Articles by: Judith Harris
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NAPLES – No visit to Naples is complete without a visit to Mount Vesuvius. In order to gaze into the crater of what is considered Europe’s most dangerous volcano, the visitor drives relatively high up the 4,200-foot volcano, to the point where there is a car park. The climb continues on foot along a slowly rising path, accessible after payment of a modestly priced ticket. From there stunning views of the caldera open up, with occasional ominous streams of smoke spewing up from within.Scary? Yes, and enough so that this week the mayors of 25 townships whose citizens are at serious risk from what is considered an inevitable future eruption are meeting to develop and refine the existing evacuation plan. An eruption is not if but when: speaking at a conference in Naples recently, the noted Japanese volcanologist Nakada Setsuya warned that, “Vesuvius will erupt – that is certain because it is an active volcano even if we cannot predict when.”In recent centuries eruptions have occurred at fairly regular intervals: six times in the 1700s, eight times in the 1900s, and again in 1906, 1929 and the last on March 8, 1944, in full wartime; because Allied planes returning to ships dumped leftover bombs into the crater, the Allies were initially blamed for causing the eruption. At one point, as pyroclastic material flows down the street of one of the three Vesuvian towns afflicted, citizens rushed away carrying mattresses, but also statues of protective saints. (A fascinating, extraordinarily dramatic film showing U.S. military footage of the 1944 eruption can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bsmv6PyKs0.)By one geologist’s account, the 2-square-mile sea of lava underlying Vesuvius has become shallower than in the past, reducing the pressure behind an eruption, and this just might explain the long gap since 1944. Nevertheless most experts here consider a new eruption overdue, and predict that it may also affect the Campi Flegrei north of Naples.Most famous for the eruption of 79 AD, which destroyed Pompeii and its neighboring ancient cities like Herculaneum, Vesuvius remains a ticking time bomb and indeed the world’s most dangerous volcano simply because a million or so people today live on or near the slopes.Why do so many people live where there is such danger? The answer is simple. Agriculture is fostered by the mineral-rich volcanic soil, producing wonderful grapes for wine, olive oil, and wheat crops; and the Bay of Naples, into which the volcano bulges, has one of Italy’s finest ports, these days crammed with acres of piled-up containers from, among other places, China. Not surprisingly, the U.S. has had a naval base there since the early postwar days. Agriculture, commerce, shipping: this has been the story of the Bay of Naples since at least the Bronze Age. Pompeii itself was a rich business city, a port at the point where a river bringing goods from the farms inland met the sea.Why today’s inhabitants ignore the risk with such fatalism is another question. As one man who lives at Ercolano complained during the RAI 1 radio broadcast Tuesday, “We know nothing about all this!” In fact, the present evacuation plan is much criticized; this week will bring its fifth revision. Although experts warn that volcanoes do not give much advance warning, the evacuation plan includes plans for those in the “zona rossa” (red zone) to receive hospitality in distant cities for up to several months. “We are twinning with other towns in Italy and have a plan for national solidarity,” said Italo Giulivo, geologist speaking for the regional Civil Protection Agency on Rai 1 Tuesday. “Our strategy in the pre-alarm phase is first to evacuate those in hospitals and in prisons.”Authorities acknowledge that there are two crucial problems, beginning with communication: how to give citizens instructions. Also, once the cell phones spread the news, panic is also inevitable, and how is the city to avoid a total traffic meltdown, as occurred in a trial evacuation a few years back? Another problem, says Giulivo, are false alarms. “The volcano gives alarms, but also false alarms, such as when we see an increase in seismic activity, or land movements.” Nothing happens, but there is widespread panic.The website www.livescience.com explains that Vesuvius is a “complex stratovolcano.” These are the most dangerous of all because their typically explosive eruptions involve ash and rocks, as well as lava flows. Civil protection authorities have divided the volcano into three areas, red being the most dangerous, and home to 670,000 people, according to Giuseppe De Natale, who is director of the National Observatory for Geophysics and Volcanology, the oldest volcano observatory in the world.Technically Vesuvius is called Somma-Vesuvius because the Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii was a mountain that grew up within the broader crater of a mountain called Somma (the word refers to a caldera in which a new cone has been formed—that is, a volcano within a volcano). A fresco painting in the National Archaeological Museum at Naples shows Vesuvius before the eruption of 79 AD as a single cone, generously covered with vineyards.The double-trouble volcano of Somma-Vesuvius falls within what is called the “Campanian volcanic arc,” sitting atop a tectonic boundary, where the deeply underground African plate is essentially sliding underneath the Eurasian plate. Because a tear in the African plate has developed, heat from the center of the earth escapes, melting rock and building up pressure. Not surprisingly, devastating earthquakes occur frequently; one took place near Naples in 1999.Meantime, keeping watch over the volcano is the Vesuvius Observatory, first created in 1841 under the Bourbon King Federico II. Today it monitors the volcano’s activity, but it is also a museum with a fascinating archive of volcanic history, the Historical Catalogue of Vesuvian Eruptions from 1631 to 1944. -
Op-Eds
ROME – Italy has no lack of social stresses. A hotly debated bill to recognize civil unions is slated for an August vote in Parliament. Migrants continue to flood onto Italian shores and into Italian cities, where apartment thefts are on the rise along with anti-immigrant sentiment. The recession that began in 2008, despite a few positive signals, continues. Add to these the problem of Greek indebtedness; and in the famous 322 billion ($352 billion) Euro Greek debt are some Euro 40 billion ($43.74 billion) owed to Italy.
