Posts Tagged ‘Italian professional classes’

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Seven

November 9, 2011

Time for Giuliano Mignini to investigate. The yield on Italian debt has hit seven percent. Which is the same as the number of deadly sins committed by the Italian prime minister. Every week, which in turn has seven days. And today is only just more than seven days after Halloween, the diabolical festival when Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox, give or take a day, hatched their Satanic ritual murder plot. In Perugia. Whose name has seven letters.

It is soooooooo obvious that everything in the whole world is a conspiracy. How can anyone be expected to take action when confronted by forces beyond our control?

Frankly, they can’t. Which is why Italy’s professional class is doing nothing as the country goes down the tubes.

Let Rome burn!

The images will at least form a good backdrop for a Dolce and Gabbana advertising campaign. Sicilian peasant chic — combining glamour, stoicism and passion — is surely the perfect day-wear for the modern cataclysmic financial crisis. Not to mention a great metaphor for a society living on bullshit.

Prime Minister Nero putting in a bunga-bunga order last night.

Worth a read:

Nouriel Roubini reposts what he said about Italy at Davos in 2006. Roubini’s analysis led to a bizarre racial outburst from finance minister Giulio Tremonti, the former professor of ethics who was recently busted renting a Rome apartment for cash.

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Oh mamma, can this really be the end? (Nth reprise)

November 8, 2011

Only in Italy do markets bounce, the currency strengthen, and gold weaken when the leader of political ‘right’ says he will step down (in order, as the traditional Italian formulation has it, to spend more time with his bunga-bunga girls).

Of course Sil hasn’t said when he will go.

As if to remind us that whatever the Greeks can do badly, the Italians can do at least as badly, this limp political comedy will continue.

Meanwhile, the IMF has been invited to Rome, which will give staffers a pre-change-of-government chance to reflect on what actually needs doing to keep Italy in the Euro. Most economists quoted in the press focus on the need to deflate. But this is impractical — Italians couldn’t take the deflation any more than Greeks could. No society can watch its real incomes shrink by a quarter or a third in order to make economists’ graphs look the way they ought to.

The only real way forward for Italy is very serious structural reforms which unlock fairly quick productivity gains and hence growth.

There is no theoretical reason why this cannot happen.

However, the job that will confront the IMF if it is called in to run a programme — which I continue to believe it will be — would exceed anything it has undertaken before.

Not only the labour market and outsize public sector need to be overhauled, but the entire justice system has to be reworked.

Can a foreign agency do such things outside the settlement terms of a catastrophic war? I suspect not. Which leaves two choices. Either give Italy German money and accept the country will not change and will remain a fiscal burden on the centre. Or kick Italy out of the Euro and refocus the group on a more northerly European caucus of states that can actually deliver political, social and fiscal integration.

In the end, it is all politics.

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And mayonnaise all over

October 6, 2011

In the finest traditions of the Italian judiciary, the presiding judge in the Sollecito-Knox appeal — Claudio Pratillo Hellmann — has been giving interviews to the press.

You can guess what he said: this has been a terrible mess, creating appalling trauma for innocent people, in particular the Kercher family. We really have got to get an independent prosecution service set up — like the CPS in the UK — and start following our rules about criminal investigations. Plus, we need a full public enquiry into the whole thing, not least the conduct of the police, why no tapes of the Knox interviews were ever produced, allegations of physical attacks on journalists, and so on. And don’t even get me started on Mignini…

But of course I am joking. What Hellman really said (let me stress I have not had time to read the original text in Italian but John Hooper is a serious correspondent) is that it is quite possible Sollecito and Knox were party to the murder, that Mignini is at the top of his game, and that the issues are really very complicated.

Many open-minded Italians will forgive Hellman because his brave decision to do the only sensible thing and have the forensic ‘evidence’ looked at by more serious people decided the outcome of the case. He is likely just covering his fanny, as they say in America. But in covering his fanny he is ensuring that everything will stay the same. Which means that people less interesting, less white, less attractive and less well funded than Sollecito and Knox will continue to get stitched up unnecessarily.

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Witch leaves Salem

October 4, 2011

Knox is gone. Not only that, she flew — which is pretty compelling evidence she is a witch. Let those four years inside be a lesson to other young people thinking of taking a student holiday in Italy and smoking a bit of dope. Just as well Knox and Sollecito didn’t grow their own and end up dead in Perugia’s Capanne prison, like the hippie who built our kitchen.

I forgot to remind readers yesterday who have not done so already to watch this short interview with the chief investigator in the Sollecito-Knox case. Arthur Miller must be eating his heart out. His play was only based on a true story.

