Berlusconi’s bounce

A surprisingly good result for Italy’s prime minister

REGIONAL elections on March 28th-29th made several things clear about today’s Italy. The first was that it is not France. Defying predictions, the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, did not get a trouncing at the polls of the kind President Sarkozy suffered a few weeks ago.

Of the 13 regions at stake, Mr Berlusconi’s conservative People of Freedom (PdL) movement took six, regaining four of them from the left. This was a strong performance for the prime minister. The opposition had everything in its favour: a string of sex scandals involving Mr Berlusconi last year; a display, in late February, of extraordinary ineptitude by the PdL when it failed to deliver its list of candidates on time in Lazio, the region that includes Rome, and an economic crisis that last year slashed GDP by 5.1% and destroyed more than 400,000 jobs. One poll conducted two weeks before the election had predicted the left holding all but one of the 11 regions it won in 2005.

The Democratic Party (PD), Italy’s biggest opposition group, did at least narrow the gap with the PdL. Partial results suggested the distance between the parties could be as little as 1%, compared with more than 4% at the 2008 general election. And the left could claim that its vote was eroded in at least one marginal region by the Five-Star Movement, a new outfit led by Beppe Grillo, an anti-Berlusconi comedian and blogger. Mr Grillo’s party had an impressive first outing, winning almost 7% in the left’s heartland of Emilia-Romagna.

Yet this was a disappointing result for the left. It lost four of its 11 governorships, and might well have lost another, Puglia, had the right there held together. In Campania, the region around Naples, the opposition’s share of the vote plunged from 62% to 43%—a damning judgment on ten years of left-wing administration. The left also failed to hold Lazio, despite fielding a strong candidate: Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner.

What went wrong? The mainstream opposition is clearly still incapable of capitalising on the dissatisfaction felt towards the government by many parts of the electorate, particularly the young. Instead of supporting the PD or the smaller, feistier Italy of Principles (IDV) movement, many voters stayed at home. Only 64% bothered to vote, almost 8% fewer than five years ago. And contrary to expectations, the right was not the only victim of the low turnout.

The other explanation for the turnaround is even more disquieting for the left. Two weeks before voting, Mr Berlusconi took to the hustings, and his personal charisma may have tilted the balance. The prime minister was not slow to draw conclusions, reportedly telling aides that in Lazio he had wrought a “sort of miracle”.

But there is a cloud on Mr Berlusconi’s horizon: the success of his ally, Umberto Bossi, whose populist, xenophobic Northern League was the one undisputed victor of these elections. The party won 13% of the vote, up from 8% at the general election, and took the governorships of two northern regions, Veneto and Piedmont. Mr Bossi promptly announced he would press for greater financial autonomy for the north as the price of his continued support. This is unlikely to be the last demand he will make of the prime minister.

As for Mr Berlusconi, he will doubtless see the result as a mandate for his continued attempts to curb the criminal prosecutors who have pursued him since before he entered politics 16 years ago. He may also view the outcome as legitimising his aspiration to a presidential style of government. How far he gets down either of these roads may now depend less on the opposition than on Mr Bossi.

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Full article and photo: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15810534&source=features_box1

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Italy’s African Heroes

WHEN I was a teenager here, kids used to shoot dogs in the head. It was a way of gaining confidence with a gun, of venting your rage on another living creature. Now it seems human beings are used for target practice.

This month, rioting by African immigrants broke out in Rosarno, in southern Italy, after at least one immigrant was shot with an air rifle. The riots were widely portrayed as clashes between immigrants and native Italians, but they were really a revolt against the ’Ndrangheta, the powerful Calabrian mafia. Anyone who seeks to negate or to minimize this motive is not familiar with these places where everything — jobs, wages, housing — is controlled by criminal organizations.

The episode in Rosarno was the second such uprising against organized crime in Italy in the last few years. The first took place in 2008 in Castel Volturno, a town near Naples, where hit men from the local mob, the Camorra, killed six Africans. The massacre was intended to intimidate, but it set off the immigrants’ anger instead.

In Castel Volturno, the immigrants work in construction. In Rosarno, they pick oranges. But in both places the mafias control all economic activity. And the only ones who’ve had the courage to rebel against them are the Africans.

An immigrant who lands in France or Britain knows he’ll have to abide by the law, but he also knows he’ll have real and tangible rights. That’s not how it is in Italy, where bureaucracy and corruption make it seem as if the only guarantees are prohibitions and mafia rule, under which rights are nonexistent. The mafias let the African immigrants live and work in their territories because they make a profit off them. The mafias exploit them, but also grant them living space in abandoned areas outside of town, and they keep the police from running too many checks or repatriating them.

The immigrants are temporarily willing to accept peanut wages, slave hours and poor living conditions. They’ve already handed over all they owned, risked all they had, just to get to Italy. But they came to make a better life for themselves — and they’re not about to let anyone take the possibility of that life away.

There are native Italians who reject mafia rule as well, but they have the means and the freedom to leave places like Rosarno, becoming migrants themselves. The Africans can’t. They have to stand up to the clans. They know they have to act collectively, for it’s their only way of protecting themselves. Otherwise they end up getting killed, which happens sometimes even to the European immigrant workers.

It’s a mistake to view the Rosarno rioters as criminals. The Rosarno riots were not about attacking the law, but about gaining access to the law.

There are African criminals of course, African mafiosi, who do business with the Italian mafias. An increasing amount of the cocaine that arrives here from South America comes via West Africa. African criminal organizations are amassing enormous power, but the poor African workers in Italy are not their men.

The Italian state should condemn the violence of the riots, but if it treats the immigrants as criminals, it will drive them to the mafias. After the Rosarno riots, the government moved more than a thousand immigrants to detention centers, allegedly for their own safety, and destroyed the rudimentary camp where many of them had lived. This is the kind of reaction that will encourage those immigrants to see the African criminal organizations as necessary protection.

For now, the majority resist; they came to Italy to better themselves, not to be mobsters. But if the Africans in Rosarno had been organized at a criminal level, they would have had a way to negotiate with the Calabrian Mafia. They would have been able to obtain better working and living conditions. They wouldn’t have had to riot.

Italy is a country that’s forgotten how its emigrants were treated in the United States, how the discrimination they suffered was precisely what allowed the Mafia to take root there. It was extremely difficult for many Italian immigrants, who did not feel protected or represented by anyone else, to avoid the clutches of the mob. It’s enough to remember Joe Petrosino, the Italian-born New York City police officer who was murdered in 1909 for taking on the Mafia, to recognize the price honest Italians paid.

Immigrants come to Italy to do jobs Italians don’t want to do, but they have also begun defending the rights that Italians are too afraid, indifferent or jaded to defend. To those African immigrants I say: don’t go — don’t leave us alone with the mafias.

Roberto Saviano is the author of “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System.” This essay was translated by Virginia Jewiss from the Italian.

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Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/opinion/25saviano.html

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A piece of cake

Panettone season arrives

How Italy’s bakers cope with seasonal demand

It’s that time again

FLUFFY, dome-shaped, dotted with sultanas and candied citrus peel, panettone is an Italian Christmas cake. Italians will eat about 40m of them over the holiday season this year. They are becoming popular elsewhere too: an estimated 1m have crossed the Atlantic this autumn. Delia Smith, a celebrity chef, recently caused a surge in demand in Britain with a recipe for trifle made with panettone. That is great news for the big manufacturers of the Milanese speciality back in Italy. But catering to the growing and ever more dispersed appetite for panettone requires some deft industrial planning.

The grand cafés in Milan, such as Taveggia, Sant’Ambroeus and Cova, about which Ernest Hemingway wrote in “A Farewell to Arms”, simply squeeze a few batches of panettoni into their normal baking schedules as Christmas approaches. But for industrial producers such as Bauli, which will make 12m this season, that is not possible. Although Bauli is diversified into year-round products like croissants and biscuits, seasonal cakes account for over 50% of its turnover, which is expected to be €420m ($570m) this year.

Instead, Bauli hires lots of seasonal workers to work on dedicated production lines: up to 1,200 of them at peak times, more than its permanent staff of around 800. Production of panettone lasts about four months, starting in September. “Attention to ingredients and the use of new technologies in production give a shelf-life of five months without preservatives,” says Michele Bauli, deputy chairman and a member of the firm’s founding family. Temporary workers are also hired to bake other seasonal cakes such as the colomba, a dove-shaped Easter treat, which keeps them occupied for a month and a half in the spring.

This arrangement appears to be working well for Bauli. Earlier this year it bought Motta and Alemagna, the two big Milanese brands that pioneered the manufacture of panettone in the early 1900s, from Nestlé, a huge Swiss food group. “High investment in research and technology allow us to manage natural fermentation and guarantee a uniform quality that artisanal bakeries find hard to achieve,” says Mr Bauli of his panettoni, which sell for €8 in supermarkets. The fact that the fanciest artisanal bakers charge €30 a cake probably also helps.

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Full article and photo: http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15065541&source=hptextfeature

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Battered Berlusconi

Italian politics

Italy reacts to an assault on the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi

FAMOUS politicians are occasionally pelted with eggs or shoes. But the attack on Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, on Sunday December 13th was of an entirely different order. As he mixed with a crowd after a rally in Milan a man hurled a plaster souvenir—a model of the city’s cathedral—at him from just a few feet away. Mr Berlusconi fell to the ground and when he re-emerged into view his face was smothered with blood.

The 73-year-old prime minister had suffered what one doctor later called “classic boxer’s injuries”. He had a broken nose and cuts on his lips, one of which needed stitches. Two of his teeth were broken and he had a nasty gash just below his left eye. His doctor said he would need about three weeks to recover fully. Mr Berlusconi’s spokesman described him as “tired and suffering”. It was expected that he would leave hospital on Tuesday.

A 42-year-old man, Massimo Tartaglia, was arrested on suspicion of a premeditated assault. Police said they had found in his pockets another souvenir and a chilli-pepper spray. An inventor and electronic engineer from a town just outside Milan, Mr Tartaglia had been undergoing psychiatric treatment for ten years. Neighbours said he was subject to fits of rage. His father said that the family supported the opposition party, but added: “I am not aware that my son hates the prime minister.”

What the incident has made clear, however, is that plenty of other Italians do. Within hours, some 20,000 people had signed up to Facebook groups lauding Mr Tartaglia as a hero. This is not the first time Mr Berlusconi has been assaulted. Five years ago, during his last government, a man who admitted afterwards that he detested the prime minister, hurled a camera tripod at him in Rome.

Most Italian politicians condemned outright the latest attack. But Antonio Di Pietro, a former prosecutor who leads a small anti-corruption party, said Mr Berlusconi “instigates violence”. His remark was widely criticised. But several commentators of right and left alike remarked that, while the attack may have been the work of a mentally disturbed individual, it emerged from a background of growing political tension, much of it revolving around the prime minister.

The previous weekend, sizeable numbers of demonstrators had converged on Rome for a “No Berlusconi Day” at which the prime minister was variously deplored and ridiculed. He has been involved in a string of sex scandals this year. Having lost immunity from prosecution he is once more on trial in two cases involving alleged bribery and fraud. And in recent weeks he has more than once vowed to reform the constitution, apparently in an effort to curb the powers of the judiciary.

The prime minister had apparently been warned of possible trouble in Milan. His spokesman said that, as they were on their way to the rally, Mr Berlusconi had asked him “don’t you think that something could happen?” In the event, he was vigorously heckled and hit back hard at his tormentors. Pointing at the section of the crowd from which the heckling had come, he shouted: “Shame, shame, shame.” Against this background, it is perhaps surprising that he chose to mix with the crowd. But contact with the people is intrinsic to Mr Berlusconi’s populist style.

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Full article and photo: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15105747&source=features_box1

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Under attack from all sides

Italy’s troubled prime minister

Silvio Berlusconi reaches a crisis point in his third stint as prime minister

THOUSANDS of protesters will gather in Rome on December 5th, not against the government’s policies, but against its leader. “No Berlusconi Day”, the latest protest born spontaneously on the internet, underlines the degree to which Italian politics is now defined by attitudes to one man: Silvio Berlusconi. Yet not even Italy’s attention-grabbing prime minister can any longer relish this. For No Berlusconi Day comes after a week in which the billionaire politician has been under relentless attack. This could even prove a turning-point. Italy’s most popular blogger, the comedian Beppe Grillo, thought so. “The countdown has already begun for Berlusconi,” he wrote. “Prepare the bubbly.”

