Senator Sandro Bondi
Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities
In office May 8, 2008 – March 23, 2011
Prime Minister	Silvio Berlusconi
Preceded by	Francesco Rutelli
Succeeded by	Giancarlo Galan
Personal details
Born	(1959-05-14) May 14, 1959 (age 53) Fivizzano, Massa-Carrara, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Political party	Il Popolo della Libertà
Alma mater	University of Pisa
Profession	Politician

Sandro Bondi (born 14 May 1959) is an Italian politician of The People of Freedom. He was appointed on 8 May 2008 to be Culture Minister until March 23, 2011 in Silvio Berlusconi's fourth cabinet.

Biography[link]

Bondi was born in Fivizzano, province of Massa-Carrara, Italy. He first attended school at Lausanne, where his emigrant father had settled. The family later returned to Italy and at a young age Sandro joined the Italian Communist Youth Federation, soon becoming its secretary in Lunigiana. He gained a laurea in philosophy from the University of Pisa with a dissertation on Leonardo Valazzana, precursor of the Augustinian order and opponent of Girolamo Savonarola.

A Catholic democrat, he campaigned for the Italian Communist Party, and was elected mayor of Fivizzano in 1990. In 1992 the town council led by him was overturned by the local Socialist Party, in association with Christian Democracy. Activists already playfully compared him to a ravanello (radish): that is, red on the outside but white on the inside. Following these events he left the PCI.

Subsequently getting to know Silvio Berlusconi via the sculptor Pietro Cascella, he became Berlusconi's secretary, collaborator and faithful advisor, so much so that - for Berlusconi's 2001 campaign - he was given the task of quickly coordinating the compilation of Una storia italiana (An Italian Story), a book of photographs on Berlusconi's public and private life, as electoral propaganda for future elections (as used by all Italian families).

Bondi returned the great trust accorded him by Berlusconi by over the years becoming one of his main supporters, publicly proclaiming his devotion and fidelity to him on several occasions,^[1] as well as in poems he composed and read on television programmes, which were a major target for his critics and for satirists.

In the 2001 general election he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Berlusconi's Forza Italia party in the III circoscrizione (Lombardia 1). In the campaign for the 2005 regional elections he organised the party's communications and was the same year named the party's coordinator. In the 2006 general election he was re-elected to the Chamber, elected from the results of circoscrizione XX (Campania 2). In the meantime he collaborated with Vanity Fair on a poetry page. In summer 2006 he published his latest sayings under the title "Laici e credenti: una fede comune".

In the course of the 2008 general election he participated in hustings in several Italian towns, as well as one in teatro Fenaroli in the city of Lanciano, where he declared that he did not wish to leave Berlusconi alone in government, as had been done in the past, thus leaving an invitation for all to lean on and encourage him. In the 2008 election, he was a People of Freedom candidate for Senate for the Tuscany region, as well as a centre-right candidate for president of the Province of Massa-Carrara. He was elected to the Senate, and he reached the second ballot for the provincial presidency with Osvaldo Angeli (candidate for the centre-left Democratic Party), which Angeli then won with 55.4% of the vote, against Bondi's 46%.

In 2008 he was made Culture minister in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet, relinquishing his post as national co-ordinator of Forza Italia to Denis Verdini. He still holds this ministry, and during his tenure of it he has announced the appointment of a special commissioner for the ruins at Pompeii^[2] and been censured for criticising modern art and architecture.^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

• (Italian) Biography on the Forza Italia website

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Paolo Guzzanti (born 1 August 1940) is an Italian journalist and politician. He was previously a member of the Italian Socialist Party.

Biography[link]

Born in Rome, he is the nephew of Elio Guzzanti and father to actors Corrado, Sabina and Caterina.

As a journalist he worked for L'Avanti!, La Repubblica (of which he was co-founder) and La Stampa. He also hosted the first season of TV show Chi l'ha visto?. Currently he is an editorialist of Paolo Berlusconi's Il Giornale (he was deputy director before and for Panorama, also owned by Berlusconi.

He was elected to the Italian Parliament for Forza Italia. From 2002 to 2006 he was president of the Mitrokhin Commission, a parliamentary commission which was entrusted with investigating the role of KGB in Italy. The commission, since the very beginning, received heavy criticism^[1] as it was pointed out that its main role seemed only that to discredit the former Italian Communist Party. According to an interview of former KGB agent Yevgeny Limarev published on La Repubblica,^[2] Italian left-winged politicians to be discredited included Romano Prodi, Massimo D'Alema and Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio. The commission was closed in 2006 without any concrete result given.

