Europe Will Be Asked to Pay for Italian Politician's Sins

The legitimacy crisis of Italy's political class is so deep and so broad that it takes your breath away. I used to think that the image of Nero playing the violin while Rome burned was poetic exaggeration. Now I see it was politics as usual.

Over the past week, the country has been wracked by intermittent, and intermittently violent, protest. The protestors are collectively known as the "Pitchfork" movement, but they are not an organized or coherent group. They are a motley collection, united only by anger. Farmers blocked roads and bridges with tractors to protest food imports bearing misleading "Made in Italy" labels; Truckers slowed their rigs down to a crawl, tangling traffic on highways; artisans and small biz owners spoke against taxes and the government in town squares; Students protested cuts in education; Xenophobes and neo-Fascist groups marched against immigration and Europe.  In Turin, the country's hard-hit manufacturing capital, the riot police removed their helmets in show of solidarity and sympathy.

Living under a bridge: As more Italians fall into poverty,
the welfare system has proven woefully inadequate. 

Meanwhile, the response of Italy's political elite has been either to freak out or to freakily try to play the anger to their own ends. The Interior Minister [from the Center-Right] ordered the cops to keep their helmets on and come down hard on "Troublemakers." The Left started talking about how the protests have been infiltrated and hijacked by Fascist groups, a line made easier to believe by a number of video clips showing a small group of protestors giving the Roman salute and showing off tattoos of Mussolini.  Berlusconi, who believes himself to be a bit of a pitch-fork wielding, barn-burner himself [even if the pitchfork is by Versace and is actually wielded by a hired hand] scheduled a meeting with pitch-forkers, only to cancel out when he realized that some of the anger might be directed at him. [Some in the angry mob, it seems, are under the impression that his having been in power 20 of the last 24 years, might have something to do with the dismal state of things.] Beppe Grillo, the leader of the 5 Star protest movement has been cheering the Pitchforks on with his usual subtle message which can be summarized as: Burn, Baby, Burn.

The most freaked-out was Giorgio Napolitano, the 87 year-old President of Italy, who warned Parliament that, if they did not take action to reform the country, a social explosion wasn't out of the question.

Cheering the Pitch-forks: Beppe Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi have looked
to turning the anger to their own political ends. 

Napolitano is a good example of how the Italian political elite rules without having to submit to elections or popular consent. This year he was elected to a second 7 year term as President of the country by the Parliament [and a few other political actors] despite his age  -he will turn 94 before leaving office- and against his stated wishes. The parties in parliament simply could not agree on anyone else and begged him to stay. He has never been voted for directly by the people he represents.

Napolitano was critical in brining the current coalition government into being after no party got enough votes to govern alone. The Left had run on the promise that they would never, never pact with Berlusconi. But, under Napolitano's prodding, they did. Berlusconi agreed to the coalition government and then changed his mind. But when he tried to pull his party out of the government, half of his deputies refused to go. So, in a sense, on both Left and Right, this is a government that no one voted for, no one wanted.

Added to the profound electoral disconnect is a profound immobilism and an unseemly refusal to cut back on the perks of power. For the past year, this circular reasoning has governed: No laws can be passed because on party has a majority; to call a new election and get a new majority, you first need to reform the electoral law; but no reform can be made for want of a majority.  The same logic applies to bills the parliamentarians don't like but which are hugely popular with voters, like cutting politician's salaries and pensions.

The there is also corruption. Despite multiple promises that the parties would run so-called clean slates that excluded anyone under indictment for a crime, this has not fully happened. Dozens of deputies have been elected -in Italy you vote for a parliamentary list rather than for a single candidate- with the impunity from prosecution that comes with it.

The notion that the political 'caste,' as Italians call it, is impervious to public opinion and corrupt to the core is part of the reason abstentionism has risen to higher than US levels. It has also fueled a whole gaggle of angry movements, from Grillo's 5 Stars to the Pitchfork crowd.

There is a sense that the political structure of this country resembles a termite infested house. It is impossible to know how much of the strength of the structure has been hollowed out and whether it could give at any moment. This fear might be fueling Napolitano's urgency; that and the fact he's too old to outrun the pitchforks.

So, what happens if the unthinkable happens? What if the political structure of Italy collapses under its own weight? The good news is that there is an insurance policy in place: Europe. The European Union would pick up the pieces. But, there is also bad news. After years of European enforced economic austerity, Europe has never been this unpopular. It has gone from being the parent who insists that you eat your vegetables, to being accused of, by the xenophobic and racist Lega Nord party of perpetrating a "crime against humanity," that would be accepting Italy into the Euro zone, and requiring that Italy adhere to European regulations on thing like recycling its trash and solving prison overcrowding. Oh yes...and pay its debts. The gall! The gall!