The first blows landed on December 1st when tensions within the ruling majority burst into the open. An opposition newspaper, La Repubblica, posted a recording, made without his knowledge, of remarks by Gianfranco Fini, whose former National Alliance party is now part of Mr Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL). The man who is notionally Mr Berlusconi’s closest ally was caught saying that the prime minister confuses “leadership with absolute monarchy” and “popular consent…with a sort of immunity from any other authority”. As Mr Fini’s spokesman noted, this was merely a franker version of criticism he had already aired. But it raises more starkly than ever a question: can he and his colleagues stick with Mr Berlusconi?

Also on December 1st, a Milan court asked Fininvest, the company at the heart of Mr Berlusconi’s business empire, for a €750m ($1.1 billion) bank guarantee. This was to show it could pay damages awarded to CIR, the holding company of Mr Berlusconi’s arch-rival, Carlo De Benedetti, in a case after the battle in the 1990s over the Mondadori publishing house. Fininvest’s lawyer was found to have bribed a judge to favour its bid. Mr Berlusconi’s company is appealing against the award, but if it fails, it may have to sell assets.

That is not Mr Berlusconi’s only money worry. His wife, Veronica Lario, who wants a legal separation, reportedly seeks annual maintenance of €43m. She broke with her 73-year-old husband after he attended the birthday party of a pretty 18-year-old, Noemi Letizia, in Naples. Neither that scandal nor one involving women allegedly paid to spend the night with him has gone away. Ms Letizia is now a model and Naples is dotted with giant posters of her in skimpy lingerie. Bookshops across Italy are selling a new book written by a call-girl, Patrizia D’Addario, recounting in explicit detail her alleged sexual encounter with the prime minister.

The sex scandals have taken only a limited toll on Mr Berlusconi’s popularity. But he is also a figure in two court cases that could do him more damage. In Milan judges are due to begin hearing a case in which he is accused of bribing a British lawyer, David Mills. This trial was halted in 2008 by a law (of Mr Berlusconi’s design), which gave the prime minister immunity but was overturned by Italy’s constitutional court in October. The new trial and the two appeals allowed under Italian law are unlikely to be over before the case is timed out by a statute of limitations. But Mr Mills has already been convicted of taking the bribe, and has lost his first appeal. His final appeal will be heard next year, by when the court trying Mr Berlusconi should reach an initial verdict. In a shameless bid to slow it down, his lawyers insist that he must be present at every hearing, only to cite reasons why he cannot be because of government business.

In the second case a former mobster, Gaspare Spatuzza, will say in court what he has already reportedly told prosecutors: that Mr Berlusconi did a deal with the Mafia around the time that he entered politics in 1994. Mr Fini was overheard calling this an “atomic bomb”. But its true explosive potential is unclear. Mr Berlusconi’s relationship with Sicily’s Cosa Nostra has long been the subject of conjecture. He once employed a Mafia boss. Marcello Dell’Utri, who set up Mr Berlusconi’s first party, Forza Italia, is appealing against a nine-year jail sentence for Mafia ties.

Yet Mr Spatuzza’s account is hearsay, based on what he claims to have been told by a more senior mafioso. According to leaks, Mr Berlusconi, who furiously denies any link, is accused of promising to relax the tough prison regime that has become the state’s most effective weapon against organised crime. It is still in use. And the Mafia is weaker than ever thanks to some spectacular police operations, the most recent of which were carried out after Mr Berlusconi’s return to office last year.

Indeed, he might plausibly argue that Mr Spatuzza’s claims reflect a vendetta by Cosa Nostra, aimed at a politician it wrongly assumed would do its bidding. Nor is this the only card Mr Berlusconi has. Mr Fini has for months puzzled his followers by arguing for a conspicuously progressive form of conservatism. The disclosure of his true feelings about Mr Berlusconi may leave him isolated, even vulnerable.

Moreover, if pressure from outside becomes intolerable, the prime minister has a final option: to appeal over the heads of critics and enemies alike to voters, arguing that he is the victim of an unholy alliance of left-wing judges, right-wing mavericks and the Mafia. Mr Berlusconi may be looking at a dwindling stack of chips. But he has a joker up his sleeve.

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Full article and photo: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15014270&source=hptextfeature

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Verdict Due in Meredith Kercher Murder Trial

Courtroom Drama in Perugia

A verdict is expected this week in the trial involving the murder of Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student who was stabbed to death in Italy in 2007. The main defendants, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, could be facing life in prison if found guilty. 

Amanda Knox  attends the Meredith Kercher Trial on November 20, 2009 in Perugia, Italy. Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito are charged with the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia on November 1, 2007.

Criminal trials would be easier if a crime left some sort of clue in the face of the perpetrator. But the face of Amanda Knox, a young American, bears no traces of the brutal murder she is accused of committing. Is it because she is innocent? 

The body of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Southwark near London who was studying in Italy as part of the European Union’s Erasmus exchange program, was found on Nov. 2, 2007 in a shared apartment on Via della Pergola on the outskirts of Perugia. She had been stabbed to death. For the past two years, a court in Perugia, Italy, has been trying to match a perpetrator to the few pieces of evidence found in the apartment. 

The Kercher murder would not have attracted worldwide attention if it did not involve another, existential question: Is it possible for two basically likeable, young, attractive and promising people to rape and brutally murder one of their friends — with no apparent motive, no justification and no compassion? 

‘Innocent Angel’ 

“Yes,” says Giuliano Mignini, the lead prosecutor in the case, who has already been talking for six hours. He recounts the details of the crime before reaching his climax: Yes, he says, Amanda Knox committed murder, driven by her narcissism and “coldness,” acting out of “negligible motives,” because she was filled with hate for “this innocent angel.” The two co-defendants, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede, allowed themselves to be influenced by Knox, says Mignini. 

Mignini is demanding a life sentence for Knox, including nine months in solitary confinement — the kind of sentence normally used with Mafia bosses. 

Knox, who is sitting only two meters from Mignini is only about 5 foot 3 inches (1.60 meters) tall. She has her hair loose and is wearing a hooded jacket. A broad-shouldered guard stands behind her. 

For hours, Knox has been listening to the prosecutors as if she were attending a lecture: attentive, her eyebrows pulled together slightly, occasionally making notes. After a while, she becomes less attentive, drawing flowers and patterns on her notepad instead. 

To visualize his theory for the lay judges, Mignini has had an elaborate 23-minute animated film made of the alleged progression of events, like something out of Second Life. It shows the avatars, who bear a striking resemblance to their real-life models, committing a murder. 

Brutal Murder 

According to Mignini’s version of events, Knox and her boyfriend Sollecito, a young Italian from a wealthy family, had spent the evening together in Perugia’s old quarter, where they met Rudy Guede, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast who eked out a living as a small-scale drug dealer. 

Shortly after 11 p.m., the three defendants apparently decided to have one last drink at the apartment on Via della Pergola, where Mercher Kercher had already gone to bed. Kercher, according to the prosecutor, was upset because Knox had brought home two men, something she had apparently done before. According to Mignini, an argument erupted between the two women, over their widely differing lifestyles and over the unpaid rent. Then, says Mignini, Knox slammed Kercher’s head against a cabinet. 

This is how the prosecutor’s animated film depicts the murder: Kercher falls to the floor and the three others begin to undress her. Kercher struggles, Sollecito pulls out his pocketknife and Knox gets a knife from the kitchen. Guede tries to rape Kercher, Sollecito injures her and Knox finally kills her by slitting her throat. The three flee the apartment. Later, Knox and Sollecito return to clumsily stage a burglary and wipe away their fingerprints. 

The indictment is based on circumstantial evidence and very little witness testimony. The witnesses include an Albanian who claims to have seen the couple that night. Investigators found mixed traces of Knox’s and Kercher’s DNA in five locations. Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of the kitchen knife, and a tiny trace of Kercher’s blood was found on the blade, which had been carefully cleaned, almost too carefully. However, there was too little blood to allow for sufficient testing of the sample. 

No Confession and No Motive 

Guede is the only suspect who has admitted to having been at the scene of the crime that night. He claims that he had diarrhea and was sitting on the toilet when the murder was committed. In October 2008, Guede was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He did not implicate Knox and Sollecito at the time, but now, in the appeal proceedings, Guede has testified for the first time that he saw Knox and Sollecito running away from the crime scene together. 

Sollecito is sitting only a few meters from his former girlfriend. His laptop is open and he hunches over documents without looking at the prosecutor. He doesn’t even make eye contact with Knox anymore. Sollecito has not testified during the trial. The two defense teams have successfully prevented any of the defendants from incriminating the others. 

The defense attorneys repeatedly argue that the only evidence is circumstantial, and that there is no clear proof, no confession and no motive. They owe their most important victory to sloppy forensics work. For instance, although investigators found traces of Sollecito’s DNA on the victim’s bra clasp, it had been lying around the crime scene for days after the murder. In addition, the officers did not change their gloves when handling the evidence. These are serious mistakes. 

Key Questions 

Giulia Bongiorno, a top attorney and the legal expert of Italia Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, is a member of the defense team. She has already successfully defended former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti against charges of Mafia involvement. But even such highly paid legal wizards have no answers to certain key questions. 

Neither Knox nor her boyfriend Sollecito has an alibi for the time of the murder. Prosecutors have evidence that both turned off their mobile phones at the same time, before the murder, and then switched them on again in the early hours of the morning — even though both testified that they had slept in until 10 a.m. 

In Italy, the circumstances accompanying a crime are often taken more seriously than in Germany, particularly when the defendants contradict themselves. Knox had initially stated — under pressure from the female police officers who had questioned her, she later claimed — that she had seen Patrick Lumumba, her boss at a bar called “Le Chic,” at the crime scene that night. As a result of this statement, Lumumba, who was later found to be innocent, spent 10 days in prison. 

The Italian newspapers provided detailed accounts of Knox’s behavior immediately after the murder of her roommate, of how she turned cartwheels and did the splits in the waiting room at the police station. Her behavior in the courtroom was also not helpful to her case. She flirted with journalists and seemed more interested in her appearance than the charges. 

‘A Disgusting Death’ 

The jurors were astonished when Knox was asked to explain the details of her description of the murder in her first interrogation, and why she was able to imitate Kercher’s screams as she was being killed. Knox, speaking in the slang of college students, said: “It was a disgusting death. I imagined it was a slow death, a death that was shocking, yucky, disgusting.” 

But Knox’s Madonna-like face is also appealing to would-be helpers and protectors. People who identify with her say that she couldn’t have committed the murder. 

A global group called “Friends of Amanda Knox” is working tirelessly to uncover the supposed machinations of what it calls the “witch trial of Perugia.” The “Inquisitor,” Giuliano Mignini, was attacked so vehemently in the press that he has filed libel actions against two American journalists. The fight over who has the authority to interpret the meaning of certain Internet sites is being bitterly waged. In the eyes of Knox’s supporters, the more overwhelming the circumstantial evidence is, the subtler the conspiracy against her must be. Knox’s parents, who are divorced, have even hired a PR consultant to help them prepare for their television appearances. 

Taken Its Toll 

The announcement of the verdict is expected at the end of this week, after a long trial that has taken its toll on everyone involved, not just the defendants. 

Two of Sollecito’s lawyers gave up their shared office after a dispute, and several forensic scientists who were called to testify left in protest against the defense’s strategy. Kercher’s mother only manages to cope by taking psychiatric medication, while her husband, a journalist, has been forced to write a book about the case to cover their legal fees. 

Knox’s parents have been ruined financially because of their legal costs and the costs of traveling between Seattle and Perugia. When they are in Perugia, they stay in a cheap hotel and live off of convenience food they have brought with them. 

In an interview on US television, Knox’s father said he believes Amanda will be home by Christmas. Few people would share his view. 

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Full article and photo: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,664493,00.html

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Not just Hitler’s fool

History of Italian fascism

A mistress’s diary shows Benito Mussolini was a rabid anti-Semite

The Duce’s lover, and chronicler

“THESE disgusting Jews, I must destroy them all.” Adolf Hitler’s dinnertime conversation? No. This is one of several anti-Semitic rants ascribed to Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, by his mistress, Clara Petacci. Both were executed by partisans at the end of the second world war. The diaries of “Claretta”, published as a book (“Mussolini segreto”) on November 18th, after more than 50 years in the state archives, challenge the comforting view that many Italians have of the Duce as a leader misled by Hitler, his ally. Mussolini’s reputation still matters in a country which, for most of the past eight years, has been led by governments incorporating his “post-fascist” heirs.

