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.

Is the US any better?

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Double dumbass on you

[DNS-and-BIND]

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. America has the same thing, Sarah Palin's calls for violence incited her followers and real people died.

Re:What keeps him in power for 2 decades?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Re:Alternative?

[Aldenissin]

Would YOU want to run against him? If you were to, remember, if something happened to you he'd automatically win...

It's a strange situation

[The Second Horseman]

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.

And exactly how does it help the satire, anyway?

[Moraelin]

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.