Word: bossiness
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Italy's influential Northern League Party has stood out over the past decade for its particular knack in finding new (and not-so-new) ways of offending people based on country of origin and color of skin. In 2003, Umberto Bossi, founder of the party, which once espoused separatism, told an interviewer that police should open fire on the boatloads of undocumented Africans arriving on Italian shores, calling the would-be immigrants "bingo-bongos." Other Northern League pols have proposed everything from separate trains for immigrants to banning the building of new mosques and even prohibiting the serving of kebabs...
...afternoon, a key ally of Berlusconi's, Northern League chief Umberto Bossi, was declaring that "the mission in Afghanistan has reached its end" and calling for Italy's troops to be brought home by Christmas. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, a die-hard Berlusconi loyalist, said Friday there are no immediate plans for a pullout but expressed serious doubts about the situation in Afghanistan. "Much has to change," Frattini told the daily Corriere della Sera. "There needs to be ... more attention on the people who suffer and on reconstruction. The general vision of the mission must be changed." Frattini wants more...
...Italy and elsewhere, that leaves space for populists like Bossi to harvest new supporters by leading the charge for a fast pullout. These days Berlusconi is more vulnerable to recalcitrant allies in the face of near daily blowback from a private-life scandal that began in April when his estranged wife accused him of "frequenting underage females...
...flaunts his wealth and insults the many magistrates who persistently investigate his business dealings; and, as of late, he has boasted of his Casanova charms, publicly swooning over a former showgirl turned politician, Mara Carfagna, whom he appointed his Minister of Equal Opportunity last year. (His trusted ally Umberto Bossi referred this week to Berlusconi's reputed use of Viagra...
...true that Italy still often seems splintered by regional allegiances. But "from the Alps to Sicily," as Mameli put it, many Italians are united in wondering what plans Umberto Bossi has next for a country he has pledged to serve but can barely stand...