Check, please.

The bill for the most expensive G8 in history has now arrived totaling a full €512 million . This is the expense that Italy spent for last year’s G8 Summit, which was moved from the island of La Maddalena to L’Aquila. And it was simply due to a PR stunt orchestrated during Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s sex scandal crisis.

The most incredible thing is that the G8 venue at La Maddalena was already prepared and had been for months… at a huge cost.  New hotels, conference rooms, docks, and streets were built or renovated for a total cost of €327 million. Money wasted. Money which magistrates are now investigating due to an emerging conflict-of-interests scandal which would have seen lucrative construction contracts awarded to the usual “friends of friends”.

Following the polemics over bribes received by the Civil Protection agency, it should not be excluded that something fishy took place even for the G8 preparations.

So, €327million have been thrown away. But why? Because Silvio Berlusconi decided to move the G8 Summit from a renovated and rebuilt La Maddelena to L’Aquila, the city that had recently been devastated by an earthquake. Over a mere few months a new G8 was organized with the government spending further €200 million in L’Aquila.

When the internally displaced citizens of L’Aquila now feel the coming summer heat in their refugee tents, they will remember the millions of euros in frivolities spent for the ‘world’s great leaders’.  Yes, Italy’s G8 farce was an incredible waste of public money and suspicion now falls upon those who may be responsible for such reckless greed.

Read the article here.

When a cancerous metastasis spreads too much, a person usually dies as no further surgery is possible. When metastases invade a nation, surgery is mandatory, as physical death doesn’t apply. Italy is presently the most metastasized among Western political societies, and her cancer is corruption in public affairs.

In past weeks the alarms have become deafening. Political scandals have multiplied -national figures being sent to jail, or indicted for crimes that deserve jail; respected institutions (like Protezione Civile, a powerful sub-ministry, headed by Mr. Guido Bertolaso, which deals with emergencies) disgraced; lastly, a two billion Euro tax fraud, the biggest one in a couple of centuries (56 arrests yet to be made). The prestigious Fiat-owned daily ‘La Stampa’ has summarized the state of affairs as “Repubblica dei Corrotti”, meaning a country governed by the corrupt. Warnings of danger are becoming desperate.

In the years before and after the Great War many countries of the world were shattered by revolutions and/or authoritarian  coups d’Etat, some of which paved the way to WW2. What can Italy do in order to escape disaster? The obvious answer is – changing her ways drastically and as soon as possible.

Change 1: The profession of the career politician must be dismantled in a succession of strokes, with a shift from parliamentary democracy to a selective (restricted) direct democracy. Corrupt politicians should be sent to labor camps.

Change 2: The whole body of government officials should be invested by an extraordinary assault. In the 1914-18 war the most extreme punishment on mutinous or coward combat units was decimation- selecting by lot and executing by firing squads every tenth man of companies, regiments, even brigades. Nothing less than bloodless decimations will crush corruption in the Italian bureaucracy. In the top echelons of civil service one officer in ten must be indicted and suspended. Until they prove their innocence they shall lose salaries, pensions, benefits. Their properties, including houses, cars, boats, etc., must be temporarily confiscated or seized, their office shall be given to substitutes (who will themselves be subjected to the next decimation). The loss of some experienced bureaucrats will not be painless, but the lucky ones will work harder and practice less corruption. Such harsh measures will  beneficially terrorize rank and file too.

Change 3: Those business people whose deals involve taxpayer’s money must be ‘decimated’ in ways that are appropriate to them, beginning with huge fines, confiscations, time in jail and will get refunds if proved innocent.

The sinister establishment  which runs, even owns, Italy will never do the above things, which of course will be said to infringe the noble Constitution, the law codes, civil and human rights, and so on and so forth. Therefore, the establishment must be pulled down through a temporary breach of legality and by an emergency leadership. Present laws protect thieves and scoundrels too much. If nothing is done, metastases will ‘kill’ more than decimations.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

Image via CrunchBase

Three Google executives were found guilty here on Wednesday of invasion of privacy in a landmark case over a video posted in 2006 of an Italian teenager with Down’s Syndrome being bullied in school.

Prosecutors said Judge Oscar Magi’s ruling “means privacy rights trump business logic” while Google, which will appeal, called it “an attack on the fundamental principles of freedom on which the Internet was built”. The first trial anywhere against executives of the Internet search engine company, the Milan case was seen as having implications for the way Google operates in Italy and for the wider debate over freedom of speech and legal responsibility for Internet postings.

