The View from Bologna

Spike Lee runs into trouble with the Partisans

Earlier this year news reports emerged that celebrated director Spike Lee would be turning his hand to a slice of Italian WWII history, as he prepares his next film the Miracle of St. Anna (due for release next year).

The film focusses on four American soldiers trapped behind the Gothic line in Italy in 1944. It deals in particular with the massacre of civilians by Nazi troops in the town of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

Lee is a frequent visitor to Italy (he has, in the past, held a season ticket for Inter Milan games), and the news that he was taking interest in an Italian story was generally welcomed. He has now, though, run into some controversy over his approach to the massacre.

A.N.P.I - the national association of partisans has published an open letter to the American director, over rumours coming from the set of the film, about his approach to the massacre.

ANPI Rimini publishes (in Italian) a letter, written by Didala Ghilarducci - herself a partisan, whose husband was shot by Nazis weeks after the massacre.
Ghilarducci and others are worried that Lee has taken an approach that suggests the massacre was carried out while Nazi troops searched the village for partisans.

It may seem laboured to the outsider, to argue about whether the massacre took place while Nazi troops searched for partisans, or whether it was a premeditated attack on civilians by the German troops. In either case soldiers lined up and shot 560 civilians in the town, including women and children.

In the political climate of today's Italy, though, where the fascist period is often referred to neutrally or in glowing terms -telling us about 'trains on time' etc without mentioning the suspension of civil rights, the racial laws, the militarisation of society, and the violent supression of dissent - ANPI, it seems to this monkey, is right to fight for the correct portrayal of history. Suggestions that Nazis (and in various cases local Italian fascists) acted on the spur of the moment, pressured by a guerilla war, is significantly different from suggesting that a tactic of the war was the targetting of civilians. You're entitled to your opinion, as the saying goes, but not to the facts.

The facts, as outlined by the magistrate Marco De Paolis, responsible for the judicial investigation into the massacre, are that " Nazi soldiers massacred men, women and children and it was an act of terrorism, planned and organised in detail. Decided upon by the upper levels of the German Comand as a politics of terror to dissuade citizens from helping partisans."

Stop it - you'll just encourage them

You'll be familiar with the ever-so-slightly desparate attempts by the movie and music industries to convince consumers that bootleg copies of films and music not only rob the industry of vitally needed funds, and provide poor audio visual quality, but also provide funds to organised crime. The ads where a man buys a cheap film from a market stall, only to find out that he's funded balaclaved menace in his city (and got a crap video that's unwatchable to boot) might just provide cue for comic activist Beppe Grillo, blacklisted magistrate Luigi Di Magistris, and journalist Marco Travaglio, who together this week went to Strasbourg to present an appeal to the EU parliament to stop sending EU funding to Italy.

During the week the European Court of Auditors, for the 13th year running, announced that the EU budget could not be given a clean bill of health, thanks to fraud and mismanagement that amounted to at least 4Billion Euro wasted. The news made front page news in the Euro-sceptical U.K, and provoked indignation amongst the fiscally correct Scandinavians. In Italy it seemed that only Grillo & Co. gave two hoots - and hence their trip to Strasbourg.

For decades Italian taxpayers have contributed to, and recieved funds from common EU fund for regional development. The fruits of the funding? Take a drive through Sicily, and you'll find superb tracts of motorway that join small towns up with no apparent structural logic. Travel through impoverished regions like Calabria and you'll find magnificently deserted Airports & Hospitals, built with EU funding and never put into operation. In the Italian case, EU funding has become a complicated route for taking taxpayers funds, placing them in the 'gift' of local politicians who - in a number of cases - channel the contracts involved to organised crime in return for blocks of votes.

It was a brave, if perhaps foolhardy, move for investigating magistrate Luigi De Magistris to publicly endorse Grillo's call in Strasbourg. De Magistris, you'll remember, is the magistrate recently removed (after he had spent four years building up a case) from the 'Why Not' case - a case which investigates precisely this problem - the missapropriation of EU funding in Calabria. Amongst those under investigation in the case are, apparently, current Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, and Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Italy's failure, despite being a member of the G8 and EU, to provide decent infrastructure and vital services to it's southern regions is perhaps the biggest single failure of the EU's regional development policy. And unfortunately it's not for want of funding. Grillo's call is, characteristically drastic and attention grabbing, but he has a point. The cutting off of EU Funding to Italy would make precious little difference to the population at large. Until the EU is in a position to impose stringent audit procedures and penalties, Italy is one country that would, perhaps, benefit from having it's paws pulled out of the cookie jar.