Other:

Writer Douglas Preston on Mignini and the case, and Mignini’s form with respect to the earlier Tuscan serial killer case. What Preston says is no doubt true, but the Mignini focus tends to draw attention away from what are really systemic problems in Italy. Mignini is a symptom. The incompetence of the magistrates compounds the incompetence of the police and unlike the UK — with the Crown Prosecution Service — there is nothing in the middle of them to act as a circuit breaker.

Before Mr Giobbi undertakes his next ‘exquisitely psychological’ investigation, he would do well to read this.

John Hooper does a Q&A in the Guardian that gives answers I would agree with to a number of obvious and important questions.

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The ones that got away

October 3, 2011

So Sollecito and Knox are out.

My immediate reaction is that this is consistent with the behaviour of a survivor institutional-retard state. It is another moment, to use the phrase which Lampedusa never quite used, when ‘everything must change so that everything can remain the same’.

Sollecito and Knox are free so that we can get back to business as usual. It’s a sort of mini Mani Pulite for the legal system.

Anecdotally, what stands out for me more than anything is ignorance. I have asked four separate Italian lawyers, two internationally renowned and two from my local town, what they think about the Sollecito-Knox case and each has said they are sure that in some sense they are guilty. But when you ask why, you realise they are ignorant of even basic facts in the case. A small dose of northern European puritan professionalism would go a long way in Italy. This is a society where no one is capable of saying ‘I don’t know’.

Worth paying attention to:

One of the great UK long-form journalists was in Perugia tonight:

10.31pm: Peter Popham of the Independent tweets:

Weird mood in Perugia’s medieval heart, thugs baying for Amanda’s blood, robbed of the witch they wanted to burn.

The video in court is very Italian, lots of extras on camera. Sollecito, who as a local always seemed to accept that a life in jail might be his fate is more together. Knox, who stood up a the start of the appeal and took the fight to the jury, is spent at this point.

John Hooper toys with the Perugia is different angle.

I am not so sure.

Monday’s coverage:

The second part of this article highlights the position that Italian ‘justice’ has left the Kerchers in. Their suffering goes on because of the grotesque unprofessionalism of the investigation and trial. The Kercher family will hold a press conference this morning that will be blogged here by the Guardian. Their anguish remains focused on the idea that the use of two knives and the number of wounds in the murder must have required more than Guede. I can’t speak to this or to the behaviour of sex attackers who use knives. What everyone can speak to is the fact that there was no motive and no evidence to put Sollecito and Knox in the bedroom where Meredith Kercher died and a huge amount of forensic evidence — hair, hand prints, finger prints, semen, other DNA — to put Guede there. I wonder if at the presser the Kerchers will mention the fact that Guede can expecct to be out of jail in only seven or eight years after his sentence was reduced on appeal (largely, I would say, to ‘fit’ with the wrongful convictions of Sollecito and Knox). If you run a legal system like a bunch of adoloscents, there will be a price to pay. Laid-back Italy doesn’t seem so cool today.

The Perugia shock blog reminds us that Knox’s 3-year, Euro22,000 criminal defamation conviction for saying the black bar owner she knew had committed the crime is UPHELD. This is very important because it is tantamount to saying the police did not intimidate and hit her during the illegal all-night interrogation for which no tape recordings have ever been produced. I have blogged before that the obvious explanation for her accusation against the bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, is that the first clearly identifiable forensic evidence the police found at the crime scene was the hair of a black male (Guede). They knew they were looking for a black man before they got the DNA match to Guede’s police record. And, in the middle of the night, subjecting Amanda Knox to the kind of pressure and sleep deprivation that produces false confessions everywhere, they got their black man (a mild-mannered barman according to people I know who know him).

(Note that the Perugia Shock blog, written by an Italian non-native English speaker, sometimes slips into the kind of emotional language that is not helpful to understanding the case. However in general it provides excellent, fine-grained coverage that you will not find in a newspaper. The author is being sued for guess what — criminal defamation — by Mignini.)

 

Want to read the rest of the stuff I have written about the Sollecito-Knox case? Just click on the ‘Sollecito and Knox’ tag (subject Categories and Tags are all listed in the right hand border).

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The aberration angle

September 19, 2011

The Observer runs a long article  to coincide with the start of summing up in the appeal case of Sollecito and Knox in Perugia.

The expectation of an acquittal is now such that journalists are moving on to the ‘What it all means’ phase. And this story is probably a taste of what is to come.

An unnamed source is quoted:

‘According to one local journalist with decades of crime reporting experience, the descent of American and British reporters on Perugia in the days after the killing “put pressure on local investigators to go too fast”.’

Only in Italy could a journalist — a person whose work is public by nature — insist on being quoted as an unnamed source. It is the measure of the society, and the shallowness of its professionals. Of course it is also shocking (and I think unusual) that The Observer would allow a journalist to be quoted as an unnamed source.

