Articles by: Judith Harris

  • Art & Culture

    Pisa Stands Tall, but Tremors Abound Elsewhere


    ROME - The good news is that Italian geologists have successfully regrounded the beloved Leaning Tower in the Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa. Two decades ago experts had serious reason to fear that the famous medieval tower was tending to lean farther and faster than in the past, to the point that it risked sudden and absolutely unpredictable collapse. By 1990 its inclination had reached 4.5 M (over 14 ft. 9 in.). At that point, according to engineer Giuseppe Bentivoglio, technical director of the team responsible for maintenance of the buildings in the piazza, "The tension to which the lower floors were subjected because of the thousands of tons of building, ever more outside their axis, made the possibility very real that it would all suddenly come down. When this happened to other historical towers there had never been forewarning."
     
    The tower foundations were built atop less than solid ground that is moreover subject to water seepage. For this reason its construction took place in fits and starts. It began in 1173, was halted for nearly a century, began again, and was then blocked for another 80 years as its builders pondered what to do. In the end, after nearly three centuries had gone by, Tower construction was completed only by making the top floors tilt slightly in the opposite direction, so as to compensate for its already visible inclination. "This gave it the form of a banana," Bentivoglio told journalist Alex Saragosa in an interview for Il Venerdi Sept. 6.
     
    In 1991 a 14-member International Committee for the Safeguard of the Pisa Tower was appointed under the direction of Michele Jamiolkowski, professor of Soil Mechanics at London's Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. Using post-tensioned stainless steel bars and cables, the engineers put in placeda 900-ton counter-weight to tug the tower backward into position. For the next decade experts continued to analyze and to experiment with what other measures could best preserve the tower. Their conclusion was to extract, slowly and carefully, some 43 cubic meters of earth from between 12 and 21 feet beneath the stronger, northern section, "so as to provoke the subsidence of the earth to compensate for the subsidence on the opposite side," Bentivoglio explained.
     
    This non-invasive technique worked. "Ever so gradually the Tower's inclination [was reduced] by something more than half a degree. Without touching the Towers, its present inclination is what it was in 1800," said a report presented by Jamiolkowski in collaboration with Carlo Viggiani of the University Federico II of Naples (now professor emeritus) and J.B. Burland, professor at Turin University and the Imperial College of London. Altogether the Tower has now regained 52.5 cm (almost 1 ft. 8.7 in.). Expectations are that it will over coming years remain stable, then begin slowly to list once more. "In the meantime it is safe for the next 200 years," said Bentivoglio.
     
    But there is a second and larger problem facing this and other historic monuments in Italy. Those mini-quakes which make the quake-prone earth in Italy tremble are coming twice as frequently this year as in the past. Between June 21 and Sept. 4 the seismographs registered a record number of 7,116 mini-quakes. These "seismic movements," as these are properly called, are imperceptible to humans normally, but slowly do their damage, particularly to historic buildings. Claudio Chiarabba, who is the director of the earthquake division of the Italian National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, says that, "The increase is substantial and means that if Italy had a median of 50 tremors a day, now we have double that number" (in fact, 200 daily). Most occur in the Tuscan-Emilian Appenine mountains, in the Irpinia region of the Campania, on the Tyrrenian coast of Calabria and in northeastern Sicily.
     
    The causes behind the increase are uncertain. They could be natural--the release of gases from deep below the earth--or linked to man, like the drilling for gas (fracking) which is considered responsible for mini-quakes that have occurred in Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio. For this reason, experts here suggest that construction companies--instead of building new homes--invest their same financial resources and construction workers in improving the solidity and quake resistance of Italy's myriad historic buildings and town centers.
     
  • Op-Eds

    Stability Bill a Spanner in the Works


    ROME - To mix a metaphor or two, just when Premier Enrico Letta's government seemed to have a green light, a spanner was tossed into the works, with consequences that are anyone's guess. The spanner is the budget bill for 2014, hammered together in late evening sessions this week by Letta of the center-left Partito Democratico (PD) and his governing coalition partner Angelino Alfano of the Berlusconi party, which, incidentally, is called either Partito della Liberta' (PdL) or Forza Italia or, increasingly, both, depending upon the day. Supposedly this draft budget, which went before the Chamber of Deputies this week but is still a long way from final approval, is meant to achieve two related goals: to reduce the pressure on tax payers while also stimulating the economy.

     
    Beginning with the tax reductions, it came for many as good news that the government plans to exclude any cuts from Italy's national health system budget. The main effort in the draft bill, is, as the PdL-Forza Italia has demanded, removal of the hated property tax on first homes, called the "IMU." This will indeed be lopped off, if and when the bill passes--but then the law would incorporate a new tax on services provided by the cities and towns, to be based upon the size of the home in square meters. The proposed new services tax, to be called the "Trise," is being attacked from both left and right on grounds that it amounts to a change in name only. In addition, because the IMU on first homes is being dropped, the IMU on second homes owned for vacations or investment is doomed to rise. Fallout from this predictable tax hike is already visible; in townships like Ronciglione, outside Rome, where many Romans owned small weekend apartments, the entire town seems for sale.
     
