Subject: Berlusconi returns to power thanks to 'post-Fascist' ally

6

Berlusconi returns to power thanks to 'post-Fascist' ally

AP

If the trend of early results is confirmed, Berlusconi will begin his third term with a stronger showing in the Senate than his predecessor Romano Prodi

By Peter Popham in Rome
Tuesday, 15 April 2008

Silvio Berlusconi celebrated an election comeback triumph last night, putting him back in charge of the world's seventh biggest economy for a third term as the centre-left failed to summon the unity to stop him.

Silvio Berlusconi celebrated a comeback triumph last night, putting him back in charge of the world's seventh biggest economy for a third term as the centre-left failed to summon the unity to stop him.

In his first comments after winning Italy's election, Mr Berlusconi told a political programme on RAI television: "I feel great responsibility; difficult years await us."

He said his priorities would include solving the rubbish crisis in Naples and that of the airline Alitalia, providing affordable new housing, and launching important new infrastructure projects – all without increasing taxes. "It will not take long to form the new government," he added. He said it would have 12 ministers "including at least four women" and would finish its five-year term.

According to the latest projections, Mr Berlusconi and his centre-right allies gained a clear victory, with about 47 per cent of the vote against about 38 per cent for the Democratic Party of Walter Veltroni and its ally, Italy of Values.

Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom coalition was expected to win 340 seats in the Chamber of Deputies – a majority of 63 – and 167 in the Senate, a majority of nine. The media magnate told his "post-Fascist" partner, former deputy prime minister and National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini of his "profound satisfaction" at the result. Mr Veltroni conceded defeat shortly after 8 pm, telling supporters that he had telephoned the media magnate to congratulate him.

He defended himself against charges that his decision to split from the far left and the socialists and run as a single party had consigned the left to defeat.

"Our decision to run alone has opened a new political season in Italy," he said. He also questioned the durability of Mr Berlusconi's winning coalition.

"I don't know how long the new majority will last, the People of Freedom will have to tackle the contradictions caused by not wanting to choose between being a party and being a mere electoral coalition."

Umberto Bossi, Mr Berlusconi's coalition partner and leader of the secessionist Northern League, whose success was crucial in giving Mr Berlusconi a decisive victory, denied that he would hold the media magnate "hostage" to his programme.

"We love Berlusconi," he said. "We are friends. We have drawn up our programme together and we will keep our pact with him."

Mr Berlusconi, 71, Italy's third richest man and owner of Italy's most important commercial TV channels, appeared headed for a decisive lead last night, two years after being narrowly defeated by the centre-left. If the trend of early results is confirmed, he will begin his third term in power with a stronger showing in the Senate than his predecessor Romano Prodi, and thus with a good chance of governing for a full five-year term.

The results were a blow to the centre-left, which had raised its hopes after a dramatic shift in the opinion polls during the last fortnight to enable it to keep the media billionaire at bay. Opinion polls at the start of the campaign, which gave Mr Berlusconi and his allies a lead of 5 to 10 per cent, appeared to be a close reflection of the final result.

"The left has brought the country to its knees,"

roared the manifesto of the People of Freedom, which brings together Forza Italia and the post-Fascist National Alliance.

"Rise again, Italy!"

Mr Berlusconi was able to cash in on his extraordinary popular appeal for a third time. He campaigned on a seven-point programme, the main themes of which included "relaunching development" – his promise to get Italy's stagnant economy moving again – improved security and justice, support for the chronically underperforming south, and federalism, the shibboleth of his principal ally, the Northern League. With the League looking set to double its representation, their key demand of federalism is likely to be pushed harder.

Mr Berlusconi's opponents and critics who warned that his previous record made him unequipped to rule, must now look to the prospect of another long spell of Berlusconi dominance. One way or another it is thought that he could contrive to be master of the nation for the next 12 years: it is anticipated that, once his term as prime minister is over, he will contrive to end his career as president, whose term lasts seven years. If that comes to pass, Mr Berlusconi would dominate Italian political life until 2020.

