Articles by: Judith Harris

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    Culture Crunch Italy


    ROME - Italy is caught in a "Culture Crunch": that is, the gulf between the country's splendid cultural heritage - its art, architecture, archaeology, cityscape, landscape - and the terrible problems in caring and maintaining such an abundance of riches. Making a gesture in the right direction, Massimo Bray, Minister of Culture and Tourism, has just appointed a "Commission for the Revision of the Code for the Cultural Heritage and Landscape," whose goal will be to harmonize the legal norms regarding the care and feeding of the heritage, and the programs of the various institutions charged with putting these norms into action.


    Sounds fuzzy? Minimal? Perhaps, but the commission members are as good as it gets, so there is hope. Commission head is the severe and admired archaeologist Salvatore Settis, whose accepting the appointment is all the more meaningful because a few years back he resigned in protest as head of that ministry's general oversight commission. Members of this new body, which admittedly has limited powers, are equally distinguished: former Premier Giuliano Amato; Paolo Carpentiere, head of the ministry's legal office; Molise Region cultural heritage director-general Gino Famiglietti; and Maria Luisa Maddalena, a magistrate. All are donating their skills and time without pay.


    But meantime another project dear to Minister Bray's heart, and which he proposed in Parliament, has been put on hold because too complicated and controversial. Bray's proposal is to turn over to private interests some of the myriad minor archaeological and other heritage sites that are currently padlocked for lack of personnel. These shuttered sites, as Bray told Parliament, represent a "very serious phenomenon" which "impoverishes" the state and harms the economy since the sites could become money-earners.


    On the pragmatic level, objections to Bray's plan abound. One is that non-profit entities have no legal status in Italy. Veteran journalist Vittorio Emiliani's lapidary sentence is that to put private citizens in charge of the cultural heritage would be "to put the fox in with the chickens." For his part, Professor Settis argues that the project flies in the face of Italian law which has, for well over a century, made all heritage sites the automatic, common property of the Italian people (that is, of the state). It was already considered a radical and scary innovation when public museums were allowed to open book and gift shops back in 1993 under the ministry of Alberto Ronchey. Settis believes that to turn over management of Italian heritage sites to private businessmen "would be profoundly wrong" because the state would be abdicating its Constitutional role. "We must free ourselves of the equivocal notion that the arrival of private citizens can compensate for the lacks of a state which, since 2008, began a devastating withdrawal from the cultural arena."


    Nevertheless, the long list of problem areas argues that something must be done, and as quickly as possible. Consider these disturbing areas where action is urgent: . Money for Ministry projects has been cut in half in 13 years, from the 0.39% of the year 2000 to this year's 0.20%. With some 2,000 archeological sites, the number of archaeologists in the employ of the state has dropped to 343. Only 453 art historians are in the employ of over 460 state museums. On the bright side, Minister Bray promises that 500 young people will be taken on as Ministry interns.


    The historical center of L'Aquila in the heart of the Abruzzo remains the country's largest single completely unresolved restoration project. Little in the town center has been changed since 2009, when the city with its great monuments dating from the Middle Ages was devastated by an earthquake. This month Mayor Massimo Cialente ordered the closing of the historic Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, which it had been partially reopened for worship, after weaknesses were found in its walls. ENI will finance restructuration with a grant of E12 million ($15 million).


     The problems of the ancient site of Pompeii are already well known, but, as this frequent visitor there can testify, it is terrible to see, on the one hand, overcrowding and, on the other, so many buildings that have become off-limits to the public. Reorganization is in the works, fortunately, and none too soon; Pompeii administration requires enormous professionalism and adequate staffing. It is simply not enough to be a dedicated archaeologist, as Bray has acknowledged.


    The big ships in overcrowded Venice bring thousands of visitors at a time into the fragile, historic port areas and hustle them down narrow streets. To say that most see little is understatement. Ordinary visitors themselves run risks from congestion in the lagoons, like the German tourist of 50 who was killed when a ferryboat crashed into the gondola in which he and his family were riding near the Rialto Bridge.


    These are only the most obvious problems. Cinema production, grand opera, symphonic orchestras are all hurting in what is, to quote Vittorio Emiliani, "cultural suicide."
    In a future column the gladiatorial battle over Colosseum sponsorship will take center arena.
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    Napolitano Has the Last Word, for Now...


    ROME - It is unlikely that we shall ever know the full story, but it is nevertheless clear that, through careful mediation, President Giorgio Napolitano has succeeded in calming at least some of the troubled waters of political Italy. This is a victory for stability, for Italy, for justice, for Premier Enrico Letta's coalition government, but also for the moderates within former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's splintered Freedom Party (PdL), who have been counselling a cautious approach even as an obviously fraught Berlusconi himself launches a new party.