In 2004 his son, Romano, published a memoir, “My Father, Il Duce”, which presented Mussolini as a caring family man, largely ignoring the dark side of the leader who had occupied Ethiopia in 1935-36 and, during his final years as Hitler’s puppet, sent thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps. In 2007 Marcello Dell’Utri, a close aide to Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, claimed to have found Mussolini’s diaries. Most historians said they were fakes, but not before Italians were told of contents which, in the words of Romano’s daughter, Alessandra Mussolini, showed “all the efforts made by grandfather to avoid the war”.

Italian television documentaries generally go easy on the Duce too, often reflecting the view that his government’s anti-Jewish “racial laws”, passed in 1938, were an aberration. Mr Berlusconi’s own opinion, given in a 2003 interview, is that Mussolini “never killed anyone”.

So for many Italians, it comes as a jolt to read of Il Duce boasting that “I’ve been a racist since ’21.” His mistress even recorded a remark by Mussolini in 1938 that foreshadowed the Final Solution: “I shall carry out a massacre, like the Turks did”—an apparent allusion to the mass killing of Armenians in 1915.

“People have always assumed the racial laws were a political instrument; not part of a policy in which he sincerely believed. This would suggest quite the opposite,” says Paul Corner, professor of European history at the University of Siena. As a lover’s account, the diaries should be treated with due caution, says Sergio Luzzatto, an historian from the University of Turin. “But they are a kind of wake-up call. They reveal Mussolini’s true gravity and wickedness.”

The Economist

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Full article: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm

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See also:

Sex Diaries Reveal Mussolini’s Soft Side

In bed with Benito

Clara Petacci, mistress of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini’s mistress, Clara Petacci, recorded intimate details of her affair with Il Duce in her journal. Her newly published diary reveals Mussolini as a sex-addicted anti-Semite who found Hitler “very likeable” — and who occasionally suffered from impotence.

On one occasion, Il Duce’s little Führer apparently let him down. “It was as if I were made of wood. Not even a hair on my body was erect,” Benito Mussolini said in amazement. Maria José di Savoia, the wife of the later King Umberto II, had done absolutely everything in her power to seduce the leader of the Italian fascists on the beach. But Benito simply couldn’t rise to the occasion. “I wasn’t a man, but a politician,” he said.

This, at least, was the way Mussolini, who was prime minister of Italy for 21 years and was known as “Il Duce,” later described the scene to his mistress Clara “Claretta” Petacci, who then recorded his words in her diaries.

Those diaries were published for the first time last week, to the considerable consternation of one of Mussolini’s descendents. “This woman would be convicted of stalking today,” says Alessandra Mussolini, Il Duce’s granddaughter. She insists that “not a word” of what Petacci wrote about her grandfather is true.

‘Your Giant’

The Mussolinis never had a very high opinion of Petacci, the only woman who was faithful to Mussolini literally to the bitter end.

Her father was a doctor at the Vatican, and as a teenager she rhapsodized about the “Duce, mio grandissimo Duce.” She became his mistress at 19. In 1936, after a two-year separation, she became Mussolini’s principal and permanent concubine, the only one who was entitled to bodyguards, a chauffeur and quarters at the Palazzo Venezia.

She called him “Ben,” and he referred to himself, none too modestly, as “your giant.” He would complain to Claretta, his confidante, about the tight boots he always had to wear. A sentimentalized version of her story was made into a film in 1984, with Claudia Cardinale as the lead.

Mussolini was as obsessed with sex as he was with his own power. Until the day of his removal from power, July 25, 1943, he had “a woman brought to him every day, every afternoon,” as his valet Quinto Navarra recalls. The women were recorded in the guest book as “fascist visitors.”

“There was a time when I had 14 women and took three or four them every evening, one after the other,” Mussolini said. But now, he insisted, Claretta was the only one. “Amore,” he said, “why do you refuse to believe me?”

Mussolini spent much of the night before March 13, 1938, when Austria was annexed into the German Reich in the Anschluss, trying to persuade Claretta not to be jealous, and his efforts were successful. As she wrote: “We make love as we have never made love before, until he has heart pain, and then we do it again. Then he falls asleep, exhausted and blissful.”

‘Your Precious Little Body Shall Only Tremble for Me’

Mussolini himself was intensely jealous and had his “bambina’s” every movement observed. “Your precious little body shall only tremble for me,” he told Claretta, who was 29 years his junior. Petacci wrote to pass the time she spent waiting for him. She wrote quickly and copiously, writing almost 2,000 pages in 1938 alone. Writing was “therapy” for Petacci, according to publisher Mauro Suttora, “because she spent her days doing nothing but living for Mussolini.”

For the most part, however, the pillow talk Petacci describes, interspersed with diatribes against Mussolini’s wife Ráchele, is a record of sex addiction, infatuation and hypocrisy. In one instance, for example, Mussolini weeps as he describes the horrors of the war in Spain, where 150 children had just been killed during an air raid. “Just think, entire buildings destroyed, as if they were made of cardboard.” But Italy had just ordered the intensification of the bombing.

There have been several questionable publications in recent years that portray Mussolini as a driven man, a tragic figure coerced into persecuting the Jews by Hitler. But Petacci’s notes from their love nest leave little doubt that Mussolini was anti-Semitic through and through. “I have been a racist since 1921,” Mussolini confided to Petacci in August 1938. “I don’t know how they can believe that I am merely imitating Hitler, who wasn’t even born at the time. One must give the Italians a sense of race, so that they don’t produce any mongrels, so that they don’t ruin what is beautiful in us.”

‘Hitler Really Likes Me a Lot’

After returning from the Munich Conference in 1938, he summoned Claretta. “The Führer is very likeable,” Il Duce told his mistress. “Hitler is an emotional person at heart. When he saw me, there were tears in his eyes. He really likes me a lot.”

Mussolini was, however, somewhat irritated by Hitler’s fits of rage. “Sparks flew from his eyes, his body was shaking and he could only pull himself together with difficulty. I, on the other hand, remained completely calm.” In Mussolini’s opinion, it was he who had saved the conference. “I was always the one who brought them back to the matter at hand, they got lost in discussion. Hitler sincerely adores me.”

After the conference, Mussolini and Petacci went on a vacation to the beach. Mussolini, while flipping through French newspapers, suddenly got into a bad mood. “These disgusting Jews, they should all be destroyed,” he said. “I will create a bloodbath the way the Turks once did. I will isolate them and imprison them. They will come to know the steel fist of Mussolini. It is time that the Italians realize that can no longer exploited by these snakes.”

Five weeks later, he had pushed through a new race law that declared “mixed marriages” invalid. When Pope Pius XI objected, he became enraged. “Never before has a pope done so much harm to religion as this one. He has already lost almost the entire world.” And, he continued, “he does dishonorable things. How can he say that we are the same as the Semites? We have fought with them for hundreds of years, and we hate them.”

It is an age-old story and not one that is exclusive to Italy: The story of short, powerful men who wear their hearts between their legs, surround themselves with showgirls and, in the end, are only attracted by anything that is even more powerful and unscrupulous than they are. One sentence that Petacci attributed to Mussolini, “I am like Napoleon,” could just as easily have been uttered by one of his modern-day successors, someone who likes to be called, not il Duce, but il Cavaliere or “Papi.”

Sweet Nothings

After he was deposed in 1943, Mussolini, with Hitler’s help, established the puppet state of the Republic of Salò on Lake Garda. Carletta remained behind in Rome, but the couple eventually reunited and, after fleeing and being arrested by Italian partisans, she and Il Duce were executed together in April 1945.

Petacci entrusted her diaries to the countess Rina Cervis. In 1950 the police unearthed them from where they had been hidden in the countess’s garden. After that, they were kept in a box in the national archive, not to be released until 70 years after they had been written.

But was it truly just “pillow talk,” as some Il Duce experts contend? And, in Petacci’s case, did the old Roman saying hold true: Tell your lover everything, just not the truth?

“Of course, the sweet nothings aren’t worth discussing. But the supposed remarks on politics are interesting,” says Lutz Klinkhammer of the German Historical Institute in Rome. “When it came to politics, why would Mussolini want to hide anything from her?” he asks. “Petacci wasn’t interested in politics. For instance, her notes on Il Duce’s anti-Semitism essentially confirm the conclusions of our most recent research.”

When the miniature Salò Republic came to an end in April 1945, Mussolini offered his mistress the option of fleeing to Spain, but Petacci declined. A short time later, she was hanging upside-down next to Il Duce above the Piazzale Loreto in Milan, shot by partisans. A passerby is believed to have said: “One thing you can say for her: She did have nice legs.”

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Full article and photo: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,663384,00.html

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Libyan Leader Hands out Korans to Hundreds of Italian Beauties

Girls for Gadhafi

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Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi doesn’t shy away from pomp.

Known for his quirkiness, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi may have outdone himself this week. In Italy for a global hunger summit, the colonel requested hundreds of “beautiful girls from all of Italy,” saying he wanted to “exchange views.” They got a Koran for their trouble.

When it comes to quirkiness, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has set the bar high. Should he wish to grace the headlines, it is no longer enough for him to arrive on foreign visits with his gaggle of female bodyguards and his Bedouin tent.

But in his narcissism, Gadhafi is nothing if not inventive. In Rome for a United Nations summit on global hunger, Gadhafi has come up with an ingenious plan to liven up his evenings.

Last week, according to the Italian newswire Ansa, an Italian agency began looking for hundreds of “beautiful girls from all of Italy” at the behest of the Libyan dictator. According to the advertisement, they were to be “cute, between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 feet 7 inches) and well dressed. No mini-skirts or cleavage.” Gadhafi, the advertisement went on, wanted to “exchange views” with the young women and “honor them” the Libyan way. For their trouble, the women were to get €50 ($75) and a Koran.

Some Guy Who Looks Like Jesus

On Sunday night, however, it became clear just what Gadhafi meant by “exchanging views.” Ansa reports that 200 women — minus those weeded out for not having dressed appropriately — filed in to the Libyan Embassy before being subjected to a lecture from the Libyan leader about the benefits of Islam. After the lesson was over, he invited them to convert.

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Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is in Rome for the International Summit of Food Security. In preparation, he asked an Italian agency to find him hundreds of young women to “exchange views” with him in the evening.

According to an advertisement placed by the agency, the women were to be “cute, between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 feet 7 inches) and well dressed. No mini-skirts or cleavage.”

The women were to be paid 50 euros for their trouble and given a copy of the Koran.

On Sunday and Monday evenings, hundreds of women showed up. But instead of a discussion, they got a lecture — with Gadhafi holding forth on the glories of Islam. The women were also invited to convert.

In addition to the Koran, Gadhafi handed out copies of his “Green Book.” The book, first printed in 1975, outlines Gadhafi’s views on democracy and makes forays into political theory and economics.

According to one participant at the event, as quoted by the Italian newswire Ansa, Gadhafi said: “You believe that Jesus was crucified, but that didn’t happen. God took him to the heavens. They crucified some guy who looked like him.”

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According to participants quoted by Ansa, Gadhafi told his audience that “you believe that Jesus was crucified, but that didn’t happen. God took him to the heavens. They crucified some guy who looked like him.”

One participant, identified by Ansa only as L.M., said “I was expecting a party, not a lecture.” Her companion added, “I feel offended because of my religious faith.”

Gadhafi is one of 60 heads of state and government in Rome for the International Summit of Food Security. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened the conference on Monday by highlighting the connection between world hunger — a problem faced by roughly a billion people around the globe — and climate change, the subject of another major international conference at the beginning of December in Copenhagen.

“The food crisis of today is a wakeup call for tomorrow,” Ban said. “By 2050 our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people…. By 2050 we know we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable.”

Graffiti in the UN

Many were critical of the fact that, aside from host Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, no leaders from the world’s richest nations had bothered to attend the summit.

Gadhafi’s curious post-conference social activities are consistent with his reputation for being eccentric in the extreme. Shunning hotels, Gadhafi often prefers to stay in an extravagant “Bedouin” tent in a central city park during state visits. He has also been wont to bring along huge contingents of attractive female bodyguards on state visits.

Most recently, Gadhafi called attention to himself by ripping up the United Nations charter at UN headquarters in New York and scrawling graffiti on his seat in the assembly hall. During a visit to Rome in June of this year, Gadhafi requested a meeting with 700 Italian women from “politics, industry and culture.”

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Full article and photos: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,661561,00.html

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How Italy Beat the World to a Smarter Grid

Energy Efficiency

Enel’s high tension insulators. Italy’s dominant utility has become the surprising world leader in the development of a smarter electrical grid.