    In addition, the Letta-Alfano 90-page budget bill, called the "Stability Law," most likely will be just that, in the sense that some predict the quarrels over it will go on for the next two months, and end with little accomplished on the concrete level. As evidence of how things actually work, as opposed to rhetoric, the financial daily Il Sole/24 Ore reminds us that, in order to activate the laws passed by the former government headed by economist Mario Monti, Parliament was required to pass 725 norms, but only 256 were enacted. The remaining two-thirds are still on paper.
     
    "The heart of the bill will be an intervention to reduce taxes on workers and increase the money in their pay packet," said Letta, speaking on TV. The idea is that giving workers more money will promote consumer spending and hence stimulate the troubled Italian economy ("to relaunch growth" is the going phrase) But in point of fact industrial and white collar workers are to have only a modest pay increase, estimated on the average as from $13 to $18--not enough, critics say, to relaunch much of anything except angst.
     
    The president of the Finance Commission at the Chamber of Deputies, Daniele Capezzone, who is also a spokesman for the PdL-Forza Italia, was among those critics who spoke of "disappointment" in a budget bill that it is "minimalist and inadequate." For Capezzone, the bill fails to reduce expenditures in any serious way and in so doing renounces cutting taxes. "The stimulus package is, to put it mildly, distressing [because] the new tax on property will affect one's main residence, plus rental property that is not occupied and rented property as well." 
     
    Even the national association of manufacturers, Confindustria, found objections, although there will be a reduction in a tax called IRAP on the component relative to the cost of labor and a reduction in social contributions. On the left, the trade unionists opposing the budget bill had vociferous objections and have already called for a massive demonstration in Rome this Friday, while also threatening a general strike.


    It came as a stunning surprise Thursday evening when former Premier Mario Monti, founder of Scelta Civica only seven months ago, resigned from that party over its support of the budget bill. Monti, a lifetime senator, is rigidly opposed to the Letta-Alfano bill and joins the Mixed Group of senators Friday.
     
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    Lampedusa: Immigration, the Law, Recriminations


    ROME - Even as Italian fire fighters brought up more bodies this morning from the moral as well as physical abyss off the isle of Lampedusa, a battle over the Italian law governing immigration rages. At this writing, of the well over 500 known to have been aboard the ship that burned early Thursday morning, 143 bodies were recovered while another 220, and possibly more, have been identified inside the sunken ship today. More recoveries are expected. In a change from the migrations of a decade ago, almost half of the corpses found were of women, one of them pregnant, while the bodies of dead babies and children were found afloat only a short distance from what is considered one of the most beautiful shorelines in the Mediterranean.

     
    Less than 8 square miles in size, the island bears the brunt of migration into Europe because it lies physically closer to North Africa, with Tunisia just 70 miles distant, than to Europe; Sicily (Lampedusa falls within the province of Agrigento) is farther, at 109 miles away. Most of the migrants who have been descending upon the island over the past decade come from Africa, but not all. The burnt boat held many of these, but also a contingent of those escaping the violence of Syria. And from what the 155 survivors were able to tell their Italian rescuers, like the Syrians aboard, the Africans too were escaping from the violence in the countries from which they had fled, Somalia and Eritrea. These were not, in other words, the men defined as "economic migrants," but refugees. The distinction is important because of the legal status of the survivors.
     
    Italy's legislation on immigration, known as the Bossi-Fini law, was passed in 2002 by the Silvio Berlusconi government in coalition with the ultra-nationalist Northern League, then headed by the cantankerous Umberto Bossi. Highly controversial, the law was promoted by Bossi himself together with Gianfranco Fini, a reformed former neo-Fascist. The law was immediately branded as Fascist but has remained on the books. Its provisions, including amendments of 2009:
    --to remain, an immigrant must show possession of a work visa and contract for at least one year submitted by an employer;
    --illegal immigrants risk a fine of $14,200 and can be detained for more than six months;
    --because illegal immigration is a crime, public officials and public workers must report the presence of any illegal immigrant;
    --those housing undocumented migrants risk three years in prison;
    --unarmed citizen patrols can circulate so as to help police;
    --all illegal or irregular immigrants found by police on Italia soil must be identified and deported to their countries of origin.
     
    A particularly grievous provision is that the owners of those private boats helping in rescues at sea can be accused of aiding and abetting clandestine migrants; rescues are up to public agencies like the firemen and Carabinieri. Although some say this is not necessarily so, it is accepted wisdom by most, and may explain why one or two of the Lampedusa fishing boats did not move forward to help immediately. And by the way, again under the Berlusconi government, in April 2011 his Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, Bossi's second-in-command in the Northern League, issued a ministerial circular which forbade reporters and journalists access to any immigrant detention center. One year later Maroni's successor under the center-left government revoked this appalling and undemocratic measure.
     
    Despite risk of prosecution for helping, most Lampedusa boatmen did rush forward, including hobby fishermen and tourists in small craft. Their descriptions of pulling refugees from the water were harrowing: so much oil had come out of the burning boat that survivors' hands and arms were greasy, and the survivors kept slipping back into the water.
     
    Should this law, aimed at bringing order in the Italian (and especially the North Italian) work place be revised to make a distinction between refugee status and economic migration? "Repression alone will not help," said Laura Boldrini, president of the Chamber of Deputies and an expert on problems of immigration. Most on the center-left agree, angrily, that she is right and that the law must rewritten. Still, a few close to Premier Letta fear that, given the relative weakness of Alfano within the PdL, it can be risky to push him too hard within his party and make fears of immigrants a new battle cry.
     
