zecchinetta

The past four years have shown indications that Provenzano’s Pax Mafiosi was not to last much longer. It is said that when Leoluca Bagarella used a court appearance in 2002 to send out a warning clearly directed at Berlusconi, well, it has been said that this warning was also directed at Provenzano.

With Provenzano now removed from his seat of power the field is open for the Sicilian Mafia to revoke Provenzano’s Pax Mafiosi. Moreover, with the power vacuum that his arrest has caused, coupled with what appears to be the end of the Pax Mafiosi era, heightened tensions are emerging within the Sicilian Mafia. The seeming abduction of Bartolomeo Spatola in October, 2006, appears to have been a formal renouncement of Pax Mafiosi, and a clear sign of the renewal of historical conflict between the Corleonesi and the same Palermitan Families that the Corleonesi ravaged in the 1960s and the 1980s.

In April 2006, Capo Crimini (boss-of-bosses), Bernardo Provenzano was arrested after forty three years living as a fugitive from the Italian justice system. As Capo Crimini , Provenzano initiated what became known as his Pax Mafiosi, demanding a more calculated style, compartmentalization, coexistence with the state and the systematic infiltration of Italian government, and public finance. He arbitrated between Mafia families, steering them away from attacks on high-profile figures, tourists, and civilians. It was such attacks in the 1980’s and early 1990’s that had hardened public opinion against the Mafia, and which had provoked intense law enforcement and prosecutorial response. In mid-September, Bartolomeo Spatola, one of three successors elected by Provenzano, disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Palermitan prosecutors believe Spatola has been abducted, and killed. According to an interview I did with an official of the Italian Secret Service, that office regards the disappearance of Spatola as a formal declaration of war, which would follow a long-held and ritualized tradition.¹

Over the past 25 years the Sicilian Mafia has proven itself to be remarkably adaptive. One of the most striking changes of late is that today we can find that several Mandamenti (Mafia Family subsets) are run by women – the wives, mothers, and daughters of imprisoned bosses. The financial strength of the Sicilian Mafia – to the extent that it has been documented – rivals that of the Italian automotive giant, Fiat. The 2006 SOS Impresa report, compiled from government data, shows that the Mafia’s 2005 revenues exceeded 2 billion Euros. Moreover, this amount is limited to extortion-based revenues, excluding profits from drugs, weapons, and human trafficking.

The past four years have shown indications that Provenzano’s Pax Mafiosi was not to last much longer. In July, 2002, Leoluca Bagarella, Capo Crimini from 1993 to 1995 used a court appearance to send out a warning that Mafia prisoners under the 41-bisregime were ““tired of being used, humiliated, oppressed and treated like merchandise by different political parties.” Sicilian Mafia experts, in law enforcement and in academia, interpreted this as a threat, purposely imprecise, and possibly addressed to specific politicians, but certainly directed at Forza Italia. As is the norm with such public announcements from high-ranking Mafia figures, anyone supposed to understand what was being communicated would certainly see the implied threat in Bagarella’s words.

In October 2002, the head of the Italian secret services said to the press that there was ‘a concrete risk’ that the Mafia, in its disappointment, would open up a new season of murders. The end of 2002 saw a critical ruling against the Mafia when the Berlusconi government converted 41-bis from an annually renewed decree into a permanent law. In the eyes of the Mafia, Forza Italia had failed to deliver on its most important commitment. Silvio Berlusconi had acted with the utmost dishonor. Soon after the parliamentary vote on 41-bis magistrates, government officials, and the secret service were alarmed at the hoisting of a banner during a soccer match at Favorita stadium in Palermo. This was a banner that unfurled to cover half the stands on one side of the stadium, and which read: “We are united against 41-bis. Berlusconi has forgotten Sicily.” This was read as an announcement that the Pax Mafiosi would soon come to an end. Moreover, it was very clearly telling Berlusconi that he could not count on the support of his one-time allies in Sicily to deliver the vote in the 2006 elections.

The question that remains unanswered, however, is if Bernardo Provenzano was really in control as boss-of-bosses in the past four or five years. He was arrested during the 2006 electoral recount and this has been the subject of much speculation, throughout Europe at least. Many have suggested that Provenzano was arrested by a police force that had been aware of his location for some time, upon the removal from office of his chief ally. However, it may not be so simple, and it rarely is in the intersection of Mafia and politics. Subjects in Trapani and Palermo have alluded to Provenzano’s arrest as the result of growing dissatisfaction among the Corleonesi: It is claimed that incarcerated and ‘free’ Corleonesi, and their allies, made an executive decision to turn Provenzano in to prosecutors. These men felt let down by Berlusconi and Provenzano who, they believe, should have abandoned Pax Mafiosi long ago and forced Berlusconi to make good on his promises to improve the conditions of imprisoned Mafiosi. The only sure way to end the Pax Mafiosi, and to provide warning to the state, in the Mafia tradition, was to remove Provenzano from power. Moreover, in humiliating, abandoning, and isolating the two men who had played both sides the Mafia has shown far greater strength than many observers had believed them capable of since before the Maxi-Trial.

The Italian State is currently performing some appearance of making efforts to tackle the Mafia ‘problem’ in the mezzogiorno, without caring to address the underlying problems. As has always been the case with Italy, this is a knee-jerk reaction of a new administration, and will likely be superseded by more pressing issues. At this point the largest of these would appear to be that of a crippled national budget which recently caused the mass-resignation of the entire anti-Mafia judiciary in Catania, the second largest city in Sicily. The solution that has been proposed to this crisis is to allow private citizens to become financial sponsors of the judiciary.² This presents a clear conflict of interests in a region where the wealthiest citizens are generally tied to the same Mafia Families with whose prosecution the anti-Mafia judiciary is charged.

On the opposite end of the spectrum Italian prisons recently released a total of 2,720 inmates, in Palermo, Naples, Calabria, and Rome, under an amnesty scheme intended to reduce overcrowding in the nations’ prison system. So far, under this amnesty, 12,000 prisoners have been released, and a further 10,000 are set to be released by the end of 2008. These men are ill-equipped to find employment in even a robust labor market. The high unemployment rate in the mezzogiorno does not bode well for the reintegration of this large population, with slim employment prospects, a limited skill set, and the opportunity for great wealth in the informal economy.

Endnotes:

1. That Provenzano nominated Spatola came as something of a surprise to Mafia observers. Spatola’s lineage traces through the Inzerillo Family and therefore he would be considered a traditional hard rival of the Corleonesi. This may have enraged some Corleonesi hard-liners.
2. 11/02/2006. See ADN Kronos International for an archive of the full media reports: http://www.adnki.com

The period referred to as the ‘Second Mafia War’ is also referred to as La Mattanza, the name of the ritual tuna hunt that takes place every April-May in the channel between the Egadi Island of Favignana, and the Sicilian coastline between the towns of Trapani and Marsala. A Mattanza is violent, dangerous, spiritual, and highly ritualized. This traditional hunt, which can be traced back to the Phoenician colonization of Favignana, involves the fishermen hauling bluefin tuna out of the ocean, tuna weighing from a few hundred to over a thousand pounds, into traditional wooden longboats, using long wood poles with machete-like hooks strapped to the ends.

There is no more appropriate term for the Second Mafia War.

Some background is, however, necessary. In 1969 Mafia activity was renewed in Sicily, along new power lines. The Commission was reconstituted with three initial members: Gaetano Badalamenti, a drug trafficker with solid ties to Gambino Family in New York and New Jersey; Stefano Bontate, capo of the largest Palermitan Family; and Luciano Leggio, a Corleonesi who was often represented by his deputy, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina, and his right-hand-man, Bernardo Provenzano. A rule that had previously disallowed heads of families from sitting on the Commission was summarily abandoned, and the Commission was no longer an impartial senate to which men of honor could voice grievances over the management of the Families.

By the mid-1970’s domestic terrorism loomed on the horizon: In 1978 the Red Brigades kidnapped Prime Minister Moro, holding him for fifty-four days before leaving his body on a Rome side street. Any concerns about the possible reemergence of Mafia activity in Sicily were pushed aside for what were considered more immediate concerns for the safety of public servants from non-Mafia violence. The 1968-1969 trial stemming from the First Mafia War had incarcerated several bosses and it was tragically assumed that the Mafia this had dealt a crippling blow to the Mafia Families. However, there was a cluster of fortuitous circumstances for Mafia Families during this period: the boom in air traffic through the airport at Cinisi, on the outskirts of Palermo allowed for greater ease in transporting narcotics and currency, their new global network ties allowed Mafia families to exploit international trafficking routes. Mafia wealth grew to unprecedented levels and, with more than enough wealth to go around, deeply held rivalries faded in the pursuit of mutual enrichment.

In the 1980s Sicily was undergoing a transformation in the composition of the judiciary. There was a new generation of magistrates in Palermo and Catania, who did not have similar patron-client relationships with Mafia Families as did the old-guard magistrates. Furthermore, these men, many of whom came from humble backgrounds, did not have membership to the Masonic temples, such as Propaganda Due, that had been so critical in the formation of the Mafia-Rome-Vatican-Finance relationships that had featured so strongly in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Finally, several of these new magistrates had grown up with the men who were now moving into leadership positions in the Mafia Families, and had a finely tuned understanding of who they were dealing with. And yet, the state would ultimately fail in protecting them, such as Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, whose work securing the ‘Maxi-Trial’ convictions in 1987 made them prime targets. Both were assassinated by the Corleonesi in 1992 after being virtually abandoned by the state.

From 1981 to 1983 clan rivalry, combined with drug profits, inspired the worst internecine war in the history of the Sicilian Mafia. The Corleonesi Family, from the inland town of Corleone, in the province of Palermo, headed by Salvatore Riina, and Bernardo Provenzano, went to war against the previously dominant Palermitan families, headed by Stefano Bontate, Salvatore Inzerillo, and Gaetano Badalamenti.¹ The opening salvo, on April 23, 1981, was the killing of Stefano Bontate. Over the following two years upwards of 1,000 were killed.² General dalla Chiesa summed up the despair that prevailed in Palermo when he said, “They are killing people in open daylight, moving their corpses, mutilating them, depositing them in the streets between the police headquarters and the offices of the regional government, burning them at three in the afternoon in the main streets of Palermo.”³

The emergence of the Corleonesi as a controlling force within the Mafia had vast implications for Sicily, and for the politicians in Rome. Even before the Second Mafia War the Corleonesi had been devoted to manipulating the central government. Prior to this it was rare for state officials to become Mafia targets. However, during the Mafia power-struggle surrounding this war, and with the Corleonesi victory, the entire landscape shifted. Furthermore, the Mafia was richer and more internationally powerful than they had ever been, and this tipped the balance of power in their favor. In the years that followed several public servants – magistrates, police, and politicians – were killed for opposing the Mafia, and the Corleonesi. In 1986-1987 nearly five-hundred Mafiosi were tried in the ‘Maxi-Trial’ which was held in an underground bunker courtroom at Ucciardone Prison in Palermo, constructed specifically for this trial. Over three-hundred were convicted, with nineteen Mafia leaders receiving life-sentences.

The final appeals for the Maxi-Trial verdicts were held in 1991, with most Mafiosi convinced that their convictions would be overturned, mostly due to promises made to senior Corleonesi by Prime Minister Andreotti. When their appeals were unsuccessful they retaliated. In early March 1992 Salvatore Lima, mayor of Palermo and close friend of Prime Minister Andreotti, was assassinated in Palermo. The Corleonesi decided to solidify a far stronger political ally than they had in Andreotti and, it is claimed, the Corleonesi entered into an alliance in 1993 with Silvio Berlusconi: They would deliver the votes to guarantee his Forza Italia party victory in the 1994 General Elections and in return he would handle their problems in Rome.⁴ In 2001, Forza Italia was again victorious, incredibly holding onto all sixty-one of the parliamentary seats in Sicily.

