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Italy's presumed next premier, Giorgia Meloni, issued a stark warning to Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday that he risked losing influence in any new government over his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as she asserted a strong pro-NATO, pro-European position about Russia's war in Ukraine. “Italy, with its head high, is part of Europe and the (NATO) Atlantic alliance,” she said. “Whoever doesn't agree with this cornerstone cannot be part of the government, at the cost of not having a government.”

In the 1990's Italian politics was revolutionized with the rise to power of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi, who once called himself a Socialist and supported the Socialist Party, rebranded himself as leader of Forza Italia (Forward Italy). He took the name from a soccer team. Berlusconi swept to victory gaining control over public media in addition to the private media already under his tutelage. His huge victory followed corruption scandals that engulfed the existing political parties in Italy. Berlusconi had his day and his following for more than 15 years. Meanwhile his enemies used the legal system against him...

On May 17, I published an article in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a “public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama administration in the United States. According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to...

The undeclared war between Israel and Iran is heating up as, in a nearly unprecedented move, the Israeli government announced it had struck Iranian targets in Syria. Iranian troops belong to the Quds Force were hit along with targets near the Damascus airport. We have started striking Iranian Quds targets in Syrian territory. We warn the Syrian Armed Forces against attempting to harm Israeli forces or territory. The Quds Force is an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards that operates almost exclusively on foreign soil. Iran deployed the Quds Force to work closely with the Lebanese terrorist group Hezb'allah,...

The three-time Italian premier, who has made a career out of rebounding from legal woes, personal scandal, heart trouble and political setbacks, is running for the European Parliament in May elections. The 82-year-old Berlusconi announced his candidacy with his center-right Forza Italia party Thursday in Sardinia. He said he wanted to “bring my voice to a Europe that should change, a Europe that has lost profound thinking about the world.” Berlusconi had been barred from running for public office for nearly five years due to a tax fraud conviction. Citing his good conduct, a court last year ruled that he...

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been surprised by a topless activist while casting his vote in the Italian elections today. The woman, who had the words 'Berlusconi, you've expired' written in black marker on her chest, jumped onto the table at the Milan polling station as Berlusconi was voting.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has upped the ante on his coalition partner populist Lega leader Matteo Salvini saying that he will deport 100,000 more migrants, referring to them as “criminals”. The bombastic billionaire made his comments following the brutal murder of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro by Nigerian migrant drug dealer Innocent Oseghal last week. Berlusconi went even further than his coalition partner Matteo Salvini who promised to deport 500,000 illegal migrants within five years, saying he would make it 600,000, Kronen Zeitung reports. “The migration issue is extremely serious, with 630,000 migrants in Italy, only 30,000 having the right...

A promise of a flat tax by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday sparked sharp reactions from opponents ahead of a general election and head-scratching among economists. Campaigning ahead of a general election on March 4th at the helm of the conservative Forza Italia movement, Berlusconi said on TV late on Thursday that such a tax would start at the current minimum rate of 23 percent, before being brought down to below 20 percent. The remarks by Berlusconi — who never sought to introduce a flat tax during his three terms as prime minister — immediately drew criticism from...

(News, Comment And Analysis) "I went out this morning and I saw this depressing thing, people not speaking, with empty looks on their faces, as if they had been replaced by an alien like in a sci-fi film. Why aren't people talking? Why are people depressed? Because they're talking in the place of the Italian people: the market. The market today is the pseudonym of the most depressing and predatory capitalism that we have in Italy" Five Star Movement leader-founder Beppe Grillo reacts to Italian President's rebuff of a Five Star-League government in Italy-5/28/2018 Italy's Five Star Movement has called...

On May 17, I published an article in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a “public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama administration in the United States. According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to...

---SNIP--- Mr Fontana's region, Lombardy in the north, is the leading destination for migrants in Italy. He reflected on this point. "We can't accept them all," he told Radio Padania, "Because if we had to accept them all, it would mean that we're no longer ourselves… as an ethnic fact. Because they outnumber us, because they are more determined than us to occupy this land." Mr Fontana, by now fully into his stride, reached his conclusion. "We need to decide whether or not our ethnic group, our white race, our society should continue to exist, or be wiped out. It's...

