Silvio B. "tackles" violence on women. From behind

"[Rape] can happen. In order to effectively prevent it, we would need an officer for each attractive woman! [smiles]"
- S. Berlusconi, 25 January 2009

...oh, so this is what you meant:

ps.
I've just been told this guy is a Berlusconi lookalike (Maurizio Antonini?), and now I feel really quite stupid. In any case, take the video as a symbolic illustration. Plus, the real SB probably would do this kind of thing and only contains himself because of the cameras... So he limits himself to playing peekaboo with Angela Merkel.

Justice Italian style: bribe your lawyer, get away with it AND get a compensation!

Minister's husband offers 'deepest apologies' to Berlusconi in court case

David Mills regrets involving Italian prime minister in bribery trial in court statement

John Hooper in Rome

David Mills, the estranged husband of the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, today proffered his "deepest apologies" to Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, for having involved him in a trial for alleged bribery.

A court in Milan is hearing the final stages of a case in which the British lawyer is accused of accepting a sum of $600,000 (£430,000) to withhold evidence in two corruption trials in which Berlusconi was a defendant. Last December, the prosecution asked for him to be sentenced to four years and eight months and yesterday Mills learned that, if convicted, he could also face a €250,000 ($230,000) bill from the Italian state.

Berlusconi's prosecution was suspended by a law drafted by his government, which was passed last year and provides him with immunity.

The judge read out a statement from Mills in which he said: "I have made mistakes. I have conducted my business poorly and I have caused a lot of trouble to people who in no way deserved such difficulties."

But the lawyer, who helped set up a network of offshore companies for Fininvest, the firm at the apex of Berlusconi's business empire, added: "I have never been corrupted by anyone, neither by Carlo Bernasconi [a Fininvest executive], nor by Berlusconi, nor by any other person."

Mills said: "In the course of my professional activity, many people have trusted in my integrity. None of them ever had reason to regret it."

The minister's husband first admitted that he had taken the money as payment for his evidence. In a letter to his accountant, obtained by investigators, he wrote that he had "turned some very tricky corners" in court and thus "kept Mr B out of a great deal of trouble he would have been in had I said all I knew".

But Mills later retracted his statement and said the money was from a Neapolitan businessman and former client. In his statement today , he said Berlusconi and the businessman had been "victims of my errors". He added: "I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to proffer my deepest apologies to both for the trouble this affair has caused."

A government lawyer earlier set damages it was seeking from Mills at €250,000. Italian law takes the view that perverting the court of justice impairs the functioning of the state and requires compensation to be paid.

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 January 2009 15.29 GMT

Another step towards a police state

Uproar as top police cleared of attack on Genoa G8 protesters

Junior officers sentenced, but will not go to jail
Savage beatings left some peaceful victims in coma

John Hooper, The Guardian, Friday 14 November 2008

There was uproar in a Genoa court last night after some of Italy's highest-ranking police officers, accused of masterminding a savage attack on peaceful protesters at the G8 meeting in the city seven years ago, were cleared of the charges against them.

The area reserved for the public erupted into chants of "shame, shame" as the presiding judge finished reading his verdict. The mother of one of the victims clambered on to a crash barrier and screamed: "We'll have our revenge".

Enrica Bartesaghi, the head of a pressure group formed by victims' relatives, told the Guardian: "My daughter was beaten so badly she was taken to hospital. She will receive €5,000 [£4,300]. Unfortunately, ours is no longer a civilised country. The sentence is an insult [to her]."

The three judges handed out sentences of up to four years to some of the operational commanders. But none of them will have to go to jail, because their offences will expire under a statute of limitations early next year.

None of the officers who carried out the beatings was a defendant in the trial. All were masked, and none wore names or numbers during the raid. Only one has ever been identified.

Among those acquitted were Giovanni Luperi, who has since been put in charge of the Italian equivalent of MI5, and two of Italy's most senior detectives, Francesco Gratteri and Gilberto Calderozzi. Several of the top police officers accused in the trial were filmed standing outside the building as the beatings proceeded.

Almost 30 people were taken to hospital after the raid, several in comas. An Italian judge subsequently ruled that none of those staying at the Armando Diaz school had had any part in the intensely violent rioting or looting that marked the anti-corporate globalisation protests in Genoa.

A statement issued by some of the victims accused the Italian police of acting "outside the democratic order". It added: "That is possible because they know they enjoy total impunity, as this sentence confirms."

Mark Covell, from Reading, one of five Britons injured in the attack, said: "The evidence was overwhelming. There is no justice here. I feel sorry for Italy."

Evidence was brought by the prosecution that police had planted two petrol bombs at the school to try to show that its occupants were violent subversives. But only the junior officers who carried the Molotov cocktails on to the premises were convicted, and their sentences and convictions have also expired under the statute of limitations.

Last night's impassioned scenes came after four years of legal wrangling. Preliminary hearings in three cases arising from the most violent of G8 protests began in 2004. The first to conclude ended in December last year, when 24 demonstrators were found guilty of damage to property and looting. They were jailed for between five months and 11 years.