An aggressive rollout of intelligent electrical meters is saving Italy’s Enel 750 million dollars per year — and cutting customers’ bills

After several false starts, 2010 finally could be the year when smart meters go global. The technology, which lets energy companies and consumers more closely monitor their electricity consumption, has many champions. The US government has earmarked $4.5 billion from the stimulus package to subsidize the rollout of smart meters nationwide. European Union politicians are pushing hard to connect 80 percent of the region’s homes and businesses to smart meters by 2020. Even emerging giants like India and China aim to install the technology in new buildings.

But with billions of dollars on the line, policymakers don’t want to make costly mistakes. Many of them are thus eyeing the remarkable experience of Italy, which in less than a decade has become the surprising world leader in the development of a smarter electrical grid. Some 85 percent of Italian homes are now outfitted with smart meters — the highest percentage in the world and more such devices than exist in the whole of the US. Utilities worldwide, such as San Francisco’s PG&E and Florida’s FPL Group, are eager to learn how Enel pulled off its smart meter revolution.

Back in 2001, Enel — the country’s dominant utility — started a five-year program to install smart meters across its customer base of 40 million homes and businesses. “We wanted to improve efficiency, create higher margins, and help customers reduce their energy bills,” says Livio Gallo, Enel’s director of infrastructure and networks, who oversaw the smart meter rollout. Another motivation, according to outside experts, was to throttle rampant power theft and other forms of fraud.

Time-of-Day Pricing Info

By 2006, Enel had invested $3 billion in the initiative, which included meters of its own design, based on technology from San Jose (Calif.) based Echelon, that send usage readings automatically to the central office and display time-of-day pricing to customers. The Italian utility can now collect customer data and manage its energy network remotely, instead of sending out costly technicians. And improved data on consumers’ electricity habits permit Enel to run its power plants more efficiently. All told, the utility says it is reaping annual cost savings of $750 million from the new technology — allowing it to recoup the infrastructure investment in just four years.

Meanwhile, the introduction of smart meters has given Enel customers greater control over their energy bills. Typically, the meter is installed in a convenient place in the home — say, in a kitchen cupboard or the laundry room. When electricity prices are high, for instance during the peak evening period or on cold winter nights, the smart meter informs household members of higher rates, allowing them to alter their habits (such as postponing a load of laundry until the next morning) to avoid big charges. Analysts figure that attentive Enel customers have been able to cut their bills by as much as one-half by keeping close tabs on energy prices and usage.

“Smart meters give customers more control over how much they want to spend,” says Michael Pollitt, assistant director of the Electricity Policy Research Group at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School.

The dual benefits for companies and consumers explain why politicians have embraced the technology. According to ABI Research, the worldwide installed base of smart meters will more than triple from 2008 to 2014, to 180 million units. The EU, with its population nearing 500 million and mandatory installation targets for 2020, represents 64 percent of that figure, or 115 million smart meters. North America is No. 2 at 45 million units, with Asia Pacific and Latin America third and fourth, respectively. Among the leading makers of smart meters today are US companies such as General Electric, Itron, and Sensus Metering Systems, as well as Luxembourg’s Elster and Switzerland’s Landis+Gyr.

Whirlwind Installation

With so many smart meters to be installed in the near future, Enel’s Gallo figures other utilities can learn a lot from the Italian experiment. First of all, he recommends that companies roll out the technology as quickly as possible. Instead of gradual installation, a whirlwind program, often in just three or four years, helps achieve a fast return on investment. That may involve higher up-front costs, but it gives utilities quick access to consumer data and greater control over their energy network, which can lead to ancillary cost savings. “In the long run, it’s more efficient than installing smart meters over a decade,” says Gallo.

The other lesson from Enel’s smart meter rollout is more basic: focus on the customer. When the company first started installing the technology, recalls Gallo, management spent time educating the public about its benefits. That involved town hall meetings and discussions with consumer protection groups, which had voiced concerns over the collection of data about individuals’ energy habits. While assuaging people’s doubts, Enel was able to explain that most customers’ bills would go down because of smart meters — helping increase customer loyalty.

Yet despite the cost savings, consumer advocates still caution that not everyone will benefit from smart meters. Vulnerable groups, particularly the poor and elderly, may become victims to price spikes. And privacy concerns that utilities could use the data collected through smart meters without the permission of customers still dog many potential rollouts.

Yet Enel’s successful adoption of smart meters shows the benefits that the technology has to offer, both to companies and to their customers. Says Rick Hanks, smart meter practice leader for Britain and Ireland at consultancy Accenture: “Smart meters are a vital part as everyone looks to become more energy-efficient.”

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Full article and photo: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,661744,00.html

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La Dolce Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of bribery, tax evasion, corruption and subversion of the press. His wife has left him on the grounds that he consorts with prostitutes and holds orgies at his villa in Sardinia. He makes embarrassing jokes (and then repeats them, as he did with the one about President Obama’s “suntan”) and periodically disappears to undergo more plastic surgery. He is at war with the Italian legal establishment, with almost all of the journalists who don’t work for him, and with the Catholic Church. Last week the Italian constitutional court lifted his immunity from prosecution, which means Italians can look forward to a whole new series of lawsuits and scandals.

Yet by far the most interesting thing about the Italian prime minister is this: Italians keep voting for him. The somewhat ragged coalition he leads — Il Popolo della Libertà, the People of Freedom — won a decisive general election victory in 2008 and trounced the opposition in European parliamentary elections in June 2009. Whether or not you agree with his daughter, who says he “will go down in the history books as the longest-serving and most loved leader in the history of the Italian republic,” you cannot argue with the fact that he has been the dominant force in Italian politics since he first became prime minister in 1994. But why?

There seem to be several answers, some of which are connected to the weird impasse that brought him to power in the first place. In the early 1990s, Italy’s political system unraveled following a series of judicial investigations that revealed profound corruption permeating the entire Italian political class. As a result, all of the major political parties and all of the leading political figures vanished overnight, sometimes literally: Bettino Craxi, leader of the Italian socialist party for nearly 20 years, fled to Tunisia to escape prison and eventually died in exile.

Berlusconi stepped into the vacuum, promising to talk about issues no one else had dared touch — notably mass immigration from North Africa — and to deal with problems no one else could solve, including the convoluted tax laws and notorious bureaucracy. But in retrospect it is clear that Berlusconi (whose record on actually carrying out any of his reforms is pretty slim) has also brought the counterrevolution: He had made his career under the old system — as had many other people — and, once in power, he brought an end to the judicial purge. Italians, journalist Beppe Severgnini told me, “were afraid of their own bravery.” They were also afraid of chaos, and in a country that has had, on average, a different government every year for the past six decades, Berlusconi, a familiar figure for many years, has come to represent a kind of stability. The Italian left is disorganized, the center-right is paralyzed, and a lot of people prefer the devil they know.

Of course, Berlusconi also has at least one tool that none of the others have: popular television. He controls three mainstream channels and various digital channels because he owns them. He also in effect controls state television because he is the prime minister. There are newspapers, magazines and late-night talk shows that criticize him, but they don’t reach the same numbers of people: Much like his friend Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, he doesn’t try to exert influence over all of the media, just the media that reach most of the voters.

That may not determine the outcome of elections, but it sure helps. It has also made Italy the center of the largest movement for press freedom outside the former Soviet Union.

But in the end, even that dominance can’t explain all of his votes. There has to be something appealing about Berlusconi himself as well. Severgnini has called him a “mirror” of modern Italy, and one sees what he means: Nouveau riche (like almost everyone in the country) and not afraid to show it off (remember that Sardinian villa); a lover of women and soccer (he owns the team A.C. Milan); loyal to his friends (even protecting them from the law); and clearly enjoying himself at those parties and on his yacht, Berlusconi leads a kind of caricature version of the ideal Italian life. And precisely because he is a caricature, he gets away with things that other people can’t. One hears Italians regale one another with Berlusconi stories and then howl with laughter.

Besides, with Berlusconi as your prime minister, you don’t have to take yourself too seriously. You don’t have to trouble yourself with geopolitics or the state of the planet, or poverty and failed states. You can stay at home, remain unserious and argue about the latest legal scandal. And maybe that, too, is part of the Italian prime minister’s appeal.

Anne Applebaum, Washington Post

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Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101202390.html

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Italy’s Constitutional Court Overturns Berlusconi’s Immunity

An Italian court overturned an immunity law shielding Mr. Berlusconi from a corruption trial.

Italy’s Constitutional Court struck down a controversial immunity bill that would have protected Italy’s top officials from criminal prosecution, dealing a severe blow to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Mr. Berlusconi now faces the possibility of legal proceedings being brought against him that had been suspended under the immunity law. These include criminal trials for alleged corruption, false accounting and fraud. Gaetano Pecorella, Mr. Berlusconi’s lawyer, said in an interview that the premier denies all of the charges that have been suspended under the immunity bill. Mr. Pecorella also said the premier had no intention of calling early elections or resigning from office.

The Constitutional Court’s decision, which was issued in a six-line statement late Wednesday, ruled that the immunity law unfairly placed Mr. Berlusconi above the law. The court also ruled that Italy’s Parliament had overstepped its powers in passing the law in July 2008, because the Parliament didn’t seek a constitutional amendment, according to the statement.

“The Berlusconi government has the duty to carry out its agenda … especially in this delicate phase for the economy,” Industry Minister Claudio Scajola said in a statement released after the court ruling.

The immunity law was one of the first bills Mr. Berlusconi’s government pushed through Parliament after he started his third term as prime minister in April 2008, giving him a respite from legal battles. By July 2008, both chambers of Parliament had passed the law, but it was subsequently challenged by Italian prosecutors who questioned its constitutionality.

From left, Niccolo Ghedini, Piero Longo and Gaetano Pecorella, lawyers for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, are seen at a session of Italy’s Constitutional Court in Rome on Tuesday to review a law shielding some elected officials.

Mr. Berlusconi is unlikely to step down, his lawyers and political allies say. Polls show that nearly half of Italian voters support him, and Italy’s center-left opposition is without clear leadership. However, Mr. Berlusconi is smarting from five months of intense scrutiny of his private life, and the specter of criminal prosecution could put further strain on his ability to govern, some analysts say.

“He’ll be forced to divide his time between governing and the courtroom,” said Alessandro Campi, director of the right-wing think tank Fare Futuro and a political scientist at the University of Perugia.

During his 15 years in politics, Mr. Berlusconi has been beset by criminal investigations, indictments and trials on charges ranging from false accounting to corruption. The premier has long denied all of the charges against him, arguing that he is the victim of left-leaning judges. In some of the cases, Mr. Berlusconi was acquitted at trial. In some others, the statute of limitations on the alleged crimes expired; because of that, he either wasn’t charged, or the charges were dropped when the statute of limitations expired.

However, there are three cases pending against the premier. Mr. Berlusconi faces one criminal trial on charges of fraud and false accounting brought in the 1990s stemming from his role as owner of private broadcaster Mediaset SpA, and a second criminal trial on charges, brought in 2006, of bribing one of the witnesses in the Mediaset-related trial. Separately, following an investigation by magistrates that began in late 2007, Mr. Berlusconi was charged with incitement to corruption in a case involving alleged attempts to influence the votes of left-leaning senators. Mr. Berlusconi denies all of the fraud, false accounting and corruption charges against him, said Piersilvio Cipolotti, one of his lawyers, in an interview. All three of these proceedings have have been suspended under the immunity law. Once Mr. Berlusconi is no longer in office, or if the law is struck down, they would restart.

For decades Italian politicians enjoyed immunity from criminal investigations, but the shield was eliminated in the early 1990s amid public outrage over the “Clean Hands” bribery scandals that eventually brought down Italy’s reigning political establishment.

In 2003, Mr. Berlusconi first attempted to erect a legal shield for top officials including the sitting prime minister, the president and the heads of the lower and upper houses of Parliament, during their term in office. The law was swiftly struck down by Italy’s Constitutional Court, which ruled that the law unfairly placed officials above the law. Weeks after returning to office in the spring of 2008, Mr. Berlusconi introduced a new immunity law that, unlike its predecessor, allowed top officeholders to opt out of its protections. Months later, prosecutors in Milan filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court.

On Tuesday, lawyers representing Mr. Berlusconi and the Italian government delivered arguments before the Constitutional Court. Glauco Nori, a lawyer for the government, argued that drawn-out legal proceedings could distract Mr. Berlusconi from his duties as prime minister. Niccolo Ghedini, Mr. Berlusconi’s personal lawyer, argued that Mr. Berlusconi’s duties as prime minister risked infringing on his right to defend himself in court.

“The premier is not getting special treatment. He’s getting a slight postponement to allow him to exercise the mandate given to him by the people,” said Mr. Cipolotti.