The turmoil over a possible Grexit – that is, the Greek exit from the Euro – is far from over, but its spillover effects on other European countries, including creditor Italy, are already becoming visible. Opinions for and against the position of the five-months-old Greek government are divided, but there is nevertheless fallout. As Italian commentator Stefano Folli remarked Wednesday, “Irritation towards a German-dominated Europe is producing unpredictable baggage.” Some here complain that Italy should have played a larger role as negotiator. Others here, and vox pop, show anti-German resentment; one unhappy example is that “In imposing totalitarian and almost dictatorial policies, Germany has come into the open.”
No less importantly, the anti-Euro sentiment reflected in the long battle over the Greeks’ ability to continue within the framework of Europe and the Euro, when analyzed together with other tensions, is playing into the hands of populist politicians. Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) had slumped from its 25% it had claimed in the national general elections of 2013, but has now recovered. This week’s Istituto Piepoli poll results, reported by ANSA news agency, show that the M5S once again claims the allegiance of one out of four voters (25%).
Grillo loudly backed the anti-Euro sentiment represented by the Greek “No” referendum vote, which he himself sat out in Athens on July 5. “What a fantastic result for everybody,” Grillo exclaimed when a “No” victory was clear. “They’ve decided something that has nothing to do with finance or the economy – it’s geopolitics. This is democracy.” Grillo was not alone in championing the “No” vote. Others on the left who traveled to Athens to cheer on the anti-Euro voters were Nichi Vendola of the Sinistra Ecologia Liberta’ (Left-Ecology-Freedom, or SEL); Stefano Fassina, who had just quit the Partito Democratico (PD); Alfredo D’Attore, a moderate who is in the PD directorate, and Paolo Ferrero of Rifondazione Comunista.
Cheering from the sidelines in Italy for the same reason were several right-wingers. Renato Brunetta of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia exulted that,”In Greece democracy won, and now nothing will be the same as before in Europe.” For Matteo Salvini of the Lega, “If [Premier Matteo] Renzi doesn’t pay attention to this, he’s nuts,” said Salvini. “Europe simply must change its treaties and its coinage. The “No” victory is a slap in the face for the Euro creeps who are leading us into famine…. Yes to a new Europe founded on work and respect for people. And if Renzi doesn’t get it, get rid of him!” The result: Berlusconi’s party is split over the Greek question, and Salvini’s continues its upward ascent, at present claiming 15% (some polls say over 16%).
In Italian political terms, it does not matter that Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras ignored the referendum vote and capitulated, accepting the European financial czars’ Draconian conditions. All told, the anti-Euro, anti-German, anti-austerity sentiment has already helped to push the populist right in Italy to well over 40% of the electorate, even as Renzi’s PD continues to falter, losing one percent in just this past week, for a total drop of 3% in the past month, to 32.5% from its 40% of 2013.
Opinion on the actual question of what is to be done remains divided. This is spelled out by Roberto Napolitano, who is editor-in-chief of the financial daily Il Sole-24 Ore. Napolitano warns that to overturn the Euro would take us into “a sea of turbulence, ending with effects on our taxes and hence on the cost of [repayment] of our public debt. In that case Italy would pay the highest price. [But] Europe must recover its strategic vision so as to deal, as one, with the question of public European debt whose ceiling, set at 60% of GNP for all the countries, is anachronistic.” (My translation for the newspaper’s, see >>>) -
Art & Culture
ROME – “It is essential to protect the Italian characteristics and the quality of Italian foods, including within the European Union,” Luigi Pio Scordamaglia, who is president of Federalimentare, told Italian food producers meeting in Milan for the third edition of the Forum on Food and Made in Italy on June 30. “Otherwise the risks are huge,” he warned.
