Antonio Di Pietro - Cambiare l’Italia

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27 July 2010

They want to turn off the Internet

28 e 29 July
In the streets against gagging

Italia dei Valori will participate in the demonstration on 28 and 29 July in piazza Montecitorio organised by ”il Popolo Viola” with the CGIL and with FNSI, against the financial package and the draft law on wiretapping. We will continue to fight both within Parliament and outside it to proclaim our firm opposition to a package that favours the tax dodgers and the local crafty lads and that is a burden on the citizens and the most vulnerable sectors of the population. We are ready to field all the initiatives needed to block the wiretapping draft law that damages the idea of the State based on the rule of law, that helps organised crime and the mafias and that gags the freedom of information and the free circulation of ideas on the Internet.

The Berlusconi government is trying to close down the web with a law that started off badly and has ended up worse. Because in the attempt to patch it up they have mangled it and made it unfeasible. Below I’m publishing the interview I gave to the daily paper La Repubblica.

”It wasn’t enough to gag the press and that’s still all there, but now they even want to close down Google.” Antonio Di Pietro has no doubts and he is announcing harsh obstructionism on the law.

LA REPUBBLICA:Rectifications on the Web within 48 hours. What do you think?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “Just as a veneer they want to have us believe that the regulation is useful for privacy, but in reality it is a way to turn off the Internet whose strength is in its capacity for self-regulation allowing each one to give their own comments. An example? The Internet was flooded with the news that I had been placed under investigation. But if I had insisted that, given that I had received no official notification, that news should be wiped out, the only solution was to close down the Internet, because by then the news had spread like wildfire.”

LA REPUBBLICA: Is it not right that the victim of false information insists on correction given that he has suffered damage?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “Now that the case has been closed, I have straight away issued my response. The democracy of the Internet lies in the fact that each one supplies his own version so that everyone can get an idea. But the idea of insisting on the removal of an item of news within 48 hours is not only impossible, because you would have to close down Google, but the consequence is that no one would ever publish anything because of the fear of penalties.”

LA REPUBBLICA: Is it not too much to start getting worked up about the bogeyman of putting a gag on Google?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “The Internet is a motorway where loads of vehicles travel, even the ones of the robbers, but to get them, you can’t close down the motorway, but you chase after them and arrest them. Berlusconi’s objective is to gag the Internet, an impossible objective.”

LA REPUBBLICA: Alternatives?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “Just one, close down the Google motorway. It’s a 360 degree censorship, that’s in fact not do-able. I publish an item of news. Blog posts follow on, these are linked and transmitted in thousands of mailing lists. I can’t remove the first news item, but I can respond through the civil courts and through the criminal courts. I can’t run after the communication ether, the cyberspace where I no longer have ownership. But the freedom of the Internet allows me to spread my version of the immediate news about the issue.”

LA REPUBBLICA: What is unacceptable in the draft law?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “It’s a law that started off badly and has ended up worse because in the attempt to patch it up they have mangled it and made it unfeasible. The jewels. The first: the request for a hearing in front of three judges. With tribunals below their staffing levels and because anyone who has already dealt with the case is barred, the thing will get blocked. The second: to have suppressed the Falcone regulation that allowed for wiretapping on satellite crimes. Now there are just the crimes of the mafia that are the final act of a progression of investigations that start from a “non-mafia crime”. The third: the possible environmental bugs in the private living space only if a crime is being committed. It’s an absurd logic because if I have caught someone in the act of committing a crime, I arrest them; I don’t go and listen in.”

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15 July 2010

Cesare: a name, a guarantee

This morning I was a guest on the show "Faccia a Faccia", presented by Massimo Giannini for RepubblicaTv. In the video and in the text that follows I am presenting a few of the salient parts of the show.

Cesare, always Cesare.
Through the years, the name Cesare has always been a guarantee. I’m thinking of Cesare Geronzi of Cesare Previti and now of “Cesare Silvio Berlusconi". Cesare is Cesare, that’s what history teaches us. Cesare does what he likes. But in fact, does it seem possible to you that every time Berlusconi is involved in happenings like this of the new P2, he never knows anything?
Often, in relation to judicial affairs that have seen the involvement of the President of the Council, I have been accused of using the theory of “He could not have not known”. Too many times Berlusconi has hidden himself behind the “I didn’t know”. In fact, he could not have not known that his employees falsified the accounts so as to pay bribes. After that, in order to reward them, he brought them into Parliament. Even yesterday, Berlusconi showed that he was pretending not to know. After the resignation of Cosentino, he reacted by saying that the former undersecretary “can thus work better in Campania for the PDL”. A Region where he is currently in the position of coordinator. The true puppet-master of this whole story is still there and he is called Silvio Berlusconi. That’s why we of Italia dei Valori are continuing in our solid opposition “without ifs and buts”. And that is why we are once more telling our allies that it’s useless to “use the foil for fencing”.

We will ask for a “no confidence” vote for the whole government
It is clear that the executive is kept in power if it has a parliamentary majority. And it is clear that the parliamentary majority right now, is with this government. But it is also true that with this electoral law it’s unlikely that things will change. In fact, the deputies will no longer have the courage to take a stand, given that they are fearful of no longer finding a space for themselves in the list of candidates at the next elections. For this reason, it is important to start now with a strong denunciation within Parliament. Thus it is important to propose an alternative to the government by means of new elections. Otherwise, we will never manage to gain a “no confidence” vote for this government. For all these reasons Italia dei Valori is proposing this vote of “no confidence”. A motion that will be turned down by the government, but it will be an opportunity for discussion and for informing the citizens about the economic, judicial and political reasons why this government must go away.
The citizens have to be informed in time, by a strong opposition inside and outside Parliament. Otherwise, even at the next elections, many Italians will go to the urns without knowing the bad that the centre right has done and is doing.

Post-Berlusconi-ism
I believe that to entrust to an assassin a scalpel to provide treatment to a patient whom he has already injured is not possible. As a consequence, I believe that to entrust to Berlusconi a new government to take the place of the current one is a great big way of taking us for a ride. Widespread agreements mean creating a Majority in parliament that makes it possible to keep a government going forward. According to you, do you think it is possible that I could sit next to people who are voting for this economic package, or for the draft law on wiretapping, that is the same parliamentarians that have voted for the amendments in favour of the usual crafty ones? For me this hypothesis cannot exist.

...

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Criminal lies

This morning, instead of dealing with the thousands of political issues that I have to tackle in my role as President of Italia dei Valori, I’ve had to spend time preparing a court case for defamation against the director of “Libero”, Maurizio Belpietro, for another serious error that he has committed to my detriment. He has put a headline across all the columns of the front page: DI PIETRO E IL CAPOCOSCA. (download the PDF of the article 111Kb)
If you then go and read the article that is however hidden on page 13, the journalist Nuzzi points out: “It’s certain that Di Pietro didn’t know that the ones asking for his photo were a gang of men from the ‘ndrangheta”. (see the sentence that is highlighted – 401Kb)
So basically, you discover that behind the headline “splashed” on the front page, there is nothing more than a photo asked for by some people who were present in a restaurant where I happened to be.
Even this morning – and yesterday – and the day before yesterday and every day for almost the last twenty years –I come across people in the street or at a restaurant or at the airport or the station, who ask me for a photo as a souvenir. It’s something that a person in the public eye cannot shun, even out of respect for the person asking for it and from whom it’s certainly not possible to ask for a copy of their criminal record.
And so why give so much importance to this insignificant fact as to give a headline on the front page? There is a reason, and I think it is a criminal one: to connect myself to other people who were arrested yesterday. People who were accused of having created and participated in a Milan branch of the ‘ndrangheta. So basically to make people believe that I could have some role in that mafia association.
The headline, appearing in enormous letter- size, prepared by or on the orders of the editor Maurizio Belpietro, contains historically false allusions, that are purposely of a denigrating nature and thus maliciously defamatory.

...

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10 July 2010

09/07/2010

AGAINST THE GAGGING BY THE P2

Some time ago already, Licio Gelli was surprised by the extent to which the student had managed to surpass the Master.
And what he was referring to was the skill with which Berlusconi engineered the Plan for the Democratic Rebirth of the P2. Today’s youngsters know little or nothing about this plan, but what they certainly do know is that the Venerable One’s plan is diametrically opposed to that which is entrenched in our Constitution.
The P2 was, and still is a secret Freemason Lodge, established with the obvious aim of undermining this Country’s socio-political and institutional structures, which it uses solely to protect and further the interests of a very specific group of people. Today, many of the Lodge’s associates, including our current Prime Minister, hold senior positions in Government and in Parliament. Unfortunately, these are not merely statements drawn from some or other spy story, but they are undeniable facts. Indeed, they were confirmed by none other than Gelli himself in an interview he gave just a few months ago. And the proof is there for everyone to see: slowly, slowly, step by step, everything that was written in that document discovered at is coming true. Their progress has been slow, thanks to our founding fathers who were well aware of the potential traps that could be lying in wait in a democratic State and wisely chose to include a whole range of checks and balances in the Constitution in order to block any subversive temptations. However, after two years of this Berlusconi Government, the final pieces of the puzzle are now being put in place, namely, control of the media and the subjugation of judicial authority. The latter would eliminate the separation of the three types of powers and would entail a constitutional amendment, but this would require a far larger majority. So the Government has instead decided to bypass this obstacle by limiting the magistrature’s ability to do its job and by denying them the necessary resources.
It is within this scenario that the latest proposed bill on wiretapping falls. A piece of legislation that is patently contrary to the principles of legality and justice precisely because it forms part of a distinctly subversive plan.
Indeed, in addition to gagging our freedom of information and muzzling the Web, it also deprives the magistrates of an essential investigation tool and clearly violates our constitutional right to be informed and to obtain justice.
The regulations contained within this proposed bill are criminal-friendly rules that, should they be approved, would be both a disgrace and a harsh blow to the entire justice and information system in this Country.

But what would change for the magistrates and the journalists were the proposed bill to become law?

WHAT WOULD CHANGE FOR THE MAGISTRATES:

- SERIOUS EVIDENCE OF A CRIME: wiretapping would only be permitted in cases where there are serious grounds for suspecting that a crime has been committed and where surveillance is deemed to be indispensible to the investigations. The Public Prosecutor will have to have “specific evidentiary reasons”, in other words, other concrete evidence proving that the person to be placed under surveillance is indeed guilty.

- COURT AUTHORISATION: in order to get the go-ahead for wiretapping, it will no longer be enough for the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate to agree but, instead, authorisation will have to be granted by panel of Court judges.

- SURVEILLANCE OF PARLIAMENTARIANS: whenever any parliamentarian is heard talking to an individual that is under surveillance, all the related documentation will have to be sealed and stored in the archives. In order to proceed with the wiretapping, authorisation will have to be obtained from the Parliament and the Senate, even if the politician in question was using someone else’s telephone at the time.

WHAT CHANGES FOR THE JOURNALISTS:

- MEDIA BLACK-OUT ON INVESTIGATIONS: It will be prohibited for anyone to publish or broadcast any information contained in any pertinent document, even a non-confidential one, until after the preliminary hearing has been completed. For example, if this law had already been approved, the public would not have known anything about the investigations into the tender contracts relating to the G8 and the wind farms or, for that matter, the dramatic deaths of Stefano Cucchi and Federico Aldovrandi.

- NO TELEVISION CAMERAS AND RECORDERS IN THE COURTROOM: no recording whatsoever during any trial without the consent of all parties. No pictures of the Courtroom itself. Therefore, this Country’s citizens will no longer be able to watch the any of the various trial proceedings on TV.

- THE D’ADDARIO RULE: No audio or video recordings may be made without prior permission from the interested party. Anyone who is not a professional journalist and is guilty of making such so-called “fraudulent” audio or video recordings will be sentenced to 4 years in jail, without any right of appeal.

- THE WEB: websites are equated with the newspapers. Bloggers are obliged to post retractions within 48 hours. This would be tantamount to a death sentence for interactive journalism and the spreading of information via the Web.

We say “NO” to this evil piece of legislation and, in order to show our indignation regarding this so-called “gagging law”, today we joined in whole-heartedly in this day of silence promoted by the FNSI (the Italian National Press Federation).
The Italia dei Valori party will press on with its battle to defend freedom of information in this Country and, make no mistake, we will do everything in our power to ensure that this early bird and dancing-girl strategy that is so typical of obsolete regimes does not prevail.
This is a battle for democracy, a battle to defend the “state of law” and those principles that our founding fathers entrenched in our Constitution. Furthermore, should this proposed bill ever become law, we will not surrender, but instead we will call for yet another referendum in order to prove to Berlusconi that there are thousands of Italian citizens that have realised that this piece of legislation blocks criminal investigations, conceals the business affairs of mafia members and fraudsters and gags the press by patently riding roughshod over our right to inform and to be informed.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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4 July 2010

They even want to gag the web

This government’s repeated attempt to put a gag on the Web is a mania that started a long way away and it is going on without respite. But we of Italia dei Valori will make use of all the parliamentary and “civil disobedience” tools that we possess, in order to block this. The censorship attempts of Berlusconi & Co. started with the Pisanu decree (“urgent measures to tackle international terrorism”), promulgated in 2005, that required the identification of all those who access the internet from public places. A regulation that doesn’t exist in any western country, not even in those places where anti-terrorism measures are more rigorous, but that was extended without any real motive up until now. Thanks to that regulation there’s an obstacle to the development of wifi in our country. In the attempt to gag the web, the Berlusconi Government has also considered the structural issue: as regards the coverage of broadband, Italy is in position 21 in the OECD classification, with a good 3 percentage points below the European average. This means slow connection speeds and less possibility to connect to information (text, video and audio) for Italian users. All this is going on while in the whole of the western world, broadband is considered essential both for the recovery of the economy as well as the extension of rights. It’s enough to look at Finland where a law that comes into force this month, lays down the right of every citizen to be able to make use of a broadband connection of at least 1 Mbps that will go up to 2 Mbps by the end of 2012. But the biggest attempt to gag the Italian web users is coming from the wiretapping draft law itself: the regulations it contains are aimed at putting information websites and newspapers on an equal footing, obliging bloggers to rectify an error within 48 hours. This would mean the death of both participative journalism and the spread of news via the web. For this very reason, we of Italia dei Valori propose the cancellation of the Pisanu decree, the financing of the development of broadband (with money obtained from the increase in the cost of TV concessions) and the immediate withdrawal of the wiretapping draft law. To defend the free circulation of ideas on the web we are willing to use “civil disobedience” in parliament and to go for democratic revolt even by means of the use of referenda.

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2 July 2010

We are out in the streets again today

We are out in the streets again today. This time at the side of the journalists with straight backs and the citizens who want to protect the right laid down in the Constitution: press freedom. Because defending a right out in the streets and with the streets is one of the last weapons left in this country.
It’s an Italy that is imploding. From industries in crisis to those who have been laid off, from the security services without funds, to cuts to the culture sector, to research that has been forgotten and the school that has been mortified. A few days ago, we were out in the streets to demonstrate together with the “precarious workers”. Today we are together with the information workers.
At 5:00pm we will be at the side of the National Press Federation, of “Popolo Viola” and “Articolo 21” to defend democracy. The DDL {government bill} on wiretapping , rechristened “gagging law” is a low blow to the history and the freedom of this nation. The democracy obtained by our “constituent fathers” is about to be entombed by the policies taken forward by this Government. An executive that will be remembered for the “ad personam” laws that guarantee impunity to the usual well known ones and for the memoranda dictated in the rooms of Palazzo Grazioli. In fact, the old fascist era “Mattinale” has been dusted off, that’s the one that indicates and imposes the line to be taken by the family newspapers as well as by all those journalists that have decided to sell off our democracy for a dish of lentils. That is to anaesthetize consciences and hide the misdeeds of the government from the citizens.
Battling against this havoc there are only a few newspapers, the internet and the last few TV stations not managed by Berlusconi. It’s not by chance that the wiretapping ddl is actually attempting to gag the internet and free information, to block citizens from having the right to be informed and to have justice and to take away from the magistrates a fundamental tool to fight the mafias and organised crime.
Berlusconi wants to approve this ddl as soon as possible and he has imposed the discussion in the Lower House on 29 July. The President of the Council is willing to do anything as long as he gets a “yes” for the gagging law before the autumn. Italia dei Valori will continue its battle inside and outside parliament to stop this little dictator from destroying the State based on the rule of law and to turn the Constitution into waste paper.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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23 June 2010

Journalism school

The fact that I am obliged for the umpteenth time to defend myself from matters that have been amply proved in the courts, does not surprise me. I have spent half my life defending myself from the attempts to discredit me. Antonio Di Pietro is a person who is unpopular with the politics of the Palace, given that in this environment there’s in force a strange rule according to which if you are not blackmailable, you are out of the pack. I am outside the pack and I am proud of that.
In fact, what worries me most is the comatose state of the news provision in Italy, and that relates across the board to the main daily papers and the national TV news programmes. This is a situation that I would not know how to describe better than Marco Travaglio has done in the editorial he wrote today in "Il Fatto Quotidiano" that is published below.

Journalism school
Rather than the fact itself, that has already been chewed over and ruminated on for 6 years with all the investigations being shelved, the recording of Di Pietro’s name in the register of those under investigation, for the age-old polemics about the reimbursement of election expenses in 2004 is enlightening because of the way it is handled by the "advocates of civil liberties" newspapers: those that come out every day not to provide news, but to cover up the shameful things of their editors who are convicts or defendants. Let’s start with “Il Giornale” (Berlusconi) and “Libero” (Angelucci). The day before yesterday, Feltri displayed his tears because don Gelmini was sent for trial for sexual abuse: “That that protagonist of murky events finishes up in the newspapers is an atrocious suffering for everyone” (and he knows something about that having pasted onto the front page a false police news item about Boffo’s homosexuality). Now in fact he uses the headline: “HE’LL LEARN” “Former prosecutor in trouble. If he were consistent, he would have to leave Parliament”. “Not even the umpteenth scandal (sic – editor) will convince Tonino to give up claiming to be the model of the rule of law.”
Here we are: the facts count for nothing. What’s important is to be able to put Di Pietro and Berlusconi on the same level in a night when all the cows are black and thus to expel the moral issue from political debate. “Libero”, the satirical insert in the newspaper “Il Giornale”, has the following heading on the front page: “WHERE HAS HE PUT THE MONEY?” Is it talking about the bribes of the Angelucci family or of Berlusconi? No. It’s talking about the reimbursement of the IDV election expenses. Belpietro (have you understood well: Belpietro) is grumbling because Di Pietro “has come out pure as a lily” from all the investigations, in fact he even dares to “have the attitude of being the victim of slanderers and political opponents": yes, well, 30 court actions in Brescia all based on nothing and finishing up as nothing are only a few. To have the attitude of being the victim you have to decriminalise your own crimes and get off scot free with amnesties, Statute of Limitations, Cirielli, “lodo Schifarli” or “Al Fano”, legitimate impediment. But this time the advocate of civil liberties, Belpietro has great hopes that Di Pietro will be arrested: “We are waiting for phase 2, that of the clean handcuffs, one day it will happen” as long as they find “a true judge”.

…

Marco Travaglio

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28 May 2010

Blog: rectification means close down

The most disturbing thing about the draft law on wiretapping approved by the Senate’s Justice Committee is that the further the legislative process goes ahead, the worse the law is made. Each member of the Majority wants to add something of his own to it, to leave his indelible mark as a censor so as to please the boss.

At the centre of the censorship, there will be, above all, those – like many of you – that provide information on the Internet. Because with these new regulations all the sites (even the ones done by amateurs that are not registered as journalistic sources) will be considered to be like newspapers, thus subject to the obligation of rectification under the rules of the “Laws of the press”.

Any person who is cited on a website or a blog will be able to request rectification: in this case, the blogger “has to publish it within forty eight hours of the request, with the same graphic characteristics, the same access methodology and the same visibility as the news item to which it refers”. For anyone who doesn’t respect the time frame and the modality set down, the penalty is not to be laughed at: you risk a fine of up to 12,500 euro.

This means that behind an amateur blog or website there always has to be someone available for publishing rectifications. The blogger can no longer go off on holiday, be absent for a week-end, decide to take a pause from working on the Internet.

Otherwise it is imagined that behind every portal – even amateur ones – there’s always a redaction team. It’s the tomb of the freedom of information on the Internet. Above all now that it has been seen that thanks to the Internet it is possible to create important mobilization, without the need for great economic resources, or the support of the big newspapers.

This censorship fury against the free flow of ideas is not surprising: it is typical of the regimes in their death throes. This is what history teaches us, from Mussolini to Ceausescu. At the moment of exhaling their final breath, the dictators have tightened ever more their censorship networks. But the more they did that the more the voices of the Opposition got louder. This is why the moment has come to shout out our refusal. The louder that is, the sooner will come the end of the Berlusconian regime.

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21 May 2010

Standing by Santoro, as always

They’ve finally managed: the politicians, that is, in the person of Masi who played the role of executioner on this occasion, have finally managed to send Santoro on early retirement, and that just when Tremonti is trying to stop anyone going on pension at all in order to save money.

No one can deny the fact that Santoro had the knack of really ticking off the politicians of both the majority and the opposition, indeed everyone except the Italia dei Valori, so much so that just to be finally rid of him they have gone ahead and blown a 10 million Euro hole in the budget just to be able to cancel the contract for ‘Annozero’. I hasten to add that Santoro deserves every penny he gets in return for having had to endure this mobbing by a bunch of yobs.

I also have to say that it was absolutely insane for them to go spend this amount of public money to get rid of the best journalist on the block. A balance sheet loss that is indeed far worse than merely the money they are offering Santoro, especially if we also take into account the loss of market share, and therefore also of advertising revenue, that the absence of Italy’s most influential journalist will surely create in the coffers of this public company. An incalculable loss for RAI that also just happens to once again benefit Mediaset (no surprise there!) as happened in the battle against Sky TV..

But what is the reason for this foolhardy and unjustified expense? How have we let ourselves get to this point? I’ll leave it to the editorial in today’s edition of “Il Fatto Quotidiano” written by one of Santoro’s most ardent followers and close friend, Marco Travaglio, to describe and to explain what they would rather we forget about this often censured, persecuted, criticised, threatened and humiliated Santoro who was nevertheless always on the front line as a tiger of the press. Once again we wish to express all our support to Santoro and urge him to continue his vehement battle for freedom of information. A battle that all the citizens of this Country, all the movements and the public desperately need, just as a diver needs oxygen, seeing that here in Italy we have all been submerged in a sea of corruption, institutional decay and political propaganda.

Annozero, the final scene

It may be simply because Santoro so loves the movies, but his destiny dictates that he should always appear in the final scene and that the rest of the movie be forgotten. Everyone remembers that he moved to Mediaset back in ’96, but everyone forgets that he had been shown the door by the Ulivo’s RAI and the fact is that, here in Italy, a television journalist can only really work either for RAI or for Mediaset, or else he doesn’t work at all. Everyone remembers that in 2005 he stood election in the European Union elections, but everyone forgets that at that stage he hadn’t worked for three years, since the Bulgaro Edict, or perhaps worse still, he was being paid not to work. Now everyone is focusing on the agreement to get him out of RAI, but everyone forgets the four Seasons of ANNOZERO: not so much because of the many political attacks from the right wing the centre and the left-wing (indeed these are like medals of valour), but more so because of the daily guerrilla warfare, far beyond any mobbing, conducted by the company against the most popular, cheapest to produce and most profitable discussion programme on Italian television. I don’t know any of the precise details of the agreement, but what I do know is that Michele, who was due to go on pension in 2016, will receive three times his annual salary as presenter (one third of what Vespa gets paid) and he will not be subject to any restraint of trade. Nor do I have any idea how he intends to pass the time in future, other than to continue with his docu-fiction programmes. In other words, I have no idea what the final scene will show. However, I know only too well what the previous scenes have shown. I know that last autumn, in accordance with orders received from above, RAI was using any excuse to prevent the annual seasonal resumption of the ANNOZERO programme. I also know that during the press conference called to announce the resumption of ANNOZERO, the Director of RaiDue also said that, had it been up to him, there was no way that Santoro would have gone on air again (at which point his station’s ratings would have dropped to below zero). I know that for the rest of the year we kept on hearing about wiretapped conversations between Trani, Berlusconi and his hangers-on within Rai, Agcom, the Controlling Body and even the Upper Council of the Magistrature who were plotting to shut down ANNOZERO. I also know that, in April, Rai lodged an appeal with the Court of Cassation against the ruling that obliged the company to put ANNOZERO back on air, thereby subjecting Santoro to another three years of legal battles against the company for which he was working (in addition to the seven previous years of battles). I know that our esteemed opposition parties studiously ignored the entire matter. Indeed, they immediately agreed to support the majority’s call for Santoro’s removal, only to then stir up controversy because – a horrible thing to say – he will take the money and go, rather than leave it for RAI, which has been so good to him. I know that no one can continue indefinitely to work for a company that doesn’t want him. One that not only never says thank you, but then also continues to kick him in the teeth at every turn. Santoro managed to keep it up for four years, more because of political tenacity than professional reasons, at the expense of his guts and his nervous system and spurred on by daily telephone calls, threats, bullets, pressure, warnings, fines, rebukes, sabotage, spanners in the works and mudslinging in the press and on the television (even on RaiDue), as well as his drive for fair treatment, a questioning nature, justness and balance, Travaglio’s contract, Vauro’s cartoons and Ruotulo’s smears. The kind of treatment that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, never mind one of my best friends. We shouldn’t be surprised therefore if the pressure cooker has finally blown its lid and the bird has flown the coop. It certainly is a great loss for Television in general and even more so for RAI and the politicians behind it, even thug the losers are only too happy to be so. It is important to note that, looking back on the entire ANNOZERO movie, scene by scene, that we would never have got to this point if the political parties and the television broadcasters had only respected the principle of freedom of information, in other words, if they had only respected the Constitution. However, on one particular March evening, at the Paladozza of Bologna, we discovered that there is indeed life after Rai, that there is indeed life after television and that there is life after the political parties. Today, the public of the Paladozza feel lost, perhaps even betrayed due to a lack of communication (Santoro is prevented from saying anything until the agreement has been signed) and the regime disinformation, which, as happened in Biagi’s case, has depicted him as a greedy man that is only interested in money (totally ignoring the fact that here in Italy a man can earn far more by arse-creeping, bowing and scraping). Whatever the case may be, I simply cannot picture Michele as a pensioner sitting on some park bench. And the public of the Paladozza, well, there is no way that they will accept defeat.

Marco Travaglio

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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23 April 2010

The infamous "Il Giornale"

The Berlusconi family’s propagandist daily newspaper, "Il Giornale", has been found guilty on no less than three occasions in recent days following charges I laid against them for defamation (read the article regarding my three complaints). Three articles devoid of any foundation – in which journalism took a back seat and was superseded by the running down of an adversary – which left me no other choice but to resort to legal action. Now the justice system has clearly impeached the journalists in question and sentenced the newspaper’s publishers to compensate me to the tune of around 350-thousand Euro for the slanderous lies they printed. This is not the first time that the Premier’s publications have been ordered to compensate yours truly and I honestly believe that it won’t be the last time.

Here is the text of an interview that I granted this afternoon, at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Piazza Piemonte in Milan, where I was busy unveiling my latest book, entitled "Ad ogni costo" (“At all costs”).

From way back when I worked as a magistrate, to now that I am a Deputy for the Italia dei Valori party, “Il Giornale” has had to pay me hundreds of thousands of Euro in compensation.
However, the main issue here is not actually the large amounts of money they have paid out in compensation, which they view as an investment, but the attention should rather be focussed on the serious damage they have wrought on the information system in general, because they are no longer printing critical news, preferring to either spread disinformation on events that never took place and then passing them off as if they had, or ignoring events that did in fact take place.
Furthermore, they always do this at election time, with the aim of de-legitimising the opposing political forces.
This goes far beyond news journalism. Indeed it destroys journalism by resorting to defamation. It leaves me no other choice but to resort to taking legal action, not so much in order to get compensation for damages, but rather to obtain a ruling that re-establishes the truth.
This legal action now also includes a number of similar cases that we are currently busy putting together as a result of the latest acts of slander concerning my alleged personal involvement in matters involving priests and various other matters.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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30 March 2010

Passaparola Monday 29 March

Text:
Good day to you all. We are not going to talk about the elections obviously, because we don’t know how they have gone, even though more or less we can forecast how things have gone apart from a couple of regions that are in a precarious position.

