British anti-arms trade activists recently scored a victory against Italian merchants of death corporation Finmeccanica. They managed to drive that firm out of the National Gallery in London, which Finmeccanica abused for selling weapons to Middle East dictatorships and others.
Finmeccanica is linked to the business empire of Silvio Berlusconi.
This video, from television in India, says about itself:
Another scam has hit the defence deals in India. Now, the VIP chopper deal of 14 helicopters purchased from Italy’s biggest firm Finmeccanica has come under the scanner. The chief executive of the firm Giuseppe Orsi has been arrested on corruption charges.
Finmeccanica’s Giuseppe Orsi held on corruption charges
Finmeccanica is Italy‘s biggest aerospace and defence group
The chief executive of Italian aerospace and defence firm Finmeccanica has been arrested on corruption charges.
Giuseppe Orsi has been under investigation for bribery and embezzlement for several months. He has always denied any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors allege he paid bribes to ensure the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government.
Finmeccanica shares slumped in Milan after initially being suspended.
They fell more than 9% to 4.236 euros.
In a statement, Finmeccanica expressed solidarity with Mr Orsi and said: “Finmeccanica confirms that management activity and the initiatives it has undertaken are continuing in an orderly fashion.”
Italy’s Prime Minister, Mario Monti, said in an interview with Italian television: “Magistrates will do their work. I’m sure they will do it thoroughly and in the best way possible.”
He added: “There is a problem with the governance of Finmeccanica at the moment and we will face up to it.”
Maybe pro-capitalist Monti was so relatively critical of Finmeccanica capitalists because of the Finmeccanica-Berlusconi connection. Berlusconi is now Monti’s rival in the elections.
Arrest warrants have been issued for two people living in Switzerland. The head of Finmeccanica’s AgustaWestland business, Bruno Spagnolini, was also placed under house arrest.
India’s foreign ministry said it had not been informed of the raid.
“We had asked the government of Italy through our mission in Rome for details of the investigation, but were told that it is a judicial process and the government of Italy is unable to share any information,” said foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin.
For Italy, it is the latest in a string of corporate scandals – including risky trades at the bank Monti Paschi di Siena and allegations of bribery at the oil services group Saipem.
Mr Orsi was in the process of overhauling Finmeccanica to try to make the company profitable again. The Italian government owns about 30% of the company.
India’s Defence Ministry said today that it has put a €560 million (£483m) contract to purchase helicopters from Italian company Finmeccanica on hold amid allegations that bribes were paid to obtain it: here.
Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, used the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, to praise the fascist “Duce” Benito Mussolini. Mussolini had “done a great deal of good”, notwithstanding the racial laws that were “his worst mistake”, Berlusconi said.
Italian responsibility for the Shoah was “not comparable to that of Germany”, Berlusconi continued. It had been “difficult” for Mussolini, who acted under pressure from Hitler. Italians had merely tolerated Nazi racial policy and were “not really aware of it at the beginning”, he said.
Italy’s political leaders immediately sought to play down the significance of Berlusconi’s statements, describing the provocations of the 76-year-old multi-billionaire as a “minor offense”.
Mario Monti, the outgoing prime minister, remarked tersely that Berlusconi had used an “unfortunate phrase on the wrong day and in the wrong place”. Just prior to his comments, the Ansa news agency reported that Monti did not rule out collaboration with Berlusconi’s party, PdL (People of Freedom), following parliamentary elections on February 24, on condition that Berlusconi did not take up a leading post in the new administration.
The Christian Democrat Pierferdinando Casini (UDC) declared that Berlusconi had “spoken nonsense”. Politicians aligned with the country’s so-called “left” also made just brief comments on the incident and were quick to move on.
Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the Democrats and leading candidate for the post of prime minister, complained that Berlusconi had made the “Day of Remembrance” a “day of election campaign maneuver”. The regional president of Puglia, Nichi Vendola (Left, Ecology and Freedom, SEL), described Berlusconi as a “falsifier, who would be advised to keep silent”.
Berlusconi expressed his comments on fascism during the official inauguration ceremony of a Holocaust memorial on “Platform 21” of the Milan Central Station. The memorial has been erected around the hidden railway tunnel originally used by the fascists to conduct deportations.
