"Meet the Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group" is a new regular series where we profile advisors of the Nourishing the Planet project. This week, we're featuring Shayna Bailey, who is Director of International Development for Slow Food International."
Bio: Shayna Bailey is Director of International Development for Slow Food International. She works on organizational development, strategic partnerships, and resource mobilization at Slow Food's international headquarters in Italy. She has a M.A. in Sustainable Development and a B.A. in International Business, and has worked on and managed Community-Supported Agriculture programs in the U.S. states of California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Vermont, as well as in St. Croix. Bailey has researched perceptions of food security with Quichua women in the Ecuadorian Andes and has studied ecological horticulture at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California-Santa Cruz. She represents Slow Food in the Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty and is involved in planning the 4th meeting of Terra Madre - World Meeting of Food Communities, to be held in October 2010.
On Nourishing the Planet: Nourishing the Planet is an important opportunity to show the world that there are effective alternatives to solving the problems of hunger and poverty that are already in practice, and are replicable on a larger scale. Many of these innovations are not well known to diverse and international audiences. This project gives visibility to lesser-known sustainable approaches that tackle some of the most critical and complex issues of our time. Nourishing the Planet will surely shift policymakers', development workers', and ordinary citizens' perspectives on what it will take to decrease hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.
This is the third part of a series on Communism in Western Europe; this section focuses on Italy in particular. The previous parts can be found here.
The Italian Communist Party (PCI) formed in 1921, as a break-away faction of the socialist party. In many respects, its early years were similar to those of the PCF. Like the French Communists, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) fared poorly in national elections, winning less than five percent of the popular vote. Its time to grow, moreover, was cut short by Benito Mussolini's dictatorship; he outlawed the party in 1926.
In another parallel to their French colleagues, the Italian Communists (PCI) fought fiercely against the Nazis during WWII and won major acclaim for their efforts. After the war, the PCI took part in the new government, playing a major role in writing the new Italian constitution. As in France, however, America's Marshall Plan curbed their influence; to gain access to U.S. aid, the Italian government kicked out the Communists. They would never again hold power in Italy.
This is the second part of a series on Communism in Western Europe; this section focuses on France in particular. The last part can be found here.
In France, the Communist Party was founded in 1920 by revolting members of its socialist party, then called the French Section of the Workers' International (Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO). Their new party initially did fairly poorly, only one of the numerous parties out there. In 1928, for instance, the Communists (PCF) won 11.26% of the vote.
Nevertheless, by 1936 - the depths of the Great Depression - the Communists (PCF) were making gains. Then came WWII - the best thing that ever happened to the PCF. Out of all the parties in occupied France, the Communists fought the Nazis hardest and suffered the most for it. They earned the nickname le parti des 75 000 fusillés - the party of the 75,000 executed people - and immense popularity.
This is the first part of a series on western communism. The second part can be found here.
A mentor once told me not to study communism, because it was a dead system, and studying something dead is worthless.
In defiance of this sensible advice, I will be presenting two dead communist movements: the communists in Italy and the communists in France.
Most Americans have never heard about these two parties. For good reason: France and Italy were staunch allies of the United States in the Cold War; it does not seem as if they were remotely communist.
But, for decades, the communists in Italy and France commanded millions of votes and a powerful political machine. Their strength remains a fascinating, little-noticed part of history.
Here are how the French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français: PCF) and the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) performed:
There are several patterns here that apply to both parties, and several patterns unique to each country. (Note: The French line after 1956 indicates Communist performance in the first round of legislative elections, whereas the Italian line indicates Communist performance in elections to the Italian Chamber of Deputies. France has a two-round election system; Italy has two chambers in its Parliament. All statistics cited afterwards relate to these specific criteria.)
I will be exploring French patterns in the next post.
We are halfway through a story that is about to turn winter in one of the most beautiful places in the world profoundly ugly.
Just like in a Cecil B. DeMille movie, we have a cast of millions, we have epic scenery, and we have made acquaintance with someone who will go on to perform a heroic act.
Unlike your typical Hollywood production, however, this movie is not going to have a happy ending-in fact, you could make the argument that it's not over yet.
So wrap yourself up in something comfortable, grab something to drink...and when you're ready, we're packing up and heading to the Alps.
We have another one of those "amazing history" stories for you today-and this one's a real doozy.
We're going to spend the better part of four years in the Italian Alps (or, to be more accurate, what was intended to be the Italian Alps), and by the time we're done, nearly 400,000 soldiers will have been killed-and 60,000 of those will have died as a result of avalanches that were set by one side or the other.
In the middle of the story: a mountaineer and soldier who was so highly regarded that even those who fought against him accorded him the highest honors they could muster, creating a legend that lives on to this very day.
And even though a young Captain Erwin Rommel fought in these battles...it's not him.
Oh, by the way: did I mention that there are also some handy object lessons for anyone who might be thinking about fighting a war in Afghanistan?
Well, there are, Gentle Reader, so follow along, and let's all learn something today.
The United States of America owes much of the hope it has right now of remaining what John Adams called "a nation of laws, not men" to Italian law enforcement. Were it not for the fact that Italian prosecutors, unlike their American counterparts, answer to the law rather than a president, the enforcement of laws against a massive crime spree by U.S. officials (and their Italian accomplices) would not have begun.
