Looking Past the Facade of Italian City After Riots

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By RACHEL DONADIO

ROSARNO, Italy — The official figures show there are 1,600 agricultural workers in this town, all but 36 of them Italians. The reality, exposed by the raw and violent riots here last week, was far different: Some 1,200 foreigners, most of them Africans, earned about $30 a day under the table picking oranges and clementines. Now that the town is largely cleared of foreign labor, the fruit remains on the trees.

In other places, $30 is not a living wage. But this is one of the poorest parts of Italy, and many local people do not earn much more, even if most will not pick fruit.

“Who is taking care of us?” asked Maria Amato, 39, a homemaker. “Until days ago, we didn’t exist.”

In a broad sense, the worst immigrant rioting ever seen in Italy — shocking here not only because of the anger of migrants, some of whom clashed with local residents, but also for the attacks on them by townspeople — cuts to the heart of the nation’s difficult evolution from a place of emigrants to one of immigrants.

But it is also a story fixed to this place. The economy is so weak here that locals and immigrants are competitors. In a town where people are reluctant to reveal their last names and often their first, a mysterious element complicates any full understanding of the riots: the ongoing strength of the Calabrian Mafia, or ’Ndrangheta, which has deep roots in agriculture. The son of a local organized crime boss was arrested and accused of wounding a policeman in the riots, suggesting that the mafia may have orchestrated the locals’ response to the immigrants’ violence.

“It’s a very, very complicated situation,” said Francesco Campolo, a police prefect who is one of three interim commissioners appointed by the region to govern Rosarno since the arrest last year of the mayor, who was charged with having organized crime ties.

This week, the absence of the immigrants, 1,200 of whom were whisked by bus and train to detention centers over the weekend, was clear. On Tuesday, firefighters demolished a former factory that served as seasonal housing for many migrants. It stood, just barely, a long roofless space of tin shacks, dirty mattresses, hand-me-down clothes, mud and garbage.

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Authorities are investigating these central questions: How did the protests become so violent? Who, if anyone, orchestrated the citizens’ retaliation? And who benefits from the immigrants’ temporary or perhaps permanent disappearance from the area?

Alberto Cisterna, who oversees Calabria at Italy’s National Anti-Mafia Commission in Rome, called Rosarno the Corleone of Calabria, where clans of the ’Ndrangheta exert “extraordinary control.”

Official estimates indicate that the ’Ndrangheta did 44 billion euros, or more than $60 billion, in 2008, in international drug and arms trafficking, public works fraud, usury and prostitution.

Many authorities say that in a town where the ’Ndrangheta is strong, the presence of the immigrant workers must have been welcome, or at least convenient.

They note that agriculture is not profitable if transportation and labor costs are high and producers pay about 75 cents for a carton of fruit.

In any case, most agricultural outfits may have Italians on the official rolls, but they pay migrant workers under the table to harvest the fruit — if it is harvested. For years state authorities have not cracked down on the arrangement.

Calabria, like other southern Italian regions rich in agriculture, has long benefited from hefty European Union agricultural subsidies. To prevent fraud in which small acreage yielded puzzlingly large harvests, in 2007 the European Union changed its rules to base subsidies on the number of hectares planted rather than the tons produced.

The result, some authorities hypothesize, is that it may be more lucrative for some Calabrian landowners to let their harvests rot on the tree and collect the subsidies than to pay pickers. In theory, the migrants may have become less useful and, possibly, less tolerated.

Still, over nearly two decades, their presence had become part of the fabric of Rosarno, whose 16,000 residents included an estimated 2,500 immigrants. This week some local shops were hurting for the migrants’ business.

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“Before Christmas I baked a whole batch of sandwich rolls just for them,” said Letizia Condulucci as she worked the counter at her family’s bakery.

Like many Rosarno residents, she vehemently defended what the townspeople had done over the years to help the migrant workers and was outraged that they had wounded residents. “Ninety-nine percent of us helped them,” she said. And in the riots, she said, “they destroyed the town.”

On Monday evening, Rosarno residents held a peaceful protest, marching through the city’s flat concrete grid with a sign that read: “Abandoned by the state, criminalized by the media. Twenty years of cohabitation isn’t racism.”

But conversations with residents revealed a more complex reality. Many used an oft-heard phrase in Italy: “We’re not racist, but ....” Ultimately, they tended to say that maybe things were better without the immigrants, since it was hard enough for the Italians to make a living.