From 1943 to 1945, thousands of Italian Jews were deported from this point to extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, and the Italian camps of Bolzano and Fossoli. A total of around 8,600 Jews were deported from Italy to the death camps.
In order to create a new “Roman Empire” around the Mediterranean Sea the Italian fascists occupied North Africa and parts of Yugoslavia, classifying Africans, Slavs and Jews as “subhuman” and discriminating against them. The defense of a “pure Italian race” was used, especially in Abyssinia and Libya, to justify massacres and genocide.
As historian Carlo Moos demonstrates, racial laws against the Jews were first introduced in Italy in 1938 in accordance with the racial policies of the Third Reich. At the same time they corresponded to “a long-existing, general-fascist racial concept” (Moos, Carlo: Late Italian Fascism and the Jews, 2008).
One of his candidates for the Senate is Mussolini’s granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini. Berlusconi’s party, the PdL, has not only allied itself with its long-time former partner, the racist Northern League, but also with ultra-right-wing parties such as the neo-fascist La Destra, led by Francesco Storace. The ranks of La Destra include Giuliana De Medici, stepdaughter of the fascist leader and founder of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), Giorgio Almirante (1914-1988).
Berlusconi has continually relied on the fascists in the course of his political career. In 1994 he drew the MSI into government for the first time since the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship. The MSI at that time openly professed its adherence to Mussolini. The party later changed its name to National Alliance (NA) and joined Berlusconi’s supporters to form the PdL. Former MSI leader Gianfranco Fini is currently backing the electoral list headed by Mario Monti.
…
Following Berlusconi’s resignation in November 2011 as head of government, his PdL party fully backed the austerity measures of the Monti government for a year in parliament. Berlusconi is now trying to divert increasing social anger into right-wing channels. While all other parties, including alleged “leftist” organizations, advocate the continuation of Monti’s austerity measures and support for the European Union, Berlusconi is conducting a populist nationalist campaign, blaming the European Union and the German government for the social decline of Italy. …
In this context Berlusconi’s allegation that Mussolini had done “much good” assumes menacing dimensions. Mussolini smashed the organized labor movement, destroyed its social gains and democratic rights, and went on to conduct brutal colonial wars in Libya and Abyssinia. …
Across Europe bourgeois politicians are forming alliances with racist, ultra-nationalist and fascist parties. Such parties have been playing an important role for some time in political life in Hungary, Greece, France and Austria. Against a background of increasing social tensions they are needed by the ruling class as a battering ram against the working class.
Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi praised Benito Mussolini for “having done good” despite the Fascist dictator’s anti-Jewish laws, immediately sparking expressions of outrage as Europe today held Holocaust remembrances.
Berlusconi also defended Mussolini for allying himself with Hitler, saying his likely reasoning was that it would be better to be on the winning side.
The media mogul, whose conservative forces are polling second in voter surveys ahead of next month’s election, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony in Milan to commemorate the Holocaust.
In 1938, before the outbreak of the Second World War, Mussolini’s regime passed the so-called “racial laws,” barring Jews from Italy’s universities and many professions, among other bans.
When Germany’s Nazi regime occupied Italy during the war, thousands from the tiny Italian Jewish community were deported to death camps.
“It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then,” Berlusconi said of Mussolini’s support for Hitler.
“Certainly the government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler’s Germany rather than oppose it.”
Berlusconi added that “within this alliance came the imposition of the fight against, and extermination of, the Jews. Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good.”
More than 7,000 Jews were deported under Mussolini’s regime, and nearly 6,000 of them were killed.
Reactions of outrage, along with a demand that Berlusconi be prosecuted for promoting Fascism, quickly followed his words.
Berlusconi’s praise of Mussolini constitutes “an insult to the democratic conscience of Italy,” said Rosy Bindi, a centre-left leader.
“Only Berlusconi’s political cynicism, combined with the worst historic revisionism, could separate the shame of the racist laws from the Fascist dictatorship.”
Italian laws enacted following the country’s disastrous experience in the war forbid the encouragement of Fascism.
A candidate for local elections, Gianfranco Mascia, pledged that he and his supporters will present a formal complaint tomorrow to Italian prosecutors, seeking to have Berlusconi prosecuted.