The election – forced less than two years into Romano Prodi's term as prime minister – was a trial by fire for the former Rome mayor Mr Veltroni, his replacement as head of the centre-left, but it was Mr Berlusconi's enduring appeal that won the day.

Once, twice, three times a leader

*1994

Silvio Berlusconi took the Forza Italia (Go Italy) chant belted out on the terraces by fans of his AC Milan football team and turned it into a mantra for a new centre-right party that was to transform the Italian political scene, appealing to a tired electorate with his "You can be rich like me" refrain. The 1994 elections gave Berlusconi a landslide victory but this first spell as prime minister was short-lived. His coalition – which included the more right-wing National Alliance and Northern League – soon descended into bitter infighting and Berlusconi's government collapsed after just eight months.

*2001

Berlusconi served a full five-year term in office – the first time in half a century that had been achieved in Italy's revolving door of leaders. Admittedly he was forced to resign once in that time by the same fractious allies, who this time were unhappy at a poor showing in local elections, but the dispute was swiftly patched up and no new national polls were needed. During this unprecedented reign, Berlusconi proudly nailed his colours to Bush's war on terror, but failed to effect much-needed domestic changes, and the economy stagnated. In the 2006 elections, he lost by the narrowest margin in Italian history to nemesis Romano Prodi. Now it seems Berlusconi is having the last laugh.

other links:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/berlusconi-returns-to-power-thanks-to-postfascist-ally-808976.html

more articles on the subject:

editorial:

Leading article: An unwelcome return

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-an-unwelcome-return-808987.html

Extreme party of chauvinism holds the key

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/extreme-party-of-chauvinism-holds-the-key-808977.html

One word: BARF!!