The city commissioners say that the riots were fueled by wild rumors on both sides. The immigrants had heard that local residents killed an immigrant, while local residents had heard that immigrants had wounded a pregnant woman so badly that she lost her baby. Both rumors were false, the commissioners say.

Still, the violence was dramatic. After immigrants struck residents and shops with sticks and burned and smashed cars, residents began responding with violence. By late Saturday night, most immigrants feared for their safety and voluntarily boarded buses and trains that took them to immigrant detention centers elsewhere in southern Italy, Rosarno authorities said.

Those with residency permits, which Doctors Without Borders says could be as many as half, were free to leave. Alessandra Tramontano, the director of Doctors Without Borders’ seasonal workers program in Italy, said the group was “worried” about where the immigrants would go and “how they will manage the winter, which historically had been spent in Rosarno.”

Meanwhile, early Tuesday morning, a special team of Italian firefighters was using demolition equipment to take down the factory where many had been squatting in conditions widely denounced as inhumane.

Mr. Campolo, one of Rosarno’s commissioners, said that even before the riots, the city had received state money to remove the immigrant encampment, which sits next to a middle school, and build a playground and sports fields.

It also plans to build a meeting center, with some health care facilities and dormitories, for the migrant workers. Mr. Campolo said the city planned to go ahead with the project. “Of course,” he said, “for the immigrants, when they come back.”

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.

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BBC - Greek Church acts on crucifix ban

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By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Athens

The Greek Orthodox Church is urging Christians across Europe to unite in an appeal against a ban on crucifixes in classrooms in Italy.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled last week that the presence of crucifixes violated a child's right to freedom of religion.

Greece's Orthodox Church fears the Italian case will set a precedent.

It has called an emergency Holy Synod meeting for next week to devise an action plan.

Although the Greek Orthodox Church has been at odds with Roman Catholicism for 1,000 years, the judicial threat to Christian symbols has acted as a unifying force.

The European Court of Human Rights found that the compulsory display of crucifixes violated parents' rights to educate their children as they saw fit and restricted the right of children to believe or not to believe.

'Worthy symbols'

The head of the Greek Church, Archbishop Ieronymos, shares Catholic complaints that the court is ignoring the role of Christianity in forming Europe's identity.

It is not only minorities that have rights but majorities as well, said the archbishop.

One of his subordinates, Bishop Nicholas from central Greece, lamented that at this rate youngsters will not have any worthy symbols at all to inspire and protect them.

Football and pop idols are very poor substitutes, he said.

The Greek Church has ostensibly intervened in this case in response to an appeal by a Greek mother whose son is studying in Italy.

But without doubt it is concerned that its omnipotence in Greece is under threat.

A human rights group called Helsinki Monitor is seeking to use the Italian case as a precedent.

It has demanded that Greek courts remove icons of Jesus Christ from above the judge's bench and that the gospel no longer be used for swearing oaths in the witness box.

Helsinki Monitor is urging trade unions to challenge the presence of religious symbols in Greek schools.

The socialist government here is also considering imposing new taxes on the Church's vast fortune, but at the same time is urging it to do more to help immigrants and poor Greeks.

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions - NYTimes.com

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By RACHEL DONADIO

MILAN — In a landmark ruling on Wednesday, an Italian judge convicted a C.I.A. station chief and 22 other Americans accused of being C.I.A. agents of kidnapping in the 2003 abduction of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan.

An enormous symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, the case was the first ever to contest the United States practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, presumably one more open to coercive interrogation techniques. The case was widely seen as an implicit indictment of the measures the Bush administration relied on to fight terrorism.

Judge Oscar Magi handed an eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. station chief in Milan, and five-year sentences to 22 other Americans. Three of the other high-ranking Americans were given diplomatic immunity, including Jeffrey Castelli, a former C.I.A. station chief in Rome.

The judge did not convict three high-ranking Italians charged in the abduction, citing state secrecy, and a former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolò Pollari, also received diplomatic immunity. All the Americans were tried in absentia and are considered fugitives.

Through their court-appointed lawyers, they pleade not guilty.

Italian prosecutors had charged the Americans and seven members of the Italian military intelligence agency in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors said he was snatched in broad daylight, flown from an American air base in Italy to a base in Germany and then on to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.

That Italy would convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases.

But the convictions may have little practical effect. They do not seem to change the close relations between the United States and Italy. Nothing new was learned about whether the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had approved the kidnapping. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone, Italian or American, would spend any time in jail.

Armando Spataro, the counter-terrorism prosecutor who brought the case, said he was considering asking the Italian government for an international arrest warrant for the fugitive Americans.

