Newsgroup: it.economia.borsa
Titolo: Andate al giornale inglese -The Spectator-

http://www.spectator.co.uk/frontpage.php3
Sono quelli dell'intervista al Silvo Nazionale


Per chi non riuscisse ad aprire il sito bloccato dai troppi ingressi
Ecco l'intervista ORIGINALE
The new imperial vision of Silvio Berlusconi
 The Spectator began by asking Berlusconi whether he has mended fences with
Chancellor Schröder, after he likened the German Social Democrat MEP, Martin
Schulz, to a Nazi camp commandant?
It was I who was offended, my government and my country. I replied with a
joke. I wanted to be humorous. The whole of the parliament laughed. My reply
was taken and exploited against me. But you know what? It was a reply that
was virtually impossible for me to resist because I once broadcast 120
episodes of Hogan's Heroes in which there was this Sergeant Schulz. You
remember? I didn't even think about it. Schulz was shouting at me - no? And
it just came to me off the cuff. I always try to be ironical in my speeches.
Anyway, I had a phone conversation with Schröder in which I said my
intention had not been to offend and that I was sorry that my joke had upset
some people.
What provoked him?
In that sitting of the parliament, the speeches had been prepared beforehand
under the direction of the MEPs of the Italian Left. So out came this image
of Italy as follows: first, that in Italy there is a man who controls 85 per
cent of the Italian press - the opposite is the case: I am the most liberal
publisher in history; two, that this person also controls all Italian
television - when I have one friend in Italian television who has a 7 per
cent share; three, that I trample the Italian judges beneath my feet - and
so if Italy were to apply today to join the EU, the application would be
turned down. This was the theme of all the different speeches by the Left
that day.
The Italian reality
The Italian reality, to he who is familiar with it, is that Italy is an
absolute democracy with one or two anomalies. One is that we have an
opposition that is not altogether democratic because it is made up of the
same people who were communists and protagonists of the Italian Communist
party which was of Stalinist origin. Another anomaly which is not known
abroad is that we have an extremely politicised judiciary. And the third
anomaly is that there is strong disinformation on the part of the press.
Just read Repubblica, just read Unitŕ, they are newspapers completely at the
service of the Left. If you read Unitŕ, you think you are living under a
tyranny.
What is the proof that we have a completely politicised judiciary?
The declarations of the judges themselves. In one of their organisations -
Magistratura Democratica - they have publicly declared that their members
must use the legal system to topple the bourgeois state.
On the leftist conspiracy
The situation in Italy cannot be understood by a foreigner unless he takes
into account the recent history of Italian politics. For half a century
Italy was governed by a coalition of five parties which were by origin
democratic and pro-West: the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the
Republicans, the Social Democrats and the Liberal party. Unfortunately, this
Italian system has produced 57 governments in little more than 50 years. I
am the 57th government, and for the first time in 50 years I have a large
majority in both houses of parliament. What happened was that in 1992, after
the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Communist party, the Left, that had been
defeated by history, instead of being put on trial at least for their moral
complicity with the crimes of the communist regimes from Stalin to Pol Pot
to Milosevic - which they had always supported - they always had a fatal
attraction for dictatorship....
Communists everywhere
They were not prosecuted because the Left had infiltrated their men in all
the nodal points of the state; that is, the schools, the papers, the TV
stations, the magistracy, in the central nervous system of the state.
Instead of being prosecuted, they used their infiltration not to stand
trial, but to put all the other parties, which history had proved right, on
trial.
Why he entered politics
I entered politics with great sorrow, but I thought in 1994 that the extreme
Left would have been a serious disaster for Italy. The parties of the Left
controlled 34 per cent of the votes, but they had more than 80 per cent of
the seats in parliament because the other parties - the five parties that
had governed Italy for 50 years - were wiped out. I was the most popular man
in Italy because I made commercial TV out of zero, and I was an important
businessman because I was a man of sports with many victories. I had five
teams - and not just in soccer, but in hockey, volleyball, rugby - and they
were victorious in all the Italian and world championships. I had built
small towns and I was the proprietor of the second biggest chain of
supermarkets - all Italians knew it. I was in charge of a popular movement,
and people were saying, 'You are our only hope of not having a left-wing
government.'
Why do Italian commentators attack him?
I think there is an element of jealousy in all of these people because I
cannot find another explanation. All these journalists - Biagi, Montanelli -
were older than me and felt they were the important ones in our
relationship, and then the relationship was turned upside-down and I became
what they themselves wanted to be.
