Bunga"s Back - Berlusconi"s Case Goes To European Court Of Human Rights

In the Sicilian elections earlier this month, Silvio Berlusconi’s return to a central role in Italy’s political circus took a major step forward with the victory of Nello Musumeci, the candidate backed by the center-right parties, including Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (see “Berlusconi: The Greatest Comeback Since Lazarus?”). As we said at the time.

Besides cementing the alliance between his Forza Italia, Brothers of Italy and the Northern League, we will be watching as Berlusconi seeks to overturn the ban on his running for public office. Berlusconi, of course, denies any wrongdoing.

While Berlusconi was banned in 2013 following conviction for tax fraud, the moment of truth is approaching, as Bloomberg reports.

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi took his comeback bid to the European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday as his lawyers fought to make him eligible for next year’s Italian election. Judges at the court in Strasbourg, France, held a hearing on the 81-year-old Berlusconi’s appeal against a ban on running for public office that resulted from a 2013 tax-fraud conviction. The multi-billionaire has denied all wrongdoing.

 

Berlusconi wants the ban overturned in time for a general election due by late May. He is seeking to forge a center-right coalition after the vote and his hopes were boosted by victory in a regional ballot in Sicily this month.

Because it’s always good copy, the Bloomberg piece references Berlusconi’s long running legal battles which have not only included corruption charges but “allegedly sexual ‘bunga-bunga” parties, or “elegant dinners” according to the man himself. On more serious note, it goes on to outline Berlusconi’s grievance and the push back from the Italian state.

Berlusconi was stripped of his parliamentary seat with a vote in a Senate where his opponents were a majority, Edward Fitzgerald, one of Berlusconi’s lawyers, said in court, according to Italian newswire Ansa. It wasn’t justice but a “Roman amphitheater” in which a majority of thumbs down or thumbs up decided the person’s fate, Fitzgerald added. The law instituting the ban had been used retroactively, applied to alleged offenses years before the law was passed, added Fitzgerald, of Doughty Street Chambers in London.

 

Maria Giuliana Civinini, a lawyer for the Italian government, said that it had respected the European Convention on Human Rights, according to Ansa. “No violation can be attributed” to the government, she said. Berlusconi, who first made his appeal to the court in 2013, argues that the ban violates his rights under the Convention, Andrea Saccucci, another one of his lawyers, said in a phone interview before the hearing. The morning hearing is expected to end at about 12 p.m. Berlusconi did not attend.

Even if he’s successful, there’s a potentially large problem for Berlusconi. His case might take too long to make him eligible for the May elections.

“The court is unlikely to reach a verdict in time for the election,” said Andrea Montanino, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “But for Berlusconi this is also about creating a mood, to portray himself as a victim of the Italian judicial system he has always fought against.”

 

Saccucci said he couldn’t predict whether the court would reach a verdict in time for the election. “The court usually takes quite some time, at least eight to ten months, but we hope it will decide as soon as possible,” said Saccucci, a Rome-based lawyer who is an associate of Doughty Street Chambers.

 

Asked whether a verdict was likely by May 2018, the court’s press office said in an email: “It is impossible to speculate about the time frame within which the Grand Chamber will deliver its ruling on the case.”

The “Grand Chamber” cannot be rushed over such a serious matter. If the decision comes too late, Berlusconi’s bid for a fifth term as prime minister will be derailed. However, that might not prevent from playing a central role in the next Italian government…as “coach” not “striker”. Bloomberg explains.

Berlusconi has made his political ambitions clear, whatever and whenever the judges decide.

 

“I’ll be in the field!” Berlusconi tweeted on Nov. 16. “I’ll be the striker if I am eligible, otherwise I’ll be the coach.” Even if Berlusconi cannot run for office, he may end up calling the shots on forming a government.

 

“If no party wins a parliamentary majority as expected, the most likely coalition will be centered on Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the Democratic Party even though they are now rivals,” said Montanino, a former executive director for Italy at the International Monetary Fund. “Berlusconi may not be premier, but he could be king maker.”

Berlusconi has promised tax cuts, with a new flat tax “as low as possible”, a halt on illegal immigration and a fight against EU bureaucrats. The most recent opinion polls put a center-right coalition ahead of the anti-establishment Five Star and the center-left Democrats. However, none of the three would have a parliamentary majority. As CNBC reports, Berlusconi’s comeback is seen as a stabilizing force in financial markets.

