Rome

  • Letter from Italy: While the old is dying, the new cannot be born

    Luigi Preiti, a 49-year old unemployed man from the Calabria region of southern Italy, walked towards Palazzo Chigi on April 28, the seat of the Italian government in Rome, holding a gun. As the military police patrolling the palace tried to stop him, Preiti went on a shooting spree. He wounded two policemen before the he was restrained and arrested by the Carabinieri. Apparently, Preiti’s intended plan was “to kill a politician” and then commit suicide.

  • Italy: Students, staff fight cuts

    Rome’s Sapienza University is one of Italy’s most prestigious universities and Europe’s biggest with more than 140,000 enrolled students. But this northern autumn, despite the cold weather outside, Sapienza University — like many others in Italy — is at boiling point. The heat is in response to funding cuts to Italy’s public education system. Further cuts are in store if the university reform package proposed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government is passed.

  • Italy: Peoples' power challenges Berlusconi

    Having heard about the October 25, 2.5-million-strong, protest against the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi while in Florence, I was disappointed that the timing of my visit to Rome was off by just a few days.

  • The decline of Gorbachev

    BORIS KAGARLITSKY, ALEXANDER POPOV AND VLADIMIR KONDRATOV are members of the Socialist Party of the Soviet Union, an organisation of about 300 members, formed in July 1990. They spoke to Steve Painter and Jim Percy.