I know it's next to impossible to think about anything but the Presidential election, but after returning from a vacation trip to Italy, I can tell you that other things are happening in the world. (I know, I know, how can you be a tourist at a time like this but this trip had been planned for a long time and it was my first trip off the North American continent in my 55 years.) At any rate, I thought it might be an interesting change of pace for Open Left readers.
In one of the most underreported stories in world news, I learned first-hand that Italy is experiencing large-scale unrest in response to a plan by the Berlusconi government and its Education minister Mariastella Gelmini, that would cut up to 140,000 jobs over the next three years including 80,000 teaching positions. Additionally, the plan would immediately cut the school day in half, posing problems for working parents.
Italy today is experiencing an unprecedented racism and xenophobia. What began as a hate for a religion, Islam, has moved on to race, ethnicity and old fashioned hatred of different skin colours.
A Roma (Gypsy) woman in Milan. Recently, the Italian government decided to fingerprint all Gypsies, including children. What began as a targeted campaign against Muslims is now spreading to become a larger, white supremacist movement under color of a Fascist political takeover.
Gabriele Marranci is an anthropologist who was born and raised in Italy. He is currently doing research in Singapore, but he frequently visits and is closely attuned through family and friends to Italy. Link to complete essay after excerpt.
Gabriele Marranci writes: In Italy, in a new and unrecognisable Italy, everybody is losing. Yet only few Italians seem to notice this. Italy is today probably the most concerning and least friendly country of the EU, marked by the return, from bottom-up, of a fascination with a defeating, and defeated, past called Fascism. Notwithstanding the similarity in the terminology, dress styles, and references (the Lega Nord, the most social nationalist party of Italy, has 'green shirts' only because it cannot refer to brown ones), this revival of fascism is not like the historical one.
The progressive stages of xenophobia that has marked the home of pizza and 'bel canto' began with the fear of Muslims and their cultures. The great majority of Italians, though not hating Muslims, have formed chimerias about Islam. Fallaci helped after September 11 to develop them from 'concerns' and 'fear' of a different unknown religion, to hate for whomever practiced that religion. She wished to bomb mosques, or at least one of them. Although Fallaci and others (in particular within the Lega Nord ) were responsible for, not always cleverly disguised, ideological incitement toward violence, there were other individuals who decided (as usually happens) to make real, what Fallaci and others fantasised about.
The reality is that Italians, the majority of them, do not care. Too busy with economic issues and social instability, endemic unemployment, workers alienation and unbelievable exploitation (my sister had to work without salary for months as 'probation' before she was granted a temporary contract of three months), the majority of Italians remain silent; a minority celebrated the beginning of the new crusades, and a few others, often from the radical left, protested. Lega Nord, with the European MP Mario Borghezio took part in the planned, but than forbidden, Nazi event against Islam organized in Cologne. An event that even Robert Spencer felt the need to distance himself from and rejected.
Lega Nord is a social nationalist, populist party, and a dangerous one, whose main force comes from the fear of others and the idea that immigrants can take over the white-celtic man. Vulgar in its language, reminiscent in its populism of Fascism, Lega Nord, mixes a fake Celticism (to replace Aryanism) with a new idea of the- again fake and historically nonexistent- superior nation, the Padania, Lega Nord shifts recently from targeting mainly Muslims to all not-white (hence non-Celtic) foreigners.
Italy today is experiencing an unprecedented (and unusual in its violence even during historical fascism before the German-imposed racial laws) racism and xenophobia. So unexpected and violent has been the phenomenon that even a post-Fascist like Gianfranco Fini (today president of the Parliament) had to raise the alarm. There is no area of Italian civil society which has not been affected by this new wind of xenophobia and violent racism.
Recently during the match for the World Cup qualification in Sofia, the Italian supporters started to invoke the 'Duce', sung 'Fascist songs' and attacked the hosts because they were 'communist', despite the historical changes in Bulgaria. Children are not spared from this white supremacist new culture: finger prints for little Roma (Gypsy) even when they are Italian, vandalism of children's work representing their perception of multiculturalism, attempts to form 'migrants only' classrooms and impose an 'Italian-ness test' for entry into Italian schools on children of legal migrants. I have been informed of racism within school and even Sunday Church schools.
What began as a hate for a religion, Islam, has moved on to race, ethnicity and old fashioned hatred of different skin colours.
Italy's new parliament met for the first time today with applause for Rome's mayor-elect, Gianni Alemanno, a day after followers celebrated his triumph with straight-arm salutes and fascist-era chants.
Alemanno, a former neo-fascist youth leader, took 54% of the vote in a run-off on Sunday and Monday, crushing his rival, Francesco Rutelli, a deputy prime minister in the last, centre-left government.
Silvio Berlusconi, who won a general election earlier this month, welcomed the latest evidence of Italy's leap to the right by declaring: "We are the new Falange". Although he took care to wrap his remark in a classical context, his choice of words appeared to be a nod and a wink to his most extreme supporters.
The original Falange - the word means "phalanx" - was the Spanish fascist party, founded in the 1930s, which supplied Francisco Franco's dictatorship with its ideological underpinning.
The worst days of history are not necessarily behind us, and Western democracies are not necessarily tolerant.
"I don't know what the left wants [but] we are ready," he told reporters. "If they want conflicts, I have 300,000 men always on hand."
On Monday night, the area around Rome's city hall rang to chants of "Duce! Duce!", the term adopted by Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, equivalent to the German "Führer". Supporters of the new mayor gave the fascist Roman straight-arm salutes.
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