Four-time Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Sunday the Crimean people had made a democratic choice to split from Ukraine and hailed Russian President Vladimir Putin as the world's greatest political leader. Earlier this month, Berlusconi became the most prominent Western politician to visit the Black Sea peninsula, which was annexed by Russia last year in a move that has driven a wedge between Moscow and Washington. Pro-Russian separatists are fighting the Kiev government in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that will most likely be raised at a meeting on Monday in New York between U.S. President Barack Obama and...

... The German chancellor’s disapproval helped end the political careers of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and Greek leader George Papandreou. After burning through whatever goodwill he had with Merkel’s lawmakers and the German public, the current Greek premier could be next.... “We are watching the end of the political career of Alexis Tsipras,” Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Peterson Institute in Washington, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “Mr. Tsipras can continue his career on T-shirts for students, replacing Che Guevara.”... Refusing to play ball with Germany didn’t turn out well for Berlusconi, whose premiership had survived...

Milan (AFP) - An Italian appeals court on Friday cleared Silvio Berlusconi of having sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of power in a surprise ruling that will strengthen the former prime minister on the political scene. "The defendant is acquitted," presiding judge Enrico Tranfa said, requesting silence after gasps from the courtroom. The effectively scraps Berlusconi's seven-year sentence and lifelong ban from holding public office. The judge said there was "no crime" on the abuse of power charge and that Berlusconi's actions "did not constitute a crime" on the prostitution one, promising to publish a detailed explanation within...

One of the dumbest things a country can do in a recession is raise taxes. Yet, after pronouncing the end of austerity, Italy's "grand coalition" government, led by Enrico Letta, is going to hike the VAT. Why? It seems they need to hike the VAT to pay for a decrease in property taxes. Recall that Silvio Berlusconi was only willing to take part in Letta's grand coalition on condition property tax hikes were rolled back. Letta agreed to do that, but now Letta says Italy needs revenue hikes to make up for it. Grand Coalition Splintering Curiously, the International Business...

Berlusconi's Bunga-Bunga Strippers Dressed Up as Barack Obama, Says Bellydancer Ruby Silvio Berlusconi's infamous "bunga-bunga" parties featured strippers dressed as US President Obama as well as the more conventional fare of nuns and nurses, according to court testimony by the Moroccan woman at the centre of the scandal. Karima el-Mahroug, 20, was giving evidence at the trial of three former aides to Berlusconi who are accused of procuring her and other women for prostitution. El-Mahroug, a former bellydancer, said she attended about half a dozen parties, using her nickname Ruby. One each occasion, Berlusconi had handed her an envelope containing...

In 1932, a 24ft marble statue of a young, muscular male athlete was unveiled in Brescia, northern Italy, and given the name Fascist Era. With its rippling torso and hand placed solemnly on hip, it was considered to symbolise the "rejuvenating ideals of the fascist regime", and, when Benito Mussolini came to visit, he was said to have praised it for its strength. Its sculptor, Arturo Dazzi, was reported to have remarked, "even if they want to tear it down, I don't care at all." Some 13 years later, that is what happened when, with the second world war over...

ROME -- A British lawyer says he invented accusations that Silvio Berlusconi paid him $600,000 to lie on the stand to protect the former Italian premier's business interests. David Mills' testimony Thursday at Berlusconi's corruption trial in Milan undercuts prosecutors' case against the politician.

His political career is in tatters while the economy is on a definite low. But Silvio Berlusconi is at least hitting some of the high notes - with his long awaited album of love songs finally being released just as he leaves office. Silver-tongued Berlusconi, 75, who as a young man was a cruise ship singer, had delayed the release of what is his fourth album of ballads as he was trying to sort out the economic crisis which has blighted Italy for months. It had been due out next week after being postponed for months but now seeing as...

Gathered around Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, a small group of unelected EU officials have been assigned the task of governing the eurozone and removing leaders who fail to toe the line, writes the British conservative weekly The Spectator. Fraser Nelson The Old Opera House in Frankfurt – once Germany’s most beautiful postwar ruin and now its most stunning recreation – has become a symbol of European rebirth. And it was here, last month, that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy met the EU’s bureaucratic elite in what would, in another era, be described as a putsch. They had grown tired...