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THANK YOU, MR. CALDWELL (finalmente ristabilita un pò di verità...)

ITALY IS RIGHT TO CURB ITS JUDGES

By Christopher Caldweill

(pubblicato sul Financial Times, 21 Giugno 2008)

Enduring Silvio Berlusconi's behaviour last week was like "sitting through a film you've seen before", said Senator Anna Finocchiaro, the parliamentary head of Italy's Democratic party. Not two months after starting his third stint as prime minister, Mr Berlusconi is in a familiar controversy.
The Senate is finishing work on a package of security laws on which Mr Berlusconi campaigned. An amendment added by his supporters and passed on Wednesday would suspend trials for all but the most serious crimes that took place before mid-2002. This will help focus the state's limited resources on a wave of violent crime that has alarmed the public. But that is not all it will do. It will also halt a trial in Milan that aims to discover whether Mr Berlusconi paid €387,000 ($601,000, £306,000) to his lawyer David Mills, the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, UK Olympics minister, to give false testimony in a court case a decade ago. (Both men deny wrongdoing.)
Mr Berlusconi believes he is being singled out by judges on the "extreme left". This week he requested that the judge presiding over the Mills trial be removed, on the grounds that her outspoken attacks on his policies reveal her as too biased to render a fair judgment. (His request was rejected.) He announced that he would seek a law providing immunity from prosecution for high-ranking members of the Italian government. Magistrates have complained that Mr Berlusconi's moves will cause "irreparable damage to the rule of law".
It is not obvious that they are right . Spain, France, Germany and the European Union all have some version of immunity. Italy, too, had an immunity for parliamentarians until it was abolished in 1993, amid a series of anti-corruption prosecutions. Mr Berlusconi's backers passed an immunity law in 2003 but the constitutional court voided it the following year, arguing (reasonably) that it would violate equality under the law and (absurdly) that it threatened the "right" of citizens to confront their accusers - as criminal defendants. Such laws can be abused. Pablo Escobar, the cocaine baron, notoriously avoided prosecution in the 1980s by getting elected to the Colombian Chamber of Representatives. But in many cases immunity prevents as much damage as it permits.
The purpose of immunity is not to give elected officials a free ride. It is to protect the right of electorates to be ruled by the person they chose democratically . Do the charges against Mr Berlusconi arise from a disinterested quest for justice or from a desire on the part of a certain branch of the Italian elite to overturn a popular choice they do not like? Such questions can almost never be answered to the public's satisfaction. In the US in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton was subjected to one investigation after another. It turned out to be just as important that the judiciary be above the taint of politics as that politicians be above the taint of corruption. Immunity might be the best way to protect the democratic elements of democratic government - especially in a country where the judiciary is highly politicised . The US remains such a country.
So does Italy, where, for a decade and a half, judges have enjoyed a degree of power unique in the west . In the early 1990s, when Italians came to feel they no longer needed to tolerate the graft that had been a regular part of cold war politics, ambitious judges toppled the leadership of the main parties in corruption trials. Italy's post-cold war purge was more thorough than that of many communist countries. There was, in effect, a judicial regency over elected officials, with judges getting to vet the leadership class of the next generation.
Such power is, over the long haul, unhealthy for a democracy. It is one of the reasons Italians have come to distrust their judiciary. A poll published on Thursday in La Repubblica, a prestigious Roman daily that opposes Mr Berlusconi, showed just a third (35 per cent) have faith in the judicial system, versus 59 per cent who do not. Mr Berlusconi's voters are overwhelmingly distrustful of judges and his opponents are mostly satisfied with them. What is striking is that the centrist voters in Italy's Christian Democratic remnant, the opposition UDC, favour Mr Berlusconi's plans to suspend trials by 69 per cent to 30 per cent. As La Repubblica put it, Italians "think that justice is working poorly. And if the price [for fixing it] is some kind of judiciary 'immunity' for Silvio Berlusconi, they are willing to pay it."
A Bleak House -style backlog of cases is the weak spot in the Italian judiciary's legitimacy. Italian law is so dilatory that it butts up against article six of the European Convention on Human Rights. In place of fast trials, Italy has the so-called "Pinto law" of 2001, to compensate people whose court cases drag on. Sir John Major was in power in Britain the year the Berlusconi-Mills trial began. The allegations against which Mr Berlusconi was fighting when the last immunity law was overturned in 2004 dated from 1985. When Mr Berlusconi's foes warn that 100,000 untried cases would be frozen because they are more than six years old, they are unwittingly making the case for the law, not against it.
Mr Berlusconi's judicial stunts are invariably self-serving, but they are never only self-serving . They always address some genuine problem severe enough to rally voters behind him. Therein lies his political genius. Italy is in a panic about crime right now. That panic might be well founded, or it might not be. But almost everything in his security law will help allay it. An immunity law, should one be drafted, might make Italian politics less litigious and more democratic. The fact that Mr Berlusconi could dodge a trial through these laws is a reason to oppose them. But it is the only reason to oppose them, and it is not a sufficient one.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

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CASE CHIUSE, CASO APERTO

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dopo parecchio tempo torno ad occuparmi di questo blog.

