This Day In History: Dick Cheney shoots his hunting buddy
Dick Cheney accidently shot his buddy while on a hunting trip on Feb. 11, 2006. CBSN’s Vladimir Duthiers and Kristine Johnson have more.
United States President George W Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney shot a fellow hunter as he did not know the difference between that hunter and a quail.
Italian police have charged a man with culpable homicide after he shot and killed his father during a boar hunt.
Media reports say the pair were moving through thick bushes near the town of Postiglione in the southern province of Salerno when the shooting occurred.
The 34-year-old opened fire when he saw a shadow and rustling foliage. He immediately raised the alarm when he realised what had happened.
Doctors could do nothing to save 55-year-old Martino Gaudioso.
Both men were in a national park area where hunting is prohibited, reports said. Police have seized their rifles.
On Sunday the president of the Italian League for the Defence of Animals and the Environment said Italy had become the “Wild West”.
“It is a real national emergency,” Michela Vittoria Brambilla told reporters.
Last October, Sergio Costa, Italy’s environment minister, called for a national ban on Sunday hunting after an 18-year-old was shot and killed close to the French border.
By the end of that month, two more men – a 56-year-old and a 20-year-old – had also died in similar circumstances.
“Nowhere is safe” in the area of the French Alps where a Welsh chef was killed by a hunter’s stray bullet, a friend of the victim has said. Marc Sutton, 34, was killed while riding his mountain bike in woods near Montriond, close to the Swiss border: here.
Dutch woman Nelleke Polderman almost killed by hunter’s bullet: here.
German President Steinmeier and the Nazi massacre at Fivizzano
29 August 2019
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democrats, SPD) participated alongside Italian head of state Sergio Mattarella last Sunday in the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Fivizzano massacres.
Between the beginning of May and mid September 1944, the Fivizzano district in northern Italy with its six villages, Sassalbo, Mommio, San Terenzo, Bardine di San Terenzo, Vinca and Tenerano, was the scene of a number of massacres, during which members of the Waffen-SS, Wehrmacht, and air force slaughtered some 400 residents, including pregnant women and children.
The atrocities committed in Vinca between 24 and 27 August, 1944, which cost the lives of more than 160 people, were carried out by the 16th Armoured Reconnaissance Division of the Waffen-SS and units of the Italian fascist Black Brigades. In the name of “combatting banditry and partisans”, the military units killed everyone they came across on their way to Vinca. In the village itself, the troops literally exterminated the residents with handguns, bayonets, and flamethrowers.
The killings in Fivizzano were part of a larger series of massacres by the Nazis across northern Italy. Just a few weeks after the destruction of Vinca, the 16th Armoured Division of the Waffen-SS under the command of Sturmbannführer Walter Reder murdered 1,836 residents, above all elderly men, women and children, in the Apennine community of Marzabotto near Bologna. Further massacres with more than 100 victims took place in Sant’Anna di Stazzema and Civitella, where Steinmeier delivered a speech five years ago.
This 2012 Italian video is about the Civitella massacre.
At the time, we remarked that there is hardly anything more repulsive “than representatives of the German ruling class recalling their past crimes even as they are in the process of preparing the next catastrophe.” In his speech in Vinca, Steinmeier stated that it was “an incredibly difficult journey for me as a German and as German President to come here and speak to you.” He added that he “cannot comprehend the hatred that drove the Germans here in Fivizzano 75 years ago.”
Steinmeier cannot and does not want to speak about this issue, because the ruling class is in the process of returning to an aggressive and imperialist foreign policy, and rehabilitating its fascist traditions.
In this, Steinmeier is playing a key role. Addressing the Munich Security Conference five years ago as foreign minister, Steinmeier—together with his predecessor as president, Joachim Gauck, and Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen—demanded, “Germany must be ready to engage in foreign and security policy earlier, more decisively and more substantially.” He railed against a “culture of restraint”. and declared, “Germany is too big just to comment on world politics from the sidelines.”