He says he admires Lady Thatcher, but is he really leading a Thatcherite
revolution in Italy?
I am a great admirer of Lady Thatcher, but I read in her biography that in
her first four years she achieved very little. I have great difficulty with
the Italian bicameral system, and I must discuss everything with my
coalition partners. The Italian prime minister does not have the power of
Tony Blair. I only have the power of moral suasion. I cannot sack a minister
or an undersecretary, and it is almost a miracle that I have been able to
achieve what I have. I inherited a state not only with the highest public
debt in Europe, at 105 per cent of our GDP - and 6 per cent of that GDP goes
on servicing our debt, and this had a huge impact on our margin of
manoeuvre - but I also inherited a country which is old in its structures
and its institutions.
Plethoric
Italy has a very good business and entrepreneurial class, thank God, and it
is the five million entrepreneurs who are the real richness of Italy; but
the state is old, obsolete, with a public administration that is plethoric,
inefficient and very expensive. We have abolished inheritance tax, and tax
on gifts. We have increased from 1m lire to 1.5m lire the tax deduction for
each child. I have reduced corporation tax to 35 per cent, and in five years
I intend to keep my promise and bring the tax on personal incomes down from
47 per cent to 33 per cent.
Bobbies on the beat
The level of reported crime is 12 per cent lower, because we are
transforming the philosophy of law and order from a purely repressive
philosophy to a preventive one. We have introduced a character like your
bobby on the beat in all major Italian cities: in the street, in the
squares, near the schools, the stadiums. Now they go in pairs and in the
future maybe they will go on their own. Then I have presented a vast
programme of public works, worth 125 billion euros, involving 125 major
works of which six are epochal in scale, such as the bridge across the
Straits of Messina and the barrier in Venice. I have already succeeded in
digitalising our public administration and making our labour markets the
most flexible in Europe. Yes, yes, they are more flexible than Britain now.
Is he confident of brokering a deal on the European convention?
I think the only way forward is to approve that which has emerged from the
Giscard convention exactly as it is, perhaps with one or two changes, but
that is all. Italy is naturally favourable to the introduction of a
reference to Europe's Christian culture, or Judaeo-Christian culture, but
there are only four countries which support this clause: Italy, Spain,
Holland and Poland. We want it, but, frankly, I don't think it will be
possible. It would be a good thing if we had a common foreign policy, if
Europe had a single voice, but I know that at the moment this is not
possible.
Why did he support the war in Iraq?
We had many doubts about the necessity of this war, and we tried to avoid
it, but when we saw that the US and England, our traditional allies, had
decided to make war, we were in solidarity with them. For example, if a
brother goes into a certain business and for three months I say, 'I beg you
not to do it', and when he does it - well, he is my brother, and I support
him, even if not to the point of paying for all his losses! And I have done
the same thing with the US. We are alive today because of the US, and it was
the US who liberated us from Nazism and communism and supported our economic
growth. We have lived for 50 years under their protective umbrella because
they spent 4 per cent of their GDP on protecting us against the Soviet
Union, and we spent only 1.5 per cent of our GDP. So we have a sense of
gratitude which is absolute, absolute. It was difficult to support the war
because I had the whole of the Left against me, but I held the line. I told
President Bush immediately that I was constitutionally forbidden from
sending troops without a second UN resolution, but we have sent 3,000 troops
now to help with democracy and peacekeeping.
What happened to the weapons of mass destruction?
I am accustomed to put myself in the place of the other guy, and I reasoned
that if I were Saddam, I would say to myself, 'We will cause all the WMD to
disappear, because then we will block the UN resolution and there will not
be an attack from America.' So Saddam eliminated the WMD because someone
told him, someone very authoritative, that there would not be an attack
without a UN resolution. So I think he destroyed them or sent them abroad.
0ere Western publics deceived on this question?
This I cannot say. I do not know how it all happened. I have a great esteem
for Tony Blair, and there is a great sincerity in our personal relations. I
believe Blair and Bush because I look into their eyes and I believe them. I
did not speak directly with Bush or Blair about the imminence of the threat
from Iraq.
Berlusconi on the Middle East...
I want to widen my remarks and say that, whether or not this war was
opportune, we certainly have a big problem in the relations between the West
and the Muslim community. It is a fact that in the Middle East there is no
democracy, and it is important that there should be; and I judge this
intervention in Iraq to be positive because it has placed an end to a
dictatorship, and it can be paradigmatic for the whole region. I understand
the difficulty of teaching democracy to a people which has known only
dictatorship.
