Showing posts with label italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label italy. Show all posts
Monday, May 07, 2007
A row is brewing in Italy as parliament prepares to debate new laws to stop anyone with businesses worth more than 15m euros (£10m) from holding office.
A new "conflict of interest" law would be particularly damaging for former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Critics of Mr Berlusconi, now leader of the opposition and Italy's richest man, maintain his media holdings are incompatible with high office.
I know in this country conservatives believe that money equal speech. If you have more money, that means you are entitled to more speech. I am not crazy about this bill, which is obviously targeted at Berlusconi. His money isn't the issue, it is his media dominance that is the problem. Berlusconi directly or indirectly controls six out of the seven networks in Italy.
This kind of makes running a fair election on equal grounds a little difficult. Assume Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, the communications industry got more deregulated, and he then bought ABC, CBS, and NBC. He then decided to run a candidate since he is ineligible to run. CNN being the only major network that wasn't under his control. It would be a bit difficult to get "fair and balanced" coverage under these conditions.
The other day, I wrote about how I would like more partisan media as opposed to the centrist biased MSM. This is not what I envisioned. Rules would still have to be in place against consolidation. It would be just as bad for George Soros to run everything as Rupert Murdoch. However, them each owning networks, with a moderate alternative, wouldn't be bad.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has handed his resignation to the country's president after losing a crucial foreign policy vote in the Senate.
Yes, jokes about the stability of Italian governments aside, this might make one ponder about something similar in our country. Bush basically went in on a long slide after the 2004 general election. In our system, we sit around and either wait the four years out, wait for him to have a fatal pretzel incident, or hope that congress has the stomach to formerly impeach him.
In Italy, the parliament just thought Prodi's foreign policy sucked and told him so. That made him resign on the spot. Perhaps our situation could be a bit more further calamitous to trigger such an action, but full blown impeachment shouldn't be the only resort when your President is a lemon. How about a lemon rule? Congress can say you really suck, that your policy choices are failures, and in shame you spend the rest of your life clearing brush. Why wait til January 2009?
Friday, February 16, 2007
26 Americans Charged in Italian Rendition Case
An Italian judge has ordered 26 US citizens - most of them CIA agents - to stand trial over the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. Osama Mustafa Hassan was allegedly seized there by the CIA and flown to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
Five Italians were also indicted by the judge, including Italy's ex-military intelligence chief, Nicolo Pollari.
Those indicted include the former station chief of CIA operations in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, who says his opposition to the proposal to kidnap the Imam was over-ruled. He is reported to have returned to the US, leaving behind a villa in Italy which he bought with his life savings.
The AP has a story as well with more details. The former head of Italian intelligence was indicted as well and said he couldn't defend himself because of classified documents not being given to him.
It is still in doubt if the US will hand over a single person over to the Italian authorities. Apparently, the defendents will be tried in absentia.
(Osama Moustafa Hassan) Nasr was allegedly transferred by vehicle to the Aviano Air Force base near Venice and then by air to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany and on to Egypt, where critics say he was tortured.
All but one of the American suspects have been identified as CIA agents, including the former station chiefs in Rome and Milan. The other is a U.S. Air Force officer stationed at the time at Aviano.
I never seriously believed that the US would hand over the people who committed this crime. Yes, even though they were following orders, the orders to kidnap a man in a foreign country to be turned over to torturers is criminal. However, the fact that there will be a trial, and there will be evidence and testimony about the practices that our government has employed will be a breath of fresh air.
Our media may even cover this with actual reports of what our government has done in our name, giving people pause to reflect on our loss of liberties and values that we allegedly hold dear.
Europe is starting to fight back. Prosecutors in Switzerland are examining charge because this crime included a flight over their air space.
And a Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in connection with another alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping, this one of a German citizen who says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonia border and flown to Afghanistan.
The truth is getting out. The rest of the world is no longered cowered. Ironically, Bush's overreach has not intimidated the rest of the world. The disaster in Iraq has exposed him as a paper tiger to those he tried to intimidate, and now they are starting to show their own fangs.
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