Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is one of the biggest assholes who ever lived. Some lunatic threw a plaster figurine at his face and scored a direct hit.
Good. This guy exemplifies the worst that politicians can be. A multi-billionaire, he got to be Prime Minister by buying up all the media in Italy, TV stations and newspapers, and having them sing his praises and criticize his nothing. His control over Italian media is almost total.
Berlusconi’s extensive control over the media has been widely criticised by both analysts and press freedom organisations, who allege Italy’s media has limited freedom of expression. The Freedom of the Press 2004 Global Survey, an annual study issued by the American organization Freedom House, downgraded Italy’s ranking from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’ due to Berlusconi’s influence over RAI, a ranking which, in “Western Europe” was shared only with Turkey (as of 2005).
A brain-dead dinosaur from a previous century, in times of trouble he calls everybody communists or leftists. An animal and a chauvinist, women are merely toys for him, the younger and prettier the better.
On 3 May, [wife] Veronica Lario announced she was filing for divorce following her husband’s attendance at a girl’s 18th birthday party in Casoria, province of Naples. She claimed that Berlusconi had not attended his own sons’ 18th birthday parties, and that she “cannot remain with a man who consorts with minors” and “is not well”. Noemi Letizia, the girl in question, gave interviews to the Italian press, revealing that she calls Berlusconi “papi” (”daddy”), that they often spent time together in the past, and that Berlusconi would take care of her career as showgirl or politician.
In the following days Silvio Berlusconi gave explanations about the incident to press and television, swearing that he knew the girl only through her father and that he never met her alone without her parents.
…Ten days later, Letizia’s ex-boyfriend Luigi Flaminio claimed that Berlusconi contacted the girl personally in October 2008, impressed by her “purity” and “angelic face” after seeing pictures of her in a photobook, brought to him by the journalist Emilio Fede (director of Rete 4’s news program). Flaminio also mentioned that she spent a week without her parents at Berlusconi’s Sardinian villa around New Year’s Eve 2009, a fact confirmed later by her mother.
He’s probably the most openly corrupt politician on the planet. He routinely dodges criminal cases by having his own government change the laws, usually by conveniently shortening the statutes of limitations.
Silvio Berlusconi has an extensive record of criminal allegations, including mafia collusion, false accounting, tax fraud, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges. Berlusconi has been tried in Italian courts in several cases. Controvers[iall]y enough, in three of them accusations were dropped by the judiciary because of the laws passed by Berlusconi’s parliamentary majority shortening the time limit for prosecution of various offences and making false accounting illegal only if there is a specific damaged party reporting the fact to the authorities. In all of them, but one, he was acquitted, either by a court of first instance or on appeal, or when proceedings came to a halt because the statute of limitations had expired. Therefore he has a clear record up to now. Berlusconi claimed that “this is a manifest judicial persecution, against which I am proud to resist, and the fact that my resistance and sacrifice will give the Italians a more fair and efficient judicial system makes me even more proud”,[84] and added that “789 prosecutors and magistrates took an interest in the politician Berlusconi from 1994 to 2006 with the aim of subverting the votes of the Italian people” reeling off statistics that he said have constituted a “calvary including 577 visits by police, 2,500 court hearings and 174 million euros in lawyers’ bills paid by me”
He also loooooves George W. Bush.
Berlusconi and George W. Bush are known to be intimate friends and spend time together on Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch. He declared that he and Bush would “remain friends forever”, nostalgic at the end of Bush’s term as a president. On an official dinner in the White House on October 2008, Berlusconi, tripping over a microphone cable, crumbled the podium, too excited about greeting Bush and embracing him. Then Berlusconi commented: “did you see what a huge love can do?”
Quotes. On his enemies:
“Read the Black Book of Communism and you will discover that in the China of Mao, they did not eat children, but had them boiled to fertilize the fields.”
“The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilisation, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago.”
“Those judges are doubly mad! In the first place, because they are politically mad, and in the second place because they are mad anyway. If they do that job it is because they are anthropologically different from the rest of the human race.”
“An Aids patient asks his doctor whether the sand treatment prescribed him will do any good. ‘No’, the doctor replies, ‘but you will get accustomed to living under the earth’.”
On himself:
“I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone.”
“In Italy I am almost seen as German for my workaholism. Also I am from Milan, the city where people work the hardest. Work, work, work – I am almost German.”
“Only I can turn this country around.”
“I believed and still believe that citizen Berlusconi should be praised for having prevented the state’s wealth from being looted… I was expecting a Gold Medal for Civil Worthiness for ensuring the state earned 2,000bn [lire].”
“There is no-one on the world stage who can compete with me.”
“I don’t need to go into office for the power. I have houses all over the world, stupendous boats… beautiful airplanes, a beautiful wife, a beautiful family… I am making a sacrifice.”
“The best political leader in Europe and in the world.”
“They had us put the sharp side of the arrow … (a) true, real archery arrow right on the soft part of your neck,” Kurt said. “There’s no bone behind it, just the real soft area .. your trachea is right there and your spine behind it, and you lean forward into the arrow.”
