Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Press Release: Carlo Ruta condannato per "stampa clandestina"

Pubblico di seguito una Press Release inviatami dallo storico Carlo Ruta sulla sentenza che lo ha condannato per "stampa clandestina" (http://www.leinchieste.com/).

Vi prego di dare la massima diffusione a questa notizia in Italia e all'estero, in quanto tale sentenza è un attacco senza precedenti alla libertà dell'informazione e della rete nel nostro paese.




Press release

Information on the Web. An Italian obscurantist sentence

An Italian blogger and historian, Carlo Ruta, has been condemned for “clandestine press” with justifications that do not belong to the contexts of a democratic country. This is the first case in Europe. It could be the beginning of the end of information on the Web.

An Italian judge, Patricia Di Marco, for the first time in Italy and in Europe has condemned a blogger to a financial sanction for “clandestine press”. This court decision has been formulated on the 8th of May 2008 in Sicily, by Modica’s law court. The justifications of the sentence have been published in August. This is a most serious fact that legitimate the worry and the protest that have been raised in Italy, with firm standing points of parliamentarians, historians, journalists, blogger, lawyers, associations. In such sentence, the judge has written that the tried site,
http://www.accadeinsicilia.net/, a normal blog, was to be considered a daily newspaper, lead clandestinely.

Such fact happens in a difficult context. Some strong powers in Sicily are making whatever is possible in order to hush up Carlo Ruta, who is now the author of
http://www.leinchieste.com/ and of numerous inquiries on the Mafia, politics, the illicit transactions of the finance. In recent months, three Italian law courts have passed judgment four sentences, the historian has been inflicted to pecuniary sanctions and huge compensations.

Far from the reasons of a true democracy, but close to logics that are in force in Tehran and Beijing, the Sicilian sentence make in fact a dangerous breach, offering to governments and to the economic and financial powers, which are more and more afraid of the freedom on the web, a way of hit against uncomfortable bloggers, the sites that publish free information, documentation, inquiries. It is therefore important that the civil mobilization, already imposing in Italy, is extended to all the European countries.

Giovanna Corradini (editor, Italy); Nikos Klitsikas (historian, Greece); Paolo Fior (journalist, Italy); Nello Lo Monaco (geologist, Italy); Vincenzo Gerace (chancellor, Italy); Riccardo Orioles (iournalist, Italy ); Roberto S. Rossi (journalist, Italy); Carlo Gubitosa (journalist writer, Italy); Carla Cau (teacher, Italy ); Serena Minicuci (journalist, Italy); Vincenzo Rossi (journalist, Italy); Teodoro Criscione (student, Italy); Antonella Serafini (journalist, Italy ); Angelo Genovese (student, Italy); Giuseppe Virzì (blogger, Italy); Luisa La Terra (employee, Italy); Marco Benanti (journalist, Italy); Andrea Mangano (student, Italy); Pietro Lo Monaco (student, Italy); Luisa La Terra (employee, Italy)

Please publish. Thank you.

For information:



Freedom emergency in Italy


The Sicilian sentence that has condemned information on the net, regarding it as crime, is provoking protests and alarms on the web and in every “responsible” corner of the country. The reasons are heavy as stones. The principles that have made the history of the democratic thought have been attacked: the same ones for which, in our country, men like the Rosselli’s brothers, Piero Gobetti, Antonio Gramsci, Eugenio Curiel, Giovanni Amendola, have spoilt their engagement and gave their life. The principle of the free expression has been particularly attacked, this principle is representative for all freedoms, it constitutes a hinge of the republican Constitution.


The current Italian government, than is connoting itself more and more in an illiberal sense, cannot avoid the moral duty of answering these days’ protests. Enough with infringes. The wave of indignation will not stop soon, and we are committed to continue as long as possible. The last frontier of democracy, in its most open and advanced form, represented by free expression in the Internet, by the communication that breaks in and bursts out in all directions, that makes citizens protagonists in a new way, is at stake. The Italian Constitution which, as Piero Calamandrei has remembered us, was not born in the parlours neither in the rooms of the power, but on mountains, beside the bodies of the victims of the war, between fires of the cities in revolt, is at stake.


A law is quickly necessary, a law distant from every possibility of misinterpretation, in order to stop the censor and repressive wefts of the strong powers of the country, illiberal and anti-democratic for vocation, in a definitive way. It is also necessary that the legislator understands that the information on the web cannot have principle limitations. The net is a hinge of our time, in which the democracy, with the exercise of confrontation, gets body and voice. It cannot be therefore annihilated, as it happens in Iran and Birmania.


Appeal is then made to the web, to the communication on all levels, to the civil and responsible country, so that the mobilization will continue endlessly, with strong initiatives. The Sicilian sentence, as a blogger has written, could be one of last “pearls” of a necklace that, day after day, is changing in an oxbow. It is about doing whatever possible to avoid this happening. It is necessary to prevent that Italy becomes the pyre of free expression, still remembering that the pyres of ideas may a preparatory stage of open scene regimes.


