Mixing an Italian Martini

Start with a shot:

"Italy hails Cardinal Martini, who wanted church to change" Associated Press, September 04, 2012

ROME — From politicians to the pope, to rank-and-file Catholics and nonbelievers, Italy bid farewell Monday to Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a rare liberal voice among top churchmen who died last week after battling Parkinson’s disease....

Martini had encouraged discussing divisive church issues including homosexuality and priestly celibacy. In an interview published posthumously, Martini criticized the church as being “200 years behind the times” and urged radical change. Jews praised his efforts to improve Catholic-Jewish relations.

Already don't like the taste.

Martini, an intellectual and biblical scholar, had a warm and personable style and seemed to connect with laymen like few high-ranking prelates.

Many Italians got to know him through his frequent contributions to the country’s leading daily, Corriere della Sera, which for three years published a column in which Martini would respond directly to questions submitted by readers.

The topics covered subjects such as the clerical sex abuse scandal and whether it was morally acceptable for a Catholic to be cremated. (It is allowed, he wrote.) His responses, filled with Biblical citations and references to church teachings, were written as if he were chatting with his readers rather than preaching to them.

He returned to the topic of priestly celibacy earlier this year in his last book, ‘‘Believe and Know,’’ as well as other sensitive issues such as artificial procreation, embryo donation, and euthanasia.

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Then add some spice:

"Italian high court upholds convictions of Americans" by Colleen Barry and Frances D’Emilio  |  Associated Press, September 20, 2012

ROME — Italy’s highest criminal court upheld the convictions of 23 Americans Wednesday in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, paving the way to possible extradition requests by Italian authorities.

The ruling by the Court of Cassation ends the final appeal in the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA’s practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture is permitted.

The Italians are to be applauded for that. 

The Americans were convicted in absentia following a 3½-year trial and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe, and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition....

The U.S. never handed them over?

Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro, one of Italy’s top antiterrorism magistrates, who shaped the prosecution, hailed the top court’s decision, saying it was tantamount to a finding that extraordinary rendition ‘‘is incompatible with democracy.’’

That's why I don't think AmeriKa is a democracy anymore.

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The Americans and two Italians were convicted in November 2009 of involvement in the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003 — the first convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA’s practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted.

Only if we didn't want to do it ourselves.

The cleric was transferred to US military bases in Italy and Germany before being moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He has since been released.

Those convicted include the former Milan CIA station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, whose original seven-year sentence was raised to nine years on appeal. The other 22 Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, also saw their sentences stiffened on appeal, from five to seven years.

Previous Italian governments, both from the center-left and from the center-right, had declined to act on prosecutors’ requests during trial to extradite the American suspects, most of whom had court-appointed lawyers the defendants never met. While some of the defendants in the case were known figures attached to the US Embassy or Consulate in Milan, many of those named in the trial are believed to have been aliases, which would hinder extradition efforts.

Premier Mario Monti, an economist from outside of politics, is leading a government of technocrats concentrated on saving Italy from financial disaster. Since any extradition request can take months to run its course, and elections are due in spring, it could conceivably be a new government to have the final say on whether to press for extradition of the Americans....

The court also ordered new appeals trials for five Italian intelligence agents, including the former head of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari. They had been acquitted by lower courts because of state secrets. But the Cassation Court’s ruling indicates that the lower appellate court, which will hear their case again, needs to give more scrutiny to the state secrecy line of defense.

During the original trial, three other Americans were acquitted due to diplomatic immunity: the then-Rome CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other diplomats formerly assigned to the embassy. Prosecutors appealed the acquittal. The appeal is pending in Milan.

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"CIA abduction acquittals overturned" by COLLEEN BARRY  |  Associated Press, February 02, 2013

MILAN — A Milan appeals court on Friday vacated acquittals for a former CIA station chief and two other Americans, and instead convicted them in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect off a Milan street as part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

The decision means that all 26 Americans tried in absentia for the abduction now have been found guilty.

The ongoing trials, which have dragged on for years, brought the first convictions anywhere in the world against CIA agents involved in a practice alleged to have led to torture. The case has been the source of diplomatic tensions, although three successive Italian leaders, including the technical government of Premier Mario Monti, have invoked state secrets, which has had the impact of limiting evidence in the successive trials and led to the acquittals of five Italians, including two spy chiefs.

