Today's Stories

May 2, 2008

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

April 30, 2008

William P. O'Connor
The Day I Lost My Innocence

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
Did the Supreme Court Just Elect John McCain?

Tariq Ali
Storming Heaven: 1968 Revisited

John Ross
Bad Jazz in NOLA: Three NAFTA Leaders Sit It for the Last Time

Glen Ford
Pop Goes the Race-Neutral Campaign!

Joshua Frank
Election Season Piffle: Thinking Outside the Voting Booth

Ashley Smith
Iraq After Basra

Robert Weissman
Medical R&D That Works in the Developing World

Sen. Russ Feingold
Bush's Shroud of Secrecy

Website of the Day
Richard Nixon, April 30, 1970

April 29, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Military Option

Roedad Khan
Why Gen. Musharraf Must Go

Chris Floyd
The Torture Election

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Dave Lindorff
Invasion of the Pumpheads

Mats Svensson
Mental Barriers in Palestine

Peter Morici
Will the Fed Broaden Its Focus?

Mike Ferner
Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

John Weisheit
Towing Icebergs to San Pedro

Amit Srivastava
China Olympics, Tibet Crackdown, Coke Profits

Website of the Day
Tom Friedman Gets Creamed

April 28, 2008

JoAnn Wypijewski
On Queen's Boulevard, the Night Sean Bell's Killers Got Off

Mike Whitney
Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch: But Will It Topple Obama?

Iris Keltz
The Fruiting Fig Tree: Memories of East Jerusalem

Steve Niva
The New Walls of Baghdad: the Israeli Model Surges Toward Iraq

David Macaray
CAFTA's Bloodtrails

John Ross
"Adelitas" Shut Down Mexico's Congress

Stephen Lendman
The Politics of Green Scare

Malou Innocent
On "Withdrawing Responsibly" from Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Want to Learn the Ins-and-Outs of the Slumping Economy? Just Ask Ashley ...

William Kaufman
Michael Moore's Embrace of Obama: a Polemic Devoid of Politics

Website of the Day
Get Your Fix

April 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

Ralph Nader
A World of Hunger

Peter Camejo
A Crying Shame: the Wages of Left Capitulation

Harvey Wasserman
Making You Pay for the Next Chernobyl--in Advance!

Franklin Lamb
Will U.S. Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East Ever Change?

Wajahat Ali
Fisk Fighting: an Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk

Mike Whitney
Food Riots and Speculators

Andrew Wimmer
Obliterate Them!

David Yearsley
Nero, Frederick the Great, Nixon ... They All Did It Better Than Clinton

Greg Moses
Chicago: the Stupid Experiment

Ron Jacobs
Walking the Lonely Road

Robert Fantina
Bush v. Carter: Let History Judge

Missy Comley Beattie
Introducing President McCain

Linn Cohen-Cole
The Criminalization of Raw Milk: a Mennonite Farmer is Hauled Away

Paul Krassner
Remembering Ruben Salazar

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Khaiyat, Lair, and Kowit

Website of the Weekend
Justice for Sean Bell

April 25, 2008

George Ciccariello-Maher
Embedded with the Tupamaros

Dave Lindorff
The Bitter and the Biased: How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

Franklin Lamb
The Israeli Project Has Failed in Lebanon

Alan Farago
Hacking the Development Code: the Politics of Zoning in Florida

John W. Farley
Syiran Nukes: the Phantom Menace

Kathleen M. Barry
Some Questions for "Femininists for Clinton:" Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condi?

Mohammed Alireza
Cowboys and Iranians

Nick Dearden
Haiti and the Black Hole of Debt

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
Why Biotech is Betting on Biofuels

Bruce Springsteen
Farewell to Danny

Website of the Day
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

April 24, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Duplicity Demeans Clinton Campaign (or When Bill Praised Farrakhan)

Franklin Lamb
Bush to Nasrallah: an Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Hypocrisy and the Malaysian Guantánamo

Mark Engler
Trade Politics and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Dave Lindorff
The Politics of Obliteration: Hillary's Monstrous Threat

John Blair
Obama's Missed Opportunities in Evansville: Did He Even Know It Was Earth Day?

De Clarke / Stan Goff
Politics is Food is Politics

Binoy Kampmark
Bowling for Boris: the Tories, Red Ken and the London Mayoral Race

Philippe Marlière
Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68

Peter Morici
The Bank of England Misses the Point

Website of the Day
Fair Food Nation

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

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Italy's Rightward Lurch

A Ray of Hope from Vicenza

By STEPHANIE WESTBROOK

Just when it seemed things could get no worse on the Italian political landscape following the first round of elections, run-off elections this past Sunday and Monday proved the contrary. But the northern city of Vicenza, home to a vibrant citizens’ movement against a second US military base in their city, proved to be the silver lining.

Round One

In the mid-April elections that came after the collapse last January of the center-left government led by Romano Prodi, the center-right coalition led by media magnate, billionaire and staunch Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi not only beat out former Rome Mayor and leader of the newly formed Democratic Party, Walter Veltroni, but also with a very comfortable 9-point lead.