The suspended case involving fraud and false accounting charges relates to arrangements by Mr. Berlusconi to buy film rights in the 1990s on behalf of Mediaset. Mr. Berlusconi has long denied and continues to deny both charges in that case, Mr. Cipolotti said.

In connection with that case, prosecutors in Milan have also charged Mr. Berlusconi with corruption for allegedly ordering the payment of more than $600,000 to his co-defendant, British lawyer David Mills, allegedly in exchange for false testimony. In February, Mr. Mills was convicted of perjury and accepting the bribe and sentenced to 4½ years in prison. Mr. Mills is appealing the conviction. A hearing in Mr. Mills’s appeals case is scheduled for later this week. Mr. Berlusconi denies ordering the payment, Mr. Cipolotti said.

The charge of incitement to corruption has also been suspended under the immunity law. Mr. Berlusconi denies the charge, Mr. Cipolotti said, describing the allegation as “science fiction. “The case is pure politics,” Mr. Cipolotti said, adding that all of the proceedings against Mr. Berlusconi “are bound to start up again” if he loses his immunity.

Mr. Cipolotti said the total charges in every pending investigation and trial against Mr. Berlusconi could result in a maximum total prison sentence of up to 21 years, though any penalties that might eventually be leveled against the premier are unlikely to reach the maximum level.

Stacy Meichtry, Wall Street Journal

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Full article and photos: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125493262656871085.html

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Muzzling the messengers

Italy and the free press

ON OCTOBER 3rd a demonstration will be held in Rome to defend media freedom—not in a remote dictatorship, but in Italy itself. Journalists who have called the protest have good reason to worry. In Freedom House’s 2009 survey of media independence, Italy was downgraded to “partly free” and placed 73rd in a list of 195 countries (only just above Bulgaria). In this respect, at least, Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy is distancing itself from western Europe and becoming more like weaker democracies farther east.

The Rome demonstration was called to protest over writs issued by the prime minister against two left-leaning newspapers. Mr Berlusconi is demanding damages of €1m ($1.5m) from La Repubblica for insisting on answers to ten questions about his private life. And he wants €2m from L’Unita (plus €200,000 apiece from five named journalists) for its articles, including one saying he abused his control of the media. L’Unita might close if it loses.

Mr Berlusconi’s writs seem to be part of a drive to flush out the few remaining rebel enclaves in the Italian media. His reply to talk of a conflict between his media interests and his political role has long been that he is still subject to plenty of criticism. Yes, he controls three of Italy’s seven main terrestrial television channels; another three, operated by the state-owned RAI, answer to a parliament dominated by his supporters; and he or his family own a leading daily, Il Giornale, plus a weekly news magazine and the country’s biggest publishing house. But of Italy’s main dailies, La Repubblica is firmly hostile, whereas Corriere della Sera and La Stampa are intermittently critical. The third RAI channel is run by the centre-left, and RAI’s radio network often provided unfavourable coverage. Even the evening news bulletin of Mr Berlusconi’s flagship channel, Canale 5, has run stories that embarrass him.

Since Mr Berlusconi returned to power last year, however, much has changed. Enrico Mentana, the news anchor long seen as a guarantor of Canale 5’s independence, walked out in April 2008, saying that he no longer felt “at home in a group that seems like an electoral [campaign] committee”. Journalists close to Mr Berlusconi have been appointed to edit RAI’s radio news and the bulletins of its first channel. And RAI has withdrawn legal support from its only real investigative programme.

Notwithstanding such efforts to appease the government, Mr Berlusconi’s allies have just launched an unprecedented assault on RAI, after one of its current-affairs programmes gave airtime to a woman who claims to have been paid to spend the night with the prime minister. Up to now, RAI has been seen as answerable only to a parliamentary committee. But on September 26th the government demanded that its most senior executives attend a meeting to “verify the impartiality” of the programme. A day later, Il Giornale and another newspaper close to the prime minister appealed to readers to stop paying the licence fees on which RAI depends for almost half its income.

Not since Mussolini’s time has an Italian government’s interference with the media been more blatant or alarming. Journalists, and other Italians, have every reason to protest.

The Economist

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Full article: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14560942&source=hptextfeature

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Italian coffee culture: a guide

If you don’t want to be taken for a tourist in Italy, you should drink coffee as and when the locals do.

The idea of not drinking coffee is as foreign to Italians as the idea of having to explain its rituals.

I once met an Italian who didn’t drink coffee. He made light of the fact, but you could see that he was tired of having to explain his disability every time some new acquaintance uttered the standard Italian greeting: “Prendiamo un caffè?” (“Fancy a coffee?”). His breezy but faintly passive-aggressive manner concealed, I suspect, deep pools of self-doubt and underground lakes of wounded masculine pride. Vegetarians develop the same nonchalant yet haunted look when travelling in places like Mongolia, where meat comes with a side-dish of meat. But this Italian guy wasn’t a visitor, he was local. He was the Mongolian vegetarian.

Coffee is so much a part of Italian culture that the idea of not drinking it is as foreign as the idea of having to explain its rituals. These rituals are set in stone and not always easy for outsiders to understand.

In fact, as in any self-respecting cult, they are made deliberately hard to comprehend, so that the initiated can recognise each other over the bar counter without the need for a curious handshake (which would only lead to stubborn cappuccino stains).

Some might object that the Italian coffee cult is now a worldwide church with branches in London, Dubai and Bora Bora. But although the Arabica coffee blend is often perfect, the cups just the right size and shape, the machines as Made in Italy as they come, Italian coffee bars outside Italy almost always adapt to the host culture – just like the vast majority of Chinese restaurants outside China. If you take your cue from your local high street espresso purveyor, you risk straying from the True Path on arrival in Italy.

Here, then, for those who fancy going native in true Lorenzo of Arabica style, are the Ten Commandments of Il Culto del Caffè.

1. Thou shalt only drink cappuccino, caffé latte, latte macchiato or any milky form of coffee in the morning, and never after a meal. Italians cringe at the thought of all that hot milk hitting a full stomach. An American friend of mine who has lived in Rome for many years continues, knowingly, to break this rule. But she has learnt, at least, to apologise to the barman.

2. Thou shalt not muck around with coffee. Requesting a mint frappuccino in Italy is like asking for a single malt whisky and lemonade with a swizzle stick in a Glasgow pub. There are but one or two regional exceptions to this rule that have met with the blessing of the general coffee synod. In Naples, thou mayst order un caffè alla nocciola – a frothy espresso with hazelnut cream. In Milan thou can impress the locals by asking for un marocchino, a sort of upside-down cappuccino, served in a small glass which is first sprinkled with cocoa powder, then hit with a blob of frothed milk, then spiked with a shot of espresso.

3. Which reminds me, thou shalt not use the word espresso. This a technical term in Italian, not an everyday one. As espresso is the default setting and single the default dose, a single espresso is simply known as un caffè.

4. Thou can order un caffè doppio (a double espresso) if thou likest, but be aware that this is not an Italian habit. Italians do drink a lot of coffee, but they do so in small, steady doses.

5. Thou shalt head confidently for the bar, call out thine order even if the barista has his back to you, and pay afterwards at the till.

6. If it’s an airport or station bar or a tourist place where the barista screams “ticket” at thee, thou shalt, if thou can bear the ignominy, pay before thou consumest.

7. Thou shalt not sit down unless thou hast a very good reason. Coffee is a pleasurable drug, but a drug nevertheless, and should be downed in one, standing. Would thou sit down at a pavement table to take thy daily Viagra?

8. Thou shouldst expect thy coffee to arrive at a temperature at which it can be downed immediately as per the previous commandment. If thou preferest burning thy lips and tongue or blowing the froth off thy cappuccino in a vain attempt to cool it down thou shouldst ask for un caffè bollente.

9. Thou shall be allowed the following variations, and these only, from the Holy Trinity of caffè, cappuccino and caffé latte: caffè macchiato or latte macchiato – an espresso with a dash of milk or a hot milk with a dash of coffee (remember, mornings only); caffè corretto: the Italian builder’s early morning pick-me-up, an espresso “corrected” with a slug of brandy or grappa; and caffè freddo or cappuccino freddo (iced espresso or cappuccino) – but beware, this usually comes pre-sugared. Thou mayst also ask for un caffè lungo or un caffè ristretto if thou desirest more or less water in thine espresso.

10. Anything else you may have heard is heresy.

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Full article and photo: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/italy/6246202/Italian-coffee-culture-a-guide.html

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Superman strikes back

Silvio Berlusconi’s troubles

The prime minister takes on his tormentors at home—and abroad

“I’M NOT only not sick,” said Silvio Berlusconi on September 1st, referring to a hint by his estranged wife. “I’m a Superman!” Like the comic-book hero, Italy’s prime minister has been lashing out at his tormentors three months after being thrown on the defensive by a sex scandal.

His latest target is the European Commission, after a spokesman said it wanted clarification of an incident on August 30th, when migrants trying to reach Italy were turned back to Libya. Intercepting migrants is a crucial part of the government’s new policy, so this intervention incensed Mr Berlusconi. He declared that, at the next European Union summit, he would demand a ban on all public statements by commissioners and their (presumably redundant) spokesmen. If his proposal that only the commission’s president and his spokesman be authorised to speak were not accepted, he said, Italy would bring EU business to a halt.

Brussels is not alone in seeking to hold Mr Berlusconi to account. On August 28th a centre-left daily, La Repubblica, disclosed that Mr Berlusconi was suing it for €1m ($1.4m). Its misdemeanour was to seek answers to ten questions about his private life and its implications for the country. It also emerged that Mr Berlusconi plans to sue a French magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, over an article on the scandals. Other foreign media may be in the firing line.

But the attack that caused the most stir was one from which Mr Berlusconi swiftly dissociated himself. On August 28th his family’s newspaper, Il Giornale, led with a story about the editor of the Catholic bishops’ daily, Avvenire, which had censured Mr Berlusconi over his private life. It repeated a claim that in 2004 Dino Boffo had paid a fine for harassing a woman in a case with homosexual overtones. Mr Boffo retorted that he was unjustly convicted.

Il Giornale was striking not just at a newspaper, but at one of Italy’s most powerful institutions. The leaders of the Catholic church closed ranks in defence of Mr Boffo. A dinner planned by Mr Berlusconi with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was cancelled, as was a proposed meeting with the pope. The Italian bishops expressed “full confidence” in Mr Boffo and, some days later, the Vatican disclosed that the pope had conveyed his “esteem, gratitude and appreciation” to the head of the bishops’ conference.

The outcome is a stand-off between the church and Mr Berlusconi. A similar cooling of relations marked the beginning of the end of Italy’s previous centre-left government. But Mr Berlusconi has some useful cards to play. One reason for the pope’s initiative was to quell reports of differences between the Vatican and the Italian bishops over their (relatively muted) criticism of the prime minister’s private life. The pope’s own newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has yet to utter a word of censure.

The Vatican may fear that Mr Berlusconi could retaliate by dropping legislation to restrict living wills or blocking a hostile parliamentary inquiry into the use of mifepristone, an abortion pill. There is also a risk that his secular followers might push a bill to give legal rights to unmarried couples, including gays.

But Mr Berlusconi’s strongest card may be an ethical one. On September 1st an Italian court made public details of the sentence against Mr Boffo, which appears to confirm the substance of Il Giornale’s claim. Two days later, Mr Boffo resigned. The only surprising thing was that Italy’s bishops had seen fit to keep him on in such a high-profile and vulnerable position for five full years after his conviction.

The Economist

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Full article: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14366008&source=hptextfeature

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A Pesky Paparazzo Stalks the Wily Berlusconi

Italian Seeks Big Bucks for Racy Photos; ‘I Have a Nose for Him’

When Italian Prime Minister Silvio throws a party at his villa here on the island of Sardinia, Antonello Zappadu is usually hiding in the bushes, dressed in military fatigues and snapping photos with a high-power zoom.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi casts an admiring glance at Miss Italia 2008 Miriam Leone during their appearance on his talk show.

Over the years, Mr. Zappadu has taken thousands of pictures of Mr. Berlusconi at Villa Certosa, including some of the prime minister strolling hand-in-hand with an array of women and aboard a raft on the villa’s artificial lake.

A court ordered Mr. Zappadu’s agency to pay a €10,000 ($14,000) fine.

“I have a nose for him,” boasted the stocky 52-year-old photographer, peering through binoculars one Sunday recently.