    The feisty PdL hawks like Daniela Santanche have been more or less openly threatening to bring down Letta's coalition government, of which Berlusconi's party is a fundamental part, unless Napolitano would grant an amnesty to liberate Berlusconi from the political consequences of his high court conviction for tax dodging. The hawks' argument has been that Berlusconi is a politician representing "ten million voters"--in fact, something like eight million--and therefore cannot, this being a democracy, be shunted out of political life by magistrates who are (from their point of view) overly politicized.


    In fact, the laws governing the situation are themselves slightly ambiguous, and the daily La Repubblica this week published, facing each other, two entirely differing versions of Berlusconi's legal right to continue in political life or to be legally excluded. Each was written by a prestigious, experienced justice. Lending credence to the PdL protests was an ill-considered, apparently gossipy telephone interview given last week by the chief presiding justice of the Cassations Court, Antonio Esposito, to a reporter from the daily Il Mattino of Naples.


    Up to that point his court was basking in praise for its upholding the principle that all citizens are equal before the law. The recorded text of the interview, given prior to official publication of the sentence and its legal basis, has yet to be published, but news reports accuse Judge Esposito of revealing that the conviction was justified because Berlusconi "knew all about" the multi-million-dollar tax scam; Berlusconi's defense has been in part that he was too occupied with political affairs to know about the tax dodge scheme involving overseas acquisitions of film rights for Berlusconi's media company, Mediaset.


    If nothing else, a presiding justice's conceding any interview to any reporter is, to say the least, almost inexplicable. But in addition Esposito supposedly also jokingly discussed what phone taps had revealed about Berlusconi's sex life. True? Not necessarily. By one account there were no salacious descriptions whatsoever. Another version has the "interview," to the extent that it was such, spoken in such a thick Neapolitan dialect that the later listeners had trouble deciphering the words. The matter is now passing into the hands of the high council of magistrates, where Esposito risks being found guilty of misconduct.


    This emergency coalition which has right and left sharing power has been dubbed the "accidental government." Not surprisingly, the man holding its reins, Premier Letta, has been on pins and needles while awaiting a resolution to the problems raised by Berlusconi's conviction and his defenders' appeals to Napolitano. To save the government, would the President, could he legally, grant Berlusconi the amnesty being claimed by the PdL hawks? At the same time, some in Letta's own left-leaning Partito Democratico (PD) feared that Berlusconi would opt to go to prison so as to play the victim. Already some newspapers were comparing him with, of all people, the imprisoned Nelson Mandela.


    Napolitano's cautious and marvelously ambiguous decision came in a note issued August 13 from the Quirinal Palace, launching an avalanche of various (and sometimes conflicting) interpretations. The best synthesis came in a tweet by PD Senator Corradino Mineo, former head of RAI News 24: "Here's what I understand from [Napolitano's] statement: 'I'd like to [grant the] amnesty but can't. B's political role is essential but his sentence must be respected. Amnesty? They have to ask for it first.'" Most importantly, an amnesty is unlikely, if not ruled out yet, but Berlusconi still has the possibility of remaining in political life. What Mineo may have forgotten to say was the Napolitano also categorically excluded Berlusconi from the risk of imprisonment, while leaving open that he will likely remain under house arrest or--Heaven knows doing what--in the redemptive hands of social workers.


    But the problems for Berlusconi do not end here. The PdL is in its last gasps, slated to be replaced by a renovated Forza Italia, and its organizers' plans were to have airplanes, among other things, flying over Italian beaches this Ferragosto holiday August 15 with banners bearing the reborn party's name. Should that money be spent? Is it too early? For others in his party the essential problem is that they have no single leader who comes anywhere near to attracting voters as Berlusconi does. Unlike the no less troubled PD, the PdL, or Forza Italia, has no attractive alternative leader, no Matteo Renzi waiting in the wings. Without Berlusconi as their leader, there would simply be no conservative party whatsoever. Even Berlusconi's daughter, Marina, 48, who had been touted as his logical successor, has just bowed out.
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    Berlusconi: "Still on the Playing Field"


    ROME- And what now? Sentenced to four years, Silvio Berlusconi has the benefit of three years' pardon, leaving a one year sentence. Because he is over 70, the former premier will not actually go to prison during that year, but will be asked if he prefers to live under house arrest or to turn himself over to social workers for re-education. His passport will be confiscated, and for the coming six years he cannot run for public office. A crucial question is whether or not he will be forced to resign from his Senate seat or choose to resign beforehand. Either way, as Berlusconi himself said, in an emotional TV monologue just hours after his conviction of fiscal fraud Thursday, the judges "have come down on me without precedent. But I am staying on the playing field."

     
    The most salient comments on Silvio Berlusconi's criminal conviction and sentencing Thursday by Italy's high court of Cassations - his first conviction in some 40 cases - came today from two editors-in-chief of influential dailies. These are not the aging, carefully coifed women who have been waving "I love Silvio" placards in front of the Milan courthouse, nor are they the trade unionists in Rome's Piazza San Giovanni vowing eternal enmity against the bourgeoisie. One stands out among Berlusconi's staunchest supporters, the other as one of his most determined adversaries. Their diametrically opposed points of view help to explain some of the passions the conviction has unleashed in the rival camps.
     
