Articles by: Judith Harris

  • Op-Eds

    Amendment Avalanche Slows Reform of the Evil Twin Senate


    ROME – An avalanche of 7,830 amendments, promulgated primarily by Nikki Vendola’s left-leaning Sinistra Ecologia e Liberta’ (SEL), by rebels within Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI), and by a handful of dissident members of the governing Partito Democratico (PD), is hindering the much promised final vote on reform of the 315-member Italian Senate.
     
    The aim of the reform promoted by Premier Matteo Renzi, and accepted by his cabinet July 1, is to reduce the size and revise the functions of what is denigrated here as the “paritary” Senate, long recognized as a sort of evil twin to the Chamber of Deputies; by bouncing a bill straight back to the Chamber, which then, yoyo fashion, returns it to the Senate, its effect has been to block decisions, and cripple governance,.
     
    The Senate would be renamed the “Senate of Autonomies” and be excluded from such crucial decisions as a vote of confidence on the government and on the national budget. Because its members receive salaries as city or regional elective officials, they would receive no extra salary as senators, for a saving estimated at around $1.35 billion a year. This saving also derives from the bill’s proposed abolishment of the entire layer of provincial governments (including the scandal-ridden Lazio government) that are sandwiched between city and region; in what seems a fuzzy plan, townships would instead be allowed to assemble into self-governing, informal units.
     
    Renzi’s project is to turn the Senate into a body composed not of directly elected senators, but a composite of those elected as city mayors or regional assembly members together with a limited number of distinguished appointees. In an effort to speed things up, debate on the first amendments just may start Monday. The final vote must be postponed until August, however, or before the Chamber shuts down for a summer holiday; and already its August agenda is blocked by other obligatory actions. The risk is that the vote may slip into September. In the words of one irate commentator, “All these amendments show that the MPs who inserted them [into the parliamentary debate] have no sense of democracy and just want to force a ‘no’ vote. Their only interest is in themselves and their ideology. They deserve the Italians’ disgust.”
     
    The debate over the virtues, or lack thereof, of the present yoyo Senate has gone on for three decades at least, and one of its early critics was the respected Italian Communist party (PCI) leftwing leader Pietro Ingrao. The final decision on reform has repercussions that go beyond Italy itself, however. As Renzi has admitted, in the 28-member European Union, where Italy leads the pack for the next six months, the partner nations are asking whether or not reform is at all possible in Italy.
     
    Some of those resorting to obstructionist tactics are hoping that a slow-down would also block Renzi’s efforts to revise the so-called “Porcellum” election law. But not all those opposing Senate reform can be dismissed as obstructionists, and no less than 55 amendments were presented by 16 of Renzi’s fellow members of the PD. The fact that members would not be elected to a Senate per se bothers some critics; others are battling for elections by name rather than by party. Even those who support the reform project acknowledge that it has flaws, but maintain that, at this point, it is important above all to launch a reform in order to demonstrate that reform is possible.
     
    Renzi faces further turbulence with his proposal to make Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, 41, the equivalent in the EU as High Representative for Foreign Policy and Joint Security. Although support – however grudging – has arrived for her candidacy from the European Socialists (PPE), the fact is that she has served only four months as foreign minister and has otherwise scant experience for a post that would require her battling into line 27 other foreign ministers. In addition, she is accused, particularly (but not only) by former East European nations now EU members of being overly tolerant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she visited shortly after she was given her governing post. The fact that Renzi’s alternative candidate is Massimo D’Alema, in his youth a PCI stalwart, will do nothing to soothe those who, like the “Wall Street Journal” vehemently oppose her candidacy.
     
    In the background of these political snafus are depressing new statistics made public this month by  which show that the number of those living below the poverty line in Italy have doubled. According to the official statistics-gathering agency Istat as of July 14, over 10 million Italians live in relative poverty, of 16.6% of the population. This is cause for serious “social alarm,” warns Edoardo Capuano of the on-line magazine ECplanet. The gap between the far North and the South has not diminished: indeed, in the Southern “Mezzogiorno” it has risen form under 10% to 12.6%, involving 1.2 million people more than just one year ago. Families with three or more young children are those suffering the most.
  • Op-Eds

    Midsummer Creatures

    ROME –Italian politics are in a holding pattern just now. Decisions over the future of a redimensioned Senate and a redesigned election law are both due shortly, but are not yet on the board. Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi is slipping into ever deeper legal waters over his past involvement with a l7-year-old legal minor nicknamed Ruby Rubacuore (Heart Stealer); at risk is his confinement to house arrest. In a Palermo courthouse the judges are sorting through allegations that the Mafia negotiated with individuals representing the Italian state, but have yet to make a pronouncement.

    In the meantime it is mid-summer, and Italians can be forgiven for turning their attention elsewhere. To what? Here’s the surprise: to their animals. It is a commonplace that until now Italians have not been considered great animal lovers. “Why, we don’t even have a word in Italian for pets!” our dog-loving Italian friend, a former diplomat, protested the other day as he walked his beloved dog. “Help me think one up!”