Carlo Ruta (historian journalist, Ragusa); Letizia Battaglia (photographer, Palermo); Alfio Caruso (writer and journalist, Milan), Paul Barnard (journalist, Rome); Carmine Colacino (research university, Potenza); Nikos klitsikas (historian and writer, Athens); Joseph Casarrubea (historian, Partinico); Pino Nicotri (journalist, Rome); Rocco Sciarrone (Sociology professor, University of Turin); Antonino Monteleone (journalist and blogger, Reggio Calabria); Paola Vallatta (Journalist, Paris); Diana Cimino (student, Palermo), Marisa Conte (Ragusa); Barbara Grimaudo (trainer, Palermo); Invisible Citizens (Association, Palermo), Alessio Di Florio (activist, Pescara); Fabrizio Occhipinti (student, Ragusa); Simona Taschetti (Fiumefreddo of Sicily); Flora Nicole Blasi ( student, Busto Arsizio), Lucio Lanza (Sant'alessio Siculo, Messina); Bruno Chiazzo, used, Florence); Gian Joseph Morici (blogger journalist, Agrigento); Cinzia Montoneri (graphics advertising and blogger, Ragusa); Athos Gualazzi (journalist and blogger, Rome); Joseph Sanarico (used, Turin); Sara Catanese (student, Rosolini); Roberto Copparoni (teacher and journalist, provincial referent of the Greens of Cagliari); Ugo Albano (blogger); Pasquale Incantalupo (Sesto San Giovanni, Milan), Andrea Giompaolo (student, Ragusa), Marco Di Martino (lawyer, Ragusa); PRF federation of Ragusa; Gemma Marino (bank officer retired, Caltagirone); Paul Fior (journalist, Milan); Nello Lo Monaco (geologist, Ragusa); Stefano Moncherini (RAI journalist, Roma), Vincenzo Gerace (Francavilla, Messina); Roberto S. Rossi (journalist, Catania); Editor of "The clandestine" (newspaper, Modica); Riccardo Orioles (journalist, Catania); Giulia Manzini (journalist, Gazzetta di Modena); Carlo Gubitosa (journalist writer, Taranto); Carla Cau (teacher, Ragusa); Serena Minicuci (official Region Calabria, Catanzaro); Vincenzo Rossi (journalist, Catania); Teodoro Criscione (student, Ragusa); Antonella Serafini (journalist, Rome); Patrizia Bellocci (university professor, Florence); Angelo Genovese (student, Ragusa); Joseph Virzì (blogger, Milan); Luisa La Terra (Ragusa); Marco Benanti (journalist, Catania); Andrea Mangano (student, Ragusa); Pippo Gurrieri (journalist, Ragusa); Victor Ciuffa (publisher and Director of Economic Mirror, Rome); Pietro Lo Monaco (student, Ragusa); Luisa La Terra (Ragusa); John Iacono (metodologo, Ragusa); Christmas Salvo (bloggers, Trapani); Supplizi Franca (sociologist, Ragusa) ; Piero Lo Monaco (student, Ragusa); Agnese Knee (cantautrice, Caserta); Daniela Pappalardo (Monterosso Almo, RG), Peter Campoli (Russians, RA); Roberto Ballabeni (Paris); Francis Cyril (journalist, Calabria); Elio Copetti (artist, Venzone, Udine); Aldo Zanchetta (engineer, Gragnano); William Trupia (photographer, Milan), Marco Billeci (student university, Milan). Joseph Crapisi (journalist blogger, Corleone); Pippo Palazzolo (law and economics professor, Ragusa); Nicola Lo Bianco (teacher, Palermo); Luigi Zoppoli (journalist, Turin); Antonio Pavolini (Employee, Roma), Salvatore Gioncardi (actor, Palermo); Piero Paolino (teacher, Modica), A New Perspective (political movement, Modica); Mario Nanni "Maralai" (blogger); Laura Incantalupo (used, Sesto San Giovanni); John Arata (blogger, Turin); Pier Luigi Zanata (journalist, Capoterra, CA); Viviana Salerno (free trader, Comiso); Enrico Natoli (photographer, Rome); contrast (association Antimafia, Roma), Francesco Balistreri (engineering student, Pietraperzia); Giuliano Ottaviano (Professor of Science, Ragusa); Luca Grimaldi (journalist blogger, Salerno); Antonio Giaimo (journalist, Bolivia); Sandra Cangemi (journalist, Milan); Baldassare Criscenzo (free trader, Rome); Mary Virgillito (journalist blogger, Catania).

For adhesion to this appeal (please indicate name, surname, activity, city):

For news and information:

Please publish and spread.