    Alessandro Sallusti, who happens to be the partner of the glamorous Berlusconi pasionaria Daniela Santanche', has directed the rightwing Il Giornale, founded by the legendary Indro Montanelli in 1987, for the past three years. Ezio Mauro, former editor-in-chief of La Stampa of Turin, has been chief editor of the left-leaning La Repubblica since 1996. For Sallusti, in a banner headline today, "Berlusconi isn't finished" even though Italy is being devoured by a cancer misnamed "justice." Whereas Berlusconi has just been convicted as a hardened tax cheat, Sallusti argues that the former premier in fact had no control over the Mediaset company at the time when the supposed crime took place, "as has already been shown in the two previous [court] sentences." Bad will and cheating are involved in all this - "that same cheating which persuaded Berlusconi to be led by the hand onto the scaffolding and then pushed down."
     
    Sallusti also took issue with the head of the left-leaning Partito Democratico (PD), former trade union leader Guglielmo Epifani, who declared that the court sentence would be executed as soon as possible. For Sallusti, Epifani is behaving as if he were the "sheriff." Indeed, even as the PD premier Enrico Letta is fighting to keep the Berlusconi conviction from bringing down the government, PD hard-liners are insisting that the PD resign from its alliance with the Liberty party (PdL), on grounds that its leader is formally acknowledged to be a convicted criminal. To this end the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano is collecting signatures for a petition to force the PD out of the government.
     
    However, those who are more concerned for economic stability than for ideological purity, and who resist the notion of new elections less than six months after the last round, are working to keep the Letta government intact, including in partnership with the Berlusconi party. For his part, Berlusconi, ignoring the hawks in his party, has done nothing to bring down the government - on the contrary, he seems to fear that the PdL's storming out would throw votes to the left. At best, lacking the promised, but never delivered, revised electoral law to replace the scorned "Porcellum," results would likely be the same, and equally inconclusive.
     
    Sallusti's conclusion is that "Berlusconi's political adventure does not end here, and no one should be so deluded as to think he can divvy up the booty. If the PD finds being in the government with the PdL is just too disgusting, they should know that the feeling is mutual." As Sallusti goes on to say, the story of Forza Italia, the personal party which Berlusconi plans to relaunch to replace the PdL, does not emerge from the old Communism of millions of dead people and economic recipes that have left countless people starving.
     
    Ezio Mauro's point of view is more succinct. He argues that, in the ongoing debate, Berlusconi is the subject, not what he did to merit conviction; politics has trumped the precise facts of the case, confirmed and reconfirmed in the three degrees of trial. In Mauro's words the facts are that: "At least E270 million were subtracted from Mediaset and its shareholders: the film rights which were purchased at 100 and resold to Mediaset for 1,000, so as to construct, in the intermediate passages, an illicit stash of slush funds in Switzerland, Montecarlo and the Bahamas, made fully and illegally available to the Cavaliere [Berlusconi]."
     
    The point was to dodge taxes by showing that costs were higher than in reality. This was done, said the court, by selling and reselling, again and again, the same film rights. This trial is anything but about politics, therefore, Mauro concludes, and the conviction demonstrates that in Italy all citizens are equal before the law, as the banner in every courtroom declares.
     
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    Cassations Decides on Berlusconi


    Rome - At 8:04 pm Silvio Berlusconi, 77-year-old former premier, learned from the TV set in his huge apartment within Palazzo Grazioli, just steps away from Palazzo Venezia in Rome, that the Italian high court, the Cassations, had come down on him, but softly enough that he can breathe a deep sigh of relief. And so can today's left-leaning premier, Enrico Letta, who heads a government in tandem with Berlusconi's Partito della Liberta' (PdL). The Berlusconi group of supporters - he was not personally in the courtroom - greeted the news with shouts of joy. Although his lawyers were careful to make no comments, outside the courthouse some Berlusconi supporters waved banners saying, "Justice has been done."


    It is early, at this writing only 20 minutes after the announcement, to make other serious predictions, but at this time it seems a safe guess that the government itself is safe. All along Berlusconi had said that there would be no repercussions on the government, and, particularly after this soft sentence, this appears to be the case.


    The Cassations court did, however, give Berlusconi his first ever conviction, to four years of prison. He will not go to prison (he is over seventy years old). But at the same time sent the case was not entirely closed, but sent onward to the Court of Appeals in Milan to redefine the question of what he had feared most, interdiction from public office. This means that Berlusconi remains a member of Parliament (and possible future premier) and retains parliamentary immunity for the time being. The court said specifically that it "annuls the sentence" regarding his temporary interdiction for five years from public office" and transmits the acts to another section of the appeals court of Milan in order to "redetermine the accessory punishment." But even if a court subsequently upholds the interdiction, say early commentators, it might be for no more than one year.