Mr. Spataro said he was pleased with what he called a “very courageous” verdict. He said it was a victory that “we brought the trial to an end, and the facts were shown to be what they were.” In his closing remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Spataro denounced torture and said that the abduction undermined the work of Italian counterterrorism investigators. He also criticized American authorities for not cooperating with the Italian justice system.

Since it began in 2007, the trial has faced many complex legal hurdles. That it has reached this late stage is a testament to the persistence of Mr. Spataro, a veteran of counterterrorism and Mafia investigations, and the earlier rulings of Judge Oscar Magi.

In May, Mr. Magi ruled that there was enough evidence to proceed with the case even after Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled in March that all evidence of coordination between the Italian secret services and the C.I.A. violated state secrecy rules and was therefore inadmissible in the trial.

Judge Magi also asked for $1.45 million in damages for Mr. Nasr and $750,000 for his wife, Ghali Nabila. In separate lawsuits, Mr. Nasr, who is now living in Alexandria, Egypt, is seeking $14 million in damages from the defendants, and h is wife is seeking $7.4 million against the Italian authorities “for their refusal to cooperate” with justice. In August the couple also filed a suit with the European Court of Human Rights.

At the time of his abduction, Mr. Nasr was under surveillance by the Italian authorities, who suspected him of delivering sermons preaching violence from his Milan mosque and recruiting militants to send to Iraq in anticipation of the American invasion. He disappeared for a year after his abduction, finally resurfacing in Egypt, where he called his wife in Italy to say he had been tortured.

The phone call was enough to activate Italian prosecutors, who are required to investigate if there is the possibility a of a crime.

Prosecutors were able to reconstruct his disappearance using cellphone records traced to the American agents. The operatives used false names but left a significant paper trail of unencrypted cellphone records and credit card bills at luxury hotels in Milan, suggesting they believed they were operating with latitude.

Court-appointed lawyers for several of the American defendants claim that prosecutors never adequately established their clients’ identities.

“The CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar,” said Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A spokesman.

Italian government has denied involvement.

In June, Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by a brother of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and widely seen as close to the Italian government, published an interview that it said it had conducted via Skype with Mr. Lady, who has since retired and whose whereabouts are unknown. In the interview, he said of Abu Omar’s abduction, “Of course it was an illegal operation. But that’s our job. We’re at war against terrorism.”

Among the 22 Americans convicted was Sabrina De Sousa, who worked in the United States Embassy in Rome and was accused of having worked closely with Mr. Lady Ms. De Sousa, who denied the prosecutors’ assertion that she was a C.I.A. operative, sued the State Department for diplomatic immunity.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

Gelato U. - Time

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By Nina Burleigh / Bologna

Some students arrive in Bologna, Italy, with just a secret indulgence — without shop locations, business plans or $70,000 on hand for must-have machinery. They head to Carpigiani Gelato University to learn how to turn sacks of sugar and crates of oranges, kiwis, lemons and persimmons into spoonfuls of earthly bliss.

Gelato is the ultimate refinement of a Mediterranean flavored-ice tradition that supposedly dates back to the ancient Egyptians. In the past half-century, Italians have designed machines — engineered and produced in the same region as Ferraris and Lamborghinis — that can produce ever tinier crystals of ice, allowing for less water, less air and more taste. (See pictures of Gelato University.)

For three weeks every month, 20 to 30 students from the world over gather in Bologna inside a tiered lecture room in a Jetsons-style building erected in the early 1960s for the brothers Carpigiani, who perfected the first electric gelato machine. There, a gelato maestro shows them how to transform lowly buckets of cream or bags of fruit into cold, concentrated flavor that often has half the fat of American ice cream.

Besides the secret of perfect gelato, many students are attracted by the sweet dream of self-employment. Gelato is a major growth business worldwide, a cheap luxury defying the recession as people turn to smaller pleasures. And despite the $1,052 tuition for a weeklong session, so far this year enrollment at Gelato U is up 87% compared with the same period in 2008. Who's signing up? "Mostly 40-year-olds looking for a new life," says Patrick Hopkins, director of the six-year-old educational offshoot of the Carpigiani company, which produces a majority of the world's gelato machines. (See gelato recipes from a Gelato University maestro.)

"About eight years ago, I got the idea" to become a gelato artisan, says a 45-year-old student, a European executive who asked not to be identified by name or even home country for fear of tipping off employers to a possible midcareer switch. "I figure I have about 15 years of energy left. Do I want to spend it climbing the corporate ladder? Or do I finally do this?"

