As chairman of the countering terrorism
financing group for the Club de Madrid, Loretta Napoleoni brought
heads of state from around the world together to create a new strategy
for combating the financing of terror networks
Nope, am thinking mobiliser, Fieldmarshal Rational.
Great article piece on the revolting creep, Berlusconi, (I believe Promoter Artisan).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/loretta-n ... 75307.html
On September 1st the Italian award-winning air acrobatics team, Frecce Tricolore, will spread their wings in Tripoli, Libya, during the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Ghaddafi's coup. This is a small gesture of appreciation from Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to his new friend, the Libyan dictator. The two men have a lot in common, including their lust for young and beautiful women and their ability to remain in power against all odds.
Berlusconi's popularity springs from a skillful manipulation of the Italian media. He owns Mondadori, the biggest publishing company in Italy and the Mediaset broadcasting network. As Prime Minister he also exercises a tremendous influence over RAI, the state-owned broadcaster. That amounts to about 80% of the Italian media. According to reporters Sans Frontieres, "in Europe, similar conglomerates control considerable shares of the media, for example Bertelsmann and Kirch in Germany and Rupert Murdoch's empire in the United Kingdom. But the combination of media and political power is unique in a democratic country."
For Italians reality is not what actually happens but what they watch on the TV channels or read in the newspapers owned by the Prime Minister. Thus, Berlusconi has the ability to alter reality, a power that usually only dictators possess. For example, Italians have no idea that the survivors of the earthquake in Abruzzo are still living in pitiful conditions. They believe that Berlusconi -- who in July hosted the G8 meeting in Aquila, the capital of the region -- has already rebuilt the towns. "All they see is the Prime Minister in Abruzzo surrounded by smiling people. Nobody reports that the government is cutting corners everywhere because they have no money and they mismanage the funds coming from abroad," confesses Ms. Segre, a volunteer for the Green Cross who has spent the month of August in Aquila. "Last week nobody reported that a riot had erupted inside the rugby field at Aquila, where many families still live in tents. When they realized that 18 chemical toilets were been removed, the people's anger exploded." The toilets cost 80 Euros per day each, too much to sustain for a government that is broke. A government official even admitted that they could not afford to provide one toilet for each five people and that with the money saved they could do something else. The question is, what would they do with this money that is more important than hygiene?..............................He loves to present himself as the average Italian: a self-made man who is an incurable romantic, a sort of modern version of Don Giovanni. Age is his sole enemy and plastic surgery is helping him to cope with that. But the results are meager. "Berlusconi looks like Frankenstein: his skin is very tight and orange. When he smiles his entire face seems made of plastic and you can see the rows of transplanted hairs on his head." This is how a top (female) civil servant describes the Prime Minister.
The 73-year-old Latin lover seems unaware of this assessment of his looks and constantly parades his obsession with sex and women. "It is true I am not a saint, but I f___ like a God," he commented to his cabinet in July, after the international media had reported on the wild parties with call girls at his Rome residence, the use of state planes to fly these women to his Sardinia villa and his wife's filing for divorce over an alleged relationship with a minor.
Mediaset helped Berlusconi forge a style that can be defined as "political machismo," the sort of smug attitude that men might assume around a pool table after several beers too many. Boasting about their sex escapades makes them feel powerful. In December 2003, during the final dinner of the Italian European presidency, the agenda was to conclude with the debate about the European constitution. Berlusconi stood up and suggested that instead they talk about women. He then asked the German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who had been married four times, to begin the discussion. When Schroeder declined, he turned to the German foreign minister Joshcka Fisher, who had also had four different wives.
She writes really to the point.
