Slashdot Mirror
Italian Police Seize Blog Over 'Kill Berlusconi' Satire
Giorgio Maone writes "Italian Police just seized the Savona e Ponente Blog because the 60-year-old journalist Valeria Rossi posted a satirical article titled 'I want to kill Berlusconi,' writing that 'you can't feel guilty of wishing him death, because he's not human: he's an alien, with incredible psychic powers.' Otherwise, how could such a clown, with multiple pending trials for corruption, tax offenses, abuse of power and even child prostitution, convince the majority of the other politicians and a consistent slice of Italian people to keep him as their prime minister for almost 20 years now? Here's a mirror of the incriminating text (Italian)." And here's a translation to English.
Did you know it is illegal to say: "I wish President Obama was killed by mortar fire on the White House. It could be set up across the park and use the flag on said White House to provide a rough wind measurement."
Not everybody has the same sense of humor ... especially politicians and those who's job it is to protect them.
I keep reading about this clown, the demonstrations against him etc, but it all seems to boil down to one thing - the lack of a credible alternative. As long as there isn't one, he's going to be in power. This simple fact seems to have escaped the Italian voting public for years now. Is it really hard to find someone in Italy who's not a crook and who wants to be president?
On the other hand, Roman emperors also had the habit of occasionally getting things done in grand style. That is what I find most baffling about Berlusconi's endurance: Not only is the guy a grossly corrupt sleazeball plutocrat, he hasn't achieved particularly thrilling results in economic, law-and-order, or quality of life metrics.
He's like the decadent and incompetent version of Putin.
He owns the media in Italy.
What keeps him in power so long? You mean apart from owning the press, subverting due process and being beloved by the police?
The funny thing is that put that way; he sounds just like most of our beloved leaders.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Kinda what I was thinking. Especially a text which doesn't have any smiley or anything, and, as far as my piss-poor Italian allows, can read just as well as a schizophrenic's hate tirade. I mean, much as I would like to believe that a text going on about how someone isn't human and can hypnotize the masses is obviously a parody, you could say the same about the contrail conspiracy theory and yet some dolts out there believe it in all earnest.
The thing is, some people _do_ go nuts now and then and start believing all sorts of highly illogical stuff right before they go and shoot someone. A text whose basic and repeated gist seems to be "I never was for killing another human, but I want to kill the head of the government, and it's ok to kill him because he's a mind-controling alien" would probably get one investigated in the USA or most other countries.
I kind of have sympathy for him, and see how being run by a douchebag using his media monopoly to keep himself in power would drive someone to despair. But FFS there are better ways to go about it without sounding like a delusional rant about wanting to kill him. Or at least, you know, a couple of winking smileys or something.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I see this a lot in politics these days: educated, intelligent journalists lashing out and saying anyone who doesn't agree with their political opinions must not be a member of the human race. And here's one who thinks that it's OK to call for deaths just because she's frustrated.
There's a critical difference between a satirical call for death and an actual death threat. Death itself is a powerful subject, and it can be used quite aptly to evoke far more sentiment than straight murderous rampage. In this case, she wasn't stating her intent to kill Berlusconi, nor was she attempting to rally others to do the same. Rather, she was expressing her rage and frustration at him, which is well within (at least American) bounds of free speech.
This seizure wasn't made out of fear and concern for Berlusconi's wellbeing. This is textbook abuse of law for the purpose of silencing opposition.
America has the same thing, Sarah Palin's calls for violence incited her followers and real people died.
This is a really stupid example. Maybe read a little into things before echoing the political impulse. As outrageous and annoying as Palin is, there is no good reason to suspect she had anything to do with the shootings.
Those two are best buddies, if I remember my wikileaks correctly.
Yeah, thought so WikiLeaks 'to highlight Putin and Berlusconi's special relationship'
One controls the Italian Mafia, one controls the Russian Mafia.