Raid on Sky
Instead, let’s talk about a topic that I believe is becoming important, namely the role of the police forces in our democracy. As you know, things are coming out all the time, cases of people who have been beaten up after being stopped, after being arrested. We know the names of some of them, as in the case of Uva, of Aldrovandi, and many other cases whose stories have been told, in the last few years, the last few months that indicate a dangerous increase in the violence carried out by those who instead should be suppressing or containing violence or using it for institutional reasons.
Just recently we have had the overturning at Appeal of the first level verdicts and in part giving absolution for the torture and the violent acts in Bolzaneto at the G8 in 2001, with the convictions and either prison sentences or obligation to pay compensation in the case of the crimes that were timed out due to the Statute if Limitations by some dozens of officers of the police force or the prison forces and in recent days we have had indications about people who were picked up during the demonstrations, just because they were expressing their thoughts by talking, shouting, waving banners, placards and it’s not known for what reason they have to be identified or even taken away. There are even people who are summoned by the police at the same time as there are Centre Right demonstrations in such a way that it is sure that they are at the Questura or at the Police station and that they don’t go to the Centre Right demonstrations. These are not things that can be done, even though, unfortunately, they are being done all the same.
From this point of view, it’s not so worrying that these things happen, given that in every set of people there are some “bad apples”. I personally start from the point of view that the Police forces are right, that the Carabinieri are right, that the magistrates are right. When it’s a matter of “cops and robbers” I am on the side of the “cops”, until there’s evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, in recent days, evidence to the contrary is coming in and not only in amazing cases, like that of Cucchi, but also in other less well known cases and in cases that are not talked about so much.
For example, yesterday I happened to tell the story that was told to me by some eye witnesses, that happened in the Sky building in Via Salaria in Rome on Friday, when Berlusconi arrived with the usual escort armed to the teeth and this is right, the escort of the President of the Council is something really necessary. He went to the Sky building for a live interview that the newspapers then talked about. Few people saw it live even though it was very well publicised. I think there were 50 thousand TV viewers and thus a media share , a very poor share of 0.3% on RAI for a night. The broadcasting event of Thursday evening at the Paladozza put together by Michele Santoro on Sky got 2.5%, whereas Berlusconi got 0.3%.
Berlusconi went in with his followers, with his escort and with the whole caboodle and meanwhile what was happening in the building was something else like the RAI Director General, Masi, would say: “not even in Zimbabwe!”
Two men of the building’s internal security staff, discovered that in the graphics department, on a great big four metres by four glass wall, an A4 sheet of white paper had been attached with a saying printed on it. What was printed was: “Odiare i mascalzoni è cosa nobile” {to hate the scoundrels is something noble} this is one of the sayings of Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, an intellectual born in 35 AD in Calagurris in Spain, later moving to Rome and he became the really famous Quintilian. It was he that wrote this. Why was it printed out and stuck up on that glass wall in the Sky graphics department? Because Daniele Luttazzi on Thursday evening, the day before, in the Paladozza, in her monologue, had recalled this saying and with a single phrase from Quintilian, she demolished months and months of bullshit about the party of hate, of love, the ones that incite to hatred and so on. She said what I personally think and that I had said after the throwing of the souvenir at the face of the President of the Council, that anyway that guy was mad and that he’s nothing to do with hatred, but in any case even if a person in his own home wants to hate, he’s absolutely free to hate whom he likes. What’s important is that the hate doesn’t get transformed into acts of violence.
Thus two young people in the graphics department in the Sky building found that they wanted to share this phrase and they had stuck it up. The men of the building’s security staff, the internal security, took note of that wording and they told the presidential guard, the escort of the President of the Council and at that point something happened that for a democracy is at the limits of the incredible, in fact beyond the limits. Two broad-shouldered officers of the Digos {Division of General Investigations and Special Operations}, two human mountains, landed on that floor where there is this glass wall, they noted that there really was this sheet of paper with this wording attached there. They closed all the windows so that people outside couldn’t see what they were doing inside, evidently realizing that they were doing something big. After that, one of the two, after having sequestered the “evidence”, the piece of paper, moved towards the main computer. He started to operate on the keyboard. He tried to open the last files that had been opened to try and corner, to identify the person who had written and printed out that wording, but unfortunately for him, the graphic designers don’t use a mouse, they use a graphics tablet and this officer didn’t know how to use it, so he asked a young woman to help him to open the last used files in an attempt to discover the authors of this horrendous misdeed, without knowing that anyway the two young men had already been taken down below, to the entrance and were being interrogated by another pair of Digos officers and that they had immediately declared, given that they had nothing to hide, that they had printed out and stuck up this wording.
At that point they were identified and it seems they were about to be taken to the Questura. I don’t know if it was a procedure of “stop”, or what they would have wanted to do to these two young men, above all what crime they were meant to have committed, “sticking up a saying of Quintilian”, “using prohibited Latin citations”, “unauthorised carrying of Latin culture”, it’s not known what the crime is that these donkeys had identified for the crime-filled behaviour that is according to me absolutely legitimate and in fact to be done. Anyway it happened that someone from the company’s legal office intervened and he managed at least, to prevent these people being taken away by the Police.
Quintilian however has not yet been found. But they are looking for him with the dog unit, and with road blocks so they have not lost hope of being able to grab this leader of this gang of terrorists that is settling in, in the graphics department of the Sky building.
Do you see that you get to these extremes, to punish ideas, to punish culture, only because with an excess of zeal, worthy of the best causes, as soon as they read “Odiare i mascalzoni è cosa nobile” they immediately thought of Berlusconi, and yet it did not say “hate Berlusconi” but it said “hate scoundrels”. We would need to interrogate the private police officers and the Digos officers and say to them: “How is it that you immediately thought of Berlusconi when you read that message, given that it’s unlikely that Quintilian, in the first century after Christ, was referring to Berlusconi when he wrote “odiare i mascalzoni è cosa nobile”? If you skip over these things, if there is no one who takes the responsibility for what happened, if this item of news remains marginalised in the pages of “Il Fatto quotidiano” or on our blogs, if no one starts to ask very politely for an account of the episode from the Rome Questura about the behaviour of these officers and if the Rome magistracy does not take action against these gentlemen, and if their own colleagues don’t start saying: certain types of behaviour have nothing to do with us, it will mean that we have taken another step forward towards the “regime” on Friday afternoon at 2:30pm, when this incredible fact took place and a police officer went into the PC of a worker to try to find out who stuck up on a wall a message from a Latin author. If we madly let these things go by, we get used to them and the inurement makes another piece of the “regime” get into our heads and thus it makes us ever more willing to tolerate new episodes of abuse of power, because this is clearly an abuse of power, as big as a house, to the detriment of two citizens who have done absolutely nothing wrong, having exercised a constitutional right laid down in article 21 of the Constitution.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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27 March 2010

My response to Panorama

Here is the video and the text of my address from yesterday's direct streaming of the "Cast an Informed Vote" event with regard to the article entitled "pre-election mudslinging" involving yours truly, as published in today's edition of the Panorama weekly.

Text of the address

For anyone who is not yet aware of what's going on, as is now usual just 48 hours prior to the commencement of the voting, the usual publication belonging to the usual proprietor has come up with yet another of its invented fake scoops in an attempt to sling mud at me and raise a question mark as regards the operations of the Italia dei Valori party.
I was late today because I was in Calabria where I held a number of meetings and where various people took many many photographs of me. While I was walking around they kept on asking to take a photograph, then another and then yet another. Now, either I must choose to be a monk or a politician, especially during an election campaign. Now, I don't know whether or not, in amongst those hundreds of photographs, there may even be one showing me standing near some or other individual with a criminal record. However, should such an instamatic photograph suddenly come to light sometime in the next two years, what would I be expected to say? When I hold a meeting or an election dinner, I can't be expected to check the credentials of everyone who wants to take a photograph.
The truth is that everyone is well aware of what the Italia dei Valori party is and who I am, and everyone knows full well that no one will be able to join us if they have a criminal background. I say this both for me and in defence of a lady, Cinzia Damonte, who is a member of the public. In the past few hours, on the Web, a photograph has been doing the rounds, showing her in the company of a number of people at an election dinner, including one particular individual who has a criminal record. How is she supposed to know that amongst the people at the election dinner there is someone who is no good? This woman is literally in tears, she is distraught because she has never been involved in politics. She has always taken part in social activities. A good, person, beyond reproach, who now, at the height of the election campaign, finds herself being accused of having associated with a bad individual. This is not politics, it is merely an attempt to sling mud at a political party in order to try to hold it back at election time.
Thus, via completely innocuous sources, even the major newspapers are now saying all sorts of things. Just think of the Contrada case, where I was in Carabinieri barracks, surrounded by a large number of Carabinieri officers, including a policeman who later turned out to have been sentenced for offences that are now well known. However, I was in the Carabinieri barracks, so what could I really have got up to anyway?
The matter of Panorama's pseudo scoop is truly ridiculous (Read the article ). Indeed, it borders on the grotesque. I have nothing to do with criminals. At the time, I was a Euro-parliamentarian. We were working on Bulgaria's entry into the European Union and I was the Head of the Italian delegation for relations with Eastern Europe. I was often called upon by ministers, parliamentarians and politicians, even from Bulgaria. On those occasions, I sometimes even got to meet their entourages. Now, if one of these people was then arrested in 2008, six years later, what on earth does that have to do with me?
I was given ti understand that I was dealing with honest people (see who they are who they were), like a man by the name of Ahmed Dogan, who Panorama describes as a criminal, a fraudster that has spent time in prison. Okay, so let's clarify: Ahmed Dogan did indeed spend time in prison, but that was during the time of the communist regime and he was imprisoned because he was a patriot and a member of the resistance. Subsequently, after the fall of the regime, he established a party and became a parliamentarian. His party went on to become the third largest political party in Bulgaria and is a member of the ELDR, the very same European parliamentary group of which the Italia dei Valori party also belongs.
So what am I actually trying to say then? In terms of international relations, it is a perfectly normal everyday occurrence for a European parliamentarian to talk to another parliamentarian, ministers and businessmen from a country such as Bulgaria, which is looking to join the European Union.
At that time, the other individual mentioned by Panorama, a certain Mr. Pavlov, was not a wanted man. Later, he was murdered by none other than the Mafia, perhaps the victim of a revenge killing or something along those lines. However, I most certainly had nothing to do with what happened to this gentleman. It is truly underhanded for Panorama to go and dig up these issues and use them to fabricate a Hollywood drama just 24 hours before the elections.
The truth of the matter is that in the previous elections they also resorted to mudslinging in an attempt to discredit me. On that occasion I was accused of using party funds to purchase a number of houses: in this regard, just last week the “il Giornale” newspaper and its editor were convicted of slander and ordered to pay me compensation for damages. They also claimed that the Italia dei Valori had enrolled no less than 240 members of the Calabrian criminal class as party members: they had to pay up for that claim as well. Perhaps the real news is that just last week, Premier Berlusconi's companies, those that control “Il Giornale”, were ordered to pay out 100,000 Euro in damages in two cases, plus legal costs. And I have already laid new charges against him.
As regards what has been written now in Panorama, we will meet again just before the next elections when they will undoubtedly once again make print false news and I in turn will once again announce yet another conviction for the lies they spread this time.
I wish to reiterate: yesterday I was in Calabria and tomorrow I will be in Puglia. People approach me in the street and in the restaurants where they proceed to take hundreds of photographs. I'm a politician, so should I really have to call out the Carabinieri to do a background check every time someone wants to take a photo? I cannot work like that. So when you suddenly see these photos around election time, have a good laugh and ask yourself why Berlusconi is so the hell in with me and with the Italia dei Valori party.
Why do they insist on coming out with these “revelations” right around election time? Because we oppose them, we worry them and we push the rest of the opposition to keep their guard up and not surrender as these people would want them to do.
Do you get what they're saying? After the elections, we must re-establish dialogue, we must amend the Constitution and we must act on the reforms. But as long as Di Pietro and the Italia dei Valori party are around, how are they going to do this? So they continue to denigrate, sling mud, defame, while I, instead of pulling my hair out, simply turn to the judges.
The Italia dei Valori party has them running scared, because without us in the picture, everything would be a lot easier for them, beginning with their underhanded deals. Have you watched the Democratic Party? A few months ago it appeared that they wanted to get cosy with the UDC and abandon the Italia dei Valori party. When push came to shove, the UDC betrayed them. The Italia dei Valori party has established a coalition to stop the anti-democratic slide and set the rules for the game. Remember Piazza Navona? We stood alone, hearing all sorts of things. However, in Piazza del Popolo, everyone was there, including them, facing off against the regime. What that means is that we right all along.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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26 March 2010

Pre-election gunge

Tomorrow, the weekly Panorama will come out with a “spray pre-election gunge” article on me. The article purports to be a false scoop on a photo that shows me with two people, that is Boyko Borisov and Ahmed Dogan.

I’m leaving it to two press releases by Niccolo' Rinaldi (euro-parliamentarian with Italia dei Valori) for the explanation of who they really are, and I’m not leaving it to the paranoia of the daily papers of the Berlusconi family for these two distinct people with whom I have been immortalised in one of the thousands of photos in 2002.

Press release on Boyko Borisov

The usual lie from Panorama! In fact, I would like to explain to those who are less well informed, among whom are the Panorama journalists, that Boyko Borisov, shown at the side of Antonio Di Pietro in a photo published in the weekly publication under discussion, while he is shaking hands, is the current Prime Minister of Bulgaria. Thus, he is not a mafia boss but a top level politician. This is a demonstration to the whole of Europe how a certain type of information in Italy is handled in an instrumental and tendentious way.

Press release on Ahmed Dogan

We in Brussels have been struck with incredulity by the presumed scoop that is coming out tomorrow in the weekly Panorama. A “scoop” that in itself explains to the rest of Europe, the state of information in our country, by showing a photo in which the IDV leader, Antonio Di Pietro, who at the time was a euro-deputy with the ELDR, and portrayed at table with Ahmed Dogan, in August 2002. In fact it’s not a matter of a terrorist that then got an amnesty, as is written in the weekly, but a historic leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedom, a fully signed up member of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR) chaired by Annemie Neyts, that Italia dei Valori is part of. Dogan was convicted by the communist regime for his activities in favour of the Turkish minority and obviously, he was amnestied straight away with the advent of democracy in his country: thus it is a matter of honour that he fought in defence of a minority. And it’s not as though Dogan is unknown in Europe: during his presidency, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms was part of the governing coalition until 2004, together with Simeone Sakskoburggotski’s party and from 2005 to 2009, also with the socialists. As regards the accusations of electoral fraud, the MRF has always collected almost all the votes of the Bulgarians residing in Turkey, as it is legitimate to expect given the orientation of the party.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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21 March 2010

Cast an informed vote

I would like to introduce you to another one of the Italia dei Valori party's initiatives, namely “Cast an informed vote”.
In order to go and cast their vote according to conscience and rationality, the voters have to be well informed. As you will no doubt have noticed, this majority Government has seen fit to shut down all the political talk shows right at election time. Not so much “Porta a Porta”, but Annozero, Ballaro', etc. In other words, at election time, you must not be permitted to know who the candidates for Governor or Regional Councillor are, or for that matter which parties are putting up candidates. You are not permitted to know anything more than what the Minzolini-clone on duty tells you each evening or what the Prime Minister tells you on the unified networks every evening. We are not satisfied with only this version of the facts, because we believe that this version of the facts is indeed false.

Casting an informed vote means knowing precisely how things stand. Our Country is definitely lacking media freedom, the opposition is being gagged, the control systems, starting with the magistrates, is being shut-up, derided and criminalised, and our Parliament has become a mere branch office for the sole singer-songwriter.

For this reason, we have decided to put the Country's citizens in a position to cast an informed vote by interacting directly with the party. I don't know whether the other parties will be nearly as forthcoming in terms of providing you with adequate information, but we most certainly will be so. We will be available to interact directly with you via direct streaming, eight hours per day, for the entire week leading up to the elections. For anyone wishing to ask any questions, there will be a member of the Italia dei Valori party on duty to answer on behalf of the party and explain this party's actions, proposals and plans with regard to employment, clean energy, welfare, infrastructure and development, as well as what our priorities are, what we believe needs to be done, what should never have been done previously and what must never be done in the future.

We will provide you with the wherewithall to better understand the party, to offer your advice and support and, above all, your criticisms, because these help us to grow and improve.

What we're offering is television space on the Web. We ask you not only to follow us, but indeed to be major role players by interacting with us and enabling us to do our job better, both at the regional level and in Parliament.

The Italia dei Valori party is making this media space available in the hope that they won't immediately shut us down. You know of course that the Prime Minister could simply make one phone call and say “Innocenzi! You who are not all that innocent, can you do me a favour and arrange to shut down this transmission?”. Let's not allow them to gag us and let's react before it's too late.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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18 March 2010

I ask one question they respond to another

I’m publishing the video and the text of my intervention today in the Chamber of Deputies during the usual question time, where I presented a parliamentary question to the Minister for Relations with Parliament, Elio Vito, about the article published in “Il Fatto Quotidiano” on 12 March about the Trani investigation that involves Premier Berlusconi, Innocenzi of Agcom and the director of TG1, Minzolini.

The question

Antonio Di Pietro: Signor President, we have asked and we want to ask the President of the Council the reasons for his behaviour: we would like to ask him this, but we are denouncing one more time that even here he is absent, just as he is from every court of justice. But in relation to Parliament, the President of the Council cannot allow himself to be absent and he has to let us know for what reason in this world, he, as President of the Council, can allow himself to telephone the director of TG1, Minzolini, to have information that agrees with him, for what reason in this world he allows himself to interact with a commissioner of the Authority for Communications Guarantees to act in such a way that that Authority punishes and closes down all the broadcasts that are not convenient for him, - and as for this political force, Italia dei Valori, and my own self in particular, - for what reason in this world he does not want the voice of the Opposition to be heard by the Italians. This is a “regime”: tell us, President of the Council who is absent, for what reason in this world you insist on acting in this way! (Applause from the deputies of the Italia dei Valori group)

The response

Elio Vito: Signor President, the Honourable Di Pietro and the deputies of the Italia dei Valori group with their question are asking the elements that the government wants to supply to Parliament in relation to the affair referred to in the introduction and what initiatives the Government intends to take in order to re-establish the correctness of the institutional relations.
Thus, Honourable Di Pietro, I am informing you that on 15 March, the Minister of Justice, acting through the General Inspectorate having jurisdiction, has taken steps to set up an administrative investigation at the Trani Office of the Prosecution of the Republic in relation to the news reported by press articles concerning presumed pressure that the President of the Council of Ministers is alleged to have set up in relation to the commissioner of the Authority for Communications Guarantees and to the director of TG1 to block the broadcasting of some TV programmes.
In particular, according to what has been reported by the press, it seems that different telephone conversations have been wiretapped in relation to which it is alleged the outcome would be the hypothesis of the crime of extortion. For this reason, the Minister of Justice has intended to set up an administrative investigation so as to carry out every necessary in-depth study and mainly to clarify the reasons for the leaking of the information that took place within the ongoing investigations at the above-mentioned Prosecution office.
That is, still in accordance with what has been said by the Minister of Justice, also so as to exclude every possible abuse connected to the use of the investigative tool that is the wiretapping of telephones and also to check up on the respect for the regulatory parameters as regards territorial jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the tribunal for ministerial crimes, taking into account the nature of the crimes that have been hypothesised and of the subjective qualification of some people under investigation.
When there is an outcome to the inspection in question, the Minister of Justice will be able to evaluate whether there have been put in place by the magistrates behaviours that are relevant on a disciplinary level. In conclusion, Honourable Di Pietro, I cannot but confirm to you that the Government intends to continue to operate in loyal collaboration with all the other institutional bodies.

The reply

Antonio Di Pietro: As I don’t believe that you are but that you merely do: I asked you one thing and you have replied with an answer to another thing. I asked you the reason why the President of the Council, while carrying out his duties, has permitted himself to attempt to block the words of a political formation that is present in parliament when this was in a public programme paid for with the money of the public service of the RAI; I asked you the reason why the President of the Council has permitted himself to interact with the the director of TG1, that is a public service paid for with the money of the citizens, to act in such a way that information goes in a single direction according to his pleasure; I asked him reasons why this gentleman, President of the Council, allows himself to interact with the Authority for Communications Guarantees that, by law, has to guarantee the transparency and the plurality of information (Applause from the deputies of the Italia dei Valori group)
And you have responded to me by saying that he has sent an inspection to Trani to verify why they have discovered this? What the Italians want to know is not why this has been discovered, but why this unauthorised action has been committed, for what reason the President of the Council does not realize that we are in a parliamentary democracy and that in a parliamentary democracy you respect the regulations, you respect the voices of the freedom of information, you respect the other parties, in a parliamentary democracy!
This is what the President of the Council doesn’t understand; and Minister Alfano doesn’t understand and doesn’t realize that the issues of competence and the leaking of information about the names of crimes is not up to the inspection to decide, it is the magistrates that have to decide within the conflicts of competence and the issues of jurisdiction.
As for the leaking of information, finally, perhaps Minister Alfano doesn’t know, I’ll tell him who leaked the first bit of information: it was done by Minzolini himself and it is the reason why the Trani prosecution office is taking action. (Applause from the deputies of the Italia dei Valori group)

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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15 March 2010

Berlusconi calls, the hit men act

Berlusconi calls, the hit men act. Berlusconi gives the order: “Away with Santoro, Floris, Dandini and Di Pietro from the public TV channels” and the hit men of information, Innocenzi, Minzolini and who knows how many others, carry out the orders in perfect mafia style.

After having cut 82% of the space dedicated to politics on TV (Raiset), they reduce to zero, the concept of “par condicio” {equal opportunities to media exposure}. Berlusconi even then chose who had to be represented on that meagre 18% that remained. But I don’t understand why he is so fearful of Italia dei Valori, is it perhaps because we have never given in to the song of the sirens of a dialogue that today, all Opposition parties recognise as impossible?

The reason why Italia dei Valori, and myself in particular, have been excluded for months from the TV News on RAI 1 presented by Minzolini is quickly explained. And likewise it’s easy to explain why the short spaces allocated to Italia dei Valori were exclusively those of attack and denigration aimed at weakening the consensus it has with the general public.

In relation to myself, the indiscretions that have appeared in the newspapers have added nothing new. There was no need to read in black and white, the pressure from a corruptor, to understand the plan to black out Italia dei Valori. What’s certain is that now, perhaps, some “berluscones” will have understood that they were a puppet in the hands of “Mangiafuoco” {Fire-eater}. What’s certain is that now there is the formal proof to have this man put on trial once more. What’s certain is that he, as always, will deny the evidence. He will accuse the magistrates and he will make a declaration with a broadcast on all the networks at the same time, that he is a victim of a “poisoned climate”. He who has poisoned all the wells of democracy: from that of Parliament to that of the Quirinale to that of the Constitutional Court, to that of the public TV channels, right up to arriving at that of the justice system. With an incredible cheek, he makes himself out to be the victim.

Shame, shame, shame. Soon the inspectors of the Minister of Injustice will be rummaging through the documents of the magistrates to gather evidence that can be used to confirm the pre-packaged hypotheses of the triple abuse by the Trani judges, and thus suffocate the ongoing investigations. The vices with which the trusty Alfano has already labelled the Apulia judges are territorial jurisdiction, the unauthorised use of wiretapping and the revelations of official secrets. Even if these alleged vices turn out to be verified, the citizens would anyway know how to weigh up the truth of those numerous ignoble telephone conversations with which Silvio Berlusconi has dealt with directors of public services and supervisory bodies as though they were gardeners at his own home.

The President of the Council should submit more often to the judgement of the voters, with a dignity that today I cannot manage to attribute to him. But he won’t do that because he knows very well that the Italians would judge his work in the government as contemptible. Berlusconi would risk a collapse in the ratings due in part to this ignoble conspiracy against the State and against democracy.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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13 March 2010

Minzolini and Innocenzi: a disgrace

Today’s edition of "Il Fatto Quotidiano" revealed the existence of some disturbing tapped telephone conversations directly involving two of the top representatives of our public media, namely TG1 Director Augusto Minzolini and Communication Authority Commissioner (Agcom) Giancarlo Innocenzi (former Pdl Member of Parliament). It is important to note that Agcom is, or rather is supposed to be the top oversight body for ensuring media plurality and transparency, particularly that of public the broadcaster RAI, given that it is funded directly, and very well at that, by the Italian public via the television licence fees.

If the early information coming out of the delicate judicial investigation is subsequently found to be true, then we will have documentary proof once and for all of how Berlusconi and his parliamentary majority have invaded the RAI information channels and have attempted to shut up the last few independent voices that are still managing to make themselves heard. The information refers specifically to AnnoZero, Report and Ballarò and it will once again prove that we are dealing with a fascist-type government that shuts up any dissenting voices while amplifying those in the media that favour the government by spreading cunning and false stories.

This story really is squalid: there is talk of a web of personal and direct dealings between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Commissioner Innocenzi to get Agcom to shut down the AnnoZero television programme >strong>because Berlusconi disapproved of the fact that the programme was telling the Italian population all about his dealings with certain people linked to the Mafia. Innocenzi appears to have begun trying to do precisely that. On request from the latter, it appears that TG1 Director Augusto Minzolini in turn assured Berlusconi that editorials would be screened to discredit the Mafia turncoat who was dragging Berlusconi into the picture (Spatuzza) and that he would arrange to run down a number of the magistrates involved in that inquiry.

On the 9th March, the Italia dei Valori party already lodged a complaint with the Prosecutor of the Administrative Court against the Chairman of the board and Board members of RAI for the damages caused to the state as a result of the drop in viewership after the cancellation of the talk shows in question. Furthermore, still with regard to the same matter, the Italia dei Valori party also submitted a question requiring a written response from the Minister for Economic Development.

Following the release of the Agcom figures and the revelation of the tapped telephone conversations involving the Prime Minister, the control bodies and the managers of the public service, we submitted a Parliamentary question requiring immediate response, in which we asked that the Prime Minister come to the Chamber immediately to explain his actions and, above all, also demanding the resignations of Commissioner Innocenzi and TG1 Director Augusto Minzolini. These resignations are a must, given the outcome of the magistrates’ investigations. Indeed, even if the actions are not necessarily illegal, they in any event constitute institutional impropriety when undertaken by two leading public figures who are duty bound: the former, namely Minzolini, to keep the public properly informed by law and the second, namely Innocenzi, to ensure that the pluralism and propriety of the media is guaranteed.

Instead, both these individuals have betrayed their roles and sold out their duty. For this reason, neither is worthy of remaining in his current post for one minute longer.

Tomorrow, in Piazza del Popolo, we will also be properly informing the Italian public with regard to this latest serious attack on our democracy and we will begin gathering signatures to back a call for the immediate removal of both Innocenzi and Minzolini from their posts.

It is also our hope that, this time, the Italian’s won’t let themselves be swayed by the mercenary media manipulated by Berlusconi and that they will now also decide to send those behind this murder of democracy, namely Mister Silvio Berlusconi and his merry men, home for good.

I therefore invite everyone to come and be part of the demonstration due to be held in Rome tomorrow, 13 March at 14h00 in Piazza del Popolo.

For those of you that are unable to be there, we will be broadcasting the event live via direct streaming on my Blog at www.antoniodipietro.it and the party website at www.italiadeivalori.it. Members of the public will be able to interact with each other in the section dedicated to this event via Twitter. Television viewers will also be able to follow the event on the Sky satellite channel 910 as from 14h30.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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11 March 2010

The difference between a leader and a dictator

Today there was a vote of confidence in the Senate, the umpteenth, about a draft law that allows Silvio Berlusconi and his Ministers not to turn up for trial.
Is this the consideration that this ultra-Right fascist has of the State?
In the afternoon, during the press conference, Berlusconi spat out one accusation after another, senseless and unfounded accusations about everything and everyone while absolving the only ones truly responsible for the electoral irregularities: his own organisation. The PDL have now thrown dirt at this stalwart of democracy: the institution of voting.

So as to give a media cover up to the disgrace that is taking place in the Senate, the Premier chose to have a farcical press conference in which to deliver, in front of a plethora of obsequious journalists selected by Minister La Russa, a shameful stream of words against TAR, the Left, the judges, the Radicals and all the ghosts that are by now laying siege to his dictatorial decline. All the interventions were obviously in the pre-arranged outline, all except one, that of a free voice that had escaped from the selection of the consenting journalists. Rocco Carlomagno, an independent journalist, who wanted to ask some questions that Berlusconi managed to avoid.

A leader does not fear the people. He does not run away from them and with his head held high, he responds to the insults and the discordant voices.
A dictator is averse to confrontation, he comes out surrounded by his body guards and a close knit “claque” ready to applaud him.

For a leader, his people are his strength.
For a dictator the crowd are “extras”, he is the only protagonist.

A leader improvises on occasions because in improvisation there’s spontaneity.
Each appearance of a dictatoris worked out in every detail and each one recites his part as set down: no voice out of place is allowed.

A leader suffers with his people. He doesn’t rob from his people. He doesn’t lie to his people.
A dictator accumulates riches abroad in private accounts by plundering from the people. He lies to the people and makes laws for his own private consumption, or at least useful to a minority.

A leader listens to the people.
A dictator only wants to be listened to by his people.

Silvio Berlusconi will never be able to allow himself to go out into the streets, nor to have a public encounter because he is a dictator.
And as such, he will not go out into the streets to explain the reasons for the “electoral mess” because before doing that he would have to explain to the people, the filthy things like the “legitimate impediment”, the “interpretive decree”, the “lodo Alfano” and the insults against the institutional organisations.
Berlusconi is a dictator. For him the people do not exist. Only subjects exist.
No dictator can allow himself to insult his subjects and at the same time ask them to applaud him.

I’m supporting Carlomagno, the freelance journalist, who was perhaps not respectful of the priority of other colleagues, perhaps too insistent, but who certainly did not deserve the treatment reserved for him by the arrogant “Balilla”.

I’m inviting him not to be discouraged, and to keep going to the bitter end with his court action, because the information that we must not give up on, is above all, that provided by those who live “outside the chorus”.

On the other hand, I’m inviting his colleagues, many of whom are paid by some little boss, to take action in defence of the freedom of information, more often than they do currently.

I’m publishing the video of the declarations given by the journalist Carlomagno to one of our operators.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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25 February 2010

Google: everyone loses out

Yesterday, three 'Google' managers were found guilty of not having removed a video relating to the mistreatment inflicted on a youngster affected with Down’s syndrome that was published on the YouTube platform.

On 28 November, I expressed my solidarity with them on the occasion of the Milan Prosecution’s request for their conviction (read the article). Today I am returning to doing that given that they have been sentenced to 6 months in prison with the “conditional”. The criminal conviction has come even though the lawyers of the victim withdrew their complaint, while the defendants have been found not guilty of the defamation accusation in the civil courts in a case brought by the city of Milan and the association ‘ViviDown’ that were the plaintiffs.

Yesterday, with these three convictions against the freedom of the Internet, everyone has lost out.
To understand the meaning of the conviction, an example would be enough: it’s as though you accused a company managing the telephones to have allowed a telephone call between one who is blackmailing and the person being blackmailed.

The youngster with Down’s syndrome was saved by YouTube. And who knows, thanks to that film clip, how many other cases have been avoided and how many have been stopped. The city of Milan should have invited the indication of other situations of abuse.

Internet is a tool for listening and for understanding social phenomena that precisely because they are to be condemned, are a reality that have to be faced up to and not kept obscured. What message does the interpretation of this case transmit to the adolescents?

And I continue to repeat, what can you say about that killer of the camorra whose images were broadcast on TV and on YouTube, making it possible for the security forces to capture him? Do we thus have to expect that the TV broadcasters and YouTube can receive a denunciation for violation of privacy from the family of the victim or by some passer-by as they are visible and shown in the film clip of the execution?