Former Google Italy president David Carl Drummond, now senior vice president, was given a six-month suspended jail term along with George De Los Reyes, a retired former Google Italy board member, and Peter Fleitcher, Google Europe’s privacy strategy chief.

The three, for whom prosecutors had asked a year’s term, were found guilty of invasion of privacy but not of defamation.

Arvind Desikan, head of the Google Video for Europe project, was acquitted because he only faced the defamation charge.

Read more here.

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• Google Italy ruling ‘threat to internet freedom’ (telegraph.co.uk)
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There is a significant amount of hand-wringing going on in the US that the Euro is fraying on the edges. Some pundits have even coined a rather derogatory acronym for Euro-countries in economic distress: the PIGS (Portugal, Italy or Ireland, Greece, Spain). The acronym bunches together four countries with very different backgrounds but one shared fact: they all face serious budget shortfalls, writes the Atlantic Review.

The grouping of these countries, largely by investment banks, may simplify investment and policymaking decisions to an unfortunate level. Italy for one does not want to be part of the group, and the Italian bank UniCredit has waged an effective campaign to change the “I” in PIGS to Ireland. But Ireland too has begun to restore both consumer confidence and budget stability thanks to aggressive action by the central government. Commentators seem to keep the “I” because that is the crucial vowel that holds the acronym together.

Portugal, Spain, and Greece are also all facing very different challenges. Portugal has a sizable but manageable budget deficit, while Spain is struggling with a burst housing bubble a la Florida. Greece remains the real country of concern; but then again, Greece has roughly the same debt levels as Germany, so what is all the fuss about?

The classification overlooks the more important–and legally binding—organizations already in existence, namely the EU and the Eurozone. Talk of the dissolution of the Euro is premature but rampant.

How should we classify countries economically? Is there any value in grouping problem areas? Just as a reference, I did a quick look at state budgets in the US and found five states with budget deficits greater than 10% in 2009: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island. Do you think CARINN could catch?

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Dark rumors have been circulating these past few weeks on possible power struggles in the high echelons of the Roman church. Rivalries are said to oppose two Vatican clans headed  by cardinals Bertone and Ruini. The former is the Secretary of State, almost a prime minister, of the Holy See. The latter chaired the Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, the body that groups the Italian bishops.

However, the really serious ills of Catholicism, better of Christendom, go beyond the feuds in Rome on specific issues. They extend to what many believe is the slow agony of the religious sentiment in Western societies. The secularization of our values goes on since the year 1000 BC- the time when believers expected the end of history. Especially in the last half millennium the hold of religion on the Christian world has steadily weakened, contrary to some semblances.

For instance, scholars commonly believe that the overall history of Spain cannot be understood if the faith element is not seen as the central component of that civilization, even of the Spanish imperial conquests. Today, we have areas of said country where Catholic practice involves much less than 5% of the population. The process started there with the XVIII century Enlightment. True, the Islamic religion looks strong and spreading. But as soon as Islamites are drawn into the modern way of life, they accept the spirit of secularism.

Yet the great religions of the world are challenged today by a calling which is the exact opposite of the agony of faith. As the main ideologies of modernity (socialism, democratic capitalism) increasingly appear empty or ineffective, religions often emerge and recover relevance. This may be cogently true for Catholicism, which is organized around a strong center. Given new circumstances, the Pope might go back to being the supreme guide of the Christian peoples, as he was eight centuries ago.

For this to happen, the Roman Catholic Church will need a different kind of pastor. The Pope of the future should be a revolutionary. He should repudiate two millennia of continuity, move his seat from Rome, sell Vatican real estate and the richest archbishopric palaces, and renounce the official status of prelates. With deeds, giving practical help to the poor and searching for new ways of faith, he would prove the Church as a genuine source of truth. Possibly, not necessarily, such an innovating pontiff should be a very young, saintly monk -not a cardinal, particularly not a diplomat. Benign pope John XXIII was a diplomat for years, and that did not help. To reconstruct, a Pope for the future should demolish first. Continuity may one day kill the Church.

Massimo Calderazzi is Junior member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to whom many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

Dozens of Basiji militants, supporters of the Iranian government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have tried to assault the Italian embassy in Teheran shouting “Death to Italy, death to Silvio Berlusconi,” reports Corriere della Sera.