Nations were communities may resist US military bases

Resisting the Empire Joseph Gerson | March 20, 2008 Editor: Emily Schwarz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
Victories are within sight for people in a growing number of nations where communities that host U.S. foreign military bases have long fought to get rid of them. Ecuador’s decision not to renew the U.S. lease for the forward operating base at (see Yankees Head Home) is the culmination of just one of many long-term and recently initiated community-based and national struggles to remove these military installations that are often sources of crime and demeaning human rights violations. A growing alliance among anti-bases movements in countries around the world, including the United States, is preventing the creation of new foreign military bases, restricting the expansion of others, and in some cases may win the withdrawal of the military bases, installations and troops that are essential to U.S. wars of intervention and its preparations for first-strike nuclear attacks. The Challenge Of course, there is still plenty of bad news. The Bush Administration is currently negotiating what is, in essence, a security treaty with the Maliki puppet government in Baghdad to secure one of the principle Bush-Cheney war aims: permanent military bases for tens of thousands of U.S. troops. The goal is to transform Iraq into an U.S. unsinkable aircraft carrier in the heart of the oil-rich Middle East. Unfortunately, the plan for Iraq is only one part of the vast and expanding U.S. infrastructure of nearly 1,000 military bases and installations strategically scattered around the world. Across Asia, in Japan, another Marine has raped an Okinawan school girl, traumatizing yet another life and temporarily shaking the foundations of the U.S.-Japan military alliance. Under the guise of a “Visiting Force Agreement,” U.S. troops have returned to the Philippines where they are deployed from “temporary” and unconstitutional military bases. In the Indian Ocean, Chagossian people were removed from Diego Garcia to make way for massive U.S. military bases; they have won all of their legal appeals but still can’t return home. In Central Europe, the Bush Administration is pressing deployment of first strike-related “missile defense” bases in the Czech Republic and Poland. Russia has countered by threatening to target the bases with nuclear weapons, and opposition to “missile defense.” In response to this renewed Cold War, opposition to “missile defense” weaponry is building in public squares and in parliaments throughout the region. And, as he recently traveled across Africa, President George W. Bush was met with near universal opposition to his plans for further military colonization of the continent in the form of moving the Pentagon’s Africa Command headquarters from Europe to the oil and resource-rich continent. The Bush Administration and Pentagon are “reconfiguring” the U.S. global network of more than 750 foreign military bases to impose what Vice President Dick Cheney termed in a New Yorker interview as “the arrangement for the 21st century.” This imperial “arrangement” is increasingly being met with opposition in “host” nations and the United States alike, and victories by allied movements are within reach. How We Got Here For more than a century, the United States has been building an unrivaled global structure of nearly foreign fortresses. Located on every continent and at sea, these military bases and installations provide an infrastructure from which invasions and nuclear wars can be launched. They enforce an unjust and often violent status quo, influence the politics and diplomacy of “host” nations, secure privileged access to oil and other natural resources, encircle enemies, “show the flag,” and more recently have served as prisons operating outside the restrictions of U.S. and international law. These bases violate democratic values in other ways. When the United States was founded, the Declaration of Independence decried the “abuses and usurpations” caused by King George having “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies.” Since then, “abuses and usurpations” inherent in the presence of foreign “Standing Armies” have become far more dangerous. Their demeaning and disruptive impacts include: Undermining the sovereignty of “host” nations Militarizing and colonizing the “host” nation’s culture Assaulting democracy and human rights Seizing people’s private property and damaging their homes Violently abusing and dehumanizing women and girls Causing life-endangering military accidents and crimes that are rarely punished Terrorizing low-altitude training flights and night-landing exercises Polluting with military toxics Since the Cold War ended, U.S. presidents and the Pentagon have worked to “reconfigure” the architecture of this military infrastructure to address changing geopolitical realities, technological “advances,” and growing resistance to the presence of foreign bases. With agility, flexibility and speed being given priority in U.S. military operations, bases are being transformed into hubs, forward operating bases, and “lily pads” for invasions and foreign military interventions. The other axis of reconfiguration is geographic. As U.S. forces have been forced out of Saudi Arabia, and with U.S. geostrategic priorities turning away from Europe and toward China, Washington has concentrated its military build up elsewhere in the Persian Gulf nations, Asia and the Pacific. Tipping Points In a number of countries, the reconfiguration has not proceeded as smoothly as anticipated: Iraq As Major General Robert Pollman explained in 2004, “It ma[de] a lot of sense” to “swap” U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia for new ones in Iraq. U.S. command and air bases located near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina incensed many Muslims and were among Osama Bin Laden’s professed reasons for the 9-11 attacks. In the lead up to the 2003 invasion, many of the functions of these bases were moved to Qatar and Kuwait, and after the conquest, 110 bases were established across Iraq. To limit their political and military vulnerability, the Pentagon has been spending more than a $1 billion a year to consolidate them into 14 “enduring” and massive Air Force, Army and Marine bases in Baghdad and other strategic locations, In addition to helping secure U.S. control over Iraq, these bases contribute to encircling Iran, and they can be used for attacks across the Persian Gulf region and into oil-rich Central Asia. The Bush administration’s plans to saddle its successor with these bases and the continuing occupation by negotiating an agreement with the Maliki government hit unexpected road block. In addition to popular Iraqi opposition, U.S. peace movement organizations joined Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) to prevent the unconstitutional imposition of what is essentially a treaty. The Delahunt hearings about the proposed commitment to defend the Baghdad government from internal and external enemies, the bases which are permanent in all but name, and privileged access to investment opportunities (read oil) for U.S. corporations forced Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to rhetorically back away from the open-ended security commitment to Baghdad. But his promises that the bases are “not permanent” are less credible. Nothing is officially “permanent,” of course. Not even the bases in Japan and Korea, which have been there for more than six decades, and not the Great Wall of China, or the pyramids of Egypt, which are slowly decaying. With opposition to the treaty and the permanent military bases now a defining issue between Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. peace movement has an important opening to press its demands for the immediate and total withdrawal from Iraq. AFRICOM U.S. planners anticipate that by 2015 Africa will provide the U.S. with 25% of its imported oil. With Islamist political forces operating across northern Africa, the continent is also seen as an important front in the misconceived “war on terrorism.” So, to “promote peace and stability on the continent” the Bush Administration and the Pentagon want to augment the U.S. military presence in Africa, beginning with the transfer of the Africa Command, AFRICOM, from remote Germany to an accommodating African nation. As President Bush learned during his recent ill-fated African tour, the continent’s leaders are understandably reluctant to accept renewed military colonization. Ghana’s President John Kufuour put it bluntly when he met with Bush, saying, “You’re not going to build any bases in Ghana.” Africa is not free of bases. France and Britain still have bases scattered there. The U.S. has bases in Djibouti and Algeria, access agreements with Morocco and Egypt, and is in the process of creating a “family” of military bases in sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, Sao Tome, Senegal and Uganda.) And, although Bush responded to African fears about AFRICOM’s possible relocation by saying that such rumors were “baloney” and “bull,” he also conceded that: “We haven’t made our minds up.” With a growing No AFRICOM movement in the United States that’s that is allied with anti-colonialist forces in Africa, this is one U.S. threat that can be contained. Diego Garcia In the mid-1960s, in a quintessential act of European colonialism, all of Diego Garcia’s 2,000 inhabitants were forcefully removed from their homeland by British authorities to make way for massive U.S. air and naval bases. In an act of legal fiction, the island was separated from Mauritius on the eve of that island nation’s independence. Located in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia’s two-mile long runways have since been used to launch B-1 and B-52 attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan. Its stealth bomber hangars have recently been upgraded for possible strikes against Iran, and its submarine base is being refitted to serve Ohio-class submarines that can be used for both missile attacks and to secretly deploy Navy SEALS in Iran and other Persian Gulf nations. The Chagos people of Diego Garcia want to return home, ending their exile in Mauritius’ slums, where up to 90% are unemployed and live desperate lives. The base rests on colonial constructions. With the help of allies in London and around the world they attempted to return, but have been halted on the high seas. But their plight and struggle has wide and sympathetic media attention, especially as they have won one challenge after another in the British courts. The British House of Lords is to make a “final ruling,” but an end run in which Diego Garcia would be returned to Mauritius’ authority and the “rented” to Washington remains possible. Education about the plight and struggle of the people of Diego Garcia, beginning with the spring speaking tour of Chagos leader Olivier Bancoult, is the best way to prepare for the next round of this compelling struggle. Okinawa Since its 1945 bloody conquest in 1945, Okinawa has served as the principle bastion of U.S. military power in East Asia – even after its 1972 reversion to Japan. Sixty years after the end of World War II, nearly 45,000 U.S. troops, civilian staff, and their families are based on Air Force, Navy, Marine and Army bases that occupy 27% of the island prefecture. Okinawans have suffered nearly every imaginable military abuse: One quarter of its people were killed during the 1945 battle, many by Japanese soldiers. U.S. nuclear weapons have fallen off ships and into coastal fishing grounds. Shells and bullets from live fire exercises have slammed into people’s homes. Children, their grandmothers, base and service workers have suffered rapes that are too numerous to count. Land has been seized, and military accidents – including helicopters and their parts falling into students’ schools – are not uncommon. To pacify the nationwide outrage that followed the 1995 kidnapping and rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan school girl in 1995, Washington and Tokyo agreed to reduce, not remove, the size of the U.S. footprint on Okinawa. With the U.S.