The View from Bologna

Romano, when in Rome

A storm in a teacup has erupted over Romano Prodi's injudicious comments regarding the Pope's security in Turkey. In New York for the UN assembly, having just come back from a trade delegation to China*, embroiled in a controversy over suggested governmental improprieties relating to Telecom Italia, Prodi responded brusquely to a reporter who asked what kind of security arrangements would be in place for the Pope's upcoming visit to Turkey. "What do you expect me to know about the Pope's security in Turkey? I know nothing about it, his guards will look after it".

Since then card carrying Catholics have been falling over themselves to attack/explain Prodi's 'outburst'.

The temerity of it, to suggest that the Vatican, an independent State, should be the ones asked about the Pope's security when travelling in Turkey.

*Where he called for a lift on the embargo on arms sales to China. We at Three Monkeys, though, can't seem to find the human rights reports that would merit a lifting of any trade embargos to China. Must have misplaced them, as the world and his uncle are tripping over themselves to do business in Beijing, after all this is the Chinese Century...

Boosting House Prices

In real terms the labeling of a town/site with the badge “UNESCO World Heritage Site” can mean an increase of up to 30% in tourist numbers.

Ironic then that the Tuscan town of San Gimignano, one such UNESCO World Heritage Site, is threatened with destruction, according to UNESCO, due to the huge amounts of tourists that it receives.

The real threat, though, to most Italian Heritage sites comes not directly from visiting tourists, who can after all be regulated, but rather from systematic violations of planning regulations around the sites. “ Do you know the latest trick? Houses built on land protected, in areas defined World Heritage Sites, and then sold with the brand UNESCO as an added value. Shameless…” Professor Giovanni Puglisi, President of the Italian UNESCO commission, recently commented.

Oriana Fallaci - Rage and Pride

Sophia Loren, a friend of Oriana Fallaci, interviewed by the Corriere della Sera following Fallaci’s death in Florence on Friday, was asked whether she had ever discussed the controversy raised by Fallaci’s post 9/11 work. Loren responded:

I don’t want to get involved, particularly at this time, in this diatribe. I always said to her: “You have always done so much for everybody. Your revolts, your experiences are a treasure that you’ve passed on to each of us”.

Loren, as a personal friend of Fallaci’s and as an actress, can be forgiven for sidestepping the question. It’s not her job. The hacks who have penned endless column inches (6 pages alone in today’s Corriere della Sera – that’s almost up there with the late JPII) analyzing the career of one of Italy and the world’s most famous journalists should not be let off the hook so lightly. With precious few exceptions, Fallaci is remembered in glowing terms, and where her post 9/11 work is discussed the emphasis is firmly placed on its popularity, as if selling millions of copies of the work automatically gives it validity. There is no discussion in the Corriere della Sera as to whether the charges of racism and incitement to hatred leveled at Fallaci by critics, for the most part outside of Italy, were/are valid.

Ironic that the difficult questions should be avoided, given that Fallaci was one of the finest interviewers her generation produced. The woman who took on Kissinger, Khomeini, Gheddafi, Meir, and Arafat, amongst countless others, would scarcely appreciate the fawning tributes that have characterized the Italian press reaction to her death.

A perfect example is the column by Lucia Annunziata in today’s La Stampa. Annunziata, who perhaps sees herself as a kindred spirit to Fallaci, having asked some difficult questions to Berlusconi during this year’s election campaign*, paints what has become the stereotypical picture of the Florentine journalist in recent years: an outcast figure, rejected by the establishment and criticized by those jealous of her talent. A voice in the wilderness who was brave enough to tell it as it is, without ifs and buts. “The traditional conflict that her work aroused – between huge popular sales and the cultural establishment – repeated itself but in a more dramatic way after the 11th of September, with her last works, rough, aggressive, brazen. They sold as usual millions of copies, but provoked criticism also in a section of the public, that of the left and the young, that had always looked to her as a model”.

The picture, constructed as much by Fallaci during her life, makes for wonderful heroic reading, even if it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Fallaci was anything but rejected by the Italian establishment, with elements ranging from political parties through to the newspapers, publishing houses, and TV repeatedly attempting to cosy up to her (to her credit she rejected all attempts to co-opt her name). Her American exile was a self-imposed and largely ideological choice, while she continued to own a home in her native Florence. The suggestion that she was a lone voice in the post 9/11 wilderness, the only one brave enough to attack Islam in print is laughable: a whole new publishing industry sprang up overnight after the terror attacks. Fallaci, perhaps the best polemicist, was certainly not the only one putting pen to paper about the supposed clash of civilizations. Her books, as pointed out in a wonderful analysis by Giancarlo Bosetti in Cattiva Maestra – La Rabbia di Oriana Fallaci, received massive pre-publicity from Italy’s two biggest media groups – RCS and Mondadori-Mediaset. The fact that she sold so many copies of her polemics, rather than being a surprise, is a simple illustration of the power of marketing.