    The traditional explanation was that in the Fifties over 40% of families were occupied in agriculture, and animals were part of their working, not their social life. By 1971 that figure had already shrunk to l7%. Since the year 2000 the agricultural sector employs fewer than 1.4 million, or under 5% of the working population.

    A sign of the new, animal-friendly times: the popularity of horseback trekking, such as the tough, mid-August horseback ride in the footsteps of Saint Benedict. Riders will cross the mountains from the ancient Abbey of Montecassino, where the saint is buried (largely bombed in WWII, it was rebuilt), to the Monastery of Subiaco, near the grotto where the saint withdrew as a hermit. Along the way, they visit the Abbey of Casamari and the Certosa of Trisulti. Interested? Contact: www.viaggioacavallo.it

    Then there are the horseback explorers of ancient Italian roads, whose pioneer as president of Archeologia a Cavallo (archaeology on horseback) has been Luigi Triossi, now 82. “When we explored the Appian Way from Rome all the way to the South, there were little towns where the children were let out of school to see us ride past,” he recalled. Last summer Triossi and a couple dozen of his fellows from the Italian Equestrian Tourism Federation (Fitetrec) and the sports association Associazione Sportiva e Centro Ippico rode the Saint Thomas Way – the Camino di San Tommaso – for 200 miles, from Ortona, near Chieti in the Abruzzo, all the way to St. Peter’s Basilica. The reputed remains of the Apostle Thomas have been kept since 1258 in the Ortona Cathedral.

    In the seaside town of Marino near Rome the local court called a TAR has just ruled that the beach managers had left too little space for dogs, and that the township must create no less than twenty free waterfront dog parks. Because dogs are not allowed for regions of hygiene on beaches, by law, from May through September, a 2006 regional law obliges all towns in Lazio to locate special beach space where dogs can run. They’re being called, half in English, “bau beaches,” as in bow-wow.

    In our own little village of Trevignano, pop. 6,000, on Lake Bracciano 30 miles north of Rome the celebrated actor Franca Valeri has loaned her name, and in her home kennel space as well, to a society for the protection of animals. Now 93 with her next birthday at the end of this month, she told an Italian interviewer that she has no plans to give up her stage appearances. Often writing her own scripts, she also worked in TV and cinema with Toto’, Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi and Sofia Loren. The animal protection society bearing her name has found and cared for many hundreds of abandoned dogs; among them was our own 3-year-old more-or-less pointer Bella, who came under the society’s protection after she was abandoned at four months, without a collar, on the Autostrada del Sole (A1). In February Valeri appeared as a special guest at the San Remo Festival of pop music.

    On the (potentially) volcanic Rocca Romana, Trevignano also has a popular Centro Volo Rapaci, where visitors can watch falcons and hawks at work. Indeed, taking the train that connects the lake to downtown Rome, I noticed a man with a small cage. Thinking inside was a kitten, I approached, only to be warned that it was not: it was a falcon. “Don’t put your fingers near,” he warned me. A website gives dates and times when visitors can walk in the woods accompanied by the falcons, hawks and owls belonging to the association (see: www.volorapaci.com). The visits are popular with youngsters at birthday parties.

    Not least, Lake Bracciano is now home to several dozen white and five black swans who seem to have escaped from over the fence of a public or private zoo; originally from the Far East, the black swans have slimmer bodies than the white, and fly far. Children (and not only) flock to the lava-pebble lake beach with bits of stale bread to feed the swan flocks, now joined by ducks and even the odd goose. And on the sidewalks is an endless stream of pet dogs. The word for “pet” may still be lacking, but the pets themselves are now everywhere.
  • Op-Eds

    In Umbria, ARCA Puts Art Crime on the Summer Agenda


    AMELIA – For the sixth year in a row experts from sixteen nations  convened in this tranquil city set amid the rolling green hills of Umbria, 100 miles north of Rome, for an interdisciplinary conference on art crime, held in Amelia June 27 – 29. Among the speakers from as far away as New Zealand and New York were archeologists and art historians, police and intelligence officers, attorneys and sitting judges.

     

    Crimes destructive to the heritage occur not only through the sale of forgeries and the looting of museums, churches and private collections, but also in wartime. On hand, therefore, revealing how he works under cover to protect the heritage in wartime, was also a real-life “Monuments Man” who had in fact been consulted by George Clooney prior to the making of the film Monuments Men. (“But let’s face it: Clooney is just too old to play me,” the real one joked.)

     

    Art crime, needless to say, is no laughing matter. This unique convening of detectives and bookworms, Interpol officers and forensic archaeologists is organized annually by Prof. Noah Charney, president of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art and chief editor of the semi-annual “Journal of Art Crime.”

     

    Art crime and restitutions have been a burning issue for literally centuries - to wit., the never ending quarrel between the British Museum and the directors of the New Acropolis Museum over ownership of the Elgin Marbles (or, as Greece would have it, the Parthenon Marbles), removed from the Acropolis and shipped to London before 1805 by Lord Elgin, at the time British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

     

    The wholesale news coverage of the trial in Rome of Marion True, the then J. Paul Getty Museum curator of antiquities; of American antiquities dealer Robert Hecht; and of the convicted Italian trafficker Giacomo Medici rekindled international interest in the subject. Following that trial, which began in 2007,  the Getty Museum in Malibu was obliged to make restitutions to Italy of important looted antiquities. Not only the Getty was involved: the Metropolitan Museum was forced to return to Rome an important ancient Greek vase signed by Euphronios, which was reportedly purchased for $1 million. As a result of that trial museums in Cleveland, Boston and elsewhere were similarly forced to make restitutions to Italy.

