Yay, moar Italian fascism! Now with added British approval!

[Cain]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1038747/The-world-shocked-Italian-sunbathers-ignoring-dead-gipsy-girls--But-Italy-showing-chilling-Roma-children.html

It was the week's most shocking picture: gipsy girls dead on a beach ignored by sunbathers... Now there is more chilling evidence of how Italy's brutal crackdown on the Roma has sick echoes of the country's fascist past.

She looks like any teenager the world over. Wearing a denim skirt, pink designer T-shirt, and with long hair tied back from her face, Samantha is a child who would make any parent proud.

Yet just a few days ago, this bubbly 14-year-old found herself taking part in an excercise that would seem unthinkable in a modern, civilised European country.

She was ordered to line up at the local community hall near her home in Naples, Italy, and dab her right forefinger in black ink before placing it on a government census form.

Samantha was photographed and given an identity code - F43 - as officials asked for her full name, address, age, religion and where she was born.

Most controversially of all, she was told to state her ethnic background.

Every detail, including the fact that her parents are immigrant Roma gipsies from Serbia, was catalogued and put on a national computer system.

She was mortified. Her eyes bright with anger, Samantha said she felt like a villain in the only country she has ever known.

'That same day, the Italian kids started calling me "gyppo" in the streets.

They pointed at me and laughed. I felt like shouting back and saying: 'I am Italian just like you. I was born here too.

'But I didn't dare, in case I started a riot.'

Samantha was taking part in a compulsory new census of Italy's 160,000 Roma people, promised by the inflammatory Right-wing premier Silvio Berlusconi in the run-up to his successful election this spring.

Anyone with a sense of the past would be forgiven for a strong feeling of foreboding about what is happening.

Thousands of migrants, many of them Roma gipsies from the old communist bloc and racially troubled Balkans, have poured into the country since the dismantling of border controls across a greatly expanded European Union in 2004.

The huge diaspora was political good fortune for 73-year-old Berlusconi.

In a country where fascism under dictator Benito Mussolini thrived until the end of World War II, Berlusconi warned of a 'Roma emergency' in big cities and produced a dossier of dubious figures alleging foreigners were involved in half of Italy's attempted murders, muggings and robberies.

The interior minister went further. Roberto Maroni, a leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League aligned with Berlusconi's nationalist Forza Italia party, claimed the controversial census and fingerprinting was essential to discover 'who is entitled to be here and who is not'.

It would stop anonymous armies of Roma children being sent out begging or stealing by their families, 60 per cent of whom have no identity papers or passports, he claimed.

Gipsy people with the right to stay would be re-housed in 'decent conditions rather than with rats'. The remainder, Maroni made clear, could expect deportation.

The article goes on, but you should read some of the comments on the story.  Or maybe not, since they are quite disgusting.

Examples include:


They are only doing what the UK should have done years ago. All illegal immigrants should be registered.

- swisschris, New Malden , UK., 26/7/2008 7:34



Bit extreme. But over here imagine what we would be saying about their human rights? How come they can do it there, but in Britain we are hamstrung by that law?

In many ways we should be doing something similar. Keeping control and track of immigrants. Never mind, they will probably all come over here now and we will give them houses and benefits, and they can still carry on stealing for pocket money and no one will have a clue as to who they are and where they are except when they claim their money.

- Chris Puddy, Hay on Wye, United Kingdom, 26/7/2008 9:15


What total exaggeration. The Italian people are deeply worried about the impossibility of
integrating the Roma into society; Roma are a people determined to stay outside society's mainstream. In doing so they engage in much criminal activity. Assuredly if had tried to integrate they would have been left alone.
The Italians have a non xenophobic attitude to foreigners but they are being driven to desperate measures to try and get a grip.
Once again the EU, by allowing unrestricted free flows of peoples, have caused problems where none existed.
To bring up fascism as an agent of these moves is deeply insulting to the Italian people.
Roma should integrate or get out.

- JD, London, 26/7/2008 9:16


Good for Italy, they are one of the very few countries that have the guts to do anything about these vermin. Until you have experienced what these thieves are like, you cannot comment on any hardship or sympathy that they may deem to want.

- Mike Jones, Farnborough, Hampshire, 26/7/2008 9:30


I blame the EU for being too lenient about immigration matters in the first place. Eventually this is bound to lead to this sort of attitude.

- Nathalie, Manchester, UK, 26/7/2008 10:12



'Bout bloody time! Let's get it started over here as well.

- Ghengis, Little Snoring, 26/7/2008 10:21



I'm, in no way, condoning what Italy is doing, but these people are parasites. They need to get educated and employment and assimilate into civilized society. It's year 2008 for God's sake.

- Olga, Los Angeles, USA, 26/7/2008 10:23



What do people expect in this era of Liberal madness, the mixture of cultures simply does not work, time is proving it, it is nothing to do with racism, these people should be judged on their behaviour and how they destroy previously good countries step by step.