The import of the remark, of course, is straightforward. This is an early example of the aberration argument. It infers that this miscarriage of justice was unusual, explicable by its uniqueness, and partly the fault of foreign journalists.

Were the jailings of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four or the Maguire Seven in the UK aberrations that resulted from journalistic pressure on police? Or did these cases — and many more that were not terrorist-related — reflect systemic failings in the police and criminal justice systems?

The passage and application of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in the UK in 1984 is the answer to the question.

In Italy, there will be no gains from a monstrous miscarriage of justice. Instead, we are getting ready for face saving. The narrative of the professional class’s self-defence is under construction. It tells of a society incapable of self-improvement.

At the same time, inflaming those famous Italian tempers further, people around Berlusconi are suggesting that acquittal for Sollecito and Knox will prove that the police-judicial system is rotten to the core and therefore that cases against the premier are fabricated assaults. It is the little jump in logic that does not work. The system is a mess, but this is not reflected in the existence of cases against Berlusconi, it is reflected in the fact that justice is never done.

In northern Europe or the US Berlusconi would have been dealt with by the judicial system years ago. Here he gets to survive, with the only quid pro quo being that he must participate in the judicial circus. The latest gratuitous leaks and leaks from cases that have not been completed are surely a small price to pay for never actually having to pay for anything. Better still, the judiciary is a source of endless votes for Berlusconi, much of whose political support derives from popular frustration with Italy’s Third World legal system.

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Homecoming II: the official response

August 25, 2011

The attentive reader will recall that having been robbed for the second time on the Fiumicino airport-Rome trains on 16 July I contacted ‘Dottoressa’ Caccia, responsible for statistical data at Italy’s Railway Police (Polfer) and that she told me to send my written enquiries to  the ‘scrivici’ (‘write to us’) web site of the state police. This site only allows a maximum 600 character (approximately 100 word) enquiry, so I had to be short and specific:

…

Sono stato rubato per la seconda volta a bordo il treno che porta a/dal l’aeroporto Fiumicino. Ho parlato con Dott. Caccia nel ufficio Polfer a Roma e vorrei avere i seguenti dati.

1. Il tot. annuale di denuncie di reato sulle linea Fiumicino-Termini e Fiumicino-Tiburtina nei ultimi 5 anni (meglio ancora dal 2004).

2.  Una conferma che questi dati contengono TUTTE le denuncie fatte — o sul modulo in lingue straniere o sul modulo tradizionale in Italiano.

3. Vorrei sapere se mantenete dati per il numero di giorni al anno che le telecamere sul binario 26 della stazione Termini non funziano (per guasti or altri motivi.) Se ci sono dati pubblici, vorrei ottenerli.

…

Let’s be honest that the Italian is not great, but nor is it difficult to understand.

The big surprise was that a section of the state police did reply:

…

Gentile signor Studwell,

la ringraziamo per aver contattato il Dipartimento di Pubblica Sicurezza fornendo utili segnalazioni sui furti che avvengono sui cosiddetti “treni a rischio”, in particolare nella tratta Roma-Fiumicino.

Siamo molto spiacenti per i furti che ha subito in due diverse occasioni su tali treni, faremo sicuramente tesoro delle sue utili indicazioni.

Premettendo che il nostro Ufficio è preposto esclusivamente al contatto con i referenti dei media, vorremmo comunque darle alcuni elementi di risposta alla sua richiesta in merito ai dati sui furti in danno dei viaggiatori.

Dal 2004 al 2010 è stata registrata una diminuzione delle denunce di furto pari al 62% per quanto riguarda gli episodi di furto in stazione ed al 45% per quelli a bordo treno. Il periodo gennaio – luglio 2011, confrontato con l’analogo periodo del 2010, ha fatto registrare un ulteriore calo dell’8% per i furti in stazione e del 21% per i furti a bordo treno.

Infine vorremmo rassicurarla confermando che i dati sulle denunce comprendono anche quelle effettuate sui moduli in lingua straniera.

Rimaniamo a disposizione per ogni eventuale altro chiarimento.

Cordiali saluti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…

Note the introductory line that ‘Despite the fact we are supposed to deal exclusively with the media [in this office], we would however like to provide you a few elements of response…’

I specifically asked for data on reported thefts on the Fiumicino airport- Rome  trains between 2004 and 2010. The reply states that reports of theft in stations and on trains fell respectively 62% and 45% between these dates, without saying where. There are further data about declining reports of theft this year.

The reply further states that the data include all reports filed on foreign language forms (the ones without reference numbers).

Since the press office failed to use a no-reply address (even Italians have tricks to learn) I asked for two clarifications:

…

Grazie per la risposta. Vorrei chiarificare 2 cose.