     

    In some cases the Mafia has been involved in a major theft. The Rev. Dr. Marius Zerafa, former director of museums at Malta, spoke on the 1984 theft from the Co-Cathedral of St. John of Caravaggio’s late painting “St. Jerome Writing.” Zerafa is the Dominican priest who successfully traced and then personally handled the tense ransom negotiations with the Mafia, which resulted in the painting’s successful return.

     

    Another newly notorious case was deeply political. In what is called “the Gurlitt affair,” German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, acting for the German state, assembled a giant cache of art works which the Nazis had termed “degenerate.” When he died in 1956, this completely unknown collection of 1,300 paintings passed to his reclusive son Cornelius,  as was learned only in late 2013, when Cornelius fell under suspicion of tax fraud. This May Cornelius agreed to turn over the works to the German government. It was a deathbed agreement: Cornelius Gurlitt died that very month. The legal in’s and out’s remain complex, for Bonn must now seek the heirs of the original owner of each work.

     

    Rome attorney Massimo Sterpi spoke of the compendium he co-edited with Bruno Boesch for collectors on comparative international laws for thirty countries in “The Art Collecting Legal Handbook” (London: Thomson Reuters, 1013). Important art fairs are held worldwide: in Florida, Basel, Istanbul, Toronto, Hong Kong, and other even more far-flung venues. For today’s collectors, knowing the variations in the rules that apply in different countries (taxation, laws on exports and imports, donations and so on) is ever more important because of the globalization of the art market.

     

    Dr. Roberta Mazza, an Italian scholar at the University of Manchester and an expert on ancient papyri, described how casual collectors have used bars of ordinary soap so as to dismount mummy masks and hence destroy the papyri while so doing. After being wrapped in linen bandages, mummies were encased in recycled papyri, or what has been called “papyrus-mache’” coverings (cartonnage).

     

    In Italy today, museums are better protected than in the past, and the Internet permits a closer look at what goes on the market, including stolen objects. As a result, all heritage thefts dropped by almost one-third in a single year, 2013 over 2012. A crucial reason is the Carabinieri art squad. Their databank, now ten years old, shows five million stolen objects - some missing for decades - and almost half a million images, readily compared with items offered for sale. In addition, an app for smart phones named iTPC will soon be connected to this databank. Potential buyers, from individuals to auction houses, have little reason not to beware of acquiring looted Italian works of art.

     

    However, like the still unknown Etruscan tombs whose loot continues to supply the illicit antiquities market, some Italian churches are less well guarded and their collections less carefully inventoried than museums. As a result, although thefts in churches have declined numerically, they have increased as a proportion of the whole. Over 700 objects were stolen from churches in the past two years - that is, 44% or almost half of all art thefts in Italy.
  • Op-Eds

    Italy Celebrates its National Day

    ROME – On June 2 Italy marked the 68th anniversary of the founding of the Republic with a parade down the Via dei Fori Imperiali in Rome. Despite the generally sober tone imposed by the recession during the national day celebrations of the past few years, the traditional overflight of the Frecce Tricolori military airplanes was restored, leaving in the bright blue sky trails of the red, white and green of the Italian flag.

    Appearing together with Premier Matteo Renzi at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland) at Piazza Venezia, President Giorgio Napolitano spoke movingly of “all the Italian soldiers who sacrificed their life in the service of the nation.”

    European togetherness was a sub-theme. Coincidentally the day—a national holiday for Italians—was also the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of World War I.
    “Just one hundred years ago the European nations fought ferociously against each other,” said Napolitano. “Today they stand under the same flag,” although, even for Europe, peace is not a given, and “serious areas of tension” exist at the borders of the European Union.

    However, the President went on to say, “In the name of their common values of freedom, justice and equality, together the European countries seek prosperity through an unrenounceable passageway of economic, political and institutional integration.”

    Ceremony apart, the crucial word was “unrenounceable.” During the just-concluded, noisy campaign to elect Italy’s contingent of MPs to the European Parliament, a significant number of top politicians, beginning with the Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) contingent led by Beppe Grillo, made anti-European sentiment a slogan.

    Grillo, with 17 EU parliamentarians, moreover just announced a controversial agreement for joint action within the EU Parliament with the populist British party leader Nigel Farage, whose UKIP party will have 24 Eurodeputies. For this Grillo has come under considerable attack from his own MPs, but defends his favoring an alliance with Farage on grounds that, among other things, the UKIP leader has a “great sense of humor.”

    The common monetary unit the Euro had been made the scapegoat for the recession, and the boogie man or woman, in this case, has been Angela Merkel. Now that the campaign is over, will that anti-Europe sentiment—implicitly criticized by President Napolitano in his June 2 message to the nation—die down, or grow stronger?