Going back to our bootleg video analogy, it's not just a poorly conceived road/hospital/airport/viaduct/irrigation system you're buying when you hand over those EU funds. In these cases you very often really are supporting organised crime.

Jerk that knee Jerk! Cracking down on the Roma

Over the long weekend, at the start of this month, Gianfranco Fini (the intelligent and increasingly acceptable face of fascism), declared that no-one should 'exploit' the murder of Giovanna Reggiani last week. Fini IIAFF^tm said this from the railway station where Ms Reggiani was last seen alive, and went on to blame various members of the centre-left coalition for being weak on crime and immigration.

From the moment that a Romanian vagrant was arrested as the prime suspect for the murder of Ms Reggiani, politicians from both left and right, government and opposition have been falling over themselves to establish their 'law and order' credentials. The government had already been developing a decree to give more power to local authorities to crack down on petty crime, and hastily added clauses allowing local prefects to authorise the expulsion of EU citizens considered a threat to the community.

The only voice of sanity came from Emma Bonino, a marginal figure in the government - though a hugely popular politician throughout Italy. Bonino, speaking at the annual congress of the Radical party had the following comments:
"In this case, it's said, that a crime has been committed that causes social alarm. But who sounds that alarm, and why does it sound in some cases, and not others? What creates the alarm: the murder, the method, or the fact that the suspect is a Romanian? Isn't something wrong when the massacre of an entire family in Erba produces alarm mainly on 'Porta a Porta'(late night talk show); and a brutal crime - but committed by a Romanian immigrant - sends the whole country in tilt? In this case the only big lesson to be learned comes from the victim's husband [...] who was quick to stress that what happened 'could have happened with an Italian as well'"^[1].

It was, though, a voice in the wilderness. The pressure was on to approve a special decree on security giving wide ranging powers to local authorities in the face of a supposed crime wave. The various parties involved in government and opposition varied solely in the severity of the measures - with the more left-wing parties looking to hand over powers of expulsion over to the courts (which, as Fini IIAFF^tm and cohorts pointed out - given the state of the Italian court system - would be the same as not having expulsions at all), while the extreme-right* Lega Nord called for the borders to be closed and for a 'cleaning' operation to get underway (whatever that may mean)².

All this at a time when, according to the annual crime statistics serious crime levels have fallen over the last number of years. And yet, week after week, surveys are published and debated that suggest that the public feels increasingly threatened and unsafe. It's the chicken and egg scenario, as massive media coverage of 'security' has been the norm for as long as this monkey can remember.

The main left-wing parties, spearheaded by their elected mayors (Bologna's mayor Sergio Cofferati in particular), have for at least two years identified 'security' as an achilles heal for their electoral chances, and have been taking steps to remedy this by introducing a wide rang of measures on a local level that hit sharply at petty crime - a disproportionately high level of which is committed by immigrants, in particular Romanian gypsies.

Journalist Marco Travaglio, in his characteristically caustic manner drew parallels with the current political class and Rudy Giuliani's zero tolerance policy in New York. The big difference, pointed out Travaglio, was that Giuliano also chased the big guns of Wall St. and organised crime in this sweep. Zero tolerance for the current political class in Italy starts with the smallest offences, and remains there. Pickpockets, shoplifters, and the unfortunates who spend their days harassing motorists at traffic lights with sponges. These are all subject to arrest and in the case of immigrants a possible expulsion. Meanwhile prominent politicians have their sentences commuted for association with the mafia...

The interesting angle to all this, though, is that while yet another difference between left and right gets swalled up (why bother voting at all, given that the main parties economic and social policies are increasingly identical), the vast majority of parties (with the exception of Fini's Alleanza Nazionale and Bossi's Lega Nord - loathe as I may be to give them credit)in 2006 voted for the 'indulto' - a general reduction of sentences across the board for Italy's prison population (with a number of specific crimes exempt - terrorism, mafia etc - but not manslaughter). So, while they spend every available media-minute scaring the electorate with tales of crime, the honourable members of parliament opened the gates of prisons across the country releasing thousands of petty (and not-so-petty) criminals. A sure-fire way to increase the citizen's sense of security. It was, presumably, incidental, that a number of high-profile politicians benefitted from the 'indulto'

Justifying the recent introduction of expulsion orders, Walter Veltroni, the new leader of the new Partito Democratico, outlined how the influx of romanian gypsies since Romania's entry to the EU earlier this year, had become intolerable - and various official voices criticised the Romanian government, openly suggesting that they had allowed much of their domestic criminal population to leave the country in January (a bit rich this, given the aforementioned 'indulto' here in Italy).

