Silvio Berlusconi has denied having sex with Karima El Mahroug
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Italian prosecutors have alleged that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had sex with a "significant number" of young prostitutes.
In a request to search some of Mr Berlusconi's properties, they cited allegations that he had paid the women or given them free use of apartments.
The prosecutors are investigating whether Mr Berlusconi paid to have sex with a 17-year-old nightclub dancer.
Mr Berlusconi says he has never paid for sex.
The document that emerged on Monday was published on the website of Italy's lower house of parliament.
It was announced on Friday that Mr Berlusconi was under investigation.
Prosecutors have to make a request to a parliamentary committee if they want to search the property of a member of parliament.
The document includes allegations that Nicole Minetti, a former dental hygienist of Mr Berlusconi's who is now a regional official, was involved with several others in procuring the young prostitutes for the prime minister.
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Analysis
Duncan Kennedy
BBC News, Rome
A billionaire prime minister of a major European nation hiring prostitutes and kitting them out with free apartments whilst lavishing money on them? In this socially networked, hyper-covered world of no secrets, it does all seem fanciful that he could get away with it, just as Silvio Berlusconi suggests.
But you get the sense the prosecutors in Milan have got the bit between their teeth on this one. It may need more than a new prime ministerial girlfriend to shake off the investigators this time.
Of course, Silvio Berlusconi's run-ins with Milanese magistrates go back decades. He accuses them of political bias; they say they're just doing their job.
It details claims that a number of young women were put up in apartments in Milano Due, an American-style suburb that Mr Berlusconi built during the 1970s.
Ms Minetti, who is under investigation, has denied the accusations.
Prostitution is not a crime in Italy, but paying for or helping arrange sex with a prostitute under the age of 18 is an offence.
Nothing wrong'
Mr Berlusconi is also suspected of abusing his power to have the 17-year-old dancer, Karima El Mahroug, freed from a police cell.
The prime minister has previously admitted calling the police on Ms El Mahroug's behalf, but says he did nothing wrong and acted out of pity.
Ms El Mahroug has denied having sex with Mr Berlusconi, though she has said she received money from him.
She is widely known by her stage name, Ruby Rubacuori - Ruby Heartstealer.
She says she gave her age as 24 when she attended a Valentine's Day party at one of Mr Berlusconi's houses last year.
Silvio Berlusconi denies he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl
Mr Berlusconi, 74, has been embroiled in a series of sex scandals since separating from his second wife, Veronica Lario.
He has denied any wrongdoing.
Mr Berlusconi said in a broadcast on Sunday that he had been in a stable relationship since splitting with Ms Lario.
"It's absurd to even think that I would pay to have sex with a woman," he said.
"I would consider it degrading."
The latest revelations come at a time when Mr Berlusconi's government has been struggling to maintain its majority.
The prime minister, whose five-year term is due to run until 2013, narrowly survived a confidence vote in December.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
New Berlusconi scandal
Silvio Berlusconi's political career is once again in jeopardy after prosecutors today accused him of paying a "significant" number of women to have sex with him at parties he hosted last year.
Investigators also claim to have "ample investigative evidence" that Berlusconi provided flats for the women in return for sex at a Milan housing complex he built in the 1970s before entering politics.
He is already under investigation on suspicion of paying for sex with one of his guests, Karima el-Mahroug, a Moroccan belly dancer known as Ruby Rubacuori, when she was 17 – an offence under Italian law. He is also suspected of pressuring police into freeing her from custody after she was arrested on suspicion of theft last May.
Prosecutors outlined their case today in a document sent to parliament to seek permission to raid the Milan offices of a Berlusconi accountant they suspect of handling payments to the women.
The prime minister emerged with his popularity intact after accusations in 2009 that he held similar parties in Rome and slept with a prostitute. But with his parliamentary majority now under threat, the recent overturning of an immunity law and a criminal conviction now possible, the latest scandal may prove more damaging and lead to elections this spring.
"Scandals are piling up and this is not the moment to try to win over new support in parliament," said Raffaele De Mucci, a political science professor at Rome's Luiss University.
"This time the prosecutors' charges are really serious and his popularity is just not going to be a factor."
After Berlusconi made a TV appeal to Italians yesterday, accusing investigators of trying to overthrow his government, supporters today urged him to refuse their request that he submit to questioning.
In his broadcast, Berlusconi denied having ever paid for sex and cast doubt on the reliability of what police may have overheard his guests saying during wiretaps on their phones.
Some of those conversations, which are contained in the prosecutors' report, were relayed by Italian media today.
"You can't even imagine what goes on there," said one of women after a party at Berlusconi's residence. "The papers say a lot less than the truth, even when they massacre him."
One woman called the residence a "whore house". Another was reported as saying: "You are either ready for everything or you get a taxi and leave."
Nicole Minetti, a former TV showgirl, and Emilio Fede, a news presenter on one of Berlusconi's channels, both of whom are under investigation for recruiting women for the politician's parties, are on tape discussing the price of oral sex, reported L'Espresso magazine.
In one reported conversation, Mahroug claims that Berlusconi was fully aware she was only 17, and in another states: "I spoke with Silvio and I said I wanted to get out with something. Five million against the darkening of my name."
In October Mahroug told a former boyfriend Berlusconi had contacted her. "He called me, telling me 'Ruby, I'll give you as much money as you want, I'll pay you, I'll cover you in gold, but the important thing is that you hide everything; don't tell anyone anything."
Speculation was also rife as to the identity of the partner Berlusconi claimed he had been seeing since he and his wife separated in 2009. Berlusconi told TV viewers that his new partner would never have allowed him to host the erotic parties that investigators describe.
Investigators also claim to have "ample investigative evidence" that Berlusconi provided flats for the women in return for sex at a Milan housing complex he built in the 1970s before entering politics.
He is already under investigation on suspicion of paying for sex with one of his guests, Karima el-Mahroug, a Moroccan belly dancer known as Ruby Rubacuori, when she was 17 – an offence under Italian law. He is also suspected of pressuring police into freeing her from custody after she was arrested on suspicion of theft last May.
Prosecutors outlined their case today in a document sent to parliament to seek permission to raid the Milan offices of a Berlusconi accountant they suspect of handling payments to the women.
The prime minister emerged with his popularity intact after accusations in 2009 that he held similar parties in Rome and slept with a prostitute. But with his parliamentary majority now under threat, the recent overturning of an immunity law and a criminal conviction now possible, the latest scandal may prove more damaging and lead to elections this spring.
"Scandals are piling up and this is not the moment to try to win over new support in parliament," said Raffaele De Mucci, a political science professor at Rome's Luiss University.
"This time the prosecutors' charges are really serious and his popularity is just not going to be a factor."
After Berlusconi made a TV appeal to Italians yesterday, accusing investigators of trying to overthrow his government, supporters today urged him to refuse their request that he submit to questioning.
In his broadcast, Berlusconi denied having ever paid for sex and cast doubt on the reliability of what police may have overheard his guests saying during wiretaps on their phones.
Some of those conversations, which are contained in the prosecutors' report, were relayed by Italian media today.
"You can't even imagine what goes on there," said one of women after a party at Berlusconi's residence. "The papers say a lot less than the truth, even when they massacre him."
One woman called the residence a "whore house". Another was reported as saying: "You are either ready for everything or you get a taxi and leave."
Nicole Minetti, a former TV showgirl, and Emilio Fede, a news presenter on one of Berlusconi's channels, both of whom are under investigation for recruiting women for the politician's parties, are on tape discussing the price of oral sex, reported L'Espresso magazine.
In one reported conversation, Mahroug claims that Berlusconi was fully aware she was only 17, and in another states: "I spoke with Silvio and I said I wanted to get out with something. Five million against the darkening of my name."
In October Mahroug told a former boyfriend Berlusconi had contacted her. "He called me, telling me 'Ruby, I'll give you as much money as you want, I'll pay you, I'll cover you in gold, but the important thing is that you hide everything; don't tell anyone anything."
Speculation was also rife as to the identity of the partner Berlusconi claimed he had been seeing since he and his wife separated in 2009. Berlusconi told TV viewers that his new partner would never have allowed him to host the erotic parties that investigators describe.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Berlusconi accused of pimping
David and Gianni Barbacetto Milosa
Milan
Cursed spring. On 21 March, the first day of spring, Silvio Berlusconi will go to trial immediately, with the risk of delay a conviction for extortion and child prostitution. This is at least the pattern of action of the prosecutor's office in Milan, which yesterday confirmed - after the news spread in the network Corriere.it - having joined on December 21 last year, the President of the Council in the register of the crimes.
The story is that of Ruby and bunga-bunga. Berlusconi is under investigation for having sex with a girl pay Moroccan Karim El Mahroug called Ruby. The girl was 17, was still a minor, and for the law on prostitution, the customer should be punished (with a penalty from 6 months to 3 years) if he has intercourse with a girl who is between 14 and 18 years. To cover the crime - according to the hypothesis of the prosecution - Berlusconi would have been a second offense, more serious bribery (punishable by a sentence of 4 to 12 years). Calling several times during the night between 27 and 28 May 2010, officers of the police headquarters in Milan, to release the girl (who had been apprehended for theft), arguing that she was "the nephew of President Mubarak of Egypt."
The ILDA BOCCASSINI PM, Pietro Forno and Sangermano Antonio, owners of the Ruby case, continue to investigate, for aiding and abetting prostitution, at Lele Mora, Emilio Fede and a member of Regional Councill of Lombardia (and former the dental hygienist of Berlusconi) Nicole Minetti, who considered that provided for the girls for The feasts of the bunga bunga. But we are convinced that the evidence against Berlusconi are withering: we would have written between the suspects on Dec. 21 and yesterday he sent an invitation to appear. In view of the specific document, an immediate trial, which is done by skipping the preliminary hearing and is held within three months following: March 21, then.
Milan
Cursed spring. On 21 March, the first day of spring, Silvio Berlusconi will go to trial immediately, with the risk of delay a conviction for extortion and child prostitution. This is at least the pattern of action of the prosecutor's office in Milan, which yesterday confirmed - after the news spread in the network Corriere.it - having joined on December 21 last year, the President of the Council in the register of the crimes.
The story is that of Ruby and bunga-bunga. Berlusconi is under investigation for having sex with a girl pay Moroccan Karim El Mahroug called Ruby. The girl was 17, was still a minor, and for the law on prostitution, the customer should be punished (with a penalty from 6 months to 3 years) if he has intercourse with a girl who is between 14 and 18 years. To cover the crime - according to the hypothesis of the prosecution - Berlusconi would have been a second offense, more serious bribery (punishable by a sentence of 4 to 12 years). Calling several times during the night between 27 and 28 May 2010, officers of the police headquarters in Milan, to release the girl (who had been apprehended for theft), arguing that she was "the nephew of President Mubarak of Egypt."
The ILDA BOCCASSINI PM, Pietro Forno and Sangermano Antonio, owners of the Ruby case, continue to investigate, for aiding and abetting prostitution, at Lele Mora, Emilio Fede and a member of Regional Councill of Lombardia (and former the dental hygienist of Berlusconi) Nicole Minetti, who considered that provided for the girls for The feasts of the bunga bunga. But we are convinced that the evidence against Berlusconi are withering: we would have written between the suspects on Dec. 21 and yesterday he sent an invitation to appear. In view of the specific document, an immediate trial, which is done by skipping the preliminary hearing and is held within three months following: March 21, then.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Wikileaks about Italy...VERY FUN
A new kind of global diplomacy
From now on, whatever the potential consequences of this interminable wave that will last for months, and the publication of more or less confidential reports written by western diplomats, certainly anyone involved in politics in the various Countries and in international relations will undoubtedly, and perhaps should indeed be aware that anything they have said is liable to be belied immediately by something they said that very day or perhaps the day before because when it comes to diplomacy, as we all know, there is always a chance that, in one nanosecond, some or other mole may send of a file to this or perhaps some other copycat website that may be set up at some stage.
