Too many street vendors in Venice, 400. The new Northern League president of the Province Francesca Zaccariotto decided to send 48 officers of provincial police and the government also will send 90 army soldiers. Only the first step, says the president, for "a public awareness campaign" to make it clear that "the purchase of a simple object can support situations of illegality".
The provincial police will then be diverted from those which should be its tasks, control of hunting and fishing. These are not in themselves matters on which the Northern League is particularly sensitive, and also the offences in hunting and fishing are generally committed by Italians, and so they don't care.
In fact, Italy has become a country with three very different systems to enforce the law.
The first is that on wealthy Italians. Against crimes committed by this class the army is never sent, they never end up in prison, financial crime are not punished even if they have cheated thousands of families, often the crime isn't even investigate because it has already been virtually eliminated as such.
The second is that on ordinary Italians, that depends on luck. Most of the times you don't get caught if you commit a crime, while other times it happens that you are arrested for a minor offense and they decide to beat you to death. The likelihood of being killed increases if the way you dress makes policemen or prison guards think that you are somehow connected to "no-global" protesters, or generally to the left.
The third system to enforce the law in Italy is on immigrants, against whom the law still applies even when does not apply against the Italians. Immigrants are controlled, stopped and arrested far more than Italians. Venice's province will made the war on street vendors even if the goods that they sell are produced and distributed by Italians. Petty drug dealers are put in jail but in the meantime the drug market, not only Italian, but worldwide, is in the hands of the Italian mafias.
And of course, if you're an immigrant, the probability of dying in prison are also higher than those of an italian who has a vaguely communist appearance. But if this happens no one will care at all, no newspaper will mention it, maybe just some website.
And of course, if you're an immigrant, the probability of dying in prison are also higher than those of an italian who has a vaguely communist appearance. But if this happens no one will care at all, no newspaper will mention it, maybe just some website.
The government sends the army to fight street vendors in Venice in a country that has the percentage of illegal economy highest in the world along with Greece. To succeed in removing all the street vendors in Italy would be an economic disaster for many Italians. It's the same story of the security decree. The illegal immigrants are between 600 and 800,000 in Italy because they are just people who work illegaly. What the reason in criminalizing them? It only creates a mass of alleged criminals among whom the real criminals can hide even better. It's unrealistic to think that they can all be expelled, and even if it were possible to do so would be an economic disaster for the entire country.
But we must not look for reason and logic in this type of actions of national and local government to "enforce the law." It's only stupid, hypocritical propaganda. In a country where the real situation of lawlessness is in politics itself, infiltrated at every level by economic and mafias lobbies that commit the worst crimes, the only hard fight in favor of the law is the one against the poor workers who try to make a living with an innocuous stall.
But we must not look for reason and logic in this type of actions of national and local government to "enforce the law." It's only stupid, hypocritical propaganda. In a country where the real situation of lawlessness is in politics itself, infiltrated at every level by economic and mafias lobbies that commit the worst crimes, the only hard fight in favor of the law is the one against the poor workers who try to make a living with an innocuous stall.
They go to war against street vendors. It's the law, they say. Technically true. The law without justice. Thus, the law of the jungle.
Francesco Defferrari
Francesco Defferrari
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