African leaders have never been short of quirks, whether proclaiming themselves the Emperor of Africa from a bespoke golden throne (Mobutu SeSe Seko) or considering a hot shower an adequate post-exposure prophylactic against HIV (our own dear President, of course), there’s more than enough weird to go around (not to mention maniacal tyranny). So, as the world not so fondly lays Col. Gaddafi to rest, let’s take a look back at Brother Leader’s top five weirdest kinks:

1. Crushing on Condy
Back in 2007, Brother Leader met the then US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, whom he described as a “darling black, African woman.” During life, he showered her with gifts during state visits, and when rebel forces stormed his Tripoli compound earlier this year, they discovered a lovingly made scrapbook featuring pictures of one woman, and only one woman. Aw, bless!

2. Hello, Nurse!
As robust as he was in youth, old age took its toll on Brother Leader. In order to stem the tide of his gathering health woes, he hired a series of Ukrainian nurses, all of whom were required to see to his every need and call him “Papa” or “Daddy”. The most well-known of these was Galyna Kolotnytska, who was rarely seen away from Papa’s side (except in the picture above, having fled Libya when the bullets started flying) and could only be described by the media as “voluptuous”. Notably, she was among the first to bugger off when the rebels came a-knocking.

3. The Mighty Amazons
Not satisfied with his health being protected by busty Ukrainian nurses, the Colonel also allegedly maintained an all female retinue of bodyguards he called his “Amazons”. These were female soldiers hand-picked (I’ll bet…) by Gaddafi himself from a special training camp just outside Tripoli, kitted out in colourful camo gear and high heel combat boots, and ordered to take a vow of chastity lest their inevitable lust for Brother Leader distract from their duty to keep the old perve alive.

4. Bunga Bunga
Last year, when Italian investigators were trying to bring down silver-haired sex-addict, Silvio Berlusconi (AKA The Prime Minister of Italy, above left), their investigations into his alleged sex-capades came across a 17-year old Moroccan prostitute called “Ruby Heartstealer” (above right) who was happy to enlighten them as to Prime Minister Pervy’s favourite sex act (see title), and also the name of the aging African despot he learned all about it from. Say no more, say… no… more. No really, I can’t.

5. The Bulletproof Tent
Despite a fear of flying, and of heights, the Colonel still liked to get out and about. On his frequent overseas trips, he would routinely bring the world’s capitals to a stand still with his diplomatic histrionics. For instance, on several occasions, the French government was required to clear the Louvre (the world’s most popular museum of art) so Gaddafi could take a stroll through the galleries and not be bothered by the pesky proles who flock to see the gallery in their thousands. He was also a fan of bringing a bit of his Libyan compound everywhere he went, and by “bit”, I mean a retinue in the hundreds, a bulletproof Bedouin tent that he would set up outside the hotels he stayed at overseas (that also required separate transport in its own plane due to its sheer weight), as well as a couple of camels and palm trees to park outside the tent, so he could feel right at home.

Never a dull moment in the Gaddafi compound, was there.

[Source: Yahoo]

Silvio Berlusconi is about to face yet another prolific attack on his leadership. The Italian Chamber of Deputies will hold a confidence vote in his government tomorrow. If he loses, he will almost certainly have to resign.

But as usual, he may put up all kinds of resistance to avoid that.

The Berlusconi led government has been in trouble for quite some time already. A writer for the Economist described him as a “harassed driver” with “squabbling passengers” who had one “of the wheels on his rickety vehicle [come] perilously loose yesterday.”

The Italian government was defeated in the chamber on Tuesday night, by a single vote, which saw a plan that would have approved consolidation of 2010 public accounts scrapped.

The Economist writes:

This was triply humiliating. First, it has never happened before, or at least not since the postwar foundation of the Italian republic. Second, neither the finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, nor Mr Berlusconi’s chief ally, Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League, were in the chamber to vote.

Third, as scarcely needs to be said, anything to do with Italy’s public finances is especially sensitive in the midst of a crisis in the euro zone when the government is trying to rein in its deficit and persuade sceptical investors to demand lower rates of interest on its debt.

Throughout the crisis the Berlusconi administration’s most persuasive claim to power has been that it offers the stability needed to guide vitally needed financial measures through the legislature. That argument looks distinctly hollow after yesterday’s defeat.

Mr Tremonti was “at a funeral” while the vote was happening, and Mr Bossi was chatting to journalists.

The current Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, also has his doubts about how a Berlusconi led administration can possibly get them through the current crisis and whether they’re actually:

Able to operate with the constant cohesion needed to … [provide] adequate solutions to the most urgent problems of the country.

The European Financial Stability Facility only has a lending capacity of 250 billion Euros – that is, it would be virtually impossible to extend the kind of help Greece and other regions are getting to Italy.

Mind you, you know who might have that kind of cash? Silvio Berlusconi.

[Source: Economist]

I point a modest finger at Berlusconi here because what Italy needs right now is a leader and that is something that Berlusconi doesn’t do well. The state debt crisis has been around for decades but it has only worsened under the dictator-like behaviour of one Silvio Berlusconi.

The story is the same as that of many debt ridden European countries, bad policies and outrageous spending cuts have hit areas like the education and university sector.

Over the long term, many young and old Italians have found it almost impossible to find stable work. Thanks to massive increases in the flexible nature of the EU labour market, this trend has grown over the decades because flexible labour is happier to work for lower wages.

And the educated have left for greener pastures.

Berlusconi isn’t entirely to blame, as this is something that has been pushed by governments of both the left and right during the 1990’s and 2000’s. But Berlusconi has just been in power for too long now and needs to stop feeding his pockets too.

The four auctions today are a kind of test for the Italians. Success at the auctions is essential so that Italy, the EU’s third largest economy, can demonstrate it is in no danger of losing access to market funding.

You’ll have to trust me, but with some basic accounting in the background, the debt sale would still leave Italy short of the estimated €175 billion it needs to finance itself to the end of the year.

Now the Bloomberg headline starts to make sense.

From the Bloomberg article:

The euro’s fate may lie in the hands of Italian bondholders as the region’s debt crisis threatens to envelop the Mediterranean nation, according to Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank. The Chart Of The Day shows Italy’s government debt burden, the euro area’s largest at 1.8 trillion Euros ($2.6 trillion), dwarfs those of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, which already received bailouts, and Spain, which has the next-highest borrowing costs.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from coalition partners to limit its contribution to sovereign bailouts. The European Financial Stability Facility currently has a lending capacity of 250 billion Euros.

With EU member country’s having their credit ratings downgraded quite regularly of late, Luca Jellinek, head of European interest-rate strategy at Credit Agricole CIB in London puts it bluntly:

If Italy gets to the point where its debt auctions start to fail and it loses access to the market, it becomes difficult to imagine who would have the kind of money that would be required to rescue it.

The IMF, maybe? No. Not at the moment, they’re still busy trying to find someone to give Greece another €104 billion odd in bailout funding.

Italian government debt is now sitting at more than 120 per cent of the country’s annual economic output.

Let’s just hope Italian thinking can become a little more al dente and that they get rid of Berlusconi too sometime.

[Sources: Bloomberg, Mail&Guardian, Metro]

Berlusconi was indicted Tuesday on charges that he paid for sex with Ruby when she was just 17, as well as using his influence to cover it up.

The prime minister asked her to a private dinner at Arcore, last year and prosecutors claim that he met Ruby on 15 occasions while the pair allegedly exchanged 67 telephone calls and text messages.  She denies ever having sexual relations with Mr Berlusconi but said he gave her several gifts and €7,000 in cash because he felt sorry for her. Mr Berlusconi has always said he has never paid for sex.

Among these gifts of charity was a diamond Recarlo necklace worth R146,765, an array of diamond rings, earrings, bracelets and pendants. And let’s not forget the Versace designer shoes. Oh, and we should probably mention the two Rolex watches (worth R489 219 and R176 119 respectively), as well as a Dolce and Gabbana designer watch, “because I told him that I didn’t like the Rolex watches”.

This story came to a simmer last year when Ruby was arrested on a unrelated charge of theft. The Prime Minister used his influence to bail her out, claiming he was trying to avoid a diplomatic incident between Italy and Egypt, as Ruby is apparently also related to recently ousted Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

The lovable rogue Berlusconi, who owns most of Italy, is permanently dodging from one scandal to the next in what seems to be some sort of perpetual human frogger game.

Apparently this time round Silv (as his mates call him) had been romancing a barely-legal girl known as Ruby, last year around Valentine’s Day. When I say “barely-legal”, I mean she was 17, so it should have been “not barely-legal” as 18 is the legal age of consent in Italy.

Ruby claims that Silvi (as she calls him) gave her the money “because I had just arrived in Milan and he knew of my difficult family situation”. Sure he did. He also knew that she was an illiterate Moroccan immigrant stripper who’d do literally anything for €7 000.

Ruby admits that although Bella (as I call him) gave her the €7 000, she didn’t have sex with him and that she had told everyone that she was 24. And that’s exactly what he’d be saying when he was hi-fiving his friends the next day.

[Source : News24]

This guy is GREAT to watch! Stay tuned..

Our boy

Wiki tells us:

Silvio Berlusconi (born 29 September 1936) is an Italian politician, entrepreneur, real estate and insurance tycoon, bank and media proprietor, sports team owner and songwriter. He is the second longest-serving Prime Minister of the Italian Republic (President of the Council of Ministers of Italy), a position he has held on three separate occasions: from 1994 to 1995, from 2001 to 2006 and currently since 2008.

Yup, it did mention “songwriter” back there.

So, apart from being prime-minister and owner of three private television channels (let alone the three public stations over which the ruling has always taken control), he has also caused a stir after audio recordings emerged of the night he spent at his home with high-class hooker, Patrizia D’Addario .

Silvio’s hooker

 

Mr Berlusconi has not denied that D’Addario went to his official residence but claims he “cannot remember her”.

The PM has also insisted he would not pay for sex “because it does not involve the thrill of conquest”.

[SKY:more here ]

That was obviously before he started having a cheeky little affair with Noemi Letizia , an 18 year old. And this time his wife is pissed off and wants a divorce.

Noemi Letizia
Silvio’s 18 year old pet
(howz that mother?)

This, from TheAge :

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s long-suffering wife Veronica Lario is to seek a divorce after running out of patience with his roving eye, newspapers report.

The 72-year-old Berlusconi himself has refused to comment on the details of the reports but acknowledges he is going through a “painful” period in his private life after nearly 30 years of marriage.

A government source later stressed Berlusconi had not been asked to react to “a concrete event, such as divorce papers”.

“Veronica’s choice: Farewell Silvio,” said the frontpage headline of La Stampa, while the rival la Repubblica led with the headline: “I’ve decided, I want a divorce,” with both papers quoting close friends.

The two papers both said Lario had contacted a divorce lawyer and given instructions to proceed towards a separation as quickly as possible. Italian news agency ANSA later echoed the reports.

The reports said she had been particularly infuriated by her husband’s decision to attend an 18th birthday party in Naples last week, for the blonde daughter of one of his business associates (presenting birthday girl Noemi Letizia
with a gold and diamond necklace) even though he never went to any of his own children’s coming-of-age parties.

 

Noemi Letizia
Going for it

 

“My marriage is over. I can’t stay with someone who cavorts with minors,” Lario was quoted as saying by one of her friends.

“I read in the papers about how he has been hanging around a minor — because he must have known her before she was 18 — and how she called him ‘Papa’ and about their meetings in Rome and Milan.

 

[more here]

Quite a vibe. Ja, look, that’s quite a good technique when attempting to woo an 18 year old. I gave a leather jacket to a little angel quite a few years back, and that did wonders. You’re definitely going about it the right way, using gold and diamonds.

CLICK HERE for Noemi Letizia photo gallery

And then, just to wrap this all up, do enjoy this incredibly hilarious mind-blowing video of Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Burlesconi, walking to his car. YOU HAVE NEVER!!

And there you were moaning about Zuma?

Oh pahlease..

CLICK HERE to find out why Italians don’t care about what Silvio gets up to.. (including short transcripts from aforementioned audio tapes)

CLICK HERE for recent interview with the 18 year old, in which she vehemently denies any affair.

[thanks earl]