Today we, or rather, I will try to talk about this scandal that is being talked about in all the newspapers around the world, as well as some of the Italian ones, not all of them, but has not been mentioned in any of the Italian television news broadcasts, except for those of the little Tg3. The people at Tg3 could be doing a lot more and, given that it is the only one of the six channels on our remote controls to report on the scandal, it could become the biggest Italian television news channel, if only they were able to take advantage of the situation, something that this channel was unable to do during Berlusconi’s regime in 2001 – 2006 and certainly isn’t doing today with its little stutters. This is better than nothing and is, in any event, far better than the other channels, because the other channels are not actually television news services at all, but simply bits of advertising space at the service of the regime. Obviously we also exclude Sky News, which is currently only watched regularly by a small number of viewers, fans and avid followers of the genre. Then we must also pull a veil of pity over “La 7”, which is yet another channel that could be wiping the floor with the big guys and become something truly professional, except for the fact that we can see how it was held back and how it is still being held even after the arrival of Mentana and so, at the moment, I would be tempted to say that there is no chance that this channel will be able to take off. As a matter of fact, what we are seeing, or rather, what we are not seeing on television or in the newspapers at the moment is very similar, except for the deaths of course, to what is happening in Iran. We are getting ever closer to the kind of thing that happens in Iran, in Russia and in Libya as regards freedom of information although here we don’t have the physical violence and it is, therefore, not so much a question of government restricting the journalists, but rather a competition between journalists to see who can do the most arsecreeping, even more than required. In order to work out precisely what the regime demands of the television news media, it is sufficient to take a look at Tg5, because this is the most watched of all the television news that belong to our Prime Minister. Yet Tg5 is not even quite as bad as Minzolini’sTg1, because outside servants that are not full time employees are always more zealous than the employees themselves in the sense that, not knowing precisely where the barbed wire of the Boss’ anger lies, they tend to stop well before they potentially reach the limit, while the full time employees go all the way to the very edge of the barbed wire if not beyond.
This scandal may well make some people yawn, as we have already said, but it may lead other people to say that which I wrote just the other day, namely that it is rather sad when the citizens of a country begin to slowly, bit by bit withdraw the mandate given to their Head of State, in our case Silvio Berlusconi, because of a problem involving prostitutes and “gay ladies”, which is indeed a very serious matter, so serious in fact that, in any other democracy, would be enough to force the head of the government to step down and cause the opposition to pull together and to table a motion of no confidence, a motion that would be backed even by the majority of the parliamentarians from the man’s own party, also because the press and public opinion would incessantly ask for, demand and eventually obtain this gesture of common decency.
But we don’t have parliamentarians in our Parliament. What we do have are Yes-men and dependents. Particularly in the centre-right, the majority of the people that are only there because the Boss man wants them there and they would never have got there in the first place if our elections were free and we had a preferential vote and a decent electoral law. These are devoted people that were chosen precisely because of their and their obsequiousness. They would be prepared to do anything whatsoever to protect their Boss, because by protecting the Boss they are also protecting themselves. If the Boss should go down, then they would go down with him and then they would be forced to go out and get a real job, which is somewhat difficult to do for someone who is no longer in the first flush of youth and who only knows how to do one thing, namely to arsecreep.
In addition, we have no such thing as public opinion, we have no such thing as freedom of information and we have no such thing as a free Parliament that is able to control the Government and its leader, so this natural course of events that is so normal in a democracy is unthinkable here by us and I feel obliged to say one thing: the “puttanopoli” (Brothel City) scandal is a serious matter in a country with normal ethical standards and if we consider all the things that Berlusconi has done in his lifetime we could be excused for saying: Oh well, it could be a lot worse!