Mr. Zappadu’s latest photos have trained a telephoto lens onto Mr. Berlusconi’s private life. Published in El Pais, a Spanish newspaper, they include shots of topless women and a former Czech prime minister sunbathing naked at the villa. The photos were followed by statements by women who claimed they were paid to attend parties hosted by the prime minister, which Mr. Berlusconi denied.

Mr. Berlusconi isn’t hurting politically; he is still Italy’s most popular politician. But he is under pressure to provide serious answers.

Mr. Zappadu’s latest photos have gotten the photographer himself into legal trouble. Mr. Berlusconi’s lawyer has filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Zappadu for alleged violation of privacy and blackmail.

Mr. Zappadu, says he’s just doing his job. “I’m a photographer. I sell. OK?”

Mr. Berlusconi has charged the foreign media with fanning his troubles. In one episode, he accused News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal, of orchestrating personal attacks on him through the media in retaliation for the Italian government’s decision in late November to raise the value-added tax on satellite TV subscriptions, a market dominated in Italy by News Corp.’s Italian pay-TV unit Sky Italia. Rupert Murdoch, CEO and chairman of News Corp., called the allegations “nonsense” in an interview on Fox Business Network earlier this month. A spokesman for News Corp. declined to comment on the matter.

Mr. Zappadu’s history with Mr. Berlusconi is long and varied. The two first met outside one of Mr. Berlusconi’s estates in 1994, shortly after the billionaire was elected prime minister the first time. Mr. Zappadu’s focus on Mr. Berlusconi intensified after Veronica Lario, Mr. Berlusconi’s second wife, publicly chastised him in January 2007 for flirting with a former TV starlet at a public ceremony. “If I weren’t already married, I would marry you right now,” the billionaire said to her. Mr. Zappadu sensed an opportunity and started staking out Mr. Berlusconi’s villa. A few weeks later, on Easter weekend, Mr. Zappadu’s long-range lens photographed Mr. Berlusconi strolling through the villa’s gardens — in the company of five women.

Mr. Zappadu’s work appeared on the cover of Oggi magazine, which is owned by RCS MediaGroup SpA, also the publisher of Italy’s largest daily, Il Corriere della Sera. Photos of the women sitting on Mr. Berlusconi’s knees and holding hands with him were accompanied by the title: “The Harem of Berlusconi.” Shortly after the photos appeared, Niccolo Ghedini, a lawyer representing Mr. Berlusconi, filed a complaint with Italy’s privacy watchdog. After an attempt to mediate among Mr. Ghedini, Mr. Zappadu and RCS, the watchdog ruled that Mr. Zappadu unfairly photographed Mr. Berlusconi within the confines of his private home. It also ordered RCS not to publish — in any of its newspapers or magazines — any photos it had bought from Mr. Zappadu. The privacy authority declined requests for an interview.

Those photos included hundreds of additional shots that Oggi hadn’t yet published.

Mr. Berlusconi went further, filing an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the photographer. Although Italy has one of the most stringent privacy laws in Europe, most of the rules don’t apply to public figures.

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Extreme Close-up

1980: Silvio Berlusconi meets his future wife, actress Veronica Lario, after spotting her on stage at a play in Milan.

1990: Mr. Berluconi and Ms. Lario marry.

April 1994: Mr. Berlusconi is elected to his first term as Italian prime minister.

January 2007: Ms. Lario rebukes her husband in a rare open letter for flirting with women at a public TV awards ceremony. Mr. Berlusconi promptly apologizes.

April 2007: Mr. Berlusconi is photographed by Antonello Zappadu with women sitting on his knees at his private villa in Sardinia.

May 2008: Mr. Zappadu begins photographing Mr. Berlusconi’s personal guests arriving on a state-owned plane at a Sardinia airport. He also snaps more pictures of the guests at Mr. Berlsconi’s private villa.

April 2009: Mr. Berlusconi attends the 18th birthday party of aspiring model Noemi Letizia on the outskirts of Naples.

May 3: Ms. Lario announces she is seeking a divorce in an interview with Turin daily newspaper La Stampa.

May 27: Mr. Berlusconi’s lawyers seek to block the publication of Mr. Zappadu’s photos, filing a complaint with Italy’s privacy watchdog.

Mr. Berlusconi attended a recording of an Italian television program on May 5 while a portrait of Ms. Lario was displayed behind him.

June 5: Left-wing Spanish newspaper publishes Mr. Zappadu’s photos.

 

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When Mr. Berlusconi was elected for the third time in April 2008, Mr. Zappadu began to track arrivals and departures of government planes at an airport near Villa Certosa — and of the goings-on at the villa. Among the pictures taken that spring were shots of musicians and singers getting off a state-owned plane; of topless women; and a nude poolside photo of Mirek Topolanek, then-prime minister of the Czech Republic. Attempts to shop the photos around to Italian publications were unsuccessful. Mr. Zappadu showed some of his pictures to the left-leaning weekly L’Espresso and to right-leaning weekly Panorama, which is owned by FininvestSpa, the Berlusconi family holding company. They weren’t interested, according to editors at both magazines.

This past spring, however, Mr. Berlusconi’s personal life was again the center of attention. The Italian media reported the premier’s presence at the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring model who lives with her parents outside Naples. Ms. Letizia had also been a guest at a New Year’s Eve bash at Mr. Berlusconi’s villa, according to a spokesman for the premier. A lawyer for Ms. Letizia didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

Photographer Antonello Zappadu, above, met Berlusconi shortly after he was first elected prime minister in 1994. Mr. Zappadu’s professional pursuit intensified in 2007 after the prime minister’s wife publicly chastised her husband for flirting with another woman.

Mr. Zappadu sensed an opportunity and tried to shop the photos around again. Italian society magazine Gente met with Mr. Zappadu but wasn’t interested, according to the magazine. The photographer went back to Panorama, the Berlusconi-owned magazine.

Maurizio Belpietro, editor of Panorama, said in an interview that he still has no interest in buying Mr. Zappadu’s photos. But he thought it would be wise to alert Mity Simonetto, an adviser to Mr. Berlusconi who handles his image. “I told him I’d been informed of his photos and that I wanted to see them,” Ms. Simonetto said in an interview.

The photographer emailed a sample of about 40 photos to Panorama’s offices with a draft contract requesting €1.5 million. Recalling the photos, Ms. Simonetto said she made the following judgment: Mr. Berlusconi was fully clothed and the nudity depicted among his guests wasn’t cause for scandal — or any type of further negotiation.

Mr. Ghedini, the lawyer, thought otherwise. He filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Zappadu, alleging that the €1.5 million request amounted to attempted blackmail. Acting on the complaint, prosecutors seized hundreds of the photographer’s photos. Upon viewing them, prosecutors also placed Mr. Berlusconi under investigation. The alleged crime: possible abuse of state funds to ferry private guests by government plane to Villa Certosa. Last week, prosecutors requested that the probe be shelved, saying the guests simply hitched a ride with Mr. Berlusconi and that the flights did no damage to the state.

Mr. Zappadu is still under investigation and faces up to six years in prison for violation of privacy and attempted blackmail. He denies any wrongdoing and says he’s cooperating with the investigation.

The investigation hasn’t stopped Mr. Zappadu from selling his work. Before the probe was launched, Mr. Zappadu stashed thousands of photos at agencies outside Italy, including the handful he sold to El Pais.

After months of scrutiny, Mr. Berlusconi struck a defiant note on Thursday. “This is how I’m made, and this is how Italians want me,” Mr. Berlusconi told a news conference, adding: “I won’t change.”

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Full article and photos except photo (1): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124586548125448559.html

Photo (1): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1056607/Pictured-Berlusconi-finds-hard-eyes-new-Miss-Italia-filming-talk-show.html

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Berlusconi denies ‘spicy’ affair

Ms Letizia sports the gold and diamond pendant given to her by the PM

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has denied having an affair with an underage girl and said he would resign if he was caught lying about it.

Mr Berlusconi said that if someone asked had he had “a spicy or more than spicy” relationship with a minor, his answer would be “absolutely not”.

“I have sworn this on the lives of my children,” he told reporters in Rome.

Mr Berlusconi, 72, is under pressure to explain his relationship with Noemi Letizia, 18, an aspiring model.

His wife, Veronica Lario, announced earlier this month that she was divorcing him after it was reported that he had attended Ms Letizia’s 18th birthday party in Naples and given her an expensive necklace

“I cannot remain with a man who consorts with minors,” she said.

Mr Berlusconi said he had only gone to Ms Letizia’s party because he happened to be in Naples that day and was an old family friend.

But photographs later emerged of them together at several social events last year, when she was 17. The prime minister also confirmed that she had stayed at his villa in Sardinia and attended a new year’s party there.

‘Furious’

During a meeting with reporters in Rome on Thursday, Mr Berlusconi repeated previous denials that he had had sex with a minor.

BEING MRS BERLUSCONI In Feb 2007, Veronica demanded a public apology from her husband for his flirting, to which he replied with a written one In the 2004 biography Veronica’s Tendency she revealed that “Silvio eats lunch while attached to the phone and dinner is the same” Veronica rarely accompanies her husband on foreign trips The couple met in 1980, wed 10 years later and have three children in their 20s Mr Berlusconi has said he was smitten when he first saw the 24-year-old actress on stage.

“I have answered the only question that anyone has the right to ask me: ‘Prime minister, have you had a, let’s say, spicy, or more than spicy, relationship with an underage girl?’ The response is: ‘Absolutely not,’” he said.

“I am aware that, if this were perjury, I would have to resign a minute later.”

The age of consent in Italy is 16, but people under 18 are considered minors.

The comments come a day after the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Dario Franceschini, asked Italians at a European Parliament election rally: “Would you want your children brought up by this man?”

The question provoked a furious response from Mr Berlusconi’s children, who have rarely made public statements in the past.

“Angry?” asked Marina, his eldest daughter from his first marriage and chairman of publisher Mondadori, in an interview for Corriere della Sera.

“I am indignant. Furious. No, this is enough. This time, I don’t intend to stay silent. My father has always worked a lot, but there has never been a time, a single time, in which I did not have him near when I needed him.”

Her younger brother, Mediaset deputy chairman Pier Silvio, demanded to know how Mr Franceschini dared make such a “bad taste” remark.

The premier’s three youngest children also said in a statement that they had been “brought up in a family atmosphere that was balanced and full of values”.

“Politics should not turn to judging the role of a father, which has nothing to do with politics,” Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi said.

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Full article and photos: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8072646.stm

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Berlusconi denies ‘steamy affair’ with teen

Italian PM says he would have to resign if caught lying about relationship with 18-year-old, an explosive political issue.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, facing demands to explain his relationship with a teenage girl, denied he had a “steamy affair” and said he would have to resign if caught lying about it.

The 72-year-old conservative leader’s relationship with an 18-year-old has become an explosive political issue after his wife Veronica demanded a divorce because of his womanizing and said he was “not well.”

Mr. Berlusconi has denied any wrongdoing or lying in his apparently contradictory explanations of why he went to Noemi Letizia’s 18th birthday and gave her an expensive necklace. He has promised to explain it all in parliament but he has not set a date.

He told reporters in Rome that if someone asked whether he had “a relationship, let’s say steamy or more than steamy, with an underage girl,” his answer would be: “Absolutely not.”

“I have sworn it on the life of my children. And I said that I am aware that, if this were perjury, I would have to resign a minute later,” said Mr. Berlusconi, who was elected for a third time last year and enjoys strong support in opinion polls.

The flamboyant media magnate normally has the support of the Roman Catholic establishment in Italy, but it has criticized him for setting a bad example to the country’s young people with his behaviour and his very public second divorce. The age of consent for sex in Italy is 16 but people under 18 are considered minors. Ms. Letizia turned 18 last month and was photographed with Berlusconi at her birthday party, and at other social events last year when she was 17.

The opposition has targeted Mr. Berlusconi’s behaviour ahead of European elections in June and centre-left leader Dario Franceschini, on the campaign trail, asked bambini-loving Italians: “Would you have your children raised by this man?”

The comment proved too much for Mr. Berlusconi’s offspring. They rarely make public statements — they refused to take sides when Veronica asked for a divorce this month — but they reacted with fury to Mr. Franceschini’s remark.

“Angry? I am indignant. Furious. No, this is enough,” Marina, Mr. Berlusconi’s daughter from his first marriage and chairman of publisher Mondadori, which is part of Berlusconi’s business empire, told Corriere della Sera newspaper. “This time, I don’t intend to stay silent … My father has always worked a lot, but there has never been a time, a single time, in which I did not have him near when I needed him.”