An example of the problems facing Italy food producers today: the EU Commission’s decision last month to allow cheese production utilizing dried (and tasteless) rather than fresh milk. Despite the fracas produced here by the decision, this is only the last step in a quarrel dating back years, and the sense is only that cheese production utilizing dried milk is being made legal; fortunately, the ruling does not regard those cheeses marked Denominazione di Origine Protetta (DOP, or guaranteed production).
Small wonder, however, that the Italians care. With earnings of over $38 billion, last year’s exports of Italian foods surged upward by 2.7% over 2013. There is still room for improvement, however. Although Italian food exports are greater than Spain’s, both Germany, with export earnings of $61 billion, and France, $47 billion, currently earn significantly more than does Italy. “Germany actually exports more orange juice than we do,” Scordamaglia complained.
These are among the topics currently under debate at Expo 2015 in Milan, whose theme, feeding the planet, is only one of the reminders of Italy’s great culinary heritage. In Rome itself a new exhibition called “Nutrire l’Impero, Storie di Alimentazione da Roma e Pompei” (Nourishing the Empire, Stories of Alimentation from Rome and Pompeii) shows the ancestral building blocks behind the high quality of Italian foodstuffs. The exhibition, open through November 15, opened July 2 at the Ara Pacis Museum, and is an homage to the Expo world’s fair underway in Milan.
At the height of empire, when Rome was home to one million people, about one out of five received subsidized bread. As the exhibition illustrates, this was early globalization. Although the mineral-rich lands surrounding Vesuvius produced their share, the bulk of the grain production feeding Rome came from Egypt and Tunisia.
From the ports at Alexandria and Carthage great sailing vessels brought two-thirds of the grain required, but because Rome had no secure port of its own, for centuries most of the goods were offloaded at Naples south of Rome or at Civitavecchia north of Rome.
From there they were placed onto smaller boats before being loaded for the third time onto
river barges small enough to ply the Tiber upriver port to the port at Testaccio, near the Roman Fora. This complex navigation system was simplified under the emperor Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, 10 BC to AD 54), who launched a decade of construction in 42 AD of an important artificial harbor near Ostia, where the large sailing vessels could finally dock.Archaeologists from Italy and the University of Southhampton working on excavations of that port have contributed important findings on public view for the first time. A digital reconstruction of that port near Ostia is on view, and the Mediterranean sea routes to reach there are illustrated in new maps prepared for the exhibition.
By the 3d century AD Roman citizens were being given other commodities besides bread, such as olive oil, wine and occasionally meat. The wealthier Romans enjoyed such delicacies as garum (the sauce made from seasoned, aged tiny fish). They also consumed imported wine from Cyprus, Crete and Gaul as well as the finer wines produced in the Vesuvian neighborhood plus olive oil from Andalusia, honey from Greece and other delicacies from Portugal to the West and as far away as the Eastern Mediterranean. Each commodity arriving was packed for shipping into a differently shaped amphora of baked clay, with the varieties exhibited.
From mass food distribution, the exhibition also illustrates the rich man’s banquet in a luxurious triclinium, or dining area with three benches for reclining. The finely frescoed walls of one of the dining rooms discovered in a luxury inn at Murecine, a river port near Pompeii, make a spectacular show. On view also are extraordinarily fine silverware from that same inn (only now returned after five years of exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York) along with the strongbox found in the home of one of the wealthiest inhabitants of Pompeii.
For most people, street food had to suffice, as is thoroughly documented at ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here there was almost always a display counter and a brick oven for heating food; at night these caupone, as they were called, were locked with a collapsing gate. In some of these small inns there was gambling in a back room, as is documented by fresco paintings.
Curators are Claudio Parisi Presicce and Orietta Rossini. A catalogue is published by L’Erma di Bretschneider. See: www.arapacis.it and twitter @museiincomune #nutrirelimpero.
In a related exhibition underway in the evocative halls of Trajan’s Forum in Rome, overlooking the Forum, fashions are on view – that is, how foods have been used in Italiab fashion over the decades, from shiny strawberry buttons to giant lemon prints on silk frocks.
