Up to two million marched in Rome's Circus Maximus Oct. 25 to protest the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi under the slogans "Save Italy" and "Another Italy is possible." Walter Veltroni, leader of the center-left opposition, told the crowds that Berlusconi is incapable of handling Italy's financial crisis—and said the country is moving in a fascist direction under his leadership.

High-profile Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanic, publisher of the muckraking opposition weekly Nacional, was killed along with his marketing chief Niko Franjic in a bomb blast in central Zagreb Oct. 23. The bomb reportedly exploded under his car and was detonated by remote control. Pukanic was noted for his aggressive investigations of official corruption and human rights abuses.

Bernardino Terracciano, the Naples man who played himself in the award-winning film Gomorra about the Neapolitan mob is among seven men arrested Oct. 12 on organized crime charges. Terracciano—the burly, menacing local boss "Zi' Bernardino" (Uncle Bernardino) in Matteo Garrone's film—is accused of extortion and criminal association, police said. Gomorra, which uses local people from Naples' dangerous suburbs as well as actors, won second place at the Cannes Film Festival this year and is Italy's entry for best foreign-language film at the forthcoming Oscars. It is based on an expose of the Camorra by the Naples based writer Roberto Saviano, who is under police protection.

The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced Bosnian Army Gen. Rasim Delic to three years in prison Sept. 15 for crimes committed by foreign Islamic fighters against captive Bosnian Serb soldiers during the 1992-1995 war. Gen. Delic's defense team pledges to appeal the verdict, arguing that he did not have control over the Bosnian Army's El Mujahid Detachment—but that they received their orders directly from al-Qaeda.

The Camorra, the Naples organized crime machine, has declared "war on the state," Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told the Italian Senate Sept. 24, one day after the government authorized sending 500 soldiers to the Campania region in response to the shooting deaths last week of seven people, six of them African immigrants, in a suspected feud over drug turf in Caserta, north of Naples. Maroni called the killings of the Italian national and the immigrants from Ghana, Liberia and Togo an "act of terrorism." The last time soldiers were used to combat organized crime was in 1992, after Sicilian mobsters assassinated two top judges. Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said the soldiers were needed to cope with a "criminal emergency." (BBC, Sept. 25; LAT, NYT, Sept. 24)

At least six were injured and 15 arrested as far-right protesters clashed with police, threw stones and petrol bombs and damaged shops and cars along Andrassy Boulevard in Budapest Sept. 20. Police fired tear gas and water cannons on the protesters—many wearing swastikas and chanting anti-Semitic slogans. Police moved in after a right-wing mob attacked people leaving a pro-tolerance rally called by the Hungarian Democratic Charter movement and Roma organizations.

We have argued before: "Classical" anti-Semitism and contemporary anti-Arab racism (and Islamophobia) are genetically linked phenomena. The fallacy is that just because one exists, the other doesn't. On the contrary, the prominence of one should be seen as evidence that the other isn't far behind. Here's more evidence. From Reuters, Sept. 17:

In a major gathering ignored by US mass media, thousands of migrants met in Spain from Sept. 11 to 14 to articulate a set of demands directed at governments across the world. Meeting at the Third World Social Forum on Migration, delegates represented organizations from more than 90 nations.