An appeals court sentenced former CIA Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli to seven years, and handed sentences of six years each to Americans Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando. 

Related: A Diplomatic CIA

Thus one must conclude that all AmeriKan embassies are CIA stations -- and likely have been for decades.

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NEXT DAY UPDATE: Italy’s ex-intelligence chief sentenced for role in abduction

Related: Italy Covers Up CIA Rendition

The CIA is Above the Law

Italy moved its spies out of Libya:

"Italy closes consulate in Benghazi after attack on consul" by Elisabetta Povoledo  |  New York Times, January 16, 2013

ROME — Italy closed its consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and withdrew its staff because of security concerns, following an attempted ambush of the Italian consul over the weekend.

Although the diplomat, Guido De Sanctis, escaped unharmed, the episode raised concerns about the tenuous security situation in Libya as the transitional government struggles to rebuild the country after the overthrow of Moammar Khadafy nearly two years ago.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said the attack was an attempt to disrupt the Libyan government’s efforts, ‘‘further proof of the international community’s need to intensify support for the Libyan people and institutions.’’

In the ambush, gunmen fired on De Sanctis as he drove through Benghazi, but none of the bullets penetrated his armored vehicle, which was issued to him after the Sept. 11 assault on the US mission in Benghazi.

Officials in Tripoli pledged to bring those responsible for Saturday’s attack to justice, the Italian government said. But the Libyan government has done little or nothing to pursue those who assaulted the US mission, and there have been attacks on the Red Cross and on a British envoy’s motorcade in Benghazi over the past year.

Italy, which ruled Libya as a colony until World War II, is the country’s closest European ally.

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Then you shake it:

"Scientists convicted in ’09 Italy quake; Prison ordered for 7 who did not warn residents" by Annalisa Camilli  |  Associated Press, October 23, 2012

L’AQUILA, Italy — Defying assertions that earthquakes cannot be predicted, an Italian court convicted seven scientists of manslaughter Monday for failing to adequately warn residents before a temblor struck central Italy in 2009 and killed more than 300 people.

See: Italy's Earthquake

Italy's Aftershocks

The verdict was one, too.

The court in L’Aquila also sentenced the defendants to six years each in prison. All are members of the national Great Risks Commission, and several are prominent scientists or experts on geological disasters.

Scientists had decried the trial as ridiculous, contending that science has no reliable way of predicting earthquakes. So news of the verdict shook the tightknit community of earthquake experts worldwide.

‘‘It’s a sad day for science,’’ said seismologist Susan Hough, of the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, Calif. ‘‘It’s unsettling.’’ That fellow seismic experts in Italy were singled out in the case ‘‘hits you in the gut,’’ Hough added....

Among those convicted Monday were some of Italy’s most well-known and internationally respected seismologists and geological experts, including Enzo Boschi, former head of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.

‘‘I am dejected, desperate,’’ Boschi said after the verdict. ‘‘I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don’t understand what I was convicted of.’’

The trial began in September 2011 in this Apennine town, whose devastated historic center is still largely deserted.

The defendants were accused in the indictment of giving ‘‘inexact, incomplete, and contradictory information’’ about whether small tremors felt by L’Aquila residents in the weeks and months before the April 6, 2009, quake should have constituted grounds for a quake warning.

Then let's HAUL ALL the CORPORATE and MOUTHPIECE MEDIA into an Italian court!

The 6.3-magnitude temblor killed 308 people in and around the medieval town and forced survivors to live in tent camps for months.

Many much smaller earth tremors had rattled the area in the months before the quake, causing frightened people to wonder if they should evacuate.

Kind of a warning.

Prosecutors had sought convictions and four-year sentences during the trial. They argued in court that the L’Aquila disaster was tantamount to ‘‘monumental negligence’’ and cited the devastation wrought in the southern United States in 2005 when levees failed to protect the city of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Relatives of some who perished in the 2009 quake said justice has been done....

Now on to the fart-misting scientists that hid the decline in world temperatures.

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Related: Italy disaster experts quit over quake trial

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Italy Ignored Earthquake Warnings

So when is the government going to be prosecuted. How do you say scapegoat in Italian?

Also see:

Italy's One-Two Punch

Another Italian Combination

This post is now ready to pour. Bottoms up!