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Op-Eds
ROME –As the daily outpouring of evidence of corruption shows, “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.” Perhaps, in the case of Italy, it’s the troubled economy: without the recession that began in 2008 and still lingers, much that is unacceptable might have remained swept under the carpet. If so, we can be grateful. But where does Italy go from here?On the A-list of scandals we have seen Expo in Milan, the cities of Rome and Naples, the Mose water barrier in Venice. But putting these aside there is also a B-list, which is now bringing evidence of corruption in sports, among other areas. In Catania, Antonino Pulvirenti, former president of the city’s soccer club, has admitted to prosecutors that he at least attempted fixes for five Serie B games, at an alleged cost of E100,000 ($115,000) for a win against Varese, Trapani, Latina, Ternana and Livorno. Although Pulvirenti says that the actual outcome of the games did not reflect his dodgy contacts with rival club officials, Catania in fact won four, losing only to Livorno.On the same day, June 30, came the news from Palermo that Dr. Matteo Tutino has admitted performing cosmetic plastic surgery on Rosario Crocetta, president of Sicily elected in 2012. His cosmetic surgery bill was fraudulently put onto the national health service on grounds that the surgery was for a medical “emergency.” Hidden microphones led to Tutino’s arrest by Carabinieri police, and he is now under house arrest as the investigation continues.On talk shows it is frequently stated that, all told, corruption costs the Italian economy around $70 billion a year, or 4% of the GNP. Though vouchsafed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (in Italy, OCSE), this figure is being challenged these days. The real costs of corruption to the country as a whole are unknown. What is being called an arbitrarily low figure gives some an excuse to ignore the problem, now estimated to cost Italy over $110 billion a year. Whatever the real amount, “Corruption is a hangman that chokes Italy at the throat and removes the oxygen for economic resources,” banker-manager Corrado Passera, Mario Monti’s Minister for Economic Development, said recently.The disaster is widespread. As well as in the South, scores of investigations are underway in Lazio and in Lombardy and other North Italian regions. It’s estimated that public works contracts are inflated by 40% or more over real costs. A year ago the tax police of the Guardia di Finanza brought charges of fraud against 1,173 individuals in the health services and pharmaceuticals. Within the state bureaucracy, in the year 2013 the accounting court (Corte dei Conti) brought charges against 742 public officials. Not least, corruption reportedly boosts food prices by almost 6%, punishing the poor.“When corruption, lawlessness, and crime are manifest, growth dries up. The loss of income and of wealth become a problem for those who respect the law, and also for the economy,” says Rainer Masera, writing in La Repubblica June 29. Banker-economist Masera, who was Minister for the Budget and Economic Planning under the government headed by Lamberto Dini, obtained his PhD at Oxford under Nobel Prize-winning economist John Hicks, and today heads the economics department at the European University of Rome. (see: http://www.repubblica.it/economia/affari-e-finanza/2015/06/29/news/il_peso_insopportabile_della_corruzione-117978427/His thesis is that organized crime has a financial counterpart within the system (as is borne out in the Mafia Capitale scandal of Rome). This linkage, says Masera, “explains the pressure to pollute financial systems by means of off-shore financial centers and sophisticated instruments like derivatives. In Italy the importance of the illegal phenomena that have characterized public investments is visible…in the broad gray area of society and politics.” As in developing countries, in Italy only half the financial resources devolved for public works actually are the remaining 50% is wasted on “inefficiency, bad and guilty administration within the selection, construction and management of the project, and to corruption and other illicit activities.”What is to be done? In Masera’s view, the positions taken by Pope Francis and by Italian President Sergio Mattarella lead the way, and should be followed by “rigorous application.” Here’s his recipe:-- Evaluate public works projects on the basis of genuine economic and social priorities, while beware of its capture by the politicians;-- Within a framework of regulations, condition the choice of project only after careful analysis of risks and of realistic timing for completion;-- Careful monitoring of the budget and of contracts, with certain dates for completion;-- Subsequent analytical review of the project with a view to possible civil and penal actions;-- Pay constant attention, without ambiguities, to ethical and moral values.If it is true that it’s the recession that has helped to bring all this into the open, it flies in the face of the U.S. experience. According to Cheatsheet.com, a U.S. on-line magazine, a survey in Spring 2015 by Notre Dame University’s business school, Mendoza College, and by Labaton Sucharow law firm, unethical behavior has actually increased on Wall Street since the financial crisis. (See >>> ). There the oral of the story seems to be the generalized attitude that illegal behavior is simply the cost of doing business; that young people entering business do not understand the need for ethical behavior; and that, where cheaters do not go to jail, the procedures continue. The result, the survey warns, is that the unethical behavior may lead to yet another financial crisis. -
Op-Eds
ROME – Just six months before the Extraordinary Jubilee called by Pope Francis to begin Dec. 8, the Eternal City is at sixes and sevens, plagued by accusations of infiltrations by organized crime. The scandal here is being called “Mafia Capitale,” a sorry play on words for “Roma Capitale” (Rome the Capital).
