Source: http://uncleas.livejournal.com/88068.html
Hello everyone,
apparently, Italian separatists from the Veneto region (Venice) built a “tank”, which they intended to use during demonstrations for territory independence. The demonstration was supposed to take place on the famous San Marco square in Venice. Unfortunately (for them), the separatists haven’t had time to deploy this contraption, as they were arrested on the charges of terrorism, attempts to threaten democratic order and illegal building of weapons. In total, Italian police special operations unit arrested 16 people and conducted 33 searches, during which, the “tank” was discovered.
This home-made armored vehicle was created by bolting on armor and adding a gun to a regular tracked tractor, but as for the weapon, the sources vary. According to some Italian news, the separatists tried to equip the tractor with a 12mm gun, but failed. For two of the arrested men, this was not their first time creating ad-hoc armor, as during the events of May 1997, they created an armored truck by welding armor plates on a regular lorry vehicle.
The 1997 armored truck:
Idiots. Idiots never change
I’m italian and I totally agree with you
I’m italian as well.
So, that makes us 3… (italian living in Brazil)
Doesn’t actually look too bad~
Im sure they got the idea from “The A-Team”;-)
My thoughts exactly – take a car or tractor, weld all sort of stuff on it, pwn all the opponents.
wtf is this, garbage truck?
When you need to take out garbage in some more dangerous districts :D
God, for some reason i reminded to Gunslinger Girls.
Seems it a bit too close with reality…
Italy has something of a history of, uh, ‘active grassroots politics’. Cold War shenanigans like Gladio didn’t exactly help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio_in_Italy
Veneto is known for high consumption of alcohol, this is the result apparently.
Such a shame for what once was a prosperous industrial district…
They are still one of the 4 or 5 provinces in Italy that is carrying other 15 on their shoulders.
The idea of separation is not new. Lega Nord was also for separation of northern Italy. Europe is full of these movements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_movements_in_Europe
So back to alcohol… what were you really trying to say here?
lol @ spain. Spain should separate from itself.
In Spain, every town should be a nation … it is probably the only country in Europe where the biggest party in the country was an anarchist one (CNT) in the 30s. So they would love the Taifa kingdoms to be restored.
Stop living in the past and start studying, every single Italian industry of relevance grew up thanks to public subsidy, the nord is of no exception.
How come the others did not grow like that? Perhaps north and Veneto were already industrialized and/or good in ecenomy/trade/banking?
Perhaps you can tell me where is all this public money coming from? Does it grow in tree or someone earned it and it was taxed?
*points to massive italian public debt*
*points to the fact that northern Italian industry was initially inherited from Austro-Hungarian empire*
I can give academic sources if you need, it was part of my university curriculum.
speaking about debt i had that in mind too. but debt has to be paid back (partially at least) and i think those few provinces are paying much more (since they earn more) than the rest of Italy .hell, why dont you split the country, split the debt and see who will and who wont profit.
and about austro-hungarian empire. that is also well known to me. but they did not inherited the industry only but also the mentality which i presume is much different than that from south.
in the end what is wrong if people want to separate from a country?
Historians tend to point at the Italian South’s long period of “new feudalism” since the 1500s or so as a major cause of the stark difference to the North. That phenomenom seems to have pretty consistently screwed over in the long term every region where it developed.
Best suited for a zombie apocalypse :P
wait wat???
zombie apocalypse ????
i though it will start from murica and defeted by murica cause they always the world after all….
so need for such a project :P
poor choice of country to build this in. italy is “democracy”, but if they have build this in third world countries as libya, siria or ukrain, govermant would fall.
Yea, cause all of the 3rd world countries fell to armored tractors.
well if you dont count nato in Libya, yeah, more or less. home made tanks are liberators there ;)
Don’t worry, Italy is going to be third world soon.
Italy is third world now, we have people that vote for Berlusconi and every fucking politician is a big fat pig which is doing nothing for this country, we’re losing everything, there is no work and more than half of Italy is still voting for those idiots.
Ridicolous, nothing else, can’t wait to get out of this country
Import the 3rd world and you will become 3rd world (not the only way but a very reliable method)
Ignorant italians did it, not the small percentage of immigrants.
That’s what we get for trying to screw each other for 150 years.
Epic ! At first glance I thought it was a pre-WW II era thing, re-discovered under a road.
Needs to be added in the European tree as a premium. Or next year’s aprils fools maybe ?
They are well known idiots, so are those even thinking that northern regions of Italy would survive without the manpower southern Italy gives them.
That being said, they shoudn’t be given attention. Idiots have this tendency of dragging you down to their level, and it shoudn’t happen.
Not to mention that lega nord proved to be every bit as corrupt and prone to waste public funds as everyone else when given a chance.
The thing is that north Italy was alwasy more developed and will continue to be, why? Check the map of Europe, north Italy is close to central Europe (and by this all Europe), south is isolated (like Spain), because of this it could never evolved. Nowadays people from south tend to move norther because of highways (it is easier to go home at holidays). Saying that north wouldn’t survive without cheap manpower is stupid thing. People would work there anyway, plus there are workers from other EU contries who would like to work.
Try looking at a geographical map, see that big plain north full of rivers?
That’s the main advantage rather than position itself.
Look at the map, see all the seas around? Economic History 101: water *connects*, and still does.
The South is buggered due to the baggage of wrong turns in socioeconomic developement centuries ago, not geography.
Killdozer’s pathetic cousin.
hahaha
i m italian and this is a very big joke :P
It is not a farfetched idea: http://youtu.be/PZbG9i1oGPA
That is not an illegal tank – it’s a bulldozer/snowplow ;-)
Guess snow plows comes equipped with 12.7mm HMG by default there :)
Still better than New Zealand tank.
Repubblica di Venezia should be free.
Free from what to do what?
Please no Murikkkan “MUH FREEDUM HURR” buzzwording here.
From Italy, of course.
You didn’t answer the question.
Is dat a pizzabox on wheels <3?
Ok, I’ve seen enough political and pseudohistorical chatting in here, so even though I’d like to talk about them a little more in depth (I’m from Venice and I’m quite informed), I’ll just stick with the tanks:
the first “tank” built by the “Serenissimi” (the indipendentist group that landed in S.Marco Square in 1997) is called “Tanko”, and it’s equipped with some sort of hydrant/flamethrower; its number plate is “VT-MB-07″ and stands for “Veneto Tanko Marcantonio Bragadin, Settimo Progetto” (Veneto is the region, Marcantonio Bragadin was a hero of the Republic of Venice of the XVIII century, Settimo Progetto: Seventh Project).
The new “tank”, according to the copies of the tappings that the Italian Police made, is a 25t caterpillar, a FIAT Allis FL 20, and its armor plates are 25mm thick; those documents are a bit incomplete, but some words (they say that there are 7 cm of space between the 25 mm of armor and something unspecified) make me think that there’s more of it, so it must be some sort of spaced armor. By the way, the12mm cannon was actually a single shot hand reloaded steel tube: you can see it here http://mattinopadova.gelocal.it/polopoly_fs/1.8975324!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_660/image.jpg
This would have worked without a gun. Can’t just fire at it, unless it fires back… this would have been a nightmare to deal with for the riot police. Absolutely stupid to add a gun.
They realize Italy has an armed forces which includes main battle tanks? What did they expect to do with this tractor?