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June 5, 2002
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
May 31, 2002
Rev. Sandra Olewine
Land Grabs and Occupation:
Silent Destruction of Palestine
James Dunlop
Russian
Colonel:
"Insane But Fit for Duty"
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
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June 5, 2002
Blackout in
Italy
Berlusconi the Censor
by Robert Fisk
The
Independent
Sciuscia, in Neapolitan Italian, means "Shoeshine".
It is the most controversial, provocative, irritating programme
on the second channel of Italy's state television, RAI.
Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister
of Italy, would like to make sure that last week's 33rd edition
of Sciuscia--pronounced 'shiewsha'--is the last. In April, Mr
Berlusconi claimed that Michele Santoro, the anchorman of this
crazy mix of brilliant documentaries and That Was The Week That
Was, had "made a criminal use of public television".
Italian journalists are waiting for blood to flow.
Last week's "final" programme
of the season--in which I was invited to take part--included
a devastating documentary by the reporter Corrado Formigli on
the West's failure to help Afghanistan. It also featured a long,
angry and sometimes hilarious studio debate on the folly of our
involvement in the country between NGOs, defence specialists,
an American actress, a leftist Italian reporter, a pro-Israeli
journalist and Signor Fisk.
Sciuscia has been a plague on the Berlusconi
administration, at one point investigating the mafia-like background
of one of the Prime Minister's closest colleagues. In presenting
the plight of Palestinians under occupation, Mr Santoro was accused
by the Italian Jewish community--like so many journalists who
dare to criticise Israel--of "anti-Semitism". Leone
Paserman, the president of the Jewish community in Rome, also
asked the RAI administration to fire Mr Santoro. Mr Paserman
was subsequently ordered by an Italian court to pay *50,000 (lbs32,000)
to the journalist.
Like many leftist reporters in Italy,
Mr Santoro was a communist--he began his career as a journalist
on the then communist party newspaper L'Unita but, today, he
is the perfect anchorman, as provocative as Jeremy Paxman and
as theatrical as Brian Rix--the perfect David Frost before Sir
David went to seed. He goads his guests into anger and generosity.
RAI's board of five administrators are not amused. Three of them,
appointed in February, are allies of Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia
and the president of RAI, Antonio Baldassarre, is close to the
Berlusconi coalition.
Sciuscia staff have not been told if
they will be allowed another series--by now, they should already
be planning next autumn's schedule.
In addition to the influence he wields
over the RAI board, Mr Berlusconi has a near- monopoly on private-sector
television in Italy: through his company Mediaset, he controls
three private channels--Channel Five, Italy 1 and Network 4.
Through his brother, he controls the daily newspaper Il Giornale,
with a circulation of 200,000. He, in effect, controls the weekly
news magazine Panorama, and also the gossip magazine Chi with
a circulation of about 1 million.
Despite promising after his rise to power
last year not to meddle in the running of the public television
network, Mr Berlusconi provoked outcry with his suggestion that
there should be a purge of current affairs presenters such as
Mr Santoro. Again the opposition reacted with horror last month
when a majority of members of the ruling coalition put their
names to a motion calling for the suspension of Sciusia, and
three other news programmes accused of "one sidedeness"
during local election campaigning.
Is this just another little fracas between
the right-wing papivor of Italian politics and the subversive,
electorally defeated forces of the left? It would be pleasant
to think so. But a few hours after the last programme of the
series, I came upon an exhibition in the basement of the Vittorio
Emanuele monument, the notorious ice-cream cake of concrete and
marble that houses Italy's First World War unknown warrior. This
was a Rome I had never seen before. The exhibition, a demonstration
of 150 years of Italian unity, a plaque at the entrance announced,
was the inspiration of none other than Mr Berlusconi.
Inside were dozens of military flags,
indeed hundreds--in fact, far too many military flags--from the
1914-18 war and before. There was a piece of Garibaldi's leg
bone, extracted after the 1862 battle of Aspromonte, and even
the great man's right, fur-lined boot, complete with bullet hole.
Far more impressive was a long documentary on the Italian army's
campaign against the Austro-Hungarian empire in the First World
War, when Italy was, of course, on "our" side. Worrying,
however, is the written commentary, appearing on screen as it
must have done when the film was originally put together--presumably
in the early years of Mussolini's rule. Over and over again,
war is referred to as "glorious". The 600,000 Italian
casualties of the war are even referred to, in Italian, as a
"holocaust". The last great battle of the war--at Piave--is
treated as a blood sacrifice.
Nothing inaccurate from a factual point
of view, perhaps but is blood really the unifying cement of Italy?
I thought I might find an antidote across the square at the Palazzo
Valentini, where another exhibition--"Portrait of an Era:
Art and Architecture in the Fascist Era"--was arranged in
what were once the baths of the Emperor Trajan. The purpose of
the exhibition, Rossana Bossaglia's introduction informed me,
was "to show how Italian art of the Fascist era developed
an expressive language of its own, able to deal with different
themes in a completely independent way...." This sounded
a little dodgy. No condemnation of the Fascist era.
Rather, a peek into what might have been
good about it. And, sure enough, there was an oil painting of
Mussolini and then a sculpture of Mussolini, alongside a photograph
of the Duce himself looking at the very same sculpture. Silvano
Moffa, president of the Rome province, offers us, in the same
introduction, the thought that "Fascism as it was in the
1920s--that is to say a movement characterised by the need to
celebrate itself--was not the same movement it would become in
the 1930s. From the very beginning of his dictatorship, Mussolini
stated that the relationship between politics and art was an
important one, and promoted several exhibitions ..." What
did this mean?
I opened my Italian newspaper. And what
did I find? President Carlo Ciampi of Italy wants to honour Garibaldi,
the Italian soldiers who bravely fought the Nazis on the island
of Cephalonia in the Second World War and--wait for it--the soldiers
who fought in the battle of El Alamein in 1942. But the latter
soldiers were fighting for Mussolini and his Nazi allies. Had
Rommel won the battle with Italian help, the Axis powers would
have reached Cairo and Palestine--whose Jewish population would
then have been included in the holocaust. I wondered, briefly,
whether Mr Paserman wouldn't have done better to complain about
this sinister plan of Mr Ciampi rather than slandering Mr Santoro.
Is this something to be worried about?
Italian journalists like to ameliorate the situation. Mr Berlusconi
is a businessman first, they told me. So is Mr Ciampi, a man
who often speaks before he thinks. Mr Santoro is an artist who
likes to play the martyr. And if Sciuscia comes back on the air,
it will be another Italian tempest. If it does not, however,
a lot of Europeans might do well to think more seriously about
Mr Berlusconi, to ask themselves whether he really is the president
of a united Italy. Or a scoundrel.
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