Valentijn van Nieuwenhuijzen, head of multi-asset strategy at NN Investment Partners, told CNBC Wednesday.

 

"Anything that does not lead directly to Italy voting to move out of the euro zone will probably be seen by markets as not disruptive enough to worry about," he said.

You"ve got to love Italy.

Britain To Criminalize Reading Online Extremist Content

Authored by Stephen Lendman,

Like America, Britain is unfit and unsafe to live in – both countries police states, serving privileged interests exclusively, allied in waging wars OF terror in multiple theaters, along with abolishing fundamental homeland freedoms.

The latest civil rights abuse came from hardline home secretary Amber Rudd.

She’s spearheading a Tory effort to criminalize readership of so-called extremist content online – punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The same holds for anyone publishing content Tories call extremist, especially about Britain’s military, intelligence services and police that could be considered related to preparing terrorist acts.

“I want to make sure those who view despicable terrorist content online, including jihadi websites, far-right propaganda and bomb-making instructions, face the full force of the law,” Rudd blustered, adding:

“There is currently a gap in the law around material (that) is viewed or streamed from the Internet without being permanently downloaded.”

“This is an increasingly common means by which material is accessed online for criminal purposes and is a particularly prevalent means of viewing extremist material such as videos and web pages.”

A Home Office analysis showed thousands of online ISIS tweets and other material over the past year.

Unmentioned was US and UK support for the terrorist group, recruiting, arming, funding, training and directing its fighters, using them as imperial foot soldiers in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

The way to end extremist online content from ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups is by no longer supporting them, combating their fighters instead of using them.

Most important is ending US-led imperial wars in multiple theaters. ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups were created to serve as imperial ground forces, aided by Pentagon-led terror-bombing.

Changes Rudd proposed aim to strengthen Britain’s 2000 Terrorism Act. It authorizes civil liberties-destroying police powers, including repressive stop-and-searches ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.

It criminalizes being a member of, supporting, or wearing clothing arousing suspicion of involvement with a proscribed group. Dozens named are nearly all Muslim ones.

Current UK law applies only to downloaded and saved extremist material. Proposed changes criminalize reading it online.

Commenting on the proposed measure, Law Professor Jonathan Turley noted that “civil libertarians have warned that Great Britain has been in a free fall from the criminalization of speech to the expansion of the surveillance state.”

Tories aren’t “satiated by their ever-expanding criminalization of speech. They now want to criminalize even viewing sites on the Internet.”

“As always, officials are basically telling the public to ‘trust us, we’re the government.’ “ Criminalizing readership of online content amounts to “an anti-civil liberties campaign.”

A previous article discussed Prime Minister Theresa May wanting greater government control of the Internet.

If readership of material Tories call unacceptable is criminalized, what’s next?

Thought control? Criminalizing legitimate criticism of government policies? Public protests against government policies? Banning free expression on any topics online or in public spaces altogether?

Turley quoted from Orwell’s 1984 as follows:

“We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.”

“The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.”

“They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.”

“We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

America, Britain and other Western nations are heading toward instituting full-blown tyranny.

Perhaps another state-sponsored 9/11-type incident will assure it.

The Worst Ideological Enemy Of The US Is Now Europe

Authored by Drieu Godefridi via The Gatestone Institute,

• The vast majority of these European courts -- whether the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) or the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) -- in their attempt to be moral and just, have dismissed the sovereign laws of Italy as irrelevant, and trampled the rights of the Italian state and ordinary Italians to approve who enters their country.


• In Europe, Amnesty International and the like are, it seems, a new source of law.


• Those who gave the Statue of Liberty to America in 1886 "to commemorate the perseverance of freedom and democracy in the United States" are willingly trampling their own people"s liberties today through courts of appointed, unelected, unaccountable ideologues. The danger is that, with the help of many doubtless well-intentioned, international NGOs, the EU will not stop at its shores.

Europe is the worst enemy of the US? You cannot be serious. Islamism, Russia, illegal immigrants... whatever, but surely not Europe! Are we not still together in NATO? Do we not conduct huge amounts of trade every day? Do we not share the same cultural roots, the same civilization, the same vision of the future? Did France not give the US her famous Statue of Liberty – "Liberty Enlightening the World?"

Not anymore. In a sense, Europe looks like a continent where American Democrats have been in power for 30 years, not only in the European states, but also at the level of the European Union.

