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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (153336)	12/4/2004 1:42:42 PM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 281500

Of course....and the relationship is quite obvious to all but those who do not wish to see it....

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (153336)	12/4/2004 9:00:41 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

> Gaddafi only flipped after Saddam was caught, telling Berlesconi that he didn't want to end up like Saddam. < That's nonsense. Libya had been "flipping" over -- working to rejoin the international community -- for years. Quoting anything Berlusconi says in this regard is showing your complete ignorance of the subject matter. Even if it were a true statement, one could easily argue that Libya, already well on the way to full reintegration with society (whether I fully believe that or not is another matter) could rightly be afraid of a madman like Bush wielding the military around like a spiked club. But more likely its an out of context representation of what was said or perhaps worse. I suppose it doesn't trouble you that the only account of Gaddafi confessing his fears comes from Berlusconi, a media mogul adept at spinning messages even before coming to politics. Berlusconi was one of the original gang of four heads of state that got together in the Azores the day before Iraq's "judgement day" as a final and dramatic show - a media event really - put on solely for public opinion's sake. Its not like such a man has no motivation in perpetuating the the myth and propaganda, right? Wrong. It apparently doesn't trouble you at all that the source of this information is Berlusconi, a man who has been indicted in over a dozen occasions on criminal charges, in his own country, ranging from tax fraud to bribery. Spain has an indictment out on him too. Berlusconi's government passed legislation designed to protect the top few heads of the state from certain prosecutions, which neatly allowed Berlusconi to side step some serious charges. Fortunately, this year the Italian Supreme Court overturned the legislation and Berlusconi is back on trial. A sitting prime minister! Its too funny for words. You might not remember, so I'll remind you: it was a former member of Berlusconi's Italian military intelligence group that put forth the forged documents that falsely implicated Iraq of buying uranium from Niger. Berlusconi is as hard right as they come, leading a collection of parties coalesced from former neo-fascist groups with rather troubling records. As a matter of fact Berlusconi in the past two weeks appointed as his foreign minister Gianfranco Fini, a man who once described Mussolini as the 20th centuries "greatest statesman". haaretz.com You ok with that? while Fini has been careful about changing his spots and that of his party and former party, given the man's ambition, its not a stretch to say he is now a supporter of Israel, democracy, and tolerance more out of convenience than from conviction. Back to your star witness, Berlusconi is also a holocaust denier of sorts: Berlusconi angers Jews over Mussolini gaffe "That [Mussolini's] was a much more benign dictatorship - Mussolini did not murder anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them," the Italian Prime Minister is quoted as saying in The Spectator magazine and Voce di Rimini newspaper. Amos Luzzatto, president of the Italian Jewish community, expressed "sadness" over the remarks. He said: "The fascist regime did not make extermination camps for the Jews, but certainly it contributed to creating them. "If killing someone only means hitting an adversary and killing him, then not even Hitler killed anyone. But in that way, we can say that there are no murderers in the world." Pierluigi Castagnetti, parliamentary party leader of the centre-Left Margherita party, said that the Prime Minister’s remarks were “incredible and shocking”. Widespread persecution of Italian Jews began in 1938 when Mussolini's regime issued racial laws. In 1943, German troops occupied northern and central Italy, and almost 7,000 Jews were deported, 5,910 of whom were killed. Fini: haaretzdaily.com Prof. Amos Luzzato, president of the Jewish community in Italy, has also undergone a kind of transformation. He has met with Fini several times in recent months and has come to be convinced that the man is a genuine democrat: "He's saying things today that in the past were inconceivable. If I were the prime minister of Israel, I'd probably invite him for a visit." Luzzato emphasizes that such a visit ought not to be construed as a total revision of fascist positions regarding Italian Jews. "Among Fini's mentors were those who signed the racial laws and delivered the Jews to the Nazis, to Auschwitz. The past cannot be erased," he says, immediately adding: "One also cannot object to a logical development of diplomatic ties between two democratic governments. Fini's visit to Israel is evidently a practical necessity and most of the Jewish community in Italy (which numbers approximately 35,000) understands this today. The majority supports my opinion. "Whether his pro-Israel stands derive from an understanding of the Israeli interest or are being taken for tactical, utilitarian reasons makes no difference," Luzzato continues. "Fini's goal is apparently to become prime minister - with his combination of cleverness and ambition, I believe he will attain his objective." I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with Luzzato's characterization.