Annunziata’s misplaced eulogy though is symptomatic of the press reaction to Fallaci’s work during her last years. Seizing upon the snappy image of ‘Eurabia’, a Europe overtaken by Muslim hordes, the Italian media, chose to talk primarily about how many copies had been sold and how the book had obviously touched a popular chord, rather than examining the arguments in the book. For example, nobody deemed it opportune to point out that two out of every three of the immigrants coming to Italy to work are not ‘Sons of Allah’ but rather migrant workers from an impoverished eastern Europe. Launching a hate-filled polemic against hordes of invading Polish plum pickers might not have sold as many books in John Paul II’s Italy.

Alessandro Cannavo, who worked with Fallaci, describes in today’s Corriere della Sera how Fallaci would “search without surrender for the least banal vocabulary, the most appropriate word”, but he makes no analysis of her use of language in phrases like “barbarians that instead of working and contributing to the betterment of humanity stay with their backsides in the air, that is praying five times a day”. Eloquent analysis the like of which one would expect to hear from a local barstool bigot rather than the most gifted journalist of her era.

Indeed if you want a succinct criticism of her post 9/11 work, better to head outside of the Italian media to the work of two sociologists, one French, one Italian, who described her work thus:
“Attempting to foment an ancestral hatred towards Muslims, she who was once amongst the most respected journalists/writers in the republic of letters, uses devices that we believed had disappeared from Europe over sixty years ago: systematic falsification of facts, conspiracy theories, bestialisation and the description of adversaries as sexual perverts, crude racism, and calls to violence. All brought together in a form that has more invective than reason”.

The tributes for her earlier groundbreaking work are to be welcomed. The glossing over of her racism and threadbare thesis of Eurabia do her memory a disservice. Oriana Fallaci’s best work was done face to face, confronting power. When 9/11 happened she had already retreated from public life to fight her cancer. Her writing in this period, full of rage and pride as the title of her first polemic suggests, is shadow boxing in a grotesque black and white fantasy land. It’s a true shame that Fallaci was not more youthful, healthy, and engaged with the world when those planes hit the towers. Her instinct then might have been to ask questions, questions to the Bin Ladens, and the Al-Zarqawis, but also to the Bushes and Blairs in this global war on terror, not to provide the crazed, apocalyptic, hate-filled answers that have sold millions.

*In truth there’s little comparison between Fallaci’s encounters and Annunziata’s moment of journalistic glory encountering Berlusconi. True, Berlusconi did walk out mid interview causing an uproar, but it was less the severity of Annunziata’s questions than the fact that Italian politicians aren’t used to being asked any difficult questions. Fallaci’s great skill lay both in asking difficult questions, but also in persuading the powerful and potent to answer them.

Pot Kettle Black

From the front page of today’s La Repubblica, two juxtaposed headlines:
“Holy War is against God”
The Pope: “Fundamentalist Islam contradicts Mohammed”

And

The Koran read by Fanatics

A priceless and pertinent dig at the Pontiff? Sadly it’s more likely to have been an unintentional layout bungle, but it made this Monkey’s day…

Freedom of the Press under Prodi

The word ‘regime’ was bandied about repeatedly while Berlusconi’s government was in power. General opinion, at least on the left, was that freedom of the press was dangerously compromised by Berlusconi’s own media ownership and through various bits of broadcasting legislation pushed through by his government.

So, a breath of liberty and fresh air for Italian journalists under the Prodi government? Heavy-handed raids on three newspapers in the Trento region might give pause for thought. The papers in question, l’adige,il Trentino, and il Corriere del Trentino had their mail servers seized by police, in an operation “worthy of an operation against a gang of drug dealers” according to l’Adige’s editor Paolo Ghezzi.

And why? Because each of the three papers published leaked transcripts from taped telephone conversations relating to an ongoing investigation concerning the activities of Giorgio Casagranda, the local head of the Margherita party – one of the main coalition partners in Prodi’s government.

It’ll be interesting to see how Freedom House rank Italy’s media freedom in next year’s annual report.

The Fate of ex-Dictators?

And so, as sure as the Seasons change, the centre-left government has started talking about reforming Italy’s Television regulations. At the same time they are talking about new improved conflict-of-interest regulations. Both of which moves will allegedly bring to an end the long-standing anomaly of a system that has allowed a media magnate to become Prime Minister.

Just how far Prodi’s government will wish, or be able, to go with these reforms remains to be seen. After all the centre-left parties, for all their harping on about Berlusconi’s media power, have done little in the past to curb political influence in the media.

There’s a priceless interview in La Repubblica, though, that caught this Monkey’s eye, with Fedele Confalonieri, the President of Mediaset, the Berlusconi founded and controlled media group. Talking angrily about the mooted reforms, Confalonieri said, and I quote:

“At the moment I’m in the car three hundred metres from Piazzale Loreto [in Milan, where Mussolini was hanged in 1945], which seems to me to be an almost fateful coincidence. Once kings and dictators were hung up by their feet. Berlusconi’s Piazzale Loreto risks being the dismantling of his television, instead of hanging up by his feet they want to strip away his TV.”