    To this there is no easy answer, but Renzi’s Partito Democratico, fortified with almost 41% of the vote, continues to stand for “continuity,” today’s oft-repeated code word for (1) no new elections and (2) no seceding from the EU.  Not surprisingly, therefore, when Renzi arrived last week at the first post-election meeting of EU leaders at Strasbourg, the French cathedral city that is the official seat of the European Parliament, none other than Merkel greeted him with a merry, “Here comes the matador!”

    By the same token, Renzi came in for remarkably high praise from the head of Fiat, Sergio Marchionne. After Renzi spoke at the annual Festival for the Economy at Trento, Marchionne pronounced that Renzi’s reform package was “just the agenda the Italy and Europe needs. He said exactly what I wanted to hear him say.”

    At the Trento meeting Roberto Napoletano, who is editor-in-chief of the financial daily Il Sole-24 Ore, asked Marchionne if there was anything new happening in the Fiat-Chrysler world. Marchionne’s withering response was, “Put that way, it seems like one of those questions that the Italian politicians twist and turn. I’m talking about the old-style politicoes, not the one I heard this morning” [i.e., Renzi].

    Even though Renzi has raised such great expectations in great places, the matador is still in the arena, but he too is repeating the current phrase, “We have no alibis.” Renzi’s reform roster continues to include combatting unemployment, boosting the economy and revision of the election law known as the “Porcellum” (pigsty law).

    The proposed revision of the latter, accepted last February by former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, is already being revised, however. Present wording calls for a coalition minimum of 37%, but this may be upped to 40%, reflecting fears that a group of minor parties could in practice outflank Renzi’s Partito Democratico (PD). (One wants to ask: why had they not thought of this before?)

    Italy’s role in the new Euro Parliament, to be installed in July, is another subject for debate here. If the duo France-Germany was considered dominant, can Italy, third largest, replace the now largely discredited France, as Renzi has suggested? For Niall Ferguson, a British economist at Harvard, this is not a valid question because the French-German duopoly has long since been bypassed for various triangulations.

    On the other hand, “If Renzi  can successfully exploit his extraordinary success, and bring about a real modernization of the country, then he will be able to bring the economy back into good health,” said Ferguson. In his important interview in the daily La Repubblica—not coincidentally, it ran June 2—Ferguson pointed out that post-election Italy is now in an excellent position to bring about the same sort of reforms that helped bring success to Gerhard Schroder’s Germany at the end of the Nineties.

    Ferguson made fairly short shrift of the last month’s successful election showing of the populist parties like Marine Le Pen’s Front National and Farage’s UKIP. “Their showing was important, but let’s not overestimate their impact. They did not win control of the European Parliament, and the various Euroskeptic parties in the diverse countries are not homogeneous.”

    In fact, for this very reason Grillo himself risks yet another rash of defections, especially from the anti-racists and pro-environmentalists in his M5S, if he goes forward with his plan to join forces with Farage.
  • Op-Eds

    For Renzi, an Historic Victory


    ROME - For Renzi, it was literally an historic victory - "a plebescite," it is being called here, unmatched since the Christian Democratic triumphs of the Fifties. The turnout, predicted to be extremely low, was instead larger than elsewhere in Europe, with various percentages still bruited about, ranging up to 59% vis a' vis the European average of only 43%.


    Said one professorial observer today: "It was the fear factor. Grillo scared the moderates." Indeed, in these early hours while final votes are still being counted, commentators remarked that the conservatives were so terrified by the Grillo factor that for the first time they voted to the left, and in the little village in North Lazio where I live, a man took his 93-year-old mother to the polling station "just because she had to vote against Grillo."
     
    To these conservatives, Renzi appears a force for moderation, to wit., his antagonistic relationship with the Big Three trade unions, beginning with open hostility to him from Susanna Camussa, head of the farthest left CGIL. As a result, the traditionally conservative country now finds in Renzi's PD an echo of the old Christian Democratic party, whose factions ranged from arch-conservatives to leftist Catholic activists. Grillo also lost the leftist vote, however, even though in the final, frantic days of what was one of the most dismal election campaigns ever, he came out with fulsome praise for the late Communist party leader Enrico Berlinguer. It did not work, and Grillo's old hashtag #Vinciamo Noi was just converted by sarcastic opponents into #VinciamoPoi (We win now to We win later). Maybe so, but he had actually threatened to quit politics if his movement did not go forward. His internet guru Gianroberto Casaleggi had also said, "Now or never." (Don't believe it.)
     
    If the duel in Italy's OK Coral was essentially between Renzi and Grillo, Silvio Berlusconi made a, for him, disappointing showdown showing, walking away with only 16.3% of the vote, by comparison with his movement's 21.6% of.national general elections in 2013. In those of 2009 he had claimed 35.2%. Nevertheless, early opinion here is that his losses are shattering but not definitive, and he is not out of the picture, and his daughter Marina is waiting in the wings.
     
    Two novelties: the first is that numerous left-leaning but moderate Italian intellectualsturned out to back a new Greece-inspired movement called L'Alternativa con Tsipras, which won over 4% of the vote and has become a player, in an interesting development. The second is the complete disappearance from the scene of Antonio Di Pietra's Italia dei Valori. 
     
