NY Times, Sept. 23, 2003 A Shocking Award to Berlusconi (2 Letters)
To the Editor:
Re "Jewish Group to Honor Friend It Calls 'Flawed' " (news article, Sept. 19):
On Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League plans to hold a dinner for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to present him with its Distinguished Statesman Award. This is shocking to anyone who knows Mr. Berlusconi's controversial history.
Most recently, Mr. Berlusconi was in the news for his comments about Benito Mussolini. "That was a much more benign dictatorship," Mr. Berlusconi was quoted as saying. "Mussolini did not murder anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday to internal exile."
This is not true; Mussolini was responsible for the deaths of many political opponents, Partisans and Jews. He persecuted Jews with his racial laws and, during World War II, was responsible for the deportation of almost 7,000 Jews, who died in Nazi camps.
Mr. Berlusconi has apologized to Italian Jews for his statements. This is not enough; he has not apologized to Italians generally.
Apparently, the A.D.L. is giving Mr. Berlusconi its award because of his support of Israel and of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. But support of Israel should not be sufficient. In this case, it is bad for the Jews, bad for Italy, bad for the United States and even bad for Israel.
FRANCO MODIGLIANI PAUL A. SAMUELSON ROBERT M. SOLOW Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 22, 2003 The writers, emeritus professors at M.I.T., are Nobel laureates in economics. The letter was also signed by four other professors at M.I.T. and Harvard.
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To the Editor:
Re "Jewish Group to Honor Friend It Calls 'Flawed' " (news article, Sept. 19):
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy met in Rome on Wednesday with representatives of the Jewish community. He apologized for his comment that Benito Mussolini was a benign dictator and expressed regret for the pain it caused the Jewish community. His apology was accepted.
KENNETH JACOBSON Associate National Director Anti-Defamation League New York, Sept. 19, 2003
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NY Review of Books, Volume 50, Number 15 · October 9, 2003
Review Italy: The Family Business By Alexander Stille Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State, 1980-2001 by Paul Ginsborg Palgrave Macmillan, 521 pp., $35.00
"The Patrimonial Ambitions of Silvio B" by Paul Ginsborg New Left Review 21, May–June 2003
The Dark Heart of Italy: Travels Through Time and Space Across Italy by Tobias Jones London: Faber and Faber, 266 pp., £16.99 A revised edition will be published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in June 2004.
1. On January 26, 1994, Silvio Berlusconi —the country's richest man, owner of a vast real estate, publishing, financial, and media empire—appeared simultaneously on the three private TV networks he owns and announced that he was founding a new political party and running for prime minister. Berlusconi's sudden appearance in the living rooms of most Italians, commandeering the airwaves for what sounded like a presidential address, created the bizarre sensation that he was somehow already prime minister even though the campaign was just beginning. It began to seem inevitable that he would be elected, and he was.
Instead of creating a million jobs as he promised in his first campaign for prime minister, Berlusconi seemed more interested in taking over the state broadcasting system. As evidence of systematic bribery of officials and political payoffs by some of his companies emerged, Berlusconi began to dedicate much of his energies to trying to derail an investigation into his corrupt practices, including paying off judges in a civil case involving a corporate takeover. His fractious coalition fell apart; he was indicted on bribery charges and his government fell after only eight months.
Although he had to wait more than six years to return as prime minister, Berlusconi was not really out of power. His party, Forza Italia (Go, Italy!), a name taken from the soccer slogan chanted at Italy's national soccer games, remained the largest party in parliament and he has continued to expand his power base, protecting his monopoly of television, weakening the Italian judiciary, and remaining Italy's most visible, audible, and powerful politician, not least by personally employing thousands of Italians who help him achieve his political ambitions.
For example, fifty deputies elected to parliament on Berlusconi's original Forza Italia list in 1994 worked for his advertising company, Publitalia, while dozens of others were employed by other Berlusconi companies or owed their livelihood to him in one way or another, working as lawyers, consultants, television stars, or journalists, or holding contracts as contributors to his vast network of newspapers, magazines, and TV stations. Those of Berlusconi's associates who were at greatest risk of winding up in jail in the various investigations into his business dealings were elected to parliament so that they could enjoy immunity from arrest. Few of them, busy with their outside jobs, bothered to show up at the meetings of the national assembly—until their trials began, at which point they claimed they needed to attend every session of parliament as a way of dragging out court proceedings by years.
In his first government, Berlusconi appointed as minister of the budget Giulio Tremonti, his own corporate tax attorney, who drafted a law that gave Berlusconi's companies a tax write-off of 250 billion lire (then about $150 million). The law was supposedly designed to encourage new investment, but Berlusconi's company Fininvest—now called Mediaset—simply shifted its assets from one Berlusconi company to another. When the write-off was challenged, Tremonti insisted that it was entirely consistent with the law he had written.
All these people, in a country in which being a member of parliament is itself an extremely lucrative sinecure, are acutely aware of owing their good fortune to the generosity and power of the supreme leader. "To personalize the [2001] campaign Berlusconi insisted that his should be the only face on Forza Italia's" campaign posters, Paul Ginsborg writes in his excellent new book, Italy and Its Discontents:
"His face was everywhere—on huge roadside posters, in the atriums of railway stations, on election bunting running down whole streets, as in the popular quarters of Naples. Forza Italia candidates were instructed not to put their own faces on posters, but always that of their leader. This was a radical change for a country which, after the fall of Fascism, had a fragmented political system in which the country's several parties mattered more than personalities."
full: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16596
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-- /**********************************************************************/ Brad Mayer