    Yesterday Berlusconi's two lawyers spoke altogether five hours in his defense, in what was the third if not quite the last round in the tax fraud case brought against Berlusconi and his Mediaset SpA TV company; through Mediaset he owns three of Italy's seven national TV channels: Canale 5, Italia 1 and Rete 4. Berlusconi's fairly weak defense was that, as premier, he had no time to bother with taxes.


    Today's sentence follows his conviction on Oct. 26, 2012 to four years of prison and to five years of interdiction from public office. Convicted with him at that time were Egyptian movie producer Frank Agrama and two former Mediaset managers, Gabriella Galetto and Daniele Lorenzano; for them today's sentence was definitive.


    This past May 8, an appeals court had upheld that sentence of 2012. On appeal by Berlusconi's small army of lawyers, headed by Niccolò Ghedini and Franco Coppi, the case was then sent to the Court of Cassations, Italy's final appellate court. The work of the Cassations is not to judge on the merit of a sentence, but to review the lower court's positions on points of law and procedure. Because the Cassations court is hardly known for swift action, the "exceptional speed" (to quote Ghedini) with which it appeared the Cassations agenda has come under criticism from the Berlusconi camp. Those defending the apparently unusual haste say it was to avoid the case's going into prescription.


    In the background was bitterness. Few have been more adamant defenders of Berlusconi than Daniela Santanché, who had repeatedly warned that Berlusconi's supporters would take to the streets to protest if he were convicted. Other of his backers screamed that a conviction would be a "vendetta" serving only to weaken the nation with "seismic shifts." The decision would go beyond Berlusconi himself, had predicted an editorialist from the rightist Il Giornale: "The Cassations holds the destiny and future of this country in its hands...a traumatic excit by the Cavaliere [Berlusconi] will put unforeseen forces into action that will make the political system even more unstable.... We are at a crossroads, and it is up to the judges to choose the political, economic and social future of the Italians."


    Berlusconi himself has been careful to say that, should he be convicted, he will neither flee to a safe haven outside Italy, as did the late Socialist leader Bettino Crazi, nor bring down the government of which his Partito della Liberta' is a partner.
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    All at Sea, but Not Sinking


    ROME - One of the more polite metaphors Italian pundits are using these days to describe the political parties is "all at sea." And so they are, but few as much at sea as the Partito Democratico (PD). The largest single political party in Italy, writes columnist Claudio Tito in the progressive daily La Repubblica, "is having a panic attack." A sign of the tense times: an internal PD debate this week over proposed revisions of the constitution that turned so heated that the debate has just been postponed until September.
     
    Party leaders are quarreling daily over a dozen other internal issues, beginning with who, prior to a forthcoming national congress, is entitled to have a vote. Who is to be entitled to vote in the primaries which will precede the party's planned national congress, theoretically scheduled for November - solely official registered party members or others committed to the PD in other ways? That is still undecided, as is the precise congress date. But, as acerbic columnist Curzio Maltese scathingly remarked, it is pitiful that the PD is presently unable even to name that convention date.
     
    PD leaders, moreover, remain at odds over whether or not the individual who will be elected party leader, when the convention is eventually held, can also serve as premier. At present this dual role is disallowed, and in May the then PD chief Enrico Letta was obliged to resign as party secretary in order to become premier, and was succeeded by Guglielmo Epiphani.
     
    By contrast with  the well meaning but fairly bland trade unionist Epiphani, behind some of the disarray is the undiminished status and appeal of the party faction led by the youthful, dynamic Florentine mayor Matteo Renzi. If the young Turks within the PD win, Renzi stands a fair chance to succeed Epiphani - a possibility which helps to explain why there is such vehemence in trying to bar a future secretary from serving as both party secretary and premier, for Renzi might then be both party boss and premier. Many in the PD, and especially its younger supporters, would like to see Renzi be just that, and they are the ones calling for open primaries in defiance of Epiphani.
     
    Even those who admit to doubts about Renzi's limited experience believe that his main role would be to bounce out the old guard, still redolent with nostalgic former Communists and trade unionists locked into bygone economic models, in order to give the PD the new look many feel it needs. As one left-leaning columnist pointed out, Renzi is also the only one on the left who can slam the door definitively on the twenty-year era of Berlusconi power. But Renzi is opposed by the majority PD leadership, which, as one conservative analysts pointed out, "has declared war on him." In an angry (and typical) tweet, Senator Andrea Marcucci, of the Renzi faction, retorted that, |"PD] headquarters have already forgotten the shellacking they took at the last elections, and are setting themselves up for another one."
     