And these demagogues are just getting warmed up. Stay tuned.

Empty Nationalism, Enlightened Soccer Fans

Italy is a country that has surrendered most of its national sovereignty.  At least traditionally, when one thinks of an independent country, one thinks of the ability to write your own laws, manage your own economic policies, and have an independent foreign policy. Italy does none of these.

The country's laws are subject to European Union regulations, and are routinely changed to conform. In foreign policy, Italy follows the EU lead even, as in the attack on Libya, when it is against Italian strategic and economic interests. Italy does not set it's own monetary policy, has no real central bank, and it's government budget must be approved (or not) by Brussels.

Yet, despite having given away many of the tools of the modern nation state, the Italian political elite can still work up a heady froth of nationalist rhetoric, especially over issues that might impinge on a politician's ability to place a cousin in a good job.

Two recent cases have set off this empty nationalist tick. Italy's national airline, Alitalia, is going bankrupt. It has an aging fleet, high labor costs, and lots of debt. It also has been regularly feathered by politicians with people who need to be placed, routes that lose money, and facilities it does not need. Needles to say, it cannot compete with low cost airlines. It certainly cannot compete with the modern Middle Eastern airlines without a ton of new soldi (money).

The Italian state is one of the most indebted in the world, and yet, to save the airline, it is tapping into the money of the postal system to keep Alitalia flying for a little longer. Even then, the very ideal of selling the airline to a foreign rival -in this case, Air France- fills Italy's political leadership with dread. What if they highjack weathy Chinese tourists on their way to Rome and force them to see Paris? The fiends! 

The idea that a country that already receives more tourism than any other in the world needs a national airline, is highly suspect. When the country itself is almost bankrupt, then throwing the pension fund money from the postal system into a money-burning biz like an airline is a crime.   

The second nationalist tiff is over the Italia Telecom -- the phone company. Like all landline, legacy telecoms, this is buried in debt, is losing customers to wireless, and needs megabucks to lay down a broadband network, something the country genuinely needs. In this sad state, a bid came in from Spain's Telefonica. Suddenly Italian politicians were spouting nonsense about the need to guarantee the security of Italian phone and online connections by keeping the company Italian. Absurd to anyone who understands modern technology.  Even more absurd if you see how much investment is required to wire Italy (a land where ay hole in the ground stands a reasonable chance of striking an archeological find).

But, I guess, if you can't control it, better not to do it.  

Except when it really matters, when there is something truly important at stake. Take soccer. One of Italy's grand old soccer clubs, Internazionale of Milano, was just sold to an Indonesian billionaire. This provoked a very positive reaction from a football crowd not normally associated with enlightened, cosmopolitan reactions. But the fans know that for Inter to compete with their hated rivals, AC Milan, owned by Berlusconi, and Juventus, owned by the family that founded Fiat, the team needs more money. So, play ball!

As for Alitalia and Telecom, both Air France and Telefonica have since backed-off their offers. 

Is Europe's Media Making Racism Worse?

Europe is living through a particularly ugly spasm of racism. This time the targets are the gypsies, and the catalyst for the outburst comes from Greece, where police took a blonde 4 year-old from her (dark) gypsy parents on suspicion of child theft.

Unemployed and homeless in Rome.

The picture of the “stolen” blonde girl in dirt-caked tresses was printed and broadcast across Europe, stirring up an old specter: gypsies steal children to exploit and sell. Greek headlines were explicit: “Roma Steal Children” and “Amber Alert: Roma Circuit Snatch Babies.” In the media frenzy following the Greek case, in Ireland, authorities in different parts of the country took a fair-haired 7 year-old girl and a blond 2 year-old boy from traveler parents, the cases are unrelated, except in racism, only to return them both after dna tests showed –unlike in the Greek case-that they were indeed their gypsy parents’ biological offspring.

Living on the water's edge in Rome.

Europe’s fear and loathing of gypsies –known variously across Europe as Rom or Roma or Sinti, or Travelers– is very old and very bitter. It is part of a broader resentment and mistrust of immigrants and outsiders, a rejection that has begun to boil over with the economic crisis and that has been stoked by xenophobic politicians. Immigrant groups across Europe, are profiled by police, discriminated against in housing, and denied social services and benefits. But none, perhaps, are targeted as consistently and shamefacedly as the gypsies. Swedish police keep a file on all gypsies that enter the country. Hungary and the Czech Republic have been found guilty, in the European court of Justice, of denying low-income housing to gypsies and segregating their children in school.  Greek police routinely conduct sweeps of gypsy camps to find what they can find. It was in one of these that the blonde girl was discovered.