Son Pier Silvio, deputy chairman of the Berlusconi family broadcasting company Mediaset, demanded to know in a statement how the opposition leader dared make such a “bad taste” comment and said he shared his father’s values.

Mr. Berlusconi’s three children with Veronica Lario also put out a statement saying they were “brought up in a family atmosphere that was balanced and full of values.”

“Not everything can be put to an opinion poll. As for the question on whether a father is capable of raising a child, the only ones who can respond to that are the children themselves,” Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi Berlusconi said in the statement.

“Politics should not turn to judging the role of a father, which has nothing to do with politics.”

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Full article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/berlusconi-denies-steamy-affair-with-teen/article1157081/

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The battle of the Berlusconis

Veronica Lario has referred to her husband as Italy’s Napoleon

In Italy’s latest soap opera – Silvio Berlusconi’s divorce – former actress Mrs Berlusconi may well have landed one of the greatest roles of her life: as a role model to her Italian sisters.

Mr Berlusconi has demanded that his wife apologise to him

Fifty-two-year-old Veronica Lario – her former stage name – has shaken Italian society with her public criticism of Italy’s head of government, and the demand for a divorce from her partner of 29 years.

For the long-suffering Mrs Berlusconi, revelations that her 72-year-old husband attended the birthday party of an 18-year-old lingerie model who calls him Papi – Daddy – was the latest in a series of public humiliations.

Apart from one public outburst in 2007, she has remained silent about the PM’s behaviour. But enough is enough, she says. She recently denounced his behaviour, his political methods and a culture of machismo that she said offended women’s dignity.

“I can’t go on being with a man who consorts with minors… He is not well,” she said after his appearance at Noemi Letizia’s party in Naples.

She also voiced her anger over plans by Mr Berlusconi’s coalition to line up several attractive young women for June’s European Parliament elections, describing the party’s list as “shamelessly trashy” and a “dangerous degradation of Italian politics”.

Maria Laura Rodota, a commentator with Corriere della Sera’s popular online forum on pop culture and politics – in Italy, the two go hand-in-hand – says Mrs Berlusconi has “struck the most formidable and effective challenge to Berlusconi’s mystique to date”.

But, she says, “it’s extraordinarily sad that it had to be his wife who denounced him and not a female politician or the leader of the opposition”.

Defending Veronica

The “Noemi and the Papi” episode together with the election affair have left many Italian women feeling uncomfortable.

For once, the dividing lines between right and left have been blurred. Influential female intellectuals and commentators from across the political spectrum have rallied to Veronica’s defence – albeit on small comment-led newspaper, websites and TV programmes.

Even right-wing politician Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of Il Duce, supported the PM’s wife, saying that Italian women had “emerged in a very bad light from this episode”.

Ms Letizia sports the gold and diamond pendant given to her by the PM

But there are few signs yet of the marital saga harming Mr Berlusconi politically.

“Italians identify totally with him,” said Giuliano Ferrara, the editor of il Foglio Newspaper, which is partly owned by Veronica Lario.

Mr Berlusconi controls much of the mainstream media, and since her public comments, the first lady has taken a battering in the press. Libero, for one, ran a 30-year-old picture of the former actress topless on stage under the headline: “Veronica Ungrateful Showgirl”.

“She now must apologise for having embarrassed me,” proclaimed her husband in a charm offensive on national and foreign TV channels.

His position, shared by many Italians, is that she should have kept quiet about the reasons of her divorce, as it was a private matter and not a political one.

Privacy issues

The former cruise crooner, turned media tycoon, turned right-wing politician, has rewritten the rules of Italian politics over the past 15 years, blurring the lines between TV, showbiz and politics.

Gender issues researcher Lorella Zanardo suggests that over his three mandates, Mr Berlusconi media interests have shaped a popular culture that distorts images of women.

Mr and Mrs Berlusconi were not often seen out in public together

But, while the media has fed Italians for years with gossip and reality TV intrusions into people’s privacy, most Italians think he should be granted total privacy when it comes to his own conduct.

According to one recent poll, he still enjoys 66% popularity – even though the majority of Italians, 67%, defend Veronica Lario.

However, another poll published this week on the La Repubblica website, suggested his rating had slipped three points since the controversy over Noemi began.

Responsibility as a mother

“Berlusconi’s media are now engaged in what appears to be a massive spin operation to divert attention, in order to bury the first lady’s serious criticisms and accusations,” says Corriere della Sera’s Ms Rodota.

“But… I record a growing, ebullient cross-party female indignation online. It might be a minority, but it is significant in a country which is ranked almost last in Europe, with Turkey, for the freedom of the press, and I think in the long term the ‘Noemi-gate’ will have political consequences.”

Mrs Berlusconi – until now unanimously respected as an intelligent woman known for her discretion and liberal and anti-war views – said she was compelled to act because of her responsibility towards her three children.

To the girls Barbara, 25, and Eleonora, 23, she wants “to show them that their mother can defend her dignity as a woman”, and to Luigi, 20, to teach him that “respect for women must be one of the most important values for a man”.

Meanwhile, on social networking site Facebook, “Veronica for President” groups multiply.

She appeared to speak for many of the 62% of Italians who did not vote for Mr Berlusconi, when she said: “I have come to wonder what kind of country we live in. Through some strange alchemy, this country appears to forgive all and justify all for its new emperor.”

Some commentators have noted that Mr Berlusconi’s party quietly dropped most of the attractive female candidates from its European list, after Mrs Berlusconi’s outburst.

It may be a small victory, but it’s certainly seen by some as a symbolic one.

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Full article and photos: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8044711.stm

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The Crime of the Cavaliere

http://abluteau.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/the-crime-of-the-cavaliere/

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Ex-Government Worker Sues for Immunity in CIA Rendition Case

A former U.S. government employee, accused by Italy of participating in a CIA-organized kidnapping of a militant Egyptian-born cleric in Milan, has sued the State Department demanding that it invoke diplomatic immunity to quash any prosecution.

Italian officials charge that Sabrina De Sousa, 53, was one of 26 U.S agents who grabbed Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, in February 2003 and flew him to Egypt, where he says he was imprisoned and tortured. Nasr has since been released.

De Sousa, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in India, says she was ordered not to travel abroad because of the fear of arrest, preventing her from visiting her mother in India and siblings in Europe. De Sousa quit her job in the federal government in February.

Italian officials charge that the disappearance of Nasr was part of a CIA rendition program in which the agency abducted suspected terrorists and took them to third countries for interrogation.

De Sousa worked as a consular official in Milan and said in court filings that she was on a vacation at the time of Nasr’s disappearance.

“Even if the allegations were true, though, her actions clearly fell within the scope of her official duties and thereby entitle her to diplomatic/consular immunity,” according to the lawsuit, first reported in the New York Times.

Asked whether she had been a CIA employee, her attorney, Mark Zaid, said De Sousa had been “a federal employee working for the State Department.”

The CIA declined to comment. A spokesman for the State Department said he could confirm her stated employment record but would not comment further about her because the case is in litigation.

De Sousa said in a phone interview that she repeatedly asked government agencies why diplomatic immunity had not been invoked and was forced to sue because she did not get a satisfactory response.

“This is a political thing that needs to go away once and for all,” she said of the prosecution.

Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro has issued arrest warrants for 26 U.S. officials, including De Sousa, named as one of the four principal figures in the alleged kidnapping. All were indicted in 2007.

The prosecution was set back this year when an Italian court said certain evidence was inadmissible because prosecutors had violated state secrecy laws, but prosecutors have vowed to press forward. A hearing is set for this month.

De Sousa said the Italian prosecution raises important concerns for government employees overseas. “If you’re going to fight this war on terror, are you going to protect your people?” she asked.

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Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/14/AR2009051404100.html?hpid=sec-nation

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The Berlusconisation of Italy

The Italian prime minister seems more strongly entrenched than ever

IF ANYBODY is having a good recession, it is the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Italy is certainly suffering: the IMF expects GDP to fall by 4.4% this year, a bigger drop than in Britain, France or Spain. But Mr Berlusconi remains significantly more popular than most other European leaders. His approval rating this month, measured by IPR Marketing for La Repubblica’s website, actually rose to 56%.

Part of the explanation is that, after more than a decade of underperformance relative to the European Union, Italians are used to economic distress. And since their banks were less enterprising (or reckless) than those in America and Britain, none has collapsed so far, sparing Mr Berlusconi the politically lethal fallout from using taxpayers’ money to save the hides of rich financiers. Yet his approval rating had been slipping—until the earthquake that hit L’Aquila on April 6th.

Mr Berlusconi’s response to the earthquake seems to explain the latest uptick. He spent almost a week in the disaster zone and even offered to accommodate some survivors in his own homes. On April 23rd he went a daring step further, saying he would switch the venue of the G8 rich-country summit in July to L’Aquila, partly so as to divert funds towards the city’s reconstruction. On the same day he announced a seemingly generous €8 billion ($10 billion) in aid for the earthquake zone (it has since emerged that this will be spread over no less than 22 years).

Mr Berlusconi’s response to the earthquake highlights another factor that his supporters claim explains his poll ratings. As one minister puts it, “this is the first government since the second world war to give Italians decisive leadership of a kind that is entirely normal in Europe.” That contrasts with his previous period in power in 2001-06, when he had to deal with repeated internal revolts. Many were caused by the centrist Union of Christian Democrats, which split from the centre-right coalition before the April 2008 election that returned the right to power.

Mr Berlusconi’s present government is far more homogenous. In March its two biggest components—his own Forza Italia and the National Alliance, which grew out of the neo-fascist movement—united in a single entity, the People of Freedom. Of the two other coalition parties, only the Northern League has the parliamentary clout to bring the government down.

To Mr Berlusconi’s critics, the explanation of his popularity is quite different. It is that he is reaping the benefit of a long-term influence on the views of his compatriots that no contemporary politician can rival. Every Italian under 30 has grown to political maturity in a country where Mr Berlusconi and his family control half the television output, one of four national newspapers, one of two news magazines and the biggest publishing house.

His hold on the media has changed attitudes and even the meaning of words. When he entered politics in 1994, few gave credence to his claim to be a victim of conniving communist judges; now it is widely believed. Fifteen years ago, an azzurro represented Italy in international sporting competitions and a moderato was a centrist. Today, an azzurro is somebody who represents Mr Berlusconi in parliament; a moderato anybody who votes for him.

The subtle Berlusconisation of Italy may help to explain a trend that has swept the country in the past 12 months. It is not only that the opposition has divided and the unions are split. It is that a conviction has gripped much of society that the prime minister will stay in power indefinitely. “I have to say that I see no alternative to Silvio Berlusconi,” declared Gabriele Muccino, a film director and one of several intellectuals and artists who have recently voiced similar opinions. This is ironic in a country whose politicians spent 15 years working towards a two-party system. It augurs ill for future economic reforms, in which Mr Berlusconi has shown little interest. And it is also troubling in any democracy, especially when seen in the context of the prime minister’s own words and actions.

His new party is as undemocratic in its form as Forza Italia was. He was acclaimed, not elected, leader at a founding congress last month that empowered him to appoint the executive. Mr Berlusconi routinely denigrates the judiciary and, since returning to power, has become increasingly dismissive of the legislature as well. His government’s use of procedural devices to cut short parliamentary debate has even been criticised by his ally, Gianfranco Fini, former leader of the National Alliance and now speaker of the lower-house Chamber of Deputies. Mr Berlusconi has sought to justify this by arguing that the myriad checks and balances in the system make Italy ungovernable. But, as President Giorgio Napolitano retorted recently, such views pointed to “authoritarian solutions”. After all, the system was put in place precisely to prevent the return of a dictator like Benito Mussolini.

Few believe that there is a serious risk of reverting to those dark days. But several recent books have highlighted the extent of Mr Berlusconi’s ascendancy and asked questions about how he intends to exploit it. Massimo Giannini, author of one, argues that his aim is “not a dictatorship in the classic sense, but…a modern form of post-ideological ‘totalitarianism’”.

The most powerful reason to worry comes in Mr Berlusconi’s own words. At his new party’s inaugural congress, he reminded the 6,000 or so delegates that “sovereignty belongs to the people”. But he also claimed that his was “the only party that defines the identity of our people”. In fact, he said, “we have to be a people even more than a party”. That smacks of pure populism.

Mr Berlusconi’s supporters dismiss all such misgivings, insisting that his sole long-term objective is the presidency (albeit, perhaps, after a constitutional reform to make it more powerful). On April 25th, the day when Italians mark the 1945 Allied liberation, the prime minister offered support for the view that he aspires to lead the nation, not just the right. He took part for the first time in the celebrations. Later he withdrew a controversial bill that would have given honours and pensions to Mussolini’s diehard militia.

