Category: Italian context

Friday, December 30, 2011

NYC Turns To The Only Country In The World That Can Handle Two Ultra Complex Projects

Posted by Peter Quennell

New York City turns to (of course!) Italy for two large infrastructure projects.

One project is the laying of a 660 megawatt power cable diagonally across the Hudson from midtown Manhattan to Edgewater in New Jersey just below the George Washington Bridge.

The ultra high capacity cable was manufactured in Italy and is now being laid by a specialized Italian cable laying vessel, the Giulio Verne (home port Naples), which every night is lit up on the Hudson like a Christmas tree.

The ship digs and backfills a trench for the cable as it goes. The Italian crew is fired up with expresso coffees every hour on the hour as this New York Times article describes.

The other project is the excavation, now largely complete, of three tunnels through Manhattan’s hard granite using giant Italian-made tunnel boring machines which are half a mile long and cost $10 to $20 million for each one. They are assembled below ground and only ever used once.

The tunnels are the Second Avenue subway, the East Side Access to allow Long Island trains to arrive at a new station deep below Grand Central Station, and the extension of the 7 subway from Times Square to 34th Street on the west side and possibly also to New Jersey.

Italy excels at these large and complicated projects. Some of the autostradas which sweep through the mountains along tunnels and bridges are astonishing. Two very large Italian projects due to begin soon are the re-engineering of Venice to stop it sinking, and the suspension bridge (the world’s longest) between the Italian mainland and Sicily.

Perugia has its share of dazzling projects too. The minimetro already running and soon one of the world’s longest escalators which may result in Meredith’s house coming down to allow for parking expansion.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Mignini’s And Giuttari’s Florence Convictions Are Annulled: No Evidence, And No Jurisdiction

Posted by Peter Quennell

The ANSA news service is reporting that Giuliano Mignini’s and Michele Giuttari’s 2010 convictions have been annulled.

The Florence appeal court ruled scathingly that no evidence exists and also that the Florence trial court did not have jurisdiction. The case might be looked at again by the prosecutors in Turin or Genoa, which Mignini and Giuttari favor to get the spurious case against them more than just annulled. They’d like its root causes brought out. .

Mignini had caught the exact-same Florence prosecutor on tape, with a judge’s consent, bewailing the fact that the Monster of Florence cabal was tying his hands. That trial was simple a panicky attempt to get himself out from under which will hurt his career and the trail judge’s too.

It wasn’t Mignini who invented the Florence cabal (or satanic sect) notion, and he is suspicious of people (like Preston and Spezi) who work so hard to deny it.  Many of the Italian Monster of Florence books also argue 180 degrees away from Preston. Hmmm. What hold does the Monster of Florence sect have over Preston? Is he a secret satanist?! The world really wants to know…

Mignin’s quoted remarks outside the appeal court make it sound like he would like to resume the investigation of why Dr Narducci died suspiciously in Lake Trasimeno. That had to be halted because the Florence prosecutor seized all the papers on the case.

We have posted several times as much on Mignini as most of the UK and US media combined, and we translated a long email from him, and two long and very revealing interviews.

Kermit’s contrast of Preston’s satanic obsessions with Mignini’s really very mundane interests are an absolute must-view.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Italian Lawyers Strategically Timed Strike This Week Causes Postponement Of Knox Calunnia Case

Posted by Peter Quennell

The legal action for criminal slander against Amanda Knox brought by those she claimed maltreated her at an interrogation (not by Mignini) is postponed to mid-May 2012.

This has the effect of putting the court dates past the release of the Hellman sentencing report due latest at year’s end and the filing of the grounds for appeal before the Supreme Court of Cassation due six weeks later.

The main lawyers union in Italy has chosen this week for their industrial action to protest the recent history of extreme political pressure by ex-PM Berlusconi’s party on the justice system, resulting in among other things the underfunding of the police’s forensic operations.

The lawyers’ union also has a long list of requested legal reforms which has long been stalled in the parliament. Lawyers are not expected to be alone in making their bids forcefully in this period as the Italian public sector budgets shrink.

Amanda Knox’s position on the calunnia charge seems weak as she herself at other times said she was treated well, she cannot identify who she claims hit her, and she has no witnesses corroborating her story and up to a dozen denying it.

Her own lawyers filed no mistreatment complaint and very publicly in a media crowd said no hitting ever happened. Knox has already served a three year sentence for criminal slander against Patrick Lumumba.

Most trials for calunnia, a serious charge due to the personal damage inflicted, result in conviction.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Italy Really Lucks Out With An Exceptional President And Now An Exceptional New Prime Minister

Posted by Peter Quennell

Italy already possesses in President Napolitano one of the more popular and effective presidents in the world

Now President Napolitano has handpicked Dr Mario Monti to succeed PM Silvio Berlusconi, starting out perhaps as soon as tomorrow. Dr Monti is the president of one of Italy’s premier business schools in Milan, and he has twice been elected a European commissioner.