In a campaign run on fear of immigrants, aided by the all too fresh memory of the Prodi government that managed disillusion across the board, and with the benefit of his 3 television networks, Berlusconi’s newly formed coalition, Popolo della libertà, People of Freedom – comprised of his Forza Italia party and Alleanza Nazionale, which has its roots in the neo fascist party MSI – together with the Lega Nord, Northern League, gained a whopping 98 seat margin in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, and 42 in the Senate.

With Forza Italia and Alleanza Nazionale running under the umbrella of Popolo della Libertà, which aims to become a full fledged party this year, the numbers for individual parties are unclear. This is not the case, however, of the xenophobic Lega Nord, which chose to retain its identity and managed to double its numbers from the 2006 elections, scoring as much as 27% in Veneto and over 20% in Lombardy, and making a decisive contribution to the right’s victory.

And for the first time in the Italian Republic’s 60-year history, there will be no Communist party represented in Parliament. With the formation of the center-left Democratic Party, which shut out more left leaning former allies, Italy’s two communist parties, Rifondazione Comunista and Comunisti Italiani, together with the Green Party and the Socialists created their own coalition, the Rainbow Left. However with only 3% of the vote, they failed to gain a single seat. Rifondazione alone had over 7% of the vote in 2006. Political cartoonist Vauro summed it up nicely with panda asking the Greens, “And you wanted to save us?”

The elimination of the Italian left from the political scene can be attributed in part to the voto utile, or useful vote, with the two major forces in this election calling on voters to not waste their vote on smaller parties or coalitions. Dario Franceschini of the Democratic Party went so far as to summon the specter of Ralph Nader’s bid for the 2000 US elections to make the point. And the Rainbow Left’s 2008 campaign as a balancing force to an eventual broad coalition between Veltroni and Berlusconi failed to garner votes.

But it was also due to the voto critico, or critical vote, as a part of their voters simply didn’t show up at the polls or chose to put a blank ballot in the box. By participating in the more centrist Prodi government, the leftist parties had hoped to push it to the left, but instead ended up alienating their base. Under Prodi, parliament failed to re-write Berlusconi’s labor laws, voted to continue financing the military mission in Afghanistan and to send troops to Lebanon. Prodi further signed on to such “winning” US military projects as the F-35 fighter jet – the most expensive weapons program in history – and the Missile Defense System. In addition, military spending increased by 23% in two years and construction of the new US military base in Vicenza was approved in spite of strong national and local opposition.

The smaller parties of the far right fared no better. There has been a move over the past years away from a the fragmented system of numerous small parties forming coalitions that went from center to far left and right toward more of a two party system. It all culminated last autumn, as the fall of the teetering Prodi government became imminent, with the formation of the Partito Democratico followed by the creation of the Popolo della Libertà coalition.

This less fragmented system resulting from the elections has been praised by many, as the sprawling coalitions made it difficult to govern: Italy has had 62 governments since WWII. However, others are concerned this lack of representation for large slices of society will lead to further radicalization of the extra parliamentary left and right.

Round Two

The political elections had been combined with already scheduled administrative elections for what was dubbed Election Day, where 2 regional, 9 provincial, 71 city governments were on the line. The majority of these contests were settled in run-off elections held this past Sunday and Monday. And the right’s victory turned into a triumph. Prior to elections, the center-left governed 42 cities and the center-right 24. The situation was inverted, with the center-right now governing 43 and the center-left 24.

But the biggest defeat by far took place in the capital. Just three days after the Festa di Liberazione, which celebrates the liberation of Italy from Nazi-Fascism, Rome elected a mayor who began his political career in the neo-fascist MSI party.

Though he lost by over 5 points in the first round, Gianni Alemanno of the Alleanza Nazionale party, which was founded in 1995 by Gianfranco Fini after he dissolved MSI, came back to win by over 7 points in the run-off against Democratic Party candidate Francesco Rutelli, mayor of Rome prior to Veltroni, but more recently Minister of Cultural Heritage in Prodi’s government. On Wednesday, Fini was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies.

Monday evening, as the results became clear, supporters gathered on the Campidoglio, seat of the city government, to celebrate the results. Photos of young men with arms stretched out in the saluto romano, or fascist salute, covered the newspapers the next day. Alemanno and Fini are trying to distance themselves from their neo-fascist history, but those photos will remain in the minds of Romans for some time.

The success of the right in Rome’s run-off elections can be attributed in part to the success of the national elections two weeks ago. And just as the national campaign was run on fear of immigrants, so it was in Rome. However, there was also some fatigue after 15 years of Rutelli and Veltroni, evidenced also by the win of Partito Democratico candidate Zingaretti in Rome’s provincial elections, and many believe voters of the Rainbow Left simply didn’t show up at the polls. 