The pentiti Antonino Giuffrè has claimed that, amongst the guarantees Berlusconi gave the Corleonesi in securing the election, Forza Italia would prioritize the Mafia’s main demands: the problem of the ‘Maxi-Trial’ verdicts, laws regarding the confiscation of Mafia wealth, and the issue of the harsh ‘41-bis’ regime imposed on imprisoned Mafiosi. Berlusconi’s business interests had already been the subject of judiciary investigation and he was publicly hostile to the anti-corruption magistrates. When Forza Italia won the 2001 election many Mafiosi assumed that Berlusconi would make changes to the judiciary that would favor him, and the Mafia. However, in his struggle with the magistrates, Berlusconi’s focus was firmly on Milan, where his business interests are concentrated, rather than Palermo. The Mafia, and the central force of the Corleonesi, soon began to feel let down by another Prime Minister they had believed to be their ally.⁵

Endnotes:

1. See also, Arlacchi 1993; Dickie 2004; Paoli 1996, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004; Schneider & Schneider 2001
2. The war even extended to the United States: John Gambino visited Palermo and returned to the U.S. with clear instructions to eliminate Tommaso Buscetta, a Corleonesi rival. Moreover, all Sicilians from the losing faction who attempted to escape to the U.S. were to be killed. Salvatore Inzerillo’s brother was killed in Mount Laurel, NJ, in a ritualized manner that indicated the reason was that he was greedy over the drug profits. The ‘new’ Mafia abandoned traditional loyalties; blood- and fictive-kinship ties were cast aside before the Corleonesi finally emerged victorious. The Corleonesi did not just kill their local enemies, they killed any man of honor whose absolute loyalty could be called into question, and any man who might offer shelter to those on the run. When Salvatore Contorno escaped from an ambush, thirty-five of his relatives, most of them with no Mafia involvement, were summarily hunted down and killed.
3. N. dalla Chiesa, 2003, p. 225
4. These claims have been publicly made by Antonino Giuffrè, the boss of the Caccamo Mandamento, and right hand man to Provenzano following Riina’s arrest. Giuffrè turned states evidence following his 2002 arrest and has given evidence against Prime Minister Berlusconi, and in the murder trial of the banker Roberto Calvi.
5. Giuffrè testimony

Bibiography:

Arlacchi, P. (1993) Men of Dishonor: Inside the Sicilian Mafia. New York: William Morrow.
dalla Chiesa, N. (2003) Delitto Imperfetto. Il Generale, la Mafia, la Società Italiana Milano, 1984 (Re-issued 2003)
Dickie, J. (2004) Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia. Coronet
Paoli, L (1996) ‘The Integration of the Italian Crime Scene’, European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, 2 (3): 131-162.
Paoli, L. (1997) ‘The Banco Ambrosiano Case: An Investigation into the Underestimation of the Relations Between Organized and Economic Crime’, Trends in Organized Crime 2(3): 30–2.
Paoli, L. (1999) ‘Broken Bonds: Mafia and Politics in Sicily’, Trends in Organized Crime, 5 (2):15-58.
Paoli, L. (2001) ‘Crime, Italian Style’, Daedalus, Summer: 157-185.
Paoli, L. (2002) ‘The Paradoxes of Organized Crime’, Crime, Law and Social Change, 37 (1): 51-97.
Paoli, L (2003) Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style. New York: Oxford University Press.
Paoli, L (2004) Italian Organised Crime: Mafia Associations and Criminal Enterprises’, Global Crime, 1 (1): 19-31.
Schneider, J. & Schneider, P. (2001) ‘Civil Society Versus Organized Crime: Local and Global Perspectives’ Critique of Anthropology. December, 2001, 21(4) 427-446

Prior to the 1960’s rivalries between Mafia families in Sicily was most notably played out on the streets of Palermo in 1955-1956, when the city’s wholesale market was moved from one territory to another. At the time the media commented that “most onlookers were relatively unconcerned… When it comes down to it, reciprocal elimination is a method that brings benefits for public order in Palermo. ¹

The period of factional rivalry that is now referred to as the ‘First Mafia War’ came to a close on the morning of June 30th, 1963, in the Palermo suburb of Villabate. A car-bomb attack in Villabate killed two men, and at the same time another car was anonymously reported abandoned on farmland in the neighboring town of Ciaculli. The bomb-squad disarmed a fused gas tank in the back seat of this car, but this was discovered to be a ruse. The trunk was filled with TNT, and when the police Lieutenant opened the trunk the TNT detonated, killing the Lieutenant, and his six men, and the house in front of which the car was parked. The intended targets of the Ciaculli car bomb were the Greco brothers and the house destroyed in the attack was the home of Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco.

The First Mafia War began in early 1962, over the narcotics trafficking empire set up in the late 1950’s. In February, 1962, the La Barbera brothers and the Greco brothers were members of a consortium that had financed a large consignment of heroin from Egypt, to be delivered to the southern coast of Sicily and then shipped to Brooklyn, NY. The consignment was reportedly short when it arrived in Brooklyn. Eighteen months later, the Mafia Commission, acquitted the Greco soldier, Calcedonio Di Pisa, of theft from this consignment. The La Barbera clan killed Di Pisa; the joint venture between the families was officially over, and a round of retaliatory killings was underway. In May 1963 Angelo La Barbera was wounded in a shooting on a residential street in Milan and arrested in hospital. With the arrest of La Barbera came a power vacuum in his Family, whose territory covered much of central Palermo.

The Ciaculli-Villabate bombs, and the murder of the police on the scene at Villabate, inspired the arrest of close to 2,000 men. Faced with this response from the Prosecutor’s Office, the Mafia went underground. In the summer of 1963 the Commission, designed to impose rules to make life easier for this newly entrepreneurial group of syndicates, unanimously voted to disband. Families also disbanded, Mafia crimes dropped to all-time lows, and several leading Mafiosi fled overseas, primarily to the United States, Canada, Australia, and Brazil. The bosses who remained, however, took this opportunity to restructure their Families. They adopted a new direction in Family orientation and the Families evolved rapidly, and unchallenged, into closely knit, entrepreneurial groups.

Endnotes:

1. Time Magazine, October 29, 1956. Another Time story in the same edition shows the reaction of the local community following a Mafia killing of a local small-time criminal: “"He is a victim of honor's law, and without honor, there would be no Sicily and no Sicilians," said one old shepherd, "we would become just like other people." And with these words, he spat in the carabiniere's face. .. "Where there is no honor," said his companion in solemn agreement, "there is chaos."

Love this so much! Loving how Berlusconi’s dishonor’s being sanctioned, it’s hilarious. Latest development in his legal woes has the Supreme Court rejecting his bid to have a key judge replaced in his high-profile corruption case. What was he thinking? Dude, you’re on trial for bribing the judiciary. I don’t care if one of the judges took out a front page ad stating his intent to bury you, no way in hell you could ever get rid of a judge in your trial, sweatpea. This one’s gonna be conducted by the book…and in minute detail.

So the Supreme Court threw out Berlusconi’s motion against Judge Fabio Paparella and ordered a tiny fine to be paid in court costs. Las October, Paparella ordered Berlusconi and British corporate lawyer David Mills – the estranged husband of British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell (she dumped his ass when this all emerged) – to stand trial for allegedly perverting the course of justice in two corruption trials. Paparella ruled that the two be indicted, at the end of preliminary hearings in which prosecutors accused Mills of accepting a $600,000 kickback from Berlusconi…

I know, I know, Berlusconi has never had a reputation for subtlety.

Had Berlusconi’s defense team been successful in the motion to remove Judge Paparella from the case, the indictment would have been annulled. The defense thus argued that Paparella was unable to rule in the matter, seeing as how he was also the Judge who ordered Berlusconi and Mills to stand trial in a separate, ongoing corruption trial involving Berlusconi’s private TV network, Mediaset.

Mills, the long stinky British lawyer married to the seemingly stinky British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, helped Berlusconi set up a network of offshore companies before Berlusconi’s 1994 political debut. For these services, Mills received $600,000, and this payment also covered the cost of his not revealing details of the media empire, in two trials against Berlusconi, in 1997, and 1998.

Tessa Jowell was accused – and subsequently cleared – of breaching parliamentary standards in the UK, by co-signing a mortgage with Mills that was allegedly linked to the $600,000 from Berlusconi. In a 2004 letter to his accountant Mills claimed that the payment was a “gift,” and that he had saved Berlusconi “from a great deal of trouble.” "I told no lies but I turned some very tricky corners," the letter said. He has since disowned that letter and insists the payment came from Attanasio.

This trial is due to open in Milan on March 13 and judicial sources said the defendants faced sentences of three to eight years if convicted. Berlusconi and Mills are among 14 defendants, who include Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri and several top former officials at Berlusconi's Fininvest family holding company. They face charges ranging from tax fraud, false accounting and embezzlement to money laundering. They all deny wrongdoing. Mills faces charges of receiving stolen goods from August 2003 to July 2004 and for fraud for 1999 and 2000.

The Mediaset trial, in which Mills has no part, began in November, and it centers on Mediaset's purchase of TV rights for US films through two offshore firms. Prosecutors believe the purchase costs of US films were artificially inflated for tax evasion purposes.

But, of course, earlier this month, several charges against Berlusconi were dropped under reforms to the statute of limitations law introduced in 2005 when the former premier was in power. In November 2005, the then Berlusconi government passed a law reducing the statute of limitations on a host of crimes including corruption, false accounting, theft and fraud. Berlusconi still faces charges of tax fraud and false accounting relating to 1999 and embezzlement after July 1999.

Incidentally, the Berlusconi-led government set up its Mitrokhin Commission in 2004 to look into possible Soviet moles or double agents. According to the Italian press, wiretaps between Guzzanti and Scaramella have revealed an attempt to dig up dirt on Prodi before the April elections in which Prodi beat Berlusconi. Now, Silvio-B cannot seriously think that the judiciary, or Prodi, are gonna give even a fraction of an inch now that they finally have him backed against a wall. No way. They’re quite possibly gonna ride him out on this one.

Wow, Uncle Silvio’s not looking so rosy these days. The Constitutional Court just rejected the controversial reform act passed in February 2006, when he was in power, and this one’s gonna cause him some serious trouble. The reform prevented appeals by the prosecution in the case of defendants acquitted at the end of a first trial. Prior to this the three-tier justice system in Italy required that all verdicts, acquittals included, could automatically be appealed twice before being considered definitive. Initially then president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi rejected the reform, on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. The center left also were critical of the reform, which was, incidentally, drawn up by Gaetano Pecorella…Berlusconi’s attorney and also the former head of the House Justice Committee…can we say conflict of interests?!

Basically this latest ruling could lead to the revival of the charges against Berlusconi, centered around him bribing members of the judiciary. He had benefited from the reform last April when a Milan appeals court cited the legislation in rejecting a retrial request by prosecutors in the bribery trial against him. But now the Constitutional Court, the supreme arbiter of Italian justice, ruled last week that parts of the law were “constitutionally illegitimate” because it created inequalities between the defense and the prosecution in the trial system, with the prosecution being placed in a disadvantageous position.

Berlusconi was cleared in December 2004 on charges that he bribed judges to prevent food conglomerate SME being sold to business rival Carlo De Benedetti in the mid-1980s. He was cleared on one count but on another, that of paying a $430,000 bribe to a Rome judge in 1991, the judges applied the statute of limitations, saying the alleged offence happened too long ago for charges to be pressed. The prosecution immediately appealed the acquittal while Berlusconi's defense team lodged an appeal in order to seek full clearance on the second count as well. The Milan appeals court rejected both requests in its April 2006 ruling on the case.

Prosecutors in the original SME trial sought an eight-year conviction for Berlusconi. Berlusconi's former attorney and one-time defense minister, lawmaker Cesare Previti, was twice sentenced to five years in the same SME trial. But the Supreme Court overturned the convictions last November in a surprise ruling, saying that for technical reasons, the trial should have been held in Perugia and not Milan.

Meanwhile, Berlusconi is currently on trial in another high-profile corruption case also involving British corporate lawyer David Mills, the estranged husband of Britain's Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. This trial, which began in November, centers on alleged fraud at Berlusconi's private TV network company Mediaset. A total of 14 defendants are on trial, including Berlusconi, Mills, Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri, and several top former officials at Berlusconi's Fininvest family holding company.

The case stems from Mediaset's purchase of TV rights for US films up until 1999 through two offshore firms. Prosecutors believe the purchase costs of US films were artificially inflated for tax evasion purposes. Earlier this month, several charges against Berlusconi and Mills were dropped under reforms to the statute of limitations law introduced when the former premier was in power. He has never received a definitive guilty verdict but in some cases he has been cleared because of the statute of limitations or changes to the law introduced when his coalition was in power.