1. Questi dati sulle denunce che fornite referiscono a quale linea di ferrovia? La prima volta che sono stato rubato ero sul treno Termini-Fiumicino. La seconda volta sulla linea Fiumicino-Tiburtina. Sono due linee diverse. Volete dire che c’e stato questo calo sulla linea Termini-Fiumicino, or Fiumicino-Tiburtina, o dove?

2. Come potete sapere che i dati sulle denunce comprendono quelle effetuati sui moduli in lingua straniera cuando quelli moduli non hanno numeri di protocollo? E perche non contengono numeri protocolli?

…

And here is the reply:

…

I dati si riferiscono alle denunce di reati commessi “in stazione” oppure ” a bordo treno” nel loro complesso, ovevro senza distinzioni di linee o stazioni specifiche. è quindi da intendersi come dato complessivo.

il protocollo è inserito sulla nota di trasmissione della denuncia all’autorità giudiziaria.

nel nostro sistema giudiziario,infatti, tuttti i fatti di reato devono infatti essere comunicati all’Autorità Giudiziaria e per un lavoro più agevole si preferisce questo sistema, ma le confermiamo che tutte le denunce di reati vengono acquisite per i necessari studi sull’andamento della criminalità. siamo noi i primi quindi ad avere intreresse a ricevere denunce e segnalazioni per migliorare i nostri interventi.

Cordialità.

…

The first bit begins to concede that the data provided do not refer to the Fiumicino airport trains… in other words that my enquiry has not been answered.

The second part becomes more interesting, claiming that the police add reference numbers to foreigner reports of crime after the reports are received because the system is ‘piu agevole’, which I would translate as ‘more efficient’ (or you could use ‘smoother’).

I would say that the system is more efficient from the perspective of policemen who want to reduce the amount of reported crime by altering or losing crime reports (see the scans of the forms and discussion here).

But as usual I am wrong, and am reminded that in Italy there is a binding legal obligation on the police to report all crimes to the judicial authority. Moreover, the state police assure, they themselves want to know how much crime is being committed so that they can hone their crime-busting techniques.

…

I asked for a final clarification on the data about reported thefts:

…

I dati che mi avete forniti, allora, sono di tutto l’Italia?

Se uno rilegge l’email originale, non siete stati chiari su questo.

Cordiali saluti,

…

And the final reply:

…

Gentile Signor Studwell,

le confermiamo che i dati che le sono stati forniti sono nazionali.

Cordialità

…

So, yes, they gave me national rail crime report data — and avoided providing anything for the Fiumicino trains, (where Ms Caccia told me on the phone theft is down by ‘at least 85 percent’).

The national data also indicate a big drop in reported thefts.

Do I believe even these national data? I think that given the use of unregistered foreigner reporting forms — which my policeman was so insistent I fill out in preference to an Italian form with a reference number — and given the remarkable obfuscation by the police statistics office, it is very hard to do so. Anecdotally, I haven’t seen anything change in terms of policing at Italian stations and on Italian trains in recent years, so why would reported crime fall so sharply? As I wrote previously, riding back and forth on the airport trains after the July 16 robbery, I was able to watch pairs of extracommunitari wandering the carriages, seemingly looking for victims in the most nonchalant fashion.

In the absence of measurable evidence to the contrary, my guess is that a significant part of what is happening statistically is that crimes on trains are not being added to the statistics. I don’t have more time at present to go into this, but it would be very interesting to know when the foreigner forms were introduced.

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Matilda

August 7, 2011

The country with more laws than any other in Europe, and whose institutional failure is based squarely on its inability to enforce its laws, has promised to overcome the financial crisis by… writing more laws.

The main points of Friday’s announcement at the Berlusconi-Tremonti press conference (FT subscription needed) are constitutional amendments requiring a balanced budget and the liberalisation of an as-yet undefined list of professions.

Perhaps Berlusconi and Tremonti forgot that their country signed a European Stability and Growth Pact in 1997 — two years before joining the Euro — that limits national debt to 60 percent of GDP. Perhaps they are unaware that in Italy the law says you must wear your seatbelt and stop at zebra crossings. Perhaps they have not read the constitution they plan to amend, and all the wondrous things it already promises which do not exist in Italy (more below).

It will be a wonder if the markets buy into this bullshit beyond 9am on Monday morning.

The S&P downgrade of US debt (FT subscription needed) allowed the weekend press to spend much of its time speculating if the US faces panic on Monday. I doubt it. Everything is relative and everything, ultimately, is about the capacity to pay.

Which is why, sooner or later, either the IMF comes in or Italy defaults.

There is, I think, a reasonable case that it would be better for Italy to go for a negotiated default and leave the Euro area. An exit is perhaps the one thing that could wake Italians up. (My ideal would be to kick Italy out of the EU completely and — so long as it would concede historic culpability for the Armenian genocide — let Turkey come in at the same time. I think that might just get the message through.)