In the election of 2013 Mayor Ignazio Marino copped over two-thirds of the vote (64%), and today heads a city administration backed by the Partito Democratico (PD) and the Sinistra Ecologia Liberta’ party (SEL).
Most of the scandals predate his election, and this respected doctor-turned-politician is recognized as personally above reproach; within his first year in office Marino turned over to prosecutors what he was learning on the job about kickbacks and corrupt aides and city employees. Fairly or not, Mayor Marino is nevertheless taking the brunt as demands pour in for new elections or appointment of a commissioner to replace him. Even Premier Matteo Renzi, head of the PD, has made broad hints that Marino should resign. For the moment, Marino refuses.The avalanche of investigations involves at least 100 people and had already sent literally dozens of city officials, shady businessmen who underwrote buddies’ elections, and even gangland associates to jail. Top manager of the dirty tricks was a former neo-Fascist tough named Massimo Carminati, who allegedly provided the link between the upper level (the crooked politicians and bureaucrats within the city administration) and – according to prosecutors – organized crime, in particular the powerful ‘Ndrangheta, The reach of this organization, whose name seems to derive from andragathía, a Greek word whose meaning incorporates defiance, courage and valiance, extends from Calabria to the U.S., Mexico and Australia – and to Rome, where it allegedly funded some political election campaigns.
For at least 18 months police successfully spied upon the now imprisoned Carminati and his associates, managing to obtain an extraordinarily vast trove of wire taps. Leaked to the press, they make devastating reading. “Truth to tell, I’m rich,” Carminati was overheard telling the boss of the cooperative movement in Rome, Salvatore Buzzi, 59 (himself now under investigation as Carminati’s successor). “I’m a rich bandit but it’s hard to bring out my money because they [the police] might just take it.” Carminati elected to rent, rather than purchase, his home in the Roman suburb of Sacrofano, he said, because a large payment for a house risked attracting officials’ attention to the gap between his tax declarations and the amount needed to pay the sort of house he wanted. (See >>>)
Nadia Cerrito, Buzzi’s 49-year-old secretary, is reported as having been among the first to cooperate with magistrates, admitting that she kept the illicit books and that, “I made the payments, I prepared the kickbacks and put them into paper envelopes… At most, 15,000 Euros” ($17,000). “For years the clan of Massimo Carminati has been doing business with the ‘Ndrangheta clan of the Mancuso of Limbadi,” reads a judicial record. Together Buzzi and Carminati created the Santo Stefano coop which was assigned the cleanup contract for Rome’s biggest outdoor market, the Esquilino. Afterward rubbish collecting jobs were given to cronies, say magistrates. “The two [Carminati and Buzzi] also had weapons available to them.”
The ongoing investigation is headed by Rome prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone, who spent two hours on June 17 testifying before the parliamentary commission on immigration, whose brief includes administration of refugee aid. One of the saddest revelations has been the evidence of huge kickbacks stolen from the coops supposed to fund housing and food for destitute migrants. “Do you have an idea of how much you can earn from immigrants?” Carminati was overheard saying last December. “The drug traffic pays less.”
The politicians allegedly involved are from political parties across the board, including Renzi’s and Marino’s PD. Under investigation is former Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, a one-time neo-Fascist who moved into Alleanza Nazionale, the party now in coalition on the national level with Premier Matteo Renzi. The charges against Alemanno, which involve Carminati, are extremely serious, for they include Mafia association.
“The ‘Mafia Capitale’ organization made a huge advance in the administration between 2011 and 2012, at the time of the North African emergency,” Commission President Gennaro Migliore of the PD said at the end of the parliamentary session where Pignatone testified. “Around the word ‘emergency’ a rather wide-ranging mafia system was developed.”
Presumably as a result of the systematic corruption in Rome, administration of the city has degenerated, with road repair, rubbish collection and building maintenance neglected. Still, some here believe that the obvious decline in the city is not solely the fault of corrupt officialdom. For the distinguished commentator Corrado Augias, writing in the daily La Repubblica June 20, “The city’s poor administration is reflected in the lazy habits of most of its inhabitants… No other city in Europe has roads that are all and always full of potholes, with sidewalks borders broken or even overturned. Manholes are stopped up, weeds grow among the venerable ancient stones, bins regurgitate rubbish, no one waters newly planted trees so that they dry up and die, and monuments are left untended.”
The news is not all bad, however. On the ancient Appian Way restoration has begun on the nine supports and eight arches of the 120-arched Aqueduct of the Quintili, at a cost of around $500,000. The arches were at risk of collapse. The aqueduct brought water into the huge villa of the Quintili, now part of a regional park and open daily to the public from 9 to 5.
