Word: bossy
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...addition to his penchant for making disparaging remarks about immigrants and southern Italians, Bossi, 66, has targeted national symbols. In 1997 he declared that the Italian tricolore flag was best used as toilet paper. The Northern League repeatedly aims its ire at the government bureaucracy in Rome and at the underdeveloped regions in Italy's south, which it says are siphoning off tax dollars with public subsidies. While Bossi was ranting on Sunday against southern teachers being sent to work in northern schools, he cited the national anthem, whose words were written in 1847 by Goffredo Mameli to encourage...
...Since he burst onto the scene in 1991 - claiming a national identity for "Padania," his name for the comparatively rich regions around the Po River Valley from Turin to Venice - Bossi has exhibited a knack for both vulgarity and political agility. Having gradually recovered from a stroke suffered during Berlusconi's last term, he led his party to 8% of the vote in the April elections. That makes the Northern League stronger now than it has been in years, currently posting four Cabinet ministers, including Interior Minister Roberto Maroni...
...last refuge for scoundrels, what do you call a Cabinet minister who flips off the national anthem? Certainly not a statesman - nor a reliable political partner. By waving his middle finger Sunday while barking out a verse of Il Canto degli Italiani, Italy's Reforms Minister Umberto Bossi raised real questions about the long-term viability of Silvio Berlusconi's center-right ruling coalition...
...Northern League party that Bossi leads has long flirted with secession, even while he and his lieutenants have served key ministerial posts in three governments of the Italian Republic. But his latest act of national scorn has brought down the fury of Berlusconi's other key ally, lower-house president Gianfranco Fini, whose post-Fascist past makes him the leader of the most explicitly patriotic faction in the three-month-old government. "A Cabinet minister cannot offend national sentiment," Fini proclaimed on Monday, demanding that Bossi "clarify" his thoughts. Bossi bit back quickly, saying that Fini would have been better...
...Ultimately, the issue that Europe's extreme right is focused on now is not Israel or Jews, but immigrants. During Berlusconi's last government, Fini was coauthor with rightist Northern League ally Umberto Bossi of a series of severe anti-immigration measures, including instant deportations and requirements that foreigners must have a fixed job to remain in the country. The next time fascist nostalgics or neo-Nazis attack a defenseless man on the street, there is a high probability it will be an immigrant. Such assaults in the past have indeed been aimed at immigrants. And that too is part...