In the US, the political spectrum still spans a vast range of views between Democrats and Republicans, globalists and nationalists, pro-lifers and pro-choicers, pro-government control and pro-individuals" control, and pro-whatever. Even today with a president and a Supreme Court clearly on the political "Right" these divisions, and the all-important separation of powers, allow for and encourage vigorous debate. By contrast, in Europe, at the "official" level, such a spectrum of views no longer exists.

In Western Europe, politically speaking, in the press and in universities, either you are on the "Left," or you are a pariah. If you are a pariah, you are most likely to be prosecuted for "Islamophobia", "racism", discrimination or some other "trumped up" charge.

There are several reasons for this imbalance. One is the difference in political maturity between Europeans and Americans. Whereas "ordinary" American voters (not just the "elites") understand that their Supreme Court is key to ensuring that fundamental constitutional freedoms are maintained for all, the Europeans have done the opposite. In the US, the constitutional right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is derived from the people -- "from the consent of the governed."

Consequently, when Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court died, the US press wrote about him for weeks. "Ordinary citizens" in the US are deeply aware of judicial roles and their effect on judgements and legal precedents.

By contrast, in Europe, we now have two Supreme Courts: the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg, in addition to national courts. There is, however, not one citizen in a million who can name a single judge of either the ECHR or the CJEU. The reason is that the nomination of those judges is mostly opaque, purely governmental and, in the instance of the ECHR, with no public debate. With the CJEU, appointments are also essentially governmental, with the sanction of the European Parliament, which is ideologically dominated by the Left.

In Europe, there are now two Supreme Courts: the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg (pictured above), in addition to national courts. (Image source: Transparency International/Flickr)

The US has always welcomed immigrants, most of whom came to her shores via Ellis Island and went through a legal process for entry, led by the light of the torch of Lady Liberty. In recent years, especially since the advent of increased terrorism, the subject of illegal immigrants, migrant workers and the vetting of immigrants has become hotly debated.

By contrast, in Europe, the topic of "illegal" migrants is effectively forbidden. The continent has recently been invaded by millions of migrants -- many apparently arriving under the false pretense of being refugees, even according to the United Nations.

One of the reasons is the open-door policy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who allowed over a million mostly Muslim migrants to enter Germany, not only without extreme vetting, but with no vetting at all.

There is, however, another, more structural cause for the current situation. In 2012, the ECHR enacted the so-called "HIRSI" ruling, named after the court case of Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy, which states that the European states have the legal obligation to rescue migrants wherever they find them in the Mediterranean Sea -- even just 200 meters away from the Libyan coast -- and ferry them to the European shores, so that these people can claim the status of refugee.

When the Italian Navy intercepted illegal migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and sent them back to their point of origin, Libya, not only did the ECHR condemn Italy for this "obvious" breach of human rights; the Italians had to pay 15,000 euros ($17,000 USD) to each of these illegal migrants in the name of "moral damage". This kind of money is equivalent to more than 10 years of income in Somalia and Eritrea (the countries of origin of Mr. Hirsi Jamaa and his companions). In 2016, Somalia"s GDP per capita was an estimated $400 USD; Eritrea"s $1,300.

Everyone, of course, heard about the HIRSI ruling. In Africa, especially, many understood that if they could reach the Mediterranean, Europe"s navies would now be obliged to ferry them directly to Europe. Before the HIRSI ruling, when people tried to reach the shores of Europe, hundreds every year tragically died at sea. After HIRSI, the objective is now simply to be intercepted. Consequently, hundreds of thousands attempt this journey -- often with the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Médecins Sans Frontières, whose activists wait for boats to appear at sea, just off the Libyan coast. We therefore presently have 5,000 unintercepted people dying at sea every year.

While Italy is "drowning" in refugees, Austria has deployed armored vehicles close to its border with Italy, to stop more migrants from coming north.

The vast majority of these European courts -- whether the ECHR or the CJEU -- in their attempt to be moral and just, have dismissed the sovereign laws of Italy as irrelevant, and trampled the rights of the Italian state and ordinary Italians to approve who enters their country.

Americans would do well to read the HIRSI decision; it is rather short and a perfect summary of current European jurisprudence. They will find that the ECHR does not hesitate to accept NGOs as an authoritative part of the process; the ECHR even quotes their statements as if fact or law. In Europe, Amnesty International and the like are, it appears, a new source of law.

