{"id":1064,"date":"2006-01-25T00:02:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-25T00:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/25\/italian-shenanigans\/"},"modified":"2008-02-27T13:25:16","modified_gmt":"2008-02-27T13:25:16","slug":"italian-shenanigans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/italian-shenanigans\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian shenanigans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/4645228.stm\" title=\"BBC - Italy approves self-defence law\">Potentially dangerous populist nonsense<\/a> being approved shortly before a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Berlusconi\" title=\"Wikipedia - Silvio Berlusconi\">potentially dangerous populist Prime Minister<\/a> gets embroiled in an election campaign he&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.italymag.co.uk\/2006\/news-from-italy\/current-affairs\/berlusconi-requests-extension-for-parliament\/\">trying to delay<\/a> while battling <a href=\"http:\/\/ansa.it\/main\/notizie\/awnplus\/english\/news\/2006-01-24_610071.html\" title=\"ANSA - Italy fights freeze amid gas cuts\">(electrical) power crises<\/a> (prompting only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.agi.it\/english\/news.pl?doc=200601241734-1215-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&amp;page=0&amp;id=agionline-eng.oggitalia\" title=\"AGI Online - Elections: Prodi, P.M is running out of gas\">semi-joking suggestions<\/a> that Russia is trying to help influence the elections), threatening to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etravelblackboard.com\/index.asp?id=46966&amp;nav=2\" title=\"E-Travel Blackboard - Italian PM says Alitalia restructuring must go on\">use the military to break strikes<\/a> and playing up to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.agi.it\/english\/news.pl?doc=200601241552-1168-RT1-CRO-0-NF30&amp;page=0&amp;id=agionline-eng.bnessitaly\" title=\"AGI Online - \nItaly-Albania. Berlusconi to veterans: Italian flag as reward\">nationalist sympathies<\/a>? Surely not&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>An added bonus of delayed elections? A delay to the rules ordering equal media coverage for all candidates in a country where the Prime Minister <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Berlusconi#Influence_on_the_Media\" title=\"Wikipedia - Silvio Berlusconi: Influence on the Media\">owns the majority of the media<\/a>. During a fifteen day period this month, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wantedinrome.com\/news\/news.php?id_n=1370\" title=\"Wanted in Rome - Fighting for the airwaves\">Belusconi was<\/a> &#8220;seen on most major television channels, on talk shows and even on the traffic news, for a total of three hours and six minutes&#8230; His opposition rival, Romano Prodi&#8230; managed to obtain just eight minutes of television coverage in the same period.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Potentially dangerous populist nonsense being approved shortly before a potentially dangerous populist Prime Minister gets embroiled in an election campaign he&#8217;s trying to delay while battling (electrical) power crises (prompting only semi-joking suggestions that Russia is trying to help influence &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/italian-shenanigans\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[185,181],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italy","tag-elections","tag-italy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}