    The tragedy is deeply felt throughout all of Italy, but little more so than in tiny Lampedusa, which some in Italy are trying to promote for the Nobel Peace Prize. The voice of the mayor, a woman named Giusi Nicolini, reveals exhaustion. In a facebook comment she wrote only a few minutes ago to thank Minister Cecile Kyenge "for being with us in this very tough moment." It is scarcely the mayor's first tough moment; on September 2 the town hall had to be evacuated because an envelope containing what was identified as anthrax was sent to her office.
     
    The anguish all this means for the inhabitants of Lampedusa cannot be overstated. To help the island's children digest the drama which continues to unfold in their front yard, elementary school teachers are having the children make drawings of the disaster and the dead.
     
    Post script #1: Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi will elect charitable service rather than house arrest, also because his formal residence is in his Roman apartment rather than in the larger, more comfortable mansion at Arcore near Milan. As a result, Italian charitable associations are fairly begging for him. Interviewed by La Repubblica on what would be the best solution, a priest who has worked for decades with former drug addicts suggested, "Let him plant tomatoes, above all in silence."
     
    Post script #2: After the high tension confidence vote last week guaranteed the continuity of the government headed by Enrico Letta of the Partito Democratico, latest public opinion surveys show that Angelino Alfano's Liberty party (PdL) gained in consensus, moving up from 25% to 29% in just seven days. The increase suggests approval of the fact that the party's hawks were finally shown to be a minority. For the same reason the personal popularity of Berlusconi, blamed by four out of ten for causing the political crisis, sank to 18%, down 3% from the previous week. The same survey showed that Italian President Giorgio Napolitano's popularity bounced up by 6 % in just one week to 54% of those queried, thanks to his contributions in resolving the crisis and avoiding national general elections. Matteo Renzi, with 52%, is Italy's second most popular single political leader. The survey, whose results were released Oct. 4, was conducted by Ixe' for RAI national broadcasting network.
  • Op-Eds

    Berlusconi. The Beginning of the End




     
    ROME - Following weeks of threats that he would torpedo the government, Silvio Berlusconi and his entire center-right parliamentary group voted today to continue to share power in their five-months-old coalition with the center-left Partito Democratico (PD). The lower house confirmed the vote later in the day, the former Premier's surprise about-face in the Senate, with 235 votes in favor, 70 opposed and no abtsentions. The successful confidence vote guarantees, at least for the time being, the continuity of the five-months-old government headed by Premier Enrico Letta and postpones recourse to early national general elections only six months after the last. The great mediator in the situation was President Giorgio Napolitano, more popular with the public than ever.
     
    "We have shown that the government is not collapsing, and I intend to continue to work," Letta said in accepting the vote. "But there can be no more blackmail attempts, no more noisy quarrels [within the coalition]. We have had 14 governments in the same period of time that the Germans had just three. Now we have to show that we understand that we must meet the expectations of the Italians." In his acceptance Letta also quoted Pope Francis.
     
    Speaking briefly in the Senate, Berlusconi said, "Considering the expectations, and the fact that Italy needs a government that can produce institutional and structural reforms, we have decided, not without internal struggles, in favor of the vote of confidence." In fact, the internal struggles he mentioned help to explain his about-face. Berlusconi's party is now splintered in two, with reciprocal insults in public between his die-hard supporters and the dissidents requesting a less autocratic party. Moreover, while their leader survives for the moment, his personal role is diminished, and what is called here "Berlusconismo" - that is, an acritical acceptance of uncontested leadership, with no discussion or debate permitted - is at an end. At the very least it is the beginning of the end for Berlusconi. As "qualified European sources" in Brussels commented (reiterated in the financial daily Il Sole/24 Ore), Berlusconi is "becoming more marginal."
     
    Behind his unexpected support of the Letta government was the opening of a split within his Freedom party (the PdL, now more or less renamed as Forza Italia), spearheaded by none other than his normally supine second-in-command, Angelino Alfano. Only one of Berlusconi's last ditch but futile efforts was to try to persuade his parliamentary group to refuse in bloc to take part in today's vote. The tactic flopped, and, after protesting that their party has fallen into the hands of extremists, some 26 members of Parliament announced Wednesday a formal breach with the PdL in order to create within Parliament an autonomous group of moderates, to be called Nuovo Italia (New Italy), headed by former Berlusconi stalwart Fabrizio Cicchitto. The new formation includes a robust faction of staunch Catholics.
     
    Another reason for Berlusconi's move is that money talks, and the stability of the government is almost instantly monetized. As news of this schism became public Tuesday afternoon, suggesting that the Letta government would survive the confidence vote, the Italian stock market surged in response by 3.11%. The news of the dissidents' likely vote for Letta sent stocks in Berlusconi's own media corporation, Mediaset, bouncing up by 6.6%, while the spread (i.e., the difference between Italian and German state bond interest) remained stable at 256, shrinking by a few points after the successful confidence vote.
     