    In any primary vote, Renzi and Letta would face off head to head. According to veteran pollster Renato Mannheimer [see http://www.liquida.it/renato-mannheimer/], at present Enrico Letta's popularity rating has surged from the 59% of mid-May to the current healthy 62%. Renzi, however, stands only one point behind, and is favored today by 61% of the Italian queried by Mannheimer. As Mannheimer also points out, this high degree of consensus for both men is unusual in Italian politics. Otherwise consensus behind the government is low, at a feeble 38%. The sole exception is Foreign Secretary Emma Bonino of the tiny Radical party who, at 60%, is nearly as well liked as both Letta and Renzi.
     
    This low standing for the government as a whole reflects dissension caused by its mixed and sometimes contradictory composition of Berlusconi's PdL and Letta's PD. Ignoring the tensions between the two, however, Letta staunchly defends his party's actions within the government, saying that his team is working toward realization of a few key goals: funding an increase in employment through investments of well over one billion dollars (E1.5 billion); a crack-down on links between organized crime and government on every level; commitment to resolve the tough situation of those in their fifties and sixties [the esodati] who have lost their jobs before entitlement to a pension; and promulgation of a law prohibiting what he calls "self-recycling."
     
    In toughing it out with its rightist coalition partner, Letta's PD won no minor victory when it struck down a sneaky PdL clause, stealthily introduced into a bill over party financing, that would have disallowed prison sentences for those convicted of corruption in the form of secretly passing public funds to outsider companies in a hidden swap for favors.
     
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    Rainbow Glimmers on the Economic Horizon


    ROME - The undiluted bad news reports of economic recession is hardly ready for the waste basket, but Confindustria just threw out a welcome ray of hope. In its July report on whither the economy, the Italian association of manufacturers has just declared that industrial production bounced up by 0.4% in June this year by comparison with the previous month. "Industrial production has stopped dropping, albeit remaining well below pre-crisis levels," Confindustria reported this week.
     
    Another positive note is that, over the past year, family savings have risen from an  historic low of 7.7%, measured in the second quarter of 2012, to this July's 9.3%. The further good news was that manufactured production has increased slightly, for the first time since 201l. Overall exports surged in volume by 0,5% this May over the previous month while exports to non-EU countries fared better still, boosted by a healthy 3.1%.
     
    Although dismal results continued in the building and services sectors, this mid-summer economic surge was moreover ratified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), whose analysis of the Italian economy placed the overall unemployment rate here, which stands at just over 12%,  at half that of Greece and Spain. More help will come from a drop in the cost of energy (which will make gasoline one cent cheaper for consumers, incidentally) and adjustments to public sector spending.
    The general feeling therefore is that Italian economic recovery will show further improvements this autumn, thanks to changes outside Italy including the revived US and Japanese economies and to increased demand on the part of the emerging economies. The slow-down among the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which together had previously accounted for one quarter of global output, is another factor. According to The Economist, "the era of disruptive BRIC ascendence is over," and this is in its way a dramatic shift.
     
    That said, the recession which began in 2008 and worsened seriously in 2011 is far from over, but many in Italian industry are hailing the unexpected good news with serious rethinking about what they are to do. Even as automotive production has sunk like a stone and car sales with it, the de-industrialization of Italy, however self-evident, has been a dirty word here, utterly ignored by the hide-bound, old-fashioned trade unions. Today, however, even some in the business avant-garde are promoting a return to a solid industrial base of highly skilled workers, preferable, they now believe, to banking on a British-style financial services base.
     
    Others here complain that the Italian tradition of highly skilled craft workers should be revived, but that offers of apprenticeships in the crafts go begging, even as over a third of Italian youth (with youth defined as anywhere up to age 35) have no work nor prepare themselves for work. Another major issue: taxes of 54% on average for those who pay taxes at all while countless tax dodgers manage to pay no taxes at all. According to Premier Enrico Letta, taxes can and should be reduced if tax dodgers can be forced to do their part. At a meeting Wednesday with the leaders of the three big trade unions, CGIL, CISL, UIL, Letta listened to their pleas for a tax reduction for unionized workers, and promised rethinking in September. "In our country taxes are so high because not everyone pays," he acknowledged. "Our commitment is to use all the money that we can from the fight to block tax dodgers to lower taxes to the others." His goal, he added, is to declare war on the notorious tax havens and to encourage foreign investment in Italy by simplification of the complicated and frustrating bureaucratic procedures.
     
    A dark cloud on the horizon is the credit crunch. Banks here continue to be reluctant to grant mortgages to families for purchases of homes, but also to manufacturers. "Liquidity is scant," Confindustria reports, and 25.6% of companies queried say they have insufficient resources for the third quarter. One sorrowful reason: long delays in payments by public administrations for work carried out by private companies. The expectation is that, by dropping the cost of credit,  the monetary policies of the European Central Bank, headed by Mario Draghi, will produce further positive effects.
  • Art & Culture

    Italy. The Culture Crunch

     

    ROME - The sun two days off the summer solstice beat down upon their heads, and the long files of angry international and Italian tourists were hot and understandably bothered. Angry trade unions who represent the custodians that guard the Colosseum had imposed a 3-1/2 hour strike - one of several which also affected the splendid National Museum of antiquities at Palazzo Massimo and the Baths of Diocletian and Caracalla - and the tourists were understandably miserable.

