Word: berlusconis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...shove it. Just when the E.U. is trying to forge a coherent identity, national pride is threatening to swamp the whole enterprise as the leaders of two of the Union's biggest members jump headlong into the summer silly season. It was bad enough when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi compared Martin Schulz, a German member of the European Parliament, to a Nazi concentration camp guard. But then Northern League firebrand Stefano Stefani - who was clearly in the wrong job as Italy's Deputy Industry Minister for Tourism - wrote a newspaper article calling German tourists "stereotyped blonds with hypernationalist pride...
...Berlusconi, if I understood him correctly, invited me to appear as the commandant of a concentration camp...
...file a human-rights complaint. He just shot back: "And if I were your husband I would drink it." But these days we get the insult without the art, and so we respond with self-righteous outrage. Last week, when a German Member of the European Parliament goaded Silvio Berlusconi about the immunity law he had passed in order to wriggle out of a bribery prosecution, the Italian Prime Minister cocked his head, pitched his voice high and replied in a classic commedia dell'arte style: "There is a producer in Italy who is making a film about Nazi concentration...
...Silvio Berlusconi likes to think big. At an emergency European Union meeting last year, held to draw up a response to Israel's siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound, the Italian Prime Minister had other things on his mind. "I have a solution to the vision of Europe," said Berlusconi, who had just returned from Moscow after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "We must make Russia a member of the E.U." The foreign ministers in the room were flabbergasted, according to a diplomat who was there, not only because Berlusconi was ignoring the issue at hand, but because...
...GRANTED. SILVIO BERLUSCONI, 66, Italian Prime Minister; immunity from prosecution; in Rome. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, is accused by Milan prosecutors of bribing judges in the 1980s to prevent a business rival taking over a state-owned food group? a charge he denies. The new immunity law bans any court proceedings against Italy's five most senior government figures during their time in office. Berlusconi's term expires in 2006, but he has the option of running for re-election...