Obviously we can understand the absolute terror, the dismay, the bewilderment and even the anger of the current governors, starting with our own ridiculous ones who, confused by these earth shattering revelations, are now making senseless, strange and odd claims about international conspiracies. I ask you, Frattini is saying that Assange wants to destroy the world. We hadn’t heard such absolute and idiotic nonsense since Louis de Funés’ Fantomas films. After all, the individuals that govern us are what they are and, in reality, Assange is not really trying to destroy anything at all. Irrespective of who Assange is and whatever his aim may be, he is merely been collecting genuine, existing documents. As a matter of fact, the only thing missing in this whole sordid affair are the denials. If the documents being revealed had belonged only to the Italian Government, by now Berlusconi and Attorney Ghedini would probably have come out and said that it was all a big lie and that they were going to lay charges, as they usually do whenever any genuine documents or testimony is revealed. They would have been the only ones anywhere in the world to do so. Not even the North Koreans denied the authenticity of the documents, in other words even they have chosen to back this worldwide disdain regarding the publication of genuine documents, documents that are not, after all, top secret, but merely confidential and not deemed to be State secrets, even though, in Italy, the concept of State secrets has long since expanded to include everything down to the Prime Minister’s G-Spot.
The first thing that one sees, in my opinion, is that the portraits of the other heads of State and heads of Government that emerge from the reports written by the diplomats are all three-dimensional portraits in that they reveal not only the individual’s private side, by all means, but also and above all a public side and the political side of the individual, while the only portrait that is strictly flat and two-dimensional is ours. Our Prime Minister is described simply from the waist down since this is the only part that shows as far as International diplomacy is concerned, the fact that all he thinks about at night are his parties, which are described as “wild orgies”. The fact that everyone thinks that he hosts wild orgies will obviously make him very happy indeed, but the Americans notice these things because they say that these parties and these orgies reflect negatively on his daytime activities since he spends all of his daytime hours trying to conceal what he has been up to at night. This explains why he has to spend part of his days on the phone to the Milan police station trying to pass off some underage girl of debatable morals as Mubarak’s grand-daughter, and the rest of his days attempting to avoid his court cases and conceal, and indeed bury his past underground. This is his true obsession, alongside the parties. They cannot find anything bad to say about Ms. Merkel, other than the fact that she may be a little boring and not very creative, but very tenacious when she is in a bit of a bind. All they can find to say about Sarcozy is that he is an emperor with no clothes, authoritarian, unscrupulous with his aides. About Putin, they say that he is a pack leader and that he has a somewhat dominant male relationship with Medvedev and therefore, that he is actually the man in charge although he cannot legally hold the highest post in Russia.
Talking about Gheddafi, they say he is a hypochondriac that injects himself with Botulin and talk about the political aspects of his activities. Of Ahmadinejad, they talk about his apparent mental instability, but also about all the things going on in Iranian politics, the part it plays in destabilising the Middle East. Regarding Kwan – Jin, they say that the Korean leader is traumatised by his stroke and the fact that he is overweight, which is plain for everyone to see, then they move on to the politics. Then there all the issues that are currently undermining international politics, for example, the fact that Hilary Clinton ordered her people to spy on the ambassadors of the various UN member Countries, including those serving on the Security Council and their veto rights, obviously including Council Chairman Vanchimun, business affairs and international politics. The black sheep, you will note, our esteemed leader Berlusconi is always at the very bottom of the long list of leaders who are quoted. Berlusconi is obviously seen as the black sheep, as the clown, as an international laughing stock and a national hazard. The No. 2 lady at the American Embassy, and here we’re talking about a woman who was Deputy Ambassador for 4 years, calls him inept, unable to govern, unsuitable for government, vain and addicted to these wild parties that interfere with his rest, to the point where he walks around like a punch-drunk boxer during the day.
Obviously these are not exactly earth-shattering revelations. If anything, it is more interesting to note that Hilary Clinton, as head of American diplomacy, actually asked for information, which is her right, rather than spying on the ambassadors and the Un Security Council Chairman, which she is certainly not entitled to do, especially since they enjoy diplomatic immunity on American soil. Indeed, this begs the question whether or not the UN Headquarters should remain in New York at all, given that the very fact that it is based in New York has allowed the Americans to spy on the various member-Countries’ UN delegations, but nevertheless, Hilary Clinton was perfectly entitled to ask for information regarding suspected deals between Putin and Berlusconi and I think also between Berlusconi and Gheddafi.
Private deals and, in the final analysis, Italy’s vulnerability resulting from the fact that Berlusconi has virtually handed the control valve of Italy’s Energy supplies to two Countries like Russia and Libya, which obviously leaves Italy exposed to whatever type of reprisal or vendetta and relegates this country to serve the needs of the Libyans or the Russians. In fact, Berlusconi is described as someone who appears to be Putin’s spokesman, which is even worse than saying that he is indeed Putin’s spokesman because at least that would mean that Putin takes him seriously and has appointed him as his spokesman in Europe. Instead, they say that he appears to be Putin’s spokesman in Europe, but why? Well, because Putin would never dream of appointing Berlusconi as his ambassador and indeed Berlusconi is the one who has adopted the self-important role and has been acting as Putin’s ambassador in Europe since 1994 when, for the first time ever, as Putin’s ambassador he suddenly told the G8 meeting in Naples that Russia should become part of Europe and that Europe should form a strategic and even nuclear alliance with the Russians. At the time, everyone looked at him as if he had lost his marbles, but since then he has never missed a single opportunity to sponsor Russian interests in Europe.
This, I would say, is a summary of what emerged as regards the relations between our Country and the United States. As I was saying, the according to the analyst in question, Mrs. Elisabeth Dibble, 2nd in charge of the embassy in Italy for 4 years, including during the Bush administration, considered Berlusconi to be incompetent, inept, a public hazard for his Country as regards international diplomacy, a spokesman for Putin even while Bush was still in charge, even while Bush was waxing lyrical in public about his friend Silvio, even when Berlusconi was working to achieve accreditation as a close friend of George Bush, the American embassy was sending distressed and distressing cables back to Washington, saying that this man is absolutely incapable of doing anything and doesn’t do anything other than deal with his own private matters, night and day. This is very interesting, but why? Well, because it’s not like this wasn’t known, but don’t simply fob off what is busy emerging at the moment because it’s one thing for any television viewer to know what he’s like since anyone with half a brain has realised that for the past 16 years we have been governed by a clown, but more important still is the undeniable fact that in an official, signed and rubber-stamped document from the American embassy in Italy, it says that we are governed by an inept, not very clear thinking dandy who is unsuitable to govern a country, is unable to get anything done and believes himself to be Putin’s spokesman.
Silviolo, the International midget
The fact that this is what the American embassy is telling that country’s government is quite obvious and all of this has some pretty serious implications, but why? Well, because it shows that, notwithstanding the patina and the decorum of these international gatherings where hugs and kisses are the order of the day, internationally speaking everyone has been able to judge our country, and it has been judged in terms of this little puppet called Silvio! It is also interesting to note the psychological profiles prepared regarding two individuals like Berlusconi and Putin. The latter is described as the Alpha-dog, a dominant male whose relationship with Medvedev is like that between Batman and Robin, but then the same could be said of the relationship between Putin and Berlusconi. Berlusconi is not and has never been top-dog, even though it is somewhat of a trademark of a midget to blow himself up, to use any means to appear important. Berlusconi has always been No.2, never No.1, always a supporting actor, never a main role player. He has always selected a powerful man to cling to and then proceeded to play second fiddle, lived in that individual’s shadow. He did this with Licio Gelli, he did it with Bettino Craxi and he did it with George Bush and when Bush disappeared from the scene, he proceeded to latch onto Putin. He is always someone’s No.2, there’s always the pronoun “Il” (The), where he is the “I” but the “L” is the one that rules the roost. This is folklore, but this is the image of Italy abroad, this is Italy’s calling card abroad and the danger that this man represents is far more obvious to people abroad than it is to us here in Italy. At some point we’ll say: why didn’t they warn us sooner? It would have helped us immensely! No, diplomacy is called diplomacy precisely because certain things are never said in public, indeed they cannot be said in public. Relations between countries are one thing, but the opinions of those countries’ representatives with regard to their colleagues are an entirely different matter altogether.
That is why the Americans speak ill of Berlusconi in public while speaking well of him in public, at least until Obama arrived on the scene who, we have noticed, has received all of the other foreign heads of State at least 3 or 4 times, but the one that has been received the least is none other than ours. That is because a little midget like our very own Berlusconi has always been very useful to the Americans when it came to living credence to Bush’s policies, but why? Well, because in essence, he was Bush’s spokesman in Europe, a continent that sided virtually unanimously in favour of the war in Iraq and at least partly in favour of the war in Afghanistan although, after 11 September, it became far more difficult to oppose based on the information available. So it was obvious that Bush would use our little midget to dissolve the unity of the European continent and, indeed, it was precisely the Berlusconi – Aznar duo that opposed the non-interventionist German and French front and form a united front with the English, who have traditionally been America’s closest ally in Europe.
So they used Berlusconi without even having to tell him what to do since this is his natural tendency anyway. They knew that it would be enough to provide him with the odd pat on the shoulder, the odd photograph with him standing next to Bush, the odd dubious visit to the ranch, the odd ego-boosting visit to the White House and the odd tartlet in the oval office, after which he would do whatever the Americans wanted without even being asked. Now that the American politicians no longer need him to break down European unity because they have some far more serious internal problems to deal with at the moment, he no longer has any influence whatsoever, he has become useless and is therefore become a joke at the international gatherings, the somewhat brain-dead old man that you joke about and that, if anything, is good for a few laughs with his dirty jokes that he has told at all the previous gatherings and that only Obama laughs at, mainly because he is a newcomer to the group.
Interesting to note is that anyone who follows International politics knows all about these events of the past 15 years. The Italians fall into one of two categories, namely the believers, those who have believed for the past 15 years that this man is the only obstacle against the spread of communism, a bastion if you will, and a champion of the free market and of the values of the centre-right, an inescapable point of reference for the conservative and liberal democrat movements of the world, as well as the beating heart of the European popular party and the standard bearer of the values of God, Country and Family, and suchlike, and then there are those that instead believe what they see and what they know. These may be right or left wingers or middle-of-the-road, but they have always known that this guy is a black sheep and a good-for-nothing scoundrel.
Amongst those who know, there are two sub-species: those who have always spoken out and written about him and those who have simply known and done nothing about it. When we finally manage to rid ourselves of him, and I believe it will happen very soon, we will see what is happening with today’s youngsters when they watch the late-night shows on the History Channel or on the RAI 3 programme called “Correva l’anno” and see the slightly speeded-up images showing Mussolini in Palazzo Venezia or Hitler at the Reichstadt and they ask themselves: how come such ridiculous, awkward and clown-like men were allowed to hold their countries hostage, Hitler for ten years and an arsehole like Mussolini for 21 years? How could so many people be taken in by these men. By the way, it landed up being more that 21 years because then came postscript, namely the Public Republic of Salò, which went on for another few months, but how is it possible that they took such dangerous yet ridiculous individuals so seriously? If we look at the Ridolini-type images of these two dictators, the first question that springs to mind is: why were all these people out in the streets applauding these men? The same thing will happen in a couple of years, when we look back on this little gentleman of ours who goes around completely re-built, wearing his perfectly formed Big Jim or Ken-type bitumen helmet and his paunch held back by a corset and now and again with his eyes shut because they forgot to wind him up via the A sharp that, like a guitar, he keeps behind his ear, a man who talks shit from morning to night, who threatens to pinch the ladies backsides just after a major earthquake has struck. A man who will do pretty much anything, who hands out Milan Soccer team watches at G8 international leaders’ gatherings, how can such a man have been taken seriously by millions of Italians?