The Milan Public Prosecutors have justified the verdict with a laconic: “With this trial we have raised a serious issue, that is the protection of the human being that has to prevail over the logic of the company”.

I maintain that this verdict has undermined the protection of the person and of their rights, by misunderstanding the events and thus drawing attention to an incompleteness of the discipline in the subject area.

I hope that the verdict at the Appeal can establish a correct interpretation of the happenings.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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29 January 2010

The Romani-Mediaset decree

Parliament has been examining the Romani decree in the last few days. The measure is basically an attack by the government against Sky and the Internet to provide obstacles to competing with Mediaset.
In fact, reading between the lines of the decree, you can appreciate the attack on the Internet. The regulations establish that “direct streaming” will be put on the same footing as live TV broadcasting and thus subject to the obligatory authorisation with all the consequent encumbrances. Furthermore, there’s provision for “blackout” by the “Guarantor” who can take action with the “providers” of all those video channels (including YouTube) where it has been possible to identify copyright violations.

The decree, that is the transposition of a European Union directive, is just waiting for Parliament’s opinion to then be approved definitively by the Council of Ministers. The very same “Guarantor” of AGCOM { Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni = Authority for Communications Guarantees} has publicly drawn attention to the serious criticality of this measure that, in our opinion is intervening illegitimately in many areas.

Basically, when it was a matter of responding to the reprimands of the European Union to dislodge “Rete 4” they took no notice, however, in a great hurry, taking advantage of the receipt of a fairly limited Community directive, the government is bringing in a tool for censoring the Internet.
In Italy there are already the tools to punish violations. This decree wants to bypass the magistracy and the postal police to be able to make use of certain regulations for its own use.
The Romani decree is at risk of becoming the Government’s truncheon against the Internet, as well as being the latest in a long series of low blows to Sky.

Before setting out a decree like this, Silvio Berlusconi should:

- choose whether to be the President of the Council or the owner of Mediaset. In fact, it is indecent that Berlusconi is using the laws of the State to counter the rules of the free market and to take advantage for his own companies.

- give up two of the three TV network concessions that he controls, concessions that cannot come together in a single person but that must be distributed to ensure a plurality of persons in the sector. For one of the two, among other things, it’s only a matter of acting in accordance with the verdict of the European Court of Justice, for which this government shows respect only in alternating phases, and that for a long time has pronounced that the frequencies that are precisely being occupied in an unauthorised way by Rete4 must be given up as it is Europa7 that has the right to them.

- adjust the price of the concessions of the radio and TV frequencies, that are today fixed at 1% of the turnover, to at least 20% of the overall receipts coming in from advertising.

There, after doing all this, the President of the Council and his chums would have been able to talk about the Romani decree in a disinterested way.

If it happens that it does not undergo relevant alterations following on from the examination in the parliamentary committee, the group of Italia dei Valori will present an opinion proposal asking the government to withdraw the outline of the Romani decree.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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15 January 2010

A time for shaming: 12 tricks to back up a theory

The elections are getting close and its time for shaming!
Once again the same script is about to be repeated, as was the case in all the previous elections. This time around, the "swindle" that the usual newspaper is building up to is truly dirty and wretched: they are using a number of perfectly innocuous photographs in an attempt to show that I am, or was paid by crooked members of the secret services and by the CIA to bring down the First Republic because that is what the Americans and the Mafia wanted.

Man, you really must have quite an imagination…and a lot of arrogance to actually believe that the Italians are all stupid enough to fall for that kind of cock and bull.

But let me warn you about the kind of game they’re playing. For a number of days now, a shadowy individual has been doing the rounds of all the newspapers and the politicians, offering, very cheaply I might add, a dossier of 12 photographs allegedly showing yours truly together with, guess who? No, not some or other escort. My alleged “partners in crime” are none other than Carabinieri Colonel Mori and Police Chief Contrada. Apparently the photographs also include a number of secret services officials.

Naturally, a willing buyer stepped forward immediately, namely the same old daily newspaper, which, when it comes down to flinging mud at yours truly, will buy absolutely anything, even at exorbitant prices, costs that will have to be added to those spent defending themselves against the charges that I will be laying (in addition to the complaint I have already lodged with the judiciary because, at least this time, I somehow managed to get to know about the trap in good time).

They have purchased four of these photographs, which they will undoubtedly be publishing just before the elections, mark my words.
These photographs would appear to back up the theory that since Mori landed up under investigation for the well-known matter of the red diaries and Contrada was convicted for collusion with the Mafia then, obviously, Di Pietro himself was also involved in these things. Given that there were also certain secret services officials with these men, it means that Di Pietro must have been colluding with some or other foreign power, if not with the Mafia itself.

Obviously, the truth is far more straightforward and trivial: at the time, I was an investigating magistrate who was conducting investigations, requesting arrests and the ensuring that they were effected. Guess by whom? By the Carabinieri and the Police Force, obviously, or even by the Financial Police. Colonel Mori and Police Chief Contrada were senior members of the said forces and it would undoubtedly have occurred, although I must say that I cannot remember any specific occasion now, almost twenty years later, that I would sometimes have approached their respective departments, as well as a myriad of others, to carry out checks and to execute orders. Perhaps, it may even have happened that I sometimes stayed behind to share a meal or a coffee with them during one of their work breaks, also in order to discuss certain work-related matters in greater detail. So what? Precisely why is this supposedly so scandalous? Discussing pertinent issues with a police chief or a Carabinieri colonel involved in investigations is the very least that could be expected of an investigating magistrate that, like myself, was involved with the Clean Hands inquiry at the time. I had no way of knowing the kind of trouble they would land up in years later. At the time, they were merely Public Servants, not delinquents.

Instead, once again, they are trying to create something from nothing, thanks to some help from the usual bunch of hired professional slanderers working for the usual exponents of the media. Their purpose is clearly evident and it’s the same old thing, namely to discredit both me and the Italia dei Valori party during the course of an election campaign and, above all, to create a false impression of the times of Tangentopoli and Clean Hands in an attempt to make everyone believe that there was no corrupt political class at the time but merely a militant judiciary that was on someone else’s payroll. Yes, I said “on someone else’s payroll”, because they are trying to prove that, in exchange for services rendered, these imaginary foreign powers then allegedly paid over significant amounts of money into foreign bank accounts in the United States and even as far afield as New Zealand. It’s like a science fiction film script, but cockeyed science fiction that is never-ending because all you need to do is to launch a load of cock and bull into information hyperspace and there you go, dinner is served!

The false impression they are attempting to create is very simple: Clean Hands was merely a bluff, or a trap and Di Pietro was one of the secret services’ men. There were never any corrupt politicians, it was nothing but a swindle. The objective is even more evident, namely, to re-write past history so as to conceal the still ongoing continuity between the corrupt politicians of the past and the even more corrupt and shameless politicians of today. Even the false and hypocritical celebration of Craxi’s life, which is now being led by the very people that criticised and betrayed him at the time, are aimed at achieving the very same objective.

However, we will continue to “resist, resist, resist”. We have to, in the interests of democracy and in order to protect our Constitution!

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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14 January 2010

Shame on you Minzolini

Last night I was a guest of Lilli Gruber on the programme called “Otto e mezzo”. Shortly before that a horrific editorial by TG1’s Augusto Minzolini had been broadcast. Italy can no longer allow itself an historical revisionism based on partial information, directed from outside and even false, like those being broadcast in a sort of beatification of Bettino Craxi. For my part, as I have already declared, I will take out a court action against Minzolini for some of the vile elements of his editorial.

Text of the intervention

History will judge whether or not Craxi was a statesman. Craxi was definitively convicted of corruption a number of times, not because he was a statesman but because he had three current accounts into which he received money from companies, money that did not go to the Party but to himself and his loved ones, directly for his own affairs. He was corrupt. He was definitively convicted and he was a fugitive from justice. This is Craxi.

The problem right now is not Craxi but Minzolini, the director of TG1, a service provided by the State paid for by the citizens with their licence fee. A director of a public service cannot allow himself to tell lies and he cannot allow himself to defame whoever has done his duty.

For this reason, privately, I will take out a court action against Minzolini for having said that the reason for that investigation was political. I did my duty and I am defending my honour before this gentleman. I will denounce in the House and to the country Signor Minzolini, who is in receipt of a salary paid for by the citizens to deliver correct information to tell the true picture and not a one-sided one.

If Minzolini thinks that Craxi was a statesman let him say that but he has to tell the citizens what he did and not compare him to Wojtyła and Reagan.

Perhaps he can compare him to Reagan but a director of a public news programme should have the decency not to compare a corrupt man to the Pope.

My passion is for the truth. This idea to split off Craxi the corrupt from Craxi the politician is like having a futile argument based on no foundation. A person has to be seen as a whole person. I don’t want to discuss what he did as a politician but, as a witness, I can say that this gentleman, while carrying out his duties, when he was deciding how to assign the TV frequencies to an entrepreneur, from this person, he received loads of billions, going through the “All Iberian” account into the “Northern Holding” account in Geneva.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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8 January 2010

Schifani is intentionally lying

Today in Reggio Emilia there was the 213th anniversary of the Italian flag. Our provincial secretary Liana Barbati, who also holds the position of deputy mayor, participated in the ceremony of the flag-raising and of the National Anthem then, at the moment of the intervention by the President of the Senate, she left.
Italia dei Valori does not accept lessons on the Constitution delivered by members of a coalition that has given itself as its first objective the irreverent twisting of the Constitution with no respect for the State and the institutions. At the demonstration in the square, there was also Beppe Grillo who was hot on the heels of the President of the Senate because an initiative of a popular law, supported by more than 350 thousand signatures, has been lying for almost two years in the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the Senate without, apparently, the parties taking any interest in it. I say “apparently” because I do not agree with the declarations of the President of the Senate that are intentionally not exact. In fact when Senator Schifani said: “My personal opinion is that the popular initiative draft laws as they don’t have a political matrix in Parliament can run the risk of not being pushed by parliamentary groups or by ‘la politica’ itself” was intentionally lying by making an over-generalisation given that Italia dei Valori has been the only party to support the collection of signatures and to support the popular initiative draft law. The proposed law says: people with definitive convictions cannot be candidates; the limit of two legislatures; the restoration of preference voting by the citizens.
The Italia dei Valori senators Felice Belisario and Pancho Pardi are part of the Constitutional Affairs Committee. They have both asked the President of the Committee, senator Vizzini on more than one occasion (read ""Dalla parte della società civile"" {on behalf of civil society} ) and formally (read the letter in which the President of the Senate himself is put in copy) for the discussion of the proposal to be put on the agenda. In effect, the start of the discussion has happened, but just the start. The rest has not been seen. I repeat to senator Schifani, and I am reassuring Beppe Grillo and the 350 thousand citizens who are signatories (among these, naturally there’s myself – watch the video) , that we will do what is possible to watch over, as we have done up until now, the forward movement of the journey of this proposal. And we will watch over it so that it is not contorted by the logic of the parties and by the Caste’s instinct of preservation.
In the face of the popular will, as we have always done, we are ready to take a step back, because this is the duty of a politician.

PS: Saturday at 2:00 pm I will be in Piazza Cordusio at the corner with Via dei Mercanti in Milan to demonstrate together with the association ‘Qui Milano Libera’ and with civil society against the intention of mayor Moratti to dedicate a street to Bettino Craxi, a politician, a corrupt man and a fugitive from justice, of the First Republic.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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9 December 2009

The tam-tam of information on the Internet

I’m publishing a letter sent as a comment to the blog.
The letter is headed “Open letter to the head of the government who ‘more than anything else has engaged a battle with the mafia’”. The text was “copy and pasted” onto my blog by a citizen and it comes from another blog "grilloparlante". The words written by Aloi, the author of the letter, are the same ones that I have repeated many times in Parliament and to the microphones of journalists. They are words that citizens can identify with, citizens who are living in the territory and who from time to time have seen the security forces pushing a police car that has run out of fuel.

It often happens that you get a real-time update by reading the comments on the blog that you follow, just as it often happens that news items bounce from one site to another, like the word spreading in a tiny village. And it is this spreading of the word without wires that is the strength and the heart of the internet, the amniotic fluid from which a new information system could be born when this political class has removed its disturbing presence.
At the top I’m publishing a video of Gioacchino Genchi who is offering an interpretation of the arrest of the fugitives Nicchi and Fidanzati. A version of the facts that will have touched the thoughts of many citizens who noticed, and this is a fact, an exceptional timing between the anti-mafia operation and the No B-Day on 5 December …. think about it folk – and weigh things up.

The letter:
Honoured Head of the Government, who has done the most in the fight against the mafia, I would like to ask you why you together with your Ministers, are boasting about results in the fight against organised crime that are not down to you.
You don’t deserve the credit because you together with your Ministers have acted and are acting with «A lot of propaganda, many adverts and very little solid action».
Let’s have a look why that is, starting with the Procure {Prosecutor’s Offices}. Certain Procure are without either a chief or a deputy; others have understaffing even of 60 per cent.
At the Palermo Procura, for example, there are 16 unfilled positions for prosecutors.
If yourself and your Government, who have done the most in the fight against the mafia, would want to guarantee security to the citizens, you would ensure that Procure and Questure { police headquarters} are in conditions that allow them to operate in a dignified way.
If yourself and your Government, who have done the most in the fight against the mafia, were to want to take the credit for this, we would not be at the paradox, for example, of police cars that are broken down and kept in the repair shop. Repairs can’t be done, there’s a lack of funds, we would not be at the paradox of the lack of fuel for the vehicles, of the lack of toner for the photocopiers, of the lack of paper to prepare the witness statements, so much so that today, a historical document was about to be recycled, for what it could be important to you, the Order of Service of 23 May 1992, yes, that very day of the Capaci slaughter, in which the lives lost were those of a magistrate, for whom there was no time to become a “red” toga, his wife, also a magistrate, and the lads who were bodyguards: I’ll remind you of their names: Giovanni Falcone, Francesca Morvillo, Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo, Antonio Montinaro.
Excuse the digression, signor Head of Government, who has done the most in the fight against the mafia, let’s go back to the discussion. The commissariats are collapsing with only one car available to them.
What’s at risk is the security of the citizens. Certain police officers pay up front from their own pockets for small repairs to the vehicles, so that they don’t have to leave them at the repair shop.
I’ll be more precise, signor Head of Government, who has done the most in the fight against the mafia, Rome and Naples (500 cars in the repair shop) , in Palermo, the figure is alarming: out of 530 cars and motor bikes assigned to the Questura, 140 are stuck at the Lungaro barracks, in the motorization section. Ranging from a problem costing a few euro like a gearbox that’s out of order to the spending of a thousand euro for engines that have seen thousands of kilometres.
The biggest repercussions are being felt by the commissariats, which should have on average from seven to ten cars, according to the importance of the office. Instead, 60 per cent of the vehicles are out of use.
For each shift at the commissariats, it’s always the same vehicle that comes out, and the result is that the number out of use at Lungaro is destined to increase. This is the situation in Palermo, for example, that Palermo where there were the most astounding arrests, that you are claiming as your victory, carried out by officers that don’t just operate in these conditions, that to define as inconvenient to say the least, but that you don’t even pay with regularity. These officers have carried out these arrests because they were coordinated by those “togas” that you define as “red” but who together with the officers are the only ones who can legitimately take the praise. Not yourself and not even those buffoons of your gofers.
How do you respond, signor Head of Government, who has done the most in the fight against the mafia?
I owed you this much … a citizen who does not feel represented
by yourself nor by your government..

Aloi Calabrese
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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8 December 2009

Passaparola Monday 7 December

Text:
Good day to you all! In a couple of days there’s the anniversary of the slaughters of Piazza Fontana (1969), 40 years ago. President Napolitano has rightly said that the slaughter of Piazza Fontana provides us with a lesson that we must never forget: it teaches us that in Italy we have to make sure that the contrasts and the legitimate divergences cannot break out into tensions of such proportions as to threaten the civil life and he adds that there are still obscure points on the slaughters of Piazza Fontana of 40 years ago. It seems to me, that there is the implication, that it’s necessary to investigate and illuminate those obscure points that characterise nearly all of the slaughters that are political/ political and terroristic/ mafia. There may well be also more recent slaughters about which not only are there many obscure points but there is , in recent days and in recent months, the possibility to cast light on them and these are the mafia slaughters of 1992/1993.

President, and the mafia slaughters?

I think that it is a stroke of luck that new people who were directly or indirectly protagonists of that season are telling the story: from Ciancimino Junior to Spatuzza and yet, apart from I think Gianfranco Fini, no one has thought to say that it is right and fitting, that it is a moment of great optimism, this moment in which new voices are adding to the partial accounts and in certain cases, nebulous accounts of those slaughters. I would be pleased, - let’s hope – that the President of the Republic were to remember that plenty of stuff is coming out about the slaughters of 1992/1993 and that it is necessary to continue investigating, trying to verify whether or not the accounts of Ciancimino and of Spatuzza and of others are trustworthy, but in any case we must be happy that new gashes in the wall of indifference are opening up, in the “rubber curtain” that has cloaked the facts. It seems to me that instead the political class is literally terrorised by the emergence of new particulars that can help us to take that next big leap, that is to finally add the names and the faces of those who were the instigators (with their faces covered up) that we all know to have been there and that the verdicts say that were there and that have not yet been identified, and to bring them to justice and punish them. There’s not only a lack of interest, there is actually a convergent interest that these new voices are silenced and that these new mouths are speedily sewn up again.
Those of you that heard Giancarlo Caselli last night talking on Fabio Fazio’s programme “ Che Tempo Che Fa” heard something that in theory, would be obvious, but that in reality is almost revolutionary, that is that if it is true that we need to search for the verification of the words of the turncoat Spatuzza, we can’t take it for granted that from the start Spatuzza is lying: we need to be neutral, not prejudiced in one sense or another. And I would add, I who am not a magistrate and who thus not bound to be so dutifully prudent as a magistrate, that it is much more probable that Spatuzza is speaking the truth, rather than lying: and what’s the reason for that? I will try to explain that today, because meanwhile Spatuzza has already been considered reliable by the Caltanissetta magistrates, who have taken the decision to review the trial for the slaughter of Via D’Amelio. You see, when they review a trial that has already reached a definitive verdict, that is when they start to raise questions about a verdict of the Court of Cassation, OK, well it means that the elements available are considerable, because otherwise a magistrate would not disown what has been done by his own office, they wouldn’t start to question it again. As you know for the slaughters of Via D’Amelio, there were convictions for some “bosses” as the direct instigators and some killers as the actual perpetrators, ones who actually carried out the actions, who at least not all of them, would turn out to be guilty, even though they have already been convicted and sentenced to various life sentences for that slaughter: why? Because Spatuzza said: “it’s me that did those things and other turncoat mafia people didn’t do them, others that had them pinned on them, starting with Scarantino, Scandura and others”, thus the problem here is a double one: to understand who prompted those two turncoats to oblige them to even take the blame for a slaughter like that of Via D’Amelio, that was not their fault. We are always being told that the turncoat is trying to offload the blame onto others, but here we are talking of confessing to a crime that they did not commit, there are people who have accused themselves of having executed a slaughter that they didn’t do. Who put the words into their mouths? Who obliged them to do that? Because I imagine that only with dramatic duress is it possible to convince one who has not executed the slaughter of Borsellino to say “yes, it was I that killed Borsellino and his bodyguards” and that’s the first point. The second point is that Spatuzza is saying “I did that slaughter and thus, as well as having dissolved the body of a child in acid and having done another thirty or forty homicides, I even did the slaughter of Via D’Amelio” and according to the magistrates of the Caltanissetta Procura , it is true and as a consequence, the verdict, in which Spatuzza is not among those found guilty of being the actual perpetrators, but other people, has to be reviewed, redoing the trial with a review mechanism, so as to convict Spatuzza and exonerate those who had nothing to do with it. You must understand that this is a powerful element in favour of the credibility of what Spatuzza is saying, because he is not just an eavesdropper who is recounting what he has heard said about other people, like Berlusconi, Dell’Utri etc., but he is one who anyhow is telling you: “it’s me that did that slaughter” and from that point he goes on. He’s not starting from Berlusconi or from Dell’Utri. He’s starting from himself and it’s on himself, and on these accusations against himself that his trustworthiness is judged. And he’s certainly not to be judged as such with a light heart because, I repeat, before the magistracy goes back on what it has said, it thinks twice. It has to have new elements that are really robust. Naturally it can be that Spatuzza is telling the truth when he is accusing himself of the Via D’Amelio slaughter and that he is lying when he says certain things about Berlusconi and about Dell’Utri: why is it more likely that he is telling the truth about Berlusconi and about Dell’Utri, rather than lying about them? For the simple reason that Spatuzza is not the first mafia turncoat to talk about the relationships between the mafia, Berlusconi and Dell’Utri. There are dozens who have already talked about that over the years. Straight after the slaughters, out popped mafia people who were talking of the relationships with Berlusconi and Dell’Utri that lasted right up to the days of the slaughters.

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5 December 2009

No B Day: we will do our own direct broadcast

Dear friends, as you all know by now, the Italia dei Valori will be taking part in the “No B Day” demonstration that has been scheduled for 5 December.

This is a public protest that we decided to instigate and support, together with the Internet population, in order to reiterate our disdain for the political policies that are currently being implemented by the Berlusconi government.

Democracy is at risk in our Country, as is the individual freedom of each and every of us. We will be down in the square to protest against an Executive that is doing absolutely nothing for this Country, not even in terms of addressing the serious economic crisis that is sending thousands of Italian families to the wall. This, of course, because this Government’s priorities lie elsewhere, such as the abolition of telephone surveillance, the Schifani Bill, the Alfano Bill, expedited justice, legitimate impediment, expedited statute barring and the tax shield. These are just a few of the items on the Berlusconi Government’s daily agenda. And so the time has come for us to say ”enough is enough!”

I therefore invite all the Italia dei Valori’s members and sympathisers to actively participate in this event.

The appointment is for 14h00 in Piazza della Repubblica, from where a march will begin towards Piazza San Giovanni, where we listen to addresses by the employers of companies that are in crisis, temporary workers at our schools, the Corleone youngsters that are battling against the Mafia, representatives of the “No to the Messina Straits Bridge” Committee and many others who are sick and tired of Berlusconi’s politics and that want a new Italy.

I also want to encourage you all to wear something purple since this is the symbolic colour chosen for this demonstration.

For those of you who are unable to come down to the square, you have my word that the day’s events will be broadcast via live streaming on my blog, www.antoniodipietro.it, as well as on the Italia dei Valori’s blog, www.italiadeivalori.it.

On the 5th December, it will also be possible to send and receive news flashes on Twitter, and we will be using the Flickr platform to receive photos from users who are present in all the squares around the Country.

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3 December 2009

Niet sovietico

Yesterday, the parliamentary group of Italia dei Valori, via its group leader in the RAI Supervisory Committee, senator Pancho Pardi, expressly asked for the 'No Berlusconi Day' demonstration on December 5 to be shown live. The request went to the three directors of the News programmes and to the director general, Mauro Masi.

Live broadcast on RAI one, two and three has been denied, even though there is availability on TG3 and RAI three to broadcast the event and in spite of the normal procedure being that if this is requested by a parliamentary group and if the event is of national interest, this must be granted.

I’m wondering what ‘s the reason for this "niet sovietico". Obviously it’s a doubt that finds the explanation in the censoring attitude of the current leadership that broadcasts as commanded by the regime.

Otherwise, how is it that the live broadcast should be denied for one of the most important popular demonstrations in 2009?

Perhaps a civil protest in all the squares of Italy, with the heart in Rome, with more than half a million online adherents, thousands of coaches from every part of Italy and a surprising number of young people who it is estimated can arrive in the capital, is not an event of national importance?

Or perhaps Masi has received the order to censor this demonstration because it’s not a “regime” one or aligned to political parties?

Or perhaps there has not been enough political “sponsorship”, apart from that of Italia dei Valori? Or perhaps there has not been a political contact person that is pleasing to the RAI top brass? Or perhaps still some RAI notable is waiting for another politician who has not given enough to guarantee the resonance of the event? How does the RAI, a public service TV, choose the importance of the events to be broadcast live? If there’s a conference with a handful of people and twenty political VIP, it sends out its truck, while if there are half a million citizens on the streets in Rome and a Nobel laureate like Dario Fo on the stage, they couldn’t care a fig.

And let Masi not come and tell us that the live broadcast is followed by Rainews24, given that Rainews24, with all respect for the great work that it does, today is seen directly by at the most 30% of the Italian population.

Italia dei Valori will put further pressure to get what is a right of the citizens in respect of their ownership: the public TV. I am asking the PD to do the same, to give strength to our appeal. In fact, Italia dei Valori is willing to follow on from any such request, so that there are no problems of “primogeniture”. All that, just to achieve the objective: to restore for a few hours a RAI channel to its owners.

In the meantime, I’m guaranteeing to the citizens that my blog and the Italia dei Valori blog will broadcast the event via live streaming, for the speeches that will be delivered from the stage , as well as for whatever happens during the march that will move from piazza della Repubblica to piazza san Giovanni. On 5 December, there will be the possibility of having news flashes on Twitter and we will make use of the Flickr platform to collect photos from users present in all the squares of Italy but, if we keep on going like this, it’ll be more worthwhile to pay the licence fee to the bloggers rather than to the State TV.
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29 November 2009

Support for Google

The Public Prosecutor's Office of Milan has asked that four Directors of Google be convicted of negligence for having failed to prevent the posting of a video clip, filmed on a mobile phone back in 2006 and showing four classmates bullying a youngster with Down’s Syndrome. The prosecution has asked that three of the four managers be sentenced to a jail term of one year and the fourth to a term of six months. As if this were not bad enough, the Milan Municipality, appearing as the offended party, has lodged a claim against the company for a sum of 300-thousand Euro in damages for alleged pain and suffering.

While I have the greatest respect for the judiciary, I feel obliged, firstly to offer my support to the four managers concerned and secondly to say that I have to disagree with this decision because it shows a distinct lack of technical understanding of the mechanisms that regulate the existence and the operation of Youtube.

Clearly, whoever came up with the bright idea to institute legal action such as this has been deceived by the fact that the legislators themselves actually have no idea of what the Web really is nor, for that matter, what YouTube really is, otherwise they would not have introduced a law that seeks to muzzle the Internet.

Even if Youtube were somehow able to monitor, in real time, each one of the thousands upon thousands of video clips that are posted by its users on any given day, and if they were to impose strict rules and stringent restrictions relating to the posting of material, they would probably have to shut down their operations within a day and thus the single most important source of free and independent information on the entire Web would disappear with it.

Furthermore, with regard to this specific case, I must add that, also thanks to that video clip, that hapless youngster who, just in passing, deserves every ounce of our sympathy, will no longer be subjected to that daily torture and, like him, heaven knows how many other youngsters also affected by bullying. This is simply because the general ruckus caused by that video clip has once again focussed the spotlight on these issues, thus also taking to task those individuals that commit these shameful acts.

Furthermore, as far as I’m aware, no one has yet suggested that Google, the company that owns Youtube, be given a reward of 300-thousand Euro for having, in the same way, enabled the police to arrest the alleged Naples killer following the posting, also on YouTube, of a video clip showing this brutal murder, which received thousands of hits in just a few hours.

I believe, therefore, that the prosecution of these four managers is nothing more than the umpteenth attack on the Internet, which stands accused of having sparked off a monumental social revolution that Italy, caged up as it is by laws that favour the growing technological divide between it and the other Countries, has not yet begun to comprehend.

I would like to close by announcing that the Italia dei Valori party is currently working on a proposed Bill aimed at the provision of free Wi-Max services in all of the larger inhabited centres, beginning with the Provinces. The bill will provide for some significant tax deductions and incentives for entrepreneurial activities that are able to transfer tangible benefits from the sale of goods and services, via the Internet, to consumers and communities. This Bill will also provide for free Internet access, without any connection fee, for students and low-income families.

The Internet is no longer merely an accessory in the life of a citizen, but has become a right and, as such, it is high time that the Government steps in to protect it.

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19 November 2009

Privatisation of water: the lobbies say thank you

I’m publishing the video and the text of Italia dei Valori’s voting intentions on the Ronchi decree for the privatisation of water .

Text

Signor President, signor President of the Council who is not present, we of Italia dei Valori are saying “no” to this decree that privatises certain services, including water.
We are saying “no” to this government because it is doing nothing but hideous laws that not even the Majority would vote for if they weren’t constantly under the permanent threat of once more being a candidate with the anticipated vote (Applause from the Deputies of the Italia dei Valori group and of the Democratic Party Group). In fact, the true problem is that this election law allows this Parliament to be made up of people appointed by the “current sultan” and not by the Italian people. We are saying “no” to this Government, because apart from privatising essential goods like water, it is privatising the laws as well, because it is making use of Parliament to take forward private interests instead of public interests. We are saying “no” to this Government that favours nuclear power. We are saying “no” to this Government that is privatising everything that is in a regime of natural monopoly, and that is transforming the public monopolies into private monopolies, in fact into their own private monopolies (Applause from the Deputies of the Italia dei Valori group). We are saying “no” to this Government that is privatising the law and that from the lodo Alfano to the lodo Schifani, and from the fiscal shield is in the end arriving at the “short trial”, that is useful only to itself, to you President of the Council, and to your criminal friends. We are saying “no” to this Government that with the system of privatisation has reduced social justice to ruins, and we are saying “no” to this Government in the name of and on behalf of the “precarious workers” in the schools, the workers and the employees of Omega, of Eutelia, of Agila and of Finmedia (Applause from the Deputies of the Italia dei Valori group), of La MALE of Turin, of the Cantieri Napoli of Castellammare and of the Finmeccanica, of FIAT in Termini Imerese, of Pomigliano d'Arco, of the Dalmine workers, of those from MAC-Iveco of Brescia, of the Merloni workers, of the Alitalia workers, of the companies in the supply chain of Malpensa, of the workers in the chemical works of Porto Torres and of Marghera, of the aluminium workers of Alcoa in Sardinia, of those at Sellfit of Caserta, at Lasme of Melfi and, from tomorrow, even those of Safilo in the North.
We are saying “no” to this Government, to the legal decrees that are used to transform into services those that are rights; because it states, with the legal decree that we are discussing, that it is privatising the service of water, but water is not a service, it is a right in itself, that is due to everyone, for the simple fact of existing: it’s not that one who has money can drink, and the one who has none, dies of thirst, (Applause from the Deputies of the Italia dei Valori group)
We are saying “no” to this Government, and we will say that with three referenda that straight after, from here, we will start off one by one as these laws are promulgated. «No» to nuclear power stations, that do not serve the public interest, because apart from stealing water they are even stealing the air to breathe, even the environment, even life (Applause from the Deputies of the Italia dei Valori group).
We are saying «no» with another referendum, relating to the legal decree being examined, that is privatising water; and we will also say «no» also to the law on the Statute of limitations relating to crimes that, asyou yourself have admitted, President of the Council who is not present, President of the Council on the run, it is of use to yourself, because you do not want to be put on trial: I would like a President of the Council who commits no crimes, not one who doesn’t want to be put on trial!

