Word: italianizer
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...provocative 2006 film, The Caiman, Italian director Nanni Moretti imagines an explosive climax to the political life and times of Silvio Berlusconi. The film ends as the billionaire leader - devilishly portrayed by Moretti - is found guilty on corruption charges and makes a menacing declaration from the courthouse steps: "With my conviction, our democracy has been transformed into a regime, and all free men have the right to react against it in any way they see fit." As the fictional Prime Minister pulls away in his limousine, a mob sets the courthouse ablaze...
...Such a scenario is, of course, the stuff of an anti-Berlusconi filmmaker's vivid imagination. But reality may be inching toward fiction. The Italian Constitutional Court's decision late Wednesday to overturn an immunity-from-prosecution law risks setting off a high-stakes showdown between the 73-year-old Prime Minister and an array of antagonists, real and imagined. (See Silvio Berlusconi's worst gaffes...
...Berlusconi has plenty of experience fighting charges. He sarcastically boasts that he is "the most prosecuted" man in Italian history never to be convicted. His criminal record is indeed clean, thanks to a string of not-guilty verdicts as well as expired statutes of limitations and modifications to laws through his control of Parliament. In 2003, he became the first Italian Prime Minister to testify in a case against him, rousing a packed courtroom with a nearly hour-long defense in a Milan corruption case in which he was eventually acquitted. (See pictures of Italy...
...right to appeal and try to hold on to power. Short of that, how else might all this end? Berlusconi's allies have increasingly alluded to a behind-the-scenes political coup they say is being orchestrated by a cabal of so-called poteri forti (strong powers) of Italian business and cultural élites who are allied with magistrates and foreign governments that are worried that Berlusconi has become a liability for political and economic stability. But even if there were such a surreptitious movement afoot to unseat the Prime Minister, any supposed "strong powers" from outside of Parliament would...
...When I work I sing,” he says. “Maybe it’s strange, maybe it’s Italian...