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INDEPENDENT Wed, 17 Feb 2010
They must be among the harshest claims ever lodged against a European prime minister, and this month they were made in public, before Sicilian public prosecutors, and backed by documentary evidence. The cornerstone of the fortune of the tycoon who has ruled Italy for most of the past 15 years was money from the Mafia, which Silvio Berlusconi used to build his first housing estate, the project which made him rich and famous. And when, in 1993, after the meltdown of Italy's major political parties in a corruption scandal, Berlusconi decided to launch himself into politics, it was with the support of Bernardo Provenzano, the capo di capi of the Cosa Nostra who, 13 years later, was finally arrested after many years on the run on the very day that Berlusconi lost the general election.
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GUARDIAN Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:05:39 GMT
From Richardson to Trichet to Volcker, central bankers are remarkable for their longevity
In the preface to the 10th printing of Summer Lightning, PG Wodehouse noted that a certain critic had remarked nastily of his last novel that it contained "all the old Wodehouse characters under different names". This time, Wodehouse wrote, "with my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names".
I have been re-reading Wodehouse to lighten a dreary January and I must say that, during my day job too, all the same old characters are coming up in the central banking world, and they still have the same names.
First, a brief tribute to that grand old man of British central banking, Lord Richardson, who died recently at the ripe old age of 94. I owe a great debt to Richardson, who was governor of the Bank of England between 1973 and 1983, because he invited me into the Bank in 1976-77 for a secondment that gave me invaluable experience.
As one of his junior colleagues remarked, Richardson was "from central casting" and exuded a great authority. He also rose to the occasion when, towards the end of what his associate Anthony Loehnis has described as "the turbulent economic and financial decade" that coincided with his governorship, he played an absolutely crucial role, with Paul Volcker, then chairman of the US Federal Reserve board, and Jacques de Larosière, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in preventing the Latin American debt crisis of 1982-3 from developing into the kind of financial meltdown we have recently experienced.
That decade included the first oil crisis, our resort to the IMF in 1976, and what this correspondent christened the period of "sado-monetarism" of the early-Thatcher period. Richardson got on well with Jim Callaghan (prime minister) and Denis Healey (chancellor) during 1976-9, the latter describing his relationship with Richardson as one of "creative tension". His relationship with Thatcher was more fraught: she could not cow the governor the way she did many ministers and while he had certainly flirted with monetarism, he soon saw its limitations and did not flirt with her.
Years later I was with Lord Richardson at a ceremony where his successor, Eddie George, was given the first Keynes-Sraffa award. By this time his sight was failing and I was asked by George to escort the great man around the room. As various names came up he would whisper mischievously: "Is he still with us? Is he still with us?"
One of his important post-gubernatorial roles was as chairman of the Group of 30, a high-powered outfit that brings together the cream of the central and commercial banks. Now in his role as chairman of the G30 is the very same Paul Volcker who worked with Richardson on the 1982-3 crisis and has developed ideas for doing something about the overleveraged behaviour of the banking system, which brought the world economy to the edge of the cliff.
Volcker is a great man for a crisis. Way back in 1979, at the World Bank/IMF meeting in Belgrade, I was having an interesting conversation with his colleague Henry Wallich when Volcker came up and said something like: "Henry, stop talking to journalists. I need to talk to you." It turned out that he had to fly back to Washington the next day to deal with a collapse of confidence in the dollar and embark on a tough counter-inflation policy.
Volcker is very much still with us and has recently remarried at the tender age of 82. He was right there with President Obama when the latter recently announced his intention of cutting those bankers down to size.
This approach has had a hostile reception in many quarters, not least in the United States Congress and among commercial bankers yodelling away in Davos last week.
But I was interested to note that, at the Treasury committee's session with Bank of England officials last Tuesday, despite inevitable minor reservations, both....
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GUARDIAN Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:57:45 GMT
The Nescafé-maker has agreed to buy a pizza business from Kraft, alllowing the US company to improve its offer for Cadbury
Swiss food company Nestlé has ruled itself out of the bidding for Cadbury and has instead given Kraft Foods the firepower to sweeten its own offer.
The maker of Nescafé, Kit Kats and Ski yoghurts declared today that it "does not intend to make, or participate in, a formal offer for Cadbury". This follows discussions with the Takeover Panel, which regulates merger activity in the UK.
