Hammer and Tongues

I have posted the audio file of Giacomo Zappia’s talk on the 27th April  2007 entitled Riutilizzo dei beni confiscati. L'esperienze delle cooperative agricole (The re-use of confiscated land. The experience of the farming cooperatives)
This lesson was the 7th in a series entitled “Mafia and Antimafia in Civil Society” a seminar organised by Prof.ssa Stefani Pellegrini at the University of Bologna Law Faculty.

Peppino Impastato was murdered by the Mafia 29 years ago

Most Italians remember the 9th May 1978 as the day when the body of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro, barbarically murdered by the Red Brigade, was discovered. But for most Sicilians it is a day to remember people who lost their lives fighting against Cosa Nostra. That night in Cinisi, near Palermo, Peppino Impastato was beaten to death and his body dynamited on the railway line.
The murder was commissioned directly by the boss of Cinisi Tano Badalamenti, to punish someone who had spoken out against the Mafia from the microphones of Radio Aut.
Over the years a movement had been developing thanks to which Cinisi had become the symbol of young people’s rebellion against Mafia conservatism and oppression. Activism, sit-ins, demonstrations, investigations and public meetings in the town squares and on the radio have brought back to life again over the past few days thanks to the intiatives organised by the Forum Sociale
Antimafia “Felicia e Peppino Impastato“ from the 6th to the 9th May to commemorate the 29th anniversary of Peppino’s murder.
(cont….)

Fabrizio Maggiore

The Mafia in Tuscany? According to the Caponnetto Foundation, it is quite likely that the controversial construction interests involving the notorious land at Campo Bisenzio may well involve Mafia interests. 

The different mafia associations have been investing illegal earnings in Central Italy for years and the Caponnetto Foundation has been trying to bring this to the attention of the national anti-mafia summits which have been held periodically in Campi Bisenzio. Decisive action needs to be taken in order to prevent the traditional Tuscan model for town and country planning  – and the Tuscan countryside – from disintegrating.

This means that the Tuscan regional Council must obtain complete control of construction contracts, starting with the mafia sub-contracting firms under investigation. The Union organisations CGIL/CISL/UIL have been campaining for changes in planning regulation The carabinieri (Ros – Special Branch) have been making investigation into planning permisison given by the regional  Council. They are working on the theory of the existence of a cupola   – typical Mafia organisation – between building firms, business men, civil servants and freelance professionals which influenced political choices, in particular planning choices, in the Comune of Campi Bisenzi as well as – according to the experts of telephone interceptions that have been published - aziende a partecipazione pubblica like Pubbliacqua.  In the meantime three members of the Town Council involved in the investigation have been arrested.

The Council announced that it considers itself to be an offended party and will be going to court against the indicted suspects.

Recently, Alleanza nazionale has demanded  that the Town Council Comune of  Campi Bisenzio be put under controlled admnistration after the scandal of  sub-contract-opolis.
They believe that the local administration left managers too much leeway. The investigation by the Florence Public Prosecutor resulted in the arrest of  several business men and has thrown some light on the system of sub-contracts, tenders, the mechanism of participation and the subseqent splitting up of the successful bid.
The system of town and country planning is at fault, according to AN, for plans are altered rediscussed and subject to varations even after they have been approved. This system must be eliminated to reduced to an absolute minimum,
At the beginning of April the minutes of the interrogation of the left-wing mayor  Fiorella Alunni were sequestered.

News agency (ANSA)
(Rome 13 APR) reports that Cosa Nostra Boss Bernardo “The Tractor” Provenzano, who has been in maximum security prison in Terni since his arrest one year ago has been moved to Novara. It is reported that he will be in the cell formerly occupied by new Camorra boss Raffaele Cutolo, who in turn has been moved to the Terni cell previously occupied by Provenzano. This move is one of the measures laid down by the 41bis law stating that prisoners sentenced for serious Mafia crimes must be moved from time to time

MAFIA: PierFerdinando Casini  (so reports ITALPRESS.
15-April-07
12:37), says that he has “spoken to our friend Cuffaro a lot about the
Mafia. He shows all the serenity of the good and righteous man”.

In any case, when it comes to smearing judges, Pierferdy is in good
company… Cossiga – Berlusconi – dell'Utri – Toto Riina: they all
think alike about the judiciary, as do other “good and righteous”-looking politicians already convicted of, but not serving time for, aiding and abetting the mafia.

As early as January this year Unità journalist Marco Travaglio drew attention to the curious fact that a Senator of the centre-left Government, Nicola Latorre, should be hob-nobbing with convicted criminal Marcello dell'Utri (For a Italia), by accepting an invitation to speak at a course on ethics (sic) and politics in dell'Utri's Milan “youth club”.
(For the record, Latorre founder, together with Massimo d'Alema – present foreign minister  – an association called “Futura” whose aim was to create a network of “competence” in the left-wing reformist area in order to contribute to the creation of a political reformist movement strongly linked to European reformist ideals.)
Being a mild-mannered and intelligent reformer sounds good, but Travaglio and many others with him couldn't help but wonder why Latorre should feel the need to accept this invitation (and presumably remuneration) from Forza Italia mastermind, sentenced in 2005 to nine years imprisonment for criminal conspiracy to aid and abet the mafia.