-Japan alliance hanging in the balance, the Status of Forces Agreement was revised to accord the Japanese courts greater authority over crimes by G.I.s, and a plan was developed to move half of the 16,000 Marines – the greatest source of G.I. crime – to Guam largely at Japan’s expense. Several bases were consolidated and Washington agreed to move the Futemna Air Base, in Ginowan’s city center, to a more remote part of the island. This leaves the massive Air Force, Naval and Marine bases still occupying a quarter of the prefecture. Inspired by respected elders, the people of Henoko, the coastal site to which Futnema’s functions were to be transferred, have put up a stiff resistance. To prevent the militarization of their community and the destruction of the reef on which the new air base is to be built, they have built alliances with peace activists and environmentalists around the world. Their focus has been to prevent destruction feeding grounds for dugongs (large, gentle sea mammals similar to manatees) that became the symbol of their movement. They have also conducted months-long sit-ins and taken their case to court. A California appeal court recently confirmed their environmental claims, and the relocation process stalled. Within weeks of this court victory, Marines raped a 14-year-old Okinawan school girl and a Filipina woman sparking renewed outrage across Okinawa and Japan. In the “Message from the Women of Okinawa” that followed, the U.S. military and the world were notified that the days when “so many rape victims…told no one and wept silently in their beds…are now over.” Their message is clear, “Go back to America. Now.” With Washington and Tokyo focused on “containing” China, it will be years before the last G.I. returns from Okinawa. In the meantime, we can provide critical support to women and men who are courageously and nonviolently campaigning to defend their lives, their families, their communities, and nature itself. The base at Henoko must not be built. The base in Futenma must be closed. It is past time to bring all the Marines home. Guam Guam is not home. Located in the South Pacific and conquered by the United States from Spain in 1898, it has long served as a U.S. stepping stone to Asia. Nominally it is not a U.S. colony, but an “unincorporated territory” with a nonvoting delegate in Congress. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. air and naval bases occupied the island’s best agricultural lands, water sources and fishing grounds. Now the abuses and usurpations are becoming much worse. Since the nonviolent 1995 Okinawan uprising, the Pentagon has been preparing for the day when it is finally forced to withdraw from Okinawa and Japan. Thus Guam is being transformed in to a military “hub.” Already large enough to accommodate B-52 and stealth bombers, Andersen Air Force Base is being expanded to serve as “the most significant U.S. Air Force base in the Pacific region for this century.” More submarines are being homeported in its harbor, and the Navy is considering homeporting an aircraft carrier strike force there is well. Then, there are those Marines from Okinawa. Understandably, Guam’s tiny Chamorro population feels besieged. In the traditions of U.S., Israeli and South African settler colonialism, it is “cowboys and Indians all over again.” We have a responsibility to prevent this cultural genocide. Europe The Cold War never really ended in Europe. An estimated 380 U.S. nuclear weapons are still based in seven European nations, and most of the 100,000 troops deployed across Western Europe remain there. But Pentagon campaigns to deploy misnamed “missile defenses” in the Czech Republic and Poland and to expand the Aviano Air Base in Italy are leading hundreds of thousands of Europeans into the streets. The missile defense system is ostensibly modest. A missile tracking radar is to be installed in the Czech Republic, and ten interceptor missiles are to be sited in Poland, reportedly to defend Europe from Iranian missiles that have not been deployed. In fact, this is the tip of the iceberg. Russia properly fears that, once deployed, the missile defense system will be greatly expanded with the goal of neutralizing Moscow’s missile forces, leaving Russia vulnerable to U.S. first strike attacks. In response, President Vladimir Putin has menacingly threatened to target nuclear weapons against the Czechs and Poles. Opinion polls indicate that most Czechs oppose the missile defense deployments and want to hold a referendum to block them. Many NATO leaders are angry that the U.S. circumvented the European Union’s decision-making process, and protests spearheaded by the U.S. Campaign for Peace and Democracy greeted Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek when he recently visited the United States. With many leading congressional Democrats also opposed to these dangerous deployments, missile defenses can be stopped. Finally, there is Italy where, unexpectedly, hundreds of thousands of citizens turned out to protest the expansion of the U.S. Air Base at Aviano (which also hosts U.S. nuclear weapons.) Dissent over the base expansion nearly toppled the Prodi government in 2007, and it will remain the focus of European and U.S. anti-bases campaigns. Resistance In response to popularly based movements to win the withdrawal of unwanted U.S. foreign military bases, an incipient U.S. anti-bases movement is emerging. It includes organizations as diverse as the American Friends Service Committee, and the Southwest Workers Union, the United for Peace and Justice coalition, and scholars who are moving from studying military bases to working for their withdrawal. Four increasingly integrated U.S. anti-bases networks have developed in recent years, spurred in part by the development of the global “No Military Bases Network” in World Social Forums and the global Network’s formal inauguration in Quito, Ecuador at a conference last year that brought together four hundred activists from forty nations. The U.S. networks are currently organizing April speaking tours featuring Olivier Bancoult from Diego Garcia, Terri Keko’olani from Hawaii, Jan Tamas and the Czech Republic, and Andreas Licata from Italy. And a national U.S. “No Foreign Military Bases” conference is in its early planning stages. Joseph Gerson, a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), is director of programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England. His books include The Sun Never Sets…Confronting the Network of U.S. Foreign Military Bases, (South End Press, 1991) and Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World (Pluto Press, 2007).