    During the long morning debate the atmosphere in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate turned extremely emotional, and Berlusconi himself turned weepy at the end of his speech in the Senate. His ever faithful lieutenant Sandro Bondi, former Culture Minister in the Berlusconi government, was also almost nearly in tears as he claimed that the Italian economy had worsened under Letta (untrue) and is responsible for the tremendously high level of unemployment (also untrue, since in office only five months).
     
    In truth, unemployment remains a concern, for it has risen to over 40% among youths between age 15 and 35. Also painfully in the background were the deaths of at least thirteen immigrants who had arrived from Libya but been cast out of a ramshackle boat by smugglers near the shore at Ragusa in Sicily. Using belts and chains, the smugglers had forced the immigrants to jump into deep waters. Those who did not know how to swim drowned only a short distance from a tourist beach. Italy is now host to nearly 5,000 refugees from Syria, and within the past week new immigrants continue to arrive at the rate of nearly 300 a day.
     
    But there was also a few occasions for lighter moments. One was Berlusconi's much-photographed arrival at his apartment in Rome's Palazzo Grazioli with, cuddled on his shoulder, his girlfriend Francesca's little white fluffy dog Dudu'. More seriously, the PdL dissidents had described themselves as "diversamente Berlusconiani," a play on words for diversamente abile (diversely able), the au currant politically correct term for disabled. From an Italian association of the diversely able came outraged protests that their term would be applied to a political faction.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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    Political Italy on the Brink


    ROME - After a series of high-tension meetings in Rome this week the hard-liners in Silvio Berlusconi's Partito della Libertà (PdL) have prevailed, heightening the likelihood that the government, in which the PdL shares power with Enrico Letta's center-left Partito Democratico (PD), will be forced to shut down. In an admitted about-face, Berlusconi persuaded all five of his cabinet members to submit their resignations from the government. The decision came even though some among Berlusconi's closest advisors, including Fabrizio Cicchitto, are known to oppose their party's torpedoing of the government installed after fundamentally inconclusive national general elections held only last Spring. The first consequence is that a vote of confidence is expected to take place early this week. If he is voted down, the Letta government will resign.

     
    Premier Letta response was swift and blunt. At the end of a meeting late Friday night with his Council of Ministers he declared that, "We need the harshest and clearest possible confrontation. I am not available to go forward without clarification. An efficacious government action is obviously incompatible with the resignation in bloc of the members of a parliamentary group [PdL] which supposedly upholds the executive. Either the [government] is relaunched, so that the nation and its citizens' interests come first, or this experience comes to an end.... I have no intention to just get by or to lend myself to continuous threats and blackmail." The immediate consequence was to halt the crucial vote on the budget.
     
    Among a newly angry Berlusconi's targets for invective is President Giorgio Napolitano, who until now had been treated by Berlusconi himself as an impartial leader of the nation. Following the three-way election split just five months ago Berlusconi himself had asked Napolitano to remain in office for a second seven-year term in order to guarantee the stability necessary for dealing with its economic crisis and to meet the criteria established by the European Union.
     
    At the same time Premier Letta, fresh from a visit to the U.S., is himself under scathing attack, first by Berlusconi himself, but also by the PD's own angry leftists. This faction has long lobbied for a confrontation with Berlusconi. They too have long promoted new elections and criticized Letta for remaining in government with Berlusconi following the former Premier's conviction in August by the Italian supreme court, the Cassations, for tax fraud on the grand scale. The resignations Friday give this faction renewed political energy and justification. At the same time the PD is under relentless daily attack by the Five-Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle, M5S), led by Beppe Grillo, whose reaction was, "Let's vote!"
     
    Officially the quarrel between the governing partners this past week has been over a planned increase in the sales tax (VAT) from 21% to 22%. "We won't be accomplices to raising taxes," said one PdL spokesman. But no one is fooled. What prompted the decision by Berlusconi and his ministers to go to the mattresses is the meeting to take place on October 4, when the Senate commission, in which the left prevails will, vote on stripping him of his parliamentary status. Berlusconi has the option of resigning beforehand or of accepting either a year of house arrest or to submit to a social welfare program for convicted criminals.
     
    For President Napolitano, the PdL decision to have its ministers resign was "improvised and disturbing for the institutions." As for Letta, he remains at least publicly optimistic, and the veteran political observer Massimo Franco hypothesizes that a small space for mediation may still exist, "if for no other reason than [Berlusconi's] fear of a government being created that could be far more hostile to him than the present one." In fact, before new elections can be called President Napolitano is far more likely to urge creation of another round under Letta. This could happen, in theory; defections from the right, including from Berlusconi's own PdL, and from the left, including from Grillo ranks, are within the range of the possible.
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    Berlusconi Video: "I Will Always Be With You"


    ROME - His face drawn and pale despite the heavy pancake makeup, former Premier Silvio Berlusconi addressed the Italians in a video message in which he promised, "I will always be with you." The video was released on Wednesday, shortly after a Senate commission in Rome voted to strip him of his Senate status on grounds of his conviction in August by the Cassations court, Italy's highest, for tax fraud. At any rate, he declared, "I am absolutely innocent," and, despite the "planned aggression of the judges," it is possible to be a politician even if not in Parliament. Most importantly, however, in the video--which seems to have been revised again and again before its release--he did not indicate that his "Freedom Party" (Partito della Liberta', PdL) would throw Italy into chaotic instability and new elections by its exit from the government.