Since then, the ruling class in Germany has begun openly drawing upon its fascist traditions. With the Alternative for Germany (AfD), they are building up a right-wing extremist party, whose leader, former Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician Alexander Gauland, has glorified the Wehrmacht and described the Nazi regime as “bird poop in over a thousand years of successful German history.”
Significantly, the federal government recently backed right-wing extremist Professor Jörg Baberowski in an official statement. The Humboldt University professor has trivialised the Nazi regime (“Hitler was not vicious”), and advocated the use of methods like those employed by the Wehrmacht and SS in Fivizzano to combat terrorism. “If one is not willing to take hostages, burn villages, hang people and spread fear and terror, as the terrorists do, if one is not prepared to do such things, then one can never win such a conflict and it is better to keep out altogether,” stated Baberowski during a panel discussion entitled “Germany: an interventionist power?” at the German Historical Museum in October 2014.
Steinmeier’s appearance in Vinca, which was featured prominently in the media, was aimed at concealing the extremely concerning and dangerous implications of the return of German and European militarism and fascism. “Our united Europe [is] founded on a promise, never again unrestrained nationalism, never again war on our continent, never again racism, agitation and violence”, he claimed. “We have to remember this at a time when the poison of nationalism is once again seeping into Europe.”
Coming from the mouth of the German head of state, these statements sound like a cruel joke!
The reality is that the ruling class is actively spreading the poison of nationalism across the continent. It employs racism, agitation, and violence to divide the working class and enforce its policies of militarism, the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus at home and abroad, and social spending cuts in the face of mounting opposition among the population. Right-wing extremist parties are currently part of the government in nine EU member states. Leading European politicians, like French President Emmanuel Macron and outgoing Italian Foreign Minister Matteo Salvini, praise the fascists Philippe Petain and Benito Mussolini.
As in the 20th century, there is only one way today to prevent the rise of the far-right and a relapse into capitalist barbarism and war: the independent mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist programme.
The so-called ‘No TAV’ activists called for the government to stop the infrastructure project, which they say would cause extensive damages to Susa valley.
“We are against the TAV because as inhabitants of the Susa Valley we would find ourselves involved in an environmental disaster. The tunnel would bring huge problems, especially for materials and rocks that are extracted,” said Mauro Rolando, one of the protesters.
‘No TAV’, the group behind the demonstration, is a movement set up to counter the construction of various high-speed railway lines in Italy and France. The name comes from the Italian acronym for Treno Alta Velocita (high speed train). The movement questions the usefulness, cost, and safety of the project and its actualisation, which they believe is being driven by European construction lobbies.
In the present Italian coalition government, the extreme right Lega party of Salvini supports the construction; while the Five Star Movement opposes it.
The leader of the far-right Lega, vice-premier and interior minister Matteo Salvini, is looking to end the governing coalition with the Five Star Movement (M5S). Under conditions in which no political party represents the interests of the working class, the Lega is mobilizing its right-wing radical base to take another step towards fascism.
On Thursday, Salvini visited the head of government, Giuseppe Conte. He called on him and President Sergio Mattarella to put an immediate end to the government coalition and to initiate new elections. In the European elections at the end of May, the Lega had doubled its votes to 34 percent. It is currently polling around 37 percent.
Now it wants to get rid of its weakened coalition partner, M5S, with the aim of forming a joint government with the Italian fascists Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). This party, whose roots—through various branches—go back to the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini, is currently polling around 7 percent. A coalition with Forza Italia, led by former head of government Silvio Berlusconi, is also under discussion. It also stands at 7 percent.
Speaking to followers on the beach of Pescara, Salvini said on Thursday evening: “I ask the Italians to give me full power so that things can be done the way they have to be done.” In order to end the government by a vote of no confidence, he continued in a deliberately coarse tone, the elected deputies would have to be willing to get off their asses and return from vacation to parliament.
Salvini is seeking to take advantage of the present situation to prepare fascist forms of rule in a surprise coup. This goal was already strengthened by the adoption of the new, stricter security law in the Italian Senate on August 5. The Decreto Sicurezza bis has once again significantly amplified the features of the previous Salvini Decree, which has already driven tens of thousands into illegality.
