The Italian cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, met last week in the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria and approved a ten-point plan to speed up the fight against the Mafia. At the same time, the Italian manufacturers' association, Confindustria, announced that from here on any member who pays protection money to any of Italy's criminal associations will be asked to resign from the organization. The so called "pizzo" is estimated to affect at least 160,000 Italian companies and businesses.

The government's new plan calls for the establishment of a national Agency that would manage the wealth confiscated from captured and convicted criminals and which will be based in Reggio Calabria, the capital of the crime-riddled Calabria region. A codex of anti-Mafia legislation from as far back as 1965, together with a detailed map of the country's criminal organizations, will also be compiled to help police combat them, along with an interforce desk that will share information among Italy's diverse police forces. In addition, the country's anti-Mafia task forces will now be given authority over illegal waste management. Given the recent riots in nearby Rosarno, attempts to limit illegal immigration, thought to swell the ranks of criminals employed by the Mafia, will be stepped up as will a long-overdue crackdown in the area on enterprises that use illegal labor.

Over the last year or two, Italian police appear to have made significant strides against organized crime, capturing many of the "most wanted" leaders of Cosa Nostra (Sicily), the Camorra (Campania) and the N'dranghete (Calabria). But the hold of the Mafia (or, rather, Mafias) on the Italian economy remains enormous. According to a report, released last week, by Confesercenti, the Italian association of small businesses (primarily tourism, commerce and refreshments), the estimated financial turnover last year for Italian organized crime - a business the association's authors dub Mafia Inc - in Italy was 135 billion euros, equal to 7% of Italian GNP.

Furthermore, the present Italian government has made some decisions that appear likely to weaken progress against organized crime, namely that of sharply limiting police and magistrates in their use of telephone tapping, by attempting to shorten the length of trials, and by giving arrested criminals the possibility of choosing a form of trial - the so-called rito abbreviato -which allows mafiosi to end up with jail terms that experts say are too short, that is, not long enough to make working with for for organized crime a real risk.

The plan for a new Agency to deal with confiscated wealth - estimated at over five billion euros worth - could make a difference but not, critics say, if the instrument used is that of auctioning off homes, cars, factories, inventories and so on, as in a public auction is it not hard for a mafioso to use an intermediary to buy assets back.

According to the Confesercenti report, organized crime's major earnings come from narcotics, estimated at E 60 billion, the protection racket (E24) and waste disposal and related activities, accounting for some E16 billion. Subcontracts in building and revenue from "normal" investments make up the rest. The report also says that while Italian GNP as a whole dropped last year by 5%, organized crime increased its turnover by some 3.7% (how they are able to calculate this is beyond me, but this is what the report says, speaking of a sharp increase in usury because of reduced lending by banks.). It says that organized crime is much more flexible in its largely cash-based operations than legitimate businesses.

Guess who came to visit?

Sunday was a day of pomp and circumstance on Rome's Lungotevere river road with rabbis in toqued hats and white and black robes waiting outside Rome's imposing Tempio Maggiore and then, for the second time in modern history, smilingly accompanying inside, as their guest, a Roman Catholic Pope. At the closing part of a two-hour ceremony, where he shared a fruit-bedecked podium with Italian Jewish dignitaries, Pope Benedict XVI denounced the horrors of the Shoah, said the bonds linking Judaism and Christianity - he specifically mentioned the Ten Commandments - were indelible and urged that the festering sores of anti-Semitism be forever healed.

In a 15-minute speech, the last of the two-hour ceremony that was broadcast live by two major networks (I watched the entire thing and it was fascinating), Benedict said the Shoah could never be forgotten and made a it clear that he would continue the Holy See's dedication to improved relations with Judaism. He spoke of the landmark Second Vatican Council as "a clear landmark to which constant reference is made in our attitude and our relations with the Jewish people, marking a new and significant stage."

Vergogna!

Most of the workers lived in tents or makeshift cardboard "dwellings" inside or on the grounds of old, abandoned factories with no sanitary facilities and in one case only one working water faucet for over 600 people. A report that included an interview with a doctor from Doctors without Frontiers said the air was more or less unbreathable and most of the people living in that factory were suffering from respiratory or intestinal problems. Vergogna!

Mr. B. is all better.

An apparently good-as-new Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi returned to Rome today, some three weeks after being attacked after a rally by a Milanese man with a history of psychiatric disorders. I, too, am back in Rome after two weeks in New York and Washington where I did not allow the icy cold and wind to disrupt a highly enjoyable vacation in which I was able to see most of my best friends, bought myriad things you can't get here or which cost less in the US, and ate my way through various Asian cuisines and good old US standbys such as pancakes, corned beef hash, scrambled eggs and bacon, corn muffins, donuts and the great New York bacon cheeseburger, with French fries and/or onion rings. Slurp. (Yes, I came back to Italy several pounds heavier but having returned to my near daily gym routine, I expect to soon return to normal.)