The answer will be the same as that given in the past because Mussolini also managed to hold on to power for so long and with such popularity. Also keep in mind that Mussolini was not Berlusconi. Mussolini was an excellent journalist who wrote excellently. He was a cultured man, very capable politically and his governments were made up of some of the best people of Italian society, including lawyers, economists, philosophers, cultural experts, fascists and nationalists, people like Gentile, like Balbo, like Bottai, like Stefani, like Alfredo Rocco, like Giovanni Gentile, not people like Gasparri, Capezzone, Bondi, Mara Carfagna and suchlike. As a matter of fact, they left behind them certain things that exist to this very day. Fortunately today’s guys won’t leave diddley-squat behind them except perhaps the first stone of the Messina Straits bridge, which has already been laid about fifteen times, so at least we are at least 15 stones closer to Messina.
The truth is that this gentleman has been taken very, very seriously indeed by this Country’s management class, particularly those that control the media (including himself), so for the past twenty years we have lived in a kind of fairy tale in which Il Corriere della Sera, which is now having great fun simply because it is so easy to do so, screams “Vain, tired, ineffective leader who appears to be Putin’s spokesman” and includes an editorial, penned by Franco Venturini, which reveals the ridiculousness of our foreign policy and the inconsistency of our political influence abroad. Yet for the past 15 years they have been saying the exact opposite, namely that foreign policy is one of Berlusconi’s major strengths. How many times has the newspaper allowed its journalists to credit Berlusconi with having single-handedly prevented war breaking out between Russia and Georgia? How many times have they said that Berlusconi was a major role-player in improving relations between Russia and America? How many times have they allowed him to get away with saying and doing the most outrageous things and then downplaying and minimising them? That is the problem. The problem is that if, during the past 15 years, the television stations and the newspapers had spoken about the things that anyone with two eyes and half a brain could clearly see and know, and if they had made that their official line and taken Berlusconi to task because he is a man that cannot be taken seriously anyway and the worst favour that you can do for him is to actually take him seriously then, perhaps, covered by this aura of ridiculousness rather than one of propriety and credibility, we would already have been long rid of him, but why? Well, because when the Italians vote, they always tend to back the winner, but when they begin to smell the stench of death or realise that their candidate is starting to look a little shaky, they take him down. They won’t willingly vote for someone ridiculous who seems to have reached the end of the road. The problem is that the Italian conformist intelligentsia image, most of the Italian press with a few notable exceptions, and the television stations, again with two or three notable exceptions, have in recent years shown a very different picture of the man who is now burned out, so now they are now suddenly taking great pleasure in writing about this.
The latecomers
Did it really need to take 15 years? Did we really need wait for the No.2 at the American embassy to say that Berlusconi is a vain, tired, ineffective leader who appears to be Putin’s spokesman? What we actually wrote is in fact very little, and I’ve got it here to remind me. Every now and again I would get the urge to make a note of the situation as is was at the time, so just before the 2006 elections, the ones that Berlusconi lost, albeit by very little, I wrote a book together with Peter Gomez, entitled “Le mille balle blu” (the thousand blues), to gather and catalogue the huge quantity of bullshit that this man had managed to say in the first twelve years of his political career, and that we hoped would be the last.
There was one chapter, entitled The Gran Turismo President, which contained all the balls-ups that he said and did abroad, just as soon as he set foot in any Country. The only difference being that he left an indelible mark on every foreign country he visited, but why? Well, because for days on end, the newspapers were saying: who the hell is this guy? Where does he come from? How the hell could the Italians ever vote him in? How the hell do they manage to live with him? Aren’t they in the least embarrassed about having this travelling joke representing them? Why? Well, because all the newspapers and television stations abroad have one major flaw in that they are not on Berlusconi’s side, so they are free to write about whatever they see, something that our television stations and newspapers have never been allowed to do, so that is why he had such a terrible reputation with the foreign press and such an excellent reputation with the Italian press. That is also why he was obliged to claim that the international press was serving the interests of communism, or that foreign press correspondents in Italy only read La Repubblica and L’Unità, and perhaps now also Il Fatto Quotidiano, when the truth is that they don’t have to read anything, all they have to do is look around them, except that, unlike our local newspapers, they are not influenced by their proprietors or their advertisers and are therefore free to call a spade a spade and label him as a clown!
Can you imagine, when he went to England and paid a visit to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he had the gall to state that she was still “a bit of allright!” When the interpreters translated his comment “a bit of allright” in reference to a Lady who was ill on top of it all, the British people began asking themselves who the hell this man thought he was and when they discovered that he was the head of our Government, they began to get concerned about us as a people! Just imagine what it was like when, at the FAO summit, he asked the President of Togo, Gnassingbe’, who was explaining the plight of Malawi with its 13 million people who were dying of starvation, to please cut his address short because “although it is not such a tragedy, we are also hungry!” At the FAO summit on world hunger, he then proceeded to add that: “thanks for being here with us, lunch is served. I hope that the menu is entirely Italian because then you will surely be satisfied”, after which he then cornered the Director of the FAO, the Senegalese Diouf, and told him that he needed to lose some weight! Then there are all the attacks on Europe by a head of State of a European Country who, at a certain point, was even President of the European Union for 6 months between July and December 2003, a period that was inaugurated by the Nazi Chief’s outburst against the German socialist, Schultz, and then began the games.
What about when he said to German Chancellor Schroeder: “Let’s talk about women, seeing that you are the expert” with the man’s wife present? On one particular visit to Russia, one of many, they took him to visit one of the Merloni plants a few kilometres outside Moscow, he was with Putin at the time, the next day a reporter wrote in the Kommerzant daily that the visit took place in Lipetz, some 400 kilometres south of Moscow. “The Italian Premier was particularly excited and he clearly had one main objective in mind. He wouldn’t be satisfied unless he managed to get up close and personal with a group of female workers and, turning to Putin, he said: I want kiss the best and most beautiful female worker. He had already identified his victim and so he moved in on a woman with a body the size of Sardinia. With his whole body, he made the same gesture used by thugs in dark alleyways when they are busy bothering a young girl on her way back home. She managed to sidestep him, but obviously this was not the first time that Mister Berlusconi has had to deal with such a quick move – something that even the Kommerzant reporter had already noted. With two quick paces he got to the lady and shamelessly began kissing her on the face – imagine all that make-up – and shook the worker while laughing, almost as if he was trying to get her down onto the ground. The only thing the poor woman could do was to refuse to acknowledge his kisses. Putin just watched this spectacle, absolutely motionless and transfixed, almost as if he could no longer take his good friend Silvio’s crude games”. So this is what his international missions are all about, the ones that are supposedly aimed at improving Italy’s image abroad.
On another occasion, when Yeltzin was still in power, Berlusconi himself states that: “I once spoke to Yeltzin for 25 minutes about the CSCE - the European security and co-operation conference that he knew nothing whatsoever about. Yeltzin was complaining that Europe was not helping him to resolve the Chechnya crisis via the CSCE, and all the while I was saying to myself: heaven alone knows what he is talking about. He eventually stopped talking and then there was silence, until the Swede Bilt intervened to break the embarrassment, saying o he turned towards me and, feeling the Italian flags waving behind me, I realised that I couldn’t embarrass my own Country, so I proceeded to talk about Chechnya, Europe and war in general for 25 minutes. Yet he doesn’t even know where the hell Chechnya is in the first place. In the end. Mitterrand said: okay, so the matter is now in your hands. Whose precisely? So immediately after dinner I took Felipe Gonzales aside and asked him: do you know what this bloody CSCE is? He began to laugh uncontrollably and landed up sitting on the floor, so much so that I had to help him back onto his feet”. A CSCE summit had been held yet Berlusconi didn’t have the foggiest idea what the CSCE was and, worst of all, he then showed his ignorance reducing everyone to laughter, after which he proceeds to tell everyone about this to put on a good show!!
Every now and again he loses it, claiming that no one else in the world who could claim to be as good as he is, no politician who has the same background as him and, from a personal point of view, he is the only one who has such an advantage! When I sit next to some or other Prime Minister or Head of State, there is always someone who wants to prove that he is better than the rest, and that someone is not me, because my cleverness is unquestionable and the others can only dream of having my human abilities and my background. It is they who have yet to prove themselves!
Global insults
On another occasion, he greeted heads of State and government leaders in Brussels at the end of a meeting of State and Government leaders, and Ciampi was absent that day, so he greeted them on Ciampi’s behalf, in English and, as we all know, speaking in unknown languages is typical of not only of Berlusconi, but also of someone who is possessed. He said, and I quote, “I give you the salutation of my President of the republic”. The best man also happens to be a multilingual cosmopolitan and speaks English like Cementano, “svalutation” and all, and “salutation” is his way of greeting! Then there is his memorable comment to Rasmussen, the Dane who had come to visit him in Rome and Berlusconi said: but you’re much better looking than Cacciari, I’ll introduce you to my wife! Thus he officially informed the world about what was being said about his wife, who was still living with him at the time, namely that she was also having it off with Cacciari. Rasmussen couldn’t believe what he was hearing via the simultaneous interpreter, he thought that there was some sort of interference, little did he know that this was precisely what Berlusconi had said. Just imagine the embarrassment that he caused to the poor Finnish President Alonen by revealing that he had had to brush up on his playboy skills and court Ms. Alonen in order to get the European Food Agency away from Finland and into Italy’s hands, precisely to Parma. Ms. Alonen was obliged to explain to the European Parliament that nothing untoward had happened and that Berlusconi had made it all up, but why? Well, because everyone wanted to know what had possessed her to cede a Finnish food agency to Italy in exchange for a night of loving, and that with a guy like Berlusconi of all people!
So Berlusconi tried to remedy the gaffe by saying that it was entirely logical to give a food agency to Italy because at least Italy had an excellent cuisine, while in Finland, what would these unfortunates get to eat? Smoked reindeer ham, how awful is that. The result? In a fit of pique, Finnish farmers blocked the importation of Italian food products, which resulted in a trade crisis between Italy and Finland. Has everyone forgotten about these marvellous episodes? And then, while not having remedied that second gaffe in any way, Berlusconi immediately made yet another one. At a meeting of the Forza Italia party leadership, he proceeded to show a blow-up of the beautiful Ms. Alonen and said: but have you taken a good look at this woman’s face? Do you honestly believe I would ever start courting someone with a face like hers? Thus he also hit Finland with an ugly stick and sorted that out as well, given that there are only a few Countries left that still had some respect for us.
There is certainly more than enough choice when it comes to describing everything that he has managed to do every time he has gone beyond the pale, because it truly in the field of foreign affairs that our little expert unfailingly outdoes himself. Not to mention what he said upon his return from a visit to Iraq, namely that: life in Iraq is returning to normal, although there are still some problems, like the traffic lights that don’t work in Baghdad. Bloody hell, there were 100 or 200 people dying every day due to attacks, kamikazes blowing themselves up all over the place, kidnappings and ongoing civil war, yet he chooses to put faulty traffic lights at the top of his list of problems. That must be why the Americans left Iraq, because of the unbelievable traffic jams, like in the Palermo of the Johnny Stecchino films, the main problem is the traffic!
