The View from Bologna

Web 2.0 runs into trouble in the classroom

One of the pre-requisites for a website/service to qualify for the trendy 'Web2.0' label, as coined by gurus like Tim O'Reilly, is that it be designed for 'remixability'. To quote O'Reilly: "the most successful web services are those that have been easiest to take in new directions unimagined by their creators."

Google is, in many ways the poster child for 'Web 2.0', with its various services which now include blogging, video and image directories etc. The potential for 'remixability' was shown, unfortunately, recently in Italy. One imagines that when a video, taken with a mobile phone in a Turin classroom, of students beating up a fellow student with downs syndrome made its way into the Google video classifications, it wasn't entirely what Google had in mind when developing the service.

Indeed both Google and YouTube have been used to post various disturbing images from Italian classrooms - videos of bullying, of teachers being threatened, of classrooms being vandalised etc.

Things took an interesting turn last week when two of Google Italy's executives, both American, were placed under investigation regarding the Turin classroom incident. Magistrates are investigating whether the executives can be charged with participation in defamation - in one video that was downloadable from Google's video site, one of the students made disparaging remarks about his fellow student.

The suggestion, obviously, is that the executives should have been responsible for filtering objectionable material from the google site - something that Google Italy has made clear is not in their power. It would require intervention on the google servers in America.

In the hullaballoo, a lawyer, Guido Camera, acting for Vividown, an association protecting the rights of downs syndrome individuals in Italy, remarked "it's an important step forward because it can help bring a bit of clarity in the world of the internet"¹

Vividown is, no doubt, acting in good faith, but freedom of information is often first threatened by those acting in good faith.
The targetting of Google, above all else, makes little sense. Sure, it could be argued, that the ability of thugs to post videos on Google encourages the bullying - but what then of the nightly news that has shown the clip repeatedly, on all channels? It can be argued that Google, without supervision, allows the thugs to diffuse harmful and offensive clips - what then of the mobile phone networks, that allow the same videos to be sent through their networks?

If anything the posting of the video on Google has done some good. Firstly it has brought to attention serious problems in Italy's schools, and society at large. Secondly, and more concretely, nothing on the net is as anonymous as it seems, and Google, once informed by the relevant authorities, have been helping the police with an investigation that will hopefully bring criminal charges against the thugs beating up on a weaker classmate.

¹ - Video sui disabili, perquisita Google Italia - Corriere della Sera, 25/11/2006

Enough of the Moaning

A foreign journalist (whose name escapes me now), in the pages of the excellent Internazionale magazine, over the summer lamented the top-heavy nature of the Italian media - or the over-importance it gives to the ruling institutions. For example, it's enough that Italian President Napolitano opens his mouth and it will be reported with fanfare on TV and in the print media; Enough that the Pope remarks that we should give peace a chance, and one can expect a newsflash; Enough that one politician make a statement, and one can expect 20 minutes of the news to be taken up with the responses of his peers.

This inevitably leads humble bloggers such as this monkey, who comment on the 'news' to concentrate on the squabbles, ironies, contradictions, and deficencies of Italy's power structures. Something which sadly leaves little space for describing why Italy is still a wonderful place to live.

Culture is one of the reasons. There are fantastic writers, film-makers, song-writers producing work in Italian that, sadly, often fails to leap over the language border. It was with great delight that this monkey got his hands on the latest novel from Niccolò Ammaniti (somewhat unfairly dubbed 'the Italian Ian McEwan'). Ammaniti shot to international prominence (or as close to it as an Italian author can get, given no-ties to the commonwealth to interest 'Anglo-Saxon' readers) with Io non ho paura (I'm not scared, published in English by Canongate).

Whereas Io non ho paura was dominated by the golden colours of Southern Italy, his latest novel Dio che comanda (God who commands) opens with a snow covered urban periphery, and a 13 year old sent out by his alcoholic father on a night-time mission to silence a continuously barking dog - with a bullet. Captivating stuff.

There's plenty of great writing going on in Italy at the moment - for example Sandro Veronesi, winner of this year's Strega prize, or the shadowy Bologna-based collective Wu Ming.

So tune out the background noise of priests and politicians pontificating, and curl up with a good book.