- Common Sense, London, England, 26/7/2008 10:27


A country wanting to clear out illegal immigrants? How dreadful, the UK should be doing this.

- Nige B, Pudsey, 26/7/2008 10:30


If they want to be treated as "equals", maybe they should choose to live in dwellings with plumbing, not camps and they should send their children to school, not to steal on the street.

- Gabrielle, London, UK, 26/7/2008 10:30


The Italians have had enough! Most of the crime, sometimes with extreme violence, is by illegal immigrants mostly Roma. Next stop UK!

- martyn robinson, northampton uk, 26/7/2008 10:34


I wish we had a government that was half as tough on immigration.

- The Tory, Oxford, UK, 26/7/2008 10:43



We need this kind of government here too. Why don't people stop tippy toeing around these issues for fear of upsetting a tiny few? what about the feeling of the majority?

- Billy h, Hull, 26/7/2008 10:53

[Cainad (dec.)]

  Dammit. This is going to get worse before it gets better, isn't it?

[Cain]

2010, the Tories come to power in the UK (unless something amazing happens).  On the back of their "broken society" meme, which has been picked up on, transmitted and amplified by the right wing press.  Prime Minister Cameron, using the tax-raises mentioned recently, pledges to build several new prisons, create longer sentences and keeps his promise to unify the British border and customs officials into a Border Security unit.  The even more empowered right wing press, seeing the success in getting PM Cameron to lock up kids who are carrying knives because the media is telling them everyone else and they want to protect themselves, then turns on immigrants as the criminal Other, the enemy within.

[Payne]

God dammit.

Time to leave the country, Cain?

As a Canadian who doesn't want to "integrate into mainstream society" will I, or you, or pretty much anyone with the wrong passport, wrong accent or wrong colour of skin be found dead in some public place, with the good people of Britain ignoring our festering corpses?

The laughs this century provides will kill me yet...

[Kurt Christ]

Thanks for reminding me why I hate humans. I need that every now and then. How long will it be before I can just move to the moon and forget about this dump?

[BADGE OF HONOR]

2010, the Tories come to power in the UK (unless something amazing happens).  On the back of their "broken society" meme, which has been picked up on, transmitted and amplified by the right wing press.  Prime Minister Cameron, using the tax-raises mentioned recently, pledges to build several new prisons, create longer sentences and keeps his promise to unify the British border and customs officials into a Border Security unit.  The even more empowered right wing press, seeing the success in getting PM Cameron to lock up kids who are carrying knives because the media is telling them everyone else and they want to protect themselves, then turns on immigrants as the criminal Other, the enemy within.

So basically what just happened in America over the last decade.  I love my country!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I LOVE this decade.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

[Messier Undertree]

Things are finally going to get interesting.

God dammit.

Time to leave the country, Cain?

You might as well stay and fight it. It'll just follow you if you don't.

[Cain]

The upside is that I can see the Tories and SNP thrashing out a deal for complete devolution of Scotland from the Union, meaning I wont have to swim the Channel if I need to leave the country quickly.

[Suu]

2010, the Tories come to power in the UK (unless something amazing happens).  On the back of their "broken society" meme, which has been picked up on, transmitted and amplified by the right wing press.  Prime Minister Cameron, using the tax-raises mentioned recently, pledges to build several new prisons, create longer sentences and keeps his promise to unify the British border and customs officials into a Border Security unit.  The even more empowered right wing press, seeing the success in getting PM Cameron to lock up kids who are carrying knives because the media is telling them everyone else and they want to protect themselves, then turns on immigrants as the criminal Other, the enemy within.

When humans lose the ability to reproduce, let me know.

*Saw this movie*

[The Good Reverend Roger]

2010, the Tories come to power in the UK (unless something amazing happens).  On the back of their "broken society" meme, which has been picked up on, transmitted and amplified by the right wing press.  Prime Minister Cameron, using the tax-raises mentioned recently, pledges to build several new prisons, create longer sentences and keeps his promise to unify the British border and customs officials into a Border Security unit.  The even more empowered right wing press, seeing the success in getting PM Cameron to lock up kids who are carrying knives because the media is telling them everyone else and they want to protect themselves, then turns on immigrants as the criminal Other, the enemy within.

I told my grandfather about this.  He didn't see the humor.

[Jenne]

When I was in Harrow last week, we went to the mall in the downtown area.  Near the bus station.  At 1200 noon, the cops came out and put a portable metal detector within the entrance to the mall.  So by the time we came out after buying our cinema tickets, the detectors were set up at the bottom, about half a dozen cops milling around, getting ready to stop anyone who looked "suspicious" enough to need to go through them.