     
    The 16-member commission meeting was just as tense as was Berlusconi, wearing in his video an honestly sober gray suit rather than his customary navy blue. Suggesting the trend, nearly two-thirds voted against Berlusconi, with fourteen members versus just nine in his favor. The next commission meeting will not take place for at least ten days, and will be public. At that time Berlusconi and his lawyers can present their defense. Wednesday's vote, however, was only the first step, and does not take effect until and unless the entire Parliament votes; when that will be is anyone's guess, but it is far enough in the future that elections this autumn seem unlikely.
     
    Predictably, in his video message the former Premier was already on the attack. "I will fight against the sentence," he declared. "You know what happened: a political outsider, a certain Silvio Berlusconi, went down onto the playing field, defeated the joyful war machine of the left and in two months brought the moderates into government....Even as the prosecutors of Magistratura Democratica [the progressive association of judges] went to war against me. From that time on I was assailed by 50 court cases in which mud was slung at me and my image, making me lose time and waste economic resources."
     
    As for the latest sentence for tax evasion, which was the third level of justice over the past ten years in the case, "I committed no crime, I am not guilty of anything, I am absolutely innocent. After 41 trials without a conviction they delude themselves in thinking they can keep me out of political life. Against a monstrous political decision I will fight in the ways and at the right and oportune time to obtain its revision in Italy and in Europe. They simply invented the crime of my cooking up a fiscal fraud." Under pretexts the judges attacked "my family, my fortune and even my guests" (an oblique reference to his notorious bunga-bunga parties).
     
    In hopes of "achieving socialism via the judicial route," the magistrates, Berlusconi went on to say, have transformed themselves into a counter-power to the state itself. "They want to kick me out through violent aggression. But I am here to ask you to keep your eyes open.... I say to you, react, protest, you have the right and duty to do something to get us out of the situation they have put us in. Every responsible Italian must feel it a duty to engage personally [in this battle]. Announcing the exhuming of his old Forza Nuova party to replace the PdL, he promised: "I will always be with you, stripped of immunity or not.... Go down into the playing field yourselves. Become the missionaries for Forza Italia."
     
    What may interest Premier Enrico Letta the most, given that Berlusconi's still extant PdL is his government partner, was that there was no direct reference in the message to the government. However, Berlusconi did ask for a commitment by the government to respect the PdL demand for a halt to "the fiscal bombardment." This was only a first move. As the noted commentator Ugo Magri of La Stampa daily wrote Thursday, Berlusconi's latest bit of malice consisted in subrosa warnings to both President Giorgio Napolitano and Premier Letta.
     
    Here is Magri's interpretation of Berlusconi's video message: "I will not make the government fall. However, seeing that you have abandoned me to a conviction without raising a finger, I am going to bombard you every day until the political air will not be worth breathing. That is, he will push onto the left the responsibility for the destruction of the political stability that both Europe and the markets demand. "He will place the allies before a crossroad: either undergo, every single day, provocations by Forza Italia or else react, out of exasperation, so that it is you who pulls the trigger that will cause a government crisis."
     
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    Berlusconi at the Crossroads, Italy on Edge


    ROME - What is stunning, some here say, is the extent to which former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's problems continue to overshadow the other problems the country faces, from unemployment to education, a monster public debt, taxation that industrialists here call crippling, and a semi-functional bureaucracy. But such is the case, particularly this week when a Senate commission began discussion of whether or not he is to be stripped of his senatorial status on grounds of his conviction in August of tax fraud on the grand scale.
     
    An anti-Berlusconi vote by the commission could bring down the government, as Berlusconi's Freedom party (PdL) has threatened, but with passing days the threat of imminent new elections recedes. Many in that party had promoted early elections, six months after the last national general elections, on grounds that Berlusconi remains the single most popular politician in Italy.
     
    The commission vote is the result of Berlusconi's conviction August 1 by the Cassations court, Italy's highest, which sentenced him to four years in prison. Berlusconi will not have to spend those four years in prison, but, on the basis of the Severino Law Decree, which was passed by Berlusconi's own Freedom Party (PdL) in 2012, parliamentarians are prohibited from serving if convicted of a serious crime. On Monday therefore his case went before the Senate committee charged with determining whether or not he is to be stripped of his senatorial status on the basis of that law.
     
    The committee has not rushed into a vote, and no one can be sure exactly when it will, or how it will vote, but the majority of committee members are tendentially to the left of the PdL. If the Senate votes against Berlusconi, the question passes for a vote by the Senate as a whole.
     
    Here is the legal background: with the aid of British corporate lawyer  and international tax expert David Mills, the real costs of media products which Berlusconi's company, Mediaset, purchased abroad in the 1990s were inflated through the creation of overseas shell companies. This did not escape official notice, and in February 2009 an Italian Appeals Court convicted Mills of having accepted a bribe from Berlusconi and for having given false evidence in Berlusconi's favor in corruption trials in 1997 and 1998. The  sentence was appealed, sending the Mills case to Italy's highest court, the Cassations. But time had passed, and the statute of limitations had expired so the Mills conviction was voided. In Senator Berlusconi's case, the statute of limitations did not expire--hence his conviction.
     