While it may be true that Al Capone was involved in far worse things than tax evasion in the United States, but he was nevertheless nabbed for tax evasion and because the penalties for tax evasion are very severe in the United States, Al Capone landed up behind bars for some twenty years, which at least got him off the streets. However, Al Capone was not Prime Minister and he was not even involved in politics, except for the fact that he held quite a bit of influence with certain of the politicians at the time. We, instead, have a Gentleman who now, after having had a close relationship with members of the mafia, after having managed proprietary companies that accumulated huge slush funds, after having bribed politicians, or rather, provided illegal funding for certain politicians that went on to draft tailor made legislation on his behalf, beginning with Craxi, after having violated accounting rules and then protecting himself from prosecution by de-criminalising the crime of accounting fraud, after having appropriated the largest Italian publishing house, namely Mondadori, thanks to a certain court ruling “purchased” by his Attorney with his Company’s money, after having despatched a man such as Dell’Utri who went out and recruited mafia members disguised as stable hands and the proceeded to create slush funds of his own and pocket the proceeds, after having drafted people from within his own companies into Parliament, people that were bribing Revenue Department officials to turn a blind eye, indeed two blind eyes to the fact that group companies were keeping two sets of accounts, after having bribed, at least according to the Milan Court, an Attorney by the name of Mills in return for perjured testimony aimed at concealing what he had done previously, after having personally (Berlusconi, that is) perjured himself before the judges in Venice back in 1990, a crime that he was later absolved of thanks to an amnesty, after having got away with all of this, one might be tempted to say: is it possible that he now stands to lose everything all because of a bit of sex for payment?
I wrote about this just the other day – we talk a lot about the 25th July, the 25th July 1943 to be precise, the day on which the Great Fascist Council deposed Mussolini in Rome and the King had him arrested. The climate was rather dramatic, we were at war and this Country was a far more serious place then. Every country has the 25th July that it deserves and so, today, when a country such as ours has been reduced to a bordello by someone such as Berlusconi, a personality not nearly as tragic as Mussolini or some other dictator, it is almost like being in one of Alvaro Vitali’s films, a story about “Pierino”, a story about “Pierino” however that must not be underestimated. The only reason why it seems a little less serious is because the person in question has done far worse things and he would deserve to be sent away for his relationships with the mafia members, for corruption, for accounting fraud, for conflict of interests, for the monopolization of the media that has changed this Country upside down, into the hellhole that we see today.
But the worst part about this entire episode is not the fact that someone deems fit to stick his nose in between the Prime Ministers bed sheets and we must be careful not to allow ourselves to be taken for a ride by the propaganda spread by those that insist on classifying this matter as simple gossip, or the Premier’s own business or his private life, after all, everyone is entitled to sleep with whoever they please and some may even say: so what, he was unfaithful to his wife, who cares, any man is free to be unfaithful to his wife, this is a matter between a man and his wife, it has nothing to do with us!
However, just a year ago the Prime Minister asked a Sardinian Bishop for dispensation allowing him to take Holy Communion even though he was a divorced man and so, this fact should also be made public seeing that he himself opened up his private life to public scrutiny, but never mind, never mind the issue of family day, we’ve talked about this already, the fact is that a person is free to do whatever he/she wishes within the confines of his/her own home. He/she is free to be the biggest Don Juan ever, the biggest debauchee and whoremonger ever, however, the important thing is that he doesn’t then sink so low as to organise “family days”. In my opinion it seems quite obvious and perhaps we should be apologising to Sabina Guzzanti and Beppe Grillo, who together with Paolo Guzzanti, have always talked about the P factor, namely the issue of prostitutes in berlusconian politics, for which they were accused of trying to break down our political institutions and being enemies of the Country. But never mind these issues, this story, this scandal is particularly serious for 3 or 4 different reasons, beyond the issue of who the last person was that mentioned the matter of the prostitute to, in the now legendary words of the Attorney Ghedini who, in his haste to prove that his Client has not committed any crime or rather that, if he has indeed committed a crime, he has left no traces, immediately proceeded to inform us that even if the girl in question was indeed a prostitute, and even if she did indeed go into Palazzo Chigi, and even if she did indeed go into the Premier’s bedroom, and even if she did indeed climb into his bed, and even if they did indeed have sex, since it was not the Premier himself who paid the girl for her services but rather some convenient businessman by the name of Tarantini, who is from Bari and who just happens to be a neighbour of Berlusconi’s in Sardinia, then Berlusconi can prove that he was unaware of what was going on and was simply the end user of the goods, which goes to show precisely how these gentlemen treat women, namely like some sort of Post Office parcel, crate of milk or case of beer. End user, I ask you with tears in my eyes!