    Looking ahead, the financial daily Il Sole'24 Ore commented that the vote marked the end of a period of shouts and promises, and that it is to be hoped that this election will be the first step "on the path to growth and change" -- that growth and change all the politicians have been talking about without taking action.  
  • Facts & Stories

    Sunday’s EU vote: A Litmus Test for Renzi


    ROME – On Sunday Italians, along with the citizens of their 27 fellow European nations, go to the polls to elect the new European Parliament. The vote is particularly important because the new Parliament will in turn elect the next president of the EU Commission. In addition, the vote is being read as a litmus test for the government of Matteo Renzi and the relative strengths of the two other competing larger parties, Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) and Silvio Berlusconi’s reborn Forza Italia.

    Once ardently pro-Europe, Italy has turned plainly indifferent to that election if not outright hostile. Some 51% of those in a recent poll described themselves as “totally pessimistic” about the EU, and the number of those abstaining or voting a blank ballot is expected to amount to the largest single voting (that is, non-voting) bloc. Nevertheless the vote matters because, first, Italians select no fewer than 10% of the new deputies in Strasbourg and, secondly, in mid-summer Italy assumes the EU presidency, with the responsibilities and possibilities this offers, even as the Euro monetary system itself has become a convenient scapegoat in Italy.



    The success of the controversial United Kingdom Independence party (UKIP) in scattered local elections there May 22 has left many here nervous. The UKIP is a notoriously anti-Europe, anti-immigrant party, and the gains it made at the expense particularly of the Labourites but also of the Conservatives ring a note of warning of what Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stella (M5S) just may achieve Sunday.



    And therein lies a tale: last week this already overly rough-and-tumble Italian election campaign struck a new note of intolerance when former Premier Berlusconi compared Grillo to Hitler. Moreover, said Berlusconi, a Grillo victory would bring “the risk of distressing disorders.” Why would Berlusconi, whose renovated Forza Italia party is plainly number three behind the PD and M5S, choose such extreme language? An editorial writer for Corriere della Sera suggested that the comparison with Hitler and implicit threat of a Berlusconi-fostered march on Rome reflect Berlusconi’s fear that, once election results are counted, Premier Matteo Renzi’s left-leaning Partito Democratico (PD) may have no choice but to strike a new governing coalition deal with Grillo. The EU election thus looms here as a showdown between Renzi and Grillo.



    As if warding off the prospect of future negotiations with Grillo, Renzi took pains to declare that the EU election results “are not a test for my government.” Indeed, pollsters give Renzi’s PD almost 35%, by comparison with 24% for Grillo. Still, a slightly disturbing bellweather was Renzi’s major rally in Rome Thursday, where the meager turnout left Piazza del Popolo half empty. Moreover, the rally was disturbed by a mini-riot over housing, which resulted in 40 demonstrators held by police.



    In last year’s general election the Grillo’s M5S won one out of four votes. This election will further precipitate Grillo onto the political stage. Showing its current greater expectations, its grizzled political-cum-internet guru Gianroberto Casaleggio mentioned the possibility of his acquiring a government ministry. It was a political faux pas, and he backed off quickly, but it was revealing. As a result pundits here began quizzing the Grillini (as his foot soldiers are called) as to just what they would do if in office. The answers from their spokesmen and women were extremely vague. “We have an idea but we shall discuss it when the time comes,” said one member of Parliament. Said another: “Unlike the other parties, we are democrats and will consult on line with our supporters.” How many? Oh, maybe 30,000.



    In the background of the elections are daily, painful revelations of financial scandal involving politicians and crony contracts, some with tentacles into organized crime.



    Speaking of Italian politics, one of its most sophisticated and admired interpreters, James Walston, died at age 65 of cancer on May 12. Born in England, educated at Eton College and Cambridge University, he was head of the international relations department of American University of Rome. His specialty was contemporary Italian politics, and his extraordinarily popular blog had a keen following in the international press. At a commemoration held at American University Thursday, Reuters correspondent Phil Pulella said that, if Walston had been paid for every useful comment he made to the hungry media, the press would have gone bankrupt. Walston was the author of Roads to Rome: Mafia and Clientelism in Calabria.
  • Tourism

    As Tourists Arrive, Roman Museums Struggle

    ROME – The tourists are back, to the delight of Roman restaurateurs and hotel and shop keepers. But investments in the cultural heritage are neglected, and a chronic shortage of funds and personnel means that museum directors are not part of the celebration.

    “You can’t hope for tourism, and then close the very places that are the real worldwide attractions,” Adriano La Regina, president of Italy’s National Institute for Archaeology and Art History, protested in an op-ed piece for the daily La Repubblica. But is tourism the cure? Not everyone agrees.

    The 1.3 million international visitors who flooded into Rome in April were there in part – but only in part -- thanks to what the Italian press calls the “Bergoglio effect,” for the fascination exerted by Pope Francis. And indeed a large percentage of the tourists in Rome this Spring come from Latin America, and especially the pope’s native Argentina. From wherever they come, it is particularly good news because, with only 46.4 million visitors in 2012, Italy had slumped to fifth place as a favorite tourism destination. France, the favorite, was first with 83 million. This was considerably more than its population of 66 million, and almost twice as many international tourists as visited Italy. After France came, in descending order, the U.S., China, and Spain, which beat Italy by some 13 million more visitors.