The European people, of course, still share the common values of Western civilization. The "Visegrad Group" of countries in Central Europe, for instance -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia -- do not accept the German diktat to relocate Muslim refugees. Parts of Western Europe, such as the northern Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, are also pretty tired of the whole European mess, and Merkel will not embody the leadership of Germany forever.

Americans, therefore, would do well to understand that for the time being the "Cultural Left" is so deeply entrenched in Western Europe and the EU, that their worst ideological enemy is not the Middle East or Russia: it is Europe.

Those who gave the Statue of Liberty to America in 1886 "to commemorate the perseverance of freedom and democracy in the United States" are willingly trampling their own people"s liberties today through courts of appointed, unelected, unaccountable ideologues. The danger is, with the help of many, doubtless well-intentioned, international NGOs, the EU will not stop at its shores.

Germany Passes "Orwellian" Anti-Free-Speech "Facebook Law"

The writing has been on the wall for months, but German lawmakers have now passed a controversial law under which Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies could face fines of up to €50 million ($57 million) for failing to remove hate speech.

As AP reports, the measure approved is designed to enforce the country’s existing limits on speech, including the long-standing ban on Holocaust denial. Among other things, it would fine social networking sites if they persistently fail to remove illegal content within a week, including defamatory “fake news.”

“Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins,” said Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who was the driving force behind the bill.

Under the law, social media companies would face steep fines for failing to remove “obviously illegal” content — including hate speech, defamation, and incitements to violence — within 24 hours. They would face an initial fine of €5 million, which could rise to €50 million. Web companies would have up to one week to decide on cases that are less clear cut.

Aside from the hefty fine for companies, the law also provides for fines of up to 5 million euros for the person each company designates to deal with the complaints procedure if it doesn’t meet requirements.

Social networks also have to publish a report every six months detailing how many complaints they received and how they dealt with them.

Maas said official figures showed the number of hate crimes in Germany increased by over 300 percent in the last two years.

But human rights experts and the companies affected warn that the law risks privatising the process of censorship and could have a chilling effect on free speech.

“This law as it stands now will not improve efforts to tackle this important societal problem,” Facebook said in a statement.

“We feel that the lack of scrutiny and consultation do not do justice to the importance of the subject. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure safety for the people on our platform,” the company said, noting that it is hiring 3,000 additional staff on top of 4,500 already working to review posts.

In an interview with Breitbart London, the CEO of Index on Censorship, Jodie Ginsburg, said:

"Hate speech laws are already too broad and ambiguous in much of Europe. This agreement fails to properly define what "illegal hate speech" is and does not provide sufficient safeguards for freedom of expression.

"It devolves power once again to unelected corporations to determine what amounts to hate speech and police it — a move that is guaranteed to stifle free speech in the mistaken belief this will make us all safer. It won"t. It will simply drive unpalatable ideas and opinions underground where they are harder to police — or to challenge.

"There have been precedents of content removal for unpopular or offensive viewpoints and this agreement risks amplifying the phenomenon of deleting controversial — yet legal — content via misuse or abuse of the notification processes."

A coalition of free speech organizations, European Digital Rights and Access Now, announced their decision not to take part in future discussions with the European Commission, saying that "we do not have confidence in the ill-considered "code of conduct" that was agreed." A statement warned:

"In short, the "code of conduct" downgrades the law to a second-class status, behind the "leading role" of private companies that are being asked to arbitrarily implement their terms of service. This process, established outside an accountable democratic framework, exploits unclear liability rules for online companies. It also creates serious risks for freedom of expression, as legal — but controversial — content may well be deleted as a result of this voluntary and unaccountable take-down mechanism.

"This means that this "agreement" between only a handful of companies and the European Commission is likely in breach of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (under which restrictions on fundamental rights should be provided for by law), and will, in practical terms, overturn case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the defense of legal speech."

Writing for Gatestone Institute, British commentator Douglas Murray noted that this assault on "racist" speech "appears to include anything critical of the EU"s current catastrophic immigration policy." He wrote:

"By deciding that "xenophobic" comment in reaction to the crisis is also "racist," Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people (who, it must be stressed, are opposed to Chancellor Merkel"s policies) into "racist" views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as "racist." This is a policy that will do its part in pushing Europe into a disastrous future.

Janice Atkinson, an independent MEP for the South East England region, summed it up this way: "It"s Orwellian. Anyone who has read 1984 sees its very re-enactment live."

European Parliament Censors Its Own Free Speech

Authored by Judith Bergmann via The Gatestone Institute,

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  The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union.