Advocating aggressive nationalism, Mussolini used brutish force and populist appeal evoking ancient Rome’s glories to achieve and keep his dictatorial grip on power, starting in the early 1920s and lasting well into the Second World War.
His Fascist “blackshirt” loyalists cracked down on dissidents, through beatings and jailings.
He encouraged big families to propagate the Italian population, established a sprawling state economy and erected monumental buildings and statues to evoke ancient Rome.
Mussolini sought to impose order on a generally individualistic-minded people, and Italians sometimes note trains ran on time during Fascism.
With dreams of an empire, he sent Italian troops on missions to attack or occupy foreign lands, including Ethiopia and Albania.
Eventually, Italian military failures in Africa and in Greece fostered rebellion among Fascist officials, and in 1943 he was placed under arrest by orders of the Italian king. His end came at the vengeful hands of partisan fighters who shot him and his mistress, and left their bodies to hang in a Milan square in April 1945.
In 2010, he told world leaders at a Paris conference that he had been reading Mussolini’s journals, and years earlier Berlusconi had claimed that Mussolini “never killed anyone.”
Monti is also running, but polls put him far behind front-runner Pier Luigi Bersani, a centre-left leader who supported Monti’s austerity measures to save Italy from the Eurozone debt crisis.
Polls show about one-third of eligible voters are undecided.
On October 22, six seismologists and a government official were sentenced to six years in prison by a court in L’Aquila, Italy on multiple charges of manslaughter. The judges ruled that they had violated their duty to correctly inform the public about the risks of an impending earthquake. The judgment is not yet final and subject to revision.
The trial dealt with the events surrounding the catastrophic earthquake which took place on April 6, 2009 in the region of Abruzzia. The earthquake, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale, killed 309 people in L’Aquila, including many children and adolescents. Some 1,500 people were injured and 67,000 were made homeless. The historic center of the city has still not been rebuilt. Damage was also substantial in other towns and villages in the region.
The verdict provoked anger in Italy and worldwide. Broad sections of the media and leading academic bodies such as the American Geophysical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) expressed their solidarity with the convicted seismologists. In Italy, a number of leading scientists resigned their posts in protest. On the same evening as the verdict, the physicist Luciano Maiani resigned as president of the State Risk Commission.
More than 5,000 scientists had already protested in an open letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at the start of the trial in September 2011. They argued that it is impossible to precisely predict an earthquake and referred to earthquake maps and guidelines for quake-resistant construction long in possession of the government. They called on politicians to take steps to improve earthquake prevention, “rather than punishing scientists for failing to do a job beyond their power: predicting earthquakes.” …
The harsh sentences against Boschi and his co-defendants for manslaughter are a legal travesty. It makes the scientists scapegoats aimed at diverting attention away from those really responsible, i.e. the former government of Silvio Berlusconi, corrupt authorities, criminal building companies and property speculators.
Although the seismic risk at L’Aquila was known and strict building codes existed, they apparently had been systematically ignored or bypassed by corrupt construction companies. The earthquake not only destroyed many old buildings, but also a number of newly constructed public buildings, although others in the immediate vicinity remained intact. Among the buildings to collapse were a new hospital and a student hostel, which had both been financed by public money. The collapse of these buildings was a clear indication of botched construction and the use of inferior materials.
These issues, however, were not even investigated, let alone made the subject of a trial. Proposals for stricter laws and controls have also failed to materialize due to the powerful lobby of major construction companies and real estate speculators. Up to the present day all governments, including the current regime of Mario Monti, have failed to introduce measures appropriate for an earthquake-prone region.
Prior to the 2009 quake, the government of Silvio Berlusconi and regional authorities had pursued an appeasement strategy aimed at lulling the population and avoiding the high costs involved in securing buildings and evacuation procedures. It was this huge mesh of political irresponsibility and corruption which meant that the earthquake on April 6, 2009, which had been anticipated for a long time, had such a devastating impact.
The seven convicted scientists, most of whom are internationally recognized authorities in their fields, are being made the scapegoats for widespread bitterness within the population, while those genuinely responsible get off scot-free.