Easy: as well as founding Futura with Massimo d'Alema, Latorre has also founded a mutual admiration society with Marcello.

Dell'Utri admires Latorre because he is “honest, measured and moderate.” Not a fanatic (dell'Utri doesn't like fanatics whether they be left or right wind). Dell'Utri admits (Corriere della Sera, 9 March 2007) that Latorre was indeed brave to accept an invitation like this (from someone with a criminal record for Mafia association???).
Latorre returns the complement by saying that he has a “relationship of great cordiality and mutual admiration” with the Forza Italia Senator. “He seems to be a very positive person, calm, sensitive, and not shallow (di spessore sic). (Nicola Latorre, Ds, vice parliamentary leader of the Ulivo in the Senate).
The judges of the Palermo court would beg to differ with Latorre about dell'Utri.
“(…) the accused has wanted to keep his relationship with the Mafia organisation alive for the past 30 years (…) despite the transformation in social consciousness regarding the Mafia as a whole and despite the fact that his personal, social cultural and financial circumstances would have given him every opportunity to distance himself and refuse any request from persons close to or within Cosa Nostra. His friendliness towards the mafia organisation regarding the sphere of politics must be regarded negatively, especially at a time when Cosa Nostra demonstrated its criminal ferocity through the commission of terrible massacres, the expression of a deviant strategy against the State and, furthermore, when his presence as a public figure with responsibilities inherent in his institutional role should have imposed upon him greater moral rigour, leading him to avoid any contamination with that mafia environment whose dynamics he was very familiar with due to a previous history connected with the exercise of his high level managerial duties(…). There is proof that Dell'Utri had promised the Mafia precise advantages in the field of politics and, on the other hand, there is proof that the mafia, in the execution of those promises, became more and more orientated towards voting for Forza Italia  in the next political elections and, furthermore, promised to support his candidacy for the European elections in the same party, at a time when he was having great problems with the judiciary because this trial was being celebrated (…). It is significant that Dell'Utri, instead of refraining from dealings with the Mafia (as his decisional autonomy and his cultural level would have allowed him to, even in the undemonstrated hypothesis that it had been Berlusconi who asked him), he chose, in full awareness of all the possible consequences, to mediate between the interests of Cosa Nostra and the business interests of Berlusconi (an entrepreneur, as we have seen, who was willing to pay in order to have a quiet life)” (Palermo Court, 2nd criminal section, motivation of the nine-year prison sentence for  senator Marcello Dell'Utri for participation in mafia association, 13 July 2005)
In other words, dell'Utri turned Mediaset into a political party to get Berlusconi into parliament in order to fulfil a series of promises in exchange for a cease-fire with the Mafia: over the dead bodies of Falcone, Borsellino, their bodyguards and many other victims.  Cosa Nostra raised the stakes for the negotiation by organising the '93 bomb attacks in Milan, Florence and Rome and Forza Italian came into being the following January, just in time to win the political elections in 1994. Since then, no more bombs.

So much for positive, calm and sensitive – a verray, parfit gentil knight. Dear Senator Latorre, a bit a bit like praising Bernardo Provenzano for piety, seriousness and  dedication isn't it?

The following is based on an article by di Vincenzo Vasile (Unità) 05/03/2007

Vincenzo Vasile reports that historian Giuseppe Casarrubea  has
recently received a death threat from the Mafia whilst doing
researching into the massacre of Portella della Ginestra (1948).
Casarrubea has been working as a consultant for the the Rai3 program
“Chi l'ha visto”  (a sort of Italian Crimewatch) and the TV team
turned up on the scene of the massacre to do some filming.
The
historian has been campaigning for years to try and throw some light
upon the mysteries between 1943 and 1948  which culminated in the
massacre of Portella,  described as the first “State massacre”
(strage di stato) (Casarrubea's research was not appreciated by
retired general Roberto Giallombardo, who at the time of the massacre
had been a young captain in the carabinieri, in charge of the Alcamo
barracks, who took the historian to court for libel n.d.t) 
The
historian is also about to publish thousands of documents  or
archive materials from the USA, UK, Slovenia and Italy, as well as a
book together with researcher Mario José Cereghino, “Tango Connection -
L'oro nazifascista, l'America Latina e la Guerra al communismo in
Italia 1943 – 1947″ (Bompiani) (Nazi gold, South America and the
struggle against communism in Italy 1943 – 47n.d.t) which tries to
offer a plausible theory about what really happened in Italy 60 years
ago. The book focuses on how Nazi gold on its way form Stalingrad to
South America generously financed eversive strategies in Italy, It
might seem strange, comments Vasile,  that ghosts of the strategia
della tensione and the Cold War from so long ago should have lead to
this death threat. Yet the authors have managed to connect many of the
mysteries of the past decades, beginning with Portella, with a single-
black -  thread. And someone evidently doesn't like the truths
being uncovered.
Using documents from the National Archives
(Kew) which were made public in January 2005, the authors tell the
story of the founding, as early as 1947, of a sort of fascist precursor
of  “Gladio” under the aegis of the newly-founded MSI (Movimento
Sociale Italiano).
The MI5, in a top secret document entitled
“Panorama of the Italian Right wing” 13 September 1951, says that the
MSI paramilitary clandestine forces were formed as early as 1947,
thanks to general Muratori, ex-general of the Msvn (Voluntary Milizia
for National Security) and commanded by Gualasco, former major Italian
army major. The core of the organisation, well-supplied with
arms,  consisted of former members of the fascist brigades and
members of the police force.
Ennio Muratori was quoted on the
occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the MSI by Pino
Romualdi as someone who at the end of the war had worked side by side
with Nino Buttazzoni, right-hand man of Junio Valerio Borghese, to
bring together various fringes of clandestine fascist groups in contact
with the allied secret services in an organisation called «Senato».
It
was he who, together with Buttazzoni, founded Eca (anticommunist army),
an organisation specialising in terrorist activity to  which,
according to other documents of Italian services already published by
Casarrubea  the bandit Giuliano himself belonged at the very time
he was assassinating the peasants at Portella.