    Like the situation at Pompeii, this new cultural heritage disaster and the plight of the touristsmade headlines worldwide, giving the managers of the Italian cultural heritage a well publicized (and well deserved) black eye.

    Less publicity has surrounded the fate of two unique warriors in bronze, found less than two miles off the Ionian coast at Riace in August 1972.

    These naked warriors, just larger than life size at 205 cm and 198 cm respectively, were made by Greek sculptors circa 450 or 460 BC and were being brought by ship to a destination in Magna Grecia - just when they were being shipped, or their destination, are unknowns; were they to adorn a stadium?

    When I visited them shortly after their installation in a special hall in the splendid National Museum in Reggio-Calabria, I was bowled over, but, oddly enough, not only by the bronzes.

    The museum houses a truly unique collection of terra cotta plaques which amount to a sketchbook of life in early Calabria. Without the bronzes, I would not have had the serendipitous delight of visiting that museum and seeing those terra cotta postcards from antiquity.

    Alas, the museum has been closed for restoration now for the past three years and will not reopen until at least April of 2014.

    As a tourist attraction the bronzes represented income for the museum, but for the nonce they can be seen, for free and lying flat on their backs, inside a local government building. The causes for the endless delays were listed by the daily Corriere della Sera as "technical problems, bureaucratic muddles and the usual inevitable lack of funds." The latter is hardly surprising since the costs of restoring the museum have more than tripled from the original E10 million, or circa $13 million, to E33 million.

    Where will the extra $30 million or so come from? The truly devastating news is that the Italian Cultural Heritage Ministry is itself not only dead broke, but officially acknowledges that it is itself in debt with unpaid bills amounting to some E40 million (about $50 million), according to a report last week to the Chamber of Deputies. Its working budget has been slashed again and again, with culture taking the brunt of the government's need to curb expenses. Since 2008 the Ministry budget has been cut by almost a quarter, from E2,037,446,020 (roughly $2.6 billion) to this year's E1,547,779,172 ($2 billion).

    The worst news of all: funds that to pay for work to protect and maintain the Italian heritage have been reduced by 58% in the past five years.
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    Berlusconi is Convicted: Now what?


    ROME - At the news stand this morning one man was shouting, "Should've given him a life sentence." Another started singing, in sarcastic mode, the Berlusconi pep anthem, "Meno male che Silvio c'e'" (Aren't we lucky that there's Silvio). Further down the road a group of dog walkers were quarreling at full throttle, with two defending Berlusconi from the ruling of the three-woman court ("witches! bitches!") who had ruled against him while the other two exulted. In Rome Giuliano Ferrara, tubby journalist, was organizing a demo of sympathy for Berlusconi in Piazza Farnese on the theme, "We are all sluts." From abroad came emails: "Will he actually go to prison?"


    That, at least, was easy to answer: absolutely not. First, yesterday's decision came from only the lowest of three possible tribunals. Next will come an appeals court and then the Court of Cassations, Italy's highest court. These appeals will take time. In addition, Berlusconi is 76, and under Italian law people over 70 are not sent to prison. Technically nothing terrible will happen to him.


    But there are broader considerations. In past weeks a canny Silvio Berlusconi said again and again that, no matter what the courts decided in the case of the state vs his Bunga Bunga-ing with minors, it would have no effect upon the government. This is the two-month-old government, headed by Enrico Letta, which the vaguely conservative Berlusconi political forces of the Partito della Liberta' (PdL) share with the vaguely leftist Partito Democratico (PD). That government came to power solely because there seemed no other choice save to call costly new elections only months after an inconclusive vote in February. What further empowered the creation of this power-sharing government of uneasy bedfellows was, and is, the severity of the economic crisis with which the government must contend, and which continues to bring dismal daily news of business failures. But now that a Milan court has actually convicted the former premier, can the shared government ride into the sky undisturbed? The answer is no, as everyone, including Berlusconi himself, knows.


    For Italy, it was important within the political culture that the trial took place at all and was brought to completion. It showed that the law is indeed equal for everyone. Moreover, the public prosecutors in Milan had asked a six- year sentence, but the court ruled for seven. This unexpected development has the legal effect of broadening the investigation into the potential complicity of 32 witnesses, many of them young women who have until now received monthly allowances of around $3,000 from Berlusconi. These young women allegedly perjured themselves by giving false testimony in his defense.