Other heads of government and stock and bond markets around the world seem increasingly optimistic that Italy can now manage to pull out of its nosedive. Italy’s austerity package as mandated by the EC has already been passed by the upper house in the Rome parliament.

Below is the only video (a few months old) we can spot in which Mario Monti speaks in English at length. And here in Business Insider is a short balanced assessment of Italy’s new prospects.

So. Fingers crossed but the trend looks promising. Enjoy your very overdue retirement, Mr Berlusconi. Keep out of prison…

 

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

With Less Than 1/4 Of Italians Polled Supporting Him PM Berlusconi May Be Toast Later Today

Posted by Peter Quennell

Breaking news. Stocks jump in Europe and the US on the news that PM Berlusconi has told the President of the Italian republic he will soon resign.

PM Berlusconi let it be known several weeks ago that he had agreed with his coalition partners to be gone by this Christmas.

Global stockmarkets liked that as there has for a while existed a premium built in to his going. But several days ago he was reported as having done a U-turn, and was now intent on hanging on.

Not least so he can keep one step ahead of Milan prosecutors who have lined up three cases against him. And Perugia (yes Perugia) prosecutors investigating his close buddies for milking contracts for the 2006 winter Olympics and 2010 earthquake rebuild. 

Today there will be a routine budget vote in the Italian parliament - but Mr Berlusconi has attached to it a vote of confidence in himself. This is from the investors’ website The Street.

Italian politics remains in the spotlight. The Italian bond market’s off-the-run 10-year yields are currently at 6.591%. The Italian government will submit a routine budget for Parliament to vote today, with Berlusconi attaching a confidence vote to a failed budgetary outcome. From there, if the government fails to reach a majority of 316 votes for a confidence vote, Berlusconi will be forced to resign his post.

Ahead of the vote, speculation about the prime minister’s imminent departure is rife and markets have welcomed the prospect. In Italy’s fragmented political landscape, his departure would not necessarily mean that austerity measures will pass quicker.

If the Berlusconi government falls, the first choice would likely be to see if a new coalition government can be formed with the existing parliament. This is likely to be supportive of risk appetite in the short term, but it would end quickly if a coalition could not be formed and the fall in the government were to lead to elections. This would ultimately delay the passage of the austerity measures and sap business and investor confidence even further.

Nevertheless, from here the best outcome for market sentiment in is likely to be a resignation of Berlusconi followed by the formation of a new government from the existing parliament.

And this “et tu Brute” report was just posted online by the National Post.

Silvio Berlusconi’s closest coalition ally Umberto Bossi told him to resign on Tuesday in what could be a mortal blow to the Italian prime minister.

Bossi, head of the devolutionist Northern League, said the 75-year-old media magnate should be replaced by Angelino Alfano [image below] secretary of the premier’s PDL party.

“We asked the prime minister to stand down,” Bossi told reporters outside parliament.

Odds are Mr Berlusconi will be gone today later today or very soon and there will be national elections within six months. Hopefully the incessant political meddling with the Italian justice system, which we suspect affected the Perugia appeal verdict, will then cease.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is said to have favored Berlusconi’s short-term survival, but these days irritated markets speak louder than politicians’ words.

[Below right: Mr Angelino Alfano, Mr Berlusconi’s most likely immediate successor]

Monday, October 17, 2011

PM Berlusconi Survives Italian Vote Of No Confidence: Did The Perugia Appeal Outcome Help?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Even some opposition MPS’s voted for Mr Berlusconi last Friday.

They consider him the only leader right now that might pull Italy out of the economic soup.  His popularity polling was already down below 30% and his party’s position in the parliament very weak.

Italy and the other so-called PIIGS countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) have all amassed public debt that exceeds what those economies now produce in one year. (So has the United States. Right now, its national debt is around $15 trillion and its annual GDP about 10% below that.)

Most of that Italian debt was racked up under Mr Berlusconi in the past 10 years when his pro-big-biz policies failed to make the economy grow. (In general big biz adds little value and few jobs. Why Europe and the US and Japan are in the messes they are in.)

Below, you can see the current Rome street reaction which is in effect blaming him for running the economy into the ground and for now make everyone pay. They have a point.

What connection might Mr Berlusconi’s predicament have to the outcome in Perugia? Well, for one thing, it was a small but vital victory for him against the Italian judiciary, with whom he is in the midst of a white hot war. It may well have helped him to survive that vote.

From a very good report by Alessandro Speciale.