Infinitely more likely, however, is that Italy continues its historic oscillation between puerile nationalism and running to mummy, in the form of the United States or the European Union. The EU has shown it lacks the discipline to help Italy, and so in any rescue in this crisis the heavy lifting will have to be done by (mostly American) IMF staffers backed by ECB funds. Apart from the fact that most of the money will be European this time, we are I suspect looking at 1945 deja vu all over again. A bunch of foreigners come in and tell Italians how to run their lives. It is utterly depressing that this is necessary. But I hope the guys and girls at the IMF are getting ready, because it will be necessary. I will write more about the task they face when it is clear they are on their way.

STOP PRESS

Sunday evening at 11pm the ECB puts out a press release, point 6 of which appears to mean it will start buying Italian and Spanish government bonds as soon as Monday morning. Guess they believed Matilda more than me then…

ECB Sunday 7 August 2011

MONDAY MORNING UPDATE

Mamma’s here. Those ECB folks grabbed a couple of hours sleep Sunday night, jumped out of bed, and started buying Italian and Spanish bonds (FT subscription needed) as soon as the markets opened Monday. The FT says bond yields are ‘tumbling’. Looked at the other way round, the ECB is offering far better prices than the market and grateful sellers are jumping with joy. What we want to know, of course, is the volume. We should start to get some information later in the day. My base case remains that this will be a very temporary respite.

MONDAY LUNCHTIME UPDATE

Much as I love the FT, I cannot believe how far behind the curve it is on this story today. You are better off reading Bloomberg for free:

Mostly this and then this.

The markets know that the ECB has neither the money nor the cojones for the job in hand and are headed south. G-7 is wittering on about hanging tough and doing everything necessary. It is time for the IMF to cancel all holiday. The end is nigh. I just wish I had cash to buy distressed equities — but I guess this is god’s way of punishing me for being a writer.

Meanwhile…

It wouldn’t be Italy if:

Some magistrate from some town you never heard of didn’t order police to raid the Milan offices of the ratings agencies because the financial crisis is clearly a satanic//American/British/etc conspiracy.

Links in Italian: 

Corriere della Sera reports the presser (Note how Italy’s most cosmopolitan newspaper refers to the US Secretary of the Treasury as Mr Timothy).

An editorial in the Corriere is interesting inasmuch as it refers to ‘a wave of speculation’ and ‘irrational’ market movements. Is it irrational to sell off Italian debt? I, personally, do not think so. If Italians do, they have the private savings to fund their debt domestically, so perhaps they should buy up the paper that is being sold. It would be a solid investment for them and it would show their trust in the reforming credentials of their government… Less cynically, I was struck at a party with Italian professionals on Saturday how receptive otherwise very smart people are to the notion that Italy is indeed the victim of some new and terrible global conspiracy.

The constitution:

Background to Italy’s 139-article constitution — one which parliamentary commissions have three times in the era of Italy’s decline tried and failed to simplify and focus.

Official English translation of the constitution.

Italy’s constitution guarantees many wondrous things. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that my personal favourites are:

Art. 10

The Italian legal system conforms to the generally recognised principles of international law.

Art. 54

Those citizens to whom public functions are entrusted have the duty to fulfil such functions with discipline and honour.

Art. 111

The law provides for the reasonable duration of trials.

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With respect to selling postcards of hangings (Perugia versus Bristol redux)

July 30, 2011

Chris Jefferies case: exquisite psychological investigation wrong again...

Chris Jefferies. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

Here is a salutary outcome from the Bristol murder case highlighted in my Perugia versus Bristol post of January 2011. Eight tabloid British newspapers have been swiftly and efficiently hit with substantial defamation damages after they attempted to convict Chris Jefferies on the basis he looks a bit odd. (And he wears an anorak. And he’s a teacher.) It is going to be very interesting to see how many Italian newspapers are hit with substantial damages for their reporting of the Sollecito-Knox satanic ritual murder trial after it turns out Sollecito and Knox aren’t satanists after all. Will Italians also realise that it is not necessary to have a criminal libel law in order to sort this kind of thing out, just a functioning judiciary?

The damages award as reported by Roy Greenslade in the Guardian on 29 July:

…

Eight national newspapers have made public apologies today to Christopher Jefferies for the libellous allegations made against him following the murder of Joanna Yeates,

The titles – The Sun, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Record, Daily Mail, Daily Star, The Scotsman and Daily Express – have also agreed to pay him substantial libel damages, thought to total six figures.

The solicitor for Mr Jefferies, Louis Charalambous, told Mr Justice Tugendhat in the high court hearing that the newspapers had acknowledged the falsity of the allegations, which were published in more than 40 articles.

