WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria, July: Goofy Special - The Legacy of "Liberation" (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Operation Husky, or the planning of the Allied landing in July 1943 in

Sicily, was something more than a simple advance into Italian territory
with the aim of attacking the Nazi-fascist alliance from the southern
flank. Another objective was being pursued at the same time, it looked
at the end of the war and the control of the territories of Western
Europe in order to build an anti-Soviet front. Sicily was considered a
fundamental pawn in this strategy and it immediately became the terrain
of other covert operations aimed at the goal that was most dear to the
United States. For this purpose, not only was the mafia legitimized and
used according to an exchange of favors which Cosa Nostra obviously did
not escape, obtaining various gains; but even the fascists themselves,
especially the more continuously anti-communist fringes, were identified
as allies in the war against communism, and, taken prisoner, were duly
trained to continue "their" battle, under the direction of the US secret
services. While the "liberation" of Italy from the Nazi-fascists
continued, the fascists ended up under the protective wing of the USA;
and we are not talking about insignificant groups, but well-established
sectors such as, among others, the X Mas of Junio Valerio Borghese.

The Allied occupation of Sicily therefore takes on a very different
meaning from this point of view, and its heavy and nefarious legacy
still plays today, 80 years after the summer of 1943, a conditioned role
in life, present and future of the Sicilians.

Although the Peace Treaty was signed in Paris in 1947 which provided for
the demilitarization of Sicily and Sardinia (art. 50 paragraph 3: "No
improvement or any reconstruction or extension of the existing
installations or permanent fortifications of Sicily and Sardinia will be
permitted "; paragraph 4: "In Sicily and Sardinia, Italy is prohibited
from building any naval, military or air force installation or
fortification; with the exception of those works intended for housing
those security forces, which were necessary for tasks of an internal
order"), things went very differently, and they have always gotten worse.

In 1947, US President Truman addressed Congress to ask the US to support
"free peoples who resist attempts at enslavement"; the following year,
the collaboration agreement between Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Holland
and Great Britain, known as the "Western Union", was signed in Brussels.
At the end of 1948 contacts began in the US capital for the drafting of
the Atlantic Pact which, in 1949, were invited to join, in addition to
the Western Union, also Denmark, Italy, Iceland, Norway and Portugal,
alongside the USA and Canada .

On 16 March 1949, the deputy of the PCI of Messina Nino Pino, a former
anarchist and libertarian separatist, declared to the Chamber of
Deputies: "... almost all the Sicilian people think that the Atlantic
Pact is an instrument of war, an aggressive instrument, and that the
accession of Italy means nothing else than a determined will to set out
on the path of war and aggression ... all this opens up an alarming
return for Sicily, of a precise and tragic linearity, which cannot fail
to bring out the dramatic irreparability of the act to be performed
(...). The Sicilian people think that the Government, by adhering to the
Atlantic Pact, does nothing but follow this path with renewed blindness,
and make Sicily the Malta of the Mediterranean, the advanced sentinel of
the expansionism of capitalist imperialisms".

On April 4, the Pact is signed; in the same year the Augusta naval base
was prepared as a base for nuclear submarines. In 1951, SHAPE, the
supreme command of the Atlantic forces in Europe, came into operation.
In 1952 Greece and Türkiye joined the "Atlantic community".

In 1953 the United States purchased the land for the construction of the
support base for the American Sixth Fleet in the Sigona Nuova and
Sigonella area, 20 km from Catania, which was assigned the task of
controlling the Mediterranean. In 1955 a communications base was
installed on Monte Lauro, on the border between the provinces of Ragusa
and Syracuse. In 1958, the Augusta base was expanded and its defense
strengthened. In 1960 Sigonella was enlarged with a cost of about 6 billion.

The process of militarization and Americanization of the island has
never stopped; in this newspaper we have told and fought it since 1977
in all its stages, from the apparently most insignificant ones to the
most important ones, such as the missile base of Comiso, the conflicts
in the Mediterranean basin and in the Middle East, the installation of
the MUOS , the war in Ukraine, the frantic search underway for areas for
a large military polygon available to the Aosta Brigade and the rapid
intervention NATO special forces.

The legacy of the 1943 Liberation-Occupation crushes the fate of the
Sicilians more and more; the island was conquered and sold off to
imperialist interests; there is no future for those who live down here.
There is only the possibility of rebelling, and making the act of
rebellion the basis for building the future that has been stolen from us.

Pippo Gurrieri

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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