Philip Willan - January 26, 2011

The decades-long battle between Silvio Berlusconi and Italy’s most famous prosecutor is entering its final round. The prime minister’s career and Italy’s democracy hang in the balance.

Last week, the Italian magazine Panorama published a huge photo of Ilda Boccassini, Milan’s 61 year-old public prosecutor, on its front cover under the title “Il Vizietto,” the Little Vice. The vice in question was not that of the magazine’s owner, Silvio Berlusconi, who is the current and long-time object of Boccassini’s investigatory ardor. The misbehavior that the magazine intended to highlight was the magistrate’s own — namely, her relentless persecution of the Italian prime minister. Indeed, in seeking an indictment of Berlusconi for the better part of the past two decades, Boccassini has herself become a defendant in Italy’s court of public opinion.

Boccassini, who over the course of her career has earned the nickname “Ilda the Red” for both her flame-colored hair and her left-wing sympathies, has polarized a society sharply divided when it comes to the embattled prime minister. An opinion poll published Jan. 23 by the Corriere della Sera newspaper showed that 49 percent of Italians thought Berlusconi should resign because of his latest sex scandal, while 45 percent believed he should not. Boccassini has earned the support of those who dislike Berlusconi: Roberto Saviano, the bestselling author who has a famously contentious relationship with the prime minister, dedicated an honorary law degree he received last week to Boccassini, praising her for fulfilling her “duty of justice.” But for admirers of the premier, the prosecutor has become a symbol of the judiciary’s obsessive, and self-interested, drive to restore its place at the top of the national political hierarchy.

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Philip Willan knows more about Italian (para)politics than most Italians, and has written two classics on the subject: Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy and The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi.

Excerpt:

The dozens of affairs which connect him to the Sicilian Mafia are a constant source of irritation for his opponents, but not for Berlusconi himself as he has never been in serious trouble on that score and is widely believed to have pulled his judicial system strings to scare judges off or have them moved to other assignments.

The same is true for his legendary ‘business flair’, which, again, has been largely left unchallenged because of his connections. Conflicts of interest, the introduction of legislation specifically designed to keep the justice system and its allegations and court cases related to alleged financial misdealing and monopolistic practices at bay, his false testimony in the P2 Masonic lodge membership scandal involving prominent business, military, political and secret service personalities, wiretapping – you name it, his name crops up in it.

But the crowning glory of his web of influence – and perhaps the most important – is his almost total control over the country’s most powerful media interests. This stranglehold on the country’s media is so effective that he has been accused by many press freedom organizations of being responsible for the fact that Italy has now been officially classified as a country with limited freedom of expression – the only case of its kind in the West. He is widely believed to control 90% of Italy’s national media and has stifled all legislative efforts to loosen his grip.

See also:

• Italy: ‘From P2 to P3: Thirty Years of Politics and Business’

Mark Franchetti - March 14, 2010

THE billionaire Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, once met a leading mafia godfather to ask for protection, according to testimony gathered over several years by crime prosecutors.

Mafia informants claim the meeting took place in Milan in 1974, when Berlusconi was already a wealthy entrepreneur, at the offices of his property company. The informers say Berlusconi met Stefano Bontade, then one of the mafia’s most powerful bosses, because he feared for his family’s safety at a time when Italy was plagued by a wave of high-profile kidnappings.

Francesco Di Carlo, one of Bontade’s henchmen who is now in jail, told prosecutors that he was at the meeting. He claims Berlusconi asked for help to ensure that neither he nor his children would be abducted by other mafia clans.

According to the henchman’s testimony, Bontade gave his word that he would personally ensure Berlusconi’s safety. In return Berlusconi told the mafia godfather that he was “at his disposal, for anything”.

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NB: Not to mention that Berlusconi was also a member of Gelli’s ‘rogue’ Masonic faction, P2. And for the deep connections between the Mafia and the Masons in Italy, see “Operation Hiram: Italian Freemasonry and the Mafia.”

Chris Williams - 3rd December 2008

Italian president and media baron Silvio Berlusconi said today that he would use his country’s imminent presidency of the G8 group to push for an international agreement to “regulate the internet”.

Speaking to Italian postal workers, Reuters reports Berlusconi said: “The G8 has as its task the regulation of financial markets… I think the next G8 can bring to the table a proposal for a regulation of the internet.”

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Surprise, surprise. An identified member of the false-flag terroristic, crypto-Masonic, fascist Propaganda Due, actually has disdain for free speech! …Never saw that coming.