Protecting the Roma from Rome's new Mayor.
iosaf | 14.05.2008 14:10 | Anti-racism | Migration | World
Gianni Alemanno was elected in April on a mixture of promises typical of his far-right platform. Upon his election fascist salutes were given to cries of "Duce!" on the steps of the Capitol in Rome. The most repugnant election promise was the immediate expulsion of Roma "gypsies" from the city. The Italian police have just been mobilised in Naples to protect Roma encampments from hate attacks last night which saw their shanties burnt. Many believed the general election which was lost by Veltroni (the former mayor of Rome) to Berlusconi was prompted because of the ongoing waste collection crises in Naples. It's time to identify the fascists.
Accordingly the news that Alemanno might sue "The Sunday Times" for defamation resulting from "misquotation" or "deforming" [sic] a quotation it carried in a piece it published last weekend entitled 'Italy needed fascism, says the new Duce', ought be seen it in its proper context.
There is a fascist in power in Rome. And the fascist salutes which greeted his election are now moving to expel the Roma community from Italy. The Roma have now been reported as moving on from the burnt camp in Naples.
Roma in Naples
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7400460.stm
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1405302.php/Naples_Roma_camp_abandoned_following_attack
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080514/107310229.html
Roman Mayor on being a Fascist.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1404826.php/Rome_mayor_says_he_was_misquoted_on_"praise"_for_fascism
The Roma or "Romani" ethnic group is estimated at 15 million worldwide. It's "day" is celebrated on the 8th of April. Despite their undoubted influence on many musical traditions including flamenco, bolero, zidane or gypsy jazz as well as classical composers such as Liszt, Brahms & Bartok - they have often been the focus of persecution.
Estimates vary on how many were killed in The Holocaust :- "Ian Hancock, director of the Program of Romani Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, proposes a figure of up to a million and a half, while an estimate of between 220,000 and 500,000 was made by the late Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum"
If you can read french you can learn all about their day and them here http://journee-mondiale-rroms.org
or in English at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people
There is a fascist in power in Rome. And the fascist salutes which greeted his election are now moving to expel the Roma community from Italy. The Roma have now been reported as moving on from the burnt camp in Naples.
Roma in Naples
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7400460.stm http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1405302.php/Naples_Roma_camp_abandoned_following_attack http://en.rian.ru/world/20080514/107310229.html Roman Mayor on being a Fascist.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1404826.php/Rome_mayor_says_he_was_misquoted_on_"praise"_for_fascism The Roma or "Romani" ethnic group is estimated at 15 million worldwide. It's "day" is celebrated on the 8th of April. Despite their undoubted influence on many musical traditions including flamenco, bolero, zidane or gypsy jazz as well as classical composers such as Liszt, Brahms & Bartok - they have often been the focus of persecution.
Estimates vary on how many were killed in The Holocaust :- "Ian Hancock, director of the Program of Romani Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, proposes a figure of up to a million and a half, while an estimate of between 220,000 and 500,000 was made by the late Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum"
If you can read french you can learn all about their day and them here
http://journee-mondiale-rroms.org or in English at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people
iosaf
Comments
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Berlusconi prepares "a hard hand" against the Romani.....so where do they go?
14.05.2008 20:38
those salutes and that name. sure we've seen it all before and don't care now-
You can quite clearly identify the salutes from the angry young and not so young types and you can quite clearly read the name on the election banner which drapes the bannister of one of Rome's principle public buildings.
Many people don't care if the hate policy of Rome's mayor, an ex-minister in a Berlusconi cabinet co-incide with an Italian wide exasperation at the petty crime they blame on Europe's last nomadic ethnic group. An exasperation which has already provoked local, municipal and regional adjustments to laws across Europe. An exasperation which has already stretched applications of laws as varied as sanitation to class-room overcrowding in the most obtuse efforts to disguise 21st century ethnic cleansing in Europe.
But of course the Roma or Romani or Gypsies simply move on, Don't they?
Nobody has suggested a homeland for them. If you go down to wikipedia you see a flag someone suggested for them. The blue sky above and the green land below and the red wheel of a caravan might remind one of the Aboriginal flag of Australia or a simple a piece of wishful thinking that has never really been flown anywhere beyond a .sgv file. They mostly don't live in green fields or below blue skies, you see. Spain moved them out of flood channels in Madrid and Andalucia because of the risk of flooding the worst recorded year of drought imminently threatened them with. Catalonia moved them on because its schoolrooms were too crowded to accomodate children with the lowest incidence of primary and secondary education attendence in Europe. Switzerland moved them on because despite once upon a time including their language in its polyglot valleys of secrets and riches the modern Switzerland relies on green belt areas for oxygen and they can't camp there and breath it for free, besides the Swiss simply don't like them .
You don't really get far in life when the only people who appear to like you are the kind of people who invent silly flags for you. Helping the Romani really means asking a tough question so that we move a step ahead of the wave of hatred which Berlusconi is capitalising on to expel the Romani (or as he calls them ""an army of evil"). The troubles in Naples are reportedly not based on the hate-stirring of Italian fascists but a quaint story of how a 16yr old Romani girl broke into a flat to steal a baby. Substitute the word "Jewish" for "Romani" and prefix "Christian" before "baby" and you could almost make a ridiculous comparison to the hatred of the 1930's.
The horrible question is this :-
Considering we accept that nasty law-abiding types in Southern Europe who routinely elect corrupt Mafia ridden governments now blame all their woes on "the Gypsy question", are we prepared to take in a million Gypsies? Because the 20,000 to be expelled from Rome will join the tens of thousands expelled from Naples and the south on the autostrade freeways built by Mussolini on the long road north.
Yep. one million Romani. a people without a homeland. good with languages. mobile. musical. commercially adept. good looking. don't eat much....,
From Italian left-wing press "Climate of Pogrom against Roma in Naples"
Second camp torched in Naples
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