This is the kind of things that he has managed to do and say over the past 15 years, yet now it is up to the No.2 at the American embassy to explain to us who have been lumbered with him for the past 15 years that he is a vain, tired and ineffective leader, to which we could add a number of other adjectives too, should we so wish. The lady has been too kind! But beware, because ridiculous things are one matter while serious things are totally another. The Americans have realised that even the Prime Minister’s private weaknesses have a certain public significance. The folklore about him and Gheddaffi is not merely folklore, it is all about business deals for Berlusconi himself and involves our Country’s dependence on a totally unreliable regime such as that in Libya and our Country’s dependence on another Country like Russia, which goes way beyond the folklore about Berlusconi wearing a furry hat at a Dacia with Putin, dependence on a Country like Russia, which we are sponsoring for personal business interests since there can be no other reason for us to do so. Russia, which the diplomats describe as a Mafia State, a Country that is now completely in the hands of organised crime syndicates and surprise, surprise, with all the Countries to choose from, guess which one our Country has chosen to adopt as our preferred partner? Obviously the other Mafia State, who else! So let’s beware of the difference between mere folklore and serious, indeed very serious matters that we had all the tools to note. Many people have pretended not to notice while others have been misled by the media that has been taking this vain, tired and ineffective leader of ours, a man who appears to be a spokesman for Putin, seriously for the past 15 years and passed him off as the leader of moderates and liberals.
So what do you think will be the next step? What will happen when Wikileaks begins to also reveal the Russian and Libyan diplomatic dossiers, as they will sooner or later, and we also discover that also in Libya and in Russia our esteemed leader is considered to be a clown and that even Putin and Gheddaffi, who publicly revere Berlusconi, privately see him for what he is, because neither Gheddaffi nor Putin are stupid, they may well be many other things, but certainly not stupid. So once it comes out that even Putin and Gheddaffi think he is a clown, then there will only be one organisation that will still take him seriously, namely the Democratic Party, the one that, in a previous re-incarnation, had gone so far as to mistake him for one of the founding fathers, thanks to D’Alema and Marini first, and Veltroni later and so, for 15 years, instead of isolating him like a foreign body, like a ridiculous little man, indeed tragically ridiculous given the damage that he has done to this Country, they continued to urge him to introduce reforms and elevate him to the status of reformer rather than handling him as he should have been handled. This, in my opinion, together with his monopoly on the media, is the other reason why this ridiculous little man is still at Palazzo Chigi. (marco Travaglio on Beppe Grillo's blog)
From now on, whatever the potential consequences of this interminable wave that will last for months, and the publication of more or less confidential reports written by western diplomats, certainly anyone involved in politics in the various Countries and in international relations will undoubtedly, and perhaps should indeed be aware that anything they have said is liable to be belied immediately by something they said that very day or perhaps the day before because when it comes to diplomacy, as we all know, there is always a chance that, in one nanosecond, some or other mole may send of a file to this or perhaps some other copycat website that may be set up at some stage.
Obviously we can understand the absolute terror, the dismay, the bewilderment and even the anger of the current governors, starting with our own ridiculous ones who, confused by these earth shattering revelations, are now making senseless, strange and odd claims about international conspiracies. I ask you, Frattini is saying that Assange wants to destroy the world. We hadn’t heard such absolute and idiotic nonsense since Louis de Funés’ Fantomas films. After all, the individuals that govern us are what they are and, in reality, Assange is not really trying to destroy anything at all. Irrespective of who Assange is and whatever his aim may be, he is merely been collecting genuine, existing documents. As a matter of fact, the only thing missing in this whole sordid affair are the denials. If the documents being revealed had belonged only to the Italian Government, by now Berlusconi and Attorney Ghedini would probably have come out and said that it was all a big lie and that they were going to lay charges, as they usually do whenever any genuine documents or testimony is revealed. They would have been the only ones anywhere in the world to do so. Not even the North Koreans denied the authenticity of the documents, in other words even they have chosen to back this worldwide disdain regarding the publication of genuine documents, documents that are not, after all, top secret, but merely confidential and not deemed to be State secrets, even though, in Italy, the concept of State secrets has long since expanded to include everything down to the Prime Minister’s G-Spot.
The first thing that one sees, in my opinion, is that the portraits of the other heads of State and heads of Government that emerge from the reports written by the diplomats are all three-dimensional portraits in that they reveal not only the individual’s private side, by all means, but also and above all a public side and the political side of the individual, while the only portrait that is strictly flat and two-dimensional is ours. Our Prime Minister is described simply from the waist down since this is the only part that shows as far as International diplomacy is concerned, the fact that all he thinks about at night are his parties, which are described as “wild orgies”. The fact that everyone thinks that he hosts wild orgies will obviously make him very happy indeed, but the Americans notice these things because they say that these parties and these orgies reflect negatively on his daytime activities since he spends all of his daytime hours trying to conceal what he has been up to at night. This explains why he has to spend part of his days on the phone to the Milan police station trying to pass off some underage girl of debatable morals as Mubarak’s grand-daughter, and the rest of his days attempting to avoid his court cases and conceal, and indeed bury his past underground. This is his true obsession, alongside the parties. They cannot find anything bad to say about Ms. Merkel, other than the fact that she may be a little boring and not very creative, but very tenacious when she is in a bit of a bind. All they can find to say about Sarcozy is that he is an emperor with no clothes, authoritarian, unscrupulous with his aides. About Putin, they say that he is a pack leader and that he has a somewhat dominant male relationship with Medvedev and therefore, that he is actually the man in charge although he cannot legally hold the highest post in Russia.
Talking about Gheddafi, they say he is a hypochondriac that injects himself with Botulin and talk about the political aspects of his activities. Of Ahmadinejad, they talk about his apparent mental instability, but also about all the things going on in Iranian politics, the part it plays in destabilising the Middle East. Regarding Kwan – Jin, they say that the Korean leader is traumatised by his stroke and the fact that he is overweight, which is plain for everyone to see, then they move on to the politics. Then there all the issues that are currently undermining international politics, for example, the fact that Hilary Clinton ordered her people to spy on the ambassadors of the various UN member Countries, including those serving on the Security Council and their veto rights, obviously including Council Chairman Vanchimun, business affairs and international politics. The black sheep, you will note, our esteemed leader Berlusconi is always at the very bottom of the long list of leaders who are quoted. Berlusconi is obviously seen as the black sheep, as the clown, as an international laughing stock and a national hazard. The No. 2 lady at the American Embassy, and here we’re talking about a woman who was Deputy Ambassador for 4 years, calls him inept, unable to govern, unsuitable for government, vain and addicted to these wild parties that interfere with his rest, to the point where he walks around like a punch-drunk boxer during the day.
Obviously these are not exactly earth-shattering revelations. If anything, it is more interesting to note that Hilary Clinton, as head of American diplomacy, actually asked for information, which is her right, rather than spying on the ambassadors and the Un Security Council Chairman, which she is certainly not entitled to do, especially since they enjoy diplomatic immunity on American soil. Indeed, this begs the question whether or not the UN Headquarters should remain in New York at all, given that the very fact that it is based in New York has allowed the Americans to spy on the various member-Countries’ UN delegations, but nevertheless, Hilary Clinton was perfectly entitled to ask for information regarding suspected deals between Putin and Berlusconi and I think also between Berlusconi and Gheddafi.
Private deals and, in the final analysis, Italy’s vulnerability resulting from the fact that Berlusconi has virtually handed the control valve of Italy’s Energy supplies to two Countries like Russia and Libya, which obviously leaves Italy exposed to whatever type of reprisal or vendetta and relegates this country to serve the needs of the Libyans or the Russians. In fact, Berlusconi is described as someone who appears to be Putin’s spokesman, which is even worse than saying that he is indeed Putin’s spokesman because at least that would mean that Putin takes him seriously and has appointed him as his spokesman in Europe. Instead, they say that he appears to be Putin’s spokesman in Europe, but why? Well, because Putin would never dream of appointing Berlusconi as his ambassador and indeed Berlusconi is the one who has adopted the self-important role and has been acting as Putin’s ambassador in Europe since 1994 when, for the first time ever, as Putin’s ambassador he suddenly told the G8 meeting in Naples that Russia should become part of Europe and that Europe should form a strategic and even nuclear alliance with the Russians. At the time, everyone looked at him as if he had lost his marbles, but since then he has never missed a single opportunity to sponsor Russian interests in Europe.
This, I would say, is a summary of what emerged as regards the relations between our Country and the United States. As I was saying, the according to the analyst in question, Mrs. Elisabeth Dibble, 2nd in charge of the embassy in Italy for 4 years, including during the Bush administration, considered Berlusconi to be incompetent, inept, a public hazard for his Country as regards international diplomacy, a spokesman for Putin even while Bush was still in charge, even while Bush was waxing lyrical in public about his friend Silvio, even when Berlusconi was working to achieve accreditation as a close friend of George Bush, the American embassy was sending distressed and distressing cables back to Washington, saying that this man is absolutely incapable of doing anything and doesn’t do anything other than deal with his own private matters, night and day. This is very interesting, but why? Well, because it’s not like this wasn’t known, but don’t simply fob off what is busy emerging at the moment because it’s one thing for any television viewer to know what he’s like since anyone with half a brain has realised that for the past 16 years we have been governed by a clown, but more important still is the undeniable fact that in an official, signed and rubber-stamped document from the American embassy in Italy, it says that we are governed by an inept, not very clear thinking dandy who is unsuitable to govern a country, is unable to get anything done and believes himself to be Putin’s spokesman.
Silviolo, the International midget
The fact that this is what the American embassy is telling that country’s government is quite obvious and all of this has some pretty serious implications, but why? Well, because it shows that, notwithstanding the patina and the decorum of these international gatherings where hugs and kisses are the order of the day, internationally speaking everyone has been able to judge our country, and it has been judged in terms of this little puppet called Silvio! It is also interesting to note the psychological profiles prepared regarding two individuals like Berlusconi and Putin. The latter is described as the Alpha-dog, a dominant male whose relationship with Medvedev is like that between Batman and Robin, but then the same could be said of the relationship between Putin and Berlusconi. Berlusconi is not and has never been top-dog, even though it is somewhat of a trademark of a midget to blow himself up, to use any means to appear important. Berlusconi has always been No.2, never No.1, always a supporting actor, never a main role player. He has always selected a powerful man to cling to and then proceeded to play second fiddle, lived in that individual’s shadow. He did this with Licio Gelli, he did it with Bettino Craxi and he did it with George Bush and when Bush disappeared from the scene, he proceeded to latch onto Putin. He is always someone’s No.2, there’s always the pronoun “Il” (The), where he is the “I” but the “L” is the one that rules the roost. This is folklore, but this is the image of Italy abroad, this is Italy’s calling card abroad and the danger that this man represents is far more obvious to people abroad than it is to us here in Italy. At some point we’ll say: why didn’t they warn us sooner? It would have helped us immensely! No, diplomacy is called diplomacy precisely because certain things are never said in public, indeed they cannot be said in public. Relations between countries are one thing, but the opinions of those countries’ representatives with regard to their colleagues are an entirely different matter altogether.
That is why the Americans speak ill of Berlusconi in public while speaking well of him in public, at least until Obama arrived on the scene who, we have noticed, has received all of the other foreign heads of State at least 3 or 4 times, but the one that has been received the least is none other than ours. That is because a little midget like our very own Berlusconi has always been very useful to the Americans when it came to living credence to Bush’s policies, but why? Well, because in essence, he was Bush’s spokesman in Europe, a continent that sided virtually unanimously in favour of the war in Iraq and at least partly in favour of the war in Afghanistan although, after 11 September, it became far more difficult to oppose based on the information available. So it was obvious that Bush would use our little midget to dissolve the unity of the European continent and, indeed, it was precisely the Berlusconi – Aznar duo that opposed the non-interventionist German and French front and form a united front with the English, who have traditionally been America’s closest ally in Europe.
