This type of juvenile personal attack says far more about you than it says about me.
-Chip
-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Mayer [mailto:bradley.mayer at sun.com]
Sent: Tue 9/23/2003 7:15 PM
Cc:
Subject: [lbo-talk] ADL Courts More Far-Rightists
Well like I said: Buffalo Chip's ADL buddies cozy up to the ghost of Mussolini.
Or is that Sharon? Hey, but at least they're 'not as bad' as Saddam!
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.
•
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
===
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
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