Tag: italy

Chinese state-sponsored contract hacker arrested in Italy at US request: DOJ

The US Department of Justice said on July 8 a Chinese state-sponsored contract hacker was arrested last week in Italy at the request of Washington, but the arrested man claimed he is a victim of mistaken identity.

Xu Zewei, 33, was arrested on July 3, the Justice Department said, adding a nine-count indictment was unsealed on July 8 in the Southern District of Texas alleging the involvement of that individual and a co-defendant in computer intrusions between February 2020 and June 2021.

Xu was arrested in Milan, Italy, and will face extradition proceedings, the DOJ said in a statement.

It alleged China’s ministry of state security had directed theft of Covid-19 research and the exploitation of Microsoft email software vulnerabilities.

The Chinese government has denied allegations of being involved. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Xu’s lawyer said on July 8 that he is a victim of mistaken identity, that his surname is quite common in China and that his mobile phone had been stolen in 2020.

The 33-year-old IT manager at a Shanghai company appeared on July 8 before an appeals court in Milan, which will decide whether to send him to the United States. The man was arrested last week after he arrived at Milan’s Malpensa airport for a holiday in Italy with his wife.

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Conservative Surrender: Italy and Switzerland Bow to Islamic Pressure, Ban Free Speech Leader Rasmus Paludan

PAY ATTENTION, AMERICA! If you think being in a conservative-led country or a so-called ‘neutral state’ will protect your right to speak out against radical ideologies, think again.

Human rights activist and Islam critic Rasmus Paludan, a Danish-Swedish politician known for his relentless stance on free speech, has once again become the target of government censorship. This time, it happened in Italy, a country supposedly led by conservatives who claim to champion Western values.

Islam – A Subject You Dare Not Speak About

The shocking truth revealed by these incidents is that Islam has become a subject so sensitive that even non-Muslim countries impose blasphemy-like restrictions to appease violent reactions. Rather than confront the problem—an imported crisis fueled by mass Islamic immigration – these countries are instead targeting the critics. It’s safer, they think, to ban the critic rather than face the backlash. This massive problem could have been prevented and even deported, as promised by the supposedly conservative Giorgia Meloni government, which has fallen woefully short of its commitments.

Italy: Conservative-Led, But Not Safe for Islam Critics

Days ago, Rasmus Paludan was stopped at Milan Malpensa Airport and denied entry into Italy. According to Paludan, he was informed by the prefect of Varese that his presence in the country could provoke anger from others. As a result, he was banned from entering Italy for five years.

“I can’t leave the airport. The prefect has decided that since other people will be angry if I’m in Italy, it’s best if I’m not allowed into the country for five years,” Paludan told RAIR Foundation.

This decision raises troubling questions about the state of free speech and the willingness of conservative governments to bow to potential threats instead of upholding the right to criticize any ideology. Instead of deporting the violent threats, Italy finds it easier to block the critic, revealing a cowardly capitulation to potential violence rather than an enforcement of democratic principles.

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Italy Could Be Forced To Grant Citizenship To 2.5 Million Foreigners After June Referendum

Italy will hold a referendum on June 8-9 to decide whether to halve the waiting period for foreigners applying for Italian nationality, the government announced on Thursday.

If approved, the reform would reduce the required residency period to five years, potentially granting citizenship to around 2.5 million foreign nationals.

The referendum was triggered after opposition parties and pro-migrant organizations, including Oxfam Italia, collected more than 500,000 signatures last September, meeting the legal threshold for a public vote.

Despite strong opposition from the ruling Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the government was obligated to set a date for the vote after a ruling from the Constitutional Court in January approved its admissibility.

Currently, foreigners must reside in Italy for at least 10 years before applying for citizenship through naturalization. Children born in Italy to foreign parents are also unable to obtain citizenship until they turn 18.

Proponents of the reform argue that the existing system is restrictive and out of step with other European countries such as Germany, the U.K., Spain, and Portugal, where the naturalization process typically takes five years. 

In France, naturalization is permitted after two to five years, depending on individual circumstances.

The proposal has sparked a heated debate within the Italian government. Prime Minister Meloni, who came to power in 2022 on an anti-migration platform, has consistently opposed changes to the nationality law, calling the 10-year requirement “an appropriate length of time for nationality.”

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the co-governing League Party, shares this stance.

However, the issue has created tensions within the governing coalition. Antonio Tajani, leader of the center-right Forza Italia party and also a deputy prime minister, suggested an alternative proposal last year to grant Italian nationality to children who have completed a continuous 10-year education in the national school system, rather than waiting until they turn 18. However, this idea was never formalized into legislation.