But this particular outbreak of racist hysteria has undoubtedly been fed and exacerbated by incompetent reporting and the bad habits of Europe’s media.

Living under a bridge in Rome.

First, there is very little, if any, fact checking of stories. Articles are self-checked with very little editorial assistance or support. Second, there is a pernicious reliance on single sources for stories, with little effort to include a second view or version of events. This is particularly evident when dealing with government authorities. In the Greek girl’s case, the police put out a press bulletin, which was repeated by the press, with speculative elaboration, but without questioning the police interpretation or incorporating other voices. Third, there is a preference in European journalism, including crime reporting, for full narratives, where the blanks of what we don’t know are backfilled by “informed” speculation to provide a more complete and compelling story. Combined with an almost total lack of attribution or sourcing for information, this “fly-on-the-wall” reporting makes for a good read but abysmal journalism. Again, in the Greek girl case, none of the deeply flawed assumptions (that gypsies could not have fair children, that therefore the child was stolen, and that this formed part of a shadowy criminal conspiracy) were questioned by the media. Instead, they were reiterated, and elaborated, and magnified.

In the end, the international attention did serve to identify the biological mother of the Greek girl. She was a gypsy living in Bulgaria. She voluntarily gave the child to the couple arrested in Greece, she said, because she could not provide for her 10 children. 

Birdstorm Season in Rome (and in Italian Politics)

Fall brings thousands of small migratory birds to Tiber alluvial plain. They flock in dense clouds that cross the sky in eerie beautiful formations. They fill the branches of the trees along the river, and dust the streets along the river with …  well, you know.  The Italian word for it translates as: birdstorm. Tourists and squeegee men love them (unless caught underneath); car owners and terrazzo lovers, not so much.  (There is a video at the bottom of this post.)

 Another birdstorm of sorts is playing out with the Italian government. The governing coalition has just presented a budget –which caused a flurry of condemnation from all sides of the political spectrum. Both center right and center left -ie the governing parties, though they don’t act like it- denounced the budget for what it does not do, namely increase spending or cut taxes. Even the namby-pamby center, which usually thinks that any government that avoid being kicked out of Europe is doing fine, had a few unkind words. The unions called for street demonstrations and a general strike. The business association, for the umpteenth time, declared that it despairs for the future of Italian industry…

Sadly, they are all right, of course. The budget will neither generate new jobs nor put the country on a more solid financial footing. It is neither fish nor fowl, neither stimulus nor austerity. Even more sadly, Italians are going to have to get used to such budgets. The country’s debt amounts to over 130% of its gdp and interest rates are at all time lows. I can’t see the country getting out from under this mountain of debt in the next 10 years. Most sadly of all, politicians are not being clear with the Italian public about what realistically can be expected.

If they did... that would really generate a ****storm no little birds could match.

6 Immigration Lessons from Italy (What Not to Do)

The failings of Italy's immigration law were made painfully and embarrassingly clear last week after two ships packed with over 700 refugees went down off the Italian island of Lampedusa. So far over 300 dead bodies have been recovered. The drownings have shone a spotlight on the disfunctional Italian immigration system, its negligent and overcrowded refugee camps, and its punitive legal treatment of migrants. 

Immigrant must check in with police on a regular basis.

6 Immigration Lessons from Italy

Italy’s current immigration law is a hardline, enforcement first measure. Know as Bossi-Fini , after its co-authors, the 2002 law greatly restricts legal immigration, abolishes many social services for immigrants, makes it difficult for children born in Italy to non-Italian parents to become citizens, and generally treats immigration as a law enforcement issue. In effect, the law is an anti-immigration measure, based on the notion that criminalization and zero-tolerance will repel migrants (illegal and legal). 

  

The problems of this approach are plain to see:

1.  By making legal immigration almost impossible, Italy has ensured that it receives only that form of immigration that is born of desperation. All those with skills and options, are driven elsewhere by bureaucratic barriers and government hostility. Its hardline immigration approch has resulted in exactly the clandestine migration it feared. 

Punitive legal measures that criminalize migrants, Italy have NOT prevented inflows of people. What these punitive measures have done is to make sure that those immigrants that do end up in Italy, often by harrowing illegal journeys during which they are at the mercy of criminal human trafficking cartels, have greater needs, are torn from their families, and have fewer social and economic resources at their disposal to make a new life for themselves. Once they are in country, their 'criminal' status renders them more vulnerable to abuse and fearful of authority. 

Graffiti in an immigrant social squat in Rome.