Critics have often accused Berlusconi of passing legislation deliberately framed to ease his own personal legal woes. Last week Pecorella said “This is a return to the Inquisition… The Court is biased in favor of prosecutors and is harming citizens.” What? Like Berlusconi’s policies didn’t harm citizens. Like the prison conditions aren’t harmful? Shit, life in Italian prisons is so abysmal they’re letting them go. That’s THIS administrations decision, not Silvio’s. And didn’t he fuck his friends over hard with his treatment of 41-bis…? Really, he screwed the nation. Repeatedly. He is a criminal. A dishonorable criminal at that. And the drama will really kick in when this son of a bitch starts naming names. He’s terrified. Not of jail, but of what he knows. And what’s gonna happen when people stop trusting him not to talk. He might not. Probably won’t. Not coz he’s honorable, coz he’s terrified of the consequences. But as soon as he’s put in THAT sitiuation those with cause for concern won’t take the risk, they’re not gonna hope that he keeps it shut. They’re gonna make sure of it. Sucks to be him. Cue another fake heart attack maybe?

In this week’s Newsweek Christopher Dickey has written a rather good piece titled “Blood and Memory: The Cycle Has Started.” And it’s a piece that resonates with my time in Sicily. Dickey opens his piece with the sentence: “Blood feuds flourish where family ties are strong and the rule of law is weak.” Um, yeah, that’s Sicily. But he’s talking about Iraq; sobering, isn’t it. As Dickie points out, it’s the same shit, from Sicily, to Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Holy Land…and Iraq. “When governments cannot or will not protect the people, then families, clans, tribes, gangs and militias will. Indeed, among the Shiites of Karbala, gang rule has a history as old and complex as the Mafia in Sicily.”

What really chills me about his piece is the frightening logic that I am now able to see in the emergence of strong insurgency groups in Iraq: “In the 1960s, soldiers and dictators of the Arab world had imagined they were integrating their societies into the West, leaving behind the rule of clans, the dogmas of faith. Saddam Hussein's Baath Party grew out of that trend. But the 12-year embargo of Iraq after his disastrous 1990 invasion of Kuwait eroded the façade of modernity. People reverted to dependence on tribes and mafias for their economic survival.” That, my friends, is something that needs to be paid far more attention than it appears to have been given in the past couple of years.

One has only to look at the history of Sicily, and of Northern Ireland, Northern China, and so on, to see that once communities become utterly dependent upon clan groups, and mafia-type groups, for their very basic needs, for survival, then there really is no end to the cycle. And, as I have clearly shown, I personally believe that the clans should be left alone, that government should pay more attention to building infrastructure and providing services to society – for would it not follow that if society is provided for by the government they will no longer need clan groups, kinship groups, and mafia-type groups. But any government, domestic or ‘crusading,’ that attempts to fracture the support networks will only succeed in building and solidifying ‘insurgencies’ and opposition, strongly supported by local society… Yes, it takes time. But, it’s the only way.

Dickie states that “Enough vendettas have since been launched in Iraq to keep its communities at each other's throats for years. And America's role in spawning them guarantees that memories of the conflict will long outlast our presence on the ground.” And that collective memory part of the equation is a real bitch. The legacy of slavery in the U.S. is acutely felt through the collective memory of African Americans, and whites, who, to paraphrase Herb Gans, still look at all blacks as the descendents of slaves.² Martin Ruef, has studied this phenomenon in his analysis of factors of a phenomena that he terms “durable inequality;” social inequality that is transmitted from one institutional arrangement (e.g. slavery) to another (e.g. America today).³

Durable inequality is particularly insidious as it creates an inequality that, on the surface, appears groundless for it is so rooted in history, and detached from present-day circumstances. Durable inequality feeds on collective memory, and stereotype. One of the foci in my proposal for fieldwork in Sicily was the notion of durable inequality as it exists on the island, and on the Italian mainland. The reality is, for any study of durable inequality, there is a very long list of possible fieldwork sites: Sicily, Harlem, the South Bronx, the 9th Ward of New Orleans, Iraq, Lebanon, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kingston Jamaica, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro… it makes ya wonder when a lawmaker will pop up who actually recognizes that it’s people, human lives, that are being handled, not livestock. Shit, even livestock are treated with more respect these days; your average middle-schooler could read Animal Farm and see how this is all gonna end up.

1. George Orwell. Animal Farm (1945)
2. Gans, Herbert J. 2005. “Race as Class.” Contexts 4:17-21
3. Ruef, Martin "Legacies of American Slavery: Status Attainment among Southern Blacks after Emancipation." Social Forces - Volume 82, Number 2, December 2003, pp. 445-480

Yesterday I spent the early morning strolling around the Capo market. It was awesome. I love the markets in Palermo, even the stench of blood and fish that fills my lungs and clings to me after I leave. I suppose it's just part of my love for things that form the very foundations of existence, nurture & death, that's what these markets are to me. So I took a few pictures, which I posted below. And yes, I did ask for permission before taking anyone's photo! Unfortunately I couldn't take more -- after someone came at me with a foot long butcher knife I decided to weave my way back through the streets and settle down with a cappucino and the morning paper. Yeah, I was rattled by it.

Sicily’s regional government has launched an online referendum in an attempt to settle the debate over the Messina Straits bridge project. Sicily is torn over whether or not they want a bridge that would traverse the straits of Messina, linking Sicily to the province of Calabria on the Italian mainland. This is a massive project – the bridge would be the world’s longest suspension bridge at 3,690 meters long, and it has been designed to handle 4,500 cars every hour, and 200 trains daily. In 2002 construction was approved by decree of the center-right government and controversy has built over the issue ever since. The project has been fiercely opposed by environmentalists, and dogged by concerns over its safety.

When Roman Prodi won the 2006 elections his center-left coalition voted to put the idea on hold and to allocate the funds to other infrastructure transport projects in southern Italy. But Governor Cuffaro (Sicily) is convinced that his constituents will show that they want the bridge to materialize ASAP and he will thus be able to put pressure on Rome to make it a priority. I do wonder what the pork is that he intends to attach to this issue…he seems just a tad too desperate for it. Moreover, Cuffaro has said that Sicily could build the bridge on its own if the Italian government refuses to be involved. What? How on earth does he propose that, when they are completely falling apart out here? For sure, Rome is a thorn in the side of this island, but to say that they could build a 5 billion Euro ($6.6 billion) bridge when they can’t even keep people on the island for want of basic infrastructure and services…well, Cuffaro seems to have caught the delusional bug from his dear friend Silvio Berlusconi. He says that one billion euros would come out of European Union regional development funds, and the rest will be paid for by the tolls collected after the bridge opens.

Many regional politicians and industrialists in Sicily support the project, insisting that it is essential to any efforts to pull Sicily out of its deep-rooted economic doldrums. But shouldn’t they fix a few of the internal problems first? Otherwise all the bridge will become is yet another escape route for fed up islanders, and another migration route for those whose boats land on the southern coast of Sicily. And, as for the notion that 5 billion Euros will be collected from tolls…Um, ok Mr. Cuffaro, be as delusional as you want, but this is one lie that will certainly catch up with you and smack Sicily hard in the face – you know perfectly well that those tolls will never reach the local government’s coffers…you’ll find a way, if you have not already done so, to divert the toll monies into the hands of your ‘friends.’

On Friday a poll was released revealing the nation’s sentiment over the recent mass pardon of Italian prisoners. People were not happy about the pardon – which comes as no surprise – in fact two thirds of those who responded were strongly against it. Of course it goes without saying that those who respond to surveys are those who feel strongly about the issue being surveyed, so there would be a real bias in this. And, most of us already knew that the mass pardon was an unpopular governmental decree. Actually, I’m surprised that the results portrayed only two thirds of the respondents being against it…, which makes me think that the respondent bias may actually have been weighted toward those who took the survey in favor of the pardon. My Italian friends, who are heavily weighted in the Mezzogiorno, are almost unanimously against the pardon, and vehemently so. I must disclose, however, that they are either middle class and law-abiding, or working / middle class and corrupt. None of those who I have asked about the issue are working class, honest, and disenfranchised. Nor have I asked mothers whose sons are unfairly incarcerated. That would, presumably, alter my assessment.

In the survey, performed by independent socioeconomic think-tank ‘Euripses,’ 14% of respondents supported the pardon, with almost 60% feeling that it had undermined citizens’ safety. The pardon, which resulted in the release of some 18,000 prisoners, was approved in July 2006, with cross-party consensus. Effectively the pardon knocks three years off sentences and its purpose is to ease the chronic overcrowding experienced by Italy’s jails. The pardon does not, however, apply to serious crimes such as terrorism, rape, pedophilia, human trafficking, or offences that include a charge of Mafia Association. Since defendants sentenced to less than three years are rarely sent to prison in Italy, most criminals sentenced to less than six years stand to gain from the pardon. Some 17,555 prisoners have been freed to date, and a further 5,000 have had their sentences converted to house arrest.

There has been much controversy over the fact that all crimes committed before May 2nd, 2006 were included. Not all sentences handed down, all crimes committed. The pardon is thus applicable to future sentences. Given the painfully slow paced Italian trial system, which allows two appeals before a sentence is considered binding, the effects of this pardon will be felt for years to come. Moreover, the Supreme Council of Magistrates, the governing body of the Italian judiciary, recently protested that 80% of pending trials were now utterly futile. And, of course, Italian citizens are concerned about the possibility of released inmates re-offending.

So far, more than 1,700 pardoned inmates have been sent back to jail. In the four cities with the nation’s highest crime rate – Rome, Milan, Naples, and Palermo – the number of crimes reported in the three months following the approval of the pardon was higher than over the same period in 2005…21% higher. (100,334 vs. 82,770).

Before the pardon Italy’s 205 prisons held 61,400 inmates. Their official capacity, however, was just 41,730. Catholic lawmakers pushed the decree as a way to alleviate what many consider inhumane conditions in the nation’s prison system. Amnesty international had singled out Palermo’s Ucciardone prison as one of the worst in the world. And I can attest to the despicable conditions therein. Furthermore, Catholic lawmakers counter the data showing a rise in crime in main cities, by stating that, across the nation as a whole, the crime rate fell 2.7% in the July-September 2006 period vs. the same period in 2005.

One of the most controversial points in this pardon, however, is its application to financial, accounting, and corruption crimes. Critics of this allowance pointed out that the number of prisoners serving time for such crimes is extremely low, and therefore this aspect of the decree cannot be defended in terms of easing prison overcrowding. They say that the aim has been to help the dozens of Italian politicians accused of wrongdoing.

According to the recently published book, ‘Honorable Men Wanted’ almost 10% of Italian lawmakers are either on trial, awaiting appeal, or have a conviction. One of the men who has already benefited from the pardon is Member of Parliament Cesare Previti, former attorney to the ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and one-time Defense Minister. Previti recently got served a six-year sentence for bribing judges, and was placed under house arrest. Now, however, half of Previti’s sentence has been swept away by the pardon, and he has asked for the remainder to be commuted to community service. It’s sorta like giving Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling a time out; telling them to stand in the corner for a few hours and think about what they did. Or giving a fraud / corruption / money laundering / oil & weapons trafficking granddaddy like Marc Rich a pardon. Oh, wait, Clinton already did that.

I've been sitting on this one for 3 days now. Unsure as to whether or not I should post it. Here it is, with an endnote that may explain some small part of my uncertainty...

There’s a HUGE story emerging in the U.K. and Italy – maybe it’s also been mentioned in the U.S. – and I’m especially fascinated, in part because it is totally gripping my parents, who won’t talk about anything else, what with me being in Sicily and all. Under the headline ‘Italy’s Battle to Defeat the Mafia’ we learn that the lynchpin in a recent mass arrest of men of honor from Gela, near Agrigento, happens to be the British wife of the boss, Antonio Rinzivillo. His wifey, Ann Rinzivillo, hails from the mediocre cultural void of Rochdale, a place where most people’s image of a vacation is a coach trip to EuroDisney, or a weekend at a holiday camp in Blackpool. Incidentally, her maiden name is Hathaway – hilarious in itself since Ann Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare, who many believe was a Sicilian from Messina, who fled from religious persecution to the U.K., via Venice.

