Western Europe Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi Dead

[Nektar Geist]

Silvio Berlusconi, scandal-ridden former Italian prime minister, dies aged 86

https://archive.is/wip/EIGTQ

"Forza Italia was founded in 1993. A year later, Berlusconi was the first prime minister to be elected without previously having held a government office. His second term in office, between 2001 and 2006, was the longest served by any Italian leader since the second world war. He returned to power in 2008 but was forced to resign in 2011 amid an acute debt crisis."

Italian politics is very interesting/entertaining, like a Marx Bros film.

 

[Cavalier Cipolla]

He was also the owner of the Merdaset TV network, known for butchering various anime (fortunately, not nearly as much as 4kids) they adapt in Italian with kid friendly censorship and sometimes changing character's names in Italian for...reasons. And also known for endless airings of One Piece and DB/DBZ/DBGT over the course of 20-ish years. And ofc, the reality shows.

Interestingly, he was even dubbed the Trump before Trump, politics wise, though I still think he was less loony than Trump was. I suppose that if it weren't for him, neither Trump nor Zelensky would've entered politics. He was allegedly even involved in some EDP type of escort business (IYKYK), but was acquitted of those charges.

I've been listening to RAI Radio today and, holy shit, they've been talking about him the whole fucking day! On Radio Capital, they did criticize him, though. Basically, he coined the "III" (Imprese, Internet, Inglese/Businesses, Internet, English) direction. IIRC The criticism is composed of some accusations about Italy under him falling behind in its informatization behind countries such as Spain and Portuga, then with him holding back mobile broadband (I assume the 800 MHz band) with the Mediaset TV network frequencies, with the English proficiency level in Italy being just LOL and, I think, making Italy dependent on Russian gas.

Yeah, he was BFF with Putin...and that was a big L. A businessman being friends with a former rather high ranking communist official who's now LARP-ing as a conservative protecting Christian values. But I suppose that pre mid 2010s Putin was more palatable to everyone.

Since I was baby boy when he was in power, I didn't really get to know much of anything about his politics and only learned about some of it recently.