Ms Yeates, a Bristol architect, was killed in December last year. After her body was discovered, Mr Jefferies, who was her landlord, was arrested by police.

In subsequent days, into early January, the newspapers ran a series of articles about Mr Jefferies that were inaccurate and defamatory.

Charalambous, of Simons Muirhead and Burton, said after today’s hearing:

“Christopher Jefferies is the latest victim of the regular witch hunts and character assassination conducted by the worst elements of the British tabloid media.

Many of the stories published in these newspapers are designed to ‘monster’ the individual, in flagrant disregard for his reputation, privacy and rights to a fair trial.

These newspapers have now apologised to him and paid substantial damages.”

Bambos Tsiattalou, the solicitor who advised Mr Jefferies after he was taken into police custody, said that the media were given a fair warning to be careful about what they published.

He said: “We warned the media by letter, immediately following Mr Jefferies’ arrest, in the strongest possible terms to desist from publishing stories which were damaging or defamatory.

“We were dismayed that our warnings went unheeded and are pleased that the newspapers in settling Mr Jefferies’ claims have acknowledged the extent of the damage to his reputation.”

The papers’ publishers – News International, Trinity Mirror, Daily Mail & General Trust, Express Newspapers and Johnston Press – will now have to fork out substantial sums in damages and legal fees.

But Charalambous pointed out that once the rules over conditional fee (no win, no fee) agreements change next year, “the victims of tabloid witch hunts will no longer have the same access to justice.”

via Eight newspapers pay libel damages to Christopher Jefferies | Media | guardian.co.uk.

And there’s more:

Plus the two best-known UK tabloids have been found guilty of contempt of court (a charge that is filed against them too rarely). This is what italian papers should go down for, having leaked the Perugia investigation before it was complete, in brazen contravention of Italian law. Problem is that Italy doesn’t apply the law, most obviously because it is the police and the magistrates who do the leaking. Or did I misunderstand something?

Here is the Guardian again:

Joanna Yeates murder

Christopher Jefferies was intially declared a suspect and arrested in Joanna Yeates murder case, but was released later without charge. There was intense media speculation about his life. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA Wire/Press Association Images
…
The Sun and the Daily Mirror were found guilty of contempt of court for publishing a series of “extreme” articles about a suspect who had been arrested by police investigating the murder of the landscape architect Joanna Yeates.

The Daily Mirror was fined £50,000 and the Sun £18,000 after the high court ruled that the papers posed a “substantial risk” to the course of justice in their reporting on the arrest of Christopher Jefferies, Yeates’s landlord, who was later released without charge and was entirely innocent of any involvement.

The Daily Mirror fine is the biggest against a British newspaper for contempt since 2004, when the Daily Star was fined £60,000 for revealing the identities of two Premiership footballers at the centre of high-profile gang rape allegations.

In a separate legal action eight national newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and Sun, collectively paid six-figure libel damages to Jefferies following allegations made about him in January, when the police hunt for Yeates’s killer was at its height.

In a written judgment on the contempt of court action handed down at the high court, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Owen described the Daily Mirror articles as “extreme” and “substantial risks to the course of justice”. The judges said the Sun’s coverage of Jefferies created a “very serious risk” that any future court defence would be damaged.

Lord Judge said: “The articles in the one issue of the Sun were written and laid out in such a way that they would have conveyed to the reader of the front page and the two inside pages over which the stories were spread that he was a stalker, with an obsession with death, who let himself into the flats of other occupants of the building where Miss Yeates lived, and that he had an unhealthy interest in blond young women.”

The court gave the Daily Mirror publisher Mirror Group Newspapers extended time in which to launch a petition for permission to appeal to the supreme court.

Vincent Tabak, a 33-year-old engineer, pleaded guilty to manslaughter but has denied murdering Yeates, who was found dead on a roadside verge in Failand, Somerset, on Christmas Day 2010. Tabak, who lived next door to Yeates, is due to go on trial accused of murder at Bristol crown court in October.

Tabloid media coverage at the time of Jefferies’s arrest was intense, with speculation about the suspect rife in newspapers and the internet. Dominic Grieve, the attorney general who brought the court action against the two papers, issued a rare warning to the press at the timeabout their reporting.

Two of the three articles found in contempt of court were published the day after Grieve’s warning, on New Year’s Day. The attorney general welcomed Friday’s judgment, saying: “[The Daily Mirror and Sun] breached the Contempt of Court Act and the court has found that there was a risk of serious prejudice to any future trial.”

Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, echoed the attorney general’s warnings in March when he said that media focus on suspects in recent criminal cases had been “startling” and “far removed” from what it was just a few years ago.