Anyway, far from Venice, or Messina, Rochdale is the epitome of pedestrian mediocrity. It is the sort of place where it always rains, and grim-faced locals peek at passers-by on the street from behind their net window blinds. Yes, I am a total snob, I detest small-minded, blinkered, exclusionists, and that is Rochdale. I detest ghetto snobbery, and that is Rochdale. And, despite being disgusted by how I think she’ll handle this whole thing, I cannot help but applaud this woman for bucking the odds, and getting the hell out! All the more exasperating, then, that she’s likely going to show her true colors before this whole debacle is through; and that those colors will, I believe, be a dishonorable and cowardly shade of yellow. Canary yellow.

The story goes that a chap by the name of Giuseppe Cannizzo, aka Peppe Karate, from Gela, was trying to muscle in on the extortion racket in his hometown. But Antonio Rinzivillo ran Gela and, on October 10th, 1990, as Cannizzo shot some pool at his local hangout, two of Rinzivillo’s soldiers popped in, and popped him. Right there, in the middle of the bar. Rinzivillo himself was finally jailed five years ago, for the murder of Italian lawyer Antonio Mirabelle. Well, jump forward to 2006, and the mass arrests of Mafiosi throughout the island, and there are a whole lot more pentiti to go around. And wily prosecutors are using the opportunity to solve unsolved murders of the past few decades. On December 11th, 2006, 79 members of Rinzivillo’s Gela clan were arrested. Rinzivillo himself is currently serving life for murder.

Rinzivillo’s wife was, however, one of those who got away. Moreover, she epitomizes the trend of the past decade, which has seen Mafia leaders putting their wives and sisters in the drivers seat if they’re arrested. Mrs. Rinzivillo was not an innocent British woman mistakenly caught up in a world of crime and deception. She was very much aware of what her husband did for a living and, furthermore, she was instrumental in furthering the family business. According to the prosecutors Mrs. Rinzivillo was her husband’s messenger, while he served time for murder, and she participated in drug trafficking, extortion, and oversaw the day-to-day operations of the Rinzivillo clan.

I foresee that this woman will play the innocent, the misguided ignoramus, when she is finally trapped by the international warrant for her arrest, issued this week. She seems oblivious to the gravity of the charges, as though she has closed the book on that chapter of her life, and expects to be gently left alone. Mrs. Rinzivillo is either a pathologically deviant genius, or totally delusional; I opt for the latter. Meanwhile, she has returned to the UK and, on her ‘Friends Reunited’ page (a rudimentary social networking site in the U.K.), posted this: “I lived in Milan for a few years. I then went to Sicily with my husband ... I came home for Christmas and decided to stay here with my two daughters and give good old England a go! Miss the weather, ha ha ciao." This was even posted under her real name.

Clearly delusional, the grim misery of Rochdale seems to have her imagining that she is in a place so drastically unrelated to everything her life has been for the past decade so antithetical to the ludicrous exoticism she sought out, and found, in the Sicilian Mafia, that she can make the past decade or so just disappear. Her delusions seem to have convinced her that, when the chips are down, she will be able to say, “oops, I’m sorry, it was all just a bit of a lark really. I really didn’t mean to do anything wrong, I promise I won’t do it again.” Or maybe she mistakenly believes that her only way out of this mess will be to open her mouth and let it all come pouring out…the names, the places, the crimes, the life, all of it, in minute detail. What a remarkably stupid, and dishonorable, woman she would thus expose herself to be.

And, not to state the obvious, but she would also be dead as a doornail before she could say “ha ha ciao.”

Here’s the thing, Mrs. Rinzivillo, no second chances on this one. As they say in Rochdale, it’s a fair cop love. You really royally screwed up, but it’s not like you would have amounted to much had you not had this life. You had an adventure, an experience, beyond the wildest dreams of your pathetic past. So for once in your godforsaken life just take some responsibility: turn yourself in, do your time, and keep your mouth shut. And keep it shut real tight; even if it feels like it’s so tight you can’t breathe. It’s the only way, love.

Coz here’s the thing that’s well known to the men of honor and cops alike; women, especially those who marry into this life and in whom it isn’t genetically ingrained, get a bad, bad case of the canaries when the chips are down. This one will talk. I’m sure of it. And, as ridiculous as it sounds, that the Italians are hunting a Rochdale housewife as a key player in the Rinzivillo clan, the reality is that she might just wind up telling them so much more than they are even hoping for. That’s right, Ann Hathaway, once mediocrity personified, might be the worst thing to happen to the Sicilian Mafia since Mussolini.

Endnote:

After I wrote this a couple of days ago I read that Mrs. Rinzivillo’s brother-in-law, Crocifisso Rinzivillo, once noted her courage, saying: "She should have been born a man." That might change things a bit. Clearly she’ll be a tougher nut to crack than I had thought. But I don’t know how much anyone can really be presumed to withstand given the techniques employed by Italian prosecutors once they get a bug up their ass. Notoriously violent, tough, and proven men of honor have crumbled in the system. And, naturally, the first threat that will be made by the prosecutors will be against her children.

As the pentito Antonino Calderone once told the sociologist, Pino Arlacchi: “Women are uncontrollable if you touch their sons, because no greater love exists in the world. The link between mother and son is stronger than any other, more than that between wife and husband, between daughter and father, between sister and brother. The pain caused by losing a son is unbearable for a mother. If they kill her husband she may in the end accept it (even if there’s no guarantee), but if they kill her son…”

Renate Siebert has analyzed this point in detail, finding that as far as the Mafia are concerned, women have long been considered untrustworthy, and could not be expected to subordinate kin ties to the needs of the organization. Wives could be agents of what Siebert labels ‘these manifest complicities,’ but mothers would always put loyalty to their sons before any other consideration. True, there has been considerable change along the lines of the beginnings of gender equality in Mafia business. But at the end of the day, whether or not Mrs. Rinzivillo should have been born a man, she was not, and her emotional attachment to her children is, presumably, something that the prosecutors’ office will be counting on.

UPDATE -- SUMMER 2007:

As predicted, little Miss Rochdale spilled her guts to the prosecutors' office. What a complete and utter idiot she is, but then what did they expect? Putting a greedy gold-digging stripper from Rochdale in charge of one of the worlds' highest grossing crime factions wasn't exactly the smartest move the Mafia has ever made... They've learned their damned lesson though, to the detriment of womens' social moblility throughout the underworld. * Sigh * -- I suppose I'll just stick to the academic thing then ;-)

References:
Siebert – Le Donne, La Mafia. Milano 1994.
Arlacchi – Gli Uomini del Disonore. Milano, 1992.

Turning, once more, to the fiscal disaster casting its brutal specter over Italy, I read today that the Economist has predicted the nation’s 2007 GDP will be a measly 1.3%. This gives Italy the dubious honor of nurturing the worst GDP in the world. Couple this with the fact that the birth rate in Italy is so low that the nation will be incapable of sustaining itself in a few decades and, well, figure it out for yourselves. This is the third consecutive year that Italy has produced the world’s worst rate of economic progress: the rate for 2006 was 1.7%, and 1.1% in 2005. So, it’s not even improving on itself, but rolling backwards, once again. To put the numbers into perspective – which seems necessary given our generally romantic notions of Italy – most countries have shown a decline with notable exceptions to the trend being Indonesia (5.8%), Pakistan (6.6%), Chile (5.3%), Saudi Arabia (5.4%), and Brazil (3.3%). It feels most appropriate that today it’s raining in Palermo.

On Sunday morning 100 refugees arrived in Sant’Ilario Ionio, on the Calabrian coast. They arrived from Turkey, where they had set out from 10 days earlier, and were discovered in a small boat by Calabrian fishermen. This is the first major illegal immigrant landing of 2007: Every year thousands of migrants take their chances in traversing the Mediterranean, piled into overloaded rickety old fishing boats. Most of them come from North Africa, in search of amnesty and fortune in Europe. Their first landing is usually in southern Italy, Spain and Portugal.

In 2006 a reported 1,335 minors arrived on these shores: a handful arriving in Calabria and Apulia, but the majority, a full 1,264 of them, disembarked in Sicily. They were a small part of the total 22,016 illegal immigrants, of whom 19,622 were men, and 1,059 were women. Sicily was overwhelmingly the first port of call: 21,400 migrants chose Sicily as their landing site (19,099 male, and 1,037 female). Countries of origin ranged from the most popular, Morocco, then Egypt, Eritrea, Tunisia, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Sudan, Pakistan, Ivory Coast, Somalia, and Lebanon. The Calabrian arrivals hailed from Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey and Apulia received its migrant landings from Bangladesh, Iraq, Afghanistan, Albania, and Sri Lanka. Those landing in Sardinia (where no minors were recorded in official migration statistics) hailed from Algeria and Tunisia. In releasing these figures, the government points out that the nationalities listed are those that they record in declarations made by the migrants when they disembark.

What about those who make it to shore unmolested, undetected. How many more are there? Certainly in Sicily there are thousands, many who manage to get in without being detained by the authorities… and still more who are trafficked by the ‘right’ persons, whose fee pays off the necessary men, or who are shipped to the island with expertly forged documents in order to fulfill a division of labor requiring migrant workers in the tomato, olive, citrus, and artichoke fields of the Mezzogiorno. Again, if the government wholeheartedly tackled the social situation in the Mezzogiorno, maybe the number of illegal immigrants would be closer to their official statistics, than the cold reality, which is a multiple thereof.

Not to mention the dangers faced by these tragic men, women, and children, as they set out for a better life in Europe, whose borders have become increasingly plastic with the broadening of the European Union. December 15th saw over 100 refugees from Senegal drown in the open seas when the flimsy boat in which they were traveling was shipwrecked. 25 others survived. Their first port of call was intended to be the Canary Islands. Some survived, and told tales of their shipmates drowning when the boat tipped over, still others died of hunger and thirst while awaiting rescue. This was their second attempt; bad weather had forced their first to be abandoned, necessitating their return to Senegal two weeks previously.

Most of those who make it can tell horrific stories about their offshore run-ins with police, coast guard, and military boundary patrols. Many of those who perish do so when trying to escape these forces. In October 2005 the European Union set up a new agency, Frontex, that goes under the official title of ‘European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union. Frontex is headquartered in Warsaw, and operates, ironically, under the motto ‘Libertas, Securitas, Justitia.’ Frontex overseas, or as it claims ‘monitors,’ most of the offshore patrol activity.

Let’s face it; the water between Europe and Africa has become a veritable mass grave of unidentified migrants who choose to risk everything to find a semblance of tolerable life for their family. Conservative figures state that, in 2006, nearly 600 were reported dead and 300 missing. These numbers are based on cases in which the boats capsize, or where there are survivor accounts. Truly missing from all this are the incidents that no one learns of, entire families decimated with no one to report them missing, nations hiding the true numbers of those attempting to flee… Even in the ‘official’ figures many of the deaths are only discovered after decaying corpses suddenly show up on beaches, throughout Europe and Africa. How many more don’t wash up at all? How many more find their way into the food chain…? A Canary Islands local government source has recently stated that the number of illegal immigrants killed this year so far attempting the perilous 2,000-kilometre sea crossing from north Africa could be as high as 6,000. That sounds more accurate. It also begs the question of what to do about it.

Opening up a nation’s borders is simply not a solution: the pressures that this action puts on the local economy is just too much and, as is evidenced in the E.U., and the U.S., open borders encourage risky migration. I never thought that I would say this, but I think that current open door policies have been shown to be an utter disaster. They harm more stratified and disenfranchised people than they help: working class African American neighborhoods, particularly those in the Midwest and Northeast, have suffered terribly from the increase in illegal immigration. Personally, I am an immigrant, first generation, although I did not flee to a better place for a better life, I just moved because I felt like it, which makes me un-similar to those fighting this struggle, and I feel very fortunate for that. I have, however, always been very much in favor of allowing people to move freely worldwide, and to have every opportunity to create a the very best future possible. But I was wrong. I was very, very wrong. Charity, after all, truly does start at home. This goes for Italy, the U.K., the U.S., everywhere – we need to fix up our own backyards, before we turn them into shantytowns for the rest of the world. I’m not being bigoted; I’m being realistic. No one can offer alms to everyone. It’s simply impossible. Instead of broadening the inequality gap, let’s work on closing it. Then we can start helping the rest of the world.