Meanwhile, both Berlusconi and I were greeted with an outbreak of what may have been the worst race riots so far to have occurred in Italy and which have once again shed light on this country's failure, despite a lot of high fallutin' words, to make sure the country's immigrants are treated fairly and guaranteed humane living conditions.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was punched in the mouth today at the close of a political rally in Milan by a 42 year old man with a history of mental problems. The police said the man, who was immediately arrested, may have hit Berlusconi with some sort of metal object. Berlusconi, who was bleeding copiously, was taken to hospital to be kept under observation for 24 hours. Two of the premier's teeth were reportedly damaged and a bone in his nose was said to be fractured.

Rudy, Amanda, Raffaele

Many Italians were taken aback last week by the reports of outrage in some parts of the U.S. regarding the 26-year sentence imposed Friday, December 4th on 22-year old Amanda Knox after she (together with a former boyfriend) was convicted by a Perugia court of murdering Knox's British roommate, Meredith Kercher, two years earlier in what was said to have been a sex game gone wrong. A third person, Rudy Guede,born in the Ivory Coast but later adopted by an Italian family, had been convicted several weeks earlier for the same crime and sentenced to 30 years in jail.

And Italian newspapers have only made things worse by giving exaggerated play to some relatively mild comments over the weekend by American Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Although Ms. Clinton merely said after admitting she knew little about the case (and why should she, given that she has been spending most of her time on more urgent issues such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East?), but would be willing to listen to anyone who had serous doubts about the way the young American woman had been treated, even the usually serious Corriere della Sera ran a banner headline today saying "Amanda, Clinton to intervene", an obvious overstatement that led to talk about a diplomatic incident until Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini intervened to say there had been no U.Si complaints at all. And then Amanda, herself, interviewed from jail, said she had no complaints about the conduct of Italian justice but since she maintains her innocence was, of course, filing an appeal. And who knows what will happen then?

Anyone who reads this blog will have noticed that I have barely written about it, primarily because I have never been particularly interested in following it closely simply because one of the major defendant was an American. Murder is murder no matter who commits it. And if it is true that Italian crime scene police work often appears to be quite sloppy, and that the wheels of the Italian justice system mover very SLOWLY and definitely need to be oiled, I cannot not think of any reason why Amanda Knox should have been particularly victimized by Italian authorities. She got a lot of bad press after her arrest, in part because of the pictures released of her which made her seem kind of wild, silly and possibly over-sexed and even more so because she tried to blame the murder on an African "barista" who two weeks later was totally exonerated.

But if Amanda was convicted on evidence that was largely circumstantial, what else is new? O.J. got off although most of us think he shouldn't have. Others can be unjustly convicted. It's had to tell. Just the other day, an Italian prosecutor in Pavia in the Italian north said he would ask for 30 years of jail time for Alberto Stasi, a 26 year old student (now graduated form University) accused of murdering his fiancée Chiara Poggi in the latter's home town of Garlasco in the summer of 2007. There, too, the evidence is largely circumstantial and it is impossible to know have a real opinion as to his guilt or innocence.

Amanda

Recently speaking out in Amanda's favour, and his own, was Raffaele Sollecito, the former boyfriend who many people believe was besotted with the young American student, so much so that he let her drag him into a deadly situation. He says he had nothing to do with Meredith Kercher's death (he throat was cut) and was not in the house when it happened. But he also can't believe that Amanda was involved. "E' dolcissima". ("She's incredibly sweet"), he said.

Veronica

Veronica Berlusconi, the estranged wife of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is reportedly asking for €3.5 million a month, the equivalent of $5.3 million, as part of a divorce settlement. The Rome daily, il Corriere della Sera, reported last week that according to undisclosed sources, the counter offer of Mr. Berlusconi, Italy's richeswt man, was for €300,000 a month. The paper quoted sources close to the prime minister as having said that he had already given his soon to be ex-wife a lump sum of more than €60 million and had offered to let her keep Villa Belvedere, the mansion outside Milan she has been living in (without her husband) for the last several years .

On November 12, Mrs. Berlusconi's lawyers filed a legal separation request in a Milan court, apparently signalling that an amicable agreement was not in the offing. Veronica Berlusconi. A former actress who met Berlusconi 30 years ago and who married him in 1990 (by which time he had left his former wide and had three children with Veronica), made public her decision to arrive at a total break with her husband last spring, after it became known he had attended the birthday party of an 18 year old Neapolitan girl.

Personally, I do not believe that Berlusconi ever had sexual relations with the girl, the daughter of friends, and Mrs. Berlusconi said she was also angry because he repeatedly missed the birthdays of their children. But he had already been thought to have had affairs with several younger women (but not as young as that one) and subsequently it became known that among the women he invited to parties in his official residence were several prostitutes (although they appear to have been paid by a Bari businessman eager to ingratiate himself with the premier.

But this may turn out to be the least of Mr. B's problems. Rumors have been circulating that along with court cases regarding matters involving his vast media and real estate empire, some magistrates here are looking into his alleged relations with some elements in the mafia. It's hard to tell what is true and what isn't since there are several center-left newspapers here that have made it clear they hope to provoke his downfall, but let's just say this is not a good time for the feisty, filthy rich controversial leader.