The residents of the earthquake-stricken region are still waiting for support and assistance. Shortly after the quake Berlusconi convened a photo-op G-8 summit in L’Aquila and the authorities hastily assembled temporary constructions outside the city. The center of the city remains devastated, however, with an above average number of people unemployed. Hopelessness and rage have erupted on a number of occasions, and the people of L’Aquila have protested several times in Rome.
The trial failed to establish that any of the defendants had made statements against their better judgment or for personal gain. In fact, Italian scientists have repeatedly presented governments and political leaders with recommendations for seismic protection measures and assembled a wealth of material—including hazard maps, guidelines for earthquake-resistant construction, and evacuation plans—which successive governments have failed to implement.
The danger arising from the judgment in L’Aquila is that in future, scientists will withhold their findings, fearful of the legal consequences.
More than 150,000 people thronged the streets of Rome on Saturday as marches in cities across Italy marked “No Monti Day.”
The day of protest was called by trade unions and left-wing political parties to call for an end to the unelected government of former Goldman Sachs adviser and European commissioner Mario Monti.
Most marches went off peacefully, though in the northern town of Riva del Garda police broke up the protest with baton charges and tear gas.
In Rome 20,000 doctors and nurses marched along a separate route in uniform to highlight cuts to the national health service, while the main demonstration began at the Piazza della Repubblica and wound its way to the Piazza San Giovanni for a mass rally.
Georgio Cremaschi of trade union group the 28 April Network told Italian media: “The Italian people are waking up at last, along with our Greek, Spanish and French fellow Europeans.”
Mr Monti was appointed to the premiership with EU backing last November to force through austerity measures too unpopular to attract votes and since then has imposed sweeping cuts to public spending and attempted to dismantle employment law.
Italy’s economy has continued to shrink and its public debt is now 126 per cent of GDP.
But the weekend saw the first cracks in the coalition propping up the “technocrat” government as disgraced ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi launched an unexpected broadside at Mr Monti on Saturday.
But he appeared to take the court ruling as a cue to make a political comeback, delivering a speech in which he said the government’s economic policies had created a “recessive spiral.”
His People of Freedom party would meet soon to decide whether to withdraw support from Mr Monti’s government, which would force early elections, although he insisted he would not be standing for the premiership.
Mr Monti has also ruled out standing for elected office, although he has offered to remain prime minister whoever wins the next election.
Thousands of Spaniards have marched on parliament again to demand that the austerity government of Mariano Rajoy changes course: here.
Silvio Berlusconi Trial: Former Italian Prime Minister Sentenced For Tax Evasion
By COLLEEN BARRY
10/26/12 11:59 AM ET EDT
MILAN — A court in Milan Friday convicted former Premier Silvio Berlusconi of tax fraud and sentenced the media mogul to four years in prison, his first prison sentence in years of criminal probes.
The 76-year-old billionaire businessman is expected to remain free until the appeals process is exhausted. In Italy, cases must pass two levels of appeal before the verdicts are final.
Berlusconi received a suspended sentence in 1997 for false bookkeeping, but that conviction was reversed on appeal. Other criminal investigation probes against him on charges including corruption had ended in acquittal or were thrown out for statute of limitations.
For nearly 20 years, Berlusconi has dominated the Italian political scene, but his star began to lose its glitter after a recent sex scandal that has pushed him into another trial in the same courthouse, and amid the European debt crisis that effectively forced him out of office last November.
Earlier in the week, Berlusconi had announced he wouldn’t run for a fourth term, leaving his center right party under pressure to find another charismatic figure before next spring’s election.
Berlusconi wasn’t in the courtroom. In a statement, his lawyers denounced the verdict as `’absolutely incredible,” and said they would appeal.
…
In this and other cases against him, Berlusconi has described himself as the innocent victim of prosecutors he contends sympathize with the left.
Berlusconi, along with other defendants convicted in the case, must deposit a total of (EURO)10 million ($13 million) into a court-ordered fund appeals, which could take years, proceed.
Prosecutors alleged that the defendants were behind a scheme to purchase the rights to broadcast U.S. movies on Berlusconi’s private TV networks in his Mediaset empire through a series of offshore companies and had falsely declared the payments to avoid taxes.