Oggi vi propongo a reflection of the Osservatore Romano, dated June 18, the pressing issue of prostitution, preceded by a brief summary of the debate. Good reading.

background: Some time ago The Right presented a bill to regulate prostitution, and later, Daniela Santanche , former premier candidate for the same deployment , has proposed holding a referendum in order to reopen the so-called "case closed".

Perhaps envious of the work of fellow conservatives, Filippo Berselli and Carlo Vizzini hanno depositato un emendamento al decreto sicurezza in discussione per equiparare le prostitute ai "soggetti socialmente e moralmente pericolosi", con una modifica al Codice penale.

Reazioni a catena: critico il Ministro dell'Ambiente, Stefania Prestigiacomo, mentre l'ex Ministro dell'interno Giuseppe Pisanu definisce la proposta "aberrante" perchè attribuisce "unilateralmente alle prostitute di strada il presunto reato contro la sicurezza e la moralità pubblica, assolvendo a priori i loro clienti". Il suo successore al Viminale, Roberto Maroni raccoglie invece la provocazione dei speakers and aims to create "eros center ", in order to combat the problem. At this point the Vice-President of the Chamber, Maurizio Lupi (Pdl): "In every country in the world these neighborhoods are a symbol of degradation. The State can not endorse the exploitation of prostitution, it means not to respect the person. " Too many dissenting voices espondenti the PD, and curiously, also the leader of "The Right", Francesco Storace , that compares the "case closed" to narcosale . A demonstration of the versatility of the subject.

Commodification of the person

No resignation of John Paul Ramos

General Manager of the Association Pope John XXIII Community

In the third millennium, the commodification of the person is a phenomenon yet to be fought, before which, as stated Pope John Paul II "We can not remain indifferent and resigned." Sexual exploitation of women is a direct result of unjust systems where the victims to improve their living conditions or simply to survive become bargaining chips for easy unscrupulous traffickers. Don Oreste Benzi, founder of the Community Pope John XXIII who fought the dramatic phenomenon and restore freedom to more than six thousand women, argued that "no woman born prostitute, but there is always someone who makes her . Globalization, the opening of European borders to Eastern European countries, the greater possibility of movement have increased immigration into the West a richer, more alluring for those who want to quickly tap into the well-being. Therefore, intermediaries and exploiters real racket organized by women most vulnerable fueling an increase in violence and brutality. John Paul II said, "is now to condemn vigorously, creating appropriate legislation defense, forms of sexual violence which frequently have to relate to women. " And Benedict XVI made his own the condemnation voiced by his predecessor in the letter to women of 29 June 1995 on the systematic exploitation of sexuality, arguing the need for a program of redemption and liberation from which Christians could no longer ignore. In fact, the debate on this issue is affecting various governments. It flares with wide media coverage on the solutions which achieve the diatribes. Baffles the idea of \u200b\u200bthose who think they can solve the problem by limiting it to urban areas or red light giving the commodified in gestione a delle cooperative. Ci si domanda come si possa pensare di contrastare un male delimitandolo geograficamente o regolamentandolo con opportune norme. Anche il furto è un male e così tante altre forme di sopruso che negano il senso del prossimo, ma non si è mai pensato di combatterle disciplinandole o regolarizzandole perché queste possano acquisire parvenze di legittimità. Le soluzioni prospettate contrastano poi con la necessità di ricostruire un tessuto valoriale , del quale da più parti si lamenta la spaventosa carenza, indispensabile per consentire ai giovani la crescita in una società più sana e meno ipocrita. Ci si chiede inoltre come sia possibile far passare per legittimo ciò which is an expression of mere possession of the person reduced to an object, offensive to the dignity and freedom of conscience. One thing that remains beyond the unjust situations affecting the act. One wonders then why do not you think the quality of life that would be reserved for "legalized prostitution" and their families. Respect for others is not only the fundamental rule of our religion, but an essential achievement in terms of culture and civilization. It is therefore absolutely crucial that governments give life to legislation appropriate to enable the prosecution of those responsible for the racket striking phenomenon, tightening controls e pene. Uno stato attento e accorto deve essere vigile nella salvaguardia del bene comune se vuole promuovere la reale crescita umana e culturale dei suoi cittadini, non soggiacere a ipocrite e affrettate soluzioni di problemi, utili solo ai soliti “furbi”, privi di scrupolo. Uno stato moderno deve combattere il male che va estirpato e sanzionato. La prostituzione non è, come alcuni sostengono, l’incontro tra due libertà: quella tra la donna schiavizzata e il suo cliente, perché l’unica libertà possibile è quella di fare il bene . Per concludere con lo spirito di colui che ci ha guidati, don Oreste Benzi, ripetiamo che le donne schiavizzate dalla prostituzione non vanno consolate, né mantenute, vanno liberate.