But Mr Berlusconi also took the opportunity to suggest that the name of the holiday should be changed. It should not be the day of liberation but of freedom. As in, for example, the People of Freedom?

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Full article and photo: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13576329&source=hptextfeature

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Wife’s poll rage hits Berlusconi

Mr Berlusconi and his wife have had public arguments before

Italy’s prime minister and his wife have clashed publicly after reports his party planned to field attractive young women as European election candidates.

Veronica Lario said the plan amounted to “shameless rubbish” being put on “for the entertainment of the emperor”.

Silvio Berlusconi said she had been misled by left-wing media reports that TV stars, actresses and an ex-beauty queen were among potential candidates.

But only one of the so-called “show girl” candidates made the party list.

Ms Lario vented her feelings in an email to the Italian news agency Ansa, which was then picked up by the national newspapers.

She said it was “to entertain the emperor” that beautiful young women were fielded to stand as candidates for Mr Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party in June’s European Parliament election.

“But behind the facade of curvaceous feminine beauty, what is even more serious is (Mr Berlusconi’s) impudence and lack of reserve” she continued, it offends “the credibility of all women”.

Mr Berlusconi later told reporters that he was sorry his wife had apparently believed “what she read in the papers”.

He said his party was aiming to select female candidates because “we want to renew our political class with people who are cultivated and well prepared”.

Candidates standing for the PdL would be unlike the “malodorous and badly dressed people who represent certain parties in parliament”, Mr Berlusconi added.

Ms Lario, who is Mr Berlusconi’s second wife and herself a former actress, said she wanted to make clear that “myself and my children are victims and not accomplices in this situation. We must endure it and it causes us to suffer.”

It was later announced that Barbara Matera – an actress, TV announcer and former Miss Italy contestant – was the only one of the “showgirl candidates” as the Italian media dubbed them to have made the final list.

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Full article and photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8026437.stm

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See also:

Silvio Berlusconi’s wife attacks his ‘shameless’ election stunt

Silvio Berlusconi’s wife has condemned her husband’s plan to field an array of female television celebrities and a former beauty queen as candidates in June’s European elections, branding it “shameless rubbish to entertain the Emperor”.

Veronica Lario, herself a former actress, said that the Prime Minister had shown a “lack of discretion in his exercise of power which offends the credibility of all women”.

Last week Mr Berlusconi held a meeting of his ruling centre-right Popolo della Liberta (PdL) party to vet candidates for the European elections. They included a TV starlet, a former beauty queen and a former Big Brother contestant. “I want it to be quite clear that my children and I are victims and not accomplices in this situation,” Ms Lario said. “We have to endure it, and it makes us suffer.”

Mr Berlusconi responded that his wife, with whom he has had three children, was the victim of “manipulation by the Left”, which had spread unfounded reports about his advancement of women from the world of showbusiness. He claimed that his party was picking women candidates because “we want to renew our political class with people who are cultivated and well prepared” — unlike the “malodorous and badly dressed people who represent certain parties in Parliament”.

Ms Lario, 52, has publicly criticised her husband before during their 19-year marriage, which is Mr Berlusconi’s second. Two years ago she wrote an open letter to her husband demanding an apology after he was overheard telling Mara Carfagna, a former topless model and variety show presenter, that if he were single he would marry her straight away.

Mr Berlusconi duly apologised but fielded Ms Carfagna as a candidate for his centre-right alliance in last year’s national elections, and made her Minister for Equal Opportunities when it won.

The Italian media was buzzing with speculation about the timing of Ms Lario’s latest attack. On Sunday Mr Berlusconi attended the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, a woman with whose family the Prime Minister is friendly. Her mother, Anna, runs a perfume shop in Naples.

Ms Letizia said that the Prime Minister was “a family friend. He’s known me since I was very, very small. He loves me like a daughter.” Mr Berlusconi had given her a gold and diamond pendant for her birthday and a CD of songs he has recorded.

Ms Lario told an Italian news agency that her husband’s decision to attend the celebration was uncharacteristic. “It surprised many people, including me, mainly because he has never attended the 18th birthdays of any of his children even though he was always invited.” Mr Berlusconi said that he had telephoned to say he would be in Naples and was invited to the party at short notice.

Ms Lario’s marriage to the Prime Minister is unconventional. She is rarely seen with him, maintains a villa of her own near Milan, and takes separate holidays. She has denied rumours that they are to divorce.

Mr Berlusconi said that the row over the MEP candidates was overblown and the idea for putting the women on the list came from the party and he “had nothing to do with it”.

After the row the party announced yesterday that Barbara Matera, an actress, TV announcer and former Miss Italy contestant, was the only one of what the Italian press have dubbed “showgirls” to have made the final candidates’ list.

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Full article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6191103.ece

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Crowds march against Naples mafia

Thousands of Italians have marched through Naples in one of the largest anti-mafia protests of recent years.

Police said 100,000 people gathered for the protest, held annually on the first day of spring.

Names of some of those killed by the mafia were read out over loudspeakers as people honoured friends and loved ones, carrying flowers along the route.

They called for more police action against mafia clans, who have killed more than 900 people in recent decades.

Speaking to the crowds Antonio Bassolino, president of the Campania region, declared the mafia “are not eternal.”

Both the traditional Sicilian Mafia and the Camorra, the Naples-area organisation, “can be beaten”, Mr Bassolino told the protesters.

He called for more resources for regional police forces left to battle organised crime, adding: “Our byword should be ‘continuity,’ because we must fight 365 days a year against the mafia.”

But some victims of Mafia violence said they remained sceptical about prospects for the future.

“I am angry and less optimistic than 17 years ago, when my brother was slain,” Rita Borsellino told the AFP news agency.

Her brother, a judge, was assassinated in the centre of the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

“The Mafia have changed, they have become more dangerous, better inserted into the web of power,” she added.

Influence spreading

Among those who joined the march was investigative journalist Roberto Saviano, the author of mafia expose Gomorrah – now an internationally-acclaimed film.

The 29-year-old has received death threats since publishing his book, which focuses on the Neapolitan Camorra, and now lives under police protection.

Nationwide interest in the mafia was rekindled with the release of the film, Gomorrah, which won multiple prizes at a number of film festivals.

It tells the tale of a ruthless, adaptable organisation, that is mostly a work of fiction but which closely mirrors Italy’s reality.

Organised crime in Italy is dominated by four mafia clans: Sicily’s Cosa Nostra; the Camorra around Naples; Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta; and the Sacra Corona Unita, in Puglia.

The Italian authorities have hit the Cosa Nostra hard in recent years, says the BBC’s Mark Duff in Milan, but other groups maintain their grip and have seen their influence spread.

The global economic downturn has also thrown up fresh money-making opportunities for the mafia – such as lending cash to credit-starved businessmen.

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Full article and photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7957269.stm

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Pope Benedict XVI joins fight over right to die of coma victim Eluana Englaro

Eluana Englaro

Doctors were removing all life support last night from an Italian woman in a coma whose “right to die” has triggered a constitutional crisis and provoked an intervention from the Pope.

As Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Government was rushing an emergency decree through parliament ordering the restoration of medical care for Eluana Englaro, the clinic in Udine that is treating her ignored appeals for a delay.

“We are proceeding with the total suspension of artificial nutrition,” Carlo Alberto Defanti, her neurologist, said. At her father’s request, medical staff at the clinic began reducing water and nutrients through feeding tubes on Friday to Ms Englaro, who has been in a vegetative coma for 17 years. Doctors said that her “path to death” would almost certainly become irreversible by the end of this week and perhaps sooner. She was being given sedatives to calm muscle spasms, they said.

Giuseppe Campeis, a lawyer for Ms Englaro’s father, Beppino, who won a decade-long legal battle last September to let her die, said: “We are continuing with medical procedures aimed at ensuring a gentle death.”

The case has sparked an open power struggle between Mr Berlusconi and President Napolitano. In a last-minute move on Friday Mr Berlusconi sided with the Vatican and drew up an emergency decree to prevent Ms Englaro’s death. President Napolitano refused to sign it on the ground that the Prime Minister could not arbitrarily overturn a legal ruling and that such a sensitive issue had to be fully debated by parliament.

The decree was due to reach the Senate tomorrow but was urgently rescheduled for today. It passes to the lower house tomorrow. The decree states that, pending complete legislation on euthanasia, food and water to sustain life or “provide for the physiological goal of easing suffering” cannot be suspended for those unable to take their own decisions.

Beppino Englaro and friends of his daughter have testified that before her accident she declared that if she ever found herself in a coma she would not want to be kept alive artificially.

Ms Englaro has been in a coma since January 1992, when her car slid on ice and smashed into a lamp post as she was driving back from a party at a friend’s house. She was previously cared for at a church-run hospital in Lecco on Lake Como, near her home but was transferred last week to La Quiete, a private clinic in Udine, which said that it was prepared to help her to die.

Maurizio Sacconi, the Health Minister, said that the clinic was not qualified to help Ms Englaro to die because it was not a hospice for the terminally ill but primarily a rest home for the aged. He said that he had sent a team of health inspectors to the home to investigate “irregularities”.

The Englaro case has become a symbol for the Vatican’s “pro-life” campaign but also for right-to-die campaigners. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Episcopal Conference, said that refusing food and water to Ms Englaro was murder. “A light is going out, the light of a life,” he said.

Pope Benedict asked the faithful yesterday to pray “for those who are gravely ill but cannot in any way provide for themselves and are totally dependent on the care of others”. He did not refer directly to Ms Englaro but reaffirmed “the absolute and supreme dignity of every human being”.

Mr Englaro was baffled by the latest twists in the controversy. “All I can say is that sometimes reality goes way beyond the wildest imagination,” he told Spain’s El PaÍs newspaper yesterday. “The Church has nothing to do with this issue.”

The tussle over Ms Englaro’s life has revived accusations that the Vatican is dictating Italian policy. Mr Berlusconi, who had previously stayed out of the controversy, reacted after Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, implored him to “stop this crime against humanity”.

Mr Berlusconi said he believed that he represented the feelings of most Italians. Opinion polls, however, suggest that Italians are divided, with 47 per cent in favour of Ms Englaro’s “right to die”, 47 per cent against, and 6 per cent undecided.

Lives on hold

- Terri Schiavo became a US celebrity during her 15-year right-to-die battle, which ended in 2005 when her life support was switched off. Her husband wanted her to die; her parents did not

- Policeman Gary French Dockery emerged from a coma after seven-and-a-half years, talking animatedly. He was shot in the head in 1988. He became silent the day after and died a year later

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Full article and photo:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article5687405.ece

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Italy Passes Stimulus Package

Italy’s government looked to kick-start its economy Friday, approving €2 billion ($2.56 billion) in fiscal stimulus, including incentives to buy new cars and home appliances. The measures are aimed at helping manufacturers such as auto maker Fiat SpA cope with slumping sales at home and abroad.

Rome also revised its economic outlook, predicting Italy will face its worst recession in three decades. The government forecast a 2% contraction in gross domestic product this year. In September, the government had seen 0.5% growth in 2009.

Meantime, the economic slump continued across Europe.

In Germany, factory output fell 5.3% in December from November. In the fourth quarter as a whole, industrial production fell by 6.8%, the largest drop since records began in 1965, official data showed Friday.

In the U.K., where manufacturing has long been in decline, factory output fell 2.2% from November to December. Output dropped 10.2% from December 2007, the largest year-on-year fall since March 1981, the government statistics office reported.

The economic distress isn’t unique to Europe. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said leading indicators for its 30 developed-country members “have fallen to levels that were last seen during the oil shocks of the 1970s.”

Italy, which is weighed down by the highest debt in Europe compared with the size of its economy, can’t spend as freely as its European neighbors in trying to shore up its economy.

For decades, Italy has relied on export goods to drive growth, leaving Italy with a thin cushion of domestic spending to absorb the impact of falling exports.

The measures approved Friday don’t include loans for auto makers, instead offering discounts of up to €3,000 for drivers who scrap cars at least a decade old to buy new models with lower-carbon emissions. The government also announced incentives on washing machines and other home appliances.

Separately, the bleak economic outlook prompted euro-zone banks to further tighten credit standards in the fourth quarter, and companies and households may even face slightly tighter requirements in the current quarter, the European Central Bank said.

This was the sixth straight quarter that banks tightened their lending standards, despite the ECB’s attempts to limit the financial turmoil and its fallout on the euro zone’s real economy.

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Full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123397530314659723.html

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