    Even Ruby Rubacuore, as the young woman accused of having sex with Berlusconi for money when she was only seventeen is known, boasted on the telephone with girl friends about the sleazy goings-on, only to retract her bragging while testifying repeatedly before the court that, "Oh, well, I told a lot of lies." By court order her belongings - the fancy shoes and handbags - will be seized. Others who will, by this decision, be dragged further into problems with the justice system include the aging TV newscaster Emilio Fede and the dental hygienist Nicole Minetti. Both are accused of acting as managers of the lively evenings at Berlusconi's Milan mansion.


    "What we must ask ourselves is how this could have happened - how could our political system have put up with this for 20 years, in Europe? Elsewhere a political leader under such accusations would have been forced from office," said Ezio Mauro, editor-in-chief of the daily La Repubblica, at his daily editorial meeting. "This was a network susceptible to blackmail, and some of these girls were paid off with political offices. It was a network of liars."


    On the other hand, the decision may work in some ways to the advantage of Berlusconi himself. Berlusconi is a whiz at playing the victim, and continues to have a core of loyal admirers. Addressing Letta directly today in Rome, Berlusconi warned that, "If you do not carry out what we'd agreed upon [in forming the government], there will be consequences." Translation: bow to our demands to lower taxes, or we bow out of the government.


    Leaders of his PdL (which incidentally he threatens to shut down and replace with a more personalized political movement) went on the warpath today, echoing him in threats to bring down the government. Until now the PdL itself has resisted this because its polls have been negative, but in recent weeks Letta's Partito Democratico has been riddled by dissenting factions while Beppe Grillo's Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) has been losing steam in polls and in Parliament, where several dissidents have walked out of the M5S group.


    Today, however, some commentators were warning that the Letta government - supposed to remain in office at least one year - risks, as a result of the court decision, being brought down this autumn, meaning that national general elections could be called more than four years ahead of schedule. Berlusconi's economic guru, Renato Brunetta, has seized the moment to raise the ante in dealing with the government by insisting that the 1% planned increase in the VAT tax be dropped immediately. "None of this is acceptable," Brunetta thundered. "This is an attack against freedom. The time has come to say a definitive 'enough'."


    Another Berlusconi crony, former Culture Minister Sandro Bondi, author of poems exalting his leader, warned, "It's ridiculous to think that this government can work with serenity while the leader of one of the parties supporting the government is politically massacred. One must make a serious decision before this judiciary destroys Italy." Another top Berlusconi aide, Fabrizio Cicchitto, called the decision "an operation aimed at destroying the existing political alliance." The Milan magistrates, backed by certain media and financial groups, are "irresponsible," he said. Said Mariastella Gelmini, Berlusconi's former Education Minister, "Berlusconi is stronger than ever before. The number of people who are close to him, including for his being persecuted, continues to grow."
  • Facts & Stories

    Cécile Kyenge in the Hot Seat


    ROME - For the past two months of the new government Dr. Cécile Kyenge has held down one of the toughest jobs in Italy. As Minister for Integration it has fallen her lot to deal with such contentious issues as citizenship for children born in Italy of immigrant parents. She is herself an immigrant. Born in Congo, Kyenge came to Italy 30 years ago to study medicine and work as an opthamologist before entering politics in North Italy. For her pains, in recent weeks she has been the object of literally obscene invective and even death threats. "I am not afraid," she told foreign journalists in Rome this week.


    Her task is daunting. The southern isle of Lampedusa is a chief port of entry for migrants from sub-Sahara and North Africa, especially via Libya. After being processed on the Italian island most are sent onward with a six-months permit allowing them to seek work. Even so, that this influx puts Lampedusa to the test is understatement. Between February and April more than 30,000 migrants arrived by sea, and this month's milder weather is bringing new hordes. On June 12 alone the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) registered 1,500 migrants who arrived from North Africa on seven rickety boats. Among the new arrivals: a baby born aboard one of these boats. Rough seas meant that some who could not swim drowned. Most lack identification, so all but one are buried in anonymous graves in the island's crowded hillside cemetery. (See  >>>)


    The holding center where these migrants are processed is chronically overcrowded, and on June 20, in his sermon in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio, who presides over the Pontifical Council for Migrants, appealed to the European Union to participate at Lampedusa. "It is not right that Italy be left alone by Europe on the issue of immigration. Lampedusa is now Europe's port for immigrants and refugees, and the EU should set up a center for them," said the Cardinal.


    No one is forgetting that Italy itself was a country whose citizens migrated from their homes throughout Italy, as is excellently documented in the National Museum of Emigration in the Vittoriano at Piazza Venezia (see: >>>). Between 1876 and 1976 some 24 million Italians emigrated, with no less than 870,000 setting sail in a single year, 1913. Despite the strain on the island, Lampedusans themselves care enough for the desperado arrivals - and most are desperate - that a group has created a small museum of found objects and letters that have been washed up on the shore. Among the items on view there are Korans, photos, shoes and life jackets. (See >>>)


    Following the Italian economic boom years of the Seventies, with 7% annual growth, migrants began reaching Italy in greater numbers than the departures. Many of these were Italians returning home. But in 1981 the national statistics agency ISTAT reported 321,000 foreign presences; ten years later the figure had doubled, to 625,000. Last year, as official statistics show, one out of every 12 in Italy was a foreigner, for 8.2% of the total Italian population. The largest immigrant community is Romanian (1,073,000) followed by Moroccans (507,000) and Albanians (492,000). Most are Christian (2.5 million) while 1.5 million are Muslim.