 Romans have been fuming because of the massive traffic jams caused by the city's decision to create an enormous security red zone around the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) where 3646 delegates from 182 countries, including 60 heads of state and 191 government ministers, gathered in Rome for three days for a World Summit on Food Security. Pope Benedict XVI addressed the meeting on the first day, November 16, saying: "Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty," said His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. "Opulence and waste are no longer acceptable when the tragedy of hunger is assuming ever greater proportions."

The severe traffic congestion - the fruit of the security measures taken by Italian police --unfortunately appears to have distracted most people here, keeping them from looking at the real issues: more than a BILLION people going to bed hungry every night in a world which already produces enough food to feed everyone. But although some progress has been made (31 poor countries in four continents of the world have managed to significantly reduce the hunger problem), rising food prices, ongoing population growth, trade barriers and inefficient production methods in much of the developing world have led the hunger and malnutrition problem to worsen since the last two world conferences on food security in 2002 and June, 2008. "The time has come to let concrete actions follow words"said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf in his final speech

The most chilling statistic of all? That every six seconds - that's every SIX SECONDS - somewhere in the world a child dies from malnutrition. And yet, responding to a poll taken by one Italian news program on the question of whether or not hunger in the world should be a top priority for governments. more than one third of the respondents said "no"". This is most worrisome and I suggest everyone read the pithy editorial (see the following article) that my friend Mary Venturini wrote for her small Rome-based magazine "Wanted in Rome".

Open a daily paper or a magazine almost any day of the week and you will find news or a feature on melting ice caps, rising sea levels, retreating glaciers or the possible extinction of polar bears.  Open the same papers for a week and you probably won’t find anything on hunger, unless it is around the time of a world food summit. Hunger just doesn’t make news in the same way as climate change and global warming.

Why is it that the fate of the retreating ice cap appears more gripping than the plight of 1.02 billion people who end each day on an empty stomach? Is it because rising sea levels seem more catastrophic to the developed world? Is it because hunger (to be distinguished from famine) is just not dramatic enough?

Perhaps. But many of the present anxieties of developed countries – and the stories that do get media coverage – stem directly or indirectly from hunger. Lack of food starts off the spiral of malnutrition that leads to poverty, ill health, disease and epidemics, the population movements that lead to mass immigration, the insecurity that generates violence, regional conflict and war. Remove the cause and the consequences become less acute.

As the world’s leaders gather in Rome on 16-18 November for the third world summit on food security since Jacques Diouf became the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1994, many may consider that this is just another example of world summitry; that heads of state and government will examine the problem and then give promises that will never be kept. That is possible, but without this summit and Diouf’s previous efforts to focus attention on world hunger, the subject would be even further down the global agenda.

The scene that faces politicians as they gather for the 2009 world food summit is certainly dramatic. According to the latest FAO figures there are now 1.02 billion hungry people worldwide –100 million more than last year – mainly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The goal set at the first world food summit, called by Diouf in 1996, was to halve the number of hungry in the world to 420 million by 2015, in other words five years from now. What has happened to cause such a devastating failure?

The increase in the number of hungry in the first decade of the 21st century, following declines in the 1980s and early 1990s, can be attributed to the effects of economic instability; to the increase and speculation in the price of food commodities; to migration from rural areas to cities in search of work; to the decline in investment in agriculture but at the same time to increasing competition for land. And as food prices go up – paradoxically at the same time as farm profits go down – and jobs become scarcer, families cut back on education and healthcare to buy food. At best this has led to a decline in public health and to an increase in migration, not just from rural to urban areas but across international frontiers. At worst it has meant a rise in both domestic violence and political conflict. A preparatory FAO document for the summit points out that 2007-2008 saw food riots threatening political stability in 22 countries.

If it isn’t, then the scenario is bleak. If the numbers of hungry continue to increase by 40 million a year – as they have done on average for the last three years – in 2050 there will be over 2.5 billion hungry people in the world. If the increase continues at the rate of 100 million a year the numbers would swell to over 5 billion. If, as estimated, world population reaches 9.2 billion in the same year, then in the first scenario over a quarter of the planet would be hungry when 30-year-olds in the developed world reach their 70s; in the second it would be over half. Either way it is an alarming prospect, but what can be done to make it daily news and not just the stuff of world food summits?

Ways to eradicate world hunger

1. improve governance by getting rid of bureaucratic waste and corruption
2. ensure that developing countries have access to international markets by lowering trade barriers
3. ensure that farmers in both the developed and the developing world have an income comparable to those working in other sectors of the economy
4. invest more public and private money in agriculture and infrastructure
5. ensure early reaction to food crises 6. adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change 7. security of legal rights to land and water resources

Hunger statistics  From 1971 to 1997 the number of hungry people dropped from 878 million (or 23 per cent of the world’s population) to 825 million (14 per cent of the population), mainly thanks to the green revolution in agriculture. From 2000-2002 it rose to 853 million and then to 873 million in 2006. In the last three years it has reached 1.02 billion (15 per cent of the population), with over 100 million “new” hungry in the last year. They are mainly in Asia and the Pacific (642 million), sub Saharan Africa (265 million), Latin America and the Caribbean (53 million), the Near East and North Africa (42 million).

See www.foa.org/hunger/en for more data.