Posted on 09/05/2015 10:59:16 AM PDT by Lorianne
Does Italy still exist, or is it, as Metternich puts it, a geographic expression? By joining the Euro, it lost its monetary sovereignty. It lost its territorial sovereignty after its defeat in the second world war with occupation by the Americans who have never left since then. It lost its military sovereignty as it is now reduced to taking orders from the USA and organising pretend peace missions in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and bombing Libya (thanks also to grandpa Napolitano)/ The fall of Gaddafi is the cause of the immigration of biblical proportions - from that country that no longer has connections with Italy What’s still left of this devastated country where the words “Patria” {fatherland} and “Nazione “ {nation} are considered to be offensive? If a country has no sovereignty and has leaky borders, can it still call itself a country? Among the many types of sovereignty that have been lost, there’s also food sovereignty. Food sovereignty implies control by the people in relation to the production and consumption of food. The countries must be able to define their own agricultural and food policies on the basis of their own needs.
In the period from 1971 to 2010, Italy lost five million hectares of agricultural land because people were abandoning the land, because of hydrological disturbances and because of “cementification”. Unless there are policies providing incentives for agriculture, people will continue to abandon the land. There are whole areas of Italy that are becoming depopulated with young people fleeing towards the cities. That’s something that started after the second world war and it has never let up. The total area of land now used for agriculture has reduced by 28% in 40 years. Our ability to provide our own food is approaching 80% and it is going down all the time. Only 20 years ago it was 92%. Italy is the third country in Europe and the fifth in the world as regards the lack of land. It’s a country that is over-populated (we have roughly the same population as France with only half the area of usable land.) To cover our food needs, another 61 million hectares are needed. Every day, 100 hectares of land is being built on, that’s 10 square metres every second. An Italian-style suicide. The Great Public Works are given precedence. But the only thing about them that’s “great” are the associated kickbacks. Instead there should be a long-term plan to put an end to the hydrogeological disruption and to clean up the terrain that has been polluted by every type of waste product. The paradox of Expo 2015 is that it focuses on "Feeding the planet“ and yet to bring it into being, a million (yes - one million) square metres of agricultural land has been used. That’s beyond belief. Food is the weapon of the future, not bombs. The embargo against Russia brought about a counter embargo on food imports.
Up until now, Europe has lost 300,000 tons of cheese that had an outlet in Russia - and that’s a loss of a billion Euro. The organisation, Coldiretti, estimates that means 20 mililon euro a month for Italian producers, and a total of 240 million since the start of the embargo in 2014. For some time now, there’s been the purchase or rent of land by countries like China and South Korea that are without food sovereignty. The phenomenon that’s also called "land grabbing“, is mainly happening in sub-Saharan Africa (where they are starving to death ...) with 70% and then there’s South America and South East Asia.
Land can be rented for up to 99 years, which is like saying “for ever”. Negotiations are usually carried on between governments and the land is mainly destined for use to produce food and biofuels. Those who buy or rent are promising the creation of infrastructure and thus of jobs, but meanwhile food is often not being produced as a result of the destruction of the land, as is happening with the production of biofuels. 795 million people in the world don’t have enough food. “When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, we will realize that we cannot eat money. Our land is worth more than money.“ Crow’s Foot of the Blackfoot people
“Beppe Grillo Blog” wasn’t enough of a hint that this belongs in the blog section?
Oh no, let’s stick it in NEWS!
Sorry, I made a mistake.
I will ask the moderator to fix or repost it.
I must admit ... I was never aware of the data you’ve provided about geophysical Italy
We will leave it in news.
Interesting information about the politics of food production.
We make exceptions for blog posting in news if they are newsworthy as this one is.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Does Italy still exist. Hmmmm. I read that and the first thing that comes to mind was the folks that were kidnapped by Al Queda right after Daniel Pearl. I remember the Italian who ripped the black covering from his head as they were about to murder them shouting, “I will show you how an Italian dies!”
Yes, like America, Italy will always exist in some form as long as men like this can be an inspiration to each of us. May we all determine to be inspired to kill anyone and everyone who would commit such an atrocity. Soon, perhaps, we can extend this to those who would enable such behavior. If you can not recognize evil, if you are not moved to crush evil, then we will not recognize you as Italian, or American.
Oh yeah. And anything that can’t be blamed the US occupation after the overthrow of Mussolini? Blame it on Germany. What a demagogue. This long snip from the wiki-wacky is just part of a much longer and detailed history. The average length of time gov’ts lasted during the First Republic was just over a year (61 in 48 years), and the current record for duration is about 2.5 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Italy#First_Republic:_1946-1994
First Republic: 1946-1994
There have been frequent government turnovers since 1945, indeed there have been 61 governments in this time. The dominance of the Christian Democratic party during much of the postwar period lent continuity and comparative stability to Italy’s political situation, mainly dominated by the attempt of keeping the Italian Communist Party (PCI) out of power in order to maintain Cold War equilibrium in the region (see May 1947 crisis).
The communists were in the government only in the national unity governments before 1948, in which their party’s secretary Palmiro Togliatti was minister of Justice. After the first democratic elections with universal suffrage in 1948, in which the Christian Democracy and their allies won against the Popular front of the Italian Communist and Socialists parties, the communist party never returned in the government...
Second Republic: 1994–present
...In the Italian referendums of 1993, voters approved substantial changes, including moving from a proportional to an Additional Member System, which is largely dominated by a majoritarian electoral system and the abolition of some ministries, some of which, however, have been reintroduced with only partly modified names, such as the Ministry of Agriculture reincarnated as the Ministry of Agricultural Resources.