On 1 December 2006 Italian Mario Scaramella, a contact of dead former spy Alexander Litvinenko, tests positive for polonium-210. Mr Scaramella is involved in an Italian parliamentary inquiry into KGB activity and was sufficiently worried by the contents of an e-mail to ask for advice from Mr Litvinenko. The e-mail said that he, Mr Litvinenko and an Italian senator, Paolo Guzzanti, were possible targets for assassination.^[3]

In 2009 Paolo Guzzanti published a book ^[4] where he stated that Litvinenko told the Mitrokhin Commission about a connection between Romano Prodi and Soviet KGB, post-Soviet FSB.^[5] He believed that Litvinenko was killed because of Mitrokhin Commission and that Vladimir Putin had an interest in ruining the commission.

On 2 February 2009 he left People of Freedom and joined Italian liberal party. He was elected deputy secretary on 20 February.

References[link]

Rutger Hauer
Rutger Hauer at the Odessa International Film Festival, 2010
Born	Rutger Oelsen Hauer (1944-01-23) 23 January 1944 (age 68) Breukelen, Netherlands
Residence	Malibu, California
Nationality	Dutch
Occupation	Actor, Writer, Environmentalist
Years active	1969–present
Home town	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Board member of	AIDS Awareness Organization, Rutger Hauer Starfish Association
Spouse	Ineke ten Kate (1985–present)
Children	Aysha Hauer
Family	Leandro Maeder (Graddaughter)
Website
rutgerhauer.org

Rutger Oelsen Hauer (/ˈrʌtɡər ˈhaʊər/; Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrʏtxər ˈulsə(n) ˈɦʌuwər]; born 23 January 1944) is a Dutch stage, television and film actor. His career began in 1969 with the title role in the popular Dutch television series Floris, directed by Paul Verhoeven. His film credits include Flesh + Blood, Blind Fury, Blade Runner, The Hitcher, Nighthawks, Wedlock, Sin City, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Ladyhawke, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Osterman Weekend, The Blood of Heroes, Batman Begins, Hobo with a Shotgun, The Rite and he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for Escape from Sobibor. Hauer is a dedicated environmentalist and has founded an AIDS awareness organization, the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association.

He is the father of actress Aysha Hauer and the grandfather of fashion model Leandro Maeder (b. Dec 14, 1987).

Early life[link]

Hauer was born in Breukelen, in the Netherlands, the town lending its name to New York City's Borough Brooklyn. His parents were drama teachers Arend and Teunke. Rutger grew up in Amsterdam. Since his parents were very occupied with their careers, he and his three sisters (one older, two younger) were brought up mostly by nannies. At the age of 15, Hauer ran off to sea and spent a year scrubbing decks aboard a freighter. Returning home, he worked as an electrician and a joiner for three years while attending acting classes at night school.^[1] He went on to join an experimental troupe, with which he remained for five years before Paul Verhoeven cast him in the lead role of the very successful 1969 television series Floris, a Dutch Ivanhoe-like medieval action drama. The role made him famous in his native country.^[2]

Film career[link]

Hauer's career changed course when Paul Verhoeven cast him as the lead in Turkish Delight (1973) (based on the Jan Wolkers book of the same name). The movie found box-office favour abroad as well as at home, and within two years its star was invited to make his English-language debut in the British film The Wilby Conspiracy (1975). Set in South Africa and starring Michael Caine and Sidney Poitier, the film was an action melodrama with a focus on apartheid. Hauer's supporting role, however, was barely noticed in Hollywood, and he returned to Dutch films for several years. During this period, he made Katie Tippel (1975) and worked again with Verhoeven on Soldier of Orange (1977), and Spetters (1980). These two films paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé.

Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981), cast as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named "Wulfgar" (after a character in the Old English poem Beowulf). The following year, he appeared in arguably his most famous and acclaimed role as the eccentric, violent, yet sympathetic anti-hero replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller, Blade Runner.

Hauer went on to play the adventurer courting Gene Hackman's daughter (Theresa Russell) in Nicolas Roeg's poorly received Eureka (1983); the investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983); the hardened Landsknecht mercenary Martin in Flesh & Blood (1985); and the knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the Medieval romance Ladyhawke (1985).

He continued to make an impression on audiences in The Hitcher (1986), in which he was the mysterious Hitchhiker intent on murdering C. Thomas Howell's lone motorist and