It’s not only Frontex working towards controlling illegal immigration: Spain also has been assisted by the E.U., who have very kindly built electrified walls enclosing parts of the Canary Islands, and established concentration camps therein, to house those who succeed in gaining entry, only to later be detained by the police. This is the other extreme. And it disgusts me. Many of these detainees are minors. On December 24th, Christmas Eve, 40 sub-Saharan migrants were arrested as they attempted to scale one of these 12-foot high razor wire electrified barricades. When one’s own life is so unimportant, in the fight for simple personal freedom, the threat of arrest is no threat at all. And, when one is so desperate that such risks seem manageable, outrunning the authorities seems possible, whether on land or at sea. And from this willingness to assume trenchant risk, there comes a far higher loss of life, as the authorities toughen their stance, and increase their border patrols. It’s a battle without victory, one in which everyone will lose.

There are some things that they really get right in Italy. A recent example is that of the recent decree against child pornography. Whereas the U.S., U.K., and other ‘world leaders’ seem to be really struggling with how to control the scourge of online child porn, and the revolting creatures who use children for sexual gratification, Italy has come up with a pretty good idea; they’re simply going to black out child porn sites. The Communications Ministry over here (equivalent to the FCC in the U.S.) has just issued a decree obliging internet providers to adopt systems capable of swiftly blacking out all websites peddling child pornography. Italian internet providers now have less than 60 days to adopt these systems, which will black out a site within six hours of a ministerial order against the site. This comes almost ten years after parliament passed a law against prostitution, pornography, and sex tourism that exploits minors. Moreover, the Ministry for the Interior has set up a special division to combat online child porn and which uses information from law enforcement, as well as from public and private organizations that have joined the fight against these crimes.

It is true, however, as has been pointed out by Father Fortunato Di Noto, the founder of an anti-child-porn organization, that the real problem lies not with Italian internet providers, but with those based abroad. He added that "efforts must be made on the level of the United Nations and involve all those countries which signed the Geneva Convention on the rights of children". But dammit, I think that everyone would agree that this is a great start, and the more success the Italian system is shown to have, the more strength the campaigners will have as they push this plan on the international stage. It is distressing that the U.S. seems to be just sitting on this one – as much as American power has faded on the international stage in the past fifteen years, this would be a real public relations coup, and they do still have the power to galvanize international sentiment and action. (Although, arguably, not for much longer). Instead of further pursuing the alienation of the international Islamic community, and its supporters, as well as sympathizers, which now includes most of Europe, couldn’t the American’s actually do something positive, something worthwhile for once? Eh, yeah, probably not.

Another area in which the Italians are being refreshingly proactive is that of international espionage, although I still think the whole gig smells awful fishy and that the wrong guy has been set up…but at least they’re not practicing the ostrich-head-in-the-sand denial act that the U.S. can’t seem to move away from. The current Scaramella-Berezovsky-Litvinenko scandal is the perfect opportunity for the Italians to really truly make the American’s look like total idiots. And the whole Polish Archbishop Secret Police scandal is a fine way to distract public discourse away from Prime Minister Prodi’s involvement with the whole Scaramella-Berezovsky-Litvinenko affair. Ooooooohhhh, international espionage – I can’t begin to tell you all what it’s doing to me! For now, though, I’m going to focus on the Polish Archbishop scandal. It’s just the safer thing to do…the rest will be in the book.

So by now the story is global, I’m sure. The new Archbishop of Warsaw, Monsignor Stanislaw Wielgus, admitted last Friday that he once collaborated with Poland’s former Communist regime. As he put it his collaboration was necessary so that he could travel abroad for his academic research: “I’m not trying to justify anything, I know that I shouldn’t have had any relations with the Communist regime Secret Services. At the time I thought I had to continue my important scientific research and acquire sound training for the good of the church.” Wow, does this guy have a massively inflated ego or what?!? What exactly was this “important scientific research?” And how exactly is the acceleration of his career of benefit to the church? Really, I mean, is he the reincarnation of Christ or something? And even if he is, it still doesn’t settle right with me.

Now, I wasn’t quite sure why he waited until the last minute, literally until a couple of hours before he was to legally become Archbishop, but that’s started to emerge in the last 24 hours, and damn, this one’s really gonna rock the Vatican, and the Catholic Church in Poland. He seems to have been attempting to sweep it all under the proverbial carpet. But a special commission of the Polish episcopate announced last Friday that it had found proof of his collaboration with Communist intelligence. The commission actually started their inquiry on January 2nd, after accusations in the Polish media that he had been a spy who informed on fellow members of the Catholic Church in Poland. The commission was initiated on the request of Wielgus himself, which may explain why he felt so certain that this would all just disappear. His initial response to the media reports against him was that there was a great deal of “false information” in the archives of the Communist intelligence services. Uh huh, I bet there is. But I also bet that there’s a great deal of good information too. And, Monsignor Wielgus, the burden of proof is on you to clear your name. If you weren’t a commie spy who shopped fellow Catholics then surely you have nothing to sweat over. Besides, the Polish Institute for National Memory, which houses the archives, estimates that only 1 in 10 priests were involved with the secret police. That’s hardly an overwhelming statistic, and it really speaks against his claim of there being soooo much “false information.”

Well, Wielgus admitted, finally, that in 1978 he signed an accord with the intelligence services. Whaddaya know. He also said that he never denounced anyone or harmed anyone through his relations with the secret police. Um, c’mon, just by being involved you added strength to the Communist movement and denounced non-Communists; you perverted the Catholic Church and it’s doctrines; and any information that you provided harmed others. For example, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, former primate of Poland, was himself frequently imprisoned by Communist authorities in the 1950s, because of his refusal to bow to their demands.

This rat should be discommunicated. Sorry, but I don’t care how much he was ‘coerced’ into signing the accord. He did so in order to pursue his career. He had a choice. Service to the church should be done in the interests of one’s fellow men, not in one’s own selfish interests. It’s simple: religious leaders should be just that, nothing less, and nothing more. The same as supermodels, who should just look phenomenal, and rappers who should just spit good rhymes. Wielgus has become the Kanye West of the Catholic church, and similarly to Kanye, his actions are utterly indefensible.

On the flip side, however, this whole affair has shown up the Vatican quite a bit. On December 21st the Vatican press office released a statement that said: "The Holy See took into consideration all the circumstances of his life, including those of his past, when it decided on his nomination as the new archbishop of Warsaw. The Holy Father has full confidence in Monsignor Stanislaw Wielgus." But the Polish Institute for National Memory said that neither the Holy See, nor Wielgus’ predecessor had requested information on the prelate, either before or after the announcement of his appointment. So the Vatican just went on Wielgus’ word then…Doh! But Wielgus STILL legally took up his post as Archbishop of Warsaw on Friday. Unbelievable! And then, on Sunday, Wielgus resigned during a special mass in Warsaw cathedral, which replaced his investiture.

Of course the Vatican City gossip hounds must have been all abuzz trying to figure out how the Pope reacted to having to accept the resignation on exactly the same day that the prelate was supposed to be formally invested as Archbishop. I can just see them whispering and giggling about it like teenage girls discussing Brangelina, the Britney Spears tailspin, or the Justin & Cameron split: “Ooooh, did you see the look on Ratzinger’s face? He’s PISSED! Homegirl TOTALLY screwed him on this one. How you gonna lie to the Pope like that? Damn, that Wielgus got coglioni like we never knew!” And now it’s only a matter of time before a Wielgus autobiography is in the pipeline. Hmmm, having recently lost her job over allegations of anti-Semitism, as well as the OJ Simpson book debacle, I bet Judith Regan is salivating over the potential for this one to get her career back on track.

Trionfo della Morte Scene.

Brancaccio...Complete With Ubiquitous Palermitan Stray.

Brancaccio, the neighborhood where I have been spending a sizable portion of my time in Palermo, is the sort of place that fulfills many of the negative stereotypes that the world has about Sicily, and about Palermo. In early September 1993, a few months after Pope John Paul II’s exhortation that Sicilians rise up and represent, a Roman Catholic priest, Giuseppe “Don Pino” Puglisi, was shot and killed on the steps of his Brancaccio rectory, on the evening of his 56th birthday, as he returned from a party held in his honor.

Puglisi, immortalized in Gianfranco Albano’s 2001 film, ‘Brancaccio,’ had made it his life’s work to rehabilitate the area and to challenge the Mafia. "Peace," Puglisi said, "is like bread — it must be shared or it loses its flavor." In Brancaccio, Puglisi was relentless in his battles against the local Mafia clan, attacking the drug trade and persuading young people not to become Mafia foot soldiers. It was his success in drying up the "talent pool" for young recruits that especially enraged Mafia figures. He casually shrugged off death threats with the comment that everyone had to die. In his confession, Salvatore Grigoli, one of the men who killed Puglisi, revealed the priest's last words: "I've been expecting you." They then shot him in the neck.

Brancaccio was a neighborhood where the Mafia was deeply entrenched, and still is today. On December 10th, 2006, Palermo learned of the death of Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo, who had led the Archdiocese of Palermo from 1970 to 1996, and who was known throughout the Catholic world as Italy’s “anti-Mafia bishop.” It was Pappalardo who famously announced on behalf of the Sicilian bishops in 1994, following the murder of Puglisi: “The Mafia is part of the reign of sin, and those who belong to it are agents of the Evil One. Whoever is part of the Mafia is outside ecclesial communion."

Pappalardo provided welcome relief from the historical quiescence of Sicilian bishops. It was, after all, a predecessor of Pappalardo, Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini, who regarded Italian Communists as a greater threat than that posed by the Mafia, and once remarked "The Mafia is an invention of the Communists." On another occasion, asked what the Mafia really was, Ruffini responded, "As far as I know, it could be a brand of detergent." Pappalardo’s lot was not an easy one: He spent many years under 24/7 armed escort, getting from point A to point B in bullet-proof cars, and amassing more death threats than he was able to count.

Pappalardo was, first and foremost, a pastorally sensitive man. In Palermo he is remembered as the man who once gave a church to the city’s tiny Muslim community so that they would have a place of worship. The man embraced the true spirit of the church, eschewing the political, careerist, and corrupt forces omnipresent in today’s Vatican. And yet he spent decades on the sidelines, performing acts of great charity, but resisting the pressure to take center stage and stand up against the Mafia. He was right. The Church is no place for political platform. The Church IS the place for all-comers, regardless of race, religion, sin-count, gender, and sexual inclination. Puglisi was also right though, as he strove not to defeat the Mafia on a regional, national, or international level, rather he sought to transform the future of the children in his San Gaetano parish in the Brancaccio neighborhood.

Throughout Brancaccio one can see graffiti repeating Puglisi’s favorite rhetorical question: “And what if somebody did something?” Unfortunately, no one is doing anything. I’m not talking about hunting down Mafiosi – I’m squarely against that, especially when they’re the only source of employment, social services, policing and support in much of Sicily. I do believe that we need to look at Puglisi’s question as it stands today as more of an exhortation to do something about the continuing surge in unemployment and underemployment in the Mezzogiorno, and the imminent social collapse as indicated in the declining birthrate and sinking GDP of the entire nation.

Puglisi's Parish Church...and Zoning Sign.

Over here the big joke at America’s expense this week (other than all things Iraq, of course) is the new trend in U.S. ‘hoods, known as ‘ghost riding the whip:’ “Follie dagli USA: Balla sull'Auto. Si Chiama "Ghost Riding the Whip."¹ For those of you aren’t onto this yet, and who haven't been ghost riding the whip through your weekends since last April, it basically entails throwing a car (that’s the ‘whip’ part of it) into neutral, and dancing next to it, around it, and on top of it, as it slowly moves down the street. It kinda sorta appears as though the car is driving itself, or being driven by a ghost, hence the ‘ghost riding’ part. I’ve seen it done a couple of times and, personally, I don’t understand the big deal. It just isn’t exciting, and actually it’s really damned boring. Nonetheless, a couple of real suckers have gotten themselves killed doing it. God knows how though, unless they weren’t really ghost riding, but actually had the car in gear. Which would just be plain idiotic and therefore Darwinism at it's finest.