    To avoid the embarrassment of this vote, should it go against Berlusconi, pundits and, reportedly, family members and his financial advisors are advising Berlusconi to avoid this brutal confrontation by resigning beforehand, but so far to no avail. "He has never lost a battle," one of his friends explained. "Psychologically he cannot face failure." The risk is, therefore, that, unless some outside force intervenes on Berlusconi's behalf, his vendetta could be to bring down the government headed by his own party's coalition partner, Premier Enrico Letta's Partito Democratico (PD). If this happens, Berlusconi is betting that the Italian voter will place no blame on him for creating electoral havoc at a time of a deep economic crisis that is now causing a cash scarcity in the banks as homeowners default on mortgages.
     
    Until now his (and his team of lawyers') strategy has been just that: a bet, excogitated by endless days of nervous meetings in Rome and at Berlusconi's home at Arcora near Milan. The latest ploy of the top guns among the 80-some lawyers in his employ was to initiate an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, France. This attempt to gain time, which may well be in the interest of the broader Italian community, has a shortcoming: from Strasbourg comes the news that it would take months before they may decide to consider his case--that is, possibly well after he is ousted from his senate seat.
     
    Other arguments the Berlusconi legal team has advanced similarly run into a logical counter-argument that contributes to the uncertainty. His lawyers argue, for example, that the tax dodge events (and not the alleged tax dodging, according to the Cassations court sentence) took place before passage in 2012 of the Severino Decree. By that reasoning the statute of limitations has run out. In fact, however, the Severino decree does not refer to illicit activities of the l990s, but to the time of his conviction August 1, 2013. Berlusconi's legal team also claims that the Severino Decree was unconstitutional, but it was passed by Parliament, including with the PdL votes.
     
    Another argument advanced by Berlusconi's legal eagles is that he has the right to defend himself. True--but in the course of three trials over ten years, he was amply defended. The Senate commission convened for Monday, moreover, is not a trial.
    Finally, there has been muttering about a possible retrial, but, again, in a decade of three trials, that appears as unlikely as the prospect of new evidence being produced. Even should a new trial be ordered, jurists here say, under Italian law it would not block execution of the existing sentence at any rate.
     

    Given the legal subtleties, perhaps the cartoonist Ellekappa (in real life the brilliant Laura Pellegrini) has it right when she depicts an old lady saying to her friend: "Only a crazy crook could decide to bring down the government." The reply: "Yeah, that's why everyone is so worried." Nevertheless, a few here are not worried for the immediate future. They are convinced that President Giorgio Napolitano is unlikely to convoke new elections--and only he has the right to do so--until and unless there is a revised election law and a pending budget bill is passed. This would put new elections at an earliest in February 2014. With luck, it is already late for elections to be called for November

  • Facts & Stories

    Pope, Peace and 100,000 at Prayer



    VATICAN CITY - The crowd singing, meditating and praying in St. Peter's Square Saturday evening was immense, the response to Pope Francis's appeal to believers, including Muslims, and non-believers as well to join together in a day of fasting and prayer for peace, not only Syria but also in Lebanon, Irak, Palestine, Israel and Egypt. Italian police estimate that as many as 100,000 participated. They included leaders of non-Catholic faiths as well as Catholics. The Pontiff's message was clear and emphatic: "Let the cry for peace rise up across the earth," he declared. "We have perfected our weapons but put to sleep our consciences." Pope Francis, who appeared wearing a simple white cassock, specifically denounced the use of chemical weapons while taking care not to place blame on either side.
     
    But in some ways the real message was the massive participation at the four-hour vigil, which demonstrated, as do the crowds flocking to the Wednesday papal audiences, the pontiff's extraordinary popularity and influence. Through the media this message circled the globe, extending into Syria. From Damascus Archbishop Mario Zenari, who is a native of Verona and the papal nunzio (that is, ambassador) in Syria, predicted on Vatican Radio that, "The words of the Holy Father will carry weight." Papal diplomats have been working for months behind the scenes in favor of an immediate cessation of violence, and earlier last week a senior Vatican spokesman had warned that the Syrian conflict risked igniting "a world war." Earlier Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo had cautioned that, "War will not take us anywhere--the only road to peace is dialogue."
     
    Among the many who elected to fast for peace with the Pontiff were actor Dario Fo, architect Renzo Piano, singers Gianni Morandi and Adriano Celentano and Foreign Minister Emma Bonino. Later Bonino was reportedly irritated at Premier Enrico Letta's signing for Italy, at the just concluded G20 meeting in St. Petersburg, a statement together with Britain, France and Spain calling for a "strong response." to the events in Syria. Italian politicians at the vigil in St. Peter's included the President of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini, Defense Minister Mauro Mauro and Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino.
     
    For Pope Francis, this was his first public venture into international politics. Vatican observers point out that his taking a particularly active role in diplomacy reflects that, as a Latin American, his vision is global; even as a cardinal he had sent one of his priests from Argentina to study Arabic in Cairo. Not coincidentally, in recent months the Vatican has been publishing its press releases in Arabic as well as European languages. "Francis is convinced that all religions can unite together to combat the evil that lies within each of us," as one Italian observer put.
     