The militants, dressed as civilians tried to assault the embassy with stones and continued their aggressions against both the French and Dutch embassies.

The news was released by the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, during a Senate hearing. There were no reports about wounded staff, but the attack, he said, was ‘worrying’.  The cause of the Iran militants’ assault is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s criticisms of Ahmadinejad made during a visit to Israel. According to Iranian state television, Berlusconi and the Italian government were named as ’slaves of Israel.’

The Italian Foreign Minister Frattini then announced that he had given instructions to Italy’s ambassador in Tehran, Alberto Bradanini, to have no part in the ceremonies taking place on Thursday at the 31^st anniversary of the Iranian republic.

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Silvio Berlusconi received new and heavy accusations about relationships between him and the Sicilian Mafia dating back to the early 90s, reports Italy’s Corriere della Sera.

The most recent claims from Massimo Ciancimino (son of the former Palermo mayor accused of collaborating with Cosa Nostra) state that the Italian PM’s political party, Forza Italia, was created in 1992 after a long negotiation between the Mafia and the state. The birth of the party would be a mechanism to help both Berlusconi and the Mafia enrich themselves and accumulate power.

The accusations were supported by a “pizzino” (Mafia slang for a little message written on a small piece of paper) sent by the former Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano to Silvio Berlusconi and his right-hand man Marcello Dell’Utri (already convicted for associating with the Mafia).

“My father said that the relationship between the Mafia and Forza Italia were significant, and that Berlusconi was representing Provenzano’s will.  On one hand, the Prime Minister solved many of his problems at the national level, and on the other hand Provenzano promised the Mafia’s help for his party. In the years since, the two entities grew their businesses and their relationship lasted for years.”

Massimo Ciancimino continues to accuse Berlusconi but now he even has evidence.  If all this were to be true, Italy would now be facing the biggest scandal in the history of the Italian republic.

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There’s a story that should be told on every website of the world, suggests La Gazzetta dello Sport’s journalist Mario Canfora. And that’s true. But there’s no happy ending. And neither beginning to be honest. Nuova Sebastiani (NS) Martos Napoli’s story promised all but good things also back in September when Lance Allred and JR Reynolds left the club. Not even movie mogul and Napoli soccer president Aurelio De Laurentiis could imagine such a drama.

While NBA fans are quite used to see their teams shift from one city to another in search for more wealth and fans (like Seattle Supersonics did migrating to Oklahoma City), this is not to be considered the norm in Italy, especially at the non-metropolitan level. Normally, teams coming from small towns are actually more supported than those from, say, Rome or Milan. They tend to have a harder core of supporters and the percentage of season ticket holders in comparison to the number of citizens is always very high. That was almost the same case for Nuova Sebastiani Basket in Rieti, almost a hundred kilometers from Rome. After surviving the fight for relegation, their volcanic president Gaetano Papalia decided to do the unthinkable and move the whole team to Naples, almost 300 km south.

Basketball in Naples before Nuova Sebastiani and Papalia
S.S.Napoli Basket won the Italian Cup in 2006 and joined Euroleague basketball a season later, before failing to register to the Italian League for debts insolvency in 2008. Thus, last season Italian Serie A jumped off without them and Capo d’Orlando and the league was reduced to just 16 teams.

The worst team in Europe
Papalia decided to give new life to basketball in Naples and searched for some help from local institutions at the beginning. The team responded very badly on the pitch losing every game, conceding 80 points average to the opposition and also saw 8 points deducted (for debts insolvency again) from their total amount, that is zero. NS is the worst team in Europe, if not the world at the moment. There’s no other team in the European major leagues that has not won a single game so far. But when that small amount of Neapolitan fans (who will be given back the money spent on a season ticket next week) thought to have seen it all, they did not consider that Damon Jones, Robert Traylor and Travis Best would not come back from the US after Christmas holidays, so that coach Federico Pasquini (who just heads to Naples in the weekends – this resulting in him having just recently learnt his players’ names) had to field Under-19 players (who descend to Naples every weekend from Rieti) in the match against Biella. That game was lost 54-124 and Nuova Sebastiani then shifted from conceding 80 to 100 points on average to the opposition in the following games.