Recently, the prime minister’s assault on the courts has taken on renewed urgency. A string of scandals allegedly involving Berlusconi began emerging in the spring of 2009, culminating with the case of Moroccan belly-dancer “˜Ruby the Heart-Stealer’ who has taken part in so-called “˜bunga bunga’ parties at Berlusconi’s villa when she was still underage…

In one wiretapped conversation, he was heard asking Valter Lavitola “” a journalist and fixer who took refuge in Bulgaria after Italian police issued an arrest warrant for him “” for a “˜suggestion’ on the appointment of the deputy head of the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial police….

“The country is in a critical condition,” warned Emma Marcegaglia, president of Confindustria, the country’s main business association. She urged the government to act “very quickly” or for it to resign….

Despite the urgent nature of the fiscal crisis, Berlusconi has failed to secure a new central bank governor. The outgoing chief of Banca d’Italia, Mario Draghi, will take over the European Central Bank at the end of October. The natural successor for the job, Draghi’s deputy, Fabrizio Saccomanni, has been vetoed by the government’s coalition partners. A weakened Berlusconi stands impotent to overcome the vetoes.

So his remaining allies in the parliament usefully leap in.

Instead of focusing on the fiscal crisis, his allies in Parliament are fighting on behalf of their leader. They’ve been working to curb wiretapping “” to thwart the embarrassing leaks to the press ““ and to make the statute of limitations even shorter. But his majority is now so fractured that even these projects have not progressed. Instead, the prime minister’s troubles have triggered infighting in his government. Lieutenants and would-be-successors are jostling for the spotlight in the event of his downfall.

In a move described by critics as a desperate attempt to protect his boss, Minister of Justice Francesco Nitto Palma has launched an inquiry on the magistrates investigating Berlusconi in Naples and Bari, to make sure they themselves hadn’t breached the law.

MP Rocco Girlanda petitioned the President for an investigation into the Perugia prosecutors, but he did not even get a reply. (The President is no friend of the PM.) Perugia prosecutors are running this national investigation into bribes that Berlusconi’s allies might have taken, and Perugia prosecutors represent perhaps his biggest threat.

Are we suggesting there was a US-Italian conspiracy to spring Sollecito and Knox at the end of the appeal and conveniently make the Perugia prosecutors look fools?

Nah, we really don’t believe in elaborate conspiracies here. But it is amazing what happens at higher levels with just a few winks and nods.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Knox And Sollecito Declared Not Guilty But With Angry Booing Outside The Courtroom

Posted by Peter Quennell

Monday, May 02, 2011

Could One Good Outcome Of This Sad Case Be That Italy Sees Less Foreign Student Druggies?

Posted by Our Main Posters

[Above: the city of Florence north of Perugia where there have been several drug-driven murders]

Chicago’s Loyola University has just done a survey of American students to see if Amanda Knox’s experience in Italy could be offputting.

Quite a few respondents said that it could. Anti-Italianism does have some traction. 

But if you look closely at the poll, it didn’t ask all of the right questions. The availability and effect of drugs was not included as a factor that might attract students to Italy.

American student buzz had long been that if you want to seriously party in your study year in Europe, Italy was an easy and safe place for drugs, and Perugia especially so.

But then Amanda Knox was widely reported as admitting to drugs on the night that Meredith died. And there have been other recent high-profile murders in Italy, also involving Americans on drugs.

Take a look at this and this.

One direct result is that there has been some high-profile tightening up on drugs lately in Italian universities.

The message has been beamed at American students that you can now get into serious trouble if you mess with drugs - and you may get no sympathy at the American Embassy.

Precisely as the Italians intended, this could be turning a proportion of prospective students off.

Monday, March 28, 2011

The Sollecito Family Criminal Trial And Civil Trial For Leaking Evidence Will Both Start On 29 April

Posted by Peter Quennell

The Sollecito family face charges for releasing an evidence video to the Bari TV station Telenorba showing Meredith’s body unclothed.

Also for attempting to influence some politicians to get some cops investigating the case moved on. Several Telenorba TV Bari staff-members will also also face charges. The trial was postponed five weeks ago as the judge was still on another case.

It is now reported in Italy by the news service Adnkronos that at today’s brief hearing a Kercher family civil suit against the Sollecitos for this disrespecting of Meredith will run in parallel.

The Sollecito defense team want to dispute the Perugia court’s jursidiction as the alleged crimes took place in Bari and Rome. That seems unlikely to fly as the evidence leaked was taken from Perugia.

The next court date for the Sollecito family will be Friday 29 April.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Today’s Celebration In Italy Of Its Unification Into One Nation 150 Years Ago

Posted by Peter Quennell