    Speaking from the pulpit of the basilica on Sunday morning, the Pope denounced the clandestine arms market. "Is this war truly a war for something, or does it serve for the illegal business of selling arms?" he asked. "One must say 'no' to fratricide violence and to the lies which spur this on, and to the proliferation of weapons and their illegal commerce." This has long been a goal of Vatican diplomacy, including at the United Nations, and on September 5 the Vatican's new foreign affairs minister, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, spoke to the 71 ambassadors to the Holy See in Rome to outline the position of the Holy See with regard to Syria. In a paper the Archbishop presented there the emphasis was on preservation of the unity and territorial integrity of Syria. This is in apparent contradiction to a US suggestion of creation of a Christian enclave of some sort in the North of Syria.
     
    The Vatican is deeply concerned for the fate of Christian and particularly Catholic communities in Syria as well as the rest of the Middle East. It learned today, with consternation, that the small town of Malula, near Damascus, had fallen to rebel forces. The town, a popular destination for pilgrims and tourists, is renowned for the fact that it is a very ancient Christian community where at least some still speak the language of Jesus Christ, Aramaic. The fighting sent the inhabitants fleeing from town, to bolster the numbers of Christian refugees, who are among the 4 million displaced persons inside Syria; another 2 million have crossed borders. "There is underlying fear that in Syria's future there will be no room for religious minorities such as Christians," according to reporter Andrea Tornielli, writing in Vatican Insider.
     
  • Op-Eds

    For the Senate, High Culture and International Input



    ROME - In the present political climate not a sparrow falls from the sky without someone crying foul (or, better, fowl), and so it was with four appointments to Senator for Life, made by President Giorgio Napolitano on August 30.


    The appointees, who replace four who had died during the past year, are all outstanding cultural figures who are also particularly well known abroad: orchestra conductor Claudio Abbado, architect Renzo Piano, Nobel prize-winning scientist Carlo Rubbia and, the only female, Elena Cattaneo, a researcher in pharmacology. The last such appointment prior to these was that of economist Mario Monti, named lifetime senator just one week prior to his becoming premier on Napolitano's watch in November of 1911.
     
    For a majority of Italians, the President's selection of distinguished cultural figures is not only a badge of honor, but also a model for Italian youth. For the political birdwatchers on the right, however, the new appointments are tainted. "As Andreotti once said, 'Thinking bad thoughts is a sin but sometimes you get it right,'" was the comment by PdL coordinator Rocco Girlanda of Umbra. The reason for the skepticism: on Sept. 9 a Senate commission begins discussion on whether or not former Premier Silvio Berlusconi will be forced to resign as senator. For some in his Freedom party (PdL), the new nominations reflect Napolitano's unsubtle attempt to pack the Senate with individuals likely to vote for stripping Berlusconi of his senatorial status--that is, for his decadenza. Later the entire Senate must vote.
     
    However, even without these new additions to the Senate, in Italy's current three-way political party tie two can always outvote the third: Berlusconi's conservatives in the PdL; the left-leaning Partito Democratico or PD, and the cranky left of Beppe Grillo's Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S. For this reason few here believe that Berlusconi will retain his status as Senator.
     
    One who continues to try for an amicable solution, even now, is Gianni Letta, 77, four times Berlusconi's undersecretary of state and on the board of Goldman Sachs. Letta, who belonged to the Vatican super-club "Gentlemen of His Holiness,"| has long been the PdL's unofficial ambassador to the Vatican as well as chief negotiator with the Quirinal Palace over the question of the President's granting an amnesty to Berlusconi. As it happens, Letta is also the uncle of the current moderate leftist premier Enrico Letta. (This "Gentlemanly" super-club of which Uncle Gianni Letta was a member, incidentally, was dissolved by Pope Francis following Vatican bank IOR scandals involving some of its members, though not Letta.)
     
    The mini-protest of the PdL is overshadowed, however, by the general sense of admiration for Napolitano's choices. All four have long experience outside Italy, and are expected to bring to the Senate a fresh international approach.
     
    Youngest appointee is biotechnologist Elena Cattaneo, 50. Born at Paladina, near Bergamo, after obtaining her PhD she spent a number of years at MIT in Boston before returning to the University of Milan, where  she directs the Stem Cell Biology and Pharmacology of Neurodegenerative Diseases. Professor Cattaneo is coordinator of the European NeuroStemcell research project, to which 16 research laboratories contribute. Her research has focused on the study of neural staminal cells and in particular of the neurodegenerativw Huntington's Disease. She is also the author of some 100 scientific papers.
     
    Pianist and orchestra conductor Claudio Abbado, 80, born in Milan, made his conducting debut at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1960. In 1963 he was awarded the Mitropoulos Prize at the New York Philharmonic and in 1968 made his debut at Covent Garden in London. From 1968 through l986 he was artistic director of La Scala while, in 1971, serving as chief conductor at the Vienna Philharmonic. Later he became artistic director of the Vienna Staatsoper and (1989-2001) of the Berlin Philharmonic. Most recently he has been artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and the Orchestra Mozart of Bologna.
     