Maestro Gianpaolo Valli whips such students into shape. "You need to know what makes a strawberry!" he shouts. His lively lectures, delivered in deliriously Italian-cadenced, non sequitur — studded English, cover such topics as how to identify a fruit's sugar content and how to do the surprisingly complicated math of balancing sugar (an antifreeze) and fat (the opposite): "You increase the fat content, but it freezes. So you need to compensate with sugar. You say, 'Maestro, not possible!' Yes, it is possible! I show you!"

Students attending Gelato U aim to build their gelaterias in far corners of the globe. They know that real gelato is a delicate thing that cannot survive being taken out and put back into a freezer, that it is best consumed where it is made. That's what Melissa Green, 36, an HR manager in Tampico, Ill., learned in September during her first trip to Italy, when she consumed her first gelato. After a few bites of green apple, a light went on, illuminating her future: "I tasted this, and I was like, We have got to bring this back home."

See pictures of Italian coffee.

See the top 10 food trends of 2008.

Turkey and Russia Conclude Energy Deals

By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL — Russia and Turkey concluded energy agreements on Thursday that will support Turkey’s drive to become a regional hub for fuel transshipments while helping Moscow maintain its monopoly on natural gas shipments from Asia to Europe.

Turkey granted the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom use of its territorial waters in the Black Sea, under which the company wants to route its so-called South Stream pipeline to gas markets in Eastern and Southern Europe.

In return, a Russian oil pipeline operator agreed to join a consortium to build a pipeline across the Anatolian Peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and Gazprom affirmed a commitment to expand an existing Black Sea gas pipeline for possible transshipment across Turkey to Cyprus or Israel.

Energy companies in both countries agreed to a joint venture to build conventional electric power plants, and the Interfax news agency in Russia reported that Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin offered to reopen talks on Russian assistance to Turkey in building nuclear power reactors.

The agreements were signed in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in meetings between Mr. Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has joined Mr. Putin on several energy projects, attended the ceremony. The Italian company Eni broke ground on the trans-Anatolian oil pipeline this year.

While the offer of specific pipeline deals and nuclear cooperation represented a new tactic by Mr. Putin, the wider struggle for dominance of the Eurasian pipelines is a long-running chess match in which he has often excelled.

As he has in the past, Mr. Putin traveled to Turkey with his basket of tempting strategic and economic benefits immediately after a similar mission by his opponents. A month ago, European governments signed an agreement in Turkey to support the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, which would compete directly with the South Stream project.

By skirting Russian territory, the Nabucco pipeline would undercut Moscow’s monopoly on European natural gas shipments and the pricing power and political clout that come with it. That may explain why Nabucco, which cannot go forward without Turkey’s support, has encountered a variety of obstacles thrown up by the Russian government, including efforts to deny it vital gas supplies in the East and a customer base in the West.

Turkey and other countries in the path of Nabucco have been eager players in this geopolitical drama, entertaining offers from both sides. Turkish authorities have even tried, without much success, to leverage the pipeline negotiations to further Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, while keeping options with Russia open, too.

“These countries are more than happy to sign agreements with both parties,” Ana Jelenkovic, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said in a telephone interview from London. “There’s no political benefit to shutting out or ceasing energy relations with Russia.”

Under the deal Mr. Putin obtained Thursday, Gazprom will be allowed to proceed with seismic and environmental tests in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone, necessary preliminary steps for laying the South Stream pipe, Prime Minister Erdogan said at a news conference.

After the meeting, Mr. Putin said, “We agreed on every issue.”

The trans-Anatolian oil pipeline also marginally improves Russia’s position in the region. The pipeline is one of two so-called Bosporus bypass systems circumventing the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, which are operating at capacity in tanker traffic.

The preferred Western route is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which allows companies to ship Caspian Basin crude oil to the West without crossing Russian territory; the pipeline instead crosses the former Soviet republic of Georgia and avoids the crowded straits by cutting across Turkey to the Mediterranean.

Russia prefers northbound pipelines out of the Caspian region that terminate at tanker terminals on the Black Sea. The success of this plan depends, in turn, on creating additional capacity in the Bosporus bypass routes. Russia is backing two such pipelines.

Mr. Putin’s offer to move ahead with a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Turkey suggests a sweetening of the overall Russian offer on energy deals with Turkey, while both Western and Russian proposals are on the table.

The nuclear aspect of the deal drew protests. About a dozen Greenpeace protesters were surrounded by at least 200 armored police officers in central Ankara on Thursday.

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow.