Silvio Berlusconi is a complete corrupt bastard who needs to share the same fate as the man (?????) he is trying to emulate, that being, Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. Someone shoot him now before he drags Italy down.

The general thrust of your article is correct - he's trying to clamp down on dissenting voices - but there are some quite glaring inaccuracies.
(1) Berlusconi is not currently in a position to push through the law; instead, his opponents have succeeded in postponing a vote until September.
(2) Berlusconi is not "outrageously popular": things have moved quickly in Italy, and he's now wildly UNpopular. His latest approval rating is approaching Bush territory: 39 per cent in one of the latest national polls. His government is now in crisis, having just lost its main coalition partner in acrimonious circumstances and being now in the minority.
(3) The law was amended on 21 July, and no longer forbids the publication of transcripts of wiretap recordings.

How long until he ratifies a law that allows him to jail anybody who doesn't vote for him?

Funny there should be an analogy to the situation in Iran it does look like Italy is headed towards what happened in the 80s in Iran. The "culture" is there in Italy.

At least they're not planning on shooting anyone (yet) like Iran.

You might get fined up to 25k€ for calling him "Piccolo Duce"....!

Plus, if I may object, the percentage of my "paesani" who's involved in criminal/mafia activity is not 80%.... it's prolly less. Too bad the remainder of the pie is just a bunch of sheeps, which, although legal, is IMHO even worse. Guess we'd be better off if Ahmadinejad were in charge! (at least we might be getting some nuclear stuff...)

Us Italians need people everywhere in the world to know what really happens here, your words are not sarcastic, it's exactly what's happening here.
All the informations Italians get from TV or printed press (except few notable exceptions) are about how good has been Berlusconi in handling the crisis (while public debt is raising about 15-20 billions every MONTH and millions of jobs have been lost since 2008.
We'll soon be the next Argentina, and that scares me a lot.

next year they are rolling out public kneecappings and the year after that they are breeding horses so that their heads can be put into the beds of dissidents

he's as bent as a £9 note

I think the article has got the wrong man.

Surely, you're talking about Mugabi or Hussein, not the leader of a first-world democratic country with a first-rate football team and first-class football manager leading the English?

Although I'd find it convincing if it were about The Peoples Democratic Republic of Australia.

everybody knew he's a crook and deeply involved in mafia affairs. so is 80% of italy. big deal.
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