...

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6 November 2009

Orzo with Tonino

Today I was Zoro’s guest on the programme "Orzo". I’m publishing the video and the summarised text of some of the topics that we dealt with during my intervention.

on Regional Alliances

I believe that the acronyms have no meaning and that it’s the people that make the difference. With Cuffaro’s UDC I will make no alliance. With Tabacci’s UDC, willingly. We have established some rules and we have to look at the lists. If they are quality lists that are representative, then we can go forward, if they are lists to run away from, then we will keep our distance.

on The lay State

The extent to which the State is a lay State can be measured by the regulations relating to the “living will”, the “day after pill”, the possibility that the lesson on religion is optional. If we had to accept the idea that in every public place there must be no crucifix, then we would have to remove them from all public places. I have respect for you thinking differently from me, but I ask for respect for my ideas. I believe that the State must be a lay State, not religious, but that Is not measured by taking away reference to the history of a country; the crucifix represents an act of love. Is it the crucifix or the drug that ruins our young people?

on The bridge over the Straits of Messina

When I was a Minister I did what I had to do without letting the State waste a single bit of money. We have to ask, instead, whether I did things to make the bridge or so that it is not made? I found a State company that already existed, that had already made a contract with Impregilo that set out, in the eventuality of the contract being rescinded, a fine of 380 million. That contract however also contained the clause saying that if the contract was not broken, if the project was rejected, no fine was to be paid.
I found 1,062,000,000 to do the bridge and that money I gave instead for Sicily and for Calabria to make roads and to make the territory secure. Thus I took money away from the company for the bridge over the Straits of Messina, without disbanding it, and thus avoiding the State having to pay the fine. I did my duty.

on The “Cucchi “ case and the state of Italian prisons

I’m inviting everyone to have a look at our website and at my blog to see what Italia dei Valori has done about the “Cucchi“ case. It was us who asked the Minister of Justice to come and tell Parliament about the case. It has been us to challenge him for giving an insufficient response. It was us who invited Cucchi’s sister to come to the session in the Senate. We have been among those who have kept the matter in the public eye because we believe that you cannot enter the prison system and come out dead. There are two types of people who are badly off in prison: the prisoners and the prison guards. In Italian prisons, there’s no space and there is no possibility for rehabilitation. There’s the need for more resources. It’s a question of using the resources and identifying priorities. We believe that in a reformist area, it’s necessary to give more attention to the social classes who are the most vulnerable, whether they are the prison guards or the prisoners, because it’s right here in these situations of “unlivability” that these acts of violence are created. Our position is distant from the model of the right-wing governments where what holds sway is the law of the strongest, the most arrogant and unscrupulous.

on Beppe Grillo

Beppe Grillo is a citizen who does not do politics, but who informs people by means of his blog, making it possible for so many citizens to be able to unite on the Internet, communicating with each other so as to be able to offer an alternative to the country. If only there were more people like Beppe Grillo: he helps the citizen to have complete information compared to that of the regime that is enshrouding this country.

...

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20 October 2009

The filth of politicalTV

”We don’t like this berlusconian RAI.” is what all the Opposition parties are still saying. But I think it is more correct to say that it is the RAI of the parties that is going well beyond the limits of decency and the responsibilities cannot be stigmatised so easily. The radio and TV public services have been reduced to servants of the master and the Oppositions are staying silent. The old-English-style “spoil system” cannot be applied to journalism, to a company that is the property of citizens and that should be taken forward by those who are professional guard dogs of democracy.

Italia dei Valori has refused to participate in the sharing out of the so-called spoils to be divided up among the winners, and it has done this to give back dignity to RAI employees, to reaffirm that concept of liberty of expression that is written into the Constitution, so as not to debase the role of public service of a company that, in the first place, should be accountable to the citizens. We have asked for a reform of the leadership of the RAI and to be coherent, we have not asked for places on the Board of Directors, nor have we supported candidates for the position of director, deputy director and so on, even though we recognise the professionalism of many journalists and workers in the sector. We are convinced that the RAI has to belong to those that work there, to the numerous professions within the organisation.

Anyway, since the change in the way the leadership is organized, since we have stepped aside from the sharing out carried on by the Pdl, Lega, Pd and Udc, from that day, the Caste has isolated us and has expelled us from any programme and from the TV cameras.

A force like that of Italia dei Valori, that has had 8 per cent at the European elections, has been eliminated and no longer has a voice in the RAI and on the Mediaset networks. Our percentage of presence does not even reach the numbers of a telephone prefix. We have presented many complaints to Agcom to denounce the anomaly and to point out the lack of attention in relation to the principle of the pluralism of information with which the company should be complying. Complaints that up until now have unfortunately not been dealt with!

I am wondering how it is that the other parties of the Opposition are now staying silent. Why are they going on in silence and accepting the disinformation of Tg1 {the News programmes on RAI One} Why are they not protecting correct information? And yet they are inside. They are sitting at the table of the share outs. But perhaps they are more bothered about increasing their presence rather than checking up on the objectivity of the news that’s reported and the absence of forces that are doing true Opposition. And we are wondering why they are saying nothing about the boycotting in relation to Italia dei Valori. Perhaps it is convenient for them as well? And these gentlemen that are on the Board of Directors of the RAI? That by definition should be there because of their professionalism. Where have they got to? To whom are they accountable? Should they too not be protecting a force that has been democratically elected to parliament and that gained 8 per cent at the European elections? The silence of the parties of the pseudo-Opposition frightens us and at the same time we are unsettled by the silence of the professionals who are on the Board of Directors of the RAI just because they have been nodded in by the Caste.

If the proposal to not pay the TV licence fee had not been put forward even by the President of the Council, the temptation to follow this route even today would be strong,, but I know that the matter is more complex, as Berlusconi is doing it exclusively to give an advantage to the Mediaset companies that he owns.

Meanwhile, I am repeating that the TV licence fee can be eliminated only if at the same time, the limit for advertising is also abolished. Basically what needs overturning is that regulation that right now prevents the RAI from freely gathering advertising, and thus gives Mediaset a massive gift. It would be a way of reviving the RAI on the market and of guaranteeing effective competition. Anyway, there’s still the problem of public service TV and radio that is not accountable to the citizens but exclusively to the parties. Thus, without the TV licence fee, the RAI is at risk of dying from a pistol shot, whereas with the current system it is dying from a knife wound.

Which is better?
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4 October 2009

Sign and it will all go away

“It is written in the Constitution that the State President promulgates all the Country’s laws. If I don’t sign it today, Parliament will simply vote again on the same piece of legislation and then, at that point, I will be obliged to sign it. When you tell me not to sign, it means absolutely nothing". These are the words uttered by a State President who, during the course of the current legislature, has simply proceeded to sign anything put before him, often within 24 hours.
It is not true that “not signing” means absolutely nothing, because the actions of the Head of State are extremely important in terms of democracy and the image of the institutions.
If this is the attitude of the person currently holding this post then I have to ask myself precisely what Giorgio Napolitano is doing there. If this is the sum total of the regard that he has for the duties assigned to his position and if he signs anything simply because “I will have to sign it later anyway”, then we may as well allow Parliament to promulgate the Country’s laws and be done with this pantomime. The Head of State should not have signed the tax amnesty, nor should he have make light of its seriousness prior to doing so. This piece of rubbish should not have been promulgated and if it was re-submitted to him unchanged, when signing it the State President should have pointed out to the people that the total arrogance of the current government and part of the official opposition was even depriving the Head of State of his prerogative.
On the 2nd October this year, the confidence vote could have resulted in the Berlusconi IV government being sent packing and allowing the Country’s citizens to go back to the polls. By a mere 20 votes, Italy missed this important train on which the Country’s future and the tax shield were travelling. The twenty votes of Democratic Party and Udc deputies and, I am obliged to shamefully admit, also an Idv deputy. The Italians have been cheated by 32 Parliamentary escorts that sold their souls in the interests of this shameful deed. On this unforgettable 2nd October, there were 24 absentees from the Democratic Party, 7 from the Udc and one from the Idv and, just a few hours earlier, these same people had already boycotted the vote on the motion of unconstitutionality of the tax shield.
I refuse to be lectured on respect for the institutions by a bunch of men wearing double-breasted suits that claim to be fulfilling the opposition role in Parliament only to pull back at the opportune moment, namely when it comes down to the vote, and the only thing they know how to do then is to denigrate and rant and rave against those that offer real opposition, without respite, both within and outside of Parliament, such as the Italia dei valori party.
The lessons given by the Pdl, including Fini, are much like the sirens’ songs to Ulysses and shouldn’t be listened to at all, however, those who disguise themselves as saviours of the homeland and go down to Piazza del Popolo to defend democracy with their words, and then proceed to kill democracy by their actions in Parliament, don’t deserve the respect of the just but rather the ire of the honest.

The birth of the 5-STAR MOVEMENT: today at 15h00 via live streaming on the blog

Yesterday I took part in the demonstration held in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, which was shown on live streaming on my blog and on the Italia dei Valori website. An imposing and important event that demonstrated that the Country is still with us and is just waiting for some sign of hope, a sign that the Italia dei Valori party is sending out and will continue to send out more strongly every day.

Today another important event will be taking place, one that is being studiously ignored by the regime and that hasn’t been given thirty days worth of front page coverage in “La Repubblica” but that, I am certain, will be followed with interest by thousands of citizens, namely the inauguration of Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star Movement at the “Smeraldo” in Milan. I will also be showing this event via live streaming on my Blog at 15h00 and, as regards this important political event, I trust that tomorrow, the same media that took to the streets to demand their freedom and proclaim their independence from the powers that be, will allocate due space in their reporting on Monday, otherwise it means that all that happened in Piazza del Popolo yesterday was just another media lobby group party. Good Luck Beppe.

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26 September 2009

Agenda for the September 26 demonstration

Today, the “Red Agenda” demonstration promoted by Salvatore Borsellino and a number of private citizens, associations and members of society, will be leaving from “Bocca della Verita” Square. The demonstration is aimed at showing support for the Public Prosecutors of Palermo, Caltanissetta, Florence and Milan who are involved in the investigations into the 1992-93 massacres and the links between politics and the Mafia.

The demonstration will be shown via live streaming on this blog.

The day’s agenda:

14h00 - Piazza Bocca della Verità: gathering of participants
15h30 – Departure of the “Red Agendas” procession, headed for Piazza Navona
17h30 - Piazza Navona: Public addresses by citizens, representatives of civil society and journalists.

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25 September 2009

Saturday 26th: Bring along your red notebook

Tomorrow, September 26 in Rome, the “Red Agenda” demonstration, promoted by Salvatore Borsellino and a number of private citizens, associations and members of society, will leave from “Bocca della Verita” Square.
I now forwarding the appeal made by Salvatore Borsellino, who is inviting citizens to join in the procession. Never before has the State detached itself from the institutions and distanced itself from the Country’s citizens with such unprecedented haughtiness and arrogance like it has in this past year. Ministers, councillors, deputies, senators, mayors and all other administrative and institutional office bearers are public servants who represent the wishes of a community of voters. They should constantly be attentive and provide answers whenever they are questioned.

At the moment, the citizens are asking the politicians for answers regarding Paolo Borsellino’s red notebook, the via D'Amelio murder, the Capaci massacre and the bombs in Florence and Milan. Explanations that cannot simply be stamped and written off as attacks on the government, unless, of course, the political masterminds of those horrendous acts are now hiding within the government.

Later this evening I will be posting the report submitted by our roving reporter following the Dell'Utri trial.

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17 September 2009

Porta a Porta: Who is paying, Vespa or Masi?

Given that by now in the broadcasts where there is an intervention from the President of the Council, there’s a recorded debacle, a decided drop in viewers, I believe that Silvio Berlusconi should appear and damage his own TV networks and not those of the public service.

While Vespa collects a humble 13.47% of the share, Mediaset is rubbing its hands with the advertising revenues of its channels that are welcoming the fugitives from the RAI networks. And in that way we find ourselves in the grotesque situation of a President of the Council who in order to favour his companies is damaging the RAI. So basically, while the taxpayers are losing money, his is filling his pockets. But if the State TV is like this, then there is no sense in paying the licence fee, and given that with the fall in the share it is also damaging the income tax revenue, and given that Vespa considers “Porta a Porta” to be one of his programmes, then I am wondering whether it should be he or Masi to make up this shortfall in the public coffers. Their behaviour can be seen as the use of public money and resources in order to favour the interests of a single individual.

I thank the Italian citizens for having followed the propaganda advert “Io boicotto Porta a Porta” {I am boycotting ‘Porta a Porta’}. Thanks to them there was a collapse in the audience rating for the programme. Bruno Vespa was the RAI’s executioner on Tuesday. When the Berlusconi government is just a memory, it’s certain that signor Vespa will end up in the oblivion of being forgotten. And I am taking the opportunity to tell him once more that there are no owners of public programmes and that I will be on “Porta a Porta” to remind him of that and to obtain a response to the following question that the citizens want answering: “How is it that Berlusconi chooses yourself and not your colleagues when he wants to be interviewed? “

Yesterday’s programme was “according to the script”, a consequence of sickening self-satisfaction, a soliloquy of an isolated man who is arrogant and weak. Silvio Berlusconi, the one who corrupted Mills, in the greatest process of tax evasion to the detriment of the tax payer, allows himself to accuse the director of “La Repubblica” of being a tax dodger, thus showing himself to be an uncontrolled liar and taking advantage of the ignorance of many citizens, the base of his electoral support, who do not know his biography.

In the next few months I will carry out a capillary campaign of leafleting, in every corner of the country, to make known Silvio Berlusconi’s biography that is online on the Wikipedia site. As anyone who surfs the Internet even knows the P2 membership number of this man, but many citizens, because of their age or for technical problems, still haven’t read what this unpresentable President of the Council has been able to do.

The first of the three objectives launched yesterday, which is that of boycotting “Porta a Porta”, has been achieved, thanks to all of you. To what extent the others that are given below are achieved, depends on the so-called Opposition parties, and on the President of the Republic from whom we are waiting for a sign. Use your Facebook site and your website to spread the word about this initiative. I am sending out an appeal to the Opposition politicians asking them to show solidarity with Franceschini who has already given his opinion. Please refuse every proposal for the “repair” episode of “del giorno dopo” scheduled for 23 September, in which Bruno Vespa would like to close down the game of “I am saving face for the filth of 15 September”. I am sending out an appeal to the President of the Republic. I am asking him to be a guarantor of the application and the respect for the law that regulates the “par condicio” (equal coverage) in guaranteeing an appropriate visibility of all the main parties and/or political movements.

Use your Facebook site and your website to spread the word about this initiative.

Text:
I am sending out an appeal to the Opposition politicians asking them to show solidarity with Franceschini who has already given his opinion. Please refuse every proposal for the “repair” episode of “del giorno dopo” scheduled for 23 September, in which Bruno Vespa would like to close down the game of “I am saving face for the filth of 15 September”.
Use your website to spread the word about this initiative:
Text:
I am sending out an appeal to the President of the Republic. I am asking him to be a guarantor of the application and the respect for the law that regulates the “par condicio” (equal coverage) in guaranteeing an appropriate visibility of all the main parties and/or political movements.
Use your website to spread the word about this initiative:

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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15 September 2009

Get out of RAI

I am joining in with the campaign that has now been launched by more than one source, to unsubscribe from the RAI licence fee and I am inviting citizens to do likewise and I’m adding “to substitute it with Sky”. I am not expressing an opinion on Mediaset because, apart from the showing of films, I would prefer even home shopping programmes to its programmes.

The RAI has fallen into a profound vegetative state. The political interferences are nauseous, and I believe that there can be the basis for taking legal action against the directorate and the government as the authors of this degradation. This is something that I have asked my lawyers to look into.

What we are witnessing is a shameful management of a public body that is dissolving the balance sheets, shares, and cultural heritage of the three networks as well as damaging the population by leaving it in the dark as regards information.

The RAI management, a rib of the government, on the one hand is boycotting high profile broadcasts with high audience ratings like Gabanelli‘s Report (video), Santoro’s Annozero (video) and Floris’ Ballarò (video), and on the other hand it is working out bankrupt strategies like TivuSat and it is promoting factious information from people like Minzolini or Vespa, whose relationship to journalism is like the electric chair to human life.

By now, we are living in a country that is without the most elementary of democratic freedoms, where the arrogance of a handful of people solidly anchored in the institutions, and protected by absurdity just by themselves, are devouring the State from the inside and are attacking the vital organs like an invisible but deadly cancer. The members of this government, when they take themselves off, soon, will not dissolve into the molasses of Parliament, like the previous legislatures, but they will have to answer for the damage caused to the “res pubblica” so that they can be kept at a distance and so that they can no longer cause harm to the country.

At Vasto on 18, 19 and 20 September, Italia dei Valori will present the alternative to government (see the agenda). The alternative to this indecent Executive, that will be the starting point to reconstruct the drugged conscience of the citizens, the economy and the State itself, whatever is still left after the XVI legislature.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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Independent information: a mirage

On Saturday 19 September I will be in Rome for the demonstration “no all’informazione al guinzaglio” {No to information on a leash} organised by the FNSI { Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana = Italian journalists’ union}. It’s a slogan that we believe in and that is still distant for Italy.

From the European elections there was an unwritten agreement, an understanding with Masonic tinges, that has reunited the traditional information bodies in a colossal censorship against Italia dei Valori, taking no notice of the opinion of almost a tenth of the population. This is an incontrovertible fact, that doesn’t need numbers because it is obvious.

Parties that are well under our level of ‘threshold go-ahead’ have received unexplainable propaganda spaces to relaunch a “third grouping” that does not exist and that is inconsistent, just to obfuscate the only alternative to government to this arrogant majority: that of Italia dei Valori. The surveillance bodies for information no longer have any relevance and are completely subjugated by those who control, whether they are of the Majority or of a certain type of Opposition.

When Berlusconi attacks the press and RaiTre, what’s actually happening is that he’s not attacking their freedom of expression but the fact that they are taking instructions from his political adversaries exactly as the rest of the Italian media galaxy is taking instructions from him.

The freedom and the independence of information are still mirages for this country. At the trials for Dell’Utri and Bassolino, our correspondents, present there every day, never bumped into a journalist from the publications that live on public financing.

And yet, the greatest conflict of interests of our country that has bankrolled the rise of Forza Italia, would have disappeared ages ago if an appropriate price had been paid for the radio and TV concessions that are in the hands of the Berlusconi family. And yet no newspaper talks about it and no Centre Left government has ever tackled the conflict of interests, in fact they have favoured it by fixing the value of the Mediaset concessions at the ridiculous value of 1% of turnover (of RTI, not even of Publitalia!).

The 10 questions asked by ‘La Repubblica’ are political questions without sufficient information efficacy. They are a tap on the cheek for a man that is so infinitely weak and blackmailable.

To have another glance at the 10 question from “la Padania” in 1998, that even the Lega itself has shamefully forgotten about, would have been much more illuminating for public opinion about who the President of the Council really is.

On 19 September , I will be in Rome, in Piazza del Popolo, at the FNSI demonstration to reaffirm Italia dei Valori’s wish to seek, without compromising, information that is free and independent of all parties, not just those of Silvio Berlusconi.

In the alternative to government given in the 10 points, those that have been censored, the alternative that frightens the Caste, at point 5 there’s the freedom of information: a proposal that would allow us to move up in the shameful classification of the world report on the freedom of the press that in 2009 sees us in position number 44 in the world.

Below are our proposals to break the chains on information:
Liberalise the TV market by putting into effect the European directive and the verdicts of the Constitutional Court and of the European Court of Justice (Europa7-Rete4 case) with the elimination of the duopoly RAI-Mediaset

Fix the limit of 10-15% of the total market for the owners of TV networks and print media

Review the criteria for assigning public financing to publishing and how they are effectively controlled

Assign the control of the RAI to a body that is totally and really independent from the conditioning and from the choices of politics

Read and comment on the points about information >>

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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25 August 2009

RAISET

The RAI is changing its name because it is no longer State TV but a rib in Mediaset governed by the lackeys of the court of the parties.
After the appointment of the controllers of the Supervisory Committee, after the splitting up of the Board of Directors, after the occupation of the leadership, renewed apart from the meritocracy and the work of the people who were stepping down, we are witnessing the final scandalous show on the delay over the appointments to TG3 and RAI3. The time wasting is due to the wait for the PD congress because if there’s one winner rather than another, the choice of lackey to cover the 2 empty armchairs would be different. The PDL, that is getting annoyed about this delay, has already placed its own Chihuahua in all the other positions!
But it’s not just this indecent occupation by politics that has transformed the RAI from a public utility service into a guinea pig for private interests, as much as the Mediaset meddling in the governance and the economics of the State TV channels.
In 19 days of August, 168 events of the public TV have been encrypted on Sky, which has meant, as could have been foreseen, major falls in the audience and thus of the attractiveness in terms of advertising on the State networks.
The role of a State TV channel is to inform, to educate, and to entertain its citizens and not to descend into war in the role of kamikaze against the competition with the empire of the President of the Council.
After having diverted advertising from State and quasi-State agencies onto Mediaset, the President of the Council, using Mauro Masi, is getting ready to split the RAI into small pieces by making it lose Sky’s more than a million euro, vital oxygen for the economic accounts of the company, viewers and advertising compared to what? From the lie about TivuSat, a bet at the expense of the citizens and of the Viale Mazzini employees, a bet that was lost at the outset and the only ones to gain any advantage will be the companies of the Berlusconi family.

In its government programme, Italia dei Valori has laid down that there will be no interference by politicians in the public appointments at all levels, even the RAI appointments, the review of the prices of the concessions of the radio and TV frequencies to Mediaset (that now is at a scandalous 1% of turnover), and a law, never called for by either the right or the left, on the conflict of interests that makes it impossible to see the character of a rich monopolist leading Italy, as happens in developed countries.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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14 August 2009

The culture of corruption

There’s a news item that only few Italians know about. It’s a summer “porcata” worthy of this band of mates who are in government.

Bondi, the Minister of Culture, has refinanced for 2009, the Craxi Foundation. Up until this, knowing that the PDL welcomes into Parliament, people who have been convicted of every sort of crime, even for mafia association, there nothing to be shocked about. We know that we are faced with a party in the image and likeness of its founders: Berlusconi and Dell’Utri.

But when you learn that the foundations in the name of Sandro Pertini, of Di Vittorio and of D'Annunzio will receive not a euro then that’s when we have to get annoyed.

The foundations have the task of promoting the culture of the Country. What values does the Craxi Foundation want to promote? Its president is Stefania, Craxi’s daughter.

In the Italian version of Wikipedia it says: “the Craxi Foundation is a foundation created in 2000 with the intention of protecting the personality, the image, the cultural and political patrimony of Bettino Craxi by means of the collection of all the historical documents that relate to his political history”. What I’m wondering when I read this definition, is whether in the patrimony that is talked about, there are the thousands of judicial documents that provide evidence of his real political value.

Craxi was not a statesman. He was just the founder of the system of illicit financing of parties, one who was a hardened corruptor and who was corrupted and who destroyed the Italian economic system by bringing it down on the mechanism of clientelism rather than on its merits. A mechanism for which the tenders and public works ended up in the hands of the one who made the best offer instead of the one who was the most capable.

A man in whose shadow (as in the worst of the breeding grounds) lived the front line politicians that are now leading the Italian parties.

A man whose teachings are at the bases of the lack of trust in the institutions and in the politics of the top Italian party: the one of those who have no trust. And it is this party that today brings together 50% of the citizens with the right to vote.

The Craxi Foundation is one that I would dissolve this very day because it is refinanced by means of the same system created by the individual that bears its name: the system of clientelism. I am proposing other Foundations to the politicians and chums of Bettino of Hammamet, who are scattered throughout the major Italian political parties: one dedicated to Mangano or to Rocco Muscari.

In the next few days I will give space to another Foundation of the same stature as the other one, that is the Agnelli Foundation, dedicated to the corruptor of that name, one who is better known in the guise of the life Senator: Giovanni Agnelli.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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6 August 2009

What’s the point of the RAI?

Today, in such good time, in the affair of Mediaset-RAI versus Sky, even Sergio Zavoli has intervened. He’s the Chair of the Overview Committee and he has suggested that the RAI directors should reopen negotiations with Sky. Even this invitation will fall on deaf ears, just like that of the Head of State, Giorgio Napolitano, for whom the only response has been a dossier of papers from Mauro Masi, the RAI director general. Just as it was deaf ears that met the four rules for the behaviour of future players laid down by the Chair of the RAI, Paolo Garimberti.

The truth is that the RAI will be used by the Head of the Government to compete with Murdoch in favour of the network of the “Biscione”. The RAI will come out of this with its bones broken: losses of millions of euro, investments with no return, and Fininvest will be the only or the major beneficiary, it will see audiences and advertising fleeing from its networks, job cuts, and a gradual ageing of its structure, of its programming and of its technologies, that will, in the space of a few years, see it deprived of any capacity to compete, just as Mediaset would like. A collapse that would be down to the State and the citizens to sort out and from which the only ones to draw a benefit would be the networks of the President of the Council.

I am wondering where is the Antitrust Authority, what’s the point of the Overview Committee unless it is to put a stop to the process of sabotage that is happening right now, what is the point of the Board of Directors if in order to take a decision of this importance for the future of public broadcasting, it’s enough to have Masi and the part of the Board of Directors that were appointed by the PDL. In a few years, then, the citizens will be asking what is the point of the RAI as a rough copy of the Mediaset channels. I would like Masi to present to Parliament the business plan and the economic evaluations that have been used to make the decisions on the alliance with Mediaset for TivuSat, and given the passivity that he will be obliged to show, I’m wondering if it will be necessary to remove him and for the documents to be discussed in the Tribunal.

Certainly in September, I will take the matter to the European Parliament and, if necessary, I will buy another page in the foreign press for a new appeal to the international community.

As well as the conflict of interests, that we have been fighting and denouncing for years, and that the PD has magically rediscovered having guaranteed them for years, it is necessary to banish politics from the appointment of directors of public services, and particularly from RAI positions so as to guarantee that the State can, through its structures, work in the interests of the citizens and the country and have a budget that is at least balanced and thus does not weigh on the public debt.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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5 August 2009

Who’s abdicating and who doesn’t care

The occupation of the media has almost finished, as in the most fantastical of the P2 plans. What’s missing is just the appointment of the vice Chair of TG1 and of RAIUNO and it’ll be all over. Masi will have done the dirty work that he was placed there to do. The president Garimberti, a clay pot among iron ones, now that he has been appointed, is imposing four rules of behaviour for the making of future decisions that I guess will be useful for those that follow.

To listen to Minzolini’s RAI or Emilio Fede’s Mediaset will make no difference, in fact, with Mediaset the citizen will be able to foresee the factiousness of his master’s voice, whereas with the RAI, millions of Italians will no longer be able to evaluate the goodness of the obfuscated information from the halo of impartiality that was enjoyed by the one with the label “Radio Televisione Italiana” {Italian Radio and Television}.

On the other hand “il Colle” {euphemism for the President of the Republic} is expressing his disappointment for the “missing” negotiation with Sky, that in reality, rather than being “missing” I would say was “avoided” or rather “non-existent”. The RAI did not choose Sky but Mediaset to give life to “TivùSat” because the criminal plan of the power group that is in government, led by Silvio Berlusconi, Fininvest’s owner, is to create a power system supported by the manipulation of information so that it can settle itself with stability to govern the country.

And while the ones with responsibility, and still for a short time, the power to fight this P2-ist plan are abdicating in favour of a behaviour that is hypocritically elegant and realistically ineffective, the sharks of democracy in the government are marching straight on their own path with the dear motto of “I don’t care” (about the rules and about the institutions).

Italia dei Valori has refused the chunk of bread for the RAI appointments offered by this Majority, unlike the parties of the “Opposition in alternating phases”, because it knew that this invitation to share out the appointments would have been used to buy silence at the appropriate moment, as the one who took a place at the sharing-out table is demonstrating.

Italia dei Valori has very clear ideas for governing the Country in terms of information, and the top one is to kick out politics from the appointments to the Board of Directors and the Supervisory Committee of the RAI.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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20 July 2009

TivùSat: the great heap

The RAI, the State TV company, has refused 125 million euro from Sky to broadcast the RaiSat package.
By going through the new decoder, RAI, Mediaset and La7 will launch the "TivùSat" era on 31 July.

And that’s not all, the Sky subscribers who are in possession of a decoder, and who don’t want other decoders, or who don’t care about Fede, will anyway have to have him in their homes (Fede and the "TivùSat" decoder) because the channels RAI 1, 2 and 3 will no longer be viewable on the Sky decoder.

I’m asking myself various questions, given that the RAI is paid for by the citizens but it is managed by Confalonieri and in the interim on behalf of the President of the Council, Berlusconi:

how much has Mediaset offered to put Murdoch’s 125 million euro out of the game?

On the basis of what criteria was the choice made for the RAI directive to invest in a losing horse like Mediaset rather than in Sky, a company whose economic results and future prospects leave no doubts with respect to the competitor in its death throes?

with what business plan and with what economic returns has the RAI thrown itself on "TivùSat", in love and agreement with Mediaset and La7 that are also its competitors?