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One of the world's most notorious arms dealers was arrested Thursday in Bangkok on allegations that he supplied Colombian rebels with arms and



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The truth emerges!! It always does. Italians say 9/11 solved

ITALIAN SAYS 9-11 SOLVED

It’s common knowledge, he reveals, CIA, Mossad behind terror attacks

By the Staff of American Free Press

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, has told Italy’s oldest and most widely read newspaper that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad, and that this was common knowledge among global intelligence agencies. In what translates awkwardly into English, Cossiga told the newspaper Corriere della Sera:

“All the [intelligence services] of America and Europe…know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the Mossad, with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part … in Iraq [and] Afghanistan.”

Cossiga was elected president of the Italian Senate in July 1983 before winning a landslide election to become president of the country in 1985, and he remained until 1992.

Cossiga’s tendency to be outspoken upset the Italian political establishment, and he was forced to resign after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, Operation Gladio. This was a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and ’80s. Gladio’s specialty was to carry out what they termed “false flag” operations—terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.

In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony,

“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9-11 in 2001, and is quoted by 9-11 researcherWebster Tarpley saying “The mastermind of the attack must have been a sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel. I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and
flight security personnel.”

Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga’s assertion that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge among global intelligence agencies is illuminating. It is one more eye-opening confirmation that has not been mentioned by America’s propaganda machine in print or on TV. Nevertheless, because of his experience and status in the world, Cossiga cannot be discounted as a crackpot.

(Issue #52, December 24, 2007)

Chikunjgunya hits Italy

As Earth Warms Up, Tropical Virus Moves to Italy

David Yoder for The International Herald Tribune

“I thought, O.K., my time is up,” said Antonio Ciano, a Castiglione resident who became so sick after catching chikungunya he said he could not stand up.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: December 23, 2007

CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy — Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.

David Yoder for The International Herald Tribune

Officials set out insect traps and were surprised by what they caught: tiger mosquitoes.

The New York Times

“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”

By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.

People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.

“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”

Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.

Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics.

“By the time we got back the name and surname of the virus, our outbreak was over,” said Dr. Rafaella Angelini, director of the regional public health department in Ravenna. “When they told us it was chikungunya, it was not a problem for Ravenna any more. But I thought: this is a big problem for Europe.”

The epidemic proved that tropical viruses are now able to spread in new areas, far north of their previous range. The tiger mosquito, which first arrived in Ravenna three years ago, is thriving across southern Europe and even in France and Switzerland.

And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.

“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”

Was he shocked to discover chikungunya in Italy, his native land? “We knew this would happen sooner or later,” he said. “We just didn’t know where or when.”

It certainly caught this town off guard on Aug. 9, when public health officials in Ravenna received an angry call from Stefano Merlo, who owns the gas station.

“Within 100 meters of my home, there were more than 30 people with fevers over 40 degrees,” or 104 Fahrenheit, said Mr. Merlo, 47. “I wanted to know what was going on. I knew it couldn’t be normal.”

August is not the season for high fevers, Dr. Angelini agreed, and within days of interviewing patients she was intrigued.

“The stories were so similar and so dramatic,” she said. “But we had no clue it was something tropical.”