To an outside observer, it seems that Berlusconi has stayed in politics for one primary reason - to make sure that he can keep changing laws every time there's an attempt to prosecute him for some misdeed. With that tactic, he's rendered the judiciary largely irrelevant. He owns a vast media empire, and hasn't been forced to keep his media holdings at arm's length while in office, so he's used that to prop up his political empire. The Italian Parliament doesn't seem to be able to deal with the issue. The disconnect between those in power and a good chunk of the population is very high, according to some recent news reports.
Given his personal behavior, you have to wonder just how corrupt his government actually is, and who may have been in a position to blackmail him for favors over the last twenty years. If he'd managed to avoid sexual misconduct that seemed deplorable to his core supporters, he wouldn't be in trouble now.
If Italy was in another part of the world, there would probably be a lot of questions about how democratic it actually is.
It goes a little wider than that.
He is an embarrassment to
And probably a lot of other groups.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
> saying anyone who doesn't agree with their political opinions must not be a member of the human race
Lemme translate some famous pearls of S. Berlusconi
"Judges are mentally ill and antropologically different from the rest of human race"
About his opposition: "I can't believe there are so many dumbasses ('coglioni') that vote against their interests"
So, police, go seize his TV stations.
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As if a life lived under an authoritarian yoke is not a disaster.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You know, that's actually a pretty good idea! The flag being used to gauge wind speed I mean, not the killing part... I never would have thought of that.
Obviously you're not a golfer.
Comparing Belusconi to Mussolini? What an absolute hidious insult to Mussolini.
They're not "child" prostitutes, they're like seventeen. Now, I agree that it's abhorrent to go with somebody that young if you're over 24 and he's like 70. I also think that if guilty he'd have to go straight to jail as underage prostitution is terrible.
But I point out that had he waited some months the girls would turn 18, he'd have been above such charges. I have theories:
1. those girls are the way to frame him, his entourage has a lot of shady guys. The mafia or the really powerful people don't let a guy like berlusconi get too powerful without a way to control him.
2. 17 is illegal. 18 is legal, no fun anymore. Pedobear sh^t gets real.
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-- John J. Chapman, Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900
Oh, the memories. I always believed that Bill should have been impeached, not for the silly 'crimes' he was accused of, but for a serious violation of aesthetics. Gees, he was the President, couldn't he do better than that? It reflected poorly on the whole country.
Lesson #1: Never, ever, get into anything related to bashing politicians. It's a free way to disaster. I'd go as far as to say "Never voice your political opinions", except maybe with your family and close friends.
FF some 10-15 years and not even there: your 5-6 yo grandchildren may "snitch" you by simply speaking to persons outside your trust circle. Don't you dare to break your trust circle either - like divorcing or something - not if you don't plan to snitch your "soon to be your ex-spouse and political detainee" before divorce. Can tell the above for sure, as a person who lived in Eastern Europe for the first 20-something years of life.
Would you like such a life? 'Cause if not, better forget about your advices and do something, even if the very little of always telling the truth.
Legally they are not underage prostitutes.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Politicians are our servant, officially speaking. Bashing a servant should be without consequences.
Stripping people of such right makes revolt a just moral choice. Of course revolt might be the expected response, rage becoming fuel for other immoral machinations.
I dunno your country but here:
Fascism 1.0 (1914-1945) is when that freedom is taken away.
Fascism 2.0 (1945-2001) is when politicians are uniformly puppets, so bashing them is encouraged as a diversion.
Fascism 3.0 (2001-present) is when bashing is again prohibited so that the diversion is stronger and the choice for the citizen is between direct and indirect control.
Getting out of it requires everybody to be social, powerful, smart, moral persons (moral as in having a moral system that competes with outside control - there is no real problem if people have genuine faith in communism, fascism, atheism, religion AND live their system for themselves and not against the others).
But that's unlikely to happen: the system can buy us off simply enabling a positive economic phase.
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Italy is different, they like sex and are not ashamed of it,
Tolerate alternative lifestyles, eg LBGT
Have some of the most passable/beautiful TS outside asia, and go to confession.