In July, 15 police officers and doctors who were on duty at a holding centre near Genoa were found guilty of brutally mistreating detainees, including many from the Diaz school. The court heard of threatened rapes, sadistic maltreatment, and of detainees being forced to bark like dogs and sing anti-Jewish songs.

Those convicted of the abuses received sentences of up to five years in jail. But, again, none will serve time. The sentences, together with the convictions, will be cancelled when the statute of limitations takes effect next year.

Backstory

At least 150 police officers stormed the Armando Diaz school on the night of July 21 2001, after three days of violence in Genoa that left more than 200 people injured and a protester dead. Police chiefs later claimed the school was occupied by the violently disruptive Black Bloc faction. If that is what rank-and-file officers were told, it may explain the viciousness with which they laid into the protesters. Briton Nicola Doherty was hit so hard on an arm with which she was shielding her face that her wrist was broken. The attack put 28 of 93 people arrested in hospital - three of them on the critical list. Mark Covell, a volunteer with the Indymedia news network, was unconscious for 14 hours. He suffered eight broken ribs, a punctured lung and 10 missing or broken teeth.

original on guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 November 2008

I'm loathing it.

Fear of McMuseums as burger boss gets culture job

Tom Kington, The Guardian, Tuesday 18 November 2008

ROMA

Italian heritage groups and opposition politicians have criticised the appointment of a former McDonald's executive to run Italy's museums.
Mario Resca, 62, who worked as Italy manager for the fast-food chain for 12 years before moving last year to relaunch a state-run casino, has been appointed to squeeze more revenue out of the country's museums, part of a shake-up at the culture ministry.
Opposition MP Manuel Ghizzoni said: "What have hamburgers got to do with Italy's extraordinary cultural patrimony?" Antonello Alici, secretary general of the preservation group Italia Nostra, said: "Resca may know how to clean up a balance sheet but knows nothing about culture. I fear our museums will be leaned on to refill state coffers,"
Resca defended his record, telling La Repubblica newspaper he had known nothing about cheeseburgers either when starting at McDonald's. "We've 4,000 museums, I have been told," he said. "They have exceptional qualities but they are for the large part unexplored."
Resca is expected to try to make money from better marketing, just as the government prepares to reduce culture funding by €1bn (£850m) over the next three years.
He said money could be made from art stashed in the store rooms of Italian museums. Proposing that the pieces be lent out for profitable temporary exhibitions around the world, Resca likened them to "oil reserves that cost nothing".
La Repubblica wrote last week that money is so tight new archaeological sites are opened only when holes are dug to create train lines or underground garages.

original on guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 18 2008 00.01 GMT

Bondi is not my Culture Minister.

I just don't get modern art, says Italy's culture minister

Tom Kington, The Guardian, Wednesday 13 August 2008

ROME

Italy's culture minister has enraged members of the country's arts community with an attack on modern architecture and an admission that he is completely mystified by contemporary art.

Sandro Bondi told the magazine Grazia: "I struggle to find evidence of beauty in contemporary art. If I go to an exhibition I pretend to understand, like many others. But, honestly, I don't understand."

The comments follow a number of attacks on modern architecture by ministers including Bondi and the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that has left the arts world aghast.

Bondi's views drew a stinging response from Francesco Bonami, a curator who has directed the Venice Biennale, the world's most important contemporary art gathering. "Bondi appears to have fallen asleep in 1895, when the Biennale was launched, to then reawake in 2008," he told La Stampa. "You cannot rely on an antiquated concept of beauty, that's like wanting to go back to the horse and cart."

But Berlusconi's minister appears to be on a roll. Last week he slammed the ultra-modern steel and stone loggia designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and planned for Florence's Uffizi gallery.

"How could it live alongside the adjacent loggias designed by Giorgio Vasari without shocking Florentines and visitors from all over the world?" demanded Bondi, referring to the 16th-century artist and architect.

A philosophy graduate and former communist, Bondi joined Berlusconi when the TV mogul entered politics in 1994, rising to become spokesman for his Forza Italia party, then minister, while continuing to publish poetry, some of which is dedicated to his political patron.

Berlusconi has also come down firmly in favour of traditional architecture since his return to power in April, calling a curved skyscraper planned for Milan by the American architect Daniel Libeskind "horrifying" and asking for it to be straightened.

Libeskind, who is overseeing the development of the site of the World Trade Centre in New York, shot back, drawing a parallel between Berlusconi's taste in skyscrapers and his nationalist brand of politics. "Under fascism in Italy, everything that was not straight or in line was also deemed perverted art," he told the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

In Rome, the mayor, Gianni Alemanno, has led a campaign against the new, bold white building housing the first-century BC Ara Pacis altar, designed by the American architect Richard Meier. Last month, culture undersecretary Francesco Maria Giro joined him, saying the building clashed with Rome's antique fabric and that it would be knocked down if the government could afford it, or at the very least a protruding wall would be demolished.

But Roman architect Francesco Coppari warned: "If Rome carries on in this way, it will become a beautiful necropolis, beautiful for the Japanese who come for the shopping and the Americans who get drunk in the centre. But it certainly won't be a modern city."

original on guardian.co.uk, Wednesday August 13 2008