Italy Elections: Surge of Violence and Threats To Meloni-Salvini Bloc

Giorgia Meloni · Foto: Breizh-Info

There have been a number of threats and incidents of violence toward right-wing political candidates and supporters ahead of Italy’s national elections this month, including gunshots fired at the office of a candidate in Calabria during a meeting.

The most recent incident of violence took place over the weekend in the northern coastal town of Marina di Carrara and saw a group of around 40 to 50 far-left anarchist extremists attack members of populist Matteo Salvini’s League as they were setting up an election campaign booth.

The League activists, four women and three men, were set upon by the extremists who smashed their stall and destroyed campaign materials. While Nicola Pieruccini, commissioner of the League in Massa Carrara, was taken to hospital for observation, no one was said to have been seriously injured as a result of the attack, La Nazione reports.

Salvini later posted footage of the violent attack on Twitter writing, “What happened last night in Marina di Carrara is VERY SERIOUS… I would like everyone, even from the left, to distance themselves and express solidarity with the supporters of the League attacked and beaten by 50 criminals.”

The attack comes just weeks after the office of Francesco Cannizzaro, a member of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and ally of Salvini and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI), was shot at in Reggio Calabria while the deputy was holding a meeting inside.

Roberto Occhiuto, president of the Calabria Region, offered his support for Cannizzaro saying, “Solidarity with the friend and member of Forza Italia Francesco Cannizzaro and his collaborators for the unworthy intimidation suffered this evening in Reggio Calabria.”

“The regional council strongly condemns this episode and asks the investigators to shed full light. That these criminals are identified and brought to justice as soon as possible,” he added and linked the shooting to mafia violence.

Giorgia Meloni, the firebrand conservative leader of the FdI who is on track to be Italy’s first female Prime Minister according to recent polling, has also been subjected to death threats and questioned why the leader of the left-wing Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, has refused to condemn them.

“The secretary of the Democratic Party did not consider making two lines of condemnation and solidarity in the face of the death threats received. In reverse, we would not have hesitated because for us politics is confrontation,” Meloni said.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/09/13/italy-elections-surge-of-violence-and-threats-to-meloni-salvini-bloc/

“This is no longer Vienna”: Austrians appalled by Syrian occupation of capital city

These incidents are taking place in Vienna’s city centre: videos show a dozen men performing oriental folk dances on the Kärntnerstrasse street and partially blocking the pedestrian zone. “This is not Vienna anymore”, and “What happened to Austria?”, users comment.

In verschiedenen Formationen kam es auf der Kärntner Straße zu arabischen Volkstanz-Performances.Instagram: bananenrepublik

“Mashalla” is what numerous users are commenting under a video that is currently going viral on the social media platform “TikTok”. It shows a dozen young men of Arab descent dancing on Vienna’s Kärntnerstraße. They are blocking a wide area of the pedestrian zone, hundreds of people have gathered to watch the performance.

The video now has 230,000 views and is said to have been recorded in Vienna’s city centre in the past few days. Besides many Arabic comments praising the dances of the compatriots, there are also dismayed comments in German. “This is no longer Vienna,” writes one user. “I think I’m in Syria, not in Vienna,” comments another.

Crowds of this kind can also pose a security risk – eXXpress has already reported on sexual harassment by migrant men in German and Austrian cities, so-called “encirclements”.

https://exxpress.at/syrische-naechte-migrantengruppen-tanzen-durch-die-wiener-innenstadt/

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Sweden: Islam party wins up to 30% of the vote in deprived areas

In Sweden’s elections, a small party achieved surprising success in the shadow of the big race between right and left: The migrant party “Nyans” won up to 30 percent of the vote in suburbs of Stockholm and Malmö.

While in the course of the vote count after the election in Sweden there is currently a razor-thin lead for the centre-right alliance, in the big cities another party has made decent gains. The migrant party “Nyans”, in English “the new ones”, was able to achieve high electoral successes in some problem districts in Malmö and Stockholm. Although Nyans “only” has slightly more than four percent of the vote in the city as a whole, in neighbourhoods such as Rosengard more than 30 percent of the eligible voters voted for it.

In its election manifesto, the party mainly advocates the rights of Muslims and greater consideration for migrants. It campaigned for the votes of eligible migrants from the Arab and North African regions, especially in so-called “multi-cult neighbourhoods”.

A video showing the party’s supporters in a major Swedish city is currently going viral. Former Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) politician Efgani Dönmez wrote on Twitter: “If you ask yourself why the right-wing camp is so strong in Sweden, here is an explanation. A party of foreigners is likely to make it into parliament in Malmö. You can see the electorate in the footage. No comment.”

It is interesting that the user who published the video is an opponent of the party depicted. For him, precisely these conditions are the reason to vote for the right-wing nationalist party “Zafer Partis” in Turkey. This party advocates that Arab migrants should leave Turkey and that no further asylum applications from Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans should be accepted.

https://exxpress.at/schweden-islam-partei-gewinnt-in-problemvierteln-bis-zu-30-der-stimmen/

‘Production in Germany is no longer competitive’ – CEO at world’s largest steel manufacturer warns of crisis as plants shut down

The energy in crisis in Germany is turning into a manufacturing crisis, with an executive at the ArcelorMittal steel company saying that the German wing of the company can no longer compete due to soaring energy coasts.

“Production in Germany is currently no longer competitive,” said Reiner Blaschek, the CEO of ArcelorMittal Germany, which recently shut down two plants in the country. He is calling for quick political intervention, saying, “We need competitive energy prices for industry.”