The problem is the previous end-users, that is the real problem that turns this affair into a political matter, a State scandal and a public matter that should interest every citizen because all of the Country’s citizens are unwittingly involved whether they like it or not. Therefore, the first issue is not whether or not Berlusconi can to have sexual relations, and in this regard an elegant discussion was unleashed on Libero when Vittorio Feltri gave us a little lesson on the prostate, a topic on which he claims to speak from personal experience, so I don’t know, perhaps we should believe him! The real problem here is called: a) blackmail; b) lies; c) election lists and, as a matter of fact, this is precisely where I would like to begin, namely from the beginning of this story, which went from the dancing girls to Berlusconi’s divorce from his wife Veronica to the Noemi case and from the Noemi case on to the parties in Sardinia with a photographer camped outside the premises and finally, from the parties in Sardinia on to this latest matter surrounding the prostitutes that allegedly visited both Palazzo Grazioli, which remains a Government building even though it also happens to be Berlusconi’s private residence, as well as a whole range of other Government buildings where public services and a variety of internal and international politics take place and, for that matter, the other villas.
Everything began with a public matter, namely the appearance of the names of certain dancing girls on the election nomination lists. At that point it was generally believed that it was simply the dancing girls whose names appeared on the nomination lists, and that in itself caused quite a scandal, but then it was later discovered that the Popolo della Libertà’s nomination lists were full of real or presumed showgirls who are absolutely incapable but that happen to move in the right circles and were therefore being nicely set up to play some or other minor part, and let’s face it, they can’t even act or sing, they are absolutely useless!
Now we find out that the election lists, such as the one for Bari for example, include at least one escort, a lady of the night, namely the one that went to Palazzo Grazioli, armed with a cell phone and a device for recording conversations and who then proceeded to circulate pictures as well as audio and video clips of her relationship with the Prime Minister, it is said that you can even see a picture of Veronica on the bedside table, yet no one was aware of what was going on and the very same infamous security system that, for the past three years, has allowed a photographer sitting on high ground to take some 7-thousand photographs of the Prime Minister and his lady friends has now also allowed some or other escort girl into the Prime Minister’s room without her even being searched, just as no one guards the entrances to Palazzo Grazioli when the end-user is at home, nor checks on Tarantini, a man that brings the girls to the end-user, who is none other than our very own Prime Minister.
This is a problem of security, of decorum and of blackmail. If you bring in your lover, or your two, three or four lovers, however many they may be, well, heads of state and government leaders can do what they like as long as their wives don’t find out, but when you bring in 10/20/30/50 women, an entire airlift, you know what I mean, it like a repeat of the Normandy landings, they’re being brought in, sometimes to Palazzo Grazioli and other times to Sardinia, in batches you know, 20 or 30 at a time, how on earth does one ever manage to maintain any sort of control over who comes and goes? How do you lay your hands on the personal details of each and every one these people? How are you supposed to know what they will do with the cell phone snapshots once they leave that place? How are you supposed to know precisely what stories they’re going to tell? The important thing is not necessarily to know whether they are going to tell the truth or tell lies because, irrespective of whether they tell the truth or whether they lie, the Prime Minister nevertheless becomes their hostage, someone that can be blackmailed by them or by any of their friends who may get to see the material, material that could even land up in the hands of criminals or foreign secret services. I know, it’s impossible not to laugh when you see Berlusconi, however, this is the same man that holds the launch codes for this Country’s defensive weapons, including nuclear weapons since Italy is a member of NATO and a nuclear power in its own right.
