Why, in an Italy whose activities have been progressively reduced to a minimum in order to stop the spread of Covid-19 contagion, does our country's arms industry continue to operate? Why not shut it down, limit it to the essentials, or even consider converting it — at least temporarily — to the production of equipment useful for dealing with the emergency, so desperately needed in Italian hospitals right now, at the very moment when they find themselves in the greatest difficulty in the history of the Republic?

Read also: Coronavirus: record number of recoveries in one day — 1,434 people

The question has been raised in recent days — and put officially to the Italian government — by some of the associations that have always fought on this front: the Rete italiana per il disarmo, the Rete della pace and the Sbilanciamoci! campaign, which in a statement on 26 March pulled no punches: "Producing weapons is certainly not something strategic at this moment. Nor necessary. We therefore call for an immediate halt in all factories and the redirection of resources from military spending to health and welfare. But also for a decisive conversion initiative of the arms industry towards productive sectors that are more useful for the life, health and safety of all Italians." Four days after that request, has any response or signal of openness of any kind come from the executive? No. On the contrary: from today, 31 March, Leonardo Spa will resume the production line for F-35 fighter jets at its plant in Cameri, in the province of Novara.

Rete Italiana Pace e Disarmo @RetePaceDisarmo

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Emergenza #coronavirus: il Governo concede all’industria delle #armi di “auto-regolamentarsi” mentre stringe le maglie di economia e spostamenti personali.

Posizione inaccettabile e contestata da @ReteDisarmo, @Rete_Pace e @Sbilanciamoci

disarmo.org/rete/a/47432.h…

♥ 38💬 1 26 mar 2020 · Apri su X →

Leonardo: security cannot be stopped, even in the face of coronavirus

The move, decided after a rapid sanitisation of the factory, had been foreshadowed by Alessandro Profumo, chief executive of Leonardo, who in an interview with Corriere della Sera had explained that "Leonardo operates in a sector that is called upon to guarantee technologies, products and support for our security and defence system. Never as in these days have we realised how indispensable it is to guarantee our borders, cyber security, the availability of air ambulances, the reliability of secure communications systems, as well as the functioning of entire satellite systems. The heart can slow down — indeed it must, when the situation requires it — but it cannot stop." Subsequently, over the weekend Leonardo also announced that it had made available 2 aircraft, 3 helicopters and several 3D printers to produce valves to help institutions tackle the coronavirus emergency.

For Francesco Vignarca, coordinator of the Rete italiana per il disarmo, Profumo's argument is only partly correct: "Leonardo produces weapons for 70 per cent of its output and telecommunications for the rest, and we fully agree that the latter are fundamental. But there is a difference between risking your safety and going to work for essential things — always with every security measure taken into account, of course — and doing so for armaments, aircraft and helicopters."

Read also: New address by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to Italians on coronavirus

Instead, the government, including in its latest decree of the presidency of the Council of Ministers, left the arms supply chains among the essential ones, limiting itself to sending a generic recommendation to the Aiad, the Federation of Italian Companies for Aerospace, Defence and Security to consider "the opportunity for companies, in continuing their own activity, to be able to concentrate operations on the production lines considered most essential and strategic." All of this, moreover, without even being required to listen to the demands of trade unions. Leonardo, for example, was able to decide independently that producing F-35s was, even in this context, an essential activity.

In practice, it is left to the companies themselves to determine what is strategic and what is not, whereas it might have been more logical to draw up a more precise framework defining what is essential and what is not — exactly as was done in the decrees of the president of the Council of Ministers with the list of Ateco codes. For example: air ambulances yes, military ships no, telecommunications systems yes, helicopters to be sold abroad no. After all, the defence sector, Vignarca explains, "is a type of production that carries with it a strategic and geopolitical dimension; it is a sector that has always been heavily protected. Yet we thought that at least in this case the government would have the courage to say stop, while all of Italy is shut down."

Giorgio Beretta @beretta_g

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Min. @Gualtierieurope e @Guerini_Lorenzo,

dopo settimane di appelli, @Leonardo_IT, la più importante industria italiana a controllo statale, per l'emergenza #Covid_19 mette a disposizione due aerei, tre elicotteri e un po' di stampanti 3D. Tutto qui?

torino.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/0…

♥ 84💬 4 29 mar 2020 · Apri su X →

The conversion could have gone even further: Giorgio Beretta of the Observatory on Light Weapons in Brescia also said in recent days, on Globalist, that he was surprised and saddened "that the government did not invite the state-owned companies of the Leonardo group and Fincantieri to immediately convert at least part of their activity to produce the medical and healthcare equipment that is urgently needed and that Civil Protection is seeking across half the world."

Italy in the top ten arms exporters

SIPRI ✓ @SIPRIorg

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Who were the top 10 arms exporters and their top 3 clients in 2015–19? The #USA🇺🇸, #Russia🇷🇺 and #France🇫🇷 take the top 3 spots. Discover more in the graphic below and in SIPRI's latest Fact Sheet ➡️ bit.ly/2TocWmk

#ArmsTransfers

♥ 9 26 mar 2020 · Apri su X →

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Italy ranked ninth in the top ten of arms-exporting countries over the five-year period 2015–2019, primarily exporting to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. And yet, out of 231 arms and ammunition manufacturing companies, according to Opal, only Siare Engineering today produces those lung ventilators that are in extremely high demand to increase the number of intensive care beds in Italian hospitals. "It would be an important challenge, and we have called for it," observes Vignarca. "We have been told that the military industry is the heart of technology, engineering and research. Now let them prove it: we know of many businesses that have risen to the challenge — companies printing machinery in 3D, there has been a rush among textile industries to produce masks and among cosmetics companies to make sanitising products. Why can't an industry this technologically advanced do the same?"

Sbilanciamoci @Sbilanciamoci

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Chi continua a lavorare?
Dalle imprese che riconvertono le produzioni per fornire mascherine e gel, all’industria militare che non si ferma. Dalla crisi delle cooperative sociali alla necessità di un nuovo Statuto dei lavoratori.
bit.ly/2JmgRub

♥ 6 29 mar 2020 · Apri su X →

The push for reconversion, however, should come not only from below — or in this case from businesses — but also from above, from governments: "Reconversion also depends on the clients, especially for companies like Leonardo and Fincantieri that have those skills: why not ask them, for example, to build cargo ships that could relieve road traffic congestion? They could do other things — you'd just have to ask them; after all, years ago Leonardo was already doing only 40 per cent military production, then it reconverted itself based on demand…".

No, we are not at war

Do we need face masks or F-35s? That is the question Giulio Marcon, spokesperson for the "Sbilanciamoci!" campaign, has been asking in recent days. Face masks, of course — yet we are perhaps confusingly caught up in the political rhetoric of these weeks, the kind that keeps telling us we are at war. "It is a mistake, and not because we are pacifists — Vignarca concludes — it is a truly dangerous leitmotif because it does not reflect what we are actually living through; just ask the doctors from NGOs who go into real war zones. This is a health crisis, we know what the virus does and we can stop it: letting ourselves be swept up in the sense of exceptionalism risks leading us to the wrong diagnosis and the wrong cure."
https://twitter.com/GiulioGallera/status/1242807969173114881
Moreover, Italian healthcare spending fell from 7 to 6.4 per cent of gross domestic product between 2012 and today, while military spending has risen from 1.2 to 1.45 per cent since 2006. And yet, Vignarca concludes, "it seems to us all the more evident in these days that healthcare spending is what truly defends us…".