I’m wondering if in evaluating their travelling companions, the director Mauro Masi and the Supervisory Committee in the person of Zavoli, have taken into consideration the fact that:

Mediaset holds the concessions of the public radio and TV frequencies at the modest price of 1% of the turnover of RTI (not even of Publitalia!), a “permission to use” that is practically free and that has denied immense capital sums to enter the coffers of the State.

from the time this government came to power, advertising investment from State and quasi-State companies like Eni and “Poste Italiane” have mainly been diverted from the RAI, owned by the Italians, to Mediaset, owned by the Berlusconi family.

Silvio Berlusconi, the owner of Mediaset, is the very same Silvio Berlusconi who is President of the Council, and it is perhaps possible that the "TivùSat" entrepreneurial adventure has been thought up to bring money to his companies and not to those that in three years he may no longer be controlling.

If Mauro Masi knows all these things, then I invite him to look at a tiny fragment of TG4 to be able to gauge what type of travelling companions he has chosen for the Italian citizens and for State information.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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15 July 2009

Giorgo don’t sign

We are here together with the friends of the Internet, with the bloggers, for this final desperate appeal. We have called it: “Giorgo don’t sign”, not out of a lack of respect, but because we want to have trust in the top institution that protects the Constitution. Signor President, don’t sign this law. It is no longer enough to revise it “a little bit” we are talking about the law that everyone is calling the “block the wiretapping” that is already a bad law in itself, but that in fact should be renamed “block democracy” because it gags information.
It is a law that even stops people from talking to each other on the Internet. Once upon a time, there was the Agora (a term used in ancient Greece to talk about the main square in the city), where people met up and had discussions, then came the telephone and people started to talk to each other at a distance. Today thanks to the Internet, there is the Universal Agora that unites both concepts. OK. A law has been done that in fact says: don’t come together, don’t talk, don’t communicate, no longer express your opinion nor listen to the opinions of the others: the Agora no longer exists.
Democracy will be totally destroyed in the country because in this measure, as well as the prohibition of wiretapping, as well as the prohibition on communicating and providing information about what is happening within the Italian proceedings, there’s a swindling amendment, a delinquent one that prevents communication via the Internet.
It is an anti-democratic measure, that they will pass in spite of this demonstration, and it should engage all of us in Europe, because it is the final rampart that we will have if Giorgio doesn’t listen to us, by means of a directive that our Parliamentarians in Strasburg are taking forward even though they only started working on it yesterday. We are doing this because we want there to be the will even in Italy, and the possibility to inform and to be informed so that there is democracy. Thus we are participating in this day of mourning for information, in this demonstration because it can be an act of “hard-working resipiscence”, an act of sensibilisation and of providing information.
When you hear this message the day of protest will have already gone by, the block on the Internet that we have promoted together, but you continue to pass the message on and above all write to Giorgio Napolitano, President of the Republic, without using “nasty” overtones or they will accuse us of threatening him. Please ask him, as Italia dei Valori is doing, almost beg him but don’t ask him to call up a Minister informally telling him “make this law a bit less ‘porcata’ {literally – like a pig – but with the idea of being filthy}”. The filthy laws are always filthy laws. You can dress up a pig as you like but it is still a pig. And this is a ‘porcata’ law. This is why we reckon we have to fight it.
Let us stay united on the Internet. Let us all be engaged in an action of civil disobedience: me personally, we of Italia dei Valori, but I know that there are so many others including independent journalists , Internet men and bloggers who will continue to keep you informed in spite of the fact that the fascist and P2-ist Italian regime wants to prevent us from doing so. The more of us there are, the more difficult it will be to stop us.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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I’m joining the blogger strike

My blog is joining the blogger strike against the gagging of wiretapping and information, promoted by Minister Alfano’s criminal law, and against the regulation of “right of correction within 48 hours” for all websites, a regulation that has been renamed by the Internet as “kill the Internet”.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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13 July 2009

Anti-Italian for whom?

During the G8 I was labelled anti-Italian. The intention of the announcement in the Herald Tribune, and of the letter in The Guardian, was to show the international public opinion that not all Italians are “berluscones”. Thus the objective was exactly the opposite of what the mono-tone chorus of media and politicians have told me off for.
Many Italians are very willing to disassociate themselves from the image that Silvio Berlusconi and his biography offer of the country and that International public opinion sees as an anomaly in the European system.
In recent days, I have received thousands of expressions of respect from the citizens, many of whom are resident abroad.
To be coherent with the choice to not accept a respite, even during the G8, I have had to reject the Head of State’s invitation. It is an invitation that I do not understand.
A political debate that is “peaceful and civil” is to be hoped for where there can at least be an engagement.

What engagement can there be with a government that has continuously made use of the confidence vote to force through laws in Parliament?
What engagement can there be with Signor Berlusconi who has explained his behaviour to the magazine Chi, that is placed in the beauty parlours of half of Italy, rather than refer to Parliament, an institution of which he is the leader and where he has never been present?
What engagement can there be with a government that has done more “ad personam” laws than those for the whole of society? That has literally ignored a referendum by the Italians against the nuclear option, and has unilaterally signed an agreement with Sarkozy to bring back outdated and lethal technology to Italy exclusively for the interests of restricted business lobbies? That 25% of the needs that the 11 power stations of death are meant to be able to satisfy could be well supplied by renewable energy, in which the above-mentioned lobbies have not invested.
What engagement can there be with the one who has put to flight the foreign capital thus destabilising the economic policy of the country?
What engagement can there be with the one who has reduced to zero the integrity and the authority of the institutional positions and has covered himself with ridicule and scandal like a clown, thus making himself also open to blackmail?
And finally, even though the list could still be very long, what engagement should we look for with the one who is getting approval for a law on wiretapping that will hand over the economy, the public administration, and the society to a level of corruption like that of South American countries.

I am sorry, President Napolitano, to be the only one to ask these questions in a context in which Italian democracy seems like a perfectly healthy organism, but is completely infested with parasites that are slowly and unceasingly debilitating its state of health.

"BEPPE GRILLO: A VALID PROGRAMME"
Many people in the PD are falling over themselves to mock the candidacy of Grillo as the Secretary of that Party, and yet his is the only programme that has been made visible, and it is much more developed than the ideas that we have heard up to now from the other candidates. Clean up Parliament, the law on the conflict of interests, public water resources, “no” to nuclear and the development of renewable energy resources, the maximum of two legislatures for the parliamentarians, free Wi-Fi, the freedom of information, with the withdrawal of State TV concessions from every political entity. A serious, innovative programme that I agree with and that we of Italia dei Valori have been taking forward for some time now in the most complete solitude and ignored by the leadership class of the Centre Right and the Centre Left.
Antonio Di Pietro

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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10 July 2009

Letter to The Guardian

Can a dog ever turn around and bite the hand that feeds it? Certainly not.

What else could we have expected from the Italian press as regards my appeal published in the Herald Tribune considering that, just yesterday, 140 million Euro of public funding was approved for 2009 and 2010?

The Italian press is essentially the politicians’ dog on a leash: they bark on command while the newspaper editors, or pack leaders, are involved in an ongoing battle to see who can best please their respective masters. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Silvio Berlusconi has certainly not managed to silence the only true opposition, namely the Italia dei Valori Party, and he is exploiting the spotlight of the G8 summit, which he is paying for, to spread some cheap propaganda. His guests, who are here for the G8 summit, are doing their best to avoid becoming embroiled in one of “Mr. Unpresentable’s” gaffes. Their aim is just to get through the summit with as little damage as possible being done to their image .

However, once the “G8 Party” is finished, the spotlights will be turned off and the world will come back down to Earth, to the reality of Termini Imerese, that of nuclear power in the Veneto Region and in Sicily, that of the Alfano Bill, that of the gagging of wiretapping, that of a GDP growth rate of -5% and that of the credit crunch that is strangling our business enterprises.
The G8 leaders are well aware of the contents of Silvio Berlusconi’s biography, indeed they certainly know far more about him than what is contained in the little flier that they have been given.

I attach the full text of the letter that I sent to The Guardian, which the paper published in extract form in the hardcopy edition and in its entirety on the website, containing my response to the English Daily’s statement that they have to ask themselves why on earth the Italian public continues to forgive Silvio Berlusconi for his political inadequacy. Dear Mr. Editor, the truth is that the Italian public is unable to rid themselves of the corruptor that is Italy’s current Prime Minister, because they are the victims of a massive conflict of interests that uses public funds to bring our Country’s information system and its democracy to their knees by putting the public’s consciousness to sleep.
(Italian version of the letter attached)

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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25 June 2009

That eight percent of level playing field

On 6 and 7 June the Italia dei Valori was the only political party to double its votes when compared to the results achieved in last year’s General Elections. This was the only real and indisputable news regarding the European Elections. Everything else went entirely "according to plan". Support for the Lega was bound to increase given the “Hogwash” that the Pdl has been coming up with and the fact that Berlusconi has become totally unpresentable. Those voters that don’t ever bother to assess individuals or political plans, but instead simply continue to believe in "promises", folded yet again, as they are doing increasingly of late, and went and voted for the party of the empty guns.

On the 8th June, the media puppets and the media themselves, having been entirely taken aback by the uncontrollable phenomenon of the 8% that couldn’t simply be explained away, and probably without even needing to discuss the issue amongst themselves beforehand, nevertheless tacitly agreed on a common strategy, namely, a blackout. Magically and in cowardly fashion, all of the puppet television news directors, daily newspapers and magazines simply stopped talking about the Italia dei Valori Party.

In the past, we have lived through and gotten used to dealing with the “ad-hoc” blackouts that unsurprisingly always seemed to strike around election time or immediately after the release of the results of some or other poll that favoured this party, but these blackouts have never before been so persistent. So much so that when, on the 23 June, Repubblica.it picked up on this Blog’s posting entitled “It’s true: the man is unwell” and mentioned it in their newscast. Literally minutes later, just long enough for one telephone call, the news item was withdrawn!

The problem now is precisely who do we turn to in order to get that 8% of space in the public media and the Government frequencies, which our voters demand in order to find out what we are doing for them?
Appealing to the Oversight Committee or to Agcom would do as much good as contacting Consob to lodge a complaint about Parmalat. In addition to being futile, turning to whichever Minzolini happens to be in the hot seat at this moment in time would be tantamount to admitting that there isn’t really someone out there that is making the puppets dance, which there undoubtedly is. We were left with no other viable option other than to once again approach our State President.

This morning we asked the State President, Giorgio Napolitano, to do the following: to intervene in order to enforce our 8% of level playing field as regards the public media, to restore credibility in our downgraded information system that has become the exclusive mouthpiece of the equivalent of two football hooligans, and to force the oversight bodies back on track and to do what they are meant to do because, at the moment, they are nothing more than a financial burden on the taxpayers’ pockets. In conclusion, our hope is that the Head of State will give careful consideration to the pending legislation relating to wiretapping before signing and promulgating it, because we believe that it includes numerous aspects that are decidedly grey and distinctly unconstitutional.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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26 May 2009

Another Bluff

”The ideal Parliament should be made up of 300 deputies and 150 senators.” This is what was declared by the President of the Council.

If only it were true! Italia dei Valori has already presented some draft laws some time ago, laws for the reduction of the costs of politics and among these one for the reduction of the number of parliamentarians (watch the video). Proposals that have been precisely ignored.

We find ourselves faced with the typical declaration that is part of the strategy based on “declare to deter”, so dear to the President of the Council. It is an ancient strategy "come out with a decisive attack" on the topics that over time will be forgotten, in such a way as to dissolve the attention from the current disgraces whether or not they are public or private.

To reduce the number of parliamentarians with a “popular initiative law” means having a joke at the expense of the public since a “proposal of a popular law” is initiated by “the people” with the collection of signatures from the citizens. But the government and its parliamentary majority have no need for 50,000 signatures from the citizens. Even this detail demonstrates the lack of consideration that the President of the Council has for the voters or his ignorance on the topic.

I am ready to bet that the citizens will show that they are sensitive on this matter. It’s obvious, but the Italians are in agreement even on three questions of another proposal for a popular law: that presented in July 2007 that wants to put a limit of two terms of office for anyone elected to Parliament, to bring back the preferences for voting and to prevent people who have been definitively convicted from sitting in one of the Chambers of Parliament.

How come this draft law is still lying around in the Committee for Constitutional Affairs? And what indications will the Premier give to his ‘lackeys’ in Parliament when these three questions start their journey through Parliament?

Perhaps the President of the Council is only interested in the number of parliamentarians, but for the citizens the quality is also an urgent matter. Thus I am asking signor Silvio Berlusconi that, if he has respect for the citizens, apart from the reduction in the number of parliamentarians, a proposal already presented by Italia dei Valori, he must shut out those who have definitive convictions. The proposal for a popular law already exists.

If he doesn't remember the names, I’ll give him a reminder:

1.Berruti Massimo Maria (FI)
2.Bonsignore Vito (Udc - European Parliament)
3.Borghezio Mario (Lega Nord - European Parliament)
4.Bossi Umberto (Lega Nord)
5.Camber Giulio (PDL)
6.Cantoni Giampiero (FI)
7.Carra Enzo (PD)
8.Ciarrapico Giuseppe (PDL)
9.De Angelis Marcello (AN)
10.Dell’Utri Marcello (FI)
11.Farina Renato (FI)
12.La Malfa Giorgio (FI-PRI)
13.Maroni Roberto (Lega Nord)
14.Nania Domenico (AN)
15.Papania Antonio (PD)
16.Naro Giuseppe (UDC)
17.Sciascia Salvatore (FI)
18.Tomassini Antonio (FI)
19.Drago Giuseppe (UDC)

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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23 May 2009

Live from Naples. Alfano and De Magistris in Europe

We have an appointment at 18h30, via direct streaming, for the “Battle for rights” demonstration in support of Luigi de Magistris and Sonia Alfano, both of whom are standing as candidates for the European elections under the banner of the Italia dei Valori party.

The day’s proceedings will be hosted by Beppe Grillo and can be viewed via direct streaming on this Blog, as well as on the websites www.italiadeivalori.it and www.carlocostantini.it.

Speakers include:

Beppe Grillo

Sonia Alfano (Italia dei Valori party candidate for the European Parliament)

Luigi de Magistris (Italia dei Valori party candidate for the European Parliament)

Carlo Vulpio (Italia dei Valori party candidate for the European Parliament)

Antonio Di Pietro (President of the Italia dei Valori party)

Clementina Forleo (magistrate)

Tara Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi’s granddaughter)

Libero De Rienzo (actor)

Abel Ferrara (film director)

Marzio Honorato (actor)

Salvatore Borsellino (Paolo Borsellino’s brother)

Gaetano di Vaio ("Figli del Bronx" Association)

Antonio Marfella (toxicologist and oncologist from the Pascale Hospital in Naples)

Ulderico Dardano (lecturer at the "Federico II" Academic University in Naples)

Musical interludes by:

Enzo Avitabile and Cisco

Peppe Lanzetta & Joe Amoroso

E’ Zezi

Final concert by Bandabardò

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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20 May 2009

What Mills lied about

Yesterday saw the publication of the complete text of the verdict for the trial of the English lawyer, David Mills. The fact is anyway well known. The English lawyer gave false testimony to favour the current President of the Council in crimes of corruption, illegal financing of parties and tax evasion. What is not known to the citizens is that Mills lied, because without knowing what he lied about, the citizens stop and look at the finger and not at the moon, while I want to invite them to look at the moon and shake up their consciences.

Above I have published a Studio Aperto propaganda film clip in which it is obvious how the instrumental use of a lie is a way of operating of the system that has handed over and that maintains the power of this person: Berlusconi was not absolved. Contrary to what is said in the programme shown above. Berlusconi simply removed himself from the trial and from his conviction.

On the other hand, I am publishing below, a part of the document setting out the grounds for the verdict, a part of verified facts, a document that bears witness to a country that “still exists” and that has the duty to resist. In the days to come, I will publish other parts of the document so that together with yourselves, we can reconstruct the truth that you will not hear on the TV News nor read in the newspapers.

(pages 77/78 of the document giving the grounds for the verdict)
FALSE TESTIMONY

In relation to the evidence given on 20 November 1997 in the trial number 1612/96 (c.d. Guardia di Finanza), it is said of Mills:

1) to have failed to declare, even though he was specifically asked, that the ownership of the Fininvest B Group offshore companies was directly and personally that of Silvio Berlusconi;

2) to have failed to talk about the circumstances of the telephone conversation with Silvio Berlusconi the night of Thursday 23 November 1995, in which the topic of conversation was the “All Iberian” company and the illegal financing of 10 billion lire made available by Berlusconi through All Iberian to Bettino Craxi;

3) to have declared false circumstances in relation to a payment of about a million and a half pounds sterling, received in a lump sum in 1996 following agreements with Silvio Berlusconi – the payment being labelled as “dividend” and kept blocked until 2000 in a bank deposit named MM/AIL (Mackenzie Mills/All Iberian Limited) – stating that it was a capital gain relating to the offshore company Horizon Ltd., that the clients had at that moment decided not to withdraw.

In relation to the evidence given on 12 and 19 January 1998 in the trial n. 3510/96 + 3511/96 (c.d. All Iberian) ), it is said of Mills:

1) to have avoided responding to the questions about the ownership of the offshore companies (cf. p. 121 transcript of the hearing on 12 January 1998: “it’s not up to me to say who is the owner and who is not” and page 129: to respond to your first question about ownership, that is I would like to clarify the question a bit. The ownership has been a bit vague, as I said earlier, because no one has said “I am the owner of this company…the client was the Gruppo Fininvest”);

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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17 May 2009

Help me to change our Country

Yesterday I took part in the event entitled "Inform in order to Resist" in Palermo, together with Sonia Alfano, Beppe Grillo, Gioacchino Genchi and Luigi de Magistris.

Both the Square and the Web were crowded with people. While I was speaking, I noticed many surprised, excited and incredulous looks on the people’s faces at some of my statements. Not because they didn’t agree, because in fact they applauded on various occasions, but perhaps because, for the first time ever, they were hearing something other than the usual government line spread by the regime.

Things are beginning to change, but true change can only be brought about by re-establishing direct relationships with the public, in other words, out in the streets.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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13 May 2009

Towards a knowledge society

I’m publishing the video of my presentation at the conference "La Cultura e l’Europa - Verso una Società della conoscenza” {Culture and Europe – moving towards a knowledge society} organised by Italia dei Valori, that took place today in Rome in the “sala Capranichetta” at the Hotel Nazionale.
In the twenty year period, the intellectuals did not react and in the end they were overwhelmed by the regime that they had been nodding at. And that’s how it happened then that a part of the culture and the learning of the intellectuals was swallowed up by events. I am wondering how it is possible that there is talk in the margins of the degraded situation of democracy produced by this government, in the midst of general indifference in which “free culture” seems to be sold off to the highest bidder. Now, one or two are repenting, others have not yet repented because perhaps it’s convenient.
I am proud that people like Magris, Tranfaglia, Pressburger and Camilleri have announced that they will be voting for Italia dei Valori. They have decided to come out in public and align themselves with a party that is without masters.
If we don’t react with plenty of advance notice, “the torrent” will sweep us away. And democracy will slip out of our hands without our noticing. Today, Italia dei Valori has the fundamental role of “logistics of Resistance” and it represents the battle for waking up consciences by welcoming within the party men and free professionalism from civil society. It’s the moment to enter the arena without delay, because tomorrow it could be too late. To then put ourselves forward, when the country will tell us we were right, would be too easy and would be the action of scoundrels.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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5 May 2009

Children of a Lesser God

I’m publishing an interview with the architect Massimiliano Fuksas. The topics covered range from construction, to energy, to society.
Fuksas defines the Italians as “Children of a Lesser God”, used to living in a situation below the poverty line, in a country where things happen that don’t happen in other countries, where people live side by side with degradation, with filth, with approximation, where the cities have lost 30% of the tree coverage, with no one saying anything, where it is possible to plonk cement anywhere, where citizens and the government live with reciprocal failings. The former operate in a way that they define “imperfect” and the government makes do with governing.
The interview ends up with a mention of energy, of refuse, of waste sorting as an alternative to incinerators describing a model that already exists, and that is taking off in developed countries.
I agree with the conclusions of Fuksas and they leave you with a bitter taste, because they are not the usual “you must shoot the pianist”, that is blame the politicians, but blame the citizens: it’s not a question of a good or bad policy, it’s a matter of a lack of awareness on the part of the citizens in supporting that part of politics that does not function correctly.

Interview:
IDV Correspondent: Fuksas, let’s start with the earthquake that happened recently in L’Aquila. There has been a lot of discussion about the quality of the buildings. There’s been talk of sand in the walls and thus of ant-seismic criteria that have not been adhered to.

M.FUKSAS: I believe that the earthquake in L’Aquila, even though it has been disastrous, has fortunately not been one of those catastrophic earthquakes. It’s not so much “the constructed object” that has to be looked at, but rather “where” construction takes place. We are used to constructing everywhere. We have never thought about the seismic faults or the places that are particular sensitive. It would be possible to forbid construction there. We build everywhere. There’s no place that we are not thinking of being able to build. This is the first point. We are well aware that the Apennines right down to reaching Sicily, have high seismic risk.
The second point is “how we construct”. In the 1960s and 19702s, we were building like a poor country. Here there were a few entrepreneurs who removed a few reinforcing bars, the steel was not the type with improved holding power, that is ridged, that can hold, but it was easy to slip out as it was completely smooth. All the reinforcing bars, the ones that hold the pillar together, were placed at distances that were not according to regulations. So basically it was all fairly hypothetical and there was hardly anything that was realistic.

...
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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24 April 2009

Chinese censorship

I’m publishing a letter that I received today from a blogger and independent journalist, Claudio Messora
What Claudio is saying is really serious. It is a signal that reveals that in Italy, there is a lot that is like the Chinese system of censorship, when we are talking about the freedom of information.
YouTube blacked out one of his videos presenting an interview with a lady called Stefania Pace, the mother of two children, who lives in Poggio Picense, a village that was devastated by the earthquake in Abruzzo.

Obviously, the video popped up in tens of other sites half an hour later, thus making the censorship ineffective.

Yesterday, Stefania Pace, was a guest on the programme “Chi l’ha visto”. Straight after the programme was broadcast, by a strange coincidence, the blogger’s video was blacked out for “violation of the policies”.
While I’m looking at the video, I am wondering what the violations are. And I am inviting whoever decided what to allow or disallow for viewing on YouTube, to clarify the reasons of this censorship gesture, or otherwise, to say if the decision to remove the video was taken as a consequence of some notification (even though it is not difficult to guess).
However, I would like to turn the attention of everyone to the content of the interview and to the words of Stefania Pace with a denunciation to the Office of the Public Prosecutor, so that there can be a verification to see whether in her words there can be found responsibilities or actions that led people, for the moment unidentified, to ask for the removal of the video. And more generally, so that the Office of the Public Prosecutor can identify the responsibility of anyone, in spite of the communications that arrived from a number of sources, including communications from Gianpaolo Giuliani, but who did not warn the population in time.

The letter:

"Dear Di Pietro,

I have been censored by YouTube. I thus deduce that in Italy, things are truly going badly. Perhaps in China, my film clip would not have been censored. And I really can’t see the reasons why it has happened. I have asked the Internet for help. I asked bloggers to spread it about, I am also asking yourself.

I’m giving the facts here, but there is more information on my blog in the article "You Tube censura byoblu" {YouTube censors Byoblu}.

A few days ago I interviewed Stefania Pace, the mother of a family. This lady of Poggio Picense, in the interview “l’informazione assassina” {information assassin} said things that I consider to be worrying, but there is certainly nothing offensive or detrimental to anyone in the content. And yet the video was removed from YouTube for violation of the policies. But what policies are we talking about? The policies of the one who obliged YouTube to remove the video or policies of YouTube itself? This gesture can only be defined in one way: censorship.

I invite you to look into this issue which is explained in detail on the blog. However, I am wondering, why that video “must not be seen”. Why did it disappear straight after signora Pace participated in the programme “Chi l’ha visto” yesterday evening? I have an idea, but in this country, I am starting to feel afraid to express it…..”
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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21 April 2009

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

Today I have spent the day between Brescia and Bergamo, meeting the trades unions, the Association of Artisans, Confapi and the National Confederation of Artisans as well as the skilled workers of Iveco.
The prime national emergency, apart from reassurances on “the worst is passed”, is still the economic and employment crisis.
Tomorrow I will publish the video of my speech to the press conference in which I speak of the solutions that would help us make a faster exit from the crisis that we are going through.

Many people (including the media and politicians) accuse me of being focused on a non-existent “dictatorship alert”. That’s twice false: first because the dictatorship is truly knocking at the door, second because my political agenda is permanently based on meeting citizens, meeting civil society and the economic reality of the country.
The aspect that the media pick up to distort the politics of the actions of Italia dei Valori is mostly that of criticising the activity of the government. I take note of that. But an Opposition without compromise, given the activity of this governing squad, cannot go missing because it is the responsibility from which, those who are truly an Opposition, cannot draw back. In fact, it is a duty in relation to the citizens.
When I read the foreign press I see that I am not alone in this activity of denunciation, at least in the view of the international media. That’s a consolation.
I’m publishing an article in Le Monde. It’s one of many that does not put our country in a good light because of the behaviour of this government.

”In the last month, Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Office of the President of the Council, has been correcting all the information in foreign newspapers that it deems offensive for Italy and the Italians. The Times, that had been ironic about Silvio Berlusconi’s proposal when he advised the people displaced by the earthquake in L’Aquila (Abruzzo) to “spend the Easter weekend at the seaside” was immediately told off by an official communication, dated Wednesday 8 April. “If the special correspondent from Britain had been on the spot, he would have been able to verify the positive reaction of the displaced people at the words of comfort (…) said in a friendly tone, to convince the families to leave the tents to go to one of the coastal hotels that have been made available to them”.

Another British daily, The Guardian, has in turn, had the right to official reprimands for having written that the merging of Alleanza Nazionale and Forza Italia means giving life to a “postfascist” formation. The Spanish daily El Pais and the German weekly Der Spiegel have received a letter of reproach from the Italian Ambassadors in Spain and Germany. The former for having written that Berlusconi was one of the “most sinister” leaders, the latter for having published on the front page a heading considered to be disparaging about Italy: “The Smelly Boot”.

... "

Read the original article on www.lemonde.fr
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18 April 2009

Either stand down or declare a coup

RAI appointments cannot be made while sitting on the sidelines with a glass of champagne, a recommendation and the blue motorcars parked at the entrance to Palazzo Grazioli.
This Country is still subject to the Rule of Law and we have a Bill of Rights and a Legitimate Parliament, even though it was elected without the benefit of preferential voting. We must either deploy the Army in the streets, dissolve the Chambers and announce a dictatorship in a united network, or the governing clique must stand down and comply with the Law.

It matters very little that the members of the Democratic Party, in the person of Vinicio Peluffo, complain about the “mobbing” in the RAI Oversight Committee, the fact remains that they are part of this grouping. The appointment of the Chairman of the Oversight Committee was an initial warning bell, with the ballet of the Television News editors’ appointments and the sharing out of posts on the Board of Directors sending out further unmistakeable signals. I would like to remind the Democratic Party that we must no longer negotiate with the conspirators or we will inevitably sink down to their level, only to then be cheated. By sitting down at the negotiating table, the Democratic Party has effectively become a meaningless accomplice within the grouping, as Silvio Berlusconi and his lackeys have already begun to demonstrate.

The Prime Minister cannot do as he wishes with RAI, both because of the position he holds and because of his ownership of RAI’s competitors. Public roles for private interests. This is called a conflict of interests, carefully handled with extreme efficiency and unscrupulousness, seeing that the moment his Government comes to power, for some inexplicable reason the enormous advertising expenditure of parastatals such as the Italian Postal Services and Eni is suddenly switched from the public television broadcaster to Mediaset.

Where are all the Italians?
What do they hope to gain by standing by idly, silently watching this Government feasting like a bunch of vultures?
I have to ask myself whether street demonstrations and civil disobedience are the last remaining available ways we have to express democratic principles.

What we need is another demonstration like the one in piazza Navona and we are ready to organise one.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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16 April 2009

Resist so as to inform

This evening I will be a guest on the “reparative” to the Annozero programme that has been imposed by Mauro Masi, the new Director General of the RAI and I repeat “ad interim” for Mediaset.

On this occasion I will repeat and confirm my convictions that accompany the affair of the earthquake in L'Aquila and that I have already expressed publicly in this blog:
- Third-world-style hypocrisy
- Government alternative
- Instrumentalise so as to gag
- I want to know
I am leaving space for a video presentation by Sonia Alfano who is talking about information.