Then think about all of the hundreds, or even thousands of people including the girls that got in, the people that took them there, those that speak to them, those that spend time with them and anyone else that may have seen these photos or information, or heard the recordings, all of whom are in a position to blackmail our Prime Minister. There have been numerous occasions during the course of the past few months where the Prime Minister has come across as being extremely vulnerable, open to blackmail and sometimes even as if he was actually being blackmailed. He was most certainly being blackmailed, even if we simply consider the telephone calls between Berlusconi, with Berlusconi trying by all means to find a place for 5 young ladies, some of whose names subsequently appeared on the nomination lists for the European elections, this was prior to Veronica’s revelations, names that were all then removed in one fell swoop, except for one, but the question is why did he have to find a place for these young ladies? Why was he so anxious to place these young girls? Some of them perhaps because they were his favourites, while others, for example Antonella, about which Berlusconi spoke to Saccà specifically, saying: You have to find a place for this one because she has already started talking”, but talking about what precisely? It doesn’t matter to us whether she was speaking the truth or lying, the important thing is that she was in a position to say certain things after having been around the Prime Minister, but to have to find a place for her because she has started talking is a bit much. And to whom was she talking exactly? While it doesn’t really matter very much if she was talking to a gossip tabloid regarding any or all of Berlusconi’s exploits because that would be minor stuff, but if, instead, she spoke to someone who could then use the information to get our Prime Minister to do something that he shouldn’t do, or for that matter something that he would never do unless he was being blackmailed, how would we know?
The fact that people know that he is surrounded by a veritable harem causes these girls to become very attractive targets and can lead to them being contacted and paid, given that they want money, not only for the sex, but also for providing information and reporting back to heaven knows who? We know that when he is with these girls, he shows them the films of his visits with former President Bush, he talks about politics, or so we are told, but does he only talk about things that are common knowledge or does he perhaps mention things that should be confidential, this is one thing that we don’t know! Just think back to the Saint *** affair, one that we have spoken about previously, where Berlusconi got to know a female television announcer, a certain Miss Buonasera, who was married to an Sisd Agent by the name of Armati. Berlusconi began to court her and, as the judges write in their summation prior to the case being archived, which I’ll talk about just now, she entered into a relationship with the Prime Minister. His own business you might say. Bunches of flowers, a small apartment in Campo dei Fiori, dinners, Palazzo Grazioli, etc. While she was having the affair with the Prime Minister, the woman got into a fight with her husband over who should get custody of their young child and proceeded to threaten her husband by saying that, should he refuse to give what she wanted, she would get you know who to ruin him completely. Irrespective of whether or not any instructions ever came down from Palazzo Chigi, soon after this threat was made the husband was promptly demoted and transferred from the Sisd to the Administration section of the Prison Services Department, at a much lower rank and earning about half of the salary he had been earning previously and so, what did he do next? He let it be known that he was going to approach the newspapers and reveal the whole sordid affair namely that the Prime Minister was living with his former wife, that he arranged for the man to be demoted and that the man was going to lay charges of mobbing and abuse of power, etc, etc. In the end, the Public Prosecutors Office in Rome archived the entire affair, as they are wont to do, and in his ruling the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate stated that while the relationship definitely existed and there was undoubtedly some sort of blackmail involved, Saint’s husband knew about his wife’s affair with the Prime Minister and had threatened to use this information to get what he wanted. And although it may simply be pure coincidence, after the husband threatened to tell all to the newspapers right at the time of the 2006 election campaign, in which Prodi beat Berlusconi by a very small margin and preceded Berlusconi’s huge comeback that eventually resulted in essential parity, well, on the eve of that election, Mister Armati, former husband of Mrs Saint ***, was inexplicably sent back to the secret services on the strength of a Prime Minister’s resolution signed by Gianni Letta, and we all know just how much authority Gianni Letta has with regard to Berlusconi, particularly when it comes down to matters affecting the secret services.