...and how to deal with the world
We are now confronted by a new world situation. We have passed from the
confrontation of two blocs because the Russian federation has decided, under
the guidance of Mr Putin, to be part of Europe and the West. That is a very
big fact. I had the occasion to be president of the G8 in Genoa in 2001, and
I was the host of the dinner, trying to bring everyone into the
conversation, and I was making jokes as usual. I asked Schröder about his
experiences with women because he has been married four times, and I made
him laugh. And I decided after a while just to push my chair back from the
table and let them talk, and I saw Blair joking with Chirac, and Putin
joking with Bush, and I was joking with everyone, and suddenly I thought,
'Look, here I am, a man who has felt on his skin the second world war, since
I was born in 1936. I saw my father dressed as a soldier, and I thought,
'What a wonderful world.'
It could be so beautiful
What a different world we are passing on to our children at the beginning of
our century, our millennium! What a marvel! It seemed almost unbelievable to
me, because when I was a boy, I knew communism. I was at school with the
Salesiani near Milan, and priests who had escaped from behind the Iron
Curtain came and visited us, and told us about the terror, and I knew at the
age of 12 that communism was the most inhuman and criminal oppression in the
history of man. Communism is not dead today, by the way: there are still
more than a billion people in the world who live under communism, and where
the opposition is either in prison or in exile. But here we come to the
point, as I saw this extraordinary, beautiful scene round the table in
Genoa. I was happy and thought we were passing on to our children the
prospect of a pacified world - and then came 11 September, and the present
situation of terrorism and fundamentalism.
Imposing liberty and democracy
So, ever since, we have been discussing this question, and at the last G8 we
discussed the New World Order, which involves a West that is extraordinarily
strong compared to the rest of the world; and we have promised several times
to give the poor of the world food, water, education, sanitation. But I said
at the Evian summit, and I said when I was at the ranch with Bush for two
days, 'Isn't there a good which comes before these material goods? And isn't
that good called Liberty?' Liberty creates these material goods, and without
it they cannot exist. If there is a dictatorship, if there is a tyranny, if
there is no liberty, then all this money goes into the hands of despots who
put it in their Swiss bank accounts. They arm themselves and make war.
A community of democracies
So I said, given the enormous and paradoxical success of fundamentalism, why
don't we talk more openly about the community of democracies? Yes, why don't
we reform the UN? Let us say to Mr X or Y in this or that dictatorship, 'You
must recognise human rights in your country, and we give you six or 12
months to do so, or else we intervene.' And we can do this now because there
is no countervailing power. In the old days, America or Russia didn't ask a
third country whether its citizens had human rights, or whether the
opposition had a voice. They only asked themselves whether he is with us or
with them. If he is with us, that is enough, and never mind if he is a
dictator.
If necessary by force
But now, in this new environment, we must see what dictatorship is
producing, and we must understand why bin Laden exists, and why
fundamentalism generates terrorism. I tell you the truth: if I lived in a
country where there was no day appointed for elections, I would become a
revolutionary, if not a terrorist. And that is because I love liberty too
much; without liberty a man is not a man. He has no dignity. And so today we
are now able, with Russia and America together, to look at all the states of
the world, and assess the dignity of all the people in the world, and we can
give them democracy and liberty. Yes! By force if necessary! Because that is
the only way to show it is not a joke. We said to Saddam, 'Do it, or we come
', and we came and we did it. I cannot say which country he was from, but
someone telephoned me the other day and said, 'I will do whatever the
Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.' [Mr
Berlusconi's spokesman indicated that the leader in question was Col.
Gaddafi.]
Bush's book of rogue states
At Evian I participated in the morning at a meeting with President Bush and
the FBI and the CIA. And they had a book, with all the countries in the
world where there is no peace and there is a risk. We began with Liberia,
and then Bush said, 'What about Afghanistan?' And then Chirac said, 'What
about Korea?' And when we came to Kosovo, where we Italians have 3,600
soldiers, Bush said to me, 'I thank you.' And I said, 'No, it is I who thank
you, because Kosovo is near me. I am here and Kosovo is here!' So we have a
moral duty to be responsible for the New World Order, and we have to
understand that America has 400,000 soldiers overseas. And how is this done?
With American taxpayers' money. All of this we have to appreciate, and also
to take action.
Should Europe not share the burden?