The main question this monkey has is, would similar expulsion orders have been possible in the absence of a brutal murder like that of Ms Reggiani? Many, I'm betting, would baulk at the idea of introducing almost-arbitrary expulsion powers to combat shoplifting and pick-pocketing - crimes that few could deny are committed by a disproportionately high number of Romanian gypsies. Statistically speaking the women of Italy have more to fear from their spouses and neighbours than Gypsies - but perhaps issuing barring orders and stiff penalties for domestic abuse isn't as catchy vote-wise as expelling the 'other'.

It remains to be seen what economic effects the decree eventually passed will have. One effect it may have is to diminish severely the capacity of citizens from Romania, Poland, and elsewhere from the Eastern part of the EU to arrive in Italy looking for work. This in turn will allow for a greater downward pressure on wages, and force 'guest-workers' to depend upon their employers for the right to stay and work in Italy. Exactly the situation that pertained to Romanians before january 2006.

Notes:
*Another pet hate of this monkey is the cast iron rule employed by Italian tv journalists to describe all the smaller left-wing parties as 'estrema sinistra' or extreme left, while the Lega in particular are simply described as part of the right wing coalition. Take a brief look at any of the public declarations of the Lega, and tell me they don't deserve the 'extreme' tag...
[1] VI CONGRESSO DI RADICALI ITALIANI: INTERVENTO DEL MINISTRO EMMA BONINO: "In questo caso, si dice, é stato commesso un reato di quelli che creano allarme sociale. Ma chi suona l'allarme, e perché suona in certi casi e non in altri? Cosa crea l' allarme: l'omicidio, le modalità dello stesso, o il fatto che il sospettato sia rumeno? C'é o non c'é qualcosa che non va, se il massacro di un'intera famiglia ad Erba crea allarme soprattutto a "Porta a Porta"; e un delitto altrettanto efferato - ma perpetrato da un immigrato rumeno - manda l'intero Paese in tilt ? Guardate in questo caso l’unica grande lezione ci viene proprio dal marito della vittima - al quale desidero esprimere, anche da questo palco, tutta la mia solidarietà e vicinanza umana – e che non ha mancato di sottolineare come ciò che è accaduto “poteva capitare anche con un Italiano”.
[2]Roberto Calderoli speaking in Rome on the 4th of November:"I rom e i crimini da loro commessi rappresentano solo la punta dell'iceberg di milioni di stranieri che al posto che lavorare vengono qui e delinquono. Per fermare l'orda c'e' un unico sistema: chiudiamo le frontiere e facciamo pulizia all'interno del Paese, solo dopo le si potra' riaprire applicando la legge Bossi-Fini, ma anche ai cittadini comunitari". Lo afferma Roberto Calderoli, Vice Presidente del Senato e Coordinatore della Lega Nord, che aggiunge: "al di la' dei permessi per turismo, lavoro o studio, nessuno, cittadino comunitario compreso, potra' venire se non con un contratto di lavoro certo. L'Europa ha fallito, restituiamo agli Stati membri la sovranita' dei loro confini".(AGI) - Roma, 4 nov"

Primo Levi's Suicide

I stumbled across this fascinating article (thanks to a posting on Chet Raymo's excellent Science Musings blog.

It's an old article, but was news to this monkey. I had always presumed that it was accepted fact that Primo Levi had committed suicide. Virtually every mention of the celebrated Italian chemist/author/holocaust survivor ends noting that Levi eventually succumbed to a dark depression and threw himself over the bannisters into a narrow stairwell in the building where he lived.

Reading through Diego Gambetta's 2004 article in the Boston Review, what strikes one is how more likely an accidental death was, and yet how determinedly a conclusion of suicide was reached by many.

Any suicide is a tragic event, but Levi's death, if caused by suicide, becomes a defining act. If the man who surivived Auschwitz, and wrote so clearly about the experience, committed suicide it helps define the evil committed by the Nazis. Escape from the camps was an illusion - there were no survivors from this savagery. Elie Wiesel, for example, famously said of Levi: "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz fourty years later"^[1].

