In an impassioned 80 seconds, MEP Daniel Hannan exposes the structurally rotten "syphilitic core" of a European Union whose existential crisis has now seemingly been pronounced 'over' by those wondrous self-denying members of the European elite. "There is an extraordinary denial going on," the eloquent Englishman expounds as he notes that they still "haven't addressed the fundamental problem," of 'applying a single monetary policy to countries with widely divergent conditions and means' leaving unemployment rising and growth stagnating. He notes that the crisis in one respect is over, the moment of decision of taking one of two paths, is indeed over - and "the squaller, the wretchedness, the unemployment and poverty have now become structural."
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Mr Monti, who is contesting the election as the leader of a centrist coalition, likened the 76-year-old billionaire to "a pied piper who leads the mice to drown in the river".
He said Mr Berlusconi had "already fooled Italians three times," a reference to his three terms as prime minister the last of which came to an end in Nov 2011 when he was forced to resign amid sex scandals and concerns over the mismanagement of Italy's large public debt.
Mr Monti's remarks, made on a television current affairs programme on Monday night, marked his most trenchant criticism to date of his predecessor and intensified the antagonism between the two protagonists just weeks ahead of the Feb 24-25 election.
"The sacrifices Italians have made in the last year could be squandered in three or four months if an old, reinvigorated illusionist comes to power," Mr Monti told the programme, Porta a Porta.
He said that he had believed in Mr Berlusconi when he first entered politics in the early 1990s, promising to bring Thatcherite reforms to Italy's sclerotic economy, but said that like millions of Italians he had become disillusioned after the media mogul broke so many promises.
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[ABC.NET.AU] Italia's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi ...former Italian prime minister, known for his plain (for a European politician) speaking and his liking for hookers a third his age or less... has lost a bid to adjourn his trial for underage sex until after upcoming elections.
Berlusconi wanted the trial pushed back until after next month's election, in which he is running for office.
The billionaire tycoon is charged with paying for sex with Karima El-Mahroug in 2010 at his mansion near Milan, when she was just 17 and he was the prime minister.
They both deny ever having sex.
Berlusconi's lawyer told the court he will be too busy campaigning to follow the case or attend court, and that he fears his trial could influence the election.
But the court has ruled the trial must go ahead.
Moroccan-born Ms El-Mahroug, who used the working name "Ruby the Heart Stealer", arrived at the trial overnight to testify.
But Berlusconi's lawyers now say they will not be calling her as a witness.
Judges said her written testimony, where she described wild "Bunga Bunga" parties hosted by Berlusconi, will still be considered in the case.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