Burlisconi has few problems, at his age most Italians envy him, as in the US its only the PC liberals who hate success and fun,
and at 74 who can grudge him that.
how could such a clown, with multiple pending trials for corruption, tax offenses, abuse of power and even child prostitution, convince the majority of the other politicians and a consistent slice of Italian people to keep him as their prime minister for almost 20 years now?
By using the brute squad to terrorize the slightest dissent.
lolwut? Are you a moron? Right now, we can point at a couple of wars that could be blamed on the right. Before then there were a couple of wars that could be blamed on the left. (arguably smaller than the more recent "right wing wars" - not to mention the reasons behind the wars turned out to be truthful.) And before all that there has been war / murder / death at the behest of all kinds of *extremists*. Lefties can be extremists and righties can be extremists. Political violence is endemic *in the human race*. (and if anything ultra conservative religious nuts are more likely to dehumanise than any other group, I mean, we are all infested with the devil are we not?)
Quoting from the text:
"Oggi, però, mi accordo di desiderare, dal profondo del cuore, la morte di Silvio Berlusconi .
Non solo: ***mi sento proprio disposta ad andarlo a far fuori personalmente.***"
The asterisked part translates to "I am ready to go kill him myself".
Now granted, the rest of the blog post is obviously satyrical and even thinking this person actually wants to go kill the dude (whom I intensely dislike, by the way) is insane, but the fact is, she did violate the law by stating this. It's still ridiculous that the blog was seized when any search for "kill berlusconi" will reveal that if someone did off the man half of italy would welcome his death and dance on his grave, but you can't technically fault the police for their actions.
Still and all, the only thing seizing the blog will accomplish is to make the attempt at censorship more widely known via your friend the Streisand effect.
"Otherwise, how could such a clown, with multiple pending trials for corruption, tax offenses, abuse of power and even child prostitution, convince the majority of the other politicians and a consistent slice of Italian people to keep him as their prime minister for almost 20 years now?"
Highlighted the answer for you.
Regards;
Political opinions are what runs a democracy - it is the people in the street, talking about what goes on in the state and what should be done about it. Silencing that free and open debate, as is apparently the custom in the United States, is the death of democracy and the advent of belittling leaders who 'know what is best for the people'.
Welcome to your willing subservitude to the new tyrants.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
What keeps him in power so long?
Sollozzo: Bene, Don Corleone. I need a man who has powerful friends. I need a million dollars in cash. I need, Don Corleone, all of those politicians that you carry around in your pocket, like so many nickels and dimes .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And exactly how does it help satire anyway? It seems to me like one could make a satire on the theme of Berlusconi being a mind-controlling alien without repeated and obsessive returns to how that makes it ok to kill him. Remove the incitations to killing him from it, and you still have the same satire. Well, and still not particularly funny, but adding some violent rhetoric doesn't make it any funnier, it just makes it distasteful.
And frankly, I don't know if Palin in particular and one particular killing are linked, but the tone of political mud-slinging in the USA is not something most of us outside the USA admire. Drawing crosshairs on maps and opponents homes and all the hate rhetoric is something that adds... what? Why don't those guys and gal just say what their party will do for the voter, instead of how their opponents are traitors and need to be shot?
And frankly, even Loughner, since you mention him, seems like a poster child for a right wingnut. Complete with stuff like not having to take "federalist" laws, ranting about the return to a gold standard, and such touching woowoo CT views as that the government mind-controls the people via neuro-linguistic programming. Yes, he was crazy and as deranged as to hold a mortal grudge over not getting the answer he wanted to a nonsense irrelevant question. But are you sure that it's ok to keep telling such nutcases that a segment of the population are traitors and need to be shot? Because it's not clear to me at all.
By sheer virtue of having a large population, there are 2.2 million schizophrenics in the USA. (Note that I'm not picking on the USA for that. All countries have them and a 0.81% prevalence rate isn't particularly high.) Add retards, Lyme disease victims, etc, and you just have a few millions who aren't particularly good at judging stuff. Exactly what is gained by hammering into their heads that some people are traitors and need to be shot and drawing crosshairs on maps? It seems to me like it's only a matter of time until someone whose line between reality and fantasy is blurred anyway, acts upon that information.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.