Internet campaign launched
An internet campaign has been launched which claims to
have proof that the attack on the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was
faked.
Video posted on YouTube shows television footage in which
Berlusconi immediately covers the lower part of his face with a black plastic
bag after the attack and keeps it there while being bundled into a car with no
blood visible. The video which has had more than 200,000 views, is
titled "The Attack on Berlusconi Is a Set-Up." Other similar videos have appeared on the site, including
one that has had some 60,000 views.
The campaigners believe that the attack was faked and
staged managed to create an internet wave of sympathy for Berlusconi who has
been dropping in the polls thanks to his involvement in sex scandals and the
fact his marriage is on the rocks. Coppers arrested a bloke with a long history of
psychiatric troubles after the attack. The 73-year-old Berlusconi with a broken
nose, two broken teeth and other facial injuries.
The videos ask why the prime minister emerged from the
car a few minutes after the attack, showing his bloody face to the cameras,
including a deep wound below his left eye which did not appear in the first
images. There is no blood on the prime minister's clothes.
"A manipulation is under way on a world scale, whose
aim in the short and long term is to take control of the Internet," the
author concludes.
Of course the government has not helped its case by
telling Facebook to close down pages praising the attacker. Italian politicians, who need everything they can throw
at Berlusconi, have dismissed the suggestions. Giuseppe Fioroni, the opposition Democratic Party's
shadow welfare minister and a trained doctor, urged a stop to the "foolishness."
Berlusconi had a three-point increase in public trust to
48 percent after the attack. Unfortunately conspiracy theorists have the problem that
Berlusconi was actually too popular to need to stage an event like this. Even
at his record low in popularity, Berlusconi is still the most popular leader in
Europe. (And the best dressed one, too. sub.ed.)