Silvio Berlusconi: Mussolini Did Well As A Leader..

Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has praised fascist leader Benito Mussolini's leadership skills at a Holocaust memorial event, but said he was wrong to pass anti-Jewish laws.

In widely criticised comments at the event in Milan, the former Prime Minister said: "It's difficult now to put yourself in the shoes of people who were making decisions at that time. "Obviously the government of that time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than opposing it.

"As part of this alliance, there were impositions, including combating and exterminating Jews. The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well.

The centre-left Democratic Party, the movement expected to beat Berlusconi's party in the February elections, condemned his comments. A spokesman told Reuters: "Our republic is based on the struggle against Nazi fascism and these are intolerable remarks which are incompatible with leadership of democratic political forces.

Huffington Post

Benito Mussolini: a dictator for all seasons in Italy?

Sixty-eight years after the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was strung up with piano wire from a petrol station in Milan following his crushing of Italian democracy, his racist laws and his disastrous alliance with Adolf Hitler, Mussolini has quietly taken his place as an icon for many Italians.

Among his adherents today are the masked, neo-fascist youths who mounted raids on Rome schools this autumn to protest against education cuts, lobbing smoke bombs in corridors and yelling "Viva Il Duce". The cult of Il Duce has also slipped into the mainstream. The decision by a town south of Rome to spend €127,000 (£100,000) of public funds this year on a tomb for Rodolfo Graziani, one of Mussolini's most blood-thirsty generals, was met with widespread indifference.

Other more mundane examples include the leading businessman who proposed renaming Forli airport in Emilia Romagna – the region of northern Italy where the dictator was born – as Mussolini airport, or the headmaster in Ascoli Piceno who tried to hang a portrait of the dictator in his school.

The man who gets some credit for dusting off Mussolini's reputation is Silvio Berlusconi, who famously described the dictator's exiling of his foes to remote villages as sending them on holiday. Berlusconi's subtle rehabilitation of Mussolini came as he brought Italy's post-fascists, led by Gianfranco Fini, into his governing coalition in 1994 and 2001, following the "years of lead" in the 1970s and early 80s, when neo-fascists and communist sympathisers battled in the streets.

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Italian Scientists Jailed In Quake Trial

A team of Italian scientists has been found guilty of manslaughter for failing to warn citizens of a huge earthquake in 2009. The team, along with a government official, were jailed for six years in a trial which has infuriated the global scientific community. Historic buildings cracked and crumbled in the 6.3 magnitude quake in which 309 died and thousands were left homeless in the town of L'Aquila in central Italy. But the following year there was another aftershock.

 

Charges were brought against six government scientists and an official for not sufficiently warning people of the risks of another seismic event. The seven accused had been part of the region's Major Risks Committee which had met on March 31, six days before the earthquake. They issued a statement designed to reassure residents after studying tremors in the area, while stressing it was impossible to say when another event may occur.

Sky News

Arrivederci Silvio Berlusconi

Italian Police vs Refugees

Italian Police drive North African refugees from a balcony on Lampedusa.

UN urges refugee 'solidarity' within European Union – BBC

Mussolini 'had affair with Italy's last queen'

Not much has stayed secret about the tumultuous private life of Benito Mussolini. That is apart from the true nature of his relationship with the woman who was to be Italy's last queen, Marie-José of Belgium.

Mussolini's mistress, Claretta Petacci, claimed in her diary that in 1937 the then princess and wife of the heir to the throne tried and failed to seduce the dictator at a beach resort near Rome. But Marie-José may have been more successful than her rival suspected, if evidence that emerged on Wednesday is to be believed. In a letter reproduced by the weekly magazine Oggi, Mussolini's son Romano quotes his mother as saying that there was a "brief period of intimate romantic relations between my father and the then princess of Piedmont".

The daughter of the Belgian king, Albert I, Marie-José was born in 1906. While still a child, it was decided that she should marry into the Italian royal family and in 1930 she wed Umberto of Savoy, the only son of King Victor Emmanuel. By her own subsequent account, the marriage was not a happy one, and she separated from her husband after the Italian monarchy was abolished by referendum in 1946. She lived for most of the rest of her life in Switzerland where she died in 2001. In contrast to the Savoy family, Marie-José had little time for fascism and during the Second World War made a failed attempt to broker a peace treaty with the United States.

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Silvio Berlusconi faces Ruby sex charge trial in April

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has been indicted to stand trial on charges of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute and abuse of power. Examining judge Cristina Di Censo said the process would start on 6 April, after prosecutors in Milan asked for an immediate trial.

Mr Berlusconi denies paying for sex with Karima El Mahroug when she was 17. He also rejects claims that he abused his power by seeking her release when she was detained in another case.

He has called the accusations "groundless" and dismissed the case as a farce. Mr Berlusconi does, however, acknowledge that he called the police while she was being held on suspicion of theft. He said he was doing a favour for the then-Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak, because Mr Berlusconi was told the girl was Mr Mubarak's granddaughter.

If convicted, the prime minister could face up to 15 years in prison.

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Berlusconi Says West Considered Mubarak ‘Wisest Man’ in Mideast

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declined to call for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying the U.S. and Europe had considered him a “reference point” and “the wisest man” in the Middle East.

Asked directly if the time had come for Mubarak to step aside, Berlusconi said he hoped for “continuity in the government.” Western leaders want a “more democratic system without ruptures with a president like Mubarak that all the Western hemisphere, including the U.S., had considered the wisest man and a reference point in all of the Middle East,” Berlusconi said on arriving at a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels today.

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Berlusconi criticised for 'use of policewomen's outfits at "bunga bunga" sessions

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, today came under attack from a new and unexpected quarter when a police trade union objected to the reported use of policewomen's outfits for striptease shows at his home.

According to prosecution documents delivered to parliament, so-called "bunga bunga" sessions at Berlusconi's villa near Milan involved female guests putting on – and then gradually taking off – skimpy nurses' outfits and police uniforms.

Berlusconi, who denies any wrongdoing, said yesterday he had no intention of resigning because of the latest disclosures, adding: "I'm enjoying myself."

Giorgio Innocenzi, the secretary general of the independent police trades union confederation, said that, if the accounts were borne out, "it would be a very serious development that impugns the high levels of professionalism guaranteed by women in the police".

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