Some City experts had speculated that Nestlé was gathering a war chest to unleash on Cadbury, after it raised $28bn (£17bn) in cash yesterday through the sale of its stake in an eye-care group. This morning, though, Nestlé announced instead that it has agreed to buy Kraft's US and Canadian frozen pizza business for $3.7bn.
Kraft swiftly declared it will use the proceeds of this sale to sweeten its own bid for Cadbury by increasing the cash element of the offer – probably by around 60p per Cadbury share. Kraft's original offer was 300p in cash and 0.2589 Kraft shares for each Cadbury share.
"Kraft Foods is doing this because of the desire expressed by some Cadbury security-holders to have a greater proportion of the offer in cash and because Kraft Foods shareholders have expressed a desire for Kraft Foods to be more sparing in its use of undervalued Kraft Foods shares as currency for the offer," declared Kraft, which believes the uncertainty over the Cadbury battle is pulling down the value of its shares.
Kraft's bid is currently worth around £10.3bn. Cadbury's board continues to reject Kraft's overtures, claiming it has a very bright future as a standalone company.
The panel has set today as the initial deadline for Cadbury shareholders to say whether they will support Kraft's offer. But the vast majority of investors are expected to sit tight and see whether Kraft improves its offer further. Cadbury has until 15 January to release new information to bolster its defence to the takeover, while Kraft faces a deadline of 19 January if it wants to raise its offer. Other interested parties – potentially Italian firm Ferrero or Hershey of the US – have until 23 January to launch their own bids.
Cadbury
Kraft
Food & drink industry
Food & drink
Mergers and acquisitions
Switzerland
Graeme Wearden
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GUARDIAN Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:05:53 GMT
Four rescuers die in search for Italian tourists and one German boy killed and friend injured in separate avalanche
Seven people have been killed in a string of deadly avalanches in the Italian Alps.
The bodies of the victims, including four rescuers, were being recovered today. A German boy hit by one of the avalanches while snow-boarding off-piste is fighting for his life at a hospital in Bolzano.
The rescuers died in the Val Lasties area of the Dolomites, east of Bolzano. Members of a party of seven expert mountaineers, they had climbed to 2,000 metres in search of two Italian tourists who had ventured into the area on snow shoes and been struck by the first of the avalanches.
The group reached a mountain refuge on Saturday night and set off again in the dark when they were caught in an avalanche as they were descending the mountain. One of the survivors raised the alarm.
The bodies of the two tourists were located by a bigger expedition consisting of tracker dogs and 40 rescuers, including members of the fire brigade and the paramilitary Carabinieri.
In the mountains west of Bolzano, a third avalanche struck three young Germans after they left the ski runs near Malga Madriccio to take a well-trodden shortcut across the slopes above 3,000 metres.
A 12 year-old boy was found dead below the snow, his older brother survived unharmed and their injured friend was taken to hospital by helicopter. None had been carrying a beacon or other location-indicating device, hampering rescue efforts.
Italy
John Hooper
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GUARDIAN Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:30:01 GMT
Four hundred years ago, Caravaggio stopped off in Naples and an art movement took off. Jonathan Jones on how painterly excess and sentiment live on in the modern Christmas
Mary sits in a ruined building, showing her new baby to shepherds and kings. Next door, ignoring the fuss over the newborn, a woman has come out on to her narrow balcony to collect her washing. In the crowded alley below her, men carrying merchandise walk past a butcher's stall, ignoring a one-legged beggar.
The figures in this tiny world, meticulously crafted out of wood, are just two inches tall. But what is most wonderful about this glorious piece of folk art is that it stands in the street, outside a shop in the sprawling southern Italian city of Naples. In fact, all along this street, similar scenes – known as presepi, or cribs – are being admired by Italians. They're pondering which one to buy, or which scene to add a figure to. The nativity is always in these cribs somewhere, but detail after detail is added, resulting in a crowded humanity; the effect is rich as cake. One shop in these dense, narrow streets sells nothing but carved baby Jesuses.
Naples has its own share of the kind of Christmas decorations we're all familiar with: fairy lights on dark walls, santas on the steps of a church. But it's the cribs, which have been made here since the 17th century, that are the most striking. These days, craftsmen sometimes add contemporary, satirical elements: this year, mini Obamas and Berlusconis feature in the multitudes.