    With them come the new problems which Italy must face. "I am working toward full integration of migrants," Kyenge said, "in a fusion of values in which all can recognize each other, in a community that brings riches to each other." Asked if after her 30 years here she sees Italy as racist, Kyenge chose her words carefully: "Italy needs to know the value of immigration and to learn that the 'other' represents cultural wealth. Immigrants are a resource."


    Not everyone agrees. After an immigrant from Somalia tried to rape two Italian girls, Dolores Valandro, activist in the Northern League in Padua, Tweeted that, since Kyenge obviously did not understand what that meant to the victims, "Why doesn't somebody rape Kyenge?" The outcry came from right, left and center, and Valandro was promptly expelled from the party. "I don't respond to violence with violence," Kyenge said. "Everyone should feel offended by this." Enrico Letta, Premier, agreed. "I for one consider myself offended." On the other hand, a grand guru of Italian commentators, Giovanni Sartori, writing in the daily Corriere della Sera, opened a flood gate of protests when he asked of Kyenge, "What does she know about integration?" He criticized Letta for having installed as minister in a particularly sensitive post an individual like Kyenge with limited experience. One might agree with this, but he then assailed the minister for having called Italy a country of "metiches", using a word commonly associated with non-pedigree dogs. "Brazilians may be 'metiches,'" declared Sartori, setting off firestorms on a hundred fronts. "Not Italians."


    He should have known better.

     
     
  • Facts & Stories

    In Venice, Council for the U.S and Italy convenes

     VENICE - Some weeks ago the Economist summed up the European economic situation, including Italy's, as, "Fifty Shades of Gray without the Sex." So now what? This fundamental issue was the leitmotif of the annual two-day meeting of the 30-year-old Council for the United States and Italy, chaired by Council president and Fiat chief Sergio Marchionne, Italian chairman; US chairman is David W. Heleniak, Senior Advisor at Morgan Stanley.  Not surprisingly, the most eagerly awaited speaker was economist Fabrizio Saccomani, 70, Minister for the Economy and Finance with broad international experience beginning with his graduate school years at Princeton University following his degree at the Bocconi University in Milan. As Marchionne put it, "Just how is Italy to get its economy back on track? This is the challenge."

     "In 2011 the financial community was worried that the European Union was breaking up. There were fears that Italy had gone beyond the point of no return, and that if Italy failed, so would Europe. But I objected: this assumed we would not react to correct the policy mistakes made in Europe including in communication." Within weeks the European financial market virtually froze, however. The two key mistakes: "the idea that countries could exit from the Euro, suggesting the Euro was no longer backed as currency by the Central Bank and hence a revolving door currency" and the contagious idea that holding the sovereign Euro would bring losses.

    On the plus side, said Saccomani, progress is being made on banking supervision: "We must give reassurances that the European banking system is transparent and not under-capitalized. Though individual banks may have problems, we are ready to operate within correct parameters." However, revival of growth does not suffice, and the German model won't work if the export market shrinks. On this the EU reaction to date has been "rather weak" and greater action to revive growth should be made. Infrastructures for the entire European market is one goal, such as for fuel, which could be financed jointly within the private market as well as European financial tools, which could be monitored by the EU itself.

    Italy's role has improved since 2009, when we had little room to maneuver because of excessive public debt. Some of the accumulated public debt has been repaid, and we must reduce taxes on labor and entrepreneurial activities. "Now I think we must work on liberalization, as the government plans, and to reduce the complexity of the bureaucracy." Italy has "too many" small enterprises which have fallen behind and become unable to compete now that bank loans are more difficult. "We are not asking special treatment for Italy but are seeking with other EU countries a way to foster job creation for youth." Not least, US and Italian economic links should be encouraged and revived, with less protectionism via regulatory actions (including within Europe).

    "We have had a long period of political stalemate, which has created a situation of psychological paralysis affecting consumers, banks and business, but I think this is past and we can look to the future with optimism."

    From 2006 through 2012 Saccomani was director of the Bank of Italy. The Council was created in 1083 by the late Fiat chief Giovanni Agnelli and David Rockefeller, to foster closer collaboration "aimed at restructuring international relations," to quote Agnelli. Keynote speaker at this workshop was David Thorne, U.S. ambassador to Italy, shortly to depart to work in Washington, DC, with Secretary of State John Kerry.

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