Contempt of court proceedings are infrequently issued against newspapers. It is more unusual still for the attorney general to take action in defence of an individual who has not been charged.

Eight national newspapers separately issued a public apology to Jefferies over libellous claims made about him in the aftermath of his December arrest. The Sun, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Record, Daily Mail, Daily Star, the Scotsman and Daily Express agreed to pay the retired public-school teacher damages.

Lawyers acting for Jefferies said he had been the victim of “regular witch hunts” in more than 40 articles in the tabloid papers. Bambos Tsiattalou, the solicitor who advised Jefferies after he was taken into police custody, said that the newspapers had ignored warnings to be careful about what they published.

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Posted in Britain, Italy | Comments Off on With respect to selling postcards of hangings (Perugia versus Bristol redux)

News from around the Third World

July 28, 2011

We start our report in the Third World’s richest nation, Italy.

I haven’t blogged about the Sollecito-Knox Satanic ritual murder case in my local provincial capital Salem*  for some time because the case has been unravelling as predicted. The star witness turned out to be a junkie-dealer who already testified for the police in two other murder trials (so much for drug addicts spending all day in bed). And the forensic procedures and DNA ‘evidence’ have been shredded by a long report from Rome’s Sapienza University.

We are now in the end game. The prosecutor Giuliano Mignini is firing off criminal defamation suits against people who point out he is unfit for office even in Italy at a rate unprecedented even for him. After the Rome academics introduced their report in court in Perugia this week, Mignini and his pals despatched two squad cars of police to Sapienza University in the capital in what appears to be a bizarre act of attempted intimidation. (The university sent them packing.) There is no real doubt that Sollecito and Knox are going to go free. The main point of interest for Italy-watchers is to ascertain that ABSOLUTELY NOBODY is held responsible for burning witches**. That includes the prosecutors; the half-witted magistrates; the gormless, overcharging lawyers; the thoroughly incompetent and corrupt police; the lazy and self-serving journalists who leaked the official side of the investigation at every turn in contravention of the law, and every other medievally-minded member of this shameful lynch-mob***.

When nobody is held responsible, it is important that you do not think of Sollecito and Knox. A couple of years inside will for them have been an interesting life experience. Think  instead of the family of Meredith Kercher, the murdered girl. They are the real victims of this pantomime performed by adults with uniforms and titles.

*Known in dialect as Perugia
** Should read: ‘sending innocent kids to prison for life’.

*** Should read: ‘professional mafia’.

A link to another part of the Third World that I cover is provided by poor old Google. The same US internet firm which last year decided to stand up to China by refusing orders to censor its service recently got a demand via Mr Mignini to shut down an Italian blog he does not like. The China decision has cost Google much of its market share in the Middle Kingdom as the Chinese government does almost everything it can to slow down and disrupt Google’s service (pushing many users to move to the Chinese Google rip-off provider, Baidu). In Italy, Google has already been intimidated under the country’s media laws in a case that saw some of its executives sentenced to prison (they won’t actually go, because that only happens to kids and poor people). So what did Google do when Mignini came knocking? The firm immediately pulled the site Mignini does not like (without contacting the blogger), even though there is no prima facie evidence it contains anything libelous under Italian law. The firm that took on the Dragon is caving in Italy. However, the blog in question has been moved to WordPress (which I use!), and which so far seems to have the necessary cojones for our Italian adventure.

The global battle against men who live with their mums, men with comb-over hair-cuts and men and women who call themselves ‘doctor’ but don’t actually have a doctorate, goes on.

We close today on the subject of the recent, horrific high-speed rail crash in China’s Zhejiang province and the official efforts to (literally) bury the truth of what happened (with corpses still inside). Rather than more news reports that you have probably already seen, here is a translation of Han Han, China’s most famous blogger. I wonder, is there anything in these lines that rings a bell for Italians with regard to the conduct of their own ‘professional’ classes:

“The Derailed Country”

You ask, why are they acting like a bunch of lunatics?

They think they’re the picture of restraint.

You ask, why can’t they tell black from white, fact from fiction?

They think they’re straight shooters, telling it like it is.

You ask, why are they running interference for murders?

They think they’ve thrown their friends under the bus. And they’re ashamed.

You ask, why all the cover-ups?

They think they’re letting it all hang out.

You ask, why are they so irretrievably corrupt?

They think they’re hardworking and plain-living.

You ask, why are they so infuriatingly arrogant?

They think they’re the picture of humility.

You feel like you’re the victim. So do they.

They think: “During the Qing Dynasty, no one had television. Now everyone has a television. Progress!”

They think: “We’re building you all this stuff, what do you care what happens in the process? Why should you care who it’s really for, so long as you get to use it? The train from Shanghai to Beijing used to take a whole day. Now you’re there in five hours (as long as there’s no lightning). Why aren’t you grateful? What’s with all the questions?