It was the day that school let out, so by the time the kids were out of school, they had this all rigged up and ready to go.  When we came out of the mall as we were going to lunch, they didn't make me, my kids or my husband's 22 year old female cousin go through.  When we came BACK to the mall, they didn't make us go through then, either.  But they had within their custody a young Middle Eastern male, had his cell phone and some unidentifiable object in a plastic baggy next to him, and it looked like he was being simultaneously patted down and questioned.

I cannot imagine this happening at my local mall, but I can imagine people calling out for it and its eventual, unfortunate implementation.

[Cain]

Oh yes, the metal detectors.  Almost as good as the SUS Laws, in alienating blacks, Asians and teenagers from the police force via selective use of enforcement.  The police have all but admitted to the press that these are used entirely on 'suspect' profiles, which means....well, exactly the description above.

Did I mention I got stopped and searched by Anti-Terrorism police on my first day of being in London, when going to meet with Lizzie?  That was fun too.  You are legally obligated to give up the information requested by the police officer, including identity, purpose of visit, contact details and a detailed physical description.

But anyway, this is the meme that the Tories are pushing:  http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/33089/part_3/its-the-broken-society-stupid.thtml

Britain may or may not be blighted by a feral media but many people are in no doubt, as this week's survey from Barnardo's reveals, that we are blighted by a feral youth, often financed and fuelled by drugs, which is out of control and beyond the law. Every day brings fresh horror stories from the frontline of the Broken Society: teenagers are shot in their beds in gangland tit-for-tat killings; a youth is chased through the streets of West London by a gang of 14-year-olds shouting 'Kill him, kill him' — which they do when they catch him, with a stab to the heart. This week another schoolboy was murdered in a pre-arranged mass gang brawl in Beckenham: he was beaten to a pulp with chains and baseball bats, then stabbed in the back.

Britain is now living with the consequences of allowing an underclass to take root and fester. When, as editor of the Sunday Times, I tried to highlight what was happening 20 years ago, nobody wanted to know: the Right said there was no such thing as an underclass, the Left that it was just the poorest part of the working class. Both were wrong.

That the underclass exists cannot now be doubted by those with eyes to see, though some fashionable opinion-formers still try to wish it away. Nor is it necessarily poor: quite often the underclass is reasonably cash-rich, thanks to welfare benefits, crime and the black economy; but it is increasingly severed, in attitude and cultural values, from the rest of society. And (another popular misconception) it has very little in common with even the most deprived of the old working class: the underclass does not form brass bands, go to night school or strive to find the best state schools for their children.

So far our response to a growing underclass has been containment: it has been herded into reservations we call sink estates, where the rest of us hope it will stay out of sight and out of mind. Its members speak their own variants of English (now well enough recognised for comedians to mock), wear their own style of clothes (which middle-class kids sometimes copy) and have no respect for the police or the laws that bind the rest of us. Nor do they have much regard for the world of work or educational achievement: traditional values such as thrift, endeavour and marriage are alien.

Its the return of the Undeserving Poor, the lumpenproletariat getting ready to cause anarchy on the streets of the UK.

And like all such memes, its pure, unadulterated bullshit.  Some of the so-called poorest and most violent parts of London are places where I actually have friends.  Would you walk down certain streets with a little bit of trepidation?  Sure, but I have friends who have gone out drinking in such areas for years and had to deal with nothing worse than some mouthy git while walking home at 2am.  Its not like parts of San Jose, for example, where Lizzie basically states walking down the street in the wrong colours is signing a virtual death warrant.

To quote Bill Hicks "you [Brits] do not have crime like we have crime.  And you should be grateful for it."  More importantly, crime is down, not only according to government figures, but also according to police figures.  They quibble on the details, but the essential point remains, undeniably, that crime IS down.  Yet fear of crime is higher than ever.  The polls even reflect this - people readily admit crime is not high in their own areas, but have a heightened perception of crime in parts of the country they do not live in.

So whats going to happen, when Cameron gets to power and has to deal with a non-existent crime wave?  Can he even do such a thing?  I'm sure he'll spin a lovely tale and put on a fantastic show - a veritable force of arms will be poured into the "wrong" neighbourhoods, where the unfashionable and uncultured "undeserving poor" live, and are made subject to ever increasing levels of humiliation and control.  But that's not enough, and it never will be.  There isn't the actual, you know, dealing of badwrong people going on, mainly because such people exist in the heads of the sort of people who comment on the story in the OP.  So who will they turn on next?

Well, the Muslims and asylum seekers, the immigrants with their funny accents stealing our jobs and eating our swans, we'll, they're always a fair target, aren't they?

[Jenne]

Apparently, the public are being told these ne'er-do-well darky teens are carrying KNIVES...and there were so many instances of knife-fights, etc. that the detectors are necessary for "public safety."

You know, like Gitmo and the Patriot Acts...