I can hardly discuss at this blog all aspects of the controversy about publication of topless photographs of Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge and wife of Prince William of Britain.
I should just remark that French magazine Closer, which published the photos, is part of the Italian billionaire and ex-Prime Mister Silvio Berlusconi‘s empire.
Silvio Berlusconi is maybe the most hypocritical man in the world about scantily dressed women.
Silvio Berlusconi became a super-rich media boss, as a springboard for Prime Minister later, by endlessly parading women with “miniskirts, too much cleavage” on his TV networks.
This video from Italy is called Berlusconi’s party of EU candidates.
However, when Italian women themselves, on their own initiative, not on Berlusconi’s orders, wear “miniskirts, too much cleavage“, then Berlusconi’s Right wingers want to set the police on them; like fellow Right wingers in Poland, in the USA, Chile, and elsewhere.
British royals take criminal action over topless photograph
21 September 2012
The British public has once again been subject to saturation coverage of the royal family over the past week, after the French magazine Closer published photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge Catherine Middleton topless. A photographer had taken the images whilst she was on holiday with her husband Prince William in the South of France earlier this month.
The royal household responded aggressively to the pictures, denouncing their publication as a “breach” of the right to privacy. Lawyers for the royal couple sought, and obtained, an order in a French court banning future printing of the images.
A royal spokesman went so far as to draw a parallel with the events surrounding the death of Princess Diana, 15 years ago, commenting, “This is disappointing, saddening and turns the clock back 15 years. We have always maintained the position that the Duke and Duchess deserve their privacy, not least when they are on holiday in their own swimming pool.”
Criminal prosecutions are now being pursued against the photographer, although the magazine has yet to release its source. On Wednesday morning, French police raided the Paris offices of Closer to obtain the photographer’s identity.
The legality of the raid was questioned by Christophe Bigot, a barrister who practices in media law, who suggested it had been authorised solely because the royal family was involved. Bigot told the Daily Mail, “A law of January 2, 2010 protects the confidentiality of sources, as do numerous decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. In the case of William and Kate, I do not see how a prosecutor could justify a search of Closer.”
These moves represent a grave attack on press freedom, launched by one of the most reactionary institutions of the British state. The criminal prosecution of an as yet unknown photographer is being used to intimidate others and ultimately suppress any media coverage not sanctioned by the House of Windsor.
Often presented as merely figureheads, with few remaining powers, the reality is quite different. A report in June estimated the total wealth of the royal family at over $1 billion—a gross underestimation.
A recent Guardian investigation uncovered that current and previous governments had sought the consent of Prince Charles to pass at least 12 pieces of legislation since 2005. This was due to a provision which permits Charles to veto any piece of legislation that interferes in his “private interests.” These relate mainly to his control over the Duchy of Cornwall, which is worth a total of £700 million and generated an income for the Prince of £18 million last year.
The hysteria stirred up over the photos is already being used by governments to promulgate new repressive legislation. In Ireland, where a daily newspaper republished the pictures, Minister of State Alan Shatter has declared his intention to review a 2006 act which introduced new press regulations.
Michael O’Kane, editor of Ireland’s Daily Star which printed the images, has been suspended pending an investigation. Meanwhile, the online shopping service eBay has removed all copies of the edition of Closer in which the pictures were initially published.
The boundless cynicism which characterises the response to the latest episode will be lost on no one. The British royals thrive on a close relationship with the media, built up over decades. Behind their current posture as defenders of privacy, both have created an environment in which the press bombards the public with coverage of the royals’ every move.
William and Catherine are the subject of constant press attention. No such qualms over privacy were shown when press reports breathlessly informed the public of how the “then Kate Middleton” wooed her prince by parading in a sheer outfit at a private fashion show.
Their wedding was utilised, at considerable public expense, as an occasion for fawning tributes to the monarchy by the media establishment. The royal couple were portrayed as the modernising face of an age-old institution, with Catherine presented to the population as “our Kate” or the “people’s princess.”
This has continued throughout the Diamond Jubilee, London’s hosting of the Olympics, and the recent royal tour of Asia. The latest favoured topic of speculation is the attempt to determine whether or not Catherine is pregnant.