Here’s their recent streak:
Biella at Naples 124-54
Naples at Rome 37-138
Naples at Pesaro 64-126
Cantù at Naples 128-37
Siena at Naples 143-49

That’s just ridiculous
The game played against Italian Champions Siena was the worst really: Siena had just defeated Maccabi Tel Aviv last week for the first time in their history at the tenth attempt in the Euroleague and are aiming to a Final Four spot in Paris in May. They’ve been the best team in Italy for the last three seasons at least and they are amongst the elite in Europe. Everybody was expecting them to win with a very wide margin. They made it indeed but the thing is, they made it fielding just one of the regulars (Nikos Zisis) plus six Under-17s and one Under 19! Even so, they managed to score a record in Serie A, breaking 1971 Simmenthal Milano (vs Udine) and 2010 Lottomatica Roma’s (vs Naples) 138-points records.

Montepaschi Siena pretended not to have their best players available for this game (officially McIntyre, Hawkins, Sato, Domercant, Stonerook, Lavrinovic and Eze were all sidelined with injuries) in order to prevent themselves from a potential referral from the FIP (Italian Basketball Federation). Every team involved in a match against Nuova Sebastiani now could risk a serious referral or could have at least some problems with FIP legally wise. As Gazzetta dello Sport journalist Luca Chiabotti said, that’s just ridiculous.

Basically coach Simone Pianigiani (who’s also the National team coach) decided to rest the best before the difficult trip to Istanbul that awaits Siena in the Euroleague next Wednesday. Fair enough.

Something must be done
One of the hypotheses would be to adopt an extraordinary measure just for this case. The best thing to do would probably be to let Naples slip to Lega Due (the lower division). But just today (Sunday January 31st) President Papalia announced that the team will be soon backed from a group of Neapolitans investors. Is it really true? Or is it just another wolf cry? Only time will tell. But the whole situation is going fast from joke to drama.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday praised the United States’ leadership of the relief effort in quake-hit Haiti in an attempt to soothe anger over riticism levelled by the Italian special envoy this weekend.

”In critical situations like the one in Haiti, organizational difficulties are inevitable,” Berlusconi warranted.

”But without the US’s intervention, managing the situation would have been much more difficult”.

”Everyone is doing their best in Haiti and right now, we need to stop being critical and focus our energies on the enormous task at hand,” he said.

Regarding remarks by Civil Protection Chief Guido Bertolaso who, during a Sunday telecast direct from Haiti, bemoaned a lack of central coordination, Berlusconi said that ”at times like these, it’s best to avoid making statements that could lead to misunderstandings”.

He added that Foreign Minister Franco Frattini had clarified the government’s position on Monday during talks in Washington with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Despite playing down criticism as ”armchair quarterbacking” during a joint press conference with Frattini, Clinton said Tuesday that she ”deeply resented” insinuations that the US had done less than it could.

”We have scrambled as quick as we could to do everything needed in the past two weeks,” she said.

While Clinton did not single out any detractors in particular, she did point out that the troops sent to Haiti were there to distribute food and medicine, a possible response to a remark by Bertolaso who accused the US of sending ”too many soldiers and not enough aid personnel”.

The Secretary of State added that she had nothing against ”constructive criticism”, but that the US had been judged unfairly by many voices abroad.

Read more here.

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Italian magistrates slammed a trial cap bill that moved through parliament on Wednesday, saying it was unparalleled compared to other countries and would have “devastating” consequences on the justice system, reports ANSA.

The Comitato Intermagistratura, a committee representing penal, civil, administrative, accounting and state magistrates, said the bill would wipe out “hundreds of thousands of trials with extremely high costs to society and to the state”.

Among the cases affected, it said, would be the massive 2003 Parmalat and Cirio bankruptcies and corporate raider assaults on the BNL and Antonveneto banks a few years ago in which thousands of shareholders have filed for compensation.

Also on the list of threatened trials, it said, were Europe’s first corporate murder trial for work accidents, at Turin’s ThyssenKrupp steelworks where seven workers died in a fire in 2007.

The bill, which moved from the Senate to the House Wednesday, “risks provoking devastating consequences on the entire system of Italian justice,” the committee said.

“It is a de facto amnesty on crimes committed before May 2, 2006,” the committee said, “a full-fledged whitewash would will ensure complete impunity for typical white-collar crimes and also many insidious forms of widespread crime against weak people”.

The Comitato claimed the bill “does not have an equivalent in any other European legislation at a European or international level”.

Read more here.