TANGO CONNECTION – L'oro nazifascista, l'America latina e la guerra al comunismo in Italia. 1943-1947
by  G.Casarrubea e M.J.Cereghino (Milano, Bompiani, 2007) will be
presented by SERGIO FLAMIGNI e NICOLA TRANFAGLIA on Wednesday at 17.30
in the bookshop “Arion Montecitorio”, piazza Montecitorio 59, Roma.

READ ANOTHER REVIEW

While politicans and journalists have been splitting hairs about the holiness of the nuclear family and the threat to the survival of Western civilisation as we know it from same-sex civil partnerships, most papers and all the TV news programmes have failed to comment on the fact that  that a judge convicted of corruption and aiding and abetting the Maria, Corrado Carnevale, has been reintegrated into his old job as a judge in the Supreme Judiciary Council (CSM). Eleven votes to ten. Four abstentions.

Carnevale's criminal conviction in the court of appeals in 2001 led to his resignation (voluntary). But the sentence was overturned in the Supreme Court on the flimsy basis that evidence regarding the pressure he put on colleagues to overturn judgements of mafiosi could not be used because it was covered by professional secrecy.

Berlusconi's government rushed to get him reinstated (in a job that he had resigned from), even though he had reached the legal age limit of 75. The previous CSM, with a right wing majority of lay members, claimed that the law did not apply to him,  but the motion to reintegrated him in 2005 lost by one vote.

Though the TAR (Administrative Regional Tribunal) court and the State Council begged to differ with that Government,  they did not go so far as to express an opinion about his automatic reinstatement.

It was our wonderful, present, left-wing dominated  CSM who completed the Berlusconi government's good work by voting Carnevale back into robes, which he will be able to don until he is 83 years old.
 
“How could this happen?”,  asks Marco Travaglio in his article “Carnevale in Quasesima” (“Carnevale in Lent” – (Friday 9 March 2007, Unità).

Easy.

Travaglio explains that of the five lay members of the CSM belonging to the left-wing Union, only two (Volpi and Tinelli) voted against Carnevale's resurrection. One (Siniscalchi) abstained and two (Mancino and Vacca) actually voted in favour together with the House of Bloody Liberties (Cdl), Magistratura Independente (Independent Judiciary) and half of Unicost.

The CSM, Travaglio continues,  was by no means obliged to accept Carnevale's reinstatement: it was one thing for Carnevale to benefit from the tailor-made law and another to get his old job back.  Part of the CSM's job is to evaluated whether or not a judge has the requisites to carry out his job. There have been judges, though acquitted from criminal charges, who have still been banned from their professions for immoral or unprofessional behaviour. One charming aspect of Carnevale's unprofessional behaviour was to call Giovanni Falcone (“cretin”) and insult him and Paolo Borsellino, calling them “dinosaurs whose professional ability was close to zero.” The insults did not cease with their death (“there are certain people I don't respect even though they are dead”).

One example of Carnevale's judge-like behaviour? A supreme court judge, Manfredi la Penna, was to judge the appeal of the murderers of police captain Basile. Carnevale summoned him to his office to persuade hime to annul their sentences. This is just one of a series of misdemeanors which would justfiy a disciplinary procedure. But the motion was chucked out.

The only way now , Travaglio concludes,  to get rid of Carnevale (reportedly in perfect health) would be for parliament to make the 75 age limit for judges applicable to those who have been reinstated too.

Fat chance.

You can read an interview with Carnevale on his “success” here.

THE FILM "PLACIDO RIZZOTTO" is being show tomorrow evening by the student group Giurisprudenza Democratica at the University of Bologna, as their contribution to the commemoration day for the victims of the Mafia. The secretary of the Trades Union office disappeared into thin air on the 10 marzo 1948.

He was 34 year old. A member of the the Corleone branch of the Socialist party, he had fought in the Resistance.Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, at the time a captain in the carabinieri, arrested his murderers, and Pio Della Torre, who was then a university student, took Rizzotto's place as a leader of the peasant workers.

Commemoration day for the Victims of the Mafia