Text of the presentation:

”Anyway for a few years many Italians are passing the time wondering how they can attack this system of power that is trying in every way to close down channels of communication.
For some time now, only the information that has to get passed is allowed through. People must absolutely not have the close contact with the situation so that they can do everything they want to.
A demonstration of this, that is perhaps the most recent, is the Englaro case, when there was this issue that was so touching, so emotional in the face of which we should all have remained silent, just in that precise moment, this government put us in front of a choice: they smashed that reality into our faces and they pushed us into almost having to take a decision in relation to what, as I repeat, should have been a behaviour of silence and sadness for a family that was living through a really atrocious moment of pain. This is because, at the same time, within the chamber of Parliament, they had to decide on the reform of the criminal justice system.
It’s not new that some Italians, in recent years, not having access to the freedom of information, have had to turn to alternative channels: to information on the Internet. Information on the Internet is free information: no one can lie; no one can make something arrive that is not real. Thanks to information on the Internet we have been able to organize demonstrations that have taken place to protect the individual. We have protested in the streets, in front of the CSM to defend De Magistris and to defend Ms. Forleo. On 28 January we went into piazza Farnese to defend Apicella and the other two magistrates who were transferred and to defend the Constitutional rule of law. On 28 March, with only 2 days to prepare, by using social networks and the Internet, we stood guard at 27 Questuras in Italy, not to demonstrate against the police, but to demonstrate our solidarity towards the police officers and above all for Gioacchino Genchi, a true servant of the State, unlike Contrada.
In the light of all this, I believe that by now, more Italians have recourse to the information that is circulating on the Internet. In relation to the depressing images of the G20 of the one who has assumed the right and the presumption to represent all the Italians, and who is called Berlusconi and who made us feel so embarrassed. Perhaps he thought he was at one of his parties, at one of his conventions when it is normal for him to sing the praises of Mangano or to sing the praises of Craxi, who I would remind him were delinquents. He continued to have this attitude at the G20 where, fortunately there were respectable people, even though they are unfortunately not Italian. At the moment he started to act it was Queen Elizabeth that silenced him. In the face of this type of situation that it could be possible to laugh about if we weren’t in Italy, and really we have to weep, on the other hand, there is true information, real information that circulates on the Internet, and it really is thanks to that, that we have to try to ensure that as much information as possible gets there.
This is also a way of telling all the Italians that the one who makes out he is the Minister of Justice and who is called Alfano, even though he is not a relative of mine and it is always well to repeat that, is talking about justice and in his spare time goes to the marriages of the daughters of mafia bosses, as for example when he went to the wedding of the daughter of the boss, Croce Napoli.
We need to inform so many Italians that the President of the Senate, Renato Schifani was the partner of a mafia guy, a mafia leader. He was a partner in Sicula Brokers together with the Villabate clan leader called Mandalà.

...”
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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15 April 2009

Third-world-style hypocrisy

We have a paradox: Santoro has to “repair” the programme of 9 April, Vauro is ousted from public service for a cartoon. That’s the word of Mauro Masi, the new Director General of the RAI, who “ad interim” I would also suggest for Mediaset.

In this country, information is regressing into propaganda. Anyone who does not align themselves is out, whether they are called Santoro rather than Vauro, Travaglio, Guzzanti, Mentana, Fazio or Giuliani. In compensation, the old fogeys of the propaganda, move forward. It’s as though we were to ask Emilio Fede to “repair” all his TV News broadcasts since 1992, when he was appointed Silvio Berlusconi’s TV lackey.

It’s as though we were to ask Silvio Berlusconi’s journalistic lackey, Mario Giordano, to dedicate the front pages of the daily paper “Il Giornale” for the next 10 years to the denunciations received and the corrections that were never published for the rubbish information with which he is poisoning the citizens.

In this country, most of the programmes and the newspaper articles are purposefully proposed without a two sided view or with a non-existent opposing view point.

The TV News broadcasts are cut, censored, and put together "ad hoc" in order to construct continuous political advertising. The articles of the print newspapers, when obliged to carry different points of view, have recourse to headings and photos that are anyway misleading. Information in this country is like that of a third world State.

I hold the cartoonist Vauro in high esteem and I would just like to offer good wishes and hope that the steps taken by Masi can be put into effect in such a solid way that he can then express his ideas with complete liberty elsewhere, including on the Internet.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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14 April 2009

Instrumentalise so as to gag

Sergio Zavoli, Chair of the RAI Surveillance Committee has stated the need for “giving a voice to different viewpoints” in investigative programmes while referring to the polemics raging about Santoro’s programme, Annozero, polemics that don’t yet seem to be dying down.

The newspapers are saying that the Annozero issue has divided the Opposition. They are mistaken.

Italia dei Valori, the only Opposition to the Government, has condemned the attack on information by Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini.
While it is true that the governing Opposition is divided and the Democratic Party’s Giorgio Merlo (who has been put up for nomination to the RAI Surveillance Committee) applauded the internal investigation set up by the RAI Chair Paolo Garimberti and his CEO, Mauro Masi.

I’ll leave aside the harsh words attacking the programme coming from the mouths of government lackeys like Fabrizio Cicchitto, (P2 membership number 2232), and Maurizio Gasparri.

However the only exception that I find to be shameful is that it was a broadcast on 9 April that gave rise to the propaganda operation on the national channels. This is an operation that has been prepared earlier and is designed to cover up the responsibilities of the government, the construction companies, the controlling bodies and the media itself who behind the death of 294 people thought they could silence the responsibility and omissions that weigh like millstones on a tragedy of such dimensions that are found in L’Aquila.

Up until today, the politicians have falsely given the invitation to not “instrumentalise the tragedy for electoral purposes”. Today I ask them not to “instrumentalise the tragedy to silence Santoro and those who want true information”.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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12 April 2009

The Country's credibility

Here is an article from the English daily The Telegraph of the 3rd April, which reflects what is fast becoming the standard line taken by the international press as regards their opinion of our current Government, and that also shows how our Country’s image has become tarnished in Europe and throughout the world.

Italy needs to recover the dignity and importance that it deserves because of the history and the capabilities that have always been one of its distinguishing factors.

Italy is moving ever further away from the rest of Europe. In addition to a loss of prestige, this distance has also begun to result in economic isolation and the flight of capital.

Here is Iain Martin’s article (for The Daily Telegraph)

The Queen shows up Silvio Berlusconi – How on earth did he end up in charge of a great country?

"If any more evidence were needed of just how fantastic the Queen is, it has now been revealed that this week she treated the Italian Prime Minister with withering contempt. In what has become “a YouTube sensation” (the phrase reserved by newspapers for things they have missed and then found on the Internet) she reacted perfectly when the pint-sized poltroon started shouting at a photo-session taking place with other G20 world leaders at Buckingham Palace.

Berlusconi shouted “Mr Obama, Mr Obama!” An embarrassed US President tried to calm Silvio down by responding at a much lower volume. The Queen then turned around, sighed and raised her arms in frustration, saying: “What is it? Why does he have to shout?”

Italy is such a great country. But why does it keep finding itself governed by this man? The land which gave us the Romans, Peroni, Pasta, Parmesan, the Renaissance, the Uffizi gallery in Florence, Gina Lollobrigida, Gucci and Ferrari, has struggled to get a proper hang of this democracy business. Is that because the country in its present form is a relatively recent construct? Perhaps.

Either way, the Italians have ended up with Berlusconi in charge too many times for it to be an accident.

Is his dominance a reflection on the reality that Italian life and culture works, in the most unexpected way, partly because its public life is chaotic and cartoonish? Doesn’t this actually suit Italians, because it means they can avoid the hassle of taking national life seriously and concentrate instead on family, friends and their neighbourhood, town or at most province? Hmmm…don’t know.

Or does he keep winning simply because he owns a majority of the Italian television stations? Quite possibly."

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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7 April 2009

When the TV provides information by mistake

Every time the TV provides information, it is attacked by the political system. Santoro has been denigrated many times for his programme, Annozero. Mentana has said many times that among the reasons why he “spontaneously” left Mediaset, was the Matrix programme when I was a guest. Fabio Fazio was severely scolded for having offered space to Travaglio who accused Schifani of having had relations with organised crime in the past. Fabio Fazio himself has been accused by Fabrizio Cicchito, (P2 member holding card number 2232), the group leader of the PDL, for having presented the programme on 04 April in a way that was "assolutamente indecente" {absolutely indecent} and for having gone beyond "every limit of factiousness". As it happens, it was I who was the guest on that occasion as well.

I am publishing the video of my intervention during the programme. I leave it up to you to evaluate Fabrizio Cicchito’s statements.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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4 April 2009

In support of Pino Maniaci

Pino Maniaci has been ordered to stand trial because he has no membership card from the Order of Journalists. Mussolini first introduced the “journalist membership card” back in 1925 with the creation of a Roll to register those people that would be permitted to work in the media.

There is no longer any valid reason for this brand mark to exist. Today there are thousands of young people and honest citizens that are doing a distinguished job of spreading truthful information on the Internet. Very few of the remaining journalists that we know, who are working for the daily newspapers and television stations have managed to retain their integrity, and Pino Maniaci is one of them.

Italy’s traditional media is currently busy dying and is in danger of disappearing completely thanks to the latest armchair-swaps at the State television stations.

Here is an interview held with Sonia Alfano, the independent candidate for the European Elections who is standing alongside the Italia dei Valori Party and who comments as follows regarding the Pino Maniaci affair. Comments with which I agree wholeheartedly.

Text of the address

"In my opinion, this entire affair surrounding Pino Maniaci, the journalist working for TeleJato, is totally absurd and indeed almost unbelievable. He has been remanded for trial because he is not in possession of a membership card issued by the Order of Journalists.
Considering that Italy is the only country that has such an order of journalists, something that is truly aberrant and meaningless, I believe that Pino is doing a sterling and truly commendable job for this Country in general and for Sicily in particular. We must not forget that the sons of a local Mafia boss once beat up Pino in the streets of Partinico. He has always dug very deep down to get to the real story and, in his daily television news broadcasts, he consistently tells the story of the life and death and the miracles of all the mafia bosses linked to specific episodes that have occurred, above all in his own area.
The Jato area is a very particular area and I believe that to try to stop the work of someone like Pino doesn’t only hamper the efforts against the mafia, because unfortunately the term “mafia” covers everything and nothing, but is particularly damaging to all of the people that are starting to believe in the possibility of living in a civilised society, namely the kind of society that rejects certain systems.
It makes me laugh when I think that there are a number of journalists walking around in possession of a membership cards, perhaps even more than one and perhaps obtained as a gift from a friend, or from the friend of a friend of our Prime Minister, yet they not prepared to give the card to Pino Maniaci rather than watch him go to trial because he doesn’t have one.
I can’t help thinking that if Pino Maniaci is being remanded for trial for not being in possession of a press card from the Order of Journalists, then Emilio Fede, who is illegally occupying the frequency used by Rete4, should be thrown in jail immediately. We must remember that, thanks to Emilio Fede’s abuses, the Italians, or at least those that actually pay their taxes, are also paying out thousands of Euro for the damage that Mister Emilio Fede and Company have caused to us Italians.
It makes me laugh to think that Renato Farina, alias “betulla”, actually had a press card. I have to ask myself precisely whose interests were served by his pseudo-journalism over the years. Certainly not ours, nor the citizens’.
There are certain situations that would be paradoxical in any other Country, but because this is Italy, we already have numerous other paradoxes to worry about. It’s enough to make you want to cry.
As a Sicilian native, I am very touched by the Pino Maniaci affair, and even more so as the daughter, not of a journalist, but of a reporter for a daily newspaper. As a reporter, my father was murdered by the Mafia in Barcelona on 8 January 1993. My father never received any recognition while he was still alive. He never had a press card, something that only arrived four years after his death. I have always believed that the press card arrived not so much because of his articles, not so much because of his contribution towards the arrest of Santapaola and not so much because he managed to foil a number of drug transactions. I think that the press card came in response to the three gunshots that killed my father. The first was a gunshot in the mouth and perhaps that is what made them grant my father the press card.
We want Pino to be allowed to continue with his task, even without a press card. It is certainly not simply some or other piece of paper that proves a man’s bravery".

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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28 March 2009

Italy gagged

Here is a video clip and the text of an address on the topic of information, as given by Carlo Vulpio, journalist and independent candidate on the Italia dei Valori party’s election lists for the European elections scheduled for 6 and 7 June.

"The Government is manoeuvring to install trusted people to run the most prestigious newspapers.
The financial disaster, the advertising revenue crisis, having to adapt to the digital world and the dismissal of journalists are issues that are common to all newspapers around the world.
Many experts and more than a few readers fear that the current situation will somehow affect the quality of the press. In Italy, which together with Russia is arguably the European country where political control of the media is least debateable, this fear is twice as bad.
We might soon see a kind of press revolution arising alongside the dual television monopoly, or rather the absolute monopoly held by Mediaset and RAI.
Behind this telluric move in progress echoes the usual name: Silvio Berlusconi, media magnate and Prime Minister, whose latest objective are the two most prestigious Milan newspapers, namely the most influential Italian daily, “Corriere della Sera” and the country’s major national financial newspaper, "Il Sole 24 Ore".
“This time, Berlusconi is not going to take any prisoners. He wants total control and he is going out to get it”, says Giancarlo Santalmassi, RAI journalist from 1962 to 1999 and director of Radio24 until last autumn, when he was removed after being declared an official enemy of the “Cavaliere” back in 2006.
Enzo Marzo, long-time journalist for the Corriere agrees fully with Santalmassi. Last Thursday, during the course of a discussion on press freedom that was being held at the European Commission’s offices in Rome, he announced that the battle for control of the newspaper has already begun.
The management unit of the RCS Group (the publisher of Unedisa in Spain), which owns the Corriere, explains Marzo, withdrew the appointment of the newspaper’s editor, Paolo Mieli, and is currently considering two replacement candidates. The first of these candidates, Carlo Rossella, is backed by Berlusconi, while the second is Roberto Napoletano, the current editor of “Il Messaggero” who, Marzo reminds us, “became famous on the last night of the elections when he was caught red handed on video, talking on his mobile phone with Casini (leader of the UDC democrats and son-in-law of the newspaper editor) discussing the main headline he was going to place in the following day’s edition of the paper”.
Rossella is President of Medusa, Berlusconi’s film distribution company, and has also got the blessing of “Il Giornale”, the daily owned by the family of the magnate who reminded us that the ‘Cavaliere’ “looks after me and has already charged me with running his two major publications, namely Panorama and TG5.”
Rossella is also counting on a number of other supporters within the RCS, namely Diego della Valle, proprietor of Tod’s and the Fiorentina soccer team, and Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, top man at Fiat and the Ferrari Group, as well as Managing Director of La Stampa.
But Berlusconi will have the final say, states his brother’s daily newspaper without any hint of modesty, because, while the crisis is strangling the newspapers, “the entire banking system is dependent on the Prime Minister”.
Napoletano also has a few aces up his sleeve: Berlusconi does not dislike him and he is one of the few people that holds telephone conversations with Giulio Tremonti, Finance Minister and leading writer for Il Messaggero.
According to “Il Giornale” the Minister has said “that the worst is yet to come as regards the financial crisis” and his idea is to place Napoletano with “Il Sole” (which, like Radio24, is owned by members of Confindustria) and move the paper’s current editor, Ferruccio de Bortoli, to head up the Corriere.
Were this not Italy, all of this would be unbelievable and only worthy of a scandal-mongering article. However, all our sources are in agreement that this is a “genuine and serious manoeuvre” that will result in “an earthquake”.
What is also clearly apparent is the Governments displeasure with another newspaper, namely Turin’s La Stampa, which is owned by Fiat. According to members of Berlusconi’s entourage, the paper’s editor, Giulio Anselmi, will be tempted away by the promise of another comfy post, namely that of President of the official agency Ansa. Should he accept, someone that is far less hostile toward the Government will take his place.
While this political plan is busy taking shape, the Italian media are trying to weather this storm as best they can. The President of RCS, Piergaetano Marchetti, who saw Group profits decline from 220 million in 2007 to 38 million in 2008, has stated that they have had to deal with “ferocious and immediate cuts in client’s advertising spend”.
Meanwhile, his Managing Director has announced that the group’s performance in the first few months of this year means that the group will be obliged to “reduce staff numbers”. “We need to cut costs and review the business models in Italy and abroad”.
Marco Benedetto, Vice President of the Espresso Group, also envisages “cuts and changes”. Ironically however, Benedetto is not pessimistic about the sector’s future: “In about ten years from now, this sector will be excellent”.

This article never appeared in any of the Italian newspapers. It was written by Spanish journalist Miguel Mora, and it appeared in a well-known Spanish daily newspaper, namely El Pais. I would have liked to be the one that wrote it, but they would not have published it."

Article translated by Italiadallestero.info

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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24 March 2009

The Taranto “pizzo”

I’m publishing a presentation by Carlo Vulpio, a journalist and an independent candidate in the lists of Italia dei Valori for the European elections on 6 and 7 June. Carlo entered politics to represent the free voice of information within the institutions as well as the citizens and the colleagues that believe in this value.

Text of the presentation

”Today I’ll tell you something that you probably won’t read in any newspaper for some time yet, nor hear on any TV or radio. We’ll talk about a fact that however, a free and responsible information system should give headlines to over 9 columns on the front page or that it should cover as the top news item in the TV or Radio News broadcast. Today we will talk about Taranto.
Taranto, it was discovered some time ago, is the most polluted city in Europe as regards industrial emissions.

Taranto produces 92% of Italian dioxin.

Taranto is poisoned by carcinogenic and teratogenic substances that are the Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) like mercury, arsenic, and lead, all substances that come from its main industries that are not industries of scarce importance, but they are industries called Ilva, the biggest steelworks in Europe; called Eni; and its refinery, called Cementir, where they produce cement. These three industries, that are the biggest, as well as poisoning Taranto and contributing heavily to the increase in cancer, in leukaemia, thus in killing the people of Taranto like flies, they have not been paying the ICI tax to the Taranto local authorities since 1993, the year when the local tax on buildings came into law.
For example, Ilva, is just paying a part, about three and a half million, Eni fails to pay about seven million in ICI every year, Edison, another industry is not paying two million two hundred thousand a year of ICI. Then there’s Cementir that is not paying about a hundred thousand Euro a year, but this amount, when compared to the others, risks seeming like quite a heavy fine. In fifteen years, up until 2007, all these industries overall have failed to pay one hundred and seventy two million in ICI considering the taxes, interest and penalties.
This means that every citizen of Taranto has paid eight hundred and ten Euro a head, an amount that we could happily call the “pizzo” that the city of Taranto has paid to these industries, which we could say are like the new Casalesi.
There are two shocking things: the first is that this ICI will no longer be paid back in total because ten years, from 1993 to 2002, are covered by the Statute of Limitations, that is, of this 172 million, about 120 million, will not be able to flow into the coffers of the city of Taranto.
The second shocking thing is that for the first time, after forty eight years, the new city cabinet that was installed in Taranto 18 months ago, also because of a new cabinet member, a lady called signora Fischetti, who is a technical person who has moved into politics after working for the Tax collecting Agency, has worked with the mayor Stefàno, to set up a tax verification system.
But, I’m sorry, it makes you want to laugh, because we have discovered that this is the first tax inspection that the biggest steelworks in Europe has been subject to in fifty years and it is the first tax inspection undergone by the other industries that we are talking about.
We have also discovered that this happened for a very simple reason: up until last year, the ICI service was carried out on contract by a Taranto company called Emmegi s.r.l. and that stands for “Mimmo Greco” the name of the person who owns this company, whom the folk in Taranto nickname “the Pope”. This company has collected ICI for the city of Taranto. How come it never did any checking? This is a good question that we all must ask, because meanwhile ICI is a tax requiring self-certification, so what were these industries doing? …"

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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18 March 2009

Carlo Vulpio in Europe

Let’s get back into Europe, but with Italians “of Value” that we can be proud of. This is why we are presenting our candidate who has a human, professional and ethical story and who will be able to represent the best of Italy in Europe.

Text of the speech:

"I am Carlo Vulpio and I am a journalist, or at least I try to carry on this profession in a country in which being a journalist has become very difficult. Information and the freedom of information are fundamental elements for all democratic and liberal societies; they are two strategic pillars for democracy in this country.
We are right at the bottom in all the ratings, both European and global, for the freedom of information. This must be more than a warning bell, we need to make it understood that today, with a Constitution like ours, one in which article 21 guarantees not just the freedom to provide information but also the freedom and the duty to be informed as citizens. These constitutional protections are running a risk that has never happened before.
These days we have to understand another important fact: information does not relate only to those who want to be informed or just those who do that for their job, but it relates to all citizens without distinction. By means of information, the games are played out that are fundamental for a country that wants to define itself as being democratic and that wants to stay inside Europe. From the point of view of the freedom of information, Italy is in Europe only because there are the Alps that keep it attached to the continent, otherwise we would have “slithered through the Straits of Gibraltar towards South America”. We need free information, true information, so that all citizens have the possibility to exercise their rights in the field of social equality, work and justice. They are all problems that today are going through this fundamental juncture.
Why is a person like me putting themselves forward as a candidate? I’m not a candidate so as to have a seat in Strasburg. It’s the last thing in my mind. I am a candidate because I understand that perhaps, allow me to say this, a face and a clean name can be expendable in this battle. I have already won as soon as my ideas and this battle for the freedom of information are affirmed in the everyday agenda of an election campaign, in the daily political debate, in the everyday discussions that all citizens have in their homes when they watch the TV and read the newspapers. As a consequence, if the seat in Strasburg arrives, we will be happy, if it doesn’t come, we will still be happy. For me, today is an important day because I have the possibility to say this to you and to all of those who believe that these things are important for the present and for the future of all of us.”
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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17 March 2009

Genchi: horizontal information

Counterinformation. The official news media has told you about a “criminal”, Gioacchino Genchi, who acted on behalf of another “criminal”, Luigi De Magistris, plagiarising the “Di Pietro methodology”, and got down to investigating and doing illegitimate actions.

Do you know what De Magistris did and what he is accused of? He is accused of using the password, supplied to him by the City of Catania, to look at the details of the tax payers as he needed to do that for certain investigations. It is true that he had access to that Catania database, but it was because he was authorised by the magistrate on each occasion. So, where is the unlawfulness in the fact that Genchi, as authorised by the magistrate, goes to have a look at certain tax payers and their income tax declarations? Nothing, apart from, of course there are some people that don’t want to let him look.

What has Genchi been accused of? He is accused of looking at the usage of telephone subscribers both of people who belong to the Secret Services and, thus “violating” State Secrecy, as well as those of parliamentarians, and thus “violating” the privilege that the parliamentarians have of not being wiretapped or controlled on the telephone calls they make and receive. The issue is different: there are telephones that are used by parliamentarians, but which are not in their name, and in order to know that they are being used by them, it’s necessary to go to see who made the telephone call and who received the telephone call, but in order to do that you need the printout of the telephone calls. It’s a dog that is biting its own tail.

If you don’t know who a telephone belongs to, you are obliged to get hold of the documents, and the documents about these particular telephones generally belonged to the Ministry of Defence, or generally to the Ministry of Justice, or generally to the Chamber of Deputies, but not everyone who works in the Chamber of Deputies is a parliamentarian.

If a person is an agent of the Secret Services it is not forbidden to see who he telephoned or from whom he received a telephone call. It’s forbidden to publish the data, but if it happens he is accused of a crime, it’s still necessary to investigate him. There is not the privilege of being untouchable.

In brief: once more there’s an attempt to try and put the brakes on those who want to discover the altars of power; one more time, as happened to me during the “Clean Hands” investigation, as is happening to Genchi and to so many others, they are trying to shift the attention onto those who are conducting the investigations and not on the ones committing the crimes, and to turn into criminals the ones who are doing their duty and on the other hand, raising up the ones who don’t.

That is why it is important that there is this horizontal information. Thank God, by using the Internet and Blogs, we can let the general public have another truth, but this time the real truth.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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13 March 2009

Wiretapping: the silence of the grave

I’m publishing the video and the official transcript of my speech in the Chamber of Deputies yesterday, Wednesday 11 March, in which I explained the preliminary statement relating to the Constitutionality expressed by Italia dei Valori to the wiretapping DDL.

Text

”Signor President, telephone wiretapping, as is known, is a tool to search for evidence of crimes. In reality, in this legal measure there are regulations that have nothing to do with wiretapping and they have evidently been put in here for objectives that are different from wiretapping.
Well, among all the provisions that have been presented, we of Italia dei Valori have highlighted a good 12 issues of constitutional legitimacy. I don’t know whether I will have the time in ten minutes to explain all 12, but obviously we rely on the written text even because in the face of the silence – I would even dare to say the climate of “don’t care” coming from one part of this Parliament, it will be down to the Constitutional Court to consider, as soon as it is involved by the individual prosecutors offices and by the individual tribunals, to restore a minimum of constitutional legitimacy with respect to this law that we are - that you are in the process of approving.
So you must know that, just because it is so unconstitutional, this law will end up to be even more of a block on the work of the police and the magistracy in combating criminality because many trials, and above all the most serious ones and the most sensitive ones, will be blocked in the court rooms so as to wait for the Constitutional Court to give its verdict on a myriad of issues of unconstitutionality that are found here.
The first of these has nothing to do with wiretapping, but is really serious and it is found in article 1, comma 2 of the draft law number 1415-A in the part where it sets out that the magistrate , if their name is recorded in the Register of those under investigation, has to be substituted.
It is an absurd regulation that violates the general principle of natural justice, it violates the general principle according to which no judge can be removed during a trial (article 25 of the Constitution), it violates article 107 of the Constitution, in the part where it lays down that the public prosecutor has the obligation to take criminal action and cannot be distracted by other people, it violates article 27 of the Constitution that specifies consequences resulting from the registration (as an obligatory action) in the Register of those under investigation even the time frame for investigating, it violates article 111 of the Constitution.
But to say that even more simply, the article that lays down that it is enough to make a denunciation against a magistrate for that magistrate to no longer be able to carry out the investigation, guarantees the impunity to any defendant who every time that he sees there is a magistrate doing investigations relating to him, it’s enough to denounce the magistrate even if he says atrocious stupidities and given that the name of the magistrate has to be recorded in the Register of information about the crime, this dossier has to pass to another magistrate in another tribunal and so on until the time limit for the Statute of Limitations arrives and so it goes on until there is impunity or until there is a magistrate that can be bought.
This is an absurdity that has no space in a State based on the Rule of Law: apart from being unconstitutional and immoral, as is immoral the fact that you don’t want to know and understand ((Applause from the deputies of the Italia dei Valori group)! So let it be written in the documents that ... "

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Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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3 March 2009

Rizzoli: crime white out

Once more I want to talk to you about the publication of information, just because disinformation continues and democracy is always more at risk.

I want to start off with a couple of examples. All the newspapers, the most emblazoned, and here I’m referring to those newspapers that have not found the space to put on their front pages that David Mills, Berlusconi’s accomplice, has been convicted and sentenced to a few years in prison for having been corrupted on behalf of Silvio Berlusconi, President of the Council. These newspapers that are so “busy with other matters”, that don’t notice that the accomplice of the President of the Council has been convicted for a fact that happened together with the latter, that last week they found the way to put on their front page “Angelo Rizzoli absolved”.
Who is Angelo Rizzoli? He is the one who is the owner of Il Corriere della Sera, a gentleman who 26 years ago was arrested for fraudulent bankruptcy for having concealed, dissipated, or misappropriated from its destination 85 billion lire, in the currency of the time. Yesterday, 26 years later, all the printed newspapers write “absolved”. All are off to do interviews in which he declares that he has come out clean after 26 years of persecution, “the infamous branding of being a bankrupt was all smoke”, “they destroyed my life”, so basically a victim of these “really evil magistrates”.

I made the effort, as did a few others like Marco Travaglio, to go and read the reasoning, and I discovered that in reality the Court of Cassation has not absolved him because the fact does not exist or because he did not commit the crime, but because the crime of “bancarotta patrimoniale societaria in amministrazione controllata” {patrimonial bankruptcy of a company while it is in administration } was decriminalised in 2006, because the Berlusconi government acted in such a way that though that was a crime before, it is no longer a crime, so basically it has given it a white out.

Rizzoli doesn’t have to light a candle for Saint Anthony, but for Saint Silvio, but from this point, to go and say that he had 26 years of punishment, simply because they found the new way of not committing crime, or rather to make something that before was a crime no longer a crime, has passed them by. It’s like saying “someone is a thief because they are always thieving”, and there are three ways in which one is no longer a thief: that he stops thieving, that he goes to prison or that the law that punishes a thief no longer exists. OK, in this case, the third way was chosen, the regulation that punishes the thief no longer exists.

I am saying this because it’s necessary to reflect on what happens when they make “ad personam” laws, that when they were made, because they were useful to the friends of the President of the Council and that now extend to such complex issues like that of this gentleman, that had something to do with the P2 and that had handed over the reins of a newspaper that is so important to characters in this very same P2.

I am saying this because no newspaper is talking right now of another case: the case of the Mastella family, for whom a few days ago, the Tribunal of Naples closed the investigation and presented to those under investigation the advise note declaring the end of the investigations, that can then be followed by the request for being sent for trial. Among these people there is Mastella himself and his wife signora Lonardo. The cuddly thing is that Mastella is a candidate with the PDL, the wife is the President of the Regional candidate with the PD, and both are in the same party, the Udeur. Thus, the Udeur has one foot on the side of the PDL and the other in the side of the PD, while the latter party is just watching. I would be really curious to know what the new PD party secretary, Franceschini has to say on this issue. What’s certain is that for these two people and for other people in the Udeur, the investigation phase for a series of crimes has been terminated. Even on this fact, no news has been published.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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1 March 2009

Some clarity regarding Gioacchino Genchi

Today, after having read the newspapers and watched the television newscasts, I finally sat down in front of my computer keyboard in order to get some real information off the Web. I went browsing on a few blogs, including Beppe Grillo’s. Yesterday's posting was dedicated to an interview with Gioacchino Genchi. Today, on his blog, Grillo returned to the story and accuses the media of “mafia-like silence”. I agree.

The citizens won’t get to hear about this story, except for those that go browsing for news rather than having it administered to them by the professionals of media sluggishness. The statements made in this video are extremely serious and one of two things must now happen: either Gioacchino Genchi must be held accountable for the seriousness of his accusations, or the doors to the prisons must open wide for a number of illustrious personalities. I know Genchi and I know that he is an honest person.

During the course of next week I will be submitting a Parliamentary question to the government, requesting that some sort of clarity be provided with regard to the statements contained in these fourteen minutes of interview.

Text of the interview held with Gioacchino Genchi

"For the past twenty years I have worked as a technical consultant for the judicial authorities, a job that began almost by accident when, with the advent of the new penal procedure code, this position was created in terms of articles 359 and 360, which grant the Public Prosecutor’s Office the option to use the services of technical experts in any field whenever there are important activities to be performed. I am sorry that Martelli forgot, but Cossiga actually reminded me of the fact that it was the very same new penal procedure code that President Cossiga himself promulgated that made provision for this post, which is a very modern type of post at that. A post that exists in the most civilised and advanced legal systems and so, whereas previously the Public Prosecutor’s Office had been very limited and could only make use the services of the Criminal Police Department for any special investigations, now the new penal code made provision for this type of post.
Therefore, when it comes down to finding out the truth in any criminal case, finding out the truth also meaning in favour of the person under investigation or the accused, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is no longer limited as regards whose services they may use. I held this post within the Department of Public Safety.

