Who Knew?

Portuguese Nobel laureate, José Saramago has a blog. Unfortunately for non-Portuguese speakers, it's only in Portuguese. If you can read the language, it has some gripping entries.

Moreover, he has published these entries in book form and has incurred the wrath of Silvio Berlusconi:

Jose Saramago has launched a blistering assault on Silvio Berlusconi, whose publishing house has dropped the Portuguese Nobel laureate’s latest offering because it describes the Italian prime minister as a “delinquent”.

The Einaudi publishing house, which is part of Mr Berlusconi’s Mondadori empire, has published all Saramago’s works in Italian for 20 years. But it declined to publish El Cuaderno (The Notebook), a compilation of Mr Saramago’s blog entries, because it contained “accusations that would be condemned in any court”.

Only in a court that has laws passed to keep the likes of Berlusconi from being prosecuted. This is good:

Mr Saramago, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1998, said yesterday he was relieved to be no longer contributing to Mr Berlusconi’s fortune.

The 86-year-old then let rip: “I find it strange that a man like that who uses the worst methods and wins millions of votes hasn’t produced a social movement of revulsion in protest at the simple fact that he’s ruined the prestige of his country,” he told El Pais. “How much longer must we put up with him?”

Apparently as long as he can whore himself out to coalitions like the Lega Nord. Of course, Berlusconi, a man about whom The Economist  published this cover story

stands for nothing other than his shameless and contemptible lust for power.

He even taints the beautiful game: Mangiare merda AC Milano!