At heart, the presepi belong to the baroque art movement, born in Italy in about 1600, and the dominant style in European culture for around 150 years. Naples is one of the baroque's great centres and a new exhibition here, Return to the Baroque, is celebrating that achievement in museums and churches across the city.
But let's stay on the street for a moment. A stone's throw from all the Christmas stalls, there's a forbidding doorway marking the entrance to a chapel where Caravaggio's astonishing painting The Seven Acts of Mercy has, for 400 years, served as altarpiece. Like the cribs outside, this is an image of Naples itself – a crowded, human place with (again echoing the cribs) touches of the divine on its mean streets.
In the chapel, candles glow distractingly and a crucifix obstructs the view; even so, this painting's strangeness holds you. It seems to be a street scene with a building, a prison, looming up; a woman offers an elderly man behind bars a breast and he drinks. This is a depiction of two of the merciful acts advocated in St Matthew's Gospel: give drink to the thirsty, help prisoners. Meanwhile, a man in clerical vestments holds up a torch to reveal the grey feet of a corpse – the final merciful act is a decent burial. Everyone is engaged in an act of mercy (a cavalier is giving his cloak away), while Mary, Jesus and two winged angels watch from above.
When Caravaggio briefly visited Naples, a killer on the run, he left behind him a handful of paintings: the Seven Acts was the greatest, and sowed the seeds of a new art. Baroque was just beginning. In Caravaggio's hands, it became an art of harsh reality: a shock for the senses and the conscience. In the streets near this altarpiece, you can see how the baroque evolved into an art of spectacle and excess. Marble spires festooned with stone garlands rise up from piazzas. Looking like marble Christmas trees, these guglie are as unique to Naples as its cribs. They are pure decoration, something to lift the spirits while negotiating the mad alleyways – making them Naples's answer to Rome's fountains.
By the time these structures were raised, half a century after Caravaggio painted his vision of mercy, the baroque had evolved from an intense, disturbing art into, well, Christmas decorations, if you're feeling harsh. Once the movement left Caravaggio's peculiar anxiety behind, the art became complacent and second-rate. Or so I used to think; but in Naples this...
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GUARDIAN Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:06:57 GMT
After months of scandal Italian prime minister has found a weapon to split his opponents
No doubt, for anyone outside Italy, the attack on Silvio Berlusconi in Milan's cathedral square last week seemed pretty straightforward: a man with a history of mental illness hit him in the face with a viciously jagged object and put him in hospital for the best part of a week; the Italian prime minister will take it easy over Christmas before resuming his duties in the new year. A deplorable incident, but one of a kind to which prominent, controversial politicians are unfortunately susceptible. Berlusconi himself was hit with a camera tripod four years ago.
In Italy, however, last Sunday's assault has acquired an entirely different, and much greater, significance. It has cast a pall of apprehension over the country, raising fears that could be self-fulfilling that Italy could lapse back into political violence. Partly as a result, the incident has transformed the country's political scene, allowing Berlusconi's supporters to drive his adversaries on to the defensive and give the prime minister his first real breathing space in eight long months.
Video footage of the incident showed his assailant, Massimo Tartaglia, 42, bringing down the object in his hand with all his might and releasing it just inches from the prime minister's face. His weapon turned out to be a model of Milan's many-spired cathedral, its Duomo, made of compacted marble dust. As he was driven away to hospital, covered in blood, the leader of the Italian right may well have reflected that it was a fittingly awful end to a thoroughly ghastly year for him.
Things began to go wrong on 28 April. That was the day Veronica Lario, his wife of 18 years, first gave a hint of the trouble she was about to heap on him when she lambasted her husband's plan to find seats in the European parliament for a string of attractive young women, most of whom had previously been known more for their anxiety to break into television than any noticeable interest in politics. The idea, said Lario, was "shameless trash".
Five days later, it was reported that she had decided to leave Berlusconi, declaring that she could no longer remain "with a man who consorts with minors" – apparently a reference to 18- year-old Noemi Letizia, a Neapolitan who also aspired to a life in the spotlight and whose birthday party Berlusconi had attended the previous month. Just as the scandal over their still unexplained relationship was abating, the prime minister was knocked sideways by the publication of an interview with a call girl who said she had spent the night with him and recorded their pillow talk.