Gas and electricity prices, which have soared in recent months due to sanctions and Russia’s decision to cut gas flows, have left many industrial companies with input costs too high to remain profitable, and many economic experts are forecasting further pain for Germany’s core industrial sector, which would have knock-on effects for the rest of the German economy.

At ArcelorMittal’s steel plant at the port of Hamburg, workers are coordinating production to ensure it does not interfere with peak electrical loads — seen during the morning and evening — for residents in the city of Hamburg. The Hamburg steel plant consumes an enormous amount of energy. For example, in one of the smelters that makes crude iron, it uses 76,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in just one hour, which is the equivalent of half a million televisions, according to German newspaper Die Welt.

“We have the gas needs of the city of Lübeck and the electricity needs of Kiel,” said Ansgar Jüchter, an engineer at the plant.

With electricity prices skyrocketing, suddenly the plant is at the mercy of the markets. It is not just about coordinating around peak electricity usage, but also around the weather. The plant can now only afford to produce steel when there is enough solar power and wind energy flowing on the grid.

However, the plant also consumes huge amounts of natural gas, and in that regard, the situation is even worse. The plant produces sponge iron inside a 60-meter tower, and the key ingredients for its production are iron ore and gas. Starting on Oct. 1, the plant will stop producing this key ingredient for the steel industry until further notice.

In addition to the plant reductions in Hamburg, ArcelorMittal will shut down a blast furnace at its Bremen site at the end of the month, a move that has made headlines, as the steel giant is the first large industrial group to shut down production in Germany due to the energy crisis. The case shows how quickly problems at a key company can shake entire supply chains.

The steel from the Hamburg plant is used in the production of machines, cars, and ships, as well as in bridges, buildings, power plants, and pipelines. With prices continuing to climb, it is not only the steel industry at risk, but a domino effect could bring large parts of Germany’s industry offline, according to Blaschek.

“Other industrial sectors are also having major problems,” the CEO of ArcelorMittal Germany said.

Figures from the Steel Industry Association show how dire the situation is. According to the association, the additional energy costs this year will top €10 billion, which equals a quarter of the average annual turnover in the German steel industry.

Remix News reported last week that German companies are increasingly unable to access energy supplies on the market, with the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) warning that the German economy will simply stop running if energy supplies dry up.

“More and more companies are telling us that they no longer have a supply contract for electricity or gas at all. The tap is turned off in the truest sense of the word,” DIHK President Peter Adrian told the RND newsroom. “But without energy, no economy can run.”

https://rmx.news/article/production-in-germany-is-no-longer-competitive-ceo-at-worlds-largest-steel-manufacturer-warns-of-crisis-as-plants-shut-down/

Fix Is In? Mail-In and Overseas Votes Could Overturn Right’s Narrow Lead in Swedish Election

While Swedish populists are celebrating their greatest electoral victory based on early results, mail-in ballots could change the tight race between the right-wing and left-wing blocs and real results may not be known until later this week.

Following Sunday’s Swedish national elections, the right-wing bloc of the populist Sweden Democrats (SD), the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, were ahead of the left-wing coalition led by the Socialists by just a single seat at 175 to 174. But the real results will likely not be known until Wednesday when overseas and postal votes have been counted, according to Sweden’s electoral authority.

Svante Linusson, mathematics professor and former Electoral Review Board expert, said the results of the foreign and mail-in ballots could change the results by as much as three per cent but told the newspaper Aftonbladet that the right-wing bloc still had an advantage.

Just 47,000 votes separate the two political blocs and, according to Linusson, the Socialists and the SD are the least likely to make gains when the results of the votes come in on Wednesday but added that it is unclear which parties of each bloc will benefit the most.

By far the biggest achievement of the election so far was for the populist anti-mass migration Sweden Democrats, who placed second overall, ahead of their right-wing bloc allies with over 20 per cent of the vote but behind the Socialists. SD leader Jimmie Åkesson celebrated the historic result on Sunday evening telling supporters, “Right now we are Sweden’s second largest party. It looks set to stay there.”

“I have already thanked everyone, but I have to do it again. We really are a big party today. I am so happy and proud of what we have done together to achieve this,” he said and noted that the party had transformed from a “small calculated party that others laughed at” to a party that can challenge all of the major parties in the country.

“If there is a change of power, we will have a central position. Our ambition is to sit with the government,” Akesson said and added, “What we see as best for Sweden is a new majority government with the Sweden Democrats as a base, for a new government in Sweden.”

The Sweden Democrats, who ran on an anti-mass migration policy during the campaign, were not the only party to see success. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Islamic Nyans party likely saw major success in many of the heavily-migrant populated areas of the country as nearly 30 per cent of voters in the Malmö no-go area of Rosengård believed to have voted for the Nyans.

“My spontaneous impression is that it is about profiling yourself as a party for Muslims and that you have then understood how to campaign in these groups, although I want to be a little cautious until we see the definitive results,” political scientist Anders Sannerstedt said.

“We do not know how Nyans ran their election campaign or what paths they have taken to reach the voters. The opinion polls haven’t really captured that,” he said and added that the party may have taken votes from the Socialists in certain areas. According to Aftonbladet, the party may win as many as two local mandates in the city of Malmö, a major breakthrough.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/09/12/fix-is-in-mail-in-and-overseas-votes-could-overturn-rights-narrow-lead-in-swedish-election/

Right-Wing Sweden Democrats Triumph in Historic Vote! More Mail-In Ballots Incoming!