Reviewing the proposal earlier this year, Italy’s top court noted that the change would only affect the required residency period for foreign nationals to apply. Other conditions for naturalization, including a minimum B1 level in Italian, continuous and legal residency in the country, and the absence of a criminal record, will still apply.

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Italian Govt Slams Judiciary After Ruling Demands Compensation For Illegals

The Italian government has been ordered to compensate a group of migrants who were prevented from disembarking from the Diciotti ship in August 2018, following the directive of then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

The decision was handed down by the Court of Cassation on Friday, which ruled that the government is liable for damages caused by the deprivation of freedom suffered by the migrants. The court referred the case back to the lower court to determine the amount of compensation.

Salvini had been investigated by the Palermo Court for alleged kidnapping in connection with the prolonged detention of migrants aboard the Italian coast guard vessel. The case was transferred to Catania for territorial jurisdiction, where prosecutors dismissed the charges. However, the Court of Ministers overruled this decision and sought Senate authorization to prosecute Salvini, which was ultimately thrown out in December last year.

The judges in their ruling emphasized that the refusal to allow migrants to disembark for 10 days could not be considered a political act beyond judicial review. Instead, they classified it as an administrative action subject to legal scrutiny under both national and international law.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticized the ruling, arguing that it established a “highly questionable principle of compensation” by presuming damage without concrete proof. She expressed frustration that taxpayer money would be used to compensate individuals who had attempted to enter Italy illegally. Meloni stated that such decisions alienate citizens from institutions, particularly when government resources are already limited.

“As a result of this decision, the government will have to compensate — with the money of honest Italian citizens who pay taxes — people who have attempted to enter Italy illegally, that is, by violating the law of the Italian state,” Meloni said in a post on X.

“I don’t think these are the decisions that citizens bring together the institutions, and I confess that having to spend money for this, when we do not have enough resources to do everything that would be right to do, is very frustrating,” she added.

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Meloni destroys the warlike dreams of the European left! Italy says ‘No’ to sending troops to Ukraine and leaves France and the UK on the ropes.

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s firm and resolute prime minister, has shaken the European negotiating tables with her categorical refusal to send Italian troops to Ukraine, exposing the interventionist obsessions of the European left, embodied by France and the United Kingdom.

Meloni made it clear in London, during a summit on Ukraine, that Italy prioritizes diplomacy over unbridled militarism.

Meloni’s decision is not a whim, but a strategic stance reflecting Italy’s caution toward a conflict that could escalate and further destabilize Europe.

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Italian cops investigate multiple New Year’s Eve sex attacks on women in central Milan as tourist, 20, describes being surrounded by dozens of men and groped

Italian police are investigating multiple New Year’s Eve sex attacks on women in central Milan reminiscent of the horrifying assaults in Cologne in 2016. 

The investigation was launched on January 7 after one of the attacked women spoke to Belgian media and described being surrounded by dozens of men who allegedly groped her. 

Laura Barbier, 20, a student from Liege, in Belgium, had travelled to Milan, Italy, with five friends aged 20 and 21 to celebrate the New Year. 

The group of four young women and two men watched the fireworks on the Piazza del Duomo outside Milan’s cathedral, where men wearing balaclavas were filmed causing chaotic scenes by shooting fireworks into the crowd on the same night.

‘Young people set off fireworks into the crowd, to create a crowd movement. It was very dangerous, we had a feeling of unease, as if there was going to be an attack,’ Laura told Belgian broadcaster RTL.

Feeling unsafe, Laura said she and her friends tried to leave the square, but they were stopped by a mob of 30 to 40 men shouting shouting ‘vaffanculo Italia’ (‘f*** off Italy’) and ‘polizia di merda’ (‘s*** police’) who surrounded them.

‘That’s when we were touched on our bodies, on our clothes and some of us, including myself, inside our clothes,’ Laura said. 

‘Three out of us four girls were sexually assaulted. A friend had her breasts groped and her buttocks touched. [The men] put their hands in my pants. It went very far.’

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POWDER KEG EUROPE: Twelve Members of Italian Neo-Nazi Group Arrested, Accused of Planning to Assassinate Prime Minister Meloni and Klaus Schwab

From East to West, Europe is in a war footing, with extremist groups cropping up, trying to disrupt normal functioning of the nations.

Now, it arises that an Italian neo-Nazi group has been accused of planning to allegedly assassinate Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, as well as WEF chairman Klaus Schwab.