    Curiously, even Milan had more overnight visitors, 6.83 million, than Rome, 6.71 million that same year even though Rome is larger. If the museums of Rome are part of the action and attraction, as they should be, the problem is that they are struggling to keep their heads above water.

    It made worldwide news when a reporter wrote (not entirely accurately) in May that the Borghese Museum collections were at risk because of problems with air conditioning. Despite the difficulty of air conditioning an centuries-old building, that problem is being resolved.  However, the less well known but beautiful Galleria d’arte Moderna is closed until June 10, and three other museums -- Roman Civilization, the Planetarium and the Museum of Astronomy -- are closed “until the termination of requalification work,” aka maintenance work and improvements.

    The problem hit the news when it was announced that during this May’s sixth annual Notte dei Musei, when museums remain open late at night and for free, the Coloseum would be closed. “It’s because our institutions are in deep trouble,” said La Regina. “They are short of personnel -- not only custodians but also for the people in charge of protecting the territory and for conserving monuments. Museum custodians are at a minimum. Even though the try hard, always, to maintain a sufficient level for visitors, but one can’t expect them to do more.”

    The disaster also involves research institutions, he added. “It’s illogical. While people invoke the positive results that could come from increasing tourism, the same people shut down the very places that make Rome a worldwide attraction,” said La Regina.

    But is tourism the cure? This was among the subjects debated at the Turin Book Fair, the Salone del Libro, where Dario Franceschini, Minister of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, spoke in a symposium with archaeologist Salvatore Settis, art historian Tomaso Montanari and Roberto Napoletano, editor of Il Sole-24 Ore. “Culture is the richest capital we have,” Napoletano began. Settis’s response was acid: “We all talk about our wonderful heritage, and from saying this we assume we ought to receive something from that heritage. It’s like consoling an unhappy child by saying, ‘Well, you’ll make a nice marriage.’ But we have to save ourselves, by ourselves, by asking what our heritage means to us, not others. Beauty will save us if we save beauty.” The cultural heritage and historic landscape are not merely money makers, he concluded. “Tourism is fine, but let’s recall that the heritage is ours and for us. It is our culture.”

    According to a Eurostat report in March 2013, Italian expenditures on maintaining its heritage amounted to a mere 1.1% of its GNP as compared with the 2.2 average for the rest of Europe. This places Italy at the very bottom of the list of those European states protecting, and investing in, their cultural heritage. Even Greece, the second worst at 1.2%, invests more. France spends double what Italy does, 2.5%, and the UK, 2.1%. Italian experts say that massive tax evasion is one reason for the cuts to the cultural budget. Another is petty corruption which imitates, and is legitimized by, that on the high level.

    But it is not only about money. Organizational skills are in short shrift, and good managers are in short supply. What is to be done?  First, the problems must be clearly spelled out. And to the extent that Italy's is indeed the heritage of the entire world, pressure and interest from the world beyond Italy will not hurt.
  • Op-Eds

    European Elections: Rhetoric High, Interest Low



    ROME – As European elections loom, the rhetoric heats up. In the background are the continuing recession, inevitably, but also disturbing judiciary evidence of corruption at Expo in Milan, of all places. In the political blame game the Euro is one of the baddies, while a major question is what is to be done about the hordes of immigrants from Asia as well as the Middle East and Africa, arriving on shabby boats via Libya. Here’s what some of the top leaders are saying or, rather, shouting during these final days before the vote May 25.

     

    As usual, the loudest is Beppe Grillo, head of the Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S).  “If we win a few Eurodeputies more than the Partito Democratico, let’s get a million people and make a nice trip to Rome together. I’ll go to tell [President Giorgio] Napolitano to dissolve Parliament, and that he should move to Cesano Boscone” (That’s the town where former Premier Berlusconi is doing his half-day weekly bout of social work among Alzheimer patients as punishment for his mega tax-fraud crime.) 

     

    The arrests and stunning revelations by magistrates of serious corruption behind the crony contracts for building (or not building, work being behind deadlines) the structures for the Expo exposition site, which opens one year from now, continue to dominate daily headlines. At a meeting in Milan with Expo officials Tuesday, a shocked Matteo Renzi said bravely: “The state is greater and stronger than the thieves… Expo must become a point of pride…. We will not let those who steal be able to take away a piece of our future. Work will not stop. The thieves will stop.” 

     

    To this Grillo’s response was, “Shut it down.” Expo is simply “una puttanata” (slutty). 

     

    Berlusconi meanwhile is basking in revelations that he was the victim of a genuine international plot. In his new book, “Stress Test,” former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner alleges that European countries (read: France, Germany, the UK) had ganged up to try to put the Berlusconi government out of business in hopes of salvaging the Italian economy. 

     

    To this Berlusconi commented: “It’s a lie that the country was on the edge of a precipice, and that there were no funds to pay old age pensioners and state employees. This story against me was circulated even though I was the very person defending national interests against certain proposals that instead would have been cozy for other states, as we saw when the man who succeeded me [Mario Monti] bowed down to those proposals….I resigned out of a sense of responsibility.”

