Word: silvio
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...They say we live in the age of the American empire. Are there lessons the Roman empire can offer? My name is Silvio, not Caesar or Augustus. But the political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs...
...SILVIO BERLUSCONI, the Italian Prime Minister and new president of the European Union, often puts his foot in his mouth. Last week he outdid himself. When a German minister questioned his fitness for the post, Berlusconi snapped, "I know there is a man in Italy producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of leader." He says he's not apologizing...
...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...
...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...