Last week, twelve alleged extremist members of the far-Right supremacist group called the ‘Werwolf Division’ have been arrested by anti-terrorism police.

Little did they know that authorities were intercepting their chats and collecting their communications.

The neo-Nazis called Meloni, from the Right-wing Brothers of Italy party, a ‘fascist who persecutes fascists.’

The group has been discussing plans to attack her since 2023.

The Telegraph reported:

“Italy’s national anti-terrorism prosecutor, Giovanni Melillo, said: ‘This is an important investigation, which is a development of another one currently under consideration by the Court of Naples’.

‘Both demonstrate the extreme danger of neo-Nazi networks branching out in Europe, which have long been underestimated’.”

The warrants allege that the group was in advanced stages of preparation for ‘serious’ attacks.

The extremists had identified sites near both the parliament building and the prime minister’s office in Rome for violent attacks – and were actively searching for snipers to carry out the hit.

“’There’s a hotel in front of Parliament from where you can shoot from above’, one member allegedly said. Another suspect reportedly said, ‘Find me a sniper and we will implement your plan’.”

The alleged extremists have been charged with terrorism, propaganda and incitement to commit racial, ethnic and religious discrimination.

They are also formally accused of illegal possession of firearms.

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Meloni: ‘I’ll be called racist, but foreigners are overrepresented in violent crimes against women’

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has brushed off anticipated cries of racism to highlight the stark reality that a disproportionate number of foreign nationals are responsible for violent crimes against women in Italy.

Speaking on the World Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Meloni said, “Now I will be defined as racist, but there is a greater incidence, unfortunately, in cases of sexual violence, by immigrant people, especially illegally, because when you have nothing, a degeneration occurs which can lead everywhere.”

The Italian premier cited alarming statistics to support her claim. “Foreigners in our country represent 8 percent of the entire population, and in our country in 2023, there were 5,832 sexual assaults, and of these, 2,524 were committed by foreigners, i.e., 43.3 percent of the total committed by a representative 8 percent of the entire population.”

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Mossad behind Italian ‘blackmail’ spying scandal

An Italian private intelligence firm that allegedly hacked government databases to collect information on thousands of prominent people, including politicians, entrepreneurs, and celebrities, is accused of working for Israeli intelligence and the Vatican, media reported on 30 October.

Police wiretaps leaked to Italian media show that Equalize, which employs former members of Italian intelligence, is accused of breaching the servers of government ministries and the police between 2019 and 2024 to collect information.

Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Equalize allegedly collected numerous classified files that contain sensitive information about prominent Italians to sell to clients – including major companies and law firms seeking information to gain an advantage over competitors, win court cases, or for blackmail and extortion.

Prime Minister Meloni described the alleged scheme as “unacceptable” and “a threat to democracy.”

At least four people are currently under arrest, while dozens more are under investigation. Fearing that Equalize may have obtained state secrets, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto ordered an urgent parliamentary investigation. 

Corsetto added that the stolen personal information was just the “tip of the iceberg.”

Politico reported that according to the leaked wiretaps, members of the hacking network met with two Israeli agents at the firm’s office in Milan in February 2023 to discuss a deal worth 1 million euros.

“The job was a cyber operation against Russian targets, including President Vladimir Putin’s unidentified ‘right-hand man,’ and unearthing the financial trail leading from the bank accounts of wealthy figures to the Russian mercenary group Wagner. The information was then supposed to be passed on to the Vatican,” Politico wrote.

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Orichalcum: Legendary Metal of Atlantis, Or Just A Common Ore?

At the beginning of 2015, several world news organizations reported that archaeologists had recovered 39 ingots of orichalcum from a 2,600-year-old shipwreck, found ten feet underwater off the coast of Sicily, near the town of Gela. (For those not familiar with the name, according to Plato, orichalcum was a type of copper alloy broadly used by the legendary Atlantians.)

Not surprisingly, while the ancient cargo provided the basis to every news report, unfortunately, none of the stories exposed anything new on Atlantis, or on the “mystical” ore, as one reporter called it. Essentially, every editorial capitalized on repeating the same familiar story, raising the usual questions, and sadly arriving at the same past conclusions. Nothing new! As for the particular freight, most reporters connected it to Atlantis, as if Atlantis was around during the Bronze Age (thus, misleading everyone not so familiar with the story) and ignoring the fact that according to Plato, the story of Atlantis took place around 9,600 BC.

In 2017, a further 47 ingots were retrieved, along with a couple of Corinthian helmets, and just this week, the recovery of all the timbers of the ship has been reported as well underway.

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