So they used Berlusconi without even having to tell him what to do since this is his natural tendency anyway. They knew that it would be enough to provide him with the odd pat on the shoulder, the odd photograph with him standing next to Bush, the odd dubious visit to the ranch, the odd ego-boosting visit to the White House and the odd tartlet in the oval office, after which he would do whatever the Americans wanted without even being asked. Now that the American politicians no longer need him to break down European unity because they have some far more serious internal problems to deal with at the moment, he no longer has any influence whatsoever, he has become useless and is therefore become a joke at the international gatherings, the somewhat brain-dead old man that you joke about and that, if anything, is good for a few laughs with his dirty jokes that he has told at all the previous gatherings and that only Obama laughs at, mainly because he is a newcomer to the group.
Interesting to note is that anyone who follows International politics knows all about these events of the past 15 years. The Italians fall into one of two categories, namely the believers, those who have believed for the past 15 years that this man is the only obstacle against the spread of communism, a bastion if you will, and a champion of the free market and of the values of the centre-right, an inescapable point of reference for the conservative and liberal democrat movements of the world, as well as the beating heart of the European popular party and the standard bearer of the values of God, Country and Family, and suchlike, and then there are those that instead believe what they see and what they know. These may be right or left wingers or middle-of-the-road, but they have always known that this guy is a black sheep and a good-for-nothing scoundrel.
Amongst those who know, there are two sub-species: those who have always spoken out and written about him and those who have simply known and done nothing about it. When we finally manage to rid ourselves of him, and I believe it will happen very soon, we will see what is happening with today’s youngsters when they watch the late-night shows on the History Channel or on the RAI 3 programme called “Correva l’anno” and see the slightly speeded-up images showing Mussolini in Palazzo Venezia or Hitler at the Reichstadt and they ask themselves: how come such ridiculous, awkward and clown-like men were allowed to hold their countries hostage, Hitler for ten years and an arsehole like Mussolini for 21 years? How could so many people be taken in by these men. By the way, it landed up being more that 21 years because then came postscript, namely the Public Republic of Salò, which went on for another few months, but how is it possible that they took such dangerous yet ridiculous individuals so seriously? If we look at the Ridolini-type images of these two dictators, the first question that springs to mind is: why were all these people out in the streets applauding these men? The same thing will happen in a couple of years, when we look back on this little gentleman of ours who goes around completely re-built, wearing his perfectly formed Big Jim or Ken-type bitumen helmet and his paunch held back by a corset and now and again with his eyes shut because they forgot to wind him up via the A sharp that, like a guitar, he keeps behind his ear, a man who talks shit from morning to night, who threatens to pinch the ladies backsides just after a major earthquake has struck. A man who will do pretty much anything, who hands out Milan Soccer team watches at G8 international leaders’ gatherings, how can such a man have been taken seriously by millions of Italians?
The answer will be the same as that given in the past because Mussolini also managed to hold on to power for so long and with such popularity. Also keep in mind that Mussolini was not Berlusconi. Mussolini was an excellent journalist who wrote excellently. He was a cultured man, very capable politically and his governments were made up of some of the best people of Italian society, including lawyers, economists, philosophers, cultural experts, fascists and nationalists, people like Gentile, like Balbo, like Bottai, like Stefani, like Alfredo Rocco, like Giovanni Gentile, not people like Gasparri, Capezzone, Bondi, Mara Carfagna and suchlike. As a matter of fact, they left behind them certain things that exist to this very day. Fortunately today’s guys won’t leave diddley-squat behind them except perhaps the first stone of the Messina Straits bridge, which has already been laid about fifteen times, so at least we are at least 15 stones closer to Messina.
The truth is that this gentleman has been taken very, very seriously indeed by this Country’s management class, particularly those that control the media (including himself), so for the past twenty years we have lived in a kind of fairy tale in which Il Corriere della Sera, which is now having great fun simply because it is so easy to do so, screams “Vain, tired, ineffective leader who appears to be Putin’s spokesman” and includes an editorial, penned by Franco Venturini, which reveals the ridiculousness of our foreign policy and the inconsistency of our political influence abroad. Yet for the past 15 years they have been saying the exact opposite, namely that foreign policy is one of Berlusconi’s major strengths. How many times has the newspaper allowed its journalists to credit Berlusconi with having single-handedly prevented war breaking out between Russia and Georgia? How many times have they said that Berlusconi was a major role-player in improving relations between Russia and America? How many times have they allowed him to get away with saying and doing the most outrageous things and then downplaying and minimising them? That is the problem. The problem is that if, during the past 15 years, the television stations and the newspapers had spoken about the things that anyone with two eyes and half a brain could clearly see and know, and if they had made that their official line and taken Berlusconi to task because he is a man that cannot be taken seriously anyway and the worst favour that you can do for him is to actually take him seriously then, perhaps, covered by this aura of ridiculousness rather than one of propriety and credibility, we would already have been long rid of him, but why? Well, because when the Italians vote, they always tend to back the winner, but when they begin to smell the stench of death or realise that their candidate is starting to look a little shaky, they take him down. They won’t willingly vote for someone ridiculous who seems to have reached the end of the road. The problem is that the Italian conformist intelligentsia image, most of the Italian press with a few notable exceptions, and the television stations, again with two or three notable exceptions, have in recent years shown a very different picture of the man who is now burned out, so now they are now suddenly taking great pleasure in writing about this.
The latecomers
Did it really need to take 15 years? Did we really need wait for the No.2 at the American embassy to say that Berlusconi is a vain, tired, ineffective leader who appears to be Putin’s spokesman? What we actually wrote is in fact very little, and I’ve got it here to remind me. Every now and again I would get the urge to make a note of the situation as is was at the time, so just before the 2006 elections, the ones that Berlusconi lost, albeit by very little, I wrote a book together with Peter Gomez, entitled “Le mille balle blu” (the thousand blues), to gather and catalogue the huge quantity of bullshit that this man had managed to say in the first twelve years of his political career, and that we hoped would be the last.
There was one chapter, entitled The Gran Turismo President, which contained all the balls-ups that he said and did abroad, just as soon as he set foot in any Country. The only difference being that he left an indelible mark on every foreign country he visited, but why? Well, because for days on end, the newspapers were saying: who the hell is this guy? Where does he come from? How the hell could the Italians ever vote him in? How the hell do they manage to live with him? Aren’t they in the least embarrassed about having this travelling joke representing them? Why? Well, because all the newspapers and television stations abroad have one major flaw in that they are not on Berlusconi’s side, so they are free to write about whatever they see, something that our television stations and newspapers have never been allowed to do, so that is why he had such a terrible reputation with the foreign press and such an excellent reputation with the Italian press. That is also why he was obliged to claim that the international press was serving the interests of communism, or that foreign press correspondents in Italy only read La Repubblica and L’Unità, and perhaps now also Il Fatto Quotidiano, when the truth is that they don’t have to read anything, all they have to do is look around them, except that, unlike our local newspapers, they are not influenced by their proprietors or their advertisers and are therefore free to call a spade a spade and label him as a clown!
Can you imagine, when he went to England and paid a visit to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he had the gall to state that she was still “a bit of allright!” When the interpreters translated his comment “a bit of allright” in reference to a Lady who was ill on top of it all, the British people began asking themselves who the hell this man thought he was and when they discovered that he was the head of our Government, they began to get concerned about us as a people! Just imagine what it was like when, at the FAO summit, he asked the President of Togo, Gnassingbe’, who was explaining the plight of Malawi with its 13 million people who were dying of starvation, to please cut his address short because “although it is not such a tragedy, we are also hungry!” At the FAO summit on world hunger, he then proceeded to add that: “thanks for being here with us, lunch is served. I hope that the menu is entirely Italian because then you will surely be satisfied”, after which he then cornered the Director of the FAO, the Senegalese Diouf, and told him that he needed to lose some weight! Then there are all the attacks on Europe by a head of State of a European Country who, at a certain point, was even President of the European Union for 6 months between July and December 2003, a period that was inaugurated by the Nazi Chief’s outburst against the German socialist, Schultz, and then began the games.
What about when he said to German Chancellor Schroeder: “Let’s talk about women, seeing that you are the expert” with the man’s wife present? On one particular visit to Russia, one of many, they took him to visit one of the Merloni plants a few kilometres outside Moscow, he was with Putin at the time, the next day a reporter wrote in the Kommerzant daily that the visit took place in Lipetz, some 400 kilometres south of Moscow. “The Italian Premier was particularly excited and he clearly had one main objective in mind. He wouldn’t be satisfied unless he managed to get up close and personal with a group of female workers and, turning to Putin, he said: I want kiss the best and most beautiful female worker. He had already identified his victim and so he moved in on a woman with a body the size of Sardinia. With his whole body, he made the same gesture used by thugs in dark alleyways when they are busy bothering a young girl on her way back home. She managed to sidestep him, but obviously this was not the first time that Mister Berlusconi has had to deal with such a quick move – something that even the Kommerzant reporter had already noted. With two quick paces he got to the lady and shamelessly began kissing her on the face – imagine all that make-up – and shook the worker while laughing, almost as if he was trying to get her down onto the ground. The only thing the poor woman could do was to refuse to acknowledge his kisses. Putin just watched this spectacle, absolutely motionless and transfixed, almost as if he could no longer take his good friend Silvio’s crude games”. So this is what his international missions are all about, the ones that are supposedly aimed at improving Italy’s image abroad.
On another occasion, when Yeltzin was still in power, Berlusconi himself states that: “I once spoke to Yeltzin for 25 minutes about the CSCE - the European security and co-operation conference that he knew nothing whatsoever about. Yeltzin was complaining that Europe was not helping him to resolve the Chechnya crisis via the CSCE, and all the while I was saying to myself: heaven alone knows what he is talking about. He eventually stopped talking and then there was silence, until the Swede Bilt intervened to break the embarrassment, saying o he turned towards me and, feeling the Italian flags waving behind me, I realised that I couldn’t embarrass my own Country, so I proceeded to talk about Chechnya, Europe and war in general for 25 minutes. Yet he doesn’t even know where the hell Chechnya is in the first place. In the end. Mitterrand said: okay, so the matter is now in your hands. Whose precisely? So immediately after dinner I took Felipe Gonzales aside and asked him: do you know what this bloody CSCE is? He began to laugh uncontrollably and landed up sitting on the floor, so much so that I had to help him back onto his feet”. A CSCE summit had been held yet Berlusconi didn’t have the foggiest idea what the CSCE was and, worst of all, he then showed his ignorance reducing everyone to laughter, after which he proceeds to tell everyone about this to put on a good show!!
Every now and again he loses it, claiming that no one else in the world who could claim to be as good as he is, no politician who has the same background as him and, from a personal point of view, he is the only one who has such an advantage! When I sit next to some or other Prime Minister or Head of State, there is always someone who wants to prove that he is better than the rest, and that someone is not me, because my cleverness is unquestionable and the others can only dream of having my human abilities and my background. It is they who have yet to prove themselves!