Hmm – Kings and Dictators. And this coming, without irony, from one of Berlusconi’s most trusted lieutenants. Need we say any more? Roll on media regulation and a serious law on conflicts of interest.

Offending the Magistrates

Italy’s Court of Appeal has decided that it is an offense to describe a judicial investigation as ‘politically motivated’. Flamboyant art historian and ex-minister of one of Berlusconi’s governments, Vittorio Sgarbi, lost his appeal and was found guilty of defamation when he described the work of the Palermo anti-mafia pool, headed at the time by Giancarlo Caselli, as a ‘political investigation’.

The judgement that went against Sgarbi establishes that it is an offence to accuse a public servant of iniziating a ‘political investigation’ as it’s a phrase that is obviously offensive and throws into question the morality of the magistrates involved.

The Italian magistrature has come under fire from the political establishment ever since the high-profile investigations it launched in the 1990s destroyed many political careers. It would be an interesting exercise, for example, to try to find one speech by Berlusconi that references justice which does not make the accusation of political motivation against the magistrates.

Pierluigi Mantini of the Margherita, one of the current governing coalition parties, described the ruling as “a strong brake on the long running war conducted by the centre-right [parties] against judges”.

The sentence though is surely nonsense. The offence lies not in the uttering of the phrase ‘politically motivated’ but rather in whether it’s true or not. And obviously it’s highly difficult to prove whether an investigation is, or is not, politically motivated.

To take two examples:
1)Giulio Andreotti, former Italian prime-minister and Senator for life, was investigated by magistrates for association with the mafia (an investigation which found evidence of mafia links, but for which the statute of limitations meant that no guilty verdict could be brought).
2)Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian prime-minister, has been relentlessly investigated on various counts including mafia association, fraud, perjury etc.
In both cases the investigations had a political effect beneficial to their adversaries. Does that mean that the investigations were politically motivated? Who knows? And therein lies the rub.

Italy’s political class has, judging on recent history, much to be investigated for. Each time that happens there is a political effect.

Putting it well into context was Berlusconi’s legal counsel, Nicolo Ghedini (imagine the horror this Monkey felt, when finding himself agreeing with Berluska’s legal eagle), who pointed out that the self same Court of Appeals found that the use of the term ‘buffoon’ when referring to the Prime Minister (at the time Berlusconi) constituted a ‘legitimate political criticism’.

Inciting Hatred?

Our last post discussed the furore caused by the publication, on the part of the Italian Union of Islamic Communities and Organisations (UCOII), of an ‘infotisement’ likening Nazi war crimes in Italy during the Second World War and alleged massacres of Civilians by Israeli troops in Lebanon and Palestine.

Since that posting Minister for the Interior Amato has pushed ahead with the shared values list, to which all members of the dialogue body established between the Italian government and the Islamic community must sign up. The list has yet to be finalized, but a preliminary list of values has been drawn up that makes no explicit reference to the Holocaust. It seems that Amato has gone for a classic fudge suggesting that recognition of the Holocaust (and its uniqueness, judging by his previous comments) is implicit in the value ‘recognition of the founding principles of the European Union’.

This Monkey, like the UCOII (though probably for different motives), objected to the phrasing of a value that recognizes the Holocaust as ‘unique’, and thus incomparable to other historical events. That’s not to say, though, that Amato’s list of values shouldn’t have included explicit reference to the Holocaust. For example, during the week it was reported that Iranian President Ahmadinejad had written to German Chancellor Merkel denouncing the Holocaust as a libel against the German people. Against this backdrop, if a list of values must be subscribed to (which is of course highly questionable in itself), it seems opportune to include reference to the Holocaust. A declaration for example recognizing the historical reality of the Holocaust would be a step forward.

The UCOII affair has taken a new turn, though, as Magistrates announced that they were opening an investigation into the publication of the UCOII notice to see whether there were grounds for a prosecution under incitement to hatred legislation. The investigation will hinge upon whether phrases like “Yesterday Nazi Massacres – Today Israeli Massacres” could provoke hatred towards Israel and Jewish people in general.

Writing in the Corriere della Sera, Magdi Allam, the paper’s Egyptian born deputy editor, welcomed the news as ‘the first crack in the wall of fear’. Allam, who has been under police escort for a couple of years due to death threats received from fundamentalists, points out that the spokesperson for UCOII, Hamza Roberto Piccardo, defined the Holocaust as ‘part of God’s plan’ in an interview in 2002.

That UCOII has questionable elements, and needs to be investigated, based on the evidence of journalists like Allam, seems without doubt. Whether this highly politicized case is the occasion to do it is questionable.

The opening of an investigation raises the stakes, because it implies that the historical comparison proposed by UCOII will be evaluated officially, and thus either sustained or refuted. Given that Israel has been accused by countless human rights organizations of inflicting collective punishment on civilian populations, the outcome of the investigation may not be precisely the one that opponents of UCOII have been searching for.