The mistake, though, is to think that if Levi's death was accidental, that it becomes an opposing commentary - that it somehow diminishes the evil of the Holocaust. Levi was very obviously scarred by the horrors he witnessed - he was one of the most eloquent witnesses not just to the nightmare of living in the camps, but also to the terrible pain of surviving.

There are number of reasons to believe the death was suicide, as Gambetta's article clearly lays out, but there are also many reasons to believe the death was the result of an accidental fall. It seems to me, though, that were Levi not a survivor of the camps, there would be little hesitation to define his fall as an accidental death.

And that, of course, may be just as much a biased reading of events as the widely-accepted suicide theory...

Notes
¹ Cited from Gabmetta's article. Orignal source La Stampa, April 14, 1987

Confusion over the Genoa inquest

In the week that the London Metropolitan Police were found guilty of a series of errors that led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, members of Italy's ruling coalition voted against holding a committee of enquiry into the conduct of policing at the G8 summitt in Genoa in 2001.

Two parties in particular brought voted, at committee level, to botch the proposed enquiry - Justice Minister Clemente Mastella's UDEUR, and ex-magistrate Antonio Di Pietro's Italia dei Valori. The move was a serious one, because - aside from everything else - both parties had signed a program for government that explicitly called for the setting up of the inquiry in question. Clemente Mastella's 'a la carte' approach to the program has been commented upon widely and frequently.

More perplexing has been Antonio Di Pietro's position. Di Pietro made his name in the '90s as one of the magistrates spearheading the 'mani pulite' corruption cases, and is rarely seen off a pedestal arguing for transparency and justice. And yet he has, for the moment, effectively denied the country a chance to ask, and have answered questions about the disturbing events that led up to the shooting of one protester dead, along with mass arrests and police beatings.

Di Pietro, on his blog, tells us that he's not against an inquiry, but rather he's against a one-sided inquiry. For Di Pietro both the actions of the police and the actions of protesters need to be examined - and while the inquiry concerns itself solely with the conduct of the police, he votes against it.

Di Pietro has made a huge mistake though, as the issue of the inquiry is not one of ascribing guilt for the outbreak of violence that occured in Genoa. It's not to point the finger, and claim 'it was your fault, and your fault alone'.Who was to blame for intial outbursts of violence on the streets of Genoa during the G7 summitt is open to question, and certainly various violent protesters (amidst the vast majority of peaceful protesters gathered) hold a share of the responsibility. There are court cases still under way involving both protesters and police officers that will shed some light on this eventually.

A parliamentary inquiry into Genoa, though, has a very different function. It's function is to examine the actions of the state. The simplest reason for this is that while violent protesters have no authority to act in our collective name, the police in their exercise of power are acting in our name, in the name of the state, and are paid for by us, the taxpayers. In a democracy the Police are answerable for their actions to the state. When they are not answerable to the state, in effect you have? Yep - a Police state.

The police in Genoa, in witnessed cases, beat unarmed protesters, destroyed camera footage from bystanders, refused to identify themselves and covered up id-badges. In the most notorious case, police stormed the headquarters of the Genoa social forum and beat protesters inside - of 96 people present in the building, 62 were hospitalised with injuries ranging from cracked ribs and broken bones, through to serious head injuries. Three of those hospitalised were in a coma. Police held a number of people, without charge, in a makeshift camp the Bolzaneto detention centre, where they were subjected to further violence - again at the hands of unidentifiable police officers.

A report from Italy's chief prosecutor came to the conclusion that the Police "must have lied" in their version of events - including the claim that a police patrol had come under attack from the Social Forum's building.

There are still questions to be answered about the police conduct - who ordered the raids; were police officers told to cover their identity badges; what plans were made prior to the meeting, and what level of political invovment was their with the plans.

When the people charged with enforcing state security act like 'wild beasts'(the description of one police officer witnessing police beating students) the integrity of the state is threatened, and action must be taken to punish those responsible, and to ensure there exists no institutional short circuit that allows for such behaviour. Individual prosecutions therefore can't take the place of a full-scale inquiry.

When a protester smashes a car, or attacks a police officer, the state's response is simpler - they arrest and prosecute the offender. The integrity of the state doesn't come into question.

Not that the British government have much of a record with the reports their inquiries produce, but at least they've got the concept of what an inquiry is for. For example, nobody blocked the report into the London Met's behaviour in relation to Jean Charles Mendes by saying that the Met and Al Qaeda should both be investigated equally.