Global insults
On another occasion, he greeted heads of State and government leaders in Brussels at the end of a meeting of State and Government leaders, and Ciampi was absent that day, so he greeted them on Ciampi’s behalf, in English and, as we all know, speaking in unknown languages is typical of not only of Berlusconi, but also of someone who is possessed. He said, and I quote, “I give you the salutation of my President of the republic”. The best man also happens to be a multilingual cosmopolitan and speaks English like Cementano, “svalutation” and all, and “salutation” is his way of greeting! Then there is his memorable comment to Rasmussen, the Dane who had come to visit him in Rome and Berlusconi said: but you’re much better looking than Cacciari, I’ll introduce you to my wife! Thus he officially informed the world about what was being said about his wife, who was still living with him at the time, namely that she was also having it off with Cacciari. Rasmussen couldn’t believe what he was hearing via the simultaneous interpreter, he thought that there was some sort of interference, little did he know that this was precisely what Berlusconi had said. Just imagine the embarrassment that he caused to the poor Finnish President Alonen by revealing that he had had to brush up on his playboy skills and court Ms. Alonen in order to get the European Food Agency away from Finland and into Italy’s hands, precisely to Parma. Ms. Alonen was obliged to explain to the European Parliament that nothing untoward had happened and that Berlusconi had made it all up, but why? Well, because everyone wanted to know what had possessed her to cede a Finnish food agency to Italy in exchange for a night of loving, and that with a guy like Berlusconi of all people!
So Berlusconi tried to remedy the gaffe by saying that it was entirely logical to give a food agency to Italy because at least Italy had an excellent cuisine, while in Finland, what would these unfortunates get to eat? Smoked reindeer ham, how awful is that. The result? In a fit of pique, Finnish farmers blocked the importation of Italian food products, which resulted in a trade crisis between Italy and Finland. Has everyone forgotten about these marvellous episodes? And then, while not having remedied that second gaffe in any way, Berlusconi immediately made yet another one. At a meeting of the Forza Italia party leadership, he proceeded to show a blow-up of the beautiful Ms. Alonen and said: but have you taken a good look at this woman’s face? Do you honestly believe I would ever start courting someone with a face like hers? Thus he also hit Finland with an ugly stick and sorted that out as well, given that there are only a few Countries left that still had some respect for us.
There is certainly more than enough choice when it comes to describing everything that he has managed to do every time he has gone beyond the pale, because it truly in the field of foreign affairs that our little expert unfailingly outdoes himself. Not to mention what he said upon his return from a visit to Iraq, namely that: life in Iraq is returning to normal, although there are still some problems, like the traffic lights that don’t work in Baghdad. Bloody hell, there were 100 or 200 people dying every day due to attacks, kamikazes blowing themselves up all over the place, kidnappings and ongoing civil war, yet he chooses to put faulty traffic lights at the top of his list of problems. That must be why the Americans left Iraq, because of the unbelievable traffic jams, like in the Palermo of the Johnny Stecchino films, the main problem is the traffic!
This is the kind of things that he has managed to do and say over the past 15 years, yet now it is up to the No.2 at the American embassy to explain to us who have been lumbered with him for the past 15 years that he is a vain, tired and ineffective leader, to which we could add a number of other adjectives too, should we so wish. The lady has been too kind! But beware, because ridiculous things are one matter while serious things are totally another. The Americans have realised that even the Prime Minister’s private weaknesses have a certain public significance. The folklore about him and Gheddaffi is not merely folklore, it is all about business deals for Berlusconi himself and involves our Country’s dependence on a totally unreliable regime such as that in Libya and our Country’s dependence on another Country like Russia, which goes way beyond the folklore about Berlusconi wearing a furry hat at a Dacia with Putin, dependence on a Country like Russia, which we are sponsoring for personal business interests since there can be no other reason for us to do so. Russia, which the diplomats describe as a Mafia State, a Country that is now completely in the hands of organised crime syndicates and surprise, surprise, with all the Countries to choose from, guess which one our Country has chosen to adopt as our preferred partner? Obviously the other Mafia State, who else! So let’s beware of the difference between mere folklore and serious, indeed very serious matters that we had all the tools to note. Many people have pretended not to notice while others have been misled by the media that has been taking this vain, tired and ineffective leader of ours, a man who appears to be a spokesman for Putin, seriously for the past 15 years and passed him off as the leader of moderates and liberals.
So what do you think will be the next step? What will happen when Wikileaks begins to also reveal the Russian and Libyan diplomatic dossiers, as they will sooner or later, and we also discover that also in Libya and in Russia our esteemed leader is considered to be a clown and that even Putin and Gheddaffi, who publicly revere Berlusconi, privately see him for what he is, because neither Gheddaffi nor Putin are stupid, they may well be many other things, but certainly not stupid. So once it comes out that even Putin and Gheddaffi think he is a clown, then there will only be one organisation that will still take him seriously, namely the Democratic Party, the one that, in a previous re-incarnation, had gone so far as to mistake him for one of the founding fathers, thanks to D’Alema and Marini first, and Veltroni later and so, for 15 years, instead of isolating him like a foreign body, like a ridiculous little man, indeed tragically ridiculous given the damage that he has done to this Country, they continued to urge him to introduce reforms and elevate him to the status of reformer rather than handling him as he should have been handled. This, in my opinion, together with his monopoly on the media, is the other reason why this ridiculous little man is still at Palazzo Chigi. (marco Travaglio on Beppe Grillo's blog)
Long but interesting:Government illegal behaviour
Good day and a happy New Year to you all. This is the second episode recorded on Christmas Eve and is therefore based on the situation as it stands. I don’t know what will be going on today, namely 3rd January, although I have a pretty good idea, but this is nevertheless a good opportunity to look back a bit, as we did last week, so perhaps it’s a good time to do a bit of a summary of the scandals that are hovering like a toxic cloud around the Berlusconi Government, a government that has been battered by scandal in the past year and has lost a number of its members who have been compromised by those scandals, except of course for the Prime Minister himself who is the most compromised of all but continues to cling doggedly to his post, so let’s see precisely who is governing us, we hope for not much longer.
The accused Premier of an accused government
As regards Berlusconi, we all know that within days the Constitutional Court is due to issue its ruling on the constitutionality or otherwise of the legitimate impediment legislation, and we hope that this time it goes our way. Should the decision go Berlusconi’s way, he could then continue to wipe his arse until October on the trials that are underway in Milan, in which he stands accused in the Mills trial of bribing a judge and in the Mediaset trial for financial fraud, undue appropriation and false accounting, offences that have all but been cancelled by statute barring, as well as the Media Trade trial for the same offences.
Then there is also an inquiry underway in Rome concerning the pressure, violence and threats made against the State at the time, namely two years ago against Agcom and RAI in order to get the Anno Zero programme shut down, as well as investigations that don’t involve him directly, like the Rubi scandal. Furthermore, we are also still awaiting the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate’s decision with regard to Berlusconi’s request to archive the case concerning his role as the carrier of the secret recording of Fassino’s telephone conversation with Consorte, which the company that made the recording sent to Silvio Berlusconi via his brother Paolo and which was subsequently divulged in one of Il Giornale’s reports by Gianluigi Nuzzi, published in January 2006 slap bang in the middle of the election campaign.
That’s it for Berlusconi, however, should the Constitutional Court instead rule that legitimate impediment legislation is unconstitutional, then Berlusconi would immediately find himself back in Court having to defend himself. Should Berlusconi be kicked out as Prime Minister, then he would have to defend himself in Court in any event, irrespective of whether the legitimate impediment legislation is ruled to be constitutional or unconstitutional, because he would lose the right the moment he is no longer a member of the government.
Then there’s Minister Fitto, who had been remanded for trial for corruption and other extremely serious crimes in Bari: there are two cases pending in which he faces charges of corruption, conspiracy to commit a crime, fraud and various other charges.
Then there’s also Minister Bossi, who already has a final conviction for illegal funding in the Enimont case and another for pushing the Party of Love and urging his activists to go house to house and flush out members of Alleanza Nazionale, whom he called fascists at the time, and he has only been saved from prosecution in the Green-shirts case thanks to the immunity vote by Minister Maroni, who was himself convicted for resisting arrest and attacking a public official.
Minister Calderoli himself was originally facing charges of involvement in the matter of certain funds received by Giampiero Fiorani, a case that was subsequently archived, but he is currently facing an individual no-confidence motion in Parliament, which we spoke about last week, for having surreptitiously slipped a clause that decriminalised the establishment of a paramilitary organisation for political purposes into the a new military regulation code in the Omnibus Decree.
Minister Matteoli is currently facing prosecution in Livorno on charges of aiding and abetting a former Prefect, whom he is accused of having warned that he (the prefect) was under investigation and that his telephone conversations were being monitored in terms of an investigation into building regulation offences on the Island of Elba.
Then we mustn’t forget Minister Bondi, who is also facing an individual no-confidence motion due to a number of scandals involving him, including allegations that he placed his companion’s husband, the Hon. Rapetti (that’s her surname, not his) as a consultant for the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, that he organised a job for Rapetti’s son in a film testing centre within the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, in a body that is funded by the Ministry itself, that he granted funding for the Theatre and even the town band of Novi Ligure, his companion’s town of birth, and Fivizzano, Bondi’s own town of birth, that he even went so far as to create fake special film awards in Venice just in order to satisfy the aspirations of film producers, actresses and, in particular, the aspirations of Michelle Bonev, a Bulgarian woman who is said to be very close to not only the Bulgarian Premier, but also our very own Prime Minister, and that his total incompetence is proven by the building collapses in Pompeii and the overall management of the Country’s cultural assets.
Just in passing, Bondi also appointed Vittorio Sgarbi as Superintendent of Venice, a man who was subsequently finally convicted for fraud committed against the very same Superintendent’s Department of Venice.
What about Michela Vittoria Brambilla, who is under investigation by the Auditor General for allegedly having sorted out various friends and relatives, as well as a number of managers of her “Circoli della Libertà” political lobbies by giving them important posts within the Ministry of Tourism and the investigations are currently focusing on whether these incredible actions of hers actually constitute fraud against the state.
As regards Mara Carfagna, we’re not going to dwell on her background. She was appointed as Minister for Equal Opportunity, then she threatened to resign because the party was in illegal hands down in Naples, or so she claimed, but then we don’t know what happened because she swallowed her words and is still appointed as Minister.
Then there are all those that have gone, including Brancher who was convicted for having accepted money from Fiorani, who was launching a take-over bid for the Antonveneta bank, and was (Brancher) sentenced this summer to serve two years behind bars.
Then there was Bertolaso who, facing accusations of corruption in the “clique” case and of involvement in the refuse scandal in Naples, left his post and made way for Prefect Franco Gabrielli, who promptly made his mark for his admirable management of the so-called snow emergency, that apparently unforeseeable event that occurred on Christmas Eve when it snowed in Italy, catching the Civil Defence Department entirely unawares as usual, after all, who would have thought that it would snow on Christmas Eve? As it happens, Gabrielli stated that the Italian people were to blame, not the institution of course. Gabrielli had already distinguished himself as Prefect of L’Aquila for having brilliantly seized the wheelbarrows that the citizens were using to remove the rubble that the Civil Defence Department had failed to remove from the old town centre since the earthquake two years earlier. Subversive wheelbarrows apparently!
Tremonti has only one close collaborator, a certain individual from Milan who is under investigation in terms of a very recent inquiry. Then there’s Minister Rotondi, whom Carlo Tecce discussed in an article in Il Fatto Quotidiano, in which he told of the Minister for Programme Implementation’s special attention for his friends and for Avellino, his birthplace, even though he was elected in the Milan constituency. So the newly appointed Secretary of the Christian Democrat Party and Programme Implementation Minister hasn’t forgotten his old school buddies, family friends and the faithful party leaders and members, his party. For a useless Ministry that costs us 8 million Euro per year and has an absenteeism rate of 52%, as revealed by the data provided by his colleague Brunetta, Rotondi has surrounded himself with 17 people, many of them from Avellino just like him, to provide him with highly professional consultancy services, apparently experts in a variety of fields and study researchers costing some 170-thousand Euro in 2010 alone. The person he approached for legal advice is none other than an Augusto Pistolesi, an old school buddy, while for advice on government policy regarding European integration, a vital matter, he chose Rosella Caputo, wife of Raffaele, who is a dentist and also just happens to be a former school buddy, at 18-thousand Euro, what luck it is to have been in the same class as Rotondi at school!
