Hammer and Tongues

Il Fatto Quotidiano on line

Il Fatto defends freedom of information and freedom of the press by widespread advertising of its campaign to scupper the new “gagging” law as soon as it is passed by creating widespread support through social networking. Journalists will risk prison sentences if they publish transcripts of (legally obtained) wiretapped phonecalls contained in trial documents. Editors will be heavily fined. Going online is the first step in their defence. Watch this space!

Opposition Party IDV (Italia dei Valore – lit. Italy of Values) is getting ready to defend freedom of speech in Italy by providing space for the publication of legal and publicly available wiretapped conversions which may no longer published in Italy once the Gag-a Bill becomes law.The “forbidden” conversations will be made available by lawyers.

Furthermore, IDV MPs and senators will read exerpts of public interest (without violating anyone’s privacy) in Parliament. This means that they will have to be included in the transcription of parliamentary debates,. and can thus be published. They will be immediately reported on the IDV website, thus offering an information service which is fundamental and sanctioned by the constitution. The help of  bloggers everywhere,  the free-thinkers of the web, will be enlisted to publicize this campaign of civil disobedience.  IDV Belgium.

We are all going gag-a with the new anti-wire-tapping law. But has anyone actually read what the Bill says? Has anyone tranbslated the text into English?

Antonio di Pietro is running a campaign against the new decree law which will make it impossible for investigators to use wiretapped conversations in the prosecution of criminals (most crimes with less than a ten year prison sentence will be excluded if the law goes through in its present form)

Take a look at the  series of initiatives in protest against the proposed anti-wiretap bill by the right-wing government which will prevent Italian journalists and bloggers from publishing the content of intercepted telephone conversations even when they have been legally obtained and are no longer protected by judicial secrecy. The law, if passed, will make investigators’ work extremely difficult and serious investigative journalism practically impossible.

The iniziative promoted by  Italia dei Valori includes the use of this banner which says “ARREST ALL OF US” I am prepared to publish the English translation of excerpts of legally obtained and publicly available wiretapped conversations on this blog. ARRESTATE ME TOO!!

Silvio Berlusconi and his gang are planning to introduce a new law which will significantly limit investigators’ powers to wiretap conversations and use them in bringing criminals to trial The proposed law will also try to get journalists who publish wiretapped conversations  into prison. Journalists and criminal investigators, not to mention the general public, are not unreasonably worried about this development. The new law would exclude mafia association and other forms of organised crime but would let sex offenders, fraudsters, smugglers, forgerers, moneylauderers and many others slip through the net.

Former Minister of “Justice”, Clemente Mastella (the one whose lack of support for Prodi’s government lead to Berluscone IV) has reportedly said  (l’Unità 11 June 2008) “I think that investigators who rely solely on wiretaps are rather lazy  and inefficient”. 

Presumably all they have to do is go back to traditional investigative methods – perhaps the good old magnifying glass. – or, as hercule Poirot would have it, “the little grey cells”. A bit like saying that doctors should forget laser surgery and go back to the saw!

Journalist Marco Travaglio now relates some of the wierd facts of Italian poltiical life on Beppe Grillo’s blog, live every Monday.  What a relief to get away from the strangehold of the RAISET duopoly and the dazing stupidity of its infotainment programmes and get some straight facts. accurate information. A perfect example of freeing information through the Web.

Italian journalist Marco Travaglio is in the firing line after this weekend’s program “Che tempo che fa” hosted by Fabio Fazio. Travaglio illustrated how the political climate of the moment dictates what so-called journalists should or shouldn’t be writing.

“It’s obvious”, he says “that if the political climate is conducive to a non-conflictual relationship between the opposition and the new government majority -  Schifano has had friendships with members of the mafia -  I don’t write that Schifani has had friendships with members of the mafia because neither the right-wing nor the left-wing want me to – and what have I got to do with right and left? They can take any political stance they want to but I have to do my job as a journalist -  I have to write about it.  Lirio Abbate has written about this in his book with Gomez and he is rightly lauded as a heroic journalist who is threatened by the Mafia. So they should either have the courage to say that Lirio Abbate is a villain and a liar or they must have the courage to take note of what he says about the second most important institutional role  and ask this person to explain his relationship with those gentlemen who have been sentenced for Mafia crimes”

Although Travaglio  didn’t actually say during the programme was that Schifani, president of the Italian Senate, has friends among the Mafia, but merely quoted from  Abbate and Gomez’s   book ”I complici” (The accomplices), now both right and left are thirsting for his blood.

Perhaps what annoyed politician’s most was Travaglio’s  comment about the kind of leader of the Senate which can be expected after Schifani – perhaps an earthworm or a form of mould, a comparison which Travaglio managed to rectify in time. Likening Schifani to an earthworm or mould would be an insult to lower organisms. Mould can at least be used to produce penicillin.

As we seem all set to have Berlusconi and his gang back in power, I am going to concentrate less on politics and more on creative and academic stuff for a while. I have just discovered a very coooool blog belonging to Erik Duval which I would like to share.

BYW – I am preparing a new still-life exhibition.

Now how can life get stiller than during a meeting? What do you generally do? Write some new code? Click your pen? Talk all the time? OR – produce art. Here is a preview. For a new collection called “Boring Meeting Art”.