Heroic Ratzy takes on the pervert priests

"Paedophile priests - The wrath of the Pope" screamed the headline in La Repubblica last week, mirroring the general news coverage of Papa Ratzi's stern words on the topic addressed to visiting Irish Bishops.

A two page spread followed in the paper, informing Italian readers who, perhaps behind the times, may not have heard about the paedophile-priest scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in many countries.

The heroes of the story, which starts in 2001, somewhat surprisingly, turn out to be the then Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II. One article, under the title When the Holy See Decided to Say Enough tells us that a historic turn-around came in 2001 when the Pope and a shocked and disgusted Cardinal Ratzinger decided to affront the problem of paedophilia in the Church.

We're told that Ratzy took the decision to modify the statute of limitations for ecclesiastical trials, a period of ten years, to allow the allotted time period to commence from the age of majority for a victim of child abuse by a cleric. A decision communicated in a letter sent to Bishops worldwide in 2001. What a hero. The good sheperd protecting the smallest of the flock.

Interesting to read, then, The Observer's coverage of the self-same letter:

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week.

[...]

It orders that 'preliminary investigations' into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger's office, which has the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the 'functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only[emphasis added].

'Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,' Ratzinger's letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.

The crucial questions and contextual information that should make up any serious piece on the Church's reaction to paedophilia are completely absent from the three different articles that make up La Repubblica's coverage. The Vatican press office could hardly have scripted more sympathetic coverage, short of suggesting that priestly-paedophilia was a communist-concocted scam.

For example, there is no query as to when Ratzinger or JPII were first informed of cases in countries like Ireland. We know that Irish Bishop Brendan Commiskey knew of cases involving at least one of his priests, Fr. Sean Fortune, as early as 1984. We know that Bishops report directly to Rome regularly. We know that Ratzinger and JPII were both in office at this stage. The transfer of priests accused of child abuse to other parishes in the Church was, we now know, a widespread practice of Bishops - can we believe this widespread practice occured without the knowledge of Rome?

Simon Kennedy, a solicitor working on behalf of victims of clerical abuse, in relation to the Fortune case wrote in The Irish Post (in 2002):

"I obtained evidence that a previous Papal Nuncio, the late Dr Alibrandi, had been informed by local people that Fortune's intentions to young people were at least suspicious. On receiving no reply, the Nuncio was reminded, and he intimated that the reason for the delay was that he was awaiting a reply from the Holy See with whom he had placed the complaint. Nothing happened."

In proceedings brought against both Bishop Commiskey and Alibrandi, Alibrandi pleaded diplomatic immunity. Kennedy, on behalf of the victims wrote a number of times, by registered post, to the Pope, but received no acknowledgement. An experience mirrored by other lawyers and investigators working on clerical abuse cases.

There is no mention of the various priests who have been transferred to the Vatican, though they face charges of child abuse in the US. A brief mention is given to the now infamous case of Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, long accused of serial child abuse in Mexico. Ratzinger as Pope, we're told, forced Maciel to resign, "saving him the humiliation of an ecclesiastical trial". NO mention is made of the fact that, despite allegations that first surfaced in the 1970s, Maciel was very much in favour with Ratzinger's predecessor JPII.

In the other main article on the Pope's encounter with Irish Bishops, the credited journalist, Orazio La Rocca, takes the time and care to quote the Holy See's minister for health, one Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, who commented "It's necessary to be vigilant, attentive, starting with the formation in seminaries. But it shouldn't be forgotten that there are also people who accuse the Church just in order to gain economic advantage with accusations and lies". There is no place in La Rocca's article, filled as it is with Church sources, for comments from victims of clerical sex abuse (perhaps they're all too busy prettying themselves up to tempt some poor priest, in order to make their fortune).

For La Rocca's benefit, we publish the following press release from One in Four, the Irish victims' group:

One in Four, the national charity which supports people who have experienced sexual violence, acknowledged the comments by Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican’s comments come one year on from the publication of the Ferns Report which detailed allegations of abuse made against 26 priests from the Diocese of Ferns. The report, found that the Catholic Church at Diocesan and Vatican level had failed to adequately address the sexual abuse of children by its priests and put in place proper procedures to prevent such abuse.