The concealed pardon
A dual contract worth 12-thousand Euro granted to a woman by the name of Roberta Piano, daughter of Avellino Town Secretary, who was charged with undertaking a study of the main government policies adopted by the executive as regards relations with the European Countries, you can just imagine what an earth-shattering study that must have turned out to be! Former business manager of Avellino Calcio, Antonio Eder Pirrello, was paid 7-thousand Euro to examine the provisions adopted and the results achieved via these actions? Enough said! Not an easy examination judging by the title. “Mbei coglioni” as they say in Rome, what a vital commission for such a high-brow concept! The Christian Democratic Party may be a small party, but they hold a majority in the Ministry for Programme Implementation. You remember Fausto Sacco, former Christian Democrat self-government co-ordinator for Avellino? Helmet on and interviewed on his scooter, he was organising the Balena Bianca journalists award, Rotondi’s “Balena” naturally, an event designed to focus attention on editorial journalists running the National newspapers and awarded by an eminent jury panel. Sacco made do with the 6-thousand Euro he was paid for monitoring government policy, who knows what the difference is between him and the other appointees, but he monitors government activity, so he must have a lot of free time on his hands!
Then let’s not forget about Sacco’s superior, former Christian Democrat Secretary for self-government, Gianfranco Picariello, paid 10-thousand Euro for examining tourism-related problems and for re-launching development. The plans are in place, as is the government, more or less, concludes Carlo Tecce, because this gentleman is still in his Ministerial post and no one has yet called him to account.
Then there are the Undersecretaries, although for obvious reasons we can only look at some of the main ones. Minister Scotti, who was one of the players of the First Republic, faced some legal woes that were subsequently sorted out, as well as an unresolved problem with the Auditor General’s Department regarding certain slush funds within the secret services. He is a former Minister of Internal Affairs. Then there’s Gianni Letta who, to all intents and purposes, is still under investigation in Lago Negro in terms of an investigation instituted at the time by Woodcock into tenders for canteen and catering services at the foreign refugee camps, where there was talk of favouritism being shown towards companies that were close to “Comunione e Liberazione”, to the people’s movement and to the Steering Committee.
Then there’s Caliendo, accused of being a member of the P3, together with Dell’Utri and Verdini who, of course, is still working as National co-ordinator of the Pdl and Caliendo is also Undersecretary for Justice, notwithstanding the fact that he stands accused of involvement in the P3, an organisation that was specifically set up to influence court decisions and, more specifically, Constitutional Court rulings at the time of its “yes” or “no” to the Alfano Bill.
Then there’s Castelli, who was convicted and ordered by the Auditor General’s Department to reimburse the State for certain inexplicable and convenient little consultancy fees paid out to his friends while he was Minister of Justice, the most famous of which was a consultancy fee paid to a fishmonger from his town of birth who was supposedly charged with investigating the construction of prisons. As a matter of fact, those famous new prisons have never been built and, just recently, the government indeed approved yet another little concealed pardon that allows detainees to serve out the last year of their prison sentence in the form of house arrest, this in a Country where the last few years of prison time are already being served in the form of house arrest under the auspices of social services. So now they will get to spend another year of their sentences at home, out of prison, meaning that someone originally sentenced to spend 4 years in jail will never see the inside of a prison if the crime was committed prior to 2006, in other words prior to the pardon that reduced his sentence by three years. 4 plus 3 equals seven, so anyone sentenced to anything up to 7 years of imprisonment will never actually see the inside of any jail.
As a result, since mid-December a few thousand prison inmates have been released in an attempt to overcome the problem of overcrowding in our prisons, a problem that was supposedly going to be sorted out by building new prisons. However, notwithstanding Castelli, Mastella and Alfano’s ongoing promises, we see no new prisons being built and, therefore, the so-called “government of security and zero-tolerance” continues to address the prison overcrowding problem by periodically releasing criminals back onto our streets!
Then there is also our old friend Cosentino who resigned from his post as Undersecretary because he was under investigation for alleged Camorra-related activities. As if that wasn’t enough, he was recently officially charged with favouring the Camorra by purposely letting the refuse emergency in Naples get totally out of hand, thus identifying him as one of the main individuals responsible for the failure to dispose of refuse in order to favour Camorra members and associated companies.
Yet this is the very same government that now demands that the average man in the street, the immigrants and the students show more respect for the law, a government that itself ignores the law yet expects others to respect it and is then surprised when everyone else breaks the law. Perhaps, sooner or later they will realise that they cannot continue to expert citizens to show more respect than that shown by the very people that make the laws.
The accused Premier of an accused government
As regards Berlusconi, we all know that within days the Constitutional Court is due to issue its ruling on the constitutionality or otherwise of the legitimate impediment legislation, and we hope that this time it goes our way. Should the decision go Berlusconi’s way, he could then continue to wipe his arse until October on the trials that are underway in Milan, in which he stands accused in the Mills trial of bribing a judge and in the Mediaset trial for financial fraud, undue appropriation and false accounting, offences that have all but been cancelled by statute barring, as well as the Media Trade trial for the same offences.
Then there is also an inquiry underway in Rome concerning the pressure, violence and threats made against the State at the time, namely two years ago against Agcom and RAI in order to get the Anno Zero programme shut down, as well as investigations that don’t involve him directly, like the Rubi scandal. Furthermore, we are also still awaiting the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate’s decision with regard to Berlusconi’s request to archive the case concerning his role as the carrier of the secret recording of Fassino’s telephone conversation with Consorte, which the company that made the recording sent to Silvio Berlusconi via his brother Paolo and which was subsequently divulged in one of Il Giornale’s reports by Gianluigi Nuzzi, published in January 2006 slap bang in the middle of the election campaign.
That’s it for Berlusconi, however, should the Constitutional Court instead rule that legitimate impediment legislation is unconstitutional, then Berlusconi would immediately find himself back in Court having to defend himself. Should Berlusconi be kicked out as Prime Minister, then he would have to defend himself in Court in any event, irrespective of whether the legitimate impediment legislation is ruled to be constitutional or unconstitutional, because he would lose the right the moment he is no longer a member of the government.
Then there’s Minister Fitto, who had been remanded for trial for corruption and other extremely serious crimes in Bari: there are two cases pending in which he faces charges of corruption, conspiracy to commit a crime, fraud and various other charges.
Then there’s also Minister Bossi, who already has a final conviction for illegal funding in the Enimont case and another for pushing the Party of Love and urging his activists to go house to house and flush out members of Alleanza Nazionale, whom he called fascists at the time, and he has only been saved from prosecution in the Green-shirts case thanks to the immunity vote by Minister Maroni, who was himself convicted for resisting arrest and attacking a public official.
Minister Calderoli himself was originally facing charges of involvement in the matter of certain funds received by Giampiero Fiorani, a case that was subsequently archived, but he is currently facing an individual no-confidence motion in Parliament, which we spoke about last week, for having surreptitiously slipped a clause that decriminalised the establishment of a paramilitary organisation for political purposes into the a new military regulation code in the Omnibus Decree.
Minister Matteoli is currently facing prosecution in Livorno on charges of aiding and abetting a former Prefect, whom he is accused of having warned that he (the prefect) was under investigation and that his telephone conversations were being monitored in terms of an investigation into building regulation offences on the Island of Elba.
Then we mustn’t forget Minister Bondi, who is also facing an individual no-confidence motion due to a number of scandals involving him, including allegations that he placed his companion’s husband, the Hon. Rapetti (that’s her surname, not his) as a consultant for the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, that he organised a job for Rapetti’s son in a film testing centre within the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, in a body that is funded by the Ministry itself, that he granted funding for the Theatre and even the town band of Novi Ligure, his companion’s town of birth, and Fivizzano, Bondi’s own town of birth, that he even went so far as to create fake special film awards in Venice just in order to satisfy the aspirations of film producers, actresses and, in particular, the aspirations of Michelle Bonev, a Bulgarian woman who is said to be very close to not only the Bulgarian Premier, but also our very own Prime Minister, and that his total incompetence is proven by the building collapses in Pompeii and the overall management of the Country’s cultural assets.
Just in passing, Bondi also appointed Vittorio Sgarbi as Superintendent of Venice, a man who was subsequently finally convicted for fraud committed against the very same Superintendent’s Department of Venice.
What about Michela Vittoria Brambilla, who is under investigation by the Auditor General for allegedly having sorted out various friends and relatives, as well as a number of managers of her “Circoli della Libertà” political lobbies by giving them important posts within the Ministry of Tourism and the investigations are currently focusing on whether these incredible actions of hers actually constitute fraud against the state.
As regards Mara Carfagna, we’re not going to dwell on her background. She was appointed as Minister for Equal Opportunity, then she threatened to resign because the party was in illegal hands down in Naples, or so she claimed, but then we don’t know what happened because she swallowed her words and is still appointed as Minister.
Then there are all those that have gone, including Brancher who was convicted for having accepted money from Fiorani, who was launching a take-over bid for the Antonveneta bank, and was (Brancher) sentenced this summer to serve two years behind bars.
Then there was Bertolaso who, facing accusations of corruption in the “clique” case and of involvement in the refuse scandal in Naples, left his post and made way for Prefect Franco Gabrielli, who promptly made his mark for his admirable management of the so-called snow emergency, that apparently unforeseeable event that occurred on Christmas Eve when it snowed in Italy, catching the Civil Defence Department entirely unawares as usual, after all, who would have thought that it would snow on Christmas Eve? As it happens, Gabrielli stated that the Italian people were to blame, not the institution of course. Gabrielli had already distinguished himself as Prefect of L’Aquila for having brilliantly seized the wheelbarrows that the citizens were using to remove the rubble that the Civil Defence Department had failed to remove from the old town centre since the earthquake two years earlier. Subversive wheelbarrows apparently!
Tremonti has only one close collaborator, a certain individual from Milan who is under investigation in terms of a very recent inquiry. Then there’s Minister Rotondi, whom Carlo Tecce discussed in an article in Il Fatto Quotidiano, in which he told of the Minister for Programme Implementation’s special attention for his friends and for Avellino, his birthplace, even though he was elected in the Milan constituency. So the newly appointed Secretary of the Christian Democrat Party and Programme Implementation Minister hasn’t forgotten his old school buddies, family friends and the faithful party leaders and members, his party. For a useless Ministry that costs us 8 million Euro per year and has an absenteeism rate of 52%, as revealed by the data provided by his colleague Brunetta, Rotondi has surrounded himself with 17 people, many of them from Avellino just like him, to provide him with highly professional consultancy services, apparently experts in a variety of fields and study researchers costing some 170-thousand Euro in 2010 alone. The person he approached for legal advice is none other than an Augusto Pistolesi, an old school buddy, while for advice on government policy regarding European integration, a vital matter, he chose Rosella Caputo, wife of Raffaele, who is a dentist and also just happens to be a former school buddy, at 18-thousand Euro, what luck it is to have been in the same class as Rotondi at school!