While the NGO ship Open Arms has been waiting nine days on the open sea for 121 rescued migrants to be allowed to land, the Senate has once again drastically tightened the penalties for rescue at sea. The new law provides for fines ranging from €150,000 to €1 million and the immediate arrest of captains of ships sailing in Italian waters without permission. The state may now immediately seize and expropriate the vessel concerned. In addition, the law requires hotel owners and other accommodation providers to inform the authorities of newly arrived migrants within 24 hours under threat of severe penalties.
The obligation to report the presence of migrants shows that the bans and police-state measures of the new law are directed against the entire working class. This is also made clear by Article 5, which refers to public demonstrations and sporting events. It imposes heavy penalties on any “destruction, plunder and damage” in public spaces and makes the organisers liable for it. This is also directed against strikes, demonstrations and rallies by workers fighting for their wages and jobs, whose leaders can now be held liable for all damages, even if caused by provocateurs.
The new law also provides for prison sentences of one to three years for those who evade the state authorities at public events or oppose the police with “signs or other passive objects of protection” or projectiles. Funds for the police and covert investigations are also significantly increased. Here, too, the law serves to promote a police state.
Salvini owes the passage of this law in parliament to Lega’s partner M5S, as it could not have passed in the Senate without the votes of the M5S MPs. Although some of them had argued against it, in the end all M5S senators voted for it or abstained.
It was not until Wednesday, during the vote on the TAV high-speed rail project, that the government camp was openly split. The rejection of this railway project, which connects the cities of Turin and Lyon, France, by means of a mountain tunnel, was one of the central election promises of the Five Star Movement and won the votes of many environmentalists.
Salvini is aiming to hold new elections and to become the leader of a far-right government. His party received 34 percent of the votes in the recent European elections and has since recorded stronger polling results. He wants to form a coalition with the fascist Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, or with both. On Tuesday, Salvini had talks with Fratelli d’Italia leader Giorgia Meloni and with Berlusconi. However, the decision on what steps to take next lies with President Sergio Mattarella of the opposition Democratic Party (PD). If the government falls next week, he has three options: to find a new majority in the existing Senate, call new elections or appoint a “technocratic” transitional government: here.
The political crisis in Italy has an international character, regardless of its national peculiarities. The country’s ruling class is responding to growing social tensions by moving toward authoritarian and fascist rule. Similar symptoms of a deeply sick society can be found in more or less pronounced forms in every capitalist country. The problems and tasks facing the international working class as a whole are revealed in Italy as if under a microscope: here.
Hundreds of neo-fascists travelled to former Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini‘s tomb in the Italian town of Predappio on Sunday, to mark the 73rd anniversary of Mussolini’s death.
One of Mussolini’s grand-daughters, Edda Negri Mussolini, addressed the crowd.
Mussolini ruled Italy from 1930 to 1943. He was an ally of Nazi Germany during the World War II.
His legacy continues to influence a number of groups in Italy. Every year, neo-fascist and far-right groups hold ceremonies and parades to pay their respects.
The video shows foreign fascists were also present, eg, veterans of the French Charlemagne division of Adolf Hitler’s SS.
During house searches in northern Italy, the police found an arsenal of right-wing extremists. Three arrests were made. …
The investigation started when a special police unit overheard people last year who wanted to sell a French missile for 470,000 euros. This rocket has now been found in an airplane hangar.
Furthermore, at the premises of one of the detainees in Gallarate town police seized thirty shotguns, pistols, bayonets, ammunition and antique Nazi paraphernalia.
According to the police, this is a man who was a candidate for the Senate election for the extreme right-wing Forza Nuova party in 2001.
He is Fabio Del Bergiolo, a former border security inspector.
According to the Turin police chief, “hardly any weapon finds have ever been found in Italy equaling the quality of these weapons of war and their deadly power”.
Italian fascists found with ‘combat-ready’ war weapons: here.