Patrizia D'Addario was one of about 30 women alleged to have been taken to dinners at Berlusconi's private residence in Rome last winter by a man who is under investigation on suspicion of drug trafficking and aiding and abetting prostitution. Her alleged recordings, which include some excruciatingly intimate exchanges, were later posted to the web for all to hear.
Then, within three days in October, the television and property magnate-turned-politician was left reeling by successive blows. The company at the heart of his business empire was ordered to pay damages of €750m (£665m) for having bribed its way to victory in a takeover battle. Meanwhile, he himself was stripped of the immunity from prosecution he had secured the year before from a parliament which is dominated by his supporters.
Meanwhile, Berlusconi was having to contend with ever more open and insistent criticism from the man who should be his closest ally – Gianfranco Fini, who earlier this year led his party into Berlusconi's Freedom People movement.
The former neo-fascist Fini has carved out a niche for himself as a born-again progressive, a conservative in the mould of David Cameron, and since being elected speaker of the lower house of parliament after the right's election victory last year, has become ever more impatient with the....
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GUARDIAN Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:47:00 GMT
Italian prime minister unlikely to return to work for 10 days after being hit in the face with a plastic souvenir during rally
The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is to be kept in hospital for another night as he recovers from the attack in which he was struck by a model of Milan's cathedral, his personal doctor said today.
A statement released by the San Raffaele hospital said the 73-year-old, who suffered a broken nose and two broken teeth in Sunday's attack, was in pain but his condition was not worrying. His personal doctor, Alberto Zangrillo, said he was unlikely to return to work for 10 days.
Italy's interior minister, Roberto Maroni, said the "mad actions" of Massimo Tartaglia, 42, who threw the souvenir at Berlusconi during a political rally outside the gothic cathedral, were premeditated, saying the attacker had been "developing a rage against the prime minister for some time".
Maroni said Tartaglia had been in the square from 11am on Sunday morning and, as well as the plastic model cathedral, obtained from a stall nearby, was carrying pepper spray and a resin crucifix.
In a letter to the Italian leader, Tartaglia expressed his "heartfelt regret for a superficial, cowardly and rash act in which he did not recognise himself", the attacker's lawyers said. They added that Tartaglia, who has a history of psychological problems, acted alone and did not have any political agenda.
Berlusconi was shaking hands and signing autographs when he was struck. He was taken to hospital with blood under his nose, on his mouth and under one eye.
There was condemnation of the attack from across the political spectrum but the Italian media has suggested the incident reflected Berlusconi's polarising effect on the public.
Italy's largest daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, said it was indicative of the "civil war" going on in Italian politics.
Berlusconi's popularity has fallen after a year in which he has been embroiled in sex scandals detailing his alleged use of prostitutes. He has also experienced legal troubles with the constitutional court throwing out a law that granted him immunity. That could open him up to a series of trials for fraud, tax evasion and bribery. But despite his troubles his approval rating remains just over 50%.
Italy
Silvio Berlusconi
Haroon Siddique
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GUARDIAN Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:46:11 GMT
Greek police clash with students in Athens as thousands march on anniversary of death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos
Police fired teargas at rioters who threw rocks and firecrackers in central Athens as thousands gathered to mark the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenager.
Clashes broke out as about 3,000 mostly students, anarchists and leftists began a march to parliament. More protests were expected tomorrow. An evening memorial service was planned in the Exarchia district, where the 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead.
Violence also broke out in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, where demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police and smashed the store front of a Starbucks cafe. More than 6,000 police were deployed across greater Athens amid fears that the demonstrations under way in the capital and other Greek cities would turn increasingly violent. Concern was heightened by reports that far-left groups and anarchists from other European countries have travelled to Greece for the protests.
Grigoropoulos was shot by a policeman on the evening of 6 December 2008, in Exarchia, a central Athens neighbourhood of bars and cafes popular with anarchist groups. Within a few hours of his death, riots spread from the Greek capital to several cities across the country, taking the government completely by surprise. An embattled police force took a passive approach as rioters looted and burned shops in violence that lasted two weeks.