The British press was universal in its support for the Royals. Not a single paper printed the images, and the decision by publications in France, Italy and Ireland to do so was denounced. With breathtaking hypocrisy, the Sun declared in typical jingoistic style, “The final irony is that it is France—smug, privacy-obsessed France—that published grossly intrusive pictures no decent British paper would touch with a bargepole.”
This came barely a month after the same newspaper revelled in printing nude images of Prince Harry at a party in Las Vegas. At the time, there were rumours of plans within the royal family to sue the newspaper, after they failed to dissuade the Sun from publicising the pictures.
As for the self-serving claims that the royals must enjoy the same right to privacy as “ordinary” people, the reality is that there is no such right for the mass of the population.
Britain has the highest number of CCTV cameras in the world, with estimates suggesting that an average citizen appears on camera 300 times per day.
Moreover, on top of the vast apparatus of anti-terrorist legislation erected after 9/11, the government is preparing to implement measures that will facilitate a massive expansion of state surveillance. Under draft proposals in the Communications Data Bill, the Home Secretary will be granted the power to retain any data on all citizens without a specific purpose. The measures will not be open to judicial review, and would cover all methods of communication, including text messages, online social media and tapping telephones.
Footage has emerged of the Queen appearing to express mild irritation at Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for being too noisy: here.
Italian lawyers are taking part in a week-long strike to protest against Prime Minister Mario Monti’s austerity package and call for an overhaul of the justice system.
Italian local elections: high abstention and a protest against austerity
9 May 2012
The local elections held last weekend in Italy were characterised by high levels of abstention. Compared to last year’s local elections average voter turnout declined by seven percent, from about 74 to 67 percent. In addition, those parties that support the austerity policies of the Monti government lost a large percentage of their vote. Increased votes were registered for smaller fringe parties and the protest list headed by the comedian Beppe Grillo.
In the first round on May 6-7, local elections were held in Genoa, Palermo, Parma, Verona, Bologna and hundreds of smaller communities. Some provincial elections also took place. A total of nine million voters, one in five of the Italian electorate, went to the ballot box. It was the first election since the assumption of power by technocrat Mario Monti and therefore an important test.
The traditional parties and politicians lost heavily. Silvio Berlusconi‘s People of Freedom party (PdL) suffered heavy defeats almost across the board. Following a recent corruption scandal and the resignation of party founder Umberto Bossi, the Northern League also registered an historic low poll. The Northern League mayor, Flavio Tosi, was confirmed in Verona only after clearly distancing himself from Bossi. The PdL and the Northern League have now dissolved their alliance.
In the Sicilian capital of Palermo, a traditional stronghold of the PdL, Berlusconi’s party failed to even reach the second round. The victor in the city was Leoluca Orlando, the candidate of the party Italy of Values (IdV), who gained 46 percent and stands against the candidate of the Democratic Party (PD), Fabrizio Ferrandelli, in the second round. In the primaries Ferrandelli had achieved an unexpected victory against the candidate favoured by the party leadership, Rita Borsellino.
Just a few weeks before the election, Italy of Values had put forward the former Mayor Orlando as its candidate. Orlando stems from the camp of the right wing and was mayor of Palermo on no less than four occasions in the 1980s and 1990, gaining a reputation as an opponent of the Mafia. This time around, Orlando was able to win support from the Greens and Communist Refoundation, and emerged as the strongest candidate from the first round.
In Genoa, another political outsider, economics professor Marco Doria (a descendent of Genoese nobleman Andrea Doria), was able to make the running in the PD primary while the party’s official candidates lagged behind. Like the Milan mayor, Giuseppe Pisapia, who last fall notched up a victory against the party leader of the center-left camp, Marco Doria was able to win the support of some groups outside of the traditional parties. With 48 percent of the vote, he enters the second round as the favourite.
The Democratic Party (PD) was able to hold on to most of its mayoral posts but mostly on the basis of support for local politicians who are regarded as relatively independent of the official party line. The PD is the main successor to the Communist Party, and together with Berlusconi’s PdL unconditionally supports the austerity policies of Mario Monti.
Candidates on the list of the comedian Beppe Grillo, the “Five Star Movement” were able to notch some notable successes. In Parma the list won nearly 20 percent of the vote in its first-ever showing, in a contest with a coalition of Democrats and Italy of Values. In Genoa, the Movement won 14 percent and in Verona nine percent of the vote. On average, Grillo’s candidates averaged around eight percent.