Speaking today, Colm O’Gorman, Director, said “One can of course appreciate on a human level Pope Benedict’s own “personal anguish” and any expression of concern for those who have been abused is welcomed. However, that the Pope as “Supreme Pastor of the Universal Church” has failed to respond to the findings in the report that the Vatican had failed in its responsibilities in relation to child sexual abuse perpetrated by its priests. The Pope’s words of care are welcome, but action is always more meaningful than words.

“ As the supreme head of the Catholic Church only Pope Benedict can act to put in place a mandatory child protection policy underpinned by Church Law right across the Catholic world, that he has failed to do so highlights the continuing failure of the Vatican to address this issue in any meaningful sense”

“ One in Four is also concerned that the Child Protection Policy unveiled by the Irish Catholic Church in November 2005 “ Our Children, Our Church” has yet to be either sanctioned by Rome or implemented across the Irish Church”

Heroic, me arse.

Drug Crazed Parliamentarians Protect Privacy

The story goes like this: Le Iene, an irreverent investigative/satirical programme (which given the restrictive nature of Italian TV is no mean feat), posing as a team from a fictional TV channel, outside Italy’s Parliament building Palazzo Chigi, do on the spot interviews with 50 parliamentarians from across the party spectrum. During the interview, one of the production team intervenes, saying that there’s some sweat glistening on the politicians forehead, and thus wipes it off using a handkerchief. In the handkerchief, though, is a special drug testing device (used by police forces across Europe, including Italy) which can indicate whether the subject tested has taken any of a variety of controlled substances within the previous 48 hours.

A sneaky trick, no doubt, but the results, while less than scientific, were interesting, to say the least. Out of a sample 50 politicians tested, over one third tested positive for illegal drugs (prohibited high of preference cannabis, closely followed by cocaine). The point the programme makers were, presumably, making was that there’s more than a little hypocrisy involved with a legislature that under the previous government approved one of the harshest drug prohibition laws in Europe. While much of Europe is rethinking the strategy of strict prohibition of ‘soft’ drugs, Italy last year decided to re-adopt harsh measures across the board.

This, though, is not the point of our tabloid-scream headline today. The official reaction to the programme’s stunt is what we’re concerned with. The programme, in order to drum up publicity for its first show of the season, issued a press release with details of their improviso hoax. Most major papers carried the story, and thus the news that a percentage of Italy’s moral guardians are prone to a bit of recreational drug use was, in a sense, no news. Come the day of the programme, though, the official body set up to ensure compliance with Italy’s extensive privacy laws, ruled that the programme could not show the piece.

“Fair is fair,” you mutter guiltily under your possibly narcotic tinted breath, “no-one should be subjected to sly drug testing outside their place of work”. Well, perhaps not (although athletes are subject to random drug testing) , but let’s clarify Le Iene’s test and its scope. After the requisite sample was slyly taken, it was added with all the others, with no distinguishing marks - so no-one, including the production team, would know who tested positive and who negative. A test, then, with a simple statistical goal. How one could further protect the parliamentarians’ privacy, short of not doing the test, is beyond this monkey.

A legal investigation has been opened, with three of the programme’s production being accused of violation of privacy.

While, during the same week, readers of La Repubblica were informed that British journalists would no longer be at risk of libel charges in cases where stories can be proved to be of public interest, Italy’s privacy laws were invoked for the umpteenth time in recent months to obstruct journalists and programme makers from investigating stories in the public interest

100% Italian

Italian TV schedules have over the last four or five years fallen prey to the 'reality' format. The initial success of Grande Fratello [Big Brother] led executives in both the public (RAI) and private networks (most noticeably Berlusconi's Mediaset) scrambling to import various other simple, and most-importantly, tele-votable formats. An industry has sprung up providing b,c & d-list celebrities willing to be shipwrecked, learn to dance, ice skate, or even join the circus - all in order to show the Italian public 'the real me'.

In an interview with La Stampa, TV personality Gianni Boncompagni in a recent interview was asked about the 'endemolisation' of Italian TV scheduling.

Boncompagni: "It's just trash made under the format of reality that has nothing original, they're formats prepackaged abroad and reproduced everywhere. A blow for us authors."

La Stampa: "Is it possible that there's nothing Italian [on the tv]?

Boncompagni: "There is one idea that's all ours: The Holy Mass, it's not Dutch and has nothing to do with Endemol."

hmmmm.