We did some important work with Arnaldo La Barbera, with Giovanni Falcone and then also regarding the massacres. When it became necessary for the Public Prosecutor’s Office to bring in an outsider, perhaps someone who would not be influenced by the executive powers, and here I am referring specifically to investigations involving white collar workers, magistrates and top political figures, the Public Prosecutor’s Office preferred to avoid the possibility of any political entities and executive powers influencing any choices taken by the public administration departments where the various people worked.
In accepting this appointment, I made an ethical choice, in other words, I chose to give up my career and my salary so as to concentrate all of my efforts on my work for the magistrature. Instead of being appreciated, this choice on my part was instead used by my detractors who, until very recently, proceeded to attack me in Parliament.

Minister Brunetta had no choice but to state that the granting of the unpaid leave of absence that I had requested was perfectly in order and had been considered by the various State Departments, by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Public Service Ministry and by the Office of Prime Minister Berlusconi, in other words, by the very same people that then proceeded to attack me in such a violent and absurd manner, telling those lies about me that made the Italians laugh about this entire hullabaloo surrounding me, this apparent national danger constituted by one person that has been working with the judges and the Public Prosecutors on Mafia cases, massacres, homicides an some of the most important mafia and political activities that have taken place in Italy.

Perhaps for them it is a national danger! For all those people that attacked me, and this is the best part (and here I will keep quiet because I cannot say too much since I am sworn to secrecy), It makes me laugh because all those gentlemen that attacked me, from Farina through to Luca Fazzo, to Lionello Mancini of the Sole 24 ore newspaper, to “La Stampa” journalist Ruotolo, are none other than the main role players in the matters that I was looking into. This is the part that is so absurd!

The very same politicians that are now busy attacking me are none other than the main players that I was investigating at the time. From Rutelli through to Martelli, the very same Martelli that was well known at the time of Falcone. We are talking about people that that fell within the scope of my activities. Martelli because his name appeared in Falcone’s computers when they were tampered with and Rutelli because he is a friend of Saladino and his name cropped up in tapped telephone conversations between Saladino and Mastella, because of the evidence that we all know about, and so forth. Later I will talk mention the names of those that spoke during Question Time in the Chamber, that journalist that drafted the press release, what a joke! By the bye, these guys don’t even have the common decency to get someone else to come in on their behalf.

No, they appear in person! They do this knowing full well that they were personally under investigation. This is absurd. It makes me laugh because the Italian population sees this great wiretapper who supposedly spied on all Italians, but why would I have wanted to spy on all the Italians? Just to hear them admit that they cannot get to the end of the month on their salaries? To hear them say that their children have lost their jobs and are now unemployed? That we are in the middle of an economic crisis? I ask the question again, why would I want to spy on the Italians? Who precisely are all these Italians that are afraid of Gioacchino Genchi?

The only ones that are afraid of Gioacchino Genchi are those with a guilty conscience and those with a guilty conscience are precisely those that attacked me. Not to mention the fact that all they have achieved by attacking me is to confirm all of my suspicions about them. Indeed even more suspicions than even I was aware of so I probably underestimated the Rutelli’s role in the “Why not” inquiry.

Rutelli has shown that he probably has a skeleton in his cupboard and that is why he behaved as he did. When the truth eventually come out into the open, then we will understand the precise nature of Rutelli’s relationship was with Saladino, what Senator Mastella’s relationship with him was, the role played by his son, the one who made use of telephones belonging to the Chamber of Deputies... everything will become clear! From beginning to end. That is another reason why they had to abolish the practice of wiretapping at all costs and why they had to strip the magistrates of their power to authorise wiretaps, especially given the results that had been achieved, namely as regards Vallettopoli, Saccà, Rai, etcetera. However, without any problems, the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office immediately began instituting proceedings against Dr. Genchi, a matter that was completely outside their jurisdiction and had about as much to do with them as cabbage for tea. Instead it had everything to do with them because the ex Chief Public Prosecutor of Catanzaro, and let me say “fortunately ex”, used these printouts like a fig leaf in order to hide all his misdeeds and later as a parachute by not using them in Catanzaro, where the new Chief Public Prosecutor would probably have immediately sent them through to Salerno.
The truth is that those printouts constitute proof of their criminal guilt. Their guilt, not mine. So, he didn’t send the printouts to Salerno, which had jurisdiction, he didn’t send them to the Public Prosecutor of Catanzaro, who would then have had an opportunity to view the printouts and thus discover what was in them, he didn’t send them to the office of the Public Prosecutor of Palermo, from where I did my work, but he sent them to Rome, which has nothing to do with the matter.

So what he does is parachute these printouts and misses the landing because the Public Prosecutor’s office he chooses is one that cannot do anything right. Also because those printouts also contained, amongst others, inquiries regarding the Public Prosecutor of Rome! Whom we are busy investigating. So now the Public Prosecutor of Rome is investigating not only me, but also certain magistrates working for the Public Prosecutor of Rome. This is a repeat of what happened between Salerno and Catanzaro, and what had already happened between Milan and Brescia at the time of the investigations regarding Di Pietro. With one difference, namely that, at the time, the body responsible for the investigations was known as the “Gico”, whereas now it is known as the “Ros”, but essentially nothing has changed.

In the final analysis, however, I must say that I nevertheless have faith in our justice system. They have attempted to turn everyone against me and they tried to say, for example, that because there was ongoing collaboration with the Public Prosecutor of Milan, and between De Magistris and the Public Prosecutor of Milan, as well as personal friendship between De Magistris and Spartaro, that Spartaro’s printouts were acquired. How absurd! No such situation has ever existed. Not even maybe! How can they deny De Magistris the support of the associated magistrature? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that he did take Spartaro’s printouts. How can we set the Upper Council of the Magistrature up against De Magistris? Let’s say that he took Mancino’s printouts. What then?

Now the “Ros” people are saying that in the printouts that I took there are heaven alone knows how many lines belonging to the Upper Council of the Magistrature. We never acquired any printouts concerning the Upper Council of the Magistrature, what we did acquire were certain printouts pertaining to magistrates themselves, that we did, and amongst them were a number of very specific individuals from the national anti-mafia prosecution, two of them, only two of whom have any contact with the Upper Council of the Magistrature.

He investigated the “Quirinale”! Since when? However, if someone within the “Quirinale” made a call to, or received a call from one of the individuals that we are legitimately investigating, then we need Upper Council of the Magistrature to find out who the person within the “Quirinale” is that has been in contact with these people, but it doesn’t mean that I have acquired printouts concerning the “Quirinale”. Irrespective of whether or not such a thing occurred, it would in any event have been completely legitimate because, to be clear, in Italy, investigations are not only conducted on drug addicts, preferably immigrant ones, or on those that come ashore at Lampedusa, against whom anything is permissible, including the creation of lagers.

Everyone is equal before the law. All of us are subject to the law! Just to be clear on that point. They need to understand this. The minute anyone dares to touch any of these gentlemen, even as lightly as a feather, these gentlemen immediately rebel and attempt to destroy those with the courage to simply do their job.
The Italians have understood this. They have also understood that how they have been vilifying this Dr. Genchi, and now I will publish all of my work. I will publish everything from beginning to end, including all of the rulings handed down by the Court of Cassation, the Courts of Appeal, the Administrative Courts, all of the Courts that have handed down hundreds of years’ worth of sentences thanks to my work.
But the rulings that I am most proud of are not the guilty ones, but rather the not-guilty ones! Those people that were unjustly accused also thanks to the work done by the people of the “Ros” and that were facing life sentences, but who were eventually found not-guilty thanks to my work! Those people that were in prison. People who were in jail because the mistook the owner of a SIM card. Yet now these gentlemen come along and accuse me of doing the same things as they have done..., but they are totally wrong!
The worst is that all of these lies and this stream of hogwash has been perpetrated within no lesser organisation than Copasir! The body that is charged with overseeing the security services, not the consultants and magistrates that do their work within the security services! We discovered evidence of collusion between employees of the security services and certain companies that work for the security services, that work in the field of wiretapping and that build barracks on the basis of privately negotiated contracts worth millions of Euros, that is what we were working on! We were working on that when they stopped us because they were all about to be caught with their hands in the cookie jar! That is the real truth.

That is the real truth and they have now provided me with the perfect opportunity to reveal the truth because, as a person who is under investigation, I am no longer subject to confidentiality clauses since I have the right to defend myself! I have to defend myself against a prosecution that cannot get anything right due to lack of jurisdiction, namely the Public Prosecutor of Rome, so I will defend myself at the Roma Prosecutor’s office.

However, the truth will most certainly come to light! And there is no need for any archives or additional information because there are three or four simple facts. The required recordings of Saladino’s pnonecalls, about ten in all, made prior to the time when De Magistris began his investigations, which are very telling indeed! The attack against me originated precisely from those individuals that I identified on the evening of nineteen July 1992, immediately after the massacre in via D'Amelio, while I could still see Paolo Borsellino’s corpse burning and poor Emanuela Loi that was falling apart within the walls of number nineteen, via D'Amelio, where the bomb went off. I am still seeing the same people, the same individuals and the same matter now that I found at the time!
No one has yet told me that I am insane. Indeed, I may well be dangerous or terrible, but no one has yet told me that I am insane. Therefore, the things that I’ saying are not the words of a madman, because I can prove all of these things. This is the perfect opportunity for the day of reckoning to come to Italy. Beginning with the via D'Amelio massacre, through to the Capaci massacre. Because the time has come for Italians to know about the ongoing collusion that has taken place between the Government’s secret services, criminals and politicians."

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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20 February 2009

The RAI is dead

Wednesday 18 February saw the appointment of the RAI Board of Directors with the appointments just done by sharing out the armchairs, with no regard for the professionalism of its members and the safeguarding of the freedom of information. On Wednesday 18 February, the RAI, the Radiotelevisione italiana, died.

I’m publishing the video and the text of my intervention during the Omnibus programme today Thursday 19 February.

Edgardo Gulotta: You used words of appreciation when you commented on how Veltroni has resigned in relation to the gesture, the way and the choice. You said you could understand the gesture from a political viewpoint. However yesterday saw the first criticism that is fairly weighty, in fact very weighty, about the appointment of the RAI Board, by defining it to be “the final act of Veltrusconismo”. Is the armistice with the PD already ended, if there ever was such a thing?
Antonio Di Pietro: Well, you see, the reason why I think that Veltroni failed in his mission lies just here: he never chose whether he was either fish or fowl. That’s what Quagliarello said and I agree with that viewpoint. At one moment, Veltroni seemed to want to act as an Opposition with me, and at another moment, it seemed that he wanted to play up to Berlusconi. In politics you have to choose which side you are on, you cannot stand with one foot in two shoes. The Democratic Party in recent months has displayed a very fragmented set of leaders, in which whoever got out of bed first each morning claimed to be the one in command, and we ourselves didn’t know who to talk to. In relation to the appointment of the RAI Board, I believe that once more they have done a shameful thing, worse than the other times, because the RAI is a public service that allows us to understand the actions and the behaviours of those who are in the Government, in Parliament and in the institutions. If you take some former parliamentarians that are the failures of the old politics, party chums and possibly even sharing the same sunshade, and you share them out between the Majority and the Opposition, “a bit for you and a bit for me” you have already done a communication mess-up. If the one who controls is appointed by the one who is controlled, the latter will do what he feels like. After that if the Majority and the Opposition come to an agreement, then the country no longer has an Opposition. Right now, I feel there is less opposition and more resistance. I don’t believe that there is a Majority and an Opposition. Right now I believe that there is there is a “regime” under construction and a “resistance” in action.

Edgardo Gulotta: Did you as Italia dei Valori have a person identified that you wanted on the RAI Board?
Antonio Di Pietro: We had suggested two things: that the Gasparri Law be redone and that the appointments to the Board be done directly by the RAI journalists. We didn’t allow ourselves to indicate the names of people we wanted, we have been calling for the fact that independent people must be appointed. That’s why we did not participate in this umpteenth appointment carve-up.
Let me say one thing. If the Democratic Party got fewer votes, it’s not for who knows what reason, but because of the scandal in Abruzzo, the scandal in Calabria, because every time on one hand or another they are not taking serious decisions as regards transparency.
Going back to the RAI, the day before yesterday at the Milan Tribunal, there was the verdict of this Mr. Mills who was corrupted by a gentleman who is called Silvio Berlusconi. I am affirming this and I accept the responsibility, but the topic is another one: The RAI was not there. It “forgot” to send its cameraman. There was the CNN, the BBC, there were all the international newspapers, because it was an important fact when a gentleman is corrupted using funds that come from the companies of the Head of the Italian government. It is something important, politically important, but though at “Porta a Porta” they do the Cogne trial ten times, they forget to do this one. This is the RAI.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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18 February 2009

Rubbish before, Rubbish now

Yesterday saw the opening of the Chiaiano rubbish tip against the wishes of the local citizens. Even more notable but alarming is the fact that this action was carried out with a military escort.
The security forces should be used to protect citizens rather than to guarantee the orders of a power group that has occupied the institutions.

In Campania, the media are staying silent. The media blackout has come down on dioxin, on rubbish, on the politicians of Campania, on the relationships between the camorra and politicians as well as on wiretapping.
In Campania everything is silent now, but it’s all as it was before, for at least 14 unending years. Silvio Berlusconi’s sessions of the Council of Ministers in Naples have not in fact resolved the problem of the rubbish, but they just resolved the problem with words.
Many Italians have been taken in by the premier’s TV shows, but not the people of Naples. Because as well as the disappearance of the refuse from piazza del Plebiscito and the blows to the heads of the sixty year olds of Pianura, they have not noted any improvement in their region. The rubbish was there before. The rubbish is there now. The camorra was in command before. The camorra is in command now.

Meanwhile there are hundreds of young people from Campania who have been writing to me, who have been sending me photos and film clips to ask for my support in denouncing the degradation.
Chiaiano is part of this degradation, not the solution to it. Otherwise there would be no need for the army to open up a rubbish tip.
There were so many notifications, that Italia dei Valori has put together a short film clip, so that we don’t forget Naples and Campania.
When I watch these images I feel shame for the journalism that is absent, frustration for the dignity of the people of Campania and disgust for the falsity of this government.

On 6 March, we will go out into the streets once more, this time in Naples, to defend wiretapping, for the rubbish, for the armchair politics and for the issue of morality that is anything but resolved. These are open sores that are humiliating the city and the region and are bringing discredit to it at a global level. And to the whole country.
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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17 February 2009

Passaparola Monday 16 February

Summary of the presentation:
The “ad sistemam” laws
Regulations borrowed from the P2
Censorship for Magistrates and for journalism

Text:

"Good day to you all.
Let’s start from here: from the report of the Court of Accounts at the inauguration of the judicial year of administrative justice that, if you are interested, you can find at the website “cortedeiconti.it”.
It’s a bloodcurdling report as regards the system of corruption in Italy and as regards the waste of public money in the sectors of consultancy, of health and of refuse.
They talk of enormous amounts of public money that are disappearing: we continue to pump the money from our taxes into a leaking aqueduct, full of holes, a type of Gruyère cheese and the money comes out at all levels with hardly anything arriving at its destination.
If you read this report and then read what the newspapers and politicians are talking about, you will realise why this aqueduct, unless they change things radically, is destined to no longer see any result in relation to the enormous efforts that we are called upon to make by contributing to the expenses of a State that by now no longer exists.
Because in a normal and serious country, the newspapers, once they have recognised what the Court of Accounts is saying, should be recording declarations of great alarm from the politicians and the government but above all from the Opposition with some concrete proposals to put a stopper in this great haemorrhage of public money that makes Italy the most corrupt in the West, as was said by the American Ambassador Spogli when he was leaving Italy – “A corrupt country” – as all the international research studies say, as for example a great German newspaper has recently defined Italy as the “putrid boot”.
Instead there is no trace of even a tiny attempt to remedy this dramatic denunciation by the Court of Accounts, in fact, they are working to create more holes and chasms in the aqueduct of our money.
Above all, they are working to try to prevent in every way the security forces and the magistracy from discovering who is creating these holes and who is sucking out our money from the water pipes.
The “ad sistemam” laws

A few years ago there was talk of “ad personam” laws. They did “ad personam” laws and the definition was technically perfect because the laws made in the 2001-2006 legislature by the second Berlusconi government were all designed to save the President of the Council and his accomplices from trials.
In this legislature, we have seen “ad personam” laws like the Lodo Alfano - and let’s hope it will soon be swept away as it is unconstitutional filth – but what they are preparing in Parliament now with a myriad of measures, that all seem unconnected and improvised, has nothing to do with the logic of the “ad personam” laws.
These are “ad sistemam” laws, if you can say that. They are laws that are very organic that are not aimed at saving Mr X or Mr Y from trials but they are aimed at saving the whole establishment, the whole Caste... let’s say the whole “cosca” {gang}, let’s use its real name because by now it is answering to laws that are no longer the ones that are imposed on us, thus it is a gigantic political and economic Cosca, with the financial guys at the driving wheel and the politicians in tow.

...

Regulations borrowed from the P2

...

Without observing that the heavyweight delinquents are happier to collaborate more willingly with the magistrates that they trust: Buscetta wanted to talk to Falcone and no one else; Mutolo wanted to talk to Borsellino and no one else; the kick-back folk in Milan queued up outside the door of Di Pietro and no one else’s. Those were magistrates that could be recognised, well known for their ability, even infamous if you like, and thus the criminal who is a man of power feels that they can trust in someone who on the other side represents the good power, who has “broad shoulders” will be difficult to budge, and thus is a person that you can count on and use as a point of reference.
Gelli had written that “it was necessary to have a decree for a series of urgent measures to reform the justice system” and the second that he inserted in order of importance was “forbid the naming in the press of magistrates in whatever role they have in the judicial proceedings”.
Gelli was not a slob. Gelli or someone on his behalf (because the “Piano di Rinascita” {Rebirth Plan} was written by Gelli with his consultants who always stayed in the shadows) had understood exactly that this idea of silence about the names of magistrates was fundamental to guarantee a country where on a formal level the law is equal for everyone but where underneath it all, there are friends who sort things out for the friends of friends.
Censorship for Magistrates and for journalism

Another regulation: what is a possibility for a magistrate to defend himself? The possibility of speaking out, to talk about, not the investigation that he is carrying out, but to denounce what they are doing to him.
Think of the really famous interview by Borsellino with Lodato and with Bolzoni, at the time of L’Unità and La Repubblica, that denounced the dismantling of the Antimafia team of judges at the end of the 1980s with the arrival of Antonino Meli to head up the office in place of the well-favoured Falcone.
Borsellino said: “they are dismantling the Antimafia team of judges”, thus the magistrate has enormous possibilities, when he is a man of prestige, one who is recognised, to be able to denounce something that is not right.
OK, now there’s an infinite series of limitations to the possibilities of magistrates speaking out if the magistrates speak without talking about their investigations, as has happened with Forleo and De Magistris and they find excuses and send them away anyway.
If they talk about one of their investigations, without revealing anything secret but giving to the citizens, information that they need, the investigation is taken from them. This is a regulation that is in the law on wiretapping. Just think. They arrest the gang that set fire to that Indian immigrant near Rome, they arrest the rapists, the assumed rapists or those who have confessed to rape like those of the other day: usually the magistrate and the Police Forces hold a press conference in which they provide information to the newspapers and the citizens. “Don’t worry, we have captured them, these are the items of evidence, they have confessed, we have found the weapon used in the offence.”
No, he will no longer be able to do that: if the magistrates says one word even to give two or three items of information to the general public he immediately loses the investigation, and it lands up with someone else who has to start from the beginning.
If then the defendant raises an objection about this in relation to his prosecutor not at the beginning but during the trial, then obviously the prosecutor has to go away and someone else has to step in, someone else who has not followed that investigation and who thus has to start from the beginning.
Thus the magistrates will be afraid of even saying their own name. They will recite their identification number only, like the military prisoners do in certain films.
Finally, we have the law (but you know it already because we talked about it at the time of the Mastella laws) that is within the regulations that prohibit journalists from talking about current investigations.
If this law gets passed, we will no longer be able to tell you that they have arrested the rapists in that case or in that other case. We will no longer be able to tell you that they have arrested the gang that burned that immigrant. We will no longer be able to tell you that persons A, B or C have been captured, investigated, searched or had goods sequestrated.
We will no longer be able to report the wiretapping to explain how it happens that all sorts of people finished up in prison like the entrepreneur of the Angelucci clinics , the governor Del Turco, and the politicians arrested in Naples together with Romeo.
We will no longer be able to say anything about current investigations relating to normal criminal proceedings nor about cases of white collar crimes apart from “someone has been arrested”. If I say that they have arrested someone, I will be able to say that it was for the crime of rape but I can’t say his name. I can either say the crime or the name of the person who is accused of having committed it, so basically I will no longer have the possibility to give to the citizens a full account in real time of what is happening.
So when they arrest one of your neighbours for paedophilia, you will be able to find out that he was arrested for paedophilia only 5 or 6 years later when the trial begins.
You will understand that it changes the life of a family to know or not to know that a neighbour is suspected of paedophilia, because for 5 years you watch out for where the children are going when you look the other way, if you know. If you don’t know, you don’t watch out, but naturally when we then have cases of paedophilia, rape, or other things due to the fact that people have not taken precautions because they were not adequately informed, well then we will know who we have to get angry with.
Let’s remember that and spread the word. Have a good day.”
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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13 February 2009

Internet in Italy: just like China and Burma

Notwithstanding the "Nay" vote by the Italia dei Valori Party, the Senate has approved article 50-bis of Legislative Decree No. 773, an amendment proposed by UDC Senator Gianpiero D’Alia to the security legislation introduced by the Government.

The amendment provides for “the repression of activities involving the defence of, or the instigation to commit a crime, carried out via the Internet”. In actual fact, if approved, it will enable the Government to repress freedom of expression and freedom of opinion on the Web (additional details in the article in Punto Informatico).

The crime of defence of and instigation to commit an offence is already specified and is punishable by law. Anyone accused of this offence can be tried in a Court of law and, if found guilty, is then sentenced accordingly. But D’Alia and his masters don’t want to have to wait for the outcome of such a trial, nor for the applicable sentence to be handed down. What they want is to be able to issue an immediate guilty verdict by obliging the service provider to black out the offending site immediately. Thereafter, who gives a damn about the trial anyway.

This is an anti-democratic and unconstitutional amendment that will prevent the spread of information on the Internet in one fell swoop, thereby putting Italy in the same category as the only two other Countries on Earth that enforce such restrictions, namely China and Burma.

Under the pretext of shutting the door on sites YouTube and Facebook, on which certain very diverse groups of fanatics “sing the praises” of Raffaele Cutolo and Salvatore Riina, the amendment in fact conceals a totally different objective. The objective in question is to shut down the last link in the information chain, the Internet, which has thus far avoided the control of Silvio Berlusconi, monopolist of the private and State media services.

I have to ask myself ,why not shut down Mediaset, which sings the praises of an assassin like Vittorio Mangano? Or why not dissolve Umberto Bossi’s Lega, which instigates the inhabitants of “Padania” to arm themselves with shotguns and fight against “Rome the Thief”, from whence the party’s leaders receive their lavish salaries.

If this attempted Coup is not stopped in the Chamber, we will take to the streets throughout the whole of Italy. And we will stay out there.

If the D’Alia amendment becomes law, then my blog, as well as those of Marco Travaglio, Beppe Grillo, Byoblu, Daniele Martinelli, Piero Ricca and thousands of other free voices on the Web will be shut down. This is the effect, and the true objective I might add, of this despicable amendment, and something that Senator D’Alia has made no attempt to hide (as you will understand from the video clip submitted by an Internet browser, to which I refer you).

Have your say to Senator Gianpiero D’Alia (e-mail).

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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2 February 2009

Passaparola on Monday 2 February

Summary:
Who will be able to ask for wiretapping?
A word of advice for the criminalsi

Text:
”Good day to you all.
Today we are going to talk about – guess what? About wiretapping. The topic is not a new one but as long as that lot are talking about it, we need to do so as well because they are changing the law again and above all they have managed to convince nearly all of the newspapers that the new text, with the new amendments, is much better than the previous one.
And, it is true at the first glance it seems to be so, it seems that the most devastating part has disappeared, the part that listed the crimes for which it will no longer be possible to do wiretapping. Now this list, thanks above all to the “pressing” by “Alleanza Nazionale” and especially by the president of the Justice Committee for the Lower House, Giulia Bongiorno, and by a part of the Lega Nord who realised, very late, what terrible damage the first Alfano project was inflicting on the war against criminality and thus against the security of citizens.
OK. This first danger has been avoided, but in the meantime, further points have been inserted and paradoxically they make the situation worse: in theory, it is written that it’s possible to do wiretapping for all crimes that have a sentence greater than 5 years, just as it is now. So it means that once more it’s possible to do wiretapping on people who are under investigation or who are suspected of all the “street” crimes: robbery, theft, bag snatching, drug dealing, extortion, kidnapping – and including the white collar crimes like corruption and financial crimes.
Do you know what the problem is? It’s that on paper everything is possible. But in practice, they have invented 2 or 3 mechanisms that on their own are not significant, but when put together they will make it almost impossible for the judges to set up wiretapping.

Who will be able to ask for wiretapping?

I’ll explain: the new text that was presented to the Justice Committee with the government’s amendments, basically sets out 4 points.
The first is who has to set up these wiretaps. Today it is the prosecutor who asks the GIP {Judge for the preliminary investigations} to have the authority to do wiretapping and persons A and B on all the equipment that they use, in the home and their mobile equipment – the GIP weighs things up and authorises the wiretapping that can last fifteen days or at the most twenty days and if they want to make it longer, either because they hope that they will say more, that they will start to speak, that they go on saying interesting things as they have done in the first period, the GIP weighs things up and if he or she reckons that there are the necessary elements, then he can agree to the further period.
He can allow a number of extension periods: if an investigation lasts six months it is absurd that the wiretapping cannot last six months, even because very often the crimes are drawn out and last a long time. There is no criminal who gives himself a final deadline for a crime.
It is possible that the planning of a murder lasts months, that the planning of a robbery lasts months, that a kidnapping even last years. Can you write down how long wiretapping lasts? No, because the criminals don’t write down how long their crime is going to last.
The wiretapping needs to last as long as the crime lasts and perhaps even longer, given that there are people who talk about a crime that they have committed a long time after they have committed it.
The judge decides and gives the necessary extension.
In the future, one GIP on his own will not be enough, there’ll be the need for a college of three judges to set up wiretapping.
You could say “OK, that way there’s more guarantee, six eyes can see better than two”. Certainly, if we were to have a hundred thousand judges. But we have ten thousand, and we have a lot of tribunals – eighty - the small ones that have less than twenty magistrates.
And that means that the magistrates have to act as the prosecutor or the judge. Some are only prosecutors. Obviously because if one is a prosecutor he cannot be a judge. He can become a judge by changing his role, but not in the same time frame.
The people who are judges are either civil or criminal judges. If one acts as a GIP, the Judge for the preliminary investigations, he cannot also be the “Gup” that is he cannot handle the preliminary hearing for sending the defendant for trial nor for the abbreviated procedures.
In an investigation, there has to be a judge who acts as the GIP, another that acts as the Gup, three who act as the re-examination judges and decide on arrests, house arrest, search warrants and sequestrations, and a college of judges for the trial for the most serious crimes, or a single judge for the less serious crimes.
If there are twenty judges in the whole tribunal, how can they manage to find one to act as GIP, another to act as Gup, three who are the re-examination judges, three who do the hearings and now three instead of one to decide on the wiretapping?
It’s obvious that there are not enough and you would have to have one taking on many roles in the comedy. Result: he will become incompatible because he will be declined: “You cannot decide on my wiretapping because you arrested me. You cannot decide on my arrest because you already wiretapped me. You cannot decide on the sequestration of my documents because you have already decided on my wiretapping. You cannot judge me in the courtroom because you were my GIP.” What’s created is an intricate mess of incompatibilities that will lead to the complete paralysis in that Tribunal and they won’t be able to find three judges that are not dealing with the case so that they can decide on wiretapping, on arrests, and on the trial.
Naturally what would be needed is to have a Minister, that is not to have Alfano, given that the Minister should be engaged in ensuring the functioning of the Justice System, not how to change the careers of the judges and attacking magistrates. The Minister must make the Justice System work: provide the pens, the paper, the photocopiers, the police cars for the judicial police, the offices, the chairs, give a coat of paint where it is dirty, to put in props where the tribunal is falling down. This is what the Minister has to do.
If we had a Minister, instead of this “Guarda gingilli” {play on words – Keeper of the Baubles – instead of Keeper of the Seals} that we have, who is anyway in a long tradition of inept and “ad personam” Ministers when they are not under investigation, if we had a real Minister, he would take the map of the Tribunals in Italy and he would take the little ones, and get rid of them and merge them at least with those in the main towns of the provinces, so as to avoid having micro-tribunals where the judges should do everything and can do nothing because they end up with incompatibilities.
But we do not have this luck. We have this Minister who goes around and spouts off about things that have nothing to do with him.

A word of advice for the criminals

Second, the duration. Today the duration is what is decided by the GIP, and rightly so, on the basis of the requests of the prosecutor and on the basis of what comes out of the first 15 days of wiretapping: there’s a decision as to whether to go ahead or to stop there.
At times the GIP makes a mistake: for example, when Guariniello put the Juventus directors under surveillance in the Turin side of the “calciopoli” scandal - if I’m not mistaken, in the summer of 2004, he discovered that Moggi called Pairetto, the person who assigned the referees to the matches, to choose the referees for himself, even in the pre-championship matches.
”I want the referee Pieri for the Luigi Berlusconi trophy.” That Sunday Pairetto assigned the referee Pieri. Even for the friendlies, do you see?
With such compromising telephone calls, when the championship started, who knows what would have been found; instead Guariniello, the prosecutor, came up against a GIP who did not understand, who had not picked up the depth of the business because it related to football and he thought it was a “burletta” {comic opera}. Anyway it happened that he didn’t allow him to go on with the wiretapping.
At the best bit, Guariniello had to stop. Luckily, the Naples Procura {prosecutors department}, without having any knowledge of what Guariniello was doing, were following the traces of the Gea – the company of the procurators of the family of Moggi, Lippi etc – and had attached bugs and stuff for more or less the same people (and even more of them) as the ones that Turin had had to remove. The wiretapping went on even though the one lot didn’t know about the other lot. They managed to capture the whole championship season.
For the whole championship they heard that Moggi, during the championship, was doing even more than he had done for the friendlies: to Bergamo, the other nominator of referees, he dictated the preliminary grid for the football fixtures, and he brought about all that we found out about three years ago, the same stuff that they are trying to make us forget about by inviting Moggi here, there and everywhere to tell whopping lies.
Anyway, the trial is ongoing in Naples.