It would be comforting to chalk all this up to electronic voting. However, Italians vote by marking a paper ballot with a pencil; the ballots are then counted by hand in front of observers from all parties. And while Berlusconi did have a distinct advantage as the owner of three television networks and several newspapers and periodicals, Italy also has a par condicio law, which guarantees equal time to all political parties, so television viewers heard from everyone from the far left to the far right. The par condicio also prohibits polling in the final 15 days and political rallies or television appearances the day before the elections in a welcome “day of silence.”

This law may soon become a thing of the past, though. Berlusconi blasted it as “undemocratic” throughout the elections, going on to praise the system in the US, which awards the person who has raised the most money, as more democratic.

The Silver Lining

Against this bleak backdrop, a ray of hope shines through. In the northern city of Vicenza, the citizen activists of the Presidio permanente No Dal Molin, who have been working for two years to block construction of a second US military base in their historic city, decided just weeks before the elections to form a lista civica, a municipal list with no party affiliation. Cinzia Bottene, who has become and icon of the movement and one of its the leaders from the start, ran as candidate for mayor, and 40 others from the Presidio as candidates for city council.

In the first round, the Vicenza Libera No Dal Molin list made a spectacular showing, gaining close to 5% of the vote, ahead of national parties such as the centrist UDC and the Rainbow Left. Bottene didn’t get enough votes in her bid for mayor, but she will have a seat on city council.

As with all decisions made by the movement, the discussions on whether or not to form the list took place at public assemblies at the Presidio, or permanent encampment, headquarters for the movement. Not all were in favor, with some concerned about mixing movement and politics, but in the end the argument that the movement, which has been experimenting an open participatory democracy for some time, should take that practice to the local government won out.

The Vicenza Libera list had an opportunity to test the waters in late February when they collected 6178 signatures in one day – they were hoping for 1000 – in support of the movement after several exponents had been placed under investigation for non violent activism against the new military base.

In the short time Vicenza Libera had to campaign, they focused on three main points: policies of peace, defense of true democratic principles and the protection of the environment. The issue of the environment was at the forefront just days after presenting the list when a pipeline, which supplies the US air base at Aviano with kerosene from the port of Livorno and the US base at Camp Darby, broke near Vicenza, contaminating the rivers Astichello and Bacchiglione.

The movement never took a backseat to the campaign. In fact, on the last day for campaigning, the activists and candidates of the Presidio traveled to Ravenna and the offices of the cooperative CMC, which had just been awarded the Euro 245 million contract to build the new military base in Vicenza. “Only crazy people like us would leave the city on the final day of the campaign,” commented Cinzia Bottene. The fact that U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command chose to award the deal to CMC, a cooperative close to the parties of the center left, did not come as a surprise. What better way to guarantee bi-partisan support!

In the first round of voting in Vicenza, no candidate gained more than 50% of the vote, so a run-off pitted Popolo della Libertà candidate Lia Sartori, with 39%, against former Vicenza mayor Achille Variati, with 31%.

As the parties and lists of the right started making alliances for the run- off, Variati began to court Vicenza Libera, knowing just how valuable their votes would be. Variati, a candidate of the Partito Democratico, which has already said the question of the base is closed, had been speaking out against the base, and long before the election campaign, in particular the less than democratic manner in which the issue had been handled.

Vicenza Libera had made their position clear from the start, with no intention of joining forces with any political party, nor accepting any political appointments in exchange for support. “We are not for sale,” said Bottene. Adding that the only way for him to gain their support would be to take a strong stand against the base and commit to opposing the base if elected.

A delegation from Vicenza Libera met with Variati. He made three pledges: to revoke the city council measure approving the base, to hold a referendum on the new base, something the movement had been requesting for almost two years, and to ask for a moratorium on construction until the results of the referendum are known. Variati is very familiar with the determination of the movement to hold politicians to account, so there is hope that this is not simply an empty campaign promise. Vicenza Libera asked their supporters to vote for Variati.

And it did the trick. In an unexpected turn of events, Variati won, 50.5% to 49.5%; a major victory in a region considered to be a stronghold of the right. The main square of Vicenza filled with celebration, and the predominant flag was that of No Dal Molin.

Cinzia Bottene now finds herself in a somewhat unusual situation. Though the issue of the new base at Dal Molin was a determining factor in Variati’s victory, she is technically part of the opposition – Vicenza Libera is independent and therefore not part of the majority – and will be seated together with the center right council members. But she was voted in because of her unwavering position against the base and commitment to represent the citizens of Vicenza, making the issue of where she is seated a minor detail. “Our desire is not to gain power but to ‘open’ the city council to the people.”

Tuesday night following the elections, at the weekly assembly of the Presidio, which continues to draw hundreds of citizens, they celebrated and speculated on future careers for the now out of work city council members. But the celebration came only after issuing a press release calling on Variati to respect the pact and oppose the base. The following day, it was back to work on what everyone realizes is a struggle far from over.

Stephanie Westbrook is a founding member of U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice in Rome, Italy and currently serves on the group's coordinating committee. She can be reached at: info@peaceandjustice.it