Prodi government drop kicks the Dal Molin ball back to Vicenza
I had blogged here about the controversial plans to expand the Dal Molin airport at Vicenza, Italy into the largest American army base outside of North America despite the fact that about 2/3 of the local residents of Vicenza are against it. The Vicentini were waiting for the recently elected center-left government of Romano Prodi to revisit the issue. Prodi had kept his cards close to his chest over the last few months, but in Bucharest yesterday he finally played his hand. He said, "Non sono mica il sindaco io ...una questione urbanistica e locale e non un problema politico... non si oppone alla decisione del precedente esecutivo e a quella del comune di Vicenza a che venga ampliata la base militare americana," or "I myself am not at all the mayor [of Vicenza; the mayor is a center-right guy named Hüllweck]... this is a local issue of urban planning and not a political problem....[The government] is not opposed to the decision of the preceding executive [=Berlusconi] nor to the decision of the local government of Vicenza to expand the American military base." So, Prodi punted the issue back to Vicenza. While he's smokin' crack or lying when he says it's not a political problem (the far left of his tenuous coalition is going to give him hell over this and I suspect that’s why he made his announcement outside of Italy) I agree with him that it should be treated more as a local issue than one decided at Rome. That means letting the citizens of Vicenza hold a referendum on it. At any rate, if the center-right coalition of Hüllweck does not let it go to a popular referendum, I bet he and his center-right allies will be railroaded out of town. Also, if the expansion goes through without a referendum, the base and American soldiers will be a greater target of local harassment; the expansion may even spawn groups similar to the Brigadi Rossi of decades' past.
Labels: Dal Molin American Base Vicenza
posted by Paul @ 9:41 AM
2 Comments:
When I was very young, I imagined America like a huge bear, strong but good too good almost fool.
An enormous bear that protects the children.
An enormous bear that meant freedom and law.
An enormous bear, ready to change his life for protect the life of another peoples.
Today I see this America like an enormous bear, always good, but still too naive.
After so much years of human sacrifices I see that this bear leaks blood……..he is wounded.
Wounded and betrayed also by so many false friends.
The Italian people doesn't know still this big bear and forgetful easily his sacrifices, his wounds and his tears.
The films like "rescues the Ryan soldier" should be projected obligatory in the Italian schools for at less 3 times at year.
Each year the colors of the flag of freedom fade in mean to a gloomy Europe, baronist and medieval.
Dear friends, I beg you: try to invest more time and resources on the "REAL" image of America, invests more time in the real image of purity and honesty of the American flag.
You must do this, at less, in honor of all those Americans spirits that lie in this old earth without memory and culturally still medieval.
Robluis,
As an American, let me assure you that:
1. America is not "always good", that is to say we often use our power to forward our own interests, or rather the selfish interests a few Americans. This does not mean that I think that we are always, or have always been, bad.
2. At the present, the only ones who are betraying America’s interests are the Neoconservative warmongers and their supporters. If they hadn’t chosen the policies they did, especially regime change in Iraq through arms, the view of America would not be so low around the globe, and I doubt the expansion at Vicenza would be as controversial as it currently is.
3. While Saving Private Ryan depicts some of the horrors of war in a realistic way, it is Hollywood fiction and not reality.
4. Most of Europe and Italy are no longer baronist or medieval in practice (which I take to mean provincial). Since the unification of Europe, the cross-border integration has proceeded quite quickly. In just the last six years in my wife’s small circle of family friends at Vicenza, her cousin now works in Ireland; while another friend who last year worked in Berlin now works in London, where he plans to stay to buy antiques for his father’s business in Venice. A third friend’s father now works in Germany and this friend and her husband have themselves moved to Provence, France to work there. That’s just in my wife’s small circle of close friends and family – I’m sure this is not unusual. Yes, the patronage system at hospitals, universities and so forth remains stronger than it is in the US, but it is slowly breaking down. Furthermore, while many European governments collect tax money for churches, in Italy, as you know, it is an optional donation on your tax form, and those who donate primarily do so to keep Italian cultural traditions alive, especially through preserving her religious monuments, not because of a deep faith. In fact, I’ve met more agnostics and atheists in Catholic Churches in Italy than I have at US universities. No kidding. In short, modern Europe is far mare imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance than it is with Medieval sensibilities. If you want a real Medieval mixture of religion and politics, then come to the US.
5. As I’m sure you know, Vicenza is, and is known as, a fairly conservative, pro-business population that has only a small leftist element (it’s not like the Communist rich area of Bologna by a long shot). A lot of the protests are a direct result of the Berlusconi government and the center-right coalition of the mayor Hüllweck trying to push through this expansion behind the citizens' back in the first place, not subversive or leftist manipulations of the naive. It’s rather bad form to make an agreement to increase a town's population by about 2% with soldiers and equipment from another country -- a town whose cultural past, especially its Renaissance past (not Medieval), lies just a few kilometers away from the site of expansion and is already under threat from crowding and pollution -- without asking the local population what they think of it or even letting them know. In fact, the first that the local population found out about it was after the secret agreement of spring 2005 was casually announced in the spring of 2006 with the statement that the provisions were to be kept secret per the post WWII US-Italian agreement. Then after the public explosion, more details began to piddle out that the idea was bring personnel from bases in Germany (in no small part to punish the Schroeder government) and Aviano and unify the 173rd Airborne into the largest US military base outside of North America, and it was only after public pressure that the local city council held a meeting to vote on it – a vote that narrowly passed along party lines. By the way, this city council was elected before the issue was even known in the public arena, and the center-right coalition would almost certainly not be in power were they to hold elections on the platform of expanding the base.
Finally, one of the things the US has historically stood for is democracy, open government and respecting the rights of local peoples to determine their own destiny. The Freedom from Blog motto pays homage to this tradition by translating one of James Madison’s sententia into Latin: mysteria non rebus publicis sed religionis pertinent. While the traditional American values of open government and local control have not been popular by the party in power in Washington these last few years, it’s not in Americans’ long-term interests for the US government to impose this on our allies by ignoring the express wishes of 2/3 of the local population of Vicenza. It's also not very amicable or ally-like to threaten to pull out what we already have there as punishment if we don’t get our way, which is to say that the “historic relationship” between the US and Italy should be a two-way street.
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