    Renzo Piano, 76, of Genoa is recognized as one of the world's foremost architects and was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1998 by U.S. President Bill Clinton. Among his best known projects is the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, where his winning design bested over 700 other candidates from 49 countries. In Rome his Parco della Musica has been an extraordinary success, while for New York he designed the new Columbia University Campus. Since 1994 he has also served UNESCO as a goodwill ambassador. In 2006 he became the first Italian to be listed by Time magazine as among the 100 most influential individuals in the world. His latest project is a new Justice Building for Paris.
     
    Born in 1934 in Gorizia, Carlo Rubbia is considered one of the world's foremost physicists. Director General of the Cern research laboratory in Geneva from 1989 to 1993, he transferred to Harvard University where he was physics professor for 18 years. In 1984 he was awarded the Noel Prize for physics together with Simon van der Meer for their discovery of the W and Z particles. A former president of Enea, at present he continues his research studies, including on cosmic neutrines, at Cern and at the National Laboratories in the Gran Sasso in the Abruzzo.
     
     
     
     
     
  • Op-Eds

    It's to the Matts, Guys ....


    ROME - Yesterday's five-hour powwow at Silvio Berlusconi's villa at Arcore, near Milan, was being called here the "super-summit" because it brought together his entire roster of backers. The aim: to decide what political moves remain open to him now that a high court has found him guilty of tax dodging. Should his supporters continue to press President Giorgio Napolitano for an amnesty, when the request to do so is an implicit admission of guilt? Even if Berlusconi were willing, Napolitano shows no sign of being willing to grant him an amnesty. So now what?


    For Berlusconi, the waning days of summer quickened the debate over how he can continue in politics. On Sept. 9 a parliamentary commission begins meeting to vote on Berlusconi's decadenza--that is, his being stripped of his Senate seat and hence of parliamentary immunity. After that commission vote, which is considered unlikely to go in Berlusconi's favor, the question goes before the entire Senate for another vote.


    Yet another deadline arrives Oct 15, when Berlusconi must choose between house arrest or meetings with social workers. Should he cave in to house arrest for a year, leading his party from home? After all, as the doves in his party have argued, Beppe Grillo runs the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) without being a member of Parliament. Otherwise Berlusconi could meet biweekly with a social worker for nine months, saying he is doing it for the good of the country, and get it over with before new elections are called. Finally, the hawks in his party have been urging him to throw down the gauntlet and declare war on everybody and everything.


    Seeking a solution, this week was rife with appeals to Premier Enrico Letta, asked to find a way to get Berlusconi off the hook. But Letta knows two things: first, that to do so would be in violation of the Italian law governing the case, the Severino Law, and, secondly, that his own Partito Democratico (PD), which reluctantly shares government with Berlusconi's Freedom party (PdL), would implode. Letta rejected outright Berlusconi's mild overtures. The sense is therefore that national general elections loom ever more likely than even a few days ago; never mind that the last elections were held only last April.


    At Arcore Saturday the delegation of cabinet ministers who have been governing partners with the left-leaning (but not very far left) PD for the past four months was headed by Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, Berlusconi's stand-in as head of the PdL founded by Silvio himself.Then there were the Berlusconi children, beginning with Marina, who reportedly went into the super-summit with appeals to her father to keep his cool. Siding with these doves were Berlusconi's financial advisors, who fear that new elections will throw into a new tizzy the Italian markets, and in particular the Berlusconi financial interests, which had just recently picked up.


    Faced off against this formidable array were the party hawks, rooting for new elections as soon as possible, with Berlusconi heading the ticket, at whatever cost, and even if his conviction formally prohibits him from running for public office. This very vocal faction boasted the likes of Sandro Bondi, whose legacy as culture minister is nigh onto invisible; Dennis Verdini, just now under investigation by a Florentine court for corruption; and the party's pasionaria, Daniela Santanché.


    Another source of friction is the hated tax on first homes, IMU, whose half-year summer payment was postponed as part of the governing compromise between Premier Letta's PD and the PdL. In hopes of fostering his own and his party's popularity, Alfano in particular has lobbied for the housing tax to be removed permanently. But, particularly in recent days, the government's respected chief financial minister Fabrizio Saccomani of the PD has declared that resources are insufficient for the state to drop that tax. A vote on this is slated in Parliament for Wednesday.


    The hawks prevailed at Arcore, finally convincing a supposedly thoughtful, reluctant Berlusconi to declare war on the government. In case anyone doubted who had the last word, Santanché put it concisely, "The Cav [Cavaliere Berlusconi] has decided. The government falls." But if so, Berlusconi is prohibited, under the Severino Law, from being a candidate for office.


    Today's banner headline in the daily owned by Berlusconi himself trumpets this warning, which is also a forewarning of the campaign to come: "If handcuffs prevail, Italian civilization is at risk." From Alfano came this: "Decadenza [his losing his Senate seat] is unthinkable and constitutionally unacceptable."


    But however irate Berlusconi and his supporters may be, President Napolitano has the last word and seems unlikely to call new elections. Already PD activists are counting heads to see how many votes a second round of Letta government, without Alfano and Berlusconi, might command. They are not altogether pessimistic but calculate that a certain number of Beppe Grillo's deputies preferring economic stability may break ranks with their leader. Convinced he will prevail, Grillo makes no secret of preferring early elections under the old Porcellum rules.

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