to the last couple of centuries, we are too stupid to do much more than chop it down; dig it up; send it out; and buy it back as finished products from cheap labour countries. Sooner or later, we are going to be comprehensively ****ed economically when reality sets in. Which will probably be about the time China revalues its currency, which will **** America over as badly or possibly worse and change the balance of global power.
Similar here in general terms if not in all details.
Our latest defence triumph was to build landing ships which were too big for the carrier ships, but it didn’t matter as the carrier ships were rusting and couldn’t carry anything anyway.
God help us if we have to go to a real war.
I can only add what Mussolini said after the debacle in Greece: “The human material I have to work with is worthless.” In truth, it was Mussolini who was worthless.
You might be interested to know, Rising Sun, that the reason for the resurgence postwar of the Mafia in Italy - after Mussolini was hung upside down in Milan - was directly attributable to the US Occupation of Sicily, Too lazy to run an effective occupation government, the Americans accepted the Mafia’s “assistance” in running that government. This is a shameful episode in postwar history and has led to a great deal of bloodhsed in Italy and elsewhere as a direct result.
There is a well documented book on this issue that you can buy at Amazon, Rodney Campbell’s “The Luciano Project: The Secret Wartime Collaboration of the Mafia and the U.S. Navy”
It is one of the most contradictory and embarrassing aspects of WW2, the goods reestablishing the mafia in Italy after being banished by the evil fascist government for 20 years.
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the CIA’s parent and sister organizations, cultivate relations with the leaders of the Italian Mafia, recruiting heavily from the New York and Chicago underworlds, whose members, including Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello, help the agencies keep in touch with Sicilian Mafia leaders exiled by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Domestically, the aim is to prevent sabotage on East Coast ports, while in Italy the goal is to gain intelligence on Sicily prior to the allied invasions and to suppress the burgeoning Italian Communist Party. Imprisoned in New York, Luciano earns a pardon for his wartime service and is deported to Italy, where he proceeds to build his heroin empire, first by diverting supplies from the legal market, before developing connections in Lebanon and Turkey that supply morphine base to labs in Sicily. The OSS and ONI also work closely with Chinese gangsters who control vast supplies of opium, morphine and heroin, helping to establish the third pillar of the post-world War II heroin trade in the Golden Triangle, the border region of Thailand, Burma, Laos and China’s Yunnan Province.
http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/congress-cia-drug-history-doc.html