Free Republic

ROME (Reuters) - A far-right Italian senator outraged Muslims on Thursday by calling for a "Pig Day" protest against the planned construction of a mosque in northern Italy. Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant Northern League party said he was ready to bring his own pig to "defile" the site where the mosque is due to be built in the northern city of Bologna. "I am making myself and my pig available for a walk at the site where they want to build the mosque," Calderoli, who is a deputy speaker of Italy's Senate, said in a statement. Calderoli also said...

THE far-right vice-president of the Italian Senate stoked anti-French feeling in the country overnight, branding Italy's World Cup final opponents "blacks, Islamists and communists". Roberto Calderoli, head of the right-wing popular Northern League party, refused to retract earlier comments in which he hailed Italy's defeat of France in Monday's World Cup final as "a victory for Italian identity". "When I say that France's team is composed of blacks, Islamists and communists, I am saying an objective and evident thing," Calderoli was quoted as saying today by the ANSA news agency. His comment, in response to a complaint to the Senate...

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is quoted in this week's The Economist as saying: "I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I'm a patient victim. I endure everything. I sacrifice myself for everyone." Many Italian politicians behave theatrically – and often irresponsibly. Mr Berlusconi is one of them, and so is Roberto Calderoli, the Italian minister of Institutional Reforms. Today, the Italian "Jesus Christ" – forced Mr Calderoli – one of his ‘apostles' – to resign because on Italian state television last Wednesday the latter had provocatively shown that he was wearing a T-shirt with one of the Danish Muhammad...

ROME (Reuters) - The row over controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad forced two ministers out of their jobs in Europe and the Middle East on Saturday after clashes between police and protesters claimed 11 lives in Libya. Initially resisting calls for his resignation, Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli stepped down after he was widely blamed for bloody clashes in Libya over cartoons of the Prophet which he had made into T-shirts and wore on television.In Tripoli, the General People's Congress fired Interior Minister Nasser al-Mabrouk Abdallah and police chiefs in Benghazi saying "disproportionate force" had been used to...

Last update - 16:24 18/02/2006 Italian minister who made T-shirts of Mohammed resigns By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters Italy's Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli resigned on Saturday following deadly clashes in Libya over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that he had made into T-shirts and wore on state television, a spokesman said. "I have resigned," Ansa news agency quoted Calderoli as saying. Some 10 people were killed on Friday trying to storm the Italian consulate in Benghazi, the only Western diplomatic mission in the eastern Libyan city, Italy's ambassador to Tripoli said. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi publicly demanded Calderoli...

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli has had T-shirts made emblazoned with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a move that could embarrass Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.