Now you see the kind of blackmail situations that we’re talking about, just as you can surely see that we are the ones being governed. He may be the end user, but we Italians are simply the abused! At the end of the day, after he has stuck it to all of us without even paying us anything for the privilege, neither he nor the initial user, the end user uses us for free. All these things make us realise that this Gentleman really is open to blackmail and not only in theory, as later experience has proven that he is in fact being blackmailed and, in this regard, if you have read the little that the newspapers have said, those that have said anything at all, you, as well as all other Italians and people living abroad will know all about the story surrounding Mrs. Daddario, an escort girl who, having left with only one thousand Euro instead of the two thousand initially negotiated, notwithstanding the fact that she had spent the entire night there and was asked and agreed to accept only one thousand Euro because she had asked the Prime Minister for his assistance with a matter involving real estate on a piece of property belonging to her family and, as usual, Berlusconi made certain promises. It is amusing to see that there are still some naive people in Italy who believe everything that Berlusconi says and so, this young lady or woman, whatever the case may be, believed the man’s promises and when, as normally happens, the promises were never kept, she started saying that she was going to get her own back on him, that she would ruin him, that she would get herself photographed with him during the election campaign in Bari and then she would make him pay!
This must be the only possible conspiracy that these gentlemen are referring to, but there is in fact no conspiracy whatsoever. If we’re talking conspiracy, what Italian or foreign entity has so much power, that’s the kind of bullshit they talk. Who is more powerful than Berlusconi here in Italy? He has everything, he even has Confindustria at his beck and call. Did you see the two dancing girls, Marcegaglia and Guidi, who were having photographs taken of themselves with him as if they were Mrs. Carfagna and Mrs. Brambilla, is that what they mean by major power? Just imagine Attorney Agnelli allowing himself to be photographed, or Mr. Lucchini for that matter, now those were major powers. These instead are ground hugging powers, always with hands outstretched begging for money, major powers, please! Since when? The only obvious major power here is Berlusconi!
The only potential conspiracy, or the eleven potential conspiracies if you believe anything these people say, is those involving the most humble of people like the escort girl. Just picture the Letizia family for a moment. Noemi’s parents who one day decided to phone Berlusconi and say to him: why don’t you come to Casoria, to the most infamous place that you will ever see in that area, and have your photograph taken with all of us, including the cooks, so that we can publicly announce our friendship, this because you had our daughter in your home. This is what they classify as a conspiracy, but they are nothing more than the rantings of Berlusconi, a man who is now so out of control that he goes and puts himself in a town that is the epitome of scary vulnerability, which is precisely what his wife said in two sentences while announcing her intention to divorce him. Everything that has happened since has been perfectly in keeping with what was said by the woman who has known Berlusconi for the past 29 years and been married to him for the past 19 of those years, namely that he is not very well, that he seeks the company of young girls, and of not so young girls too, as we have seen.
These are the dramatic aspects of this case, dramatic aspects that are aggravated by another public affair, namely the majority party, namely the Popolo delle Libartà’s choice of members of its ruling class. Millions of voters deserve far better because it is not said that simply because someone supports the centre-right they should not have any alternatives but to vote for a convicted criminal or a slut. Clearly the simple fact that an individual is a centre-right supporter doesn’t mean that he should be punished in this way. He too is entitled to something normal, just like centre-right voters in France and in all other countries of the world where there is a perfectly respectable centre-right, such as Sarcozy in France, Mrs. Merkel in Germany, etc, etc..