     

    According to The Daily Beast review of the Geithner book, at a G-20 meeting in 2011, “Europeans were pushing the White house to get involved in pushing bunga bunga legend and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi out of office. ‘We can’t have his blood on our hands,’ responded Geithner, voicing his disapproval.” 

     

    If that was Geithner’s version, here is Gianfranco Fini’s curt response: “There was no plot. The government fell for other reasons. Berlusconi was very fragile, the coalition majority simply did not have the numbers [for a vote of confidence]. Everyone wanted to avoid Italy’s plummeting into a Greek-style bankruptcy.”

     

    On the immigrants, the Northern League could hardly be silent. According to Matteo Salvini, federal secretary: “These deaths weigh on the conscience of the fools behind ‘Mare Nostrum’ [welfare aid to immigrants]. They build the illusions of thousands of desperados who risk death, as unfortunately we have seen, promising them that in Italy they’ll find a home, work, hope, a future….. 

     

    “We need to suspend ‘Mare Nostrum’ and invest there [in their countries] all that money we’re throwing away here. Just as did our Interior Minister Maroni, who gave several billion euros to Libya to build infrastructure and guarantee a future there.” 

     

    In so saying, however, Salvini ignores the fact that the new hordes of immigrants flooding Catania and Lampedusa are more likely to be refugees from war and religious persecution than the economic immigrants of past years. Of the cadavers fished from the sea in past days, the majority are of women and children.

     

    A post script: a handful of different pollsters May 10 agree that the distance between the Partito Democratico of Matteo Renzi and the Movimento 5 Stelle of Grillo may be shrinking somewhat, but that the PD is still safely in charge. With between 32% and 34% of the vote, the PD remains well ahead of the M5S. Grillo’s is almost certainly Italy’s second largest party, but with no more than 24% of the vote. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia may sink blow 20%. Ipsos gives Berlusconi 19.5%; Demetra l7.8%; and Demos, 17.5%

     

    Which of the smaller parties will obtain more than 4% is uncertain. The rightists around Interior Minister Angelino Alfano are expected to win just over 4% and the Northern League, about the same. 

     

    The real certainty is that voters’ interest is low. The non-voters or those who abstain may be over 40%.
  • Facts & Stories

    Books and Words

    ROME – For Mario Caligiuri, official head of cultural affairs for the Reggio-Calabria region, “Reading is an extraordinary antidote for the disadvantaged. It leads to knowledge and to personal and social rehabilitation.” He has consequently sent to Parliament a bill that would allow any convicted criminal whose prison sentence exceeds six months a three-day reduction of the prison term for every book read, for a maximum of 48 freebie days a year.

    His proposal happens to coincide with one of Italy’s halcyon events, the annual International Book Salon at the Lingotto of Turin, which lasted from May 8-12.

    Unusually, the Vatican was a participant, represented by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of cultural affairs for the Vatican and a regular weekly columnist for Italy’s financial daily Il Sole-24 Ore. With him in attendance was Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, whose address to the salon May 10 considered the use of the language by Pope Francis from the point of view of linguistics, pastoral message and theology.

    The pope excites sufficient media interest that Time magazine elected him man of year, Cardinal Parolin pointed out. “My subject,” said the cardinal, “is the words of Francis. And my objective is to present some of the most incisive words Pope Francis has used in speeches, documents, interviews and spontaneous communication in his dialogues with pilgrims at the general audiences.”

    An example: when elected in March 2013, Francis “catalyzed attention” by saying he had been taken from “almost the end of the world.” His noteworthy style of communication is novel for the church, said the cardinal, and his use of language is “direct and informal…immediately transformed into the emblems and symbols of mass communication.”

    In this way the pontiff’s words are suited to new media because essential, with “few words of strong plastic impact on broad themes” while also reviving traditional church means of expression. “Pope Francis puts his listener, whoever he may be, in a condition of parity, and not at a distance. His words facilitate.” Last November the weekly news magazine Vita published a booklet called “L”Abici’ del Papa,” which showed that the pontiff’s use of words “sculpted his figure in the eyes of the world,” said the cardinal. (For the interesting full text in Italian >>>

    Another star attraction May 11 was Steve McCurry, National Geographic photo-reporter and the author of a book on the stories behind his photographs. His illustrated talk was so popular that he had to give it twice, and gratified his hosts by saying that, in the end after all his travels (India is one of his favorites), “I work often in Italy, and always return happily. Italy is complete: the best combination of people, food, culture, landscapes and colors.”

    The other starlets were the children, and this is a positive sign. Many were too tiny to be able to see the books laid out for them to peruse on the stands, but still excited to be at the fair. No less than in other countries, the book trade is in the doldrums, but the children’s market is in expansion. According to the results of a Nielsen poll, in 2013 the children’s market rose by 3.3% for copies sold, and by 3.1% in monetary terms. Trade book (that is, commercial) sales were down by 2.3% in volume and down by 6% in value in 2013 over 2012.

