Word: speechings
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Giorgio Napolitano, Italy's grandfatherly President, was trying not to squirm in his seat. But sitting center stage at a ceremony to honor World War II resistance fighters, the 83-year-old head of state couldn't help but wince as Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa shifted gears mid speech. "I would betray my conscience," La Russa declared, "if I did not recall other men in uniform...
...Those "other men" were the fascist Italian troops allied with the Nazi occupiers. "From their point of view," La Russa said of the Nembo division, which served alongside the Germans in Rome, they "fought in the belief they were defending their country." La Russa's Sept. 8 speech was the second time in two days that a top leader of Italy's "post-fascist" National Alliance party - a key ally in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling coalition - had opened wounds that most Italians have considered closed for decades...
...Russa's controversial speech came just a day after Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno refused to categorically condemn Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. Interviewed by Milan daily Corriere Della Sera following a visit to Israel, Alemanno, who also belongs to National Alliance, said he did not consider fascism an "absolute evil." While racial laws passed by Mussolini in the last five years of his two-decade reign were abhorrent, Alemanno told the newspaper, "fascism was a more complex phenomenon. Many people signed up in good faith...
...infamy, the defamation, the lies!" Ortega thundered during a recent speech. "Who was slandered more than Christ? Who was defamed more than Christ?" Ortega reminded his followers that "we are a faithful nation...God gives our families the strength to find happiness and to overcome the most difficult moments...
...result might be disorienting to some of the Sandinistas' more traditional Christian base: Ortega, dressed in pastels in order to channel positive energy, delivers a meandering speech on the danger of devils and the love of Christ and of Sandino, while sitting in front of psychedelic painting of an eyeball in the center of a hand surrounded by snakes - a colorful mural painted by Murillo behind Ortega's chair in Sandinista headquarters, to protect him from evil...