So Europe is laughing its ass off at this wonderful piece of Darwinism to come out of the sinking ship that is America. Although, judging by the way Sicilian kids drive (and most Italian kids, for that matter), what they’re really laughing at are the sophomoric ways that American’s get their kicks. Really, ghost riding the whip is utterly junior-league compared to kicking it in Palermo, or Trapani, or anywhere else on the island for that matter. Here, you wanna mess around with your car, take it for a spin on the Palermo-Agrigento route after dark. You’re screwed. Single lane, country roads, pulling 170 km/h, with no idea if the next bend will present a car or bus heading straight towards you as it passes a slow driver, or a shepherd with a flock of sheep coming back from the fields, a couple of donkey’s hanging out, or a lost band of immigrants fresh off the boat from Morocco, who are dazed and confused having not eaten or had fresh water in days... Ghost riding the whip, puhleez, grow up America!

Anyway, the hunt is on, for the British woman who could quite possibly turn out to be the Mafia’s biggest headache since Mussolini. Now, to be perfectly accurate, it's not so much a hunt, as a commentary and a bit of a debate, since the international arrest warrant the Italian's have issued is stuck in international red tape. You see, the UK doesn’t recognize the crime of Mafia Association with which she is being charged, and therefore isn’t moving to extradite, or even find her. The British tabloids have kindly pointed out where she is living, that she’s driving a Ford Focus, working as a masseuse, and posting on the “Friends Reunited” website under her real name! And 79 members of her husband's clan in Gela, near Agrigento, were recently arrested, including a local cop who had tried to sell the clan a CDR with details of the investigation! But even with this latest run of ‘Mafia’ headlines, the pendulum of public opinion is motionless, at best.

The anti-Mafia movements that had been growing in the past 15 years, since the killings of the magistrates Falcone and Borsellino, appear to have faded away. It’s nearly three years since the birth of the “Addio Pizzo” movement in Palermo, when the city was filled with demonstrators, students, and activists, all urging shopkeepers to defy the Mafia hegemony by simply refusing to pay the pizzo. (The protection ‘tax’ demanded of all businesses, ranging from around 1,000 Euros a month for a small city business, to over 5,000 Euros for a supermarket). When ‘Addio Pizzo’ was initiated a total of 159 businesses signed up. Tens of thousands of others refused.

And, honestly, who could blame them? I mean it just makes good business sense, aside from everything else: Personally, I wouldn’t be up for staying in a hotel that was known to be defiant and not paying the pizzo. In fact, the next time I visit, that’s one of the things I want Expedia to tell me – after searching by location, price, and amenities, I want the option of searching only for pizzo-paying establishments. That way I’ll be able to sleep at night.

When Rita Borsellino ran for Governor of Sicily in the elections last spring, she ran as the only candidate against the incumbent, Totò Cuffaro, himself under investigation for the crime of Mafia Association, for the past three years, an investigation supported by damning wiretap transcripts that found their way into the national newspapers. Anyway, Borsellino’s entry into the race reignited the anti-Mafia movement, which had been flagging since 2001 when Berlusconi won 100% of the parliamentary seats on the island, with the help of his ‘friends.’ And Cuffaro won, not surprisingly, despite Borsellino’s heroic efforts.

Rita Borsellino is a figurehead of the anti-Mafia movement, and also sister to Paolo Borsellino, one of the magistrates killed by a Mafia bomb in 1992. It was his death, following immediately after that of his colleague, Giovanni Falcone, that galvanized the anti-Mafia movement, suddenly propelled it to the fore, and positioned Rita Borsellino as spokesperson. At the same time came the end of Salvatore ‘Totò’ Riina’s brutal reign, with his January 1993 arrest. And thus began Bernardo Provenzano’s ‘Pax Mafiosi.’ The anti-Mafia movement may have checked the Mafia; but the Mafia responded with an elegant, sophisticated, and undetected checkmate. No one knew, for a very long time. It was widely assumed that the anti-Mafia movement was winning, that the Mafia was licking its wounds, in hiding, weakened, defeated. Nothing, however, could have been farther from the truth.

It was April 2006 when Provenzano was arrested. But you wouldn’t know it had even happened. Life always just goes on here. In June 2006 I was in Palermo, at the Questura (offices of the Chief of Police) at Palazzo Sclafani, the morning of Operation Gotha. I witnessed the perp walk of high-ranking men of honor, and was amazed at the lack of media present. Yeah, there were a few, but nothing like what one would expect for the biggest Mafia bust in years, so hot on the heels of Provenzano’s arrest, and so soon after Berlusconi’s big loss at the polls. Had I not been there, I wouldn’t have known it happened. Palermo kept on rolling along.

When it comes down to it, the protests in 1992 and 1993 were a direct response to the violence, not to the presence of a Mafia on the island: as one Palermitan has been quoted as saying to the media “It wasn’t because they had been killed by the Mafia as such; it was because Falcone had been blown up while driving on the airport road. Any ordinary Palermitan driving along minding his own business could have been killed in the same blast. That's what they were really protesting about." And that’s what Provenzano seems to have grasped, when all those on the opposite side to his would never have credited him with such a deep understanding of the human spirit, of his countrymen, and of the politics of power, status, and war. People here aren’t anti-Mafia; they’re anti-fear. And, as long as the Mafia don’t threaten the average day-to-day citizen, as long as their tactics don’t send this island back to the early 1990’s perception of being shrouded by a terroristic miasma, then the Mafia will keep on trucking, unassailable.

The thing that very few in Italian law enforcement (quite possibly no one since Falcone and Borsellino, other than, maybe Antonio Di Pietro) seems to truly understand about this terrain is that all the sociological, political, economic, and psychological theorizing in the world won’t change things. There is no getting to the root of it, nor can there be any generalizable assertions found that will provide for further theoretical work: This is, primarily and uniquely, a phenomenon that is in a constant state of flux, of evolution. Fundamental to the phenomenon is that many, if not most, Sicilians, to a greater or lesser degree, identify with the notion of Mafia as representative of their struggle, and the struggles of their ancestors. And when men of honor perform a statehood role – drastically unlike those performed by elected state representatives – boy, they really do get the job done. Whether it involves chasing down someone who has done them, or a client, wrong; meting out punishments; preventing crime through the threat of ‘sanctions’ etc, they come through, and they don’t bother with the sophomoric ‘check,’ they just go straight to checkmate. Every time I am in Palermo, or Trapani, or Catania, throughout Sicily, I am struck by the lack of petty crime. Palermo is a huge city, with massive levels of poverty and unemployment. And yet, the lead stories on the nightly news are not a list of muggings, shootings, gang fights, drug busts, child abuse, or reports of women as victims of abusive partners, or of rape.

The Mafia controls the honest and the dishonest alike, the honorable and the dishonorable, the respectable and the despicable. Palermitan’s may occasionally grumble about paying the pizzo, or about the fact that the cost of doing business here is passed down to the consumer. And the consumer may grumble, as I have, at paying higher prices for everything, from food and clothes, to taxi service and cell phones. But no one wants to see crime control here left in the hands of the state. No one wants Palermo to slide into that abyss. It’s called “Voglia di Mafia,” – “Desire for the Mafia.” And the current Mafia leadership ought to take notice; for the minute that they revert back to asserting themselves through acts of terrorism that threaten the daily routines of the average Palermitan, well it is then that they will truly face the fight of their lives, at least as far as Sicily is concerned.

But then, the Mafia’s got bigger fish to fry. They’re still providing protection on the island – which barely touches the riches they are amassing with their other endeavors. This could plausibly be read to show that, contrary to the self-aggrandizing elected officials on the island, men of honor actually care about the state of society within their communities. Not to say they’re going soft, I'm just saying that they might just give a damn. I concede that this is a very dangerous assumption to make, one that demands far more investigation and analysis before I could even consider taking the ‘might’ out of ‘might just give a damn.’ But it is also far more pragmatic than categorically denying the possibility, which is, unfortunately, the standard academic assertion on the issue. The truth is, unlike ghost riding the whip to alleviate one’s boredom, this ‘Voglia di Mafia’ danced in every community on the island holds not only the future of Sicily in its hands, but also the fate of millions of Sicilians. With stakes this high, it should be our responsibility to look at the whole matter with more than just a cursory theoretical glance in the pursuit of careerist self-enrichment. It's troubling how few seem to agree. And, more troubling still, the number who claim to, but inevitably turn up on the wrong side of a checkmate.

_{(1) L’Espresso, Jan 7th, 2007; La Repubblica, Jan 7th, 2007}

1.6.07

Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi are having a pissing contest. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the names, Prodi is the current Premier over here, and Berlusconi is the last one, losing the election to Prodi last April. The election itself was hilarious as Berlusconi pouted and got all petulant in asking for recounts, a la Al Gore. He seemingly couldn’t quite comprehend that his policies had failed, his numerous gaffes had come back to bite him on the ass, and, finally, he was incredulous that the networks of ‘friends’ who had provided him his political career in the first place, had turned their backs on him when he failed to deliver on his promises to them, no matter how politically unethical those promises may have been. I could write a book about the farce that is Berlusconi, but many other academics, more accomplished than I, have already done so. Suffice to say, he has never acted in a manner becoming of a Premier: in 2003, the day after assuming a six month presidency of the European Parliament, Berlusconi lost his cool after the minister for Germany accused him of exporting his conflicts of interest to the rest of the European Union. Berlusconi had been on trial in Milan for bribing judges, and ultimately managed to avoid full prosecution, and imminent conviction, by passing a law granting him immunity as the country’s Premier. So, when the minister, Martin Schulz, criticized him, quite fairly, he responded: “A producer I know in Italy is now shooting a film about the Nazi concentration camps. I propose you to play the role of Capo, the camp guard.” At a rally last March he announced that when Mao Zedong launched China’s ‘Great Leap Forward,’ in the late 1950’s, Communist cadres “didn’t eat babies, but boiled them to fertilize the fields.” And (and this is the last one, promise!) during the 2006 pre-election debates he called Prodi “a useful idiot” and said that those who voted for the left were “coglioni.” That means testicles. WTF is this man on? I mean Bush is bad, but at least he doesn’t label the nation’s Democrats “testicles!” At least, not in public, or on camera!

(I love this photo...very statesman-ly of you Uncle Silvio!)

So Berlusconi this week claimed that the recent unexpected upturn in the nation’s fiscal wellbeing was his doing. Huh? How? He raped this country, ignored all social responsibility, and spent his time passing laws to benefit his own personal agenda, his monopoly on TV and print media, and his real estate concerns. In fact, under Berlusconi, Italy’s high and rising deficit and public debt levels were so exaggerated that the government received numerous warnings from the European Parliament. Italy’s debt is the third largest in the world, at over 107% of GDP. The public deficit has, for the past 3 years, breached the European Union’s 3% limit: In 2006 it hit almost 5.7%!

But Berlusconi claims, “The (recent positive) result is mainly due to measure adopted by my government.” And Prodi responded, “Berlusconi’s real legacy is the biggest public debt in Europe.” Ooooooh, come on girls, kiss and make up! Shit, Prodi won’t last, he didn’t last the last time he was in office. And if he just plays Mr. Nice, well maybe they can get a 2-for-1 next time Uncle Silvio gets a face lift – Lord knows Prodi needs one, or at least a little eye lift. And maybe a quick nip and tuck around the old jowls… Oh, but wait, didn’t Berlusconi just get some work done…let’s think. Hmmm, well, he went on trial in November, for fraud, money laundering, etc, faces up to 12 years inside (and it’s not his first time facing these kind of charges – his handy immunity law saved his ass last time). A week into this recent trial, in mid-November 2006, he ‘collapsed’ at a political rally, was examined and a half hour later he was miraculously cleared to go home. Then, all of a sudden, Uncle Silvio goes to the US over Christmas for some kind of heart surgery. Uh-huh.

And, what do you know, he returned to Italy looking ten years younger! The cardiologists, and all that bed-rest must have done him good... It is my bet that, as things heat up a bit in Uncle Silvio's kitchen (and let's not forget he has the trial of David Mills coming up soon too -- the ex-husband of the British Culture Secretary, suspected of laundering Berlusconi's money!) well, as things heat up, this man is gonna claim that he's too ill, his heart condition has weakened him too much, to stand trial. Or, if he's convicted, to do any time. Suspicious? Cynical? Me? Yep, you bet your ass I am. I'm perennially suspicious and cynical when it comes to charismatic men with truth problems. Shit, I’ve known one or two of them very well indeed, and still do.