This is despite the fact that Grillo offers no sort of alternative to the traditional parties and politicians he criticises. He diverts widespread public outrage at the arrogance and corruption of the political elite into right-wing channels: a devoted supporter of the free market economic system, he calls for an end to waste, “clean” politics and the promotion of local and green initiatives and small businesses against the multinationals and international banks.
Grillo has recently sought to exploit public hostility to the European Union. He is now demanding that Italy should leave the euro zone. The EU is seen quite correctly by many Italian workers as an instrument of the European banks and the driving force behind the brutal austerity measures.
Grillo is clearly profiting from the vacuum on the left. The demise of the former workers’ parties and trade unions, their nationalism, together with their support for the diktats of the EU and the social counterrevolution pursued by the Monti government means that a thoroughly diffuse and essentially backward-looking movement as the “Grillini” has been able to benefit from the growing anger of a broad social strata.
The elections took place against a backdrop of growing recession. Industrial production in the first quarter of 2012 sank by 2.3 percent and gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 1.6 percent. Many companies have reported mass layoffs or bankruptcy.
The drastic austerity measures introduced by the Monti government have significantly worsened the situation of working people in a short period of time. The pension cuts and the increase in the age of retirement means that thousands of seniors have to wait longer for their pensions, even though they have not the slightest chance of getting a job. Their descent into poverty is inevitable.
The suicide rate has risen dramatically as unemployed workers and small entrepreneurs decide to take their lives because of the financially hopeless situation. The artisan association CGIA reports that over a thousand people took their lives last year—25 percent more than the previous year. This year there are likely to be far more victims.
The official rate of unemployment in March was two and a half million—an increase of half a million or 23 percent compared to the previous year. This trend is increasing. Total unemployment rose in March by 2.7 percent compared with the previous month. Unemployment has risen steeply since the introduction of drastic austerity measures by the Monti government in November 2011.
If one includes so-called “inactive” workers, i.e., those of working age but who have not looked for work last month, then the official unemployment rate soars to 14.5 million people, or 36.7 percent of the population of working age.
In March 2012, 22.9 million people were registered on payrolls, which represents an employment rate of only 57 percent for people between the ages of 15 and 64 years. For women the employment rate is below 50 percent. In addition, 36 percent of all young people between 15 and 24 are officially unemployed.
These figures show that an enormous social explosion is brewing beneath the surface. The results of the recent elections are just the first indications of the political upheavals to come.
AN account by an under-age nightclub dancer of an alleged erotic after-dinner party at his home has plunged Silvio Berlusconi into a new scandal.
Mr Berlusconi, 74, is reported to have invited Karima Keyek, 17 – better known as Ruby – to three parties at his opulent villa near Milan this year and to have showered her with presents of cash, jewellery and an Audi sports car.
Ruby, a 177cm-tall Moroccan, has testified that one of these parties included “bunga-bunga” – a form of orgy. The party supposedly featured a naked Mr Berlusconi and 20 female guests, also naked. Ruby has denied having sex with the Prime Minister and said she lied to him about her age.
Although he has weathered previous scandals, this case comes at a vulnerable time for the Prime Minister. He has been weakened by corruption investigations into ministers and his coalition is at the mercy of a breakaway by former ally Gianfranco Fini, which could rob him of his parliamentary majority.
The scandal broke last week when Italian newspapers leaked Ruby’s testimony to prosecutors, who have placed three acquaintances of Mr Berlusconi under investigation on suspicion of abetting prostitution. They are Emilio Fede, a newsreader on one of the Prime Minister’s television channels; Lele Mora, a hairdresser turned show business agent; and Nicole Minetti, a showgirl turned regional councillor.
In Ruby’s account to prosecutors, revealed by La Repubblica, the Rome newspaper, Mr Fede allegedly drove her to Mr Berlusconi’s Villa San Martino on Valentine’s Day. She was greeted by a “very courteous” Mr Berlusconi.