“Every now and then, there’s an accident. The top leaders all show how worried they are. We make someone available to answer journalists’ questions. First we say we’ll give the victims 170,000 kuai apiece. Then we say we’ll give them 500,000. We fire a buddy of ours. We’ve done all that, and you still want to nitpick? How could you all be so close-minded? You’re not thinking of the big picture! Why do you want us to apologize when we haven’t done anything wrong? It’s the price of development.

“Taking care of the bodies quickly is just the way we do things. The earlier we start signing things, the more we’ll have to pay out in the end. The later we sign, the smaller the damages. Our pals in the other departments—the ones who knock down all the houses—taught us that one. Burying the train car was a bonehead move, true, but the folks upstairs told us to do it. That’s how they think: if there’s something that could give you trouble, just bury it. Anyway, the real mistake was trying to dig such a huge hole in broad daylight. And not talking it over with the Propaganda Department beforehand. And not getting a handle on all the photographers at the site. We were busy, ok? If there’s anything we’ve learned from all this, it’s that when you need to bury something, make sure you think about how big it is, and make sure you keep the whole thing quiet. We underestimated all that.”

They think that, on the whole, it was a textbook rescue operation—well planned, promptly executed, and well managed. It’s a shame public opinion’s gotten a little out of hand, but they think, “That part’s not our responsibility. We don’t do public opinion.”

They’re thinking: “Look at the big picture: We had the Olympics, we canceled the agricultural tax, and you guys still won’t cut us a break. You’re always glomming on to these piddling little details. No can-do spirit. We could be more authoritarian than North Korea. We could make this place poorer than the Sudan. We could be more evil than the Khmer Rouge. Our army’s bigger than any of theirs, but we don’t do any of that. And not only are you not thankful, but you want us to apologize! As if we’ve done something wrong?”

Society has people of means, and those without. There’s people with power, and those that have none. And they all think they’re the victim. In a country where everyone’s the victim, where the classes have started to decouple from one another, where it’s every man for himself, in this huge country whose constituent parts slide forward on inertia alone—in this country, if there’s no further reform, even tiny decouplings make the derailings hard to put right.

The country’s not moving forward because a lot of them judge themselves as if Stalin and Mao were still alive. So they’ll always feel like the victim. They’ll always feel like they’re the enlightened ones, the impartial ones, the merciful ones, the humble ones, the put-upon ones. They think the technological drumbeat of historical progress is a dream of their own making.
The more you criticize him, the more he longs for autocracy. The more you gaomao him (piss him off), the more he misses Mao.

A friend in the state apparatus told me, “You’re all too greedy. Forty years ago, writers like you would’ve been shot. So you tell me, have things gotten better, or have they gotten worse?”

I said, “No, you’re all too greedy. Ninety years ago, that kind of thinking would have gotten you laughed out of the room. So you tell me: after all that, have things gotten better, or have they gotten worse?”

Worthwhile links:

No longer on Google’s Blogger, but now at WordPress (great courtroom detail):

http://perugiashock.com

Long reports can also be funny when they deal with Italian police conduct:

http://knoxdnareport.wordpress.com/

The highlights of this report (at least those that have thus far been translated into English) are here:

  • 5 big dos and 5 big don’’ts of crime scene investigation (Ooops. In Perugia the police and their ‘scientists’ did none of dos and all of the don’ts. Guess they had a bit of an off-day…)

http://knoxdnareport.wordpress.com/contents/conclusions-1/notes-on-inspection-and-collection-techniques/

  • Overall conclusions that police and their ‘scientists’ ignored standard international protocols, failed to perform some tests, misinterpreted results in others, claimed to have ‘scientific’ results where they did not:

http://knoxdnareport.wordpress.com/contents/conclusions-2/

Note the discovery at Sapienza of starch (err…food) on the knife between the blade and the handle. Prosecution claimed the knife had been thoroughly cleaned by the killers, but their great forensics still uncovered (internationally-unacceptably small trace of) Kercher blood on the blade. Presence of starch residue now shows satanic ritutal murder gang cunningly cleaned off blood but not food from the knife… just like they cleaned all their fingerprints, bloodprints, DNA, etc from the room where Kercher died while leaving Rudy Guede’s evidence all over the place. I say: Burn ‘em already…

Finally, here is that YouTube video of the chief investigator on the Sollecito-Knox case again, talking about his ‘exquisitely psychological’ investigation. There have been another 2,000 hits since I first posted it. It deserves 2 million. You will not find anything funnier on a comedy programme, so settle for Italian reality and send it to your friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWkZPWRS3N0

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Posted in China, Italy, Italy to avoid | Comments Off on News from around the Third World

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