Now, about the election nomination lists. Did you hear what Noemi said, namely that Papy will decide whether I go into television or whether I will go into politics and serve in the Cabinet. Did you notice that amongst the candidates listed for the European elections were the names of all the young ladies that were initially supposed to be given roles in the RAI soap operas? Or did you notice that the candidate list for the Puglia Region is headed up by Raffaele Fitto, Minister for the Regions, followed by Antonio Matarrese, an much talked about former soccer bad boy, as well as his grandson, and also included the escort girl and her friend who accompanied her on her visit to Palazzo Graziolo, both of whom were nominated in support of the centre-right candidate for the Bari Municipality, namely ***. And what about the lists for Brescia? Is this to make up the required quota of women? Have the women of the centre-right got absolutely nothing to say about this? Are they quite happy with this situation? These are the kind of public problems we are talking about, irrespective of the sexual preferences and sexual habits of this old man that is desperately trying to give the impression that he is a young Don Juan, while he should probably rather be resign himself to the fact that he should learn to live with the ravages of old age, in which case he could have saved himself a lot of heartache and damage that is probably irreversible because he is most certainly never going to find a way to remedy this situation.
I don’t know how he’s going to get out of this one because, while it may be true that Italians will simply accept most things, that the television news reports are not showing us anything and that 60/70% of Italians don’t browse the Internet and don’t read the newspapers but make up their own minds, the Census data talks reveals that only 2/3 of all Italians only watch the news on television and anyone who only watches the television news knows very little about what is really going on, has not heard anything about our topic of discussion and is totally ignorant, it would be enough for them to pop over to Canada or to Australia to find out what is happening, unfortunately they live in Italy and, therefore, they are not shown anything on what is really going on in the country; as a matter of fact, within the next few days, as from 22 June to be precise, they will be screening a programme entitled “Citizen Berlusconi”, a documentary on Berlusconi that was produced in 2003/2004. No one in Italy has ever been allowed to see this documentary although it was shown worldwide, except for Italy, so we are still living in this nightmare , but it is becoming clear that Berlusconi’s downhill slide has begun, although Fini is dead right when he says that the disrepute that is hounding the ruling class as a result of this man’s actions and those of all of the slaves that surround him and don’t have the decency to throw him out, doesn’t necessarily mean that there is instability, and why not? Because this man has a 100-vote majority in the Cabinet and who else can find 100 parliamentarians prepared to commit political suicide by bringing down the very government that is their last remaining hope of keeping their posts? When Berlusconi eventually falls, his entire ruling class will have to go back home, both the right-wingers and the left-wingers, who are only there because he is also there and there is no other possible reason on earth for anyone to vote for the current Democratic Party other than the fact that this braggart is on the other side. Therefore, the moment he goes, everything will fall apart as it did in 1992, so we must be prepared for some red support for Berlusconi. As it is D’Alema’s rather rash comment regarding certain shocks, although I don’t believe that he was aware of the Bari investigations because the Bari Magistrates are good at their jobs and having had D’Alema under investigation with regard to allegations of bribery involving the entrepreneur Cavallari, no one there would have whispered anything in his ear about the progress of their confidential investigations, but with that comment he has already provided Berlusconi with additional grounds to claim that there is a conspiracy against him, even though he has brought it upon himself, Berlusconi that is, and D’Alema has had no part in it.
What I expect to see happening soon, once D’Alema’s supporters have managed to wrench the Democratic Party away from poor Franceschini, who has himself been attempting vainly to remedy the chaos in which the party found itself at the time of Veltroni, as soon as the D’Alema supporters take back the reigns of the Democratic Party, someone, probably having received a bribe, will probably crawl out of the woodwork claiming that Patrizia was organized for me, Berlusconi had nothing to do with it. We paid her for our own purposes and then she later went with him. I say this because in the past 15 years, every time Berlusconi has appeared to be tottering or limping along politically, someone from within the centre-left area has always conveniently saved him by raising another issue, such as bipartisanism or any number of supposedly urgent reforms.
I will keep you informed and I’ll close with the topic of our newspaper. We have now passed the 40-thousand subscriber mark and the real subscriptions are pouring in from the www.antefatto.it Website. We are now able to offer instalment payment terms for anyone who cannot afford or don’t want to pay a single lump sum into the bank account or the Post Office current account. As from next week, the easy credit card option will also become available. So, make a note or visit the Blog at www.voglioscendere.it and discover all the links, or go directly to www.antefatto.it, and pass on the news.