    The biggest losers were what is called “practical non-fiction” in the trade – that is, lifestyle, leisure time and guide books, down 13.2%. As in the U.S., independent book stores are in trouble, and book sales there dropped from 36% to 35%  last year over 2012. At the same time, sales on line rose, but  only by a disappointing 0.3% to 6.6%. With somewhere between 4 and 7 million titles downloaded, the e-book share of the Italian market so far occupies only 3%, for circa $40 million.

    The increase in children’s books is a positive signal at a time when Italian education is coming under heavy criticism. In an analysis of comparative school achievement conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and published by Pearson, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong topped the list of the 40 nations studied. Italy came in only at number 25, just below Norway, Hungary, France and Sweden.

    One possible reason for the low rating is a lack of investment in teachers, said Anna Maria Ajello, president of the Istituto Invalsi, which conducts its own research into scholastic achievement. “Instruction must be a collective undertaking.” That institute’s own statistics for 2013 show a depressing contrast between the high scholastic achievement in the North, the middling achievement in the South of Italy and even lower rates of achievement in the farthest south, Sicily and Sardinia.

    The good news, however, is that in the South the scholastic achievement figures for 2013 were notably better than in 2012 and far superior to those of 2010-2011. See >>>
     

    The moral of the story is that to read a book – to know how to use words, as Pope Francis does -- can do no harm, either to popes, prisoners or even students. Long live those who keep the book fairs alive.
  • Op-Eds

    As Immigrants Arrive, Reception Centers Share Despair

    ROME – Both the daily horde of exhausted, hungry immigrants landing on the shores of Sicily and those who tend to them after their arrival are in despair. Their stories begin with the statistics. At Trapani 887 North Africans arrived May 6 by boat, and at Porto Empedocle, on the coast of the Strait of Sicily near Agrigento, another 468 immigrants landed, including 104 women and 25 children.

    There would have been 469 but one had died en route, and his body was removed on arrival.

    Another 300 were picked up from sleazy boats in the Sicilian Channel. Many of the newcomers, including a number of pregnant women, arrived via Libya from Syria. 

    Even before this week some 2,000 immigrants were known to be on the island, and this is only the beginning of fair weather. The police prefect of Sicily has appealed for help from Rome, but in the meantime the Sicilian holding centers are on the verge of collapse.

    In Messina on May 4, where immigrants are housed, so to speak, in a walled campground, a violent hailstorm aggravated an already difficult situation by pelting the 32 tents which host 250 people. Result: 184 Syrians and Palestinian refugees fled. Last autumn the same camping compound had been flooded. “It’s another proof that this just isn’t the right place,” said Mayor Renato Accorinti of Messina. 

    Italy is not necessarily their final destination. A good number of these political and economic refugees will move on to Northern Europe, where some have relatives and at least contacts, and for this reason Italy continues to appeal to the European Community for more assistance. But the numbers in the meantime are daunting. In Trapani alone there are almost 3,000 immigrants waiting for a brighter future to open for them. 

    The dimensions of the problem are daunting. At the Ministry of the Interior the fear is that over 800,000 immigrants are on their way to the shores of Europe, bringing the entire system to the verge of collapse.  Last year brought some 43,000 to Italy, but during the first four months this year 25,000 have already arrived, most of them from Africa. At that rate the figure for 2014 will be double that of 2013. 

    At a hearing in the Senate Defense Commission last week, Giovanni Pinto, national head of border police, said that so far, “We have nowhere to house them. The local people are growing angry over the continual arrival of so many foreigners.” Although he later backed away from these harsh words, the fact remains that it is true.

    This week the parents of 60 children in Ragusa, Eastern Sicily, protested that the buses their children normally ride to school are also used by night to drive immigrants to various holding centers. The parents argued that the immigrants are germ-infested and the buses are not disinfected before the school children board the next morning. “The risk is real and it is very high,” said one parent. “We saw the children’s bus on TV taking the immigrants.”

    Pinto also said that, as in the past, Libya is the point of departure for nine out of 10 immigrants. He points out the bitter irony that the more successful the care for immigrants has been, the more arrive. “Our ‘operation Mare nostrum’ has given excellent results but has also increased the departures from Libya,” he told the Senate Commission. 

    Last month Interior Minister Angelino Alfano warned that some 300,000 to 600,000 people are expected to set off for the shores of Southern Europe. But the politicians, struggling to pull Italy out of its economic recession and to introduce institutional reforms, can hardly ignore the situation but do not know what to do.

    Matteo Salvini, federal secretary of the anti-immigrant Northern League (he is the youthful successor to Umberto Bossi), flew to Siracusa and Catania in Eastern Sicily “to give a concrete signal in the battle against clandestine immigration and against exploitation.” Salvini claimed that he was speaking for the “good folks of Sicily” who would like to help the immigrants, but at the same time know that “it is impossible for Sicily and Italy to be alone in this, when Europe doesn’t give a damn.”

    His advice: “Reject the clandestines and invest money in Africa to help those countries’ development.” In the meantime his Northern League is investing in TV ads read by foreign-looking actors to advise wannabe immigrants against coming to Italy.

    Please take a look at the deeply moving winning entry for the World Press Photo 2014, of migrants by John Stanmeyer, at >>> 

    The series on immigration beginning with his photo can be seen with Italian captions at:
    >>>

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