Mr Berlusconi and Mr Fede were reportedly the only men present. Ruby has named the 20 or so female guests but the names have yet to emerge. They are believed to include two government ministers and television presenters, showgirls and prostitutes. She left after dinner with a black-and-white dress with Swarovski crystals, designed by Valentino, which she says Mr Berlusconi had given her.
The following month Ruby returned to the villa, again with Mr Fede. Mr Berlusconi is said to have asked her to stay the night and, she claimed, showed her an Audi R8, worth more than $130,000, parked outside. “It’s for you,” he told her.
After dinner came “bunga-bunga” which she reportedly described so graphically – “what was being done and who was doing it” – that she astonished the prosecutors. “Silvio told me that he’d copied that formula from Muammar Gaddafi (the Libyan leader). It’s a ritual of his African harem,” Ruby said.
…
Mr Fede has said he had “perhaps” seen Ruby a couple of times at dinners at the villa and denied any wrongdoing.
A business associate of Mr Berlusconi reportedly gave Ruby about $7000 after each of her visits.
According to this site, Berlusconi lied to Italian police about the issue:
She claims he showered her with gifts of Rolex watches and Bulgari, Damiani and Dolce&Gabbana jewellery and clothes as well as over 150,000 euros in cash. He said he would buy her a beauty parlour and told Ruby to say she was the niece of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the newspaper reports cited her as saying.
Ruby was part of a circle of aspiring models and actresses who were allegedly introduced to Berlusconi by a prominent show business agent, Lele Mora, and by prominent TV host Emilio Fede. Fede is 79.
The undocumented Moroccan teenager was picked up several times by police, suspected of theft and burglary. But each time, she was allegedly released after police received a call from the Italian cabinet office saying she was Mubarak’s niece.
Berlusconi is not just a hypocrite for publicly imposing conservative “chastity” on women, while privately having sex parties with minor girls.
Also, “Ruby”, being Moroccan, is from a mainly Muslim country. In this way, Berlusconi shows how hypocritical his Islamophobic propaganda is.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has dismissed calls to resign over reports he helped a teenage girl who attended parties at his house, saying it was ‘better to like beautiful girls than to be gay’: here. And here.
Britain: It was on November 2 1960 that a jury acquitted Penguin books of a charge of obscenity for publishing DH Lawrence‘s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover: here. And here.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s popularity fell to the lowest since he took office as austerity measures and rising unemployment turned potential voters away from the ruling coalition, according to a poll.
Confidence in Berlusconi fell two percentage points to 22 percent from a survey last month, IPR Marketing said today. That’s the lowest since he was elected in 2008. If elections were held now, 45.5 percent of Italians said they’d vote for the opposition, up from 44 percent, while support for the ruling coalition parties declined to 35.5 percent from 37.5 percent.
“The creeping crisis continues to affect confidence indices,” Rome-based IPR said in an e-mailed statement. “The trend for the current government seems increasingly compromised.”
Berlusconi is under pressure from his European partners to step up measures aimed at reducing Italy’s debt of more than $2 trillion and keep the country from succumbing to the euro-area debt crisis. While his government has pushed through more than 100 billion euros ($135 billion) in austerity measures, borrowing costs have continued to rise.
Italy’s jobless rate hit a 10-month high of 8.3 percent in September and the government was forced to cut its growth forecast for the economy to 0.7 percent this year, down from 1.1 percent.
‘Nightmare’
Italy’s biggest labor union, CGIL, called Berlusconi’s measures, which include a gradual rise in the retirement age and easing of laws on firing workers, “a nightmare,” according to a statement posted on its website last week. The union also said it is considering a general strike.
Berlusconi has repeatedly rejected stepping down, vowing to see out the end of his term in 2013.
The poll also showed support for Berlusconi’s key coalition partner, the Northern League, dropped below 8 percent for the first time since the government took office. The party’s leader, Umberto Bossi, also saw his popularity fall three percentage points to 38 percent.
The poll for Repubblica newspaper surveyed 1,000 adults by telephone on Oct. 28. No margin of error was given.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alessandra Migliaccio in Rome at amigliaccio@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net
Italian MPs faced pressure to impose austerity on themselves on Tuesday after the publication of a report highlighting their €11,283 (£9,330) a month basic salary plus €3,503 (£2,987) “cost of living” allowance; here.
