My favourite member of the European Commission has an interesting past…
Hat tip: EUX.tv / Schuman Square
Silvio Berlusconi instead seems to think it’s OK – in public – to look like he’s more than attracted to a traffic warden. Eeeuuuuggghhh. Please, please get rid of that man.
Hat tip: you know who you are after laughing over a beer
[UPDATE – 26.01.2008] A further amusing one from today at Th!nk About It:
Jon,
you probably already noticed it…
the Berlusconi video is a fake, that guy is a lookalike, it’s been around for ages in Italy.
However, he still remains pretty awful as head of the Italian government.
About Berlusconi:
the day before yesterday he said that for avoiding rapes they will increase the soldiers (note: soldiers, not policemen, in Italy they are actually using soldiers for enhancing what they call security!!!) patrolling Italian streets from the present 3’000 to 30’000 units!
The minister of defence, a former(?) fascist, replied it could be possible, but not in a few days… it will take six months!
Berlusconi yesterday added that even if they’ll put soldiers everywhere this will not protect completely Italian women from rapes, because rapes sometimes just happen and “It would be needed a soldier for every nice woman in order to protect all of them”.
Note that:
* in Italy every year there are 27’000 rapes
* only 10% of them are denounced to authorities
* about 7% of them are perpetuated by strangers (and so they happen “on the streets”), while about 70% are perpetuated by women partners and the rest by people known by the women as family friends or family members and so on. (data are by the Italian Institute of Statistics ISTAT and they are relative to 2006, which is for Italy what Eurostat is for Europe)
Note that:
Berlusconi and the Italian Council of Ministers promulgated in July a draft law which will be discussed by the Parliament in a few days to stop phone tapping (at present made by policemen ordered by public prosecutors with the authorization of a judge), for the following crimes:
kidnap, criminal organization, extortion, commerce of stolen goods, fraud, theft, robbery, bag-snatching, dealing, manslaughter, all financial crimes and… rape.
Note that
In the 80s Berlusconi was a member of (from wikipedia) “P2 was […] a pseudo-Masonic or “black” or “covert” lodge operating illegally from 1976 to 1981. During the 1980s, when the lodge was headed by Licio Gelli, P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries […] When searching Licio Gelli’s villa, the police found a document called the “Plan for Democratic Rebirth”, which called for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.”
The general plan of the P2 was to bring the total control of mass media and the Parliament by a group of trusted and acknowledged people while spoiling judges and public prosecutors of any power and independence from the political power and then changing the Italian Constitution and putting all that power in the hands of an elected president (decided behind the stage by that very group of trusted people).
The plan was discovered by the police and the head of the P2, Mr. Licio Gelli, prosecuted. 20 years later Mr. Licio Gelli is the special guest of a series of TV shows which talks about Italian history on a minor channel. A couple of months ago he said publicly (and many newspapers typed the news) that Silvio Berlusconi has copied his own plan and that 20 years ago they have to keep it secret, while now it can eventually be completely public.
Note that:
during the last few months the livers of many (but it seems not the majority) of us, Italians, are blowing up.
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Sorry for giving a vent to my anger on your blog Jon, but I assure you that we are on a very dangerous edge here in Italy.
Barroso looks a bit more lively than he does today, but already at this time he lacks charisma, with his face remaining almost without identifiable emotional expression.
Spotted you today in the Spanish (leftist) press:
http://www.publico.es/ciencias/tecnologia/194200/fracasa/millonaria/inversion/ue/internet