Hard-working shopkeepers could not get out of bed because their hips hurt so much. Able-bodied men could not lift spoons to their mouths. (Months later, many still have debilitating joint pain.)

From the start, doctors suspected that the disease was spread by insects, rather than people. While almost all homes had one person who was ill, family members seemed not to catch the disease from one another.

They initially focused on sand flies, since the disease clustered on streets by the river.

Canceling their traditional mid-August vacations (in Italy, a true sign of panic), health officials sent off blood samples, called national infectious-disease experts, searched the Internet and set out traps to see what insects were in the neighborhood. The first surprise was that the insect traps contained not sand flies but tiger mosquitoes, and huge numbers of them.

The scientific survey confirmed what residents of Castiglione had come to accept as a horrible nuisance, though not a deadly threat.

“In the last three or four years, you couldn’t live on these streets because the mosquitoes were so bad,” said Rino Ricchi, a road worker who fell ill, standing at the entrance to his neatly tended garden, where mosquito traps have now replaced decorative fountains. “We used to delight in having a garden or a porch to eat dinner. You couldn’t this year, you’d get eaten alive.”

Said Dr. Angelini: “They were treating the mosquitoes like an annoyance. They knew that mosquitoes could spread tropical diseases but they had peace of mind because they knew this didn’t happen in Italy.”

Ravenna immediately set about killing the bugs in the hopes of containing the epidemic. Workers sprayed insecticides and went into each family’s garden, emptying flower pots, fountains and the rainwater collection barrels to remove the mosquitoes’ breeding ground.

By early September, there were no new cases in Castiglione di Cervia. But there were a number of mini-epidemics in the region — in Ravenna, Cesena and Rimini — set off by tiger mosquitoes there. Each was controlled in the same way.

By that point, the doctors had cataloged the patients’ symptoms and tried to match them to mosquito-borne diseases.

“We realized,” Dr. Angelini said, “we were seeing a photocopy of an outbreak on Réunion,” a French island in the Indian Ocean where more than 10,000 people have contracted chikungunya in the last two years. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis. By summer’s end, home-grown chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians.

Chikungunya is spread when tiger mosquitoes drink blood from an infected person and, if conditions are right, pass the virus on when they bite again. Tiger mosquitoes first came to southern Italy with shipments of tires from Albania about a decade ago but their habitat has expanded steadily northward as temperatures have risen.

But the doctors were baffled by how chikungunya made its way into mosquitoes in northern Italy since no one in Castiglione di Cervia had been abroad. In the past two years France, especially Paris, has had a number of imported cases of chikungunya, in travelers returning from Réunion. But the disease has never spread in France, because the mosquito cannot thrive there yet.

Eventually investigators discovered a link: one of the first men to fall ill in Castiglione di Cervia had been visited by a feverish relative in early July. That relative, an Italian, had previously traveled to Kerala, India. Chikungunya traveled to Italy in his blood, but climatic conditions are now such that it can spread and find a home here.

Now it is winter in Castiglione di Cervia, near freezing as the sun went down on a recent evening and Christmas lights glowed across the piazza. There are no mosquitoes now.

But dozens of residents still suffer from arthritis, a known complication of chikungunya.

Mr. Ricchi, the road worker, says he still has trouble clenching his fists, and his left ankle has horrible pains. Three people in the town died after getting the virus, Mr. Merlo said, although all of those victims had other illnesses as well.

From the start, townspeople noticed that the very elderly never got the disease. Now it makes sense: “If all you do is walk the 50 yards from your home to the church, there’s not much chance to get bitten,” said Mr. Ciano, the retiree.

But the biggest mystery is whether chikungunya will emerge here next summer. In the tropics, it is a year-round disease, since the mosquitoes breed continually. But the virus can winter over in mosquito eggs, too, and no one knows if there are reservoirs of sleeping eggs in some pool of water in Italy.

With climate change at hand, Dr. Bertollini said, chikungunya will surely be back somewhere in Europe again.