Certainly, certainly. Europe ought to spend more to give it a military
power, or it will never be equal to the US, and the distance between us will
be irrecoverable. We have many budgetary difficulties in Italy, and I
inherited a bad situation, but I am convinced that over time Italy should
gradually spend more on defence. But I am also convinced that there should
be intelligent spending, so that each European country does not equip itself
with the same specialisations.
So why does the Economist think he is unfit to govern Italy?
The Economist has made a big and fundamental mistake in confusing the cops
and the robbers. It has taken the protectors of democracy and liberty - us -
for the robbers, and it has taken the robbers for cops. It has jumbled it
all up. I have never in my life taken a penny out of politics. I have put my
money into politics, yes, by financing Forza Italia. I don't dare to
telephone my group, because a single telephone operator might say,
'Berlusconi's calling.' As for the conflicts of interest, it is all the
other way round, because I had to sell all my system of big stores because
the communists didn't want to buy from me and they had a BB - boycott
Berlusconi - strategy. The left-wing authorities wouldn't give me any new
permits to build stores, and I didn't ask from the Right because it would
have been thought I had an interest, so my sons decided to sell the lot.
Is it right to pass a law exempting oneself from prosecution?
You have to understand that I have had more than 500 visits from the Guardie
di Finanze [inland revenue police] to my group, that I have had more than 90
investigations. You have to ask, what is the remedy if an entire procura
[investigating magistratura], in Milan and Palermo, does nothing else except
invent theories about me? What is the remedy if they keep asking me to go to
court, or keep having me have meetings with my lawyers? Do I govern or do I
respond continually to all these accusations? It is impossible. Only 8 per
cent of Italians have faith in this magistratura. This is what must be
understand that the Economist has not yet understood. Only 8 per cent. So
this seemed the only possible remedy.... Not cases closed but suspended
during the period of service to the state. I was against it. I didn't want
it.... But then they tell me (I have won all my cases - eh - only one
remained, only one) that the Milan judges are doing exactly what they did in
1994. In 1994 my government fell because they accused me of corruption and
then I was acquitted after six years. But they made my government fall for
that, and they changed the course of Italian history not with the truth, but
with false accusations. And now the same judges, from the same courts, make
the same false accusations!
Didn't his company bribe at least one judge, called Squillante?
As far as the money goes, nothing has been proved, because in relation to
us, in relation to my company, what has been established is merely the
payment of parcelle to the lawyers who in Rome had a system of bank accounts
going back and forth from Switzerland in which all Roman judges
participated. I am not saying this was correct, I am merely saying that we
had nothing to do with it. And in any case, this Squillante did not have a
case that involved me. Why should my group pay Squillante if there was not
one single court case of mine in which he had a hand? All my cases were in
Milan, not Rome. Why should my company make a payment to Squillante?
But wasn't he trying to stop the sale of SME to Buitoni, as a favour to
Craxi?
Squillante was not a judge on any of our cases, so I don't understand how it
happened. The Italians don't believe it. They believe me.
They don't believe the Economist?
No! They knew all this. I won the election with this case already taking
place, with all the TV against me. The Italians believed me and they didn't
believe the judges.
But why don't people understand this abroad?
I think that 80 per cent of journalists are left-wing, and they have very
close relations with the foreign press, and they all have a club in Rome. I
don't give press conferences to the foreign press because they just use it
as an opportunity to attack me. They don't take any account of what I say or
do. They write what they have already in their heads. They don't understand
about our judiciary. Look at what happened to Andreotti, who was sentenced
to 20 years.
Wasn't Andreotti, seven times Italian prime minister, a mafioso?
But no. But no. Ma no. Andreotti is troppo intelligente. He is too clever.
Look, Andreotti is not my friend. He is of the Left. They created this
fiction to demonstrate that the Democrazia Cristiana which was for 50 years
the most important party in our history was not an ethical party but a party
close to criminality. But it is not true. Non č vero. It is una follia!
These judges are mad twice over! First, because they are politically that
way, and second, because they are mad anyway. To do that job you need to be
mentally disturbed, you need psychic disturbances. If they do that job it is
because they are antropologicamente different! That is why I am in the
process of reforming everything.

"Geronimo" ha scritto nel messaggio
22 KB di roba.
Plonk and go-----> al'abuse di newsland. Spero ti seghino l'account.
E vai anzi andate a postare su NG di POLITICCA!!!!!!! Che mi sono rotto di
scaricare le cianche che non mi interessano!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Plonk and go-----> al'abuse di newsland. Spero ti seghino l'account.
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