...

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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30 January 2009

The executioners' backstops

Everything that was said at Piazza Farnese has been hushed up, except for the useless stuff. With effect from today, total silence has descended, because the Web has silenced the lies.

La Repubblica has received thousands of comments from indignant citizens and the same goes for l’Unità and Il Corriere. Twenty minutes after the end of Piazza Farnese, the entire event was posted on You Tube, while the editors were still running around busily trying to set up their own version of what happened. This is something that the media directors had failed to anticipate.

No one other than the Web made any mention of the “Associazione Nazionale Vittime di Mafia” (National Association of Mafia Victims), no one reported the words of Salvatore Borsellino, those of Beppe Lumia, those of Sonia Alfano or those of Beppe Grillo, and no one reported any of the names mentioned in that square, neither those of the "bad guys", such as Marcello Dell’Utri, Vittorio Mangano, Angelino Alfano and Cesare Previti, nor those of the "good guys", namely Luigi De Magistris, Luigi Apicella and Clementina Forleo. No one mentioned the Mafia, the Camorra, the ’nDrangheta or the European funds.
No one mentioned the moon, only the finger pointed at it.

The only thing they spoke about were my alleged insults against Napoletano, nonexistent insults that never existed. Yes, I levelled certain criticisms, and I will repeat them. Just as criticisms have been levelled by 84% of Italians who don’t believe that the man is a proper “custodian of the Constitution” (see the MicroMega survey).

Yesterday the moon was called Piazza Farnese, but it changes name daily.

Today it is the wiretaps that the citizens want (see the Sole24Ore survey), but that our Parliament (minus the Italia dei Valori Party, of course) is actually on the point of eliminating by means of a law that will change the history of this Country and deliver it into the hands of a bunch of drug peddlers, assassins, losers, Camorra members, corruptors and bent politicians. A law with devastating effects that are far worse than those of the pardons.
T
Today the moon is also the Copasir (Comitato parlamentare per la sicurezza della Repubblica – Parliamentary Committee for the security of the Republic), chaired by Francesco Rutelli, the man that summoned De Magistris for the wiretaps at the Genchi archive, ordered by the Public Prosecutor. An act of intimidation carried out by the head of an institution. In addition to being the Chairman of Copasir, Francesco Rutelli is also the one that would like to charge De Magistris.

How many moons and how many bearers of misinformation are there in Italy?

If it is true that Il Giornale is seen as the eccentric of the media, then we expect the other newspapers to openly reject such nonsense. The citizens expect impartial reporting from Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, or at least something that vaguely resembles impartial reporting.
I feel obliged to remind those in the media that, in the case of a robbery, the criminal’s associate, or the executioner’s backstop, is just as guilty as the person that physically commits the crime.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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28 January 2009

Resist, react, inform

The demonstration organized by the National Association of Families of Mafia Victims in support of the Justice System and in support of Luigi Apicella has come to an end. I am publishing the video and the text of my speech that I have divided into sections to make it easier to read.
- Why we are here.
- From one “ad personam” law to another.
- For freedom of information.
- Appeal to Napolitano.

My speech:

"In my own name and in the name of Italia dei Valori I would like to thank all the National Association of Families of Mafia Victims. I would like to thank all of you because you do not want to give up, because you have the courage to continue this battle for the rule of law and for civility. Never as in this moment is it necessary to prevent our country from ending up being governed by a P2-ist regime and on the other hand to forget who has given their life to bring democracy and the rule of law to this country.
Thus, from Piazza Navona to Piazza Farnese, and then again from one square to another throughout the country, to inform the citizens and to create together with them a new civic consciousness that makes the rule of law a premise for a healthy economy and for a healthy democracy. This is the commitment from Italia dei Valori. We don’t want it to happen that those who have given their lives for our country get slaughtered twice, by slaughtering also the memory and the commitment with which they performed their work.
Why we are here

Why are we here? Because one more time, certain specific cases show us how the system closes up like a hedgehog to think only of defending its privileges and its own freedom from prosecution. Each time that in relation to the system there’s an effort to discover if someone has stacked the deck of cards, then someone is thrown out – and it’s not the one who has done the skulduggery but the one who tried to discover who was doing the skulduggery. It has happened time and time again and it always happens to the one who while trying to do their duty is trying to apply the law in a way that is equal for everyone. I believe that a fundamental principle in a State based on the rule of law must be that when a magistrate is carrying out investigations, they must be left in peace to do that right to the end, and not be blocked half way through. I know something about that as I have lived through it in person. This idea that it is always necessary to stop a magistrate before he or she can conclude the investigations, and thus instead of a person defending themselves during a trial, they are defending themselves from having a trial. This is a medieval idea. It’s an idea of Don Rodrigo. This is why we are here. We are here to affirm the principle that whoever has nothing to fear from the justice system can only be happy to go to their own judge, because they can explain their own point of view and if they are not convinced by the first judge, they have a second or a third judge who can weigh up their situation better. But the idea that you have to be outside the law, by creating for yourself a “lodo Alfano” and a “lodo Consolo”, as is being done, is an idea that offends the State based on the rule of law. This is why we are here.
From one “ad personam” law to another

Given that there is another bad deed. We are saying this today before the misdeed is completed: they are going ahead from one “ad personam” law to another. It is said that we need more security, more legality, more justice that functions, but the action is the complete opposite. Yesterday, the Minister of Justice, Alfano came to Parliament to give a report on his first months of government and he forgot to say that he did the “lodo Alfano”. Even he is ashamed of what he has done. Yesterday, the Minister of Justice did not tell us that we are approving in Parliament, where it is already at the Committee stage, the “lodo Consolo”, that law where the Ministers, who are jealous, also want for themselves, the law that Berlusconi did for himself. Yesterday, the Minister of Justice forgot to say that they have done the “Save-the-Manager” law, the one that allowed so many neighbourhood wide boys to get away scot free. He forgot to tell us that they are doing a “save us from wire-tapping” law. Even on this, allow me to say that what they are selling today as an agreement found within the majority is simply a statement that they have been “caught with their hands in the marmalade” , because the draft law was already deposited in June, and in the draft law it said that if the sentence laid down by statute is up to 10 years of then there’s no longer any wiretapping. What does that mean? It means that they have tried, and given that slap on the wrists they haven’t thought about it again: they have changed the jar of marmalade. From one “ad personam” law to another What does all this mean? That the proposal they put forward yesterday is even worse than the previous one, because they have said “wiretapping is OK but only for 45 days” so that one can know that from the 46th day onwards they can do what they like.

...

For freedom of information.

...

Appeal to Napolitano

...

We are asking for all this from the institutions, and this is why we are appealing to you signor Head of State. Give a courageous speech. Tell the merchants that they have to get out of the temple. Tell the convicts that they have to get out of Parliament. Say that, and we will approve and you will see different banners. Do not complain if someone sees in your silence, an excessive desire to please.

...

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27 January 2009

I know

I’m publishing a video entitled “I know” and recorded for Beppe Grillo’s Blog. The video with my list of things that “I know” contains information that the media does not report. I invite you to also look at those of Beppe Grillo, Salvatore Borsellino, Sonia Alfano, Marco Travaglio and Carlo Vulpio. Tomorrow I will be there in Piazza Farnese in defence of the justice system and of the democracy of our country.
Text of the presentation:

”I know.
I know that Tangentopoli {Bribesville} has never finished, that political corruption is stronger now than it was before.
I know that many TV channels and newspapers are a permanent propaganda tool used by the powers that answer to Silvio Berlusconi.
I know that Rete4 is unauthorised.
I know that Mangano was a “Mafioso”
I know that Mangano lived as a guest in Berlusconi’s house for a long time.
I know that in Parliament there are loads of convicts who should not be representing the Italians
I know that the economic crisis and the millions of unemployed and “precarious” workers are the offspring of corruption, of the “pizzo”, of organised crime, of bad business, of the canoodling between politics and the mafia.
I know that the Lodo Alfano is unconstitutional.
I know that no citizen can be more equal than others before the law.
I know that Luigi De Magistris has been discriminated against to prevent him from finishing his investigations, as happened to me and as is happening every day to so many magistrates who want to do their duty.
I know that a whole prosecutors’ department, that of Salerno, has been wiped out to prevent Luigi De Magistris’s investigations from being reopened.
I know that the issue of wiretapping is not the problem, but the problem is the people who commit the crimes.
I know that those who have nothing to hide do not fear being wiretapped.
I know that Berlusconi tried to “buy” a senator and bring down the Prodi government by helping some hopeful actresses.
I know that in another country this is called political corruption.
I know that a President of the Council is using his role and our money to run an election campaign in Sardinia instead of taking care of the serious problems of the economy.
I know Alitalia has gone bust.
I know that billions of euro in Alitalia debts have been offloaded onto the Italians.
I know that the small scale savers who bought shares and bonds in Alitalia have waste paper in their hands.
I know that the life-senator Giulio Andreotti got statute-barred for his relationship with the mafia and not absolved.
I know that it must be the news media that control politics and not politics that controls the news media.
I know that the country needs to definitively shake off this straitjacket of mafia criminality and corrupt politics and enter into a new era before it is too late.
I know that parliamentarians must be elected by the people and not by the party secretaries.
I know that Corrado Carnevale should no longer have any institutional role.
I know that the Antimafia committee is not working because the parties don’t want to let it function.
I know that Italian citizens want justice and not soldiers on the streets.
I know that Italy is the aircraft carrier for the import of drugs.
I know that we need to start afresh and honour the memories of Paolo Borsellino, Giovanni Falcone, Giorgio Ambrosoli, Rosario Livatino, Peppino Impastato, Giuseppe Fava, Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and many others who have honoured this country by sacrificing their own lives, but not like the ones who have gone off and acted as fugitives.
I know that on 28 January I will be present in Piazza Farnese from 9:00 am until 2:00 pm to participate in the demonstration to support the justice system.
This is what I know. Let’s know it together.”

The demonstration organised by Associazione Nazionale Familiari Vittime di Mafia in support of Procuratore Capo di Salerno Luigi Apicella, with the particpation of’Italia dei Valori as well as myself in person, must be transformed into a moment fo rnot leaving the justice system on its own In support of Luigi Apicella but also of Luigi De Magistris, and of Clementina Forleo, against the Lodo Alfano and against the latest government mucky thing: the gag on wiretapping.
Wednesday28 January 2009 from 9.00 am until 2:00 pm in Piazza Farnese the date is with democracy and the protagonists tha citizens who are warmly invited to particpate.

I'm publishing the timetable for tomorrow's event:

9.00-9.30: Video from You Tube

9:30-11:00: Presentations from:
- Serenetta Monti (introduction and explanation of the reasons for the demonstration)
- Video by familes of mafia victims
- Familes of mafia victims
- Emiliano Morrone
- Salvatore Borsellino
- Sonia Alfano

11.00-13.00: Beppe Grillo, Antonio Di Pietro, Marco Travaglio, Carlo Vulpio

13:00: Conclusion.

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I know – Passaparola Monday 26 January

The demonstration planned for 28 January is no longer to be in Piazza della Repubblica, but in Rome’s Piazza Farnese from 9:00 am until 2:00 pm.

I’m publishing the video and the text of Marco Travaglio’s presentation entitled: “I know”.
Please remember the demonstration on Wednesday 28 January from 9:00am until 2:00 pm in Rome’s Piazza Farnese, in support of Luigi Apicella, the head prosecutor of Salerno. For anyone who cannot be present I invite you to watch the event via live streaming on the blog.
Summary of this presentation:
A yucky thing to be thrown down the toilet
The lie of the Big Ear

Text:
“I know that once again they are taking us for a ride, it’s just that they are not doing it with the usual everyday fibs.
This time, they are organising a big disinformation campaign styled on the Soviets or the South Americans, if you like.
Or Italian. We can even say Italian-style. Italianesque.
They are doing this because they are afraid of the voters who have perhaps started to have an intuition about the great big yuck that they have to hide, or what a gigantic mass of muck they have to hide with this mess-up law against wiretapping.
For the first time, Berlusconi and his accomplices have not managed to convince the general public that they want fewer wiretaps in Italy.
For obvious reasons of intelligence and their security, the Italians know that it is right and a duty to go without a tiny scrap of our privacy to put a few cameras around, to be able to apprehend more delinquents, to put telephones under control to apprehend more delinquents.
But also, possibly, to discover thanks to the wiretapping, if there is some innocent person who has unjustly landed up in an investigation.
It’s possible to make a distinction between the responsibility of the guilty and the innocent, so the wiretapping for those who have nothing to hide is a resource.
On the other hand, for those who have a lot to hide, it is a danger.
They haven’t managed to get this through. Not even the gang of thieves that has been hammering us for 20 years has managed to convince us that we have to accept, for our own good, fewer wiretaps for the crimes of their lordships, and thus also for street crimes.
It seems that even the Lega voters – luckily, (better late than never) are rebelling and are putting pressure on their representatives not to sign the yuck that Berlusconi wants to do.
And the newspapers are telling us that the game is all about whether the crime of corruption will or won’t be among the crimes for which there can be wiretapping.
A yucky thing to be thrown down the toilet

The problem is not just the crime of corruption: in the draft law presented in July by the Council of Ministers, as we have already said many times but “repetita iuvant”, there’s a prohibition on wiretaps for crimes like rape (in recent days there has been a lot of talk of rape) Berlusconi even promises a soldier for every beautiful woman and in the future maybe for every old woman who goes to pick up her pension, for every old man who goes to pick up his pension, for every housewife who goes shopping.
So basically, there’ll be half the population as a soldier and the other half getting robbed.
And anyway, who will do the thieving? We would have to import the delinquents from abroad. It’s madness.
But as regards the prohibition on wiretapping, the Council of Ministers’ draft law forbids this for rape, kidnapping, associating to commit a crime, extortion, receiving, fraud, theft, theft in an apartment, robbery, bag-snatching, small-scale selling of drugs, culpable homicide and all financial crimes.
The problem is picking up this gigantic yuck and throwing it down the toilet. This lot should be a serious party, even accepting that the Lega manages to do that every so often, instead of staying there to retouch a crime here (yes) – and another one there (no).
These are all crimes for which right now there can be wiretapping and in fact, already we have problems in discovering the guilty ones because we need more wiretapping and connected investigations.
Instead, because of the continual reduction in resources and funding, we always have less and we have only a few people revealed to be guilty.
Just think when we won’t be able to even do wiretapping, how many criminals we will have at liberty: we will have to barricade ourselves in our homes once this law gets passed. We’ll need “chevaux de frise” and sand bags at the windows to do our own justice.
This is the state they want to lead us towards.
The lie of the Big Ear

So, given that people have not already swallowed the hoax about the wiretapping, they are exaggerating, they are getting close to the sound barrier, they are going beyond the limits of decency, assuming that they have any.
That is they are feeding us another super-lie to convince us that we are subject to “Big Brother”, the Big Ear, the spy of spies, the black man, who, hidden in an office in Palermo, is intercepting everything and everyone with great violation of privacy.
Putting democracy in danger.
This monster is called Gioacchino Genchi. He’s a deputy police chief on sabbatical. And since the times of Giovanni Falcone he has been collaborating with the magistrates who are most involved in a whole series of investigations that have something to do with computing and telephony, because he has accumulated experience on this matter that is unique in the whole of Europe.
He helps the magistrates to cross-match the telephone calls and the printouts in trials for murder, robbery, mafia, 'ndrangheta, camorra, kickbacks, and slaughter.
Why is someone like him useful and indispensable? Because it’s not enough doing like so many animals with a pen in their hand do on the newspapers: take a wiretapping chunk and do copy and paste and display it on the page of a newspaper or have it heard on the TV.
The wiretap information needs to be read and above all to be understood.
On the telephone, many people even try to use a conventional language, or even if they aren’t trying to do that they end up doing it: people speak very badly on the phone, often, you can understand very little.
That is why it is important to understand what time that phone call took place, in what location, after which other telephone calls and before which other telephone calls that one comes.

...

You will understand the enormity of the lie that you are being told with one additional thing: Has Genchi got tens of thousands of users under surveillance? I have already told you that that is not true.
In his whole career that has covered 30 years, it is possible that Genchi has handled hundreds of thousands of telephone calls. He has been receiving wiretaps and printouts and cross-matching them for 30 years.
Of people under investigation, of people not under investigation, “colaterals and in-laws” as Totò would have said.
It is possible that at this very moment, given that he has a lot of work from many Italian prosecutors – cases of murder, robbery, mafia, camorra, 'ndrangheta, kickbacks, tax dodging, slaughter, association to commit crime, drugs, various crimes – it is possible that overall he has thousands of items of information.
It is clear that if he is working on some investigations involving someone who has a rapport with Berlusconi, there will be Berlusconi’s number.
Exactly like when investigating Saladino, the printout had the number of Rutelli, and that of Mastella etc.
Has he listened to them? No. The magistrates listened to them and then they passed the information to him to do the processing.
You can understand how, starting from an innocuous issue, in fact a positive matter, for which we all should be grateful to Genchi for what he is doing – they are doing an artful creation of an astounding case of disinformation not just to stop him from going on doing this work, that is useful for all of us, that is to capture the criminals.
But they are also trying to use this case to dismantle, to destroy that bit of law enforcement that still guarantees that every so often, some delinquents are caught.
We’ll meet again on Wednesday in Rome’s Piazza Farnese. I urge you: spread the word! Passate parola!!"
Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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18 January 2009

Discredit in order to discredit me

Here is the video clip and text of an interview I granted, which was broadcast today, 17 January on La7, wherein I respond to questions put to me by the interviewer, Alain Elkann, on the topic of justice and information.

Alain Elkann: In recent days, certain newspapers and television channels have reported that there are certain of your party members that have caused problems for you and that there are certain problems within your party. For example the Naples matter and, even though you are not personally involved, when one is the leader of a party...
Antonio Di Pietro: Firstly: to be fair, not a single one of my people has as yet been questioned. Instead, there are certain people within the government, both in the majority and in the opposition, that have even been placed under arrest. They are quick to mention our people, who are not under investigation, but no mention is made about those people who are even serving in government and for whom precautionary measures have been requested. So, if the broadcasting channel takes a toothpick, turns it into a beam and sticks it into your eye, then you can no longer see. The problem lies elsewhere. The real problem is that it can and will happen, even to the Italia dei Valori party. When a political party is nothing more than a political movement, when it takes part in demonstrations and marches, as happened in Piazza Navona, then it becomes a party of protest, of so-called civil society complaining about things that are not right. When a party takes a step up and enters into the institutions it is like the farmer picking apples. When he picks apples, it is not said that all the apples in the basket are worm free, because there may be some rotten apples amongst them. The problem is that within our party we cannot always, by divine intuition, only ever pick sound apples. It can happen that there are some rotten apples amongst the good ones. What is the difference? The difference is that the good farmer looks through the basket of apples the next day, because the worm appears only the next day, and he will find it then. When the farmer finds a rotten apple, he picks it up and removes it from the basket. This is what the Italia dei Valori party has done to date, and we will continue to do so. More importantly, anyone who has legal problems pending against them is immediately removed from the party and then, if these problems are settled positively, they are allowed to return, if not, then they are not permitted to work or stay in the party. The difference with us, I am proud to say, is that when legal problems arise, we are duty bound to approach the magistrate and lay our reasons before him. Our second duty is to first make ourselves available to the justice system and only then to the institutions. In the other parties, the first thing they do is introduce a made to measure law to save themselves from prosecution and then criminalize the magistrate by claiming that it is a political battle. So then, tell me, who is the better “farmer”?"

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16 January 2009

This is not a normal Country

Yesterday was an important day that I as a citizen, as parliamentarian and as leader of the Italia dei Valori party am proud of.

I went voluntarily to the Naples Police Station to make my contribution and to provide my testimony so as to enable the judges to reconstruct the facts surrounding the magistrates that they are busy investigating (and above all the role played by the former service provider involved in the public works in Naples, namely Mario Mautone, who was and still is a director at the Ministry for Infrastructure where I acted as Minister for two years). As soon as the documents have been lodged on completion of the investigation, I will request a copy of my testimony, which I will make public on this site.

In any civilised Country, my collaboration would be considered to be a dutiful and meritorious action. According to the news agencies, the judges themselves described my interview as being “very satisfactory”. In Italy, however, which is not a normal Country in many respects, least of all as regards information, this morning the newspapers, television news services and professional commentators offered interpretations of the entire matter that were completely and shamefully distorted.

Not quite all of them, however, if the truth be told, because amongst these an interview with Marco Travaglio, carried in “La Stampa”, offers the reader an interpretation that is somewhat closer to the truth regarding what is actually going on. Here is the interview in question.

“But let us not confuse bribes and favours”

La Stampa: Travaglio, so, no embarrassment for Di Pietro who is frequenting the Courts?
Marco Travaglio: No... and why should there be? He did not go out and start ranting. As far as I am aware, he also didn’t ask for any “made to measure” laws in his favour.

La Stampa: No, he says that investigations should be done across the board. Including children and friends.
Marco Travaglio: Precisely. I believe that his behaviour is entirely consistent. I would like to congratulate him. Also because he has not sought refuge in the argument of that which is legally significant. Therefore, at least Di Pietro is leaving it to the magistrates to decide on what is legally significant.

La Stampa: Dear Mr. Travaglio, it would seem that in your opinion Di Pietro has emerged even stronger from this unpleasant affair.
Marco Travaglio: Look, given that I know little or nothing about this matter and that I therefore have no idea whatsoever about who is under investigation and who is not, I have noted that Di Pietro is not making any exceptions for anyone. It was not a given. The individuals must be tested in the light of the facts.

La Stampa: The fact remains that the inquiry has uncovered a very nasty affair.
Marco Travaglio: He states that his party is experiencing a period of rapid growth. And that obviously all sorts are getting in. So, this is a limitation. It is the same for all parties, but in his case the matter is more serious. Because this kind of thing is not expected of Di Pietro. What is needed are some bouncers standing at the entrance. And they would also need a serious committee of upstanding members.

La Stampa: If we were to be particularly harsh, however, even Di Pietro should chuck out half of the party.
Marco Travaglio: At least, if nothing else, when a bad apple is pointed out to him, he gets rid of it. The others don’t. Like Mautone, for example: when certain rumours came to his attention, he moved the man. It is a good rule to live by given that certain office bearers cannot simply be fired. And then I notice that they have blamed him for this as well...

La Stampa: The most delicate and painful issue, however, remains the story regarding his son Cristiano.
Marco Travaglio: It seems to me to be only right that he has resigned from the party. Now, I am not confusing people that accept bribes, which is a crime, with a simple recommendation. And so, given that making recommendations is not acceptable, clearly these two matters are very different indeed in terms of their seriousness.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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15 January 2009

The Bassolino Court Case / 6

I’m publishing the video and the text of the presentation by our reporter at the hearing of the Bassolino Court Case on Wednesday 14 January.

”The Poggioreale prison in Naples. Today is Wednesday 14 January 2009 and the hearings in the Bassolino Impregilo Case have begun again after the Christmas break, with a new president of the judging court, the women judge Ramaldella who is taking the place of Giovanni Rabuano who has gone to be the President of the Tribunal at Nola in the Province of Naples. This change has not meant the blocking of the trial because Rabuano managed to conclude all the preliminary activities last year. Today in the bunker courtroom there were all the lawyers representing the 553 towns, a really high number that has all the flavour of bringing confusion to the trial, to try and block it or at least to hinder its work. Anyway today there was once more a really long appeal. There was the official opening of the debate stage and the judge decided to put off everything until the next hearing on 28 January, the day when there will be abstentions by the lawyers, and probably that date will be further moved presumably to the first Wednesday of February. While we are putting together this report (the hearing has just finished) we don’t yet have the official date but in a few days time we will know that and obviously we will let you know. Now here are a couple of words with two of the very few lawyers who are giving statements after this morning’s activities.

Avv.F.Vigoriti: Today there was the formulation of the requests for evidence, that is the trial, now that the preliminary phase has finished. Following on from the opening declarations, the debate starts the live stage. And it started with the report from the prosecutor and the requests for evidence from all sides, and it is based on this that the Tribunal must make a decision and issue an order. Given the number of participants and thus the mass of requests and documents that will be deposited, it is understandable that the Tribunal will take a period of time to study everything. And then it will decide which evidence can be used in the debate and which will be excluded. This is starting from the list of witnesses that is pretty weighty. Consider that just the prosecutor asks to be able to hear about 90 witnesses, but if I’m not mistaken, the Impregilo defence is asking to hear all the mayors of the towns in Campania and there are 552 of them. Thus it’s probable that there will have to be a thinning out of these lists otherwise it would be a trial that cannot be managed and that would be impossible to carry on.
D.Martinelli: On 28 January there is the strike by the lawyers and so?
Avv.F.Vigoriti: So I reckon they won’t have the trial on 28 January.

D.Martinelli: The towns that are bringing the case, there are 553, a really high number.
Avv .G. Vitiello: Yes, the number of civil plaintiffs has gone up noticeably. But there were already a lot, right from the start. Certainly, the Tribunal decided it was appropriate to admit them with an appreciable judicial reasoning and without a doubt, the number and the plethora of participants will be laborious for the way the trial is conducted. But I believe that it will be the intelligence of the civil plaintiffs, the regions and the towns and also from other plaintiffs that have been admitted to try and simplify the activity of the trial to reduce the number of interventions to a minimum for the purposes of the procedures.”

Previous Articles:
- The Bassolino Court Case / 4
- The Bassolino Court Case / 3
- The Bassolino Court Case
- The "Bassolino - Impregilo" court case

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information
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13 January 2009

Six responses to Libero

I am publishing my responses (plus one) in this interview-at-a-distance between Feltri, the editor of Libero and myself. I am doing this above all for you, the readers and for the general public that has the right to know the facts. Facts and circumstances that instead each day are misrepresented and instrumentalised by those of “Il Giornale” on the orders and instructions of their boss. I will turn my attention to them in the appropriate courts where they have been called by me to respond to the serious defamation that I am subject to. It’s up to you to evaluate what I am reporting below.

To make it easier to read my replies, I am giving the links to the questions here:

1) "How could you buy the dwelling in Bergamo from Inail if the law forbids it?"

2) "How do you explain the duality of the IDV Association and the IDV Political Movement? "

3) "How do you explain the handling of the election expenses of the party? Who collected the money?"

4) "How do you explain that it was you, Di Pietro, to approve the IDV financial statement without further controls?"

5) "How do you explain the mystery of IDV paying rent for the Rome office to the Di Pietro family? "

6) "How do you explain that Di Pietro knew in advance that Mario Mautone, Superintendent o fPublic Works in in Campania, was under investigation in Naples?"

7) "I’m referring to the latest “pearl of wisdom” from “Il Giornale” according to which I am meant to have given or I am meant to have taken steps so that it happened that Avvocato Ascione living in Brescia obtained a consultancy with a motorway company."

The Letter

”
Dear Editor,
Here I am again to respond to the other questions that last Sunday you formulated for me in public. As you have said: “We have done thirty, let’s do thirty one”. In fact, since we are doing this why not “thirty two”, given that in the meantime, those of “Il Giornale” have splattered me with more mud (my presumed favouritisms as a Minister). So here I am, ready to respond to the six questions that you have asked me (plus one), with paper and documents ready at hand, that obviously, I am making available to you as I have already done the previous time.

First question: "How could you buy the dwelling in Bergamo from Inail if the law forbids it?"
Response: And who says that the law forbids it? Oh yes, the ones from “Il Giornale” are saying that, but it’s lies. Let’s look at the facts. On 10 November 2004, I participated in a public auction that was organised by the SCIP on behalf of INAIL. Among the many other properties on sale there was an apartment in Bergamo at via Locatelli 29. It was in an auction for the second time because there was no interest at the first auction (you see that the first time no one wanted it at that price). The reserve price for the auction was 204,085.00 euro. My offer was for 261,

	"BEPPE GRILLO: A VALID PROGRAMME"
Many people in the PD are falling over themselves to mock the candidacy of Grillo as the Secretary of that Party, and yet his is the only programme that has been made visible, and it is much more developed than the ideas that we have heard up to now from the other candidates. Clean up Parliament, the law on the conflict of interests, public water resources, “no” to nuclear and the development of renewable energy resources, the maximum of two legislatures for the parliamentarians, free Wi-Fi, the freedom of information, with the withdrawal of State TV concessions from every political entity. A serious, innovative programme that I agree with and that we of Italia dei Valori have been taking forward for some time now in the most complete solitude and ignored by the leadership class of the Centre Right and the Centre Left.
Antonio Di Pietro

1)	"How could you buy the dwelling in Bergamo from Inail if the law forbids it?"
2)	"How do you explain the duality of the IDV Association and the IDV Political Movement? "
3)	"How do you explain the handling of the election expenses of the party? Who collected the money?"
4)	"How do you explain that it was you, Di Pietro, to approve the IDV financial statement without further controls?"
5)	"How do you explain the mystery of IDV paying rent for the Rome office to the Di Pietro family? "
6)	"How do you explain that Di Pietro knew in advance that Mario Mautone, Superintendent o fPublic Works in in Campania, was under investigation in Naples?"
7)	"I’m referring to the latest “pearl of wisdom” from “Il Giornale” according to which I am meant to have given or I am meant to have taken steps so that it happened that Avvocato Ascione living in Brescia obtained a consultancy with a motorway company."