Continuing in the vein of all things fiscal: today comes news of a consortium that has formed to buy out the stumbling Alitalia. This deeply concerns me, and raises my fish smelling olfactory abilities... The fact is, any sophisticated group of investors would not even consider such a premature move. The man leading the consortium, Paolo Alazraki, has a solid track record with 30 years experience in finance and real estate, so it’s even fishier that he would see this as a timely opportunity. He has, however, said that he would like to sit down with Alitalia’s union bosses in order to avert the strike planned for later this month. The strike is, incidentally, around the time I’m flying out, of course…and I’m still undecided if that’s a good, or bad, thing! The whole consortium formation just sounds extra dodgy to me. And, as was surmised in The Economist last week, smart investors would wait until the company could no longer pay fuel and airport costs, thus increasing their leverage at the bargaining table… I wonder what Alazraki thinks about when he rests his head at night.

So my cold’s almost all gone (thank you to all those who commiserated with my sniffley woozy self), and just in time, by the sound of things. Some yucky stuff has turned up in an undercover report by uber-journalist-gangsta Fabrizio Gatti, of L’Espresso. He just spent a month undercover as a cleaner at the Umberto I hospital in Rome: this is the same dude who last year posed as an illegal immigrant tomato picker in the region of Puglia, exposing disgusting and abusive conditions faced by migrant farm laborers living in what L’Espresso labeled “concentration camps.” In 2005 he went undercover as an illegal immigrant at the immigration ‘holding center’ (read: jail) on the island of Lampedusa, off the southern tip of the island. (In all fairness, the problem of illegal immigration using Sicily as a gateway has reached devastating epidemic proportions, and even I can’t get on my soap box with a suggestion for how to handle the swarms entering Italy via Lampedusa, but I’m working on a blog entry about it).

Up to 7,000 patients die each year from infections contracted in Italian hospitals. Additionally, hospital infections are an alleged factor in 21,000 other patient deaths, annually, and up to 700,000 patients contract non-fatal infections. Daaaaammmnn! Gatti documented utter filth at the hospital – hazardous materials dumped outside, staff smoking in the pediatric ICU, no vacuum cleaners, or other newfangled cleaning tools – the cleaners who can operate those demand a higher hourly wage than the hospital is prepared to pay. Instead, filthy mops are used, unwashed, spreading infection from one room to the next, one ward to the next, one floor to the next. Ewwwww! And, get this, Gatti wasn’t even hired…he just went in one day disguised as a cleaner, and stayed a month, without anyone asking for ID!!! Thousands of confidential patient files were dumped in a hallway, and there was open access to anyone off the street, not only to these files, but also to the infectious disease and radiology wards.

There are parts of the hospital that he shows are used as garbage dumps. He shows waste materials labeled “Dangerous” and “Infective” piled up in anterooms off of wards, where they are accessible to anyone walking past. Horrifyingly, he shows critically ill patients being wheeled through these areas as a short cut from one ward to another. And, most revolting, in one hallway he films a big old pile of dog shit… which went cold, but remained there for three days.

OK, now something actually relating to my trip! Today is La Festa dell’Epiphena, the Epiphany; as significant a holiday to Italians as Christmas Day is to the rest of the Christian world (and Hallmark, who thankfully haven’t yet seized the Epiphany in their gnarled hands). Italian kids are especially into The Epiphany, thanks to the legend of La Befana. This character is a witch-like lady who rides a broom and, legend has it, refused to join the 3 Wiseguys (oh c’mon, I had to!) on their road trip to visit the Baby Gesù.

So, anyway, La Befana regrets her decision and, feeling a huge sense of loss over her own child who died at a young age, she changes her mind and sets out to bring gifts to the Baby-G. She races after the 3 Wiseguys, taking her broom to help the new mother (the, ahem, virgin mother…riiiigghht!) clean the house. But the Wiseguys, being Wiseguys, elude her dogged pursuit, and she gets lost, unable to find them or the Baby-G. Just when La Befana gets too tired to go any further, angels come down and give flight to her broom (yeah, yeah, sketchy, but no more unlikely than the immaculate conception). She searches high and low but, sadly, can’t find the Baby-G. To this day La Befana still searches, on the Epiphany. Whenever she comes to a house where there’s a child, she pops in to see if it’s the Baby-G, and even though it never is she leaves a gift anyway. I personally think she might have actually found the Baby-G and family: When she thought about it though she realized the whole virgin birth / immaculate conception thing was an utter crock, a ruse concocted to get free shit out of the community (and old Italian women to do the floors!), and so she returned to Italy, to spread the wealth at home instead. Coz old Italian women are smart cookies, and don’t suffer fools lightly.

In the run up to the Epiphany kids across Italy write letters to La Befana (just like our letters to Santa), telling her the gifts they want most, and they generally behave better, knowing full well that if they don’t she’ll leave them lumps of coal and bunches of twigs instead of candy and toys. On January 5th they leave out shoes and put up stockings for La Befana to fill. So, La Befana is kinda like Father Christmas, only with some relation to the nativity, rather than just some random old Nordic chap with a few deer and a cosca of elves.

And how is this relevant to my trip? I met La Befana! For real!

Well, two of her actually, And I GOT CANDY!!!!!! So that means I've been good, right?

La Befana, and her twin sis were chillin outside my favorite place (clearly they knew where to find me...).

And now I gotta go visit the shrine of Santa Rosalia tomorrow -- I'm in confessional debt up to my eyeballs at this point. I'm gonna have to say a few gazillion Hail Mary’s for denying the immaculate conception, calling Mary and Joseph con-artists, poking fun at the 3 Wise Men, and having a joke at the expense of the Baby-G.

I love being a Catholic; it’s all about saying you’re sorry!

1.5.07

I have been astonished to learn that Sicilian is the only European language to have no future tense. When you really think about what that implies, it’s very depressing indeed.

Still, lest we forget what a remarkable place this island, and this city, is, they got it spot on with this piece of PR I've been spotting around town:

"The coolest town in Italy? It's Palermo." Hell yeah it is!!!

I’ve spent the last couple of days chillin' in the Brancaccio neighborhood, with my homeboy, Turriteddu. Brancaccio is a notorious ‘hood in these parts – historically it has been utter misery – poverty stricken, depressed, industrial. Put those ingredients together, and y’all know what comes out in the mix – honor & loyalty – and shit loads of it.

Brancaccio is also very close to the heart of a young man by the name of Matteo Messina Denaro, and I was amused by this recent story about him confounding the local police, once again: “Mafia’s Bible Puzzle Has Police Guessing.” The gist is that the cops have had to turn to the Vatican for assistance in translating a memorial notice placed in Il Giornale di Sicilia, by Matteo Messina Denaro in honor of his father, Francesco, who died in 1998. Messina Denaro, who has much of his life a fugitive, is wanted for at least 50 murders, and in 2002 received an in absentia life sentence for his alleged role in the two 1992 bombs that killed the Palermitan magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and for the 1993 campaign against the state following the arrest of then-boss Salvatore ‘Totò’ Riina. He is, moreover, widely believed to be the most likely new leader of tutti cose di Cosa Nostra. It would not be a great surprise, however, if this were not the case, given his notoriously fast-paced lifestyle, his young age, and the fact that the authorities are frequently wrong with such assumptions. On the flip side, his youth, modern global attitude and ability to efficiently steer the Mafia as a lean, well-run multinational, must not be dismissed. Messina Denaro's statesmanship in leading the cosche of the Sicilian province of Trapani was emblematic of strong and efficient leadership; he consolidated, strengthened and globalized at a time when everyone said the Mafia was fading away, when they were said to be weakened, and demoralized.

That Messina Denaro places the annual memorial to his father in Il Giornale di Sicilia is well known, and his most recent is formed as an Old Testament passage. The first part (translated) is loosely based on Ecclesiastes 3 and it reads “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die.” The second part, however, is not part of the Old Testament, and it translates as “but only he who wants to will fly, and your flight has forever been sublime.” Now, to my eyes, I just don’t see the subterfuge in it. But I’m not exactly a code-breaker. Nor am I known for my subtlety. Actually I’m more generally considered someone who puts their foot in their mouth, spills the beans, and fails to understand anything that isn’t spelled out to me. So I’m probably not the best judge of the whole thing.

What does have me rolling around with laughter, however, is that Antonio Ingroia, the head anti-Mafia prosecutor in the province of Trapani (from whence Messina Denaro hails), seemed puzzled as to how this man had become fluent in Latin. Um, I can answer that one: He’s been on the run for over 13 years – that’s plenty of time to hone some new skills, and pick up a language or two (including French, German, Portuguese, and Dutch)! I mean, c’mon, just coz he isn’t enrolled at Oxford doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. It’s not like he’s at Barnard for his M.R.S. degree or playing Lacrosse at Duke – if he were, well yeah, I too would be astonished that he could write Latin. And besides, he speaks Italian, so he’s got a head start on the old “amo, amas, amat” game. Anyway, Ingroia also professes to being puzzled over why Messina Denaro would make use of his newly found language skills to convey some message in the memorial. Um, gotcha again, COZ HE KNOWS LATIN 101 ISN’T PART OF LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING, SILLY! By the time this shiznit got translated, by the Vatican who probably took their good time ‘helping out,’ well, the message was received, and acted on, and is now history.

At least Ingroia redeems himself somewhat when he says, “Anyone who thinks today’s Mafiosi are illiterate shepherds who sit in their huts making ricotta cheese is profoundly mistaken.” Ahh, bravo Mr. Ingroia. But don’t be too hasty now; men like Messina Denaro are the epitome of the ‘ferrigno duro,’ don’t let the Porsches, Gucci shades, and blonde arm-candy fool ya.

As Turriteddu and I spent the past two days visiting in Brancaccio, I was reminded of a poem, Satura, by Eugenio Montale who, in his acceptance speech for winning the 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature, said: “I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life. I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?” Satura, which is also quoted by Peter Robb at the start of his brilliant book ‘Midnight in Sicily,’ goes as follows:

So history is not
the devastating bulldozer they say it is.
It leaves underpasses crypts, holes
and hiding places.
Some survive it.
History is benevolent, too, destroying
what it can: better of course
if more were destroyed, but history is short
on information and long on vendettas.
History scrapes the bottom
like a drag net periodically
hauled in.
A few fish escape,
and sometimes you meet the ectoplasm
of a survivor, and he doesn't seem particularly happy.
He doesn't know he's outside, free, nobody’s told him.
The others, those in the net, think they’re more free than he.

And, on that cheerful note, here's something even more cheerful...the center image from the Trionfo della Morte (Triumph of Death), a 15th Century piece by an unknown artist held in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, at Palazzo Abatellis, Via Alloro 4, in the La Kalsa part of Palermo...enjoy!

1.2.07

A big storm is rolling through Sicily today and tomorrow. Really. That’s not some oblique reference to the Christian Democrat Party or a Papal Visit.

Anyway, what that means for me is less pounding the streets, and more sitting in café’s chain smoking and reading Sciascia. Which is fine by me, considering the nasty cold I'm nursing. All in all I seem to be leading a pretty charmed life. But then I’m not blogging any of the stuff I’m doing for my research, so this must look like a very nice and genteel little vacation. Unfortunately, however, I am acutely aware that this evening and tomorrow morning it will not be thus.

Funny, how my connection to this island seems to have done something of a 360 of late. At Heathrow airport I got into a bit of an argument with a young Palermitan, who yelled at me quite ferociously in English. Basically the flight from Heathrow to Milan Malpensa (where we were to catch our connection to Palermo) was cancelled. Malpensa, we were told, was shut down due to fog. Even though Milan Linate airport was operating, without even so much as a delay! Long story…he yelled at me, and I yelled back, he yelled some more, I asked him why he was yelling and called him an idiot cockney. Well, he DID have a cockney accent! He broke down in laughter and told me he was Palermitan. And I couldn’t help but grin my widest grin (those who know me will understand that my widest grin is something akin to the Grand Canyon – this girl never stops smiling). So we started chatting (not yelling) and he tells me that he is a croupier at a London casino. His family still resides in Palermo (Mondello, actually) and he left home to train as a croupier. This may seem random, but it's not, and I must leave that bit of info at that. Everything was coming up gambling in my world of Sicilian ex-pats. And then I read in today’s Giornale di Sicilia that a young lady, British and married to an Italian, started a business by the name of Croupier Courses International nearly ten years ago and recently is overwhelmed by the numbers of young Sicilians applying to her school. Croupier Courses International opened an outpost in Palermo in 2004. They are rigorous in their selection process, but at the same time have graduated several hundred from the Palermo branch alone in the past 2 years.