The concealed pardon
A dual contract worth 12-thousand Euro granted to a woman by the name of Roberta Piano, daughter of Avellino Town Secretary, who was charged with undertaking a study of the main government policies adopted by the executive as regards relations with the European Countries, you can just imagine what an earth-shattering study that must have turned out to be! Former business manager of Avellino Calcio, Antonio Eder Pirrello, was paid 7-thousand Euro to examine the provisions adopted and the results achieved via these actions? Enough said! Not an easy examination judging by the title. “Mbei coglioni” as they say in Rome, what a vital commission for such a high-brow concept! The Christian Democratic Party may be a small party, but they hold a majority in the Ministry for Programme Implementation. You remember Fausto Sacco, former Christian Democrat self-government co-ordinator for Avellino? Helmet on and interviewed on his scooter, he was organising the Balena Bianca journalists award, Rotondi’s “Balena” naturally, an event designed to focus attention on editorial journalists running the National newspapers and awarded by an eminent jury panel. Sacco made do with the 6-thousand Euro he was paid for monitoring government policy, who knows what the difference is between him and the other appointees, but he monitors government activity, so he must have a lot of free time on his hands!
Then let’s not forget about Sacco’s superior, former Christian Democrat Secretary for self-government, Gianfranco Picariello, paid 10-thousand Euro for examining tourism-related problems and for re-launching development. The plans are in place, as is the government, more or less, concludes Carlo Tecce, because this gentleman is still in his Ministerial post and no one has yet called him to account.
Then there are the Undersecretaries, although for obvious reasons we can only look at some of the main ones. Minister Scotti, who was one of the players of the First Republic, faced some legal woes that were subsequently sorted out, as well as an unresolved problem with the Auditor General’s Department regarding certain slush funds within the secret services. He is a former Minister of Internal Affairs. Then there’s Gianni Letta who, to all intents and purposes, is still under investigation in Lago Negro in terms of an investigation instituted at the time by Woodcock into tenders for canteen and catering services at the foreign refugee camps, where there was talk of favouritism being shown towards companies that were close to “Comunione e Liberazione”, to the people’s movement and to the Steering Committee.
Then there’s Caliendo, accused of being a member of the P3, together with Dell’Utri and Verdini who, of course, is still working as National co-ordinator of the Pdl and Caliendo is also Undersecretary for Justice, notwithstanding the fact that he stands accused of involvement in the P3, an organisation that was specifically set up to influence court decisions and, more specifically, Constitutional Court rulings at the time of its “yes” or “no” to the Alfano Bill.
Then there’s Castelli, who was convicted and ordered by the Auditor General’s Department to reimburse the State for certain inexplicable and convenient little consultancy fees paid out to his friends while he was Minister of Justice, the most famous of which was a consultancy fee paid to a fishmonger from his town of birth who was supposedly charged with investigating the construction of prisons. As a matter of fact, those famous new prisons have never been built and, just recently, the government indeed approved yet another little concealed pardon that allows detainees to serve out the last year of their prison sentence in the form of house arrest, this in a Country where the last few years of prison time are already being served in the form of house arrest under the auspices of social services. So now they will get to spend another year of their sentences at home, out of prison, meaning that someone originally sentenced to spend 4 years in jail will never see the inside of a prison if the crime was committed prior to 2006, in other words prior to the pardon that reduced his sentence by three years. 4 plus 3 equals seven, so anyone sentenced to anything up to 7 years of imprisonment will never actually see the inside of any jail.
As a result, since mid-December a few thousand prison inmates have been released in an attempt to overcome the problem of overcrowding in our prisons, a problem that was supposedly going to be sorted out by building new prisons. However, notwithstanding Castelli, Mastella and Alfano’s ongoing promises, we see no new prisons being built and, therefore, the so-called “government of security and zero-tolerance” continues to address the prison overcrowding problem by periodically releasing criminals back onto our streets!
Then there is also our old friend Cosentino who resigned from his post as Undersecretary because he was under investigation for alleged Camorra-related activities. As if that wasn’t enough, he was recently officially charged with favouring the Camorra by purposely letting the refuse emergency in Naples get totally out of hand, thus identifying him as one of the main individuals responsible for the failure to dispose of refuse in order to favour Camorra members and associated companies.
Yet this is the very same government that now demands that the average man in the street, the immigrants and the students show more respect for the law, a government that itself ignores the law yet expects others to respect it and is then surprised when everyone else breaks the law. Perhaps, sooner or later they will realise that they cannot continue to expert citizens to show more respect than that shown by the very people that make the laws.
Marcello Lonzi. Died in prison with 8 broken ribs and 2 holes in his head – heart attack.
The death penalty was abolished by the Constitution in 1948. However, every year more than 100 prisoners die in mysterious circumstances. For example, a young man can die from a heart attack in Livorno, according to the prison doctor, with eight broken ribs, two broken teeth, two holes in his head, with a fractured jaw, sternum and wrist. Heart attack, not as a result of being beaten up. Marcello Lonzi, a young man, was convicted of attempted theft and sentenced to 9 months in prison. His mother wants the truth and apologies from the State who should have taken care of the life of her son.
Interview with Maria Ciuffi, mother of Marcello Lonzi:
Eight broken ribs and two holes in his head – heart attack
”My name is Maria Ciuffi, I am the mother of Marcello Lonzi, who died on 11 July 2003 in the “Le Sughere” prison in Livorno. He was arrested for attempted theft and got 9 months in prison. After 4 months, my son was dead. No one told me. I was not notified by the Carabinieri nor by the Police, but just by my aunt on 12 July at 1:20 pm, when they came to the house to tell me, saying that my son was dead. I said: “It’s impossible. There’s a mistake!” I immediately ran to the prison and after an hour and a half – I remember it really well - in the hot sun – they came to tell me that my son was not there – but that they were already doing the autopsy on his body. Naturally I was in a great state, I was very confused and at that moment, I didn’t think to get hold of an expert to work for me. In September the PM – the Magistrate who carried out the investigation – came back from holiday and I was told that he died from a heart attack. However, when I saw him on 13 July in the coffin what didn’t seem right… what struck me straight away were the three marks that he had on his face and those three marks were very deep. Then friends wanted to put a bandana on him - a head band round his forehead, and we noticed that he had a hole, because a finger went inside. I waited for September/October to see if they would give me some responses, the magistrate was Dr Roberto Pennisi and he was still telling me that my son died of a heart attack or he died of stress, as it said on the pathologist’s report. In 2004, everything was finished with the death from natural causes: now I, in possession of the pathologist’s report, in which I can see it says that there are two broken ribs, a fractured jaw (left) the sternum fractured, a V-shaped excoriation, basically death from a heart attack, an infarct, seems strange to me. Anyway it was all concluded on 10 December. At that time I had the Naples lawyer Vittorio Trupiano, and at that point he said to me: “Look Maria, there’s nothing to be done, the only thing that could be done to get the case reopened is if you want, but however you are taking a risk, is to present a denunciation to the magistrate in Bologna, or Florence or Genoa.” OK, I went to Genoa, and I presented a denunciation to magistrate Pennisi. After about four months I was summoned to Genoa and Dr Fenizia of Genoa closed the denunciation to the magistrate Pennisi and had me reopen the case with the Livorno Prosecutors’ Office and he said that based on the photo, they have to do further investigations, because there was something that didn’t make sense.
In 2006, my son’s body was re-exhumed and they discover that it’s not two but eight ribs and there’s not just a single hole in his head but two holes, one of which was as deep as the bone and they even find the dark blue paint from the cell attached. They also find the left wrist fractured, that the first pathologist, Alessandro Bassi Luciani hadn’t talked about. At this point, talking to my lawyer, he said “Here there’s something that doesn’t make sense, these are blows”, because from the photo you can see they are blows, however, what I noticed is that they have closed the case again and now in 2010, unknown to us I was summoned for 25 May and instead on 19 May I was called by some Livorno journalist who said: “Signora Ciuffi, the Chief Procurator Francesco De Leo has asked for the case to be closed”. I said: “That’s impossible, because I have been summoned for 25 May by Dr Giaconi, the one carrying out the investigations”. However, unfortunately it was true.
Interview with Maria Ciuffi, mother of Marcello Lonzi:
Eight broken ribs and two holes in his head – heart attack
”My name is Maria Ciuffi, I am the mother of Marcello Lonzi, who died on 11 July 2003 in the “Le Sughere” prison in Livorno. He was arrested for attempted theft and got 9 months in prison. After 4 months, my son was dead. No one told me. I was not notified by the Carabinieri nor by the Police, but just by my aunt on 12 July at 1:20 pm, when they came to the house to tell me, saying that my son was dead. I said: “It’s impossible. There’s a mistake!” I immediately ran to the prison and after an hour and a half – I remember it really well - in the hot sun – they came to tell me that my son was not there – but that they were already doing the autopsy on his body. Naturally I was in a great state, I was very confused and at that moment, I didn’t think to get hold of an expert to work for me. In September the PM – the Magistrate who carried out the investigation – came back from holiday and I was told that he died from a heart attack. However, when I saw him on 13 July in the coffin what didn’t seem right… what struck me straight away were the three marks that he had on his face and those three marks were very deep. Then friends wanted to put a bandana on him - a head band round his forehead, and we noticed that he had a hole, because a finger went inside. I waited for September/October to see if they would give me some responses, the magistrate was Dr Roberto Pennisi and he was still telling me that my son died of a heart attack or he died of stress, as it said on the pathologist’s report. In 2004, everything was finished with the death from natural causes: now I, in possession of the pathologist’s report, in which I can see it says that there are two broken ribs, a fractured jaw (left) the sternum fractured, a V-shaped excoriation, basically death from a heart attack, an infarct, seems strange to me. Anyway it was all concluded on 10 December. At that time I had the Naples lawyer Vittorio Trupiano, and at that point he said to me: “Look Maria, there’s nothing to be done, the only thing that could be done to get the case reopened is if you want, but however you are taking a risk, is to present a denunciation to the magistrate in Bologna, or Florence or Genoa.” OK, I went to Genoa, and I presented a denunciation to magistrate Pennisi. After about four months I was summoned to Genoa and Dr Fenizia of Genoa closed the denunciation to the magistrate Pennisi and had me reopen the case with the Livorno Prosecutors’ Office and he said that based on the photo, they have to do further investigations, because there was something that didn’t make sense.
In 2006, my son’s body was re-exhumed and they discover that it’s not two but eight ribs and there’s not just a single hole in his head but two holes, one of which was as deep as the bone and they even find the dark blue paint from the cell attached. They also find the left wrist fractured, that the first pathologist, Alessandro Bassi Luciani hadn’t talked about. At this point, talking to my lawyer, he said “Here there’s something that doesn’t make sense, these are blows”, because from the photo you can see they are blows, however, what I noticed is that they have closed the case again and now in 2010, unknown to us I was summoned for 25 May and instead on 19 May I was called by some Livorno journalist who said: “Signora Ciuffi, the Chief Procurator Francesco De Leo has asked for the case to be closed”. I said: “That’s impossible, because I have been summoned for 25 May by Dr Giaconi, the one carrying out the investigations”. However, unfortunately it was true.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Minister Bondi votes for colleagues
"After the sale of Deputies, representatives of the Government to hold together a majority, now increasingly shaky, using only instruments illegal, as the Minister Sandro Bondi this morning, on the occasion of a vote by the Ddl Gelmini (reform of the Universities strongly contested in the country) by voting either for himself or for Maurizio Sacconi, who was absent in the courtroom at the time of the vote. Bondi is ashamed in front of all the Italians, with this gesture puts himself under any ethical and moral rectitude which his political office would oblige him. "The senator of Italy of Values Stefano Pedica resumed this morning with its smartphone the minister who votes for his colleague in government. Shooting immortalizes the Minister for three times, but, as explained Pedica is from the beginning of the day that the Minister for Cultural Heritage vote for Mr Sacconi. For a total of 15-20 votes. As announced at fattoquotidiano.it, the group announced IDV battle for the afternoon. Pedica concludes: "The vote is illegal and therefore have to cancel all the votes. We will present the problem directly from the benches of the Senate and ask the president Renato Schifani the immediate expulsion of the minister
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