Major political parties, beset by scandal and loss of voter confidence, underwent far-reaching changes. New political forces and new alignments of power emerged in the March 1994 national elections. This election saw a major turnover in the new parliament, with 452 out of 630 deputies and 213 out of 315 senators elected for the first time.
The 1994 elections also swept media magnate Silvio Berlusconi (leader of “Pole of Freedoms” coalition) into office as Prime Minister. Berlusconi, however, was forced to step down in December 1994 when the Lega Nord withdrew support. The Berlusconi government was succeeded by a technical government headed by Prime Minister Lamberto Dini, which left office in early 1996.
A series of center-left coalitions dominated Italy’s political landscape between 1996 and 2001. In April 1996, national elections led to the victory of a center-left coalition, Olive Tree, under the leadership of Romano Prodi. Prodi’s government became the third-longest to stay in power before he narrowly lost a vote of confidence, by three votes, in October 1998. [about two and a half years]
...The election set against two new parties, the Democratic Party (founded in October 2007 by the union of the Democrats of the Left and Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy) led by Walter Veltroni, and The People of Freedom (federation of Forza Italia, National Alliance and other parties) led by Silvio Berlusconi. The Democratic Party was in alliance with Italy of Values, while The People of Freedom forged an alliance with Lega Nord and the Movement for the Autonomy. The coalition led by Berlusconi won the election and the leader of the centre-right created the Berlusconi IV Cabinet.
...The current prime minister Matteo Renzi became the youngest prime minister, at 39 years. His government has the youngest average age in Europe.
Grand Coalition governments
At different times, since his entering the Italian Parliament, Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the centre-right, had repeatedly vowed to stop the communist, while leftist parties had insisted that they would oust Berlusconi. Thus, despite the fact that the executive branch bears responsibility toward the Parliament, the governments led by Mario Monti (since 2011) and by Enrico Letta (since 2013) were called “unelected governments” because they won a vote of confidence by a Parliament coalition formed by centre-right and left-right parties that had in turn obtained parliamentary seats by taking part in the elections as competitors, rather than allies. While formally complying with law and procedures, the creation of these governments did not comply with the decision made by people through the election.
Meanwhile, in 2013, a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Italy established that the Italian electoral system employed to elect the Parliament breached a number of Constitutional requirements... The issue was a major one, to the extent that the Constitutional Court itself ruled that the Italian Parliament should remain in charge only to reform the electoral system and then should be dissolved.
The new government, led by Matteo Renzi, has proposed a new electoral law. The so-called Italicum has been approved in 2015 and will come into force on 1 July 2016.
Um, DannyTN, the writer was simply attributing the quote at the end of the post to Crow’s Feet, the clue that there was a quote to attribute was the “ “ enclosing the final sentence.
I appreciate Jim’s decision to keep this in News, very interesting piece and gave me a perspective I hadn’t considered.
Anyway, I do like Italy for all the contributions they have made to our cuisine. I like pizza, spaghetti & meatballs, Italian sausage, lasagna, and those big jugs of cheap table wine for when I'm having company over and don't want to use the good stuff.
I don't like Italian dressing however. I prefer just olive oil on my salad and I get my olive oil from the Greeks. Do we also occupy Greece?
My husband’s Sicilian relatives blame the Americans for EVERYTHING. This is nothing new. I think they should be more worried about the Islamic hordes (which were there prior to 9/11 if Orianna Fallaci was anything to go by) than a few American bases.
Wow!
Humblegunner taken down by the Mods! It probably happens, but I haven’t seen this. (He is usually right about people who want to redirect to their blogs though.)
Interesting post. There are large agricultural areas in California that China owns and on which they grow Hay that they ship back to China! We should seriously consider agricultural land a resource for citizens only. That won’t happen, of course, since the politicians in charge consider that our southern border has dissolved and exists somewhere in the neighborhood of Columbia.
Yes, I think food sovereignty is something we should seriously consider. This article was about Italy but the same applies to just about everywhere.
China is colonizing Africa in part because they do not have enough arable land in China to feed all its people. So they are looking for good agricultural land around the globe.
I did not know about the California/hay thing with China. Very interesting.
Given Italy’s long history of development and its limerock soils in the south, although I was ready to accept and am interested in finding out more about this “cementification” problem there, I did a search on cementification+soil+Italy and didn’t come up with much. I do know there was major erosive damage during the Roman Imperial period, but don’t know much more about it.
I’m wondering if they are suffering from a caliche buildup from irrigation or something like it. If you find out more, please ping me. Thanks!
Great watching you take a b**** slapping from the moderator. I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Thanks for your contribution to my long weekend.
L
If the parent rock is dolomite one would think calcium cementation would be an issue, whether from surface water or wells. Italy has strongly partitioned soil systems between the Alpine foothills, the Po Valley, and the peninsula, interspersed with regions of volcanic deposition. Soils can vary from strongly alkaline to acidic.
How so? My point stands. It's a blog posted in news.
Yeah, I got lazy and didn’t try to track it down, but I recall reading, uh, somewhere, some years ago, that during the 16 years Hannibal was running around Italy during one of the Punic Wars, the Roman response to his presence in southern Italy was to ‘scorched earth’ everything to deny him supplies — no doubt land that none of the senatorial families owned. The defoliation was never addressed thereafter, to the current day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.