Sicily, as a region, has an unemployment rate double the national average in Italy, and many more times the average of the northern provinces. Moreover, the unemployment rate for young Sicilian men, between the ages of 16 and 21 is in excess of 50%. This has led many to search for more exotic means of employment, one that will allow them to work hard, away from home, but to also return to their families for extended periods. The region itself does not have casinos. Although, fair to say, it does have plenty of gambling. Mrs. Chilton clearly understands Sicilianismo (NOT, God forbid, in Mussolini’s sense of the term) when she is quoted as saying “The feeling of power – unique to those behind the table who are in charge of the game – also undoubtedly plays a part…I realized that there was enormous potential in Sicily, and, above all, a burning desire to succeed.” Thank you, Mrs. Chilton, for speaking of the potential and desire of the region. From the time of the Phoenician’s to Prodi, Sicily has been shit on as the black sheep of Italy…the “blacks of Europe,” the “dirt eaters.” And all the while they have been a region of hard working, monstrously oppressed and stratified, honest, loyal, honorable people. Moreover, in the school Mrs. Chilton not only ensures that the students become fluent in English, but she also guarantees work for all of her graduates. Her school is the Ivy League for casinos across Europe, as well as having a lucrative contract with the leading Italian cruise company, Costa Cruises. Once again, the citizenry is filling the state’s role in Sicily.

And God is the state making a balls-up of its job down south. The big news at the moment is that people are dropping like flies in Sicilian hospitals. On December 26th, a 57 year old engineer, Giuseppe Sorrentino, in Palermo, of sudden onset leukemia, who had only been admitted on Christmas Day. In the few days before there were three other dodgy deaths also – 2 newborn babies (one still-born after the mother was refused a c-section the day before,), and the 78 year-old Marianna Governale, of a heart attack, having waited without triage at the very same hospital as the stillbirth and Sr. Sorrentino.

Politicians are, of course, dodging the proverbial bullet on the hospitals issue. The ridiculous headline in The Guardian newspaper out of London went: “ Patients Die as Sicilian Mafia Buys into the Hospital Service.” The truth runs more like: “Patients Die as Sicilian Mafia Ousted from Hospital Service Following Arrest of Local Boss.” Yep, that’s right. The boss of the Brancaccio district, Dr. Giuseppe Guttadauro was a top Palermitan surgeon. Another Dr., also the Public Health Assessor of Palermo, Dr. Domenico Miceli, was himself sentenced for Mafia Association in December; he received 8 years given the wiretaps that had him discussing political appointments with Dr. Guttadauro.

Franceso Forgione, head of the Italian Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission said “Cosa Nostra is investing heavily in private health centers in Sicily, which are subsidized by the state.” Firstly, the state needs to subsidize a tad more…shit, the first organ transplant ward on the island only opened in 1997, and is funded and owned by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. This is an utter disgrace. Secondly, the Anti Mafia Commission might as well close up and rent out their offices if they really think that the Mafia is only now beginning to invest in healthcare on the island. As the article points out, Sicily has over 1,800 private clinics, compared to the measly 150 in Lombardy (northern Italian region). But Sicily by far leads the nation in patient deaths. The rationale given by Mr. Forgione is that the private, Mafia-run clinics are siphoning off funds from public hospitals “which are falling into a state of disrepair.” Um, ok, so fix them. It’s quite simple really, revoke funding for a percentage of clinics, which would then become wholly private (similar to in the U.K.) and divert that funding to public hospitals. Or, alternatively, just accept that the boys in Rome are useless and about as far away from efficient as a politician could get. The thing is, if the Mafia DIDN’T invest in these 1,800 or so clinics, they wouldn’t exist. And the public hospitals would STILL be in a shambles. So don’t blame the easy fall guy, blame the policy-maker. It’s terribly aggravating the way Rome, whenever something is criticized about how they do their job in the mezzogiorno, instantly invoke the ‘Mafia-Excuse:’ “Oh, well, it’s not really our fault. You see, the Mafia are involved in that, and we really can’t do anything. But we’re working on it, and are investigating several persons of interest.” Please, stop passing the buck, and do your damned job.

So, after that lengthy diatribe, I realize that my current flu-like symptoms should be taken more seriously. And with the current re-emergence of tropical diseases in Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria, and Puglia, I may have something far more sinister than the common cold. There has been a surge in locally contracted cases of malaria (up over 200% in the past 5 years), visceral leishmaniasis (up over 300% in the past decade), and tick borne encephalitis (up over 550% in the past 7 years). If I get any worse than I’ve felt for the past 48 hours I will myself be heading to the emergency room, and I don’t think my life insurance is sufficient to repay my parents for all of the sacrifices they have made for me over my lifetime. Aw shit!

And, to end all this on a truly hilarious note, I hope you all enjoy the photo I took earlier today, of the signage for the beauty school on via Principe di Belmonte. (Yes, I spend entirely too much time on that street, but I'm utterly addicted to the wild strawberry tart at Antico Caffé Spinnato...) I won't cast aspersions, but I'll let the evil ones amongst you find your own brutal and cruel amusement...

1.1.07

Corso Vittorio Emanuele @ Piazza Marina, Aftermath.

This morning the aftermath of New Year’s Eve was especially visible on the streets of La Kalsa. Of course one could find the usual debris, not unique to Palermo, or the ‘hood: bottles, plastic cups, broken glass, cigarette packets, paper plates, syringes, glassines, vomit, and the excrement of various species. Litter not entirely dissimilar to what one would see on the streets of most towns and cities worldwide this morning. Mixed in with the typical January 1st debris, however, I saw dozens of shell casings, and several newly formed potholes that I assumed were the result of mortars and Zidane Head Butt’s being dropped from rooftops and balconies.
In reference to yesterday’s post, about the severed goat’s head that arrived in the Christmas eve mail drop at the home of Rino Foschi, it would seem that I was correct in my belief that he may not be all that familiar with Sciascia’s work. Foschi was not the only prominent Palermitan to receive such a gift from a ‘Secret Santa’ this holiday season; the ‘Assessor of Culture’ also received a severed goat’s head in the mail. This changes things a bit, making the whole thing look less like the work of a fan disgruntled by the recent run of bad luck for the home team. And at the same time proving me wrong in my simple assessment of the incident. It appears that there has recently been some dispute over how tickets are distributed for Palermo football matches; this is a system that has long been easily manipulated by private citizens, for personal (and syndicated) profit. And, really, why not? Ticket scalping is not such an unbalanced marketplace really – those with time can queue up for handfuls of tickets, which they then sell, rather profitably, to those without the time to stand in long lines for hours on end. Presumably some (albeit not all) of those lacking the necessary time to wait around in line are otherwise occupied by employment that allows them to afford scalped tickets.
City cultural officials and il signor Foschi have been actively promoting policies to end this free distribution of tickets. In so doing they are therefore seen as personally cutting into the income of others. And would anyone really be surprised if they then hike up ticket prices once they end the free distribution, thereby out-pricing those who already can’t afford scalped tickets. It appears to be a pretty standard format they’re following here. And, it all creates a sense that the whole goat’s head debacle is one capitalist defending his territory from another.
Foschi might not want to be so glib in his comments that he thinks the whole thing is a joke; his competitor’s likely aren’t frat-boys after all, and frat boys are the only class of man who would find humor in using such a bloody prop to make a facile joke.

La Cala, from bed this morning

December 31st 2006

(Photo: Stephan Crimarco)

There was a Palermo story today, plastered all over the international sports pages, that made me giggle as I sat outside, enjoying my cappuccino on a beautiful warm December day at Antico Caffé Spinnato on Via Principe di Belmonte. The headlines went “Palermo Director Gets Mafia-Style Goat’s Head Warning” and “GM Receives Severed Goat Head For Christmas.” The story goes that Rino Foschi, sporting director of the Palermo football team, received a gift-wrapped goat’s head, sent through the mail, from Palermo to his home. The 'gift' arrived on Christmas Eve. Foschi's team began the season as a strong contender for the Serie A title, but their last seven games resulted in two draws and three losses. This pushed them into third place. This was clearly an unacceptable result for one (or more) fervent supporters. Foschi is quoted as saying “it gave my wife a terrible fright. She fainted when she opened the box.” He goes on to say “I think it was a joke and I’m sleeping peacefully. Let’s not make a film about this.” Evidently Foschi has not read Sciascia’s brilliant 'A Ciascuno Il Suo' (To Each His Own). At least this time the message wasn’t confused with any attempt at extortion. In 1999 the president of Reggina received a bull’s head in the mail, along with a demand for $5 million. It all makes me wonder, however, considering the notoriously abysmal postal service in Sicily, how many severed goat, bull, horse, or donkey heads, actually fail to be delivered in the course of a year.

Other interesting stories included the recently released report of the Palermo Financial Police: In 2006 they made 430 seizures from members of the Mafia with a total value of approximately $650 million. A further $41 Million was confiscated. The seizures included 49 businesses, 248 real estate holdings, 132 cars, and numerous bank accounts and insurance policies. Also confiscated were 90 real estate holdings, 5 cars, and 9 businesses. A further 32 businesses are now said to be under investigation, along with 41 other alleged men of honor and associates. Additionally they announced that they are investigating 16 for usury, and 33 for drug trafficking. Amazing how they still haven’t realized that any attempt to control this thing is doomed to fail with their bottom-up approach. Or maybe they realized this all along. Either way, there are far better ways to spend the tiny budget the state provides Sicily than chasing around after a group whose 2006 earnings outpaced the largest ‘legitimate’ Italian firms. Without adequate healthcare, education, and all the usual social programs, not to mention jobs, the state will always be cast in the role of 'barruggieddu.'

Speaking of state inefficiency…the Alitalia debacle has me even more panic stricken over my next flight than I otherwise would have been (although maybe this is just an excuse for me to get really nutty about flying). The treasury owns a 49.9% stake in the airline, and has formally invited bids for no less than 30.1% of the carrier, and all convertible bonds owned by the state. The way the rules work anyone who buys over 30% of the airline will be legally obliged to make a public offer for all publicly traded Alitalia shares. Alitalia has not reported any annual profit since 2002. They have warned that the carrier’s total losses for 2006 could exceed last year’s loss of nearly $300 million. So that’s me really looking forward to flying out of Palermo in a rickety old Alitalia tuna can.

This has turned into a bit of a summary of the day’s news, which was not my intention. Apologies. But these were all things that I pondered as I walked around today, followed by stray dogs and street kids, chain-smoking their Marlboro’s. I got lost in the middle of the afternoon, in the 'hood, walking down deserted boarded-up streets, still bombed out from WW2, without even passing cars to accompany me. I felt a bit stupid, and a bit anxious, but it was truly fantastic to be able to absorb Palermo in relative silence, and without the constant push and pull of other people. Still, I wound up taking a cab home once sunset approached. It was a total rip off but the driver was so damned hot it was worth every penny just to spend 7 1/2 minutes staring at the back of his head.

Tonight it is wild outside. All day kids (and adults) were letting off firecrackers in the streets. I saw tons of what are called Zidane Head-Butt firecrackers, that give off a single massive blast, more like a mortar the way the ground shakes when they’re let off. And it seems to be a tradition to throw them from balconies and rooftops onto the street below. Shortly after sunset, as I was walking home, I heard several gunshots, and then someone let off a mortar. Yeah, I looked like a real dork the way it made me jump. So I’m a dork, fine. A few moments ago, as I smoked a cigarette with the window open, I saw the young teenager in the apartment next door dropping Zidane's from his balcony, two at a time. He appeared to be trying to hit the cars driving below. The whole New Years thing is no joke around here; it makes New Years Eve in Times Square look like a rough draft.