By Geraldina Colotti on April 26, 2024
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed Italy’s commitment to NATO after she met with Sec. General Jens Stoltenberg.
“Look to your future”. With this slogan, accompanied by a poster showing a soldier wielding a rifle, ready for war, the Italian army carries out propaganda in schools, while involving primary school students in visits to barracks and war games.
One more sign of the ideological direction they want to give to the Italian society governed by the extreme right, whose path has been prepared by decades of adherence to NATO war policies, also by the “center-left”. In order to promote the reconversion of the economy for war, and the consequent “philosophy” to make it accepted by the whole society, there have been authoritarian and top-down turns in institutional decisions, which have increasingly stripped the parliament (anyway ruled in majority by the right) of its functions.
The reports that “justify” with reasons of national security the increasing military spending to finance Italy’s missions abroad, in Europe and, above all, in the framework of NATO, end up to show that, in reality, they follow the strategic interests of the Atlantic Alliance, in the context of the conflict in Ukraine and of the contrast to China. Italy is at the center of several crisis hotspots, starting from the Greater Mediterranean area. An area comprised between the Gibraltar-Gulf of Aden axis, the Middle East and the northern coast of the Mediterranean.
An artery which, with the doubling of the Suez Canal, connects the Indo-Pacific with the Atlantic, and through which a third of the world’s maritime trade passes. Italy has been entrusted with the tactical command of the Aspides mission, sent to the Red Sea to counter the actions of the Yemeni Houthi militias, who oppose the genocide of the Palestinians and try to prevent the transit of ships trading with the Zionist regime. This operation will officially cost the Italians almost 43 million euros for the whole of 2024.
In total, Italy participates in 9 missions in the NATO context, 9 in the European or EU context and 5 in the UN context. To these must be added 3 others acting within the coalition system. The remaining 10, to which must be added Djibouti and the Persian Gulf, which involve a commitment especially logistical and in terms of military bases, are developed in national territory. Overall, between those renewed and those approved, military missions abroad have an economic impact of 1,492 million euros, compared to 1,313.1 million in 2023.
Since the abolition of compulsory military service in 2004, the advantages of participating in military missions abroad have become decisive in encouraging many young people to join the army or other military corps. In fact, a soldier can earn a lot of money, starting immediately with a salary of 2 thousand euros gross. One can earn from a minimum of 17,500 euros gross per year earned by a First Corporal Major up to 26,000 euros gross per year earned by a Lieutenant Colonel Major.
To this must be added the additional daily salary if he goes abroad. For example, for a mission in Lebanon one receives a higher daily allowance (130 euros per day) than for a mission in Kosovo (80 euros per day), in Latvia (80-90 euros per day) and in Afghanistan (120 euros per day). Salary and daily allowances are two separate benefits. A soldier on mission receives two salaries, from different agencies, as one is paid by the state, while the other is paid by NATO or the UN, depending on the mission destination.
The recruitment campaign is most successful in southern Italy, where the presence of NATO military bases is greater and where job opportunities for young people are almost non-existent. In the last five years, real wages have fallen sharply, in particular wages for young people in the private sector have fallen to ever lower averages, reaching 9,546 euros per year for those under 24, while independent living remains the highest demand among young people (65.7%), with an increasing percentage among girls.
Southern Italy records significantly higher youth unemployment rates than the north, the ability of young people to access stable job opportunities is much lower, and the average annual salary is significantly lower. Since 2018, in both the private and public sectors (where youth pay represents one and a half times that of the private sector), considering inflation, there has been a sharp decline in purchasing power.
A person living alone, in Italy, spends an average of 800 euros per month, including rent and mandatory expenses such as water, electricity, gas and the purchase of food, not including transportation, incidentals, entertainment and miscellaneous extras. The average monthly expenditure of Italian families is around 2,571 euros and the most significant impact is on spending on housing, transport and food. The average salary of a worker with a permanent job (there is no minimum wage in Italy) is 1,500 euros per month; moreover, having a permanent job is becoming more and more of a chimera.
Due to the growing instability in the labor market, where precarious employment accounts for 41% of those under 35 years of age, the brain drain is worrying. Out of a population of 58 million 990 thousand inhabitants, there are about six million Italians abroad, a third of whom are highly qualified, in search of greater opportunities guaranteed by the single market and the Schengen area. According to Istat data, between 2011 and 2021, 377,000 Italians aged between 20 and 34 emigrated to the economically stronger EU countries. And at the European level, more and more highly qualified young people are packing their bags: in 2021, 32 percent of European citizens who left their country of origin were highly educated, up from 28 percent in 2016.
Italian intelligence is also conducting a massive recruitment drive in universities, urgently seeking “specific knowledge and skills” in the sectors of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), missiles, dual-use materials and procurement networks, behavioral sciences and profiling and activities, penetration testing and network teaming methodologies, cyber threat intelligence, reverse engineering, malware analysis and digital forensics. Also sought, as last year, are experts in artificial intelligence (machine learning engineers, data scientists and big data engineer-architects), cryptanalysis algorithms and photo-interpretation of satellite imagery, as well as document archiving and digitization. Research sectors in which Italian universities intertwine their interests with those of the Zionist regime, today strongly contested by academics in the face of the Palestinian genocide.
On January 1, 2024, the resident population of Italy had an average age of 46.6 years. The population over sixty-five years of age, as a whole, at the beginning of 2024 amounted to 14 million 358 thousand people, constituting 24.3% of the total population, compared to 24% in the previous year. The number of people over eighty years of age, the so-called elderly elderly: with 4 million 554 thousand people, almost 50 thousand more than 12 months earlier, this contingent exceeds that of children under 10 years of age (4 million 441 thousand individuals).
On the contrary, working-age and younger individuals are decreasing: those aged 15 to 64 years go from 37 million 472 thousand (63.5% of the total population) to 37 million 447 thousand (63.5%), while boys up to 14 years of age decrease from 7 million 344 thousand (12.4%) to 7 million 185 thousand (12.2%).
The decline in the youth population has had clear repercussions also on the youth electorate, which in 20 years has been drastically reduced, from 30.4% in 2002 to an all-time low of 21.9% in 2022. The cut in parliamentarians has almost exclusively affected those under 35 years of age, with a drastic drop in young elected members, who between 2018 and 2022 suffered a decrease of 80%, from 133 to 27.
The influence of younger people in politics is decreasing. Surveys show a strong feeling of alienation from institutions, perceived as ineffective in responding to their needs by 85%. The perception changes if we look at the European Union, which receives a passing score (6/10) on the trust index. Figures far removed from those that characterize political and protagonist participation in Cuba or Bolivarian Venezuela, where youth constitute a fundamental social force. Countries to which the governments of the old Europe would like to give lessons, by introducing in the decisions with the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the USA: also to push young people to stay away from politics or to leave their country.