  
  


• 
  

  The rule can only have a chilling effect on free speech in the European Parliament, and will likely prove a convenient tool in trying to shut up those parliamentarians who do not follow the politically correct narrative of the EU.

  
  


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  By lifting Le Pen"s immunity while she is running for president of France, the European Parliament is sending the clear signal that publicizing the graphic and horrifying truth of the crimes of ISIS, rather than being received as a warning about what might soon be coming to Europe, instead ought to be punished.

  
  


• 
  

  Where does this clearly totalitarian impulse stop and who will stop it?

  
  

The European Parliament has introduced a new procedural rule, which allows for the chair of a debate to interrupt the live broadcasting of a speaking MEP "in the case of defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior by a Member". Furthermore, the President of the European Parliament may even "decide to delete from the audiovisual record of the proceedings those parts of a speech by a Member that contain defamatory, racist or xenophobic language".

No one, however, has bothered to define what constitutes "defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior". This omission means that the chair of any debate in the European Parliament is free to decide, without any guidelines or objective criteria, whether the statements of MEPs are "defamatory, racist or xenophobic". The penalty for offenders can apparently reach up to around 9,000 euros.

"There have been a growing number of cases of politicians saying things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate," said British EU parliamentarian Richard Corbett, who has defended the new rule. Mr. Corbett, however, does not specify what he considers "beyond the pale".

In June 2016, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, addressed the European Parliament in a speech, which drew on old anti-Semitic blood libels, such as falsely accusing Israeli rabbis of calling on the Israeli government to poison the water used by Palestinian Arabs. Such a clearly incendiary and anti-Semitic speech was not only allowed in parliament by the sensitive and "anti-racist" parliamentarians; it received a standing ovation. Evidently, wild anti-Semitic blood libels pronounced by Arabs do not constitute "things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate".

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas receives a standing ovation at the European Parliament in Brussels on June 23, 2016, after falsely claiming in his speech that Israeli rabbis were calling to poison Palestinian water. Abbas later recanted and admitted that his claim had been false. (Image source: European Parliament)

The European Parliament apparently did not even bother to publicize their new procedural rule; it was only made public by Spain"s La Vanguardia newspaper. Voters were, it appears, not supposed to know that they may be cut off from listening to the live broadcasts of the parliamentarians they elected to represent them in the EU, if some chairman of a debate subjectively happened to decide that what was being said was "racist, defamatory or xenophobic".

The European Parliament is the only popularly elected institution in the EU. Helmut Scholz, from Germany"s left-wing Die Linke party, said that EU lawmakers must be able to express their views about how Europe should work: "You can"t limit or deny this right". Well, they can express it (but for how long?), except that now no one outside of parliament will hear it.

The rule strikes at the very center of free speech, namely that of elected politicians, which the European Court of Human Rights has deemed in its practice to be specially protected. Members of the European Parliament are people who have been elected to make the voices of their constituents heard inside the institutions of the European Union. Limiting their freedom of speech is undemocratic, worrisome and spookily Orwellian.

The rule can only have a chilling effect on freedom of speech in the European Parliament and will likely prove a convenient tool in trying to shut up those parliamentarians who do not follow the politically correct narrative of the EU.

The European Parliament lately seems to be waging war against free speech. At the beginning of March, the body lifted the parliamentary immunity of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Her crime? Tweeting three images of ISIS executions in 2015. In France, "publishing violent images" constitutes a criminal offense, which can carry a penalty of three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros. By lifting her immunity at the same time that she is running for president of France, the European Parliament is sending the clear signal that publicizing the graphic and horrifying truth of the crimes of ISIS, rather than being received as a warning about what might soon be coming to Europe, instead ought to be punished.

This is a bizarre signal to be sending, especially to the Christian and Yazidi victims of ISIS, who are still largely ignored by the European Union. European parliamentarians, evidently, are too sensitive to deal with the graphic murders of defenseless people in the Middle East, and are more concerned with ensuring the prosecution of the messengers, such as Marine Le Pen.

So, political correctness, now effectively the "religious police" of political discourse, has not only taken over the media and academia; elected MEPs are now also supposed to toe the politically correct line, or literally be cut off. No one stopped the European Parliament from passing this undemocratic anti-free speech rule. Why did no parliamentarian out of the 751 MEPs raise red flags about the issue before it became an actual rule? Even more importantly: Where does this clearly totalitarian impulse stop and who will stop it?