2. In addition to restricting legal immigration, Bossi-Fini also makes gaining Italian citizenship difficult for children born in Italy, to non-Italian parents. The result of this measure is to create a class of people who are born and raised as Italians, but who don't have the legal rights of citizenship. Thus, long term immigrants are prevented from putting down roots in the country. The result is a class of "guest workers" who live in Italy but heve neither full rights nor a stake in the future of the country.

4. Although Bossi-Fini allow for the the granting of asylum to refugees, there is little provision for how to deal with their presence. The asylum system is so starved of funds to the point of shame. Refugees spend years in overcrowded and underfunded camps. The  camp in Lampedusa was built for 200. It houses over a thousand, including unaccompanied minors mixed with adults. 

5. The idea that refugees, who are fleeing abject poverty of political violence will be deterred by the threat of a monetary fine is absurd and delegitimizes the justice system that has to prosecute helpless victims.  The magistrate charged with prosecuting the wretched souls who survived the shipwrecks last week spoke of his shame at enforcing the law. 

6. Italy itself is the victim of a European Union measure that required refugee seekers to stay in the country they first set foot in. Thus Italy, and Greece and Malta and Spain, poor countries by EU standards, are forced to carry a disproportionate share of refugees seeking entry to Europe. The last irony of Bossi-Fini is that most of the refugees and immigrants in the Italian anti-immigration system want to leave the country.

When Survival is a Crime

Two outrageous developments about the ship packed with refugees that went down off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy: 

In published interviews, some of the first rescuers, tourists boats and fishermen, describe a nightmarish scene in which the water was full of people calling for help and clinging to pieces of wood. They claim that the Italian coast guard ordered them back to port only to then to wait for "instructions" before beginning to rescue the drowning people. The coast guard deny this.

Under Italy's harsh immigration law, the survivors of the shipwreck, will be prosecuted for illegal entry into the country and face punitive fines. The magistrate's office has stated that they are ashamed of having to prosecute, but that they have no flexibility.

The Prime Minister and the Minister of Interior are making noises about modifying this "shameful" law. Meanwhile divers continue to bring up dead bodies from the sunken ship, 300 so far.

"The Mediterranean is a graveyard."

Ruined watchtowers dot the easternmost point of mainland Italy. 

A crippled ship weighed down with over 500 refugees caught fire and sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. A hundred or so were rescued alive, thanks to the unstinting bravery of Lampedusa's fishermen. But divers have filmed horrifying underwater images of the sunken ship, still packed with dead bodies, above and below deck, perhaps over 300.

The tragedy has set off a needed debate on how Italy, and Europe, treat the thousands of migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Africa and the Middle East. In Lampedusa, which is 70 miles off the Tunisian Coast and which has the largest refugee relocation center in Italy, the people held a moving candlelight vigil in remembrance and solidarity. The refugee relocation camp on the island has space for 250 people. It currently houses 1,200. The majority of refugees, including unaccompanied minors, sleep on the open ground for want of space. Other refugee centers in Italy are also overcrowded, and are reluctant accept more. Asylum requests can take years to process.

Sunrise over San Giovanni in Laterano, the Pope's Basilica.

Pope Francis, who has been a strong voice in favor of making immigration policy more humane, is offering the use of monasteries to house the refugees. The xenophobic right is calling for the use of the military to intercept and prevent refugees from approaching Italian shores. (The European Union already has a military border interception force --but it is housed in Warsaw, far from the Mediterranean.) 

But the tremendous scale of this tragedy has forced the Italian government to take action. They are ordering other refugee centers in the country to take more of the load. And they are calling on the European Union to change some of its more dysfunctional policies.

By European regulations, asylum seekers must remain in the first European point where they apply for asylum. This is to prevent migrants from moving about Europe, but the consequence is to put a tremendous strain on a few countries: Italy, Greece, and Malta, in particular.

Italy is calling on other European countries to accept to receive their fair share refugees. Currently three European countries receive a disproportionate amount of resettled migrants: UK, France and Germany. The smaller countries accept almost zero.

The tragedy has also opened debate over Italy's own highly restrictive immigration laws. (A magistrate has already announced that the survivors of the tragedy will face prosecution under the harsh Bossi-Fini immigration law in the books.) The law makes legal immigration to the country almost impossible, thereby exacerbating the use of desperate and dangerous illegal routes. Italy's immigration levels are higher than those of the small, exclusionary countries of Europe, but very low compared to the big three.

The vast majority of those who died this week were from Eritrea and Somalia -- the former a poor one-party state, and the latter a famously failed one. Both were once Italian colonies. Eritrea officially became an Italian colony in 1890, after Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia. Somalia followed later. In 1936, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland were declared provinces of Italian East Africa. In 1941, when the British expelled the Italians from the Horn of Africa, almost 10% of the population of Eritrea was Italian.