Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Berlusconi: I've got the sun in my pocket

 
Alcuni brani dall'intervista al Sunday Times magazine,
 
Silvio Berlusconi
He thanks me for visiting him, offers an early- evening aperitivo and agrees 
heartily when I refuse. He is not simply a well- rehearsed affable host, but 
instinctively keen to charm and makes ever effort to make me feel 
comfortable. I ask after his health. “I’m well. l’ve still got the sun in my 
pocket”, he replies, an expression he famously used to drum into the sales 
teams of his business empire. “I’m an incurable optimist," Berlusconi smiles 
again. At 5ft 4in, he is sharp, alert, but paunchy and slightly breathless 
after coming down the stairs. He has a full head of hair , the hair thinner 
on top of his scalp, after a transplant a decade ago.
 
During our meeting he repeatedly denies the charges and reminds me he is 
appealing the verdicts. He waves me to a chair at an oval table in a wood 
panelled dining room where, he says, he and his party apparatchiks “do all 
the thinking”. He is accompanied by a long- time political aide and his 
chief press officer. For the next 90 minutes, Berlusconi fidgets constantly 
gesticulating, doodling on a notepad, often closing his eyes as he speaks. 
For all the talk of the sun in his pocket, he seems weary. His mood is in 
turn nostalgic, sad, bitter, angry, bombastic and defiant. (…)
 
 
Berlusconi tells me, that the accusations about his private life have caused 
“so much pain, so many wounds, for me and for my family”. He has in recent 
months suffered from depression and spent many nights sitting in front of 
the TV. When l ask him what really went on at his villa, he looks briefly 
surprised at the question, then launches into a list of his political 
achievements. None of his undoing, he believes, is about sex or tax fraud, 
it is all about payback for his political triumphs. He is at his angriest 
when denouncing prosecutors and judges, whom he describes as politically 
motivated left wingers.
“I represented, and still represent, the only obstacle to the left’s 
definitive conquest of power,” he insists. “I’m paying a personal price tor 
that, with a political and judicial vendetta that has been unleashed against 
me, through 150 trials in the last 20 years.”
Berlusconi says that his card was marked from the moment he decided to go 
into politics. In 1994 his first government collapsed when a coalition ally 
abandoned him following news of a corruption investigation; he was later 
cleared of the allegations. After returning to power for a fourth time in 
2008, he says, he cut taxes and cleared Naples of household rubbish, 
performing a “miracle”. (…)
 
In his last term in office, he claims to have saved the airline Alitalia 
from French hands, and built new homes for 30,000 victims of an earthquake 
at L’Aquila in central Italy. “Alas, my popularity went up to 75.3% in late 
2009. The leftist judiciary was hugely scared, and the perfect storm was 
launched,” he says. And then he talks in detail of the allegations that have 
dogged his career in recent years. It was, he says, his friend Emilio Fede, 
a former newsreader on one of his TV channels, who had the idea of having a 
table of beautiful girls, as Berlusconi puts it. (Fede is appealing against 
a seven-year sentence for procuring young women for prostitution for 
Berlusconi’s parties.) “I worked all the time, in the evening, on Saturday, 
on Sunday, it was crazy. It’s clear that I’ve worked so hard in a room 
surrounded by people from Rome, the politicians.” Fede’s idea suited him. “I 
liked tossing songs for a bit, to talk about soccer, in a very pleasant 
manner”(…)
 
 
Berlusconi’s tone suddenly changes and emotion wells up in his voice . “They 
did things to these girls which…I don’t know I can put it…These girls were 
named everywhere, look them up, and they come out as the prosecutor said, as 
pros-ti-tutes”, slowly articulating each syllable “These girls have had 
their lives de-vas-ta-ted, de-vas-ta-ted,” he continues. “They can’t find a 
proper boyfriend, a proper  job, they can’t find someone who will rent them 
a flat, and they are desperate.”
 
In the “bunga” case the police staged “ a roundup”, barging into the homes 
of 32 women. He claims the women, watched by a female officer, were made to 
undress in the bathroom as their clothes, bags, shoes and knickers – he 
stresses the last word- were laid out and photographed. “All their diaries, 
computers and mobile phones were taken away. Then they were taken to police 
headquarters and kept there with no food until 9pm,” he says  (...)
 
 
“Luckily, I’ve never in my life had to pay a woman to have sex,” he insists. 
He grins broadly and says that unfortunately he had to marry some, which 
cost him a lot.  Last summer, a court ruled that Berlusconi must pay his 
estranged wife Veronica Lario a monthy sum of £1.2m. (When she filed for 
divorce in 2009, Lario branded him “a dragon to whom young virgins offer 
themselves”.) (...)
 
Berlusconi insists that he cannot explain how and underage girl - Ruby the 
Heart Stealer - had been among his guests at dinner one evening. “We didn’t 
manage to find out how, because no one said they’d brought her along.” He 
does say, however, that her description of her background made many of his 
guests feel sorry for her. She said she was Egyptian and that her mother was 
related to Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president. Her parents had had 
thrown her because she had embraced the Catholic faith and her father had 
thrown boiling oil on her. “She showed us deep injuries,” Berlusconi says, 
bowing his head and gesturing as if he were parting his hair. Her father has 
denied treating her in this way.
 
“She said she was 24, she looked her age and she had a way of speaking that 
meant no one would have thought she was 17 and a few months. She made 
friends with some people and so, every so often, I saw her appear here. I 
never invited her”, Berlusconi says. (…)
 
In 1991, after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the Italian party shifted 
towards the centre, renaming itself the Democratic Party of the Left. But 
Berlusconi was convinced it remained a treath. “All the opinion polls showed 
I was the only one who could save Italy from this danger,” he says. “I didn’t 
sleep for nights” (…)
 
Berlusconi is determined to return to front-line Italian politics, but 
current polls credit the centre –right bloc he leads with 33,7% of the vote, 
behind the centre left of “Italy’s Tony Blair”, the 38-year-old Matteo 
Renzi, at 38,8%. Asked whether he would like to be prime minister for a 
fifth time – judges permitting – he replies: “We can’t leave the left an 
empty field”. More than that, it’s a question of duty. “If I take into 
account the incredible judicial and media siege which has turned me into a 
continuous target; and, above all, if I compare myself to the other players 
on the (Italian) stage today, then I have the duty to stay in the ring.” 
 

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:le30l6$ame$1...@dont-email.me...
 
Fosse vero!
 
 

 ring."
 
 
 
"massivan"
 
Le solite panzane, ricicla ancora quella delle
casette ai terremotati che erano della regione
Trentino.