The new socialist government, which has faced a spate of attacks by far-left and anarchist groups, since coming to power in October, has vowed not to tolerate any violence during today's anniversary.
Police yesterday detained about 160 youths and raided what they described as a firebomb-making hideout in the district of Keratsini, near the port of Piraeus. A memorial gathering last night at the spot where Grigoropoulos was killed in Exarchia began peacefully, although clashes broke out in the area later between rock-throwers and riot police. Police arrested 14 people, including five Italians and three Albanians.
Dozens of police, some in riot gear and others on motorbikes, stood guard throughout the district on Saturday night. Apart from the brief clash, the area was quiet, with heavy rain helping keep people off the streets.
Greece's civil protection minister, Michalis Chrisochoidis, who is also in charge of the police, said earlier this week that people had been right to demonstrate against the teenager's death, but further riots would not be tolerated.
"Without doubt (Grigoropoulos's death) was an act of extreme police violence and misconduct that has scarred our collective memory," Chrisochoidis said. "Young people were right to take to the streets to express their outrage. But we will not tolerate a repeat of the violence and terror in the centre of Athens and other cities. We will not surrender Athens to vandals."
Protest
Greece
Mark Tran
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| Full List of Italy articles |
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 Robert Fisk on CrossTalk: Is Israel a Rogue State?
YOUTUBE 31 July 2010
On this edition of Peter Lavelle's CrossTalk, he asks his guests, including Robert Fisk, whether the real problem when finding peace in the Middle East is the US-Israel alliance
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Swissed-off: Outrage as 'Minaret ban' scandal flares up
YOUTUBE 1 Dec 2009
The UN human rights chief says Switzerland's minaret ban is discriminatory and puts it on a collision course with international law. This weekend Switzerland held a referendum on banning...
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Paramilitary TSG Police Officer attacked Ian Tomlinson
YOUTUBE 9 April 2009
Ken Livingstone describes his surprise that the attacker of Ian Tomlinson was a Police Officer wearing a Balaclava to hide his face. He declares the Man to be a Paramilitary Officer from the...
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PROOF that the Police LIED about the death of Ian Tomlinson
YOUTUBE 9 April 2009
The police are on tape LYING about the circumstances surrounding the Death of the G20 Victim Ian Tomlinson.
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Police Brutality: Ian Tomlinson WAS attacked by the Police BEFORE his death
YOUTUBE 8 April 2009
Video has emerged that shows the Police LIED in regard to the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 Protests. The Police claimed they had tried to protect Mr Tomlinson but had come under attack...
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Alex Jones on Ian Collins' talkSPORT radio show Thursday 19 June 2008
SPIDEREDVIDEOS
Alex Jones on Civil Liberties, Europe, Conspiracies, Taxation, Imperialism, Globalization, Global Government, Puppet Governments, Global warming, Iraq, Afghanistan, Assassinations, Religious...
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George Galloway Destroys Racist on Immigration and Asylum
YOUTUBE
George Galloway visited Swansea on Tuesday 13th March 2007 and was greeted by a racist asking about why we should let Immigrants in the UK, the questioner is completely destroyed and totally...
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French president Nicolas Sarkozy drunk at G8
YOUTUBE
Obviously drunk. This video was recorded during a press conference held by recently elected french president Nicolas Sarkozy during the G8 summit on june 2007. This is the translation of the...
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NEWS SUMMARY
Apology over Italy hospital fight
Knox 'wants to adopt children' after jail
Amanda Knox senses the pen is mightier than the penal code
Oetzi the Iceman may have had ceremonial burial
Italy seizes counterfeit artwork
Robinho rejects Fenerbahce switch
Canine 'Baywatch' patrols beach
Italy's first official woman gondolier?
Loan move close for £20m Aquilani
Mancini hails Balotelli's debut
Thousands thrill at historic horse race
Berlusconi government dispute with Florence over ownership of David sculpture
Italy releases PKK leader on probation
Venice gives licence to first female gondolier
Italy's 'summer of homophobia' | Alexander Chancellor
Jesuit priest accuses Philip Pullman of waging war on Christianity
Juve say Poulsen is joining Reds
Capello may call time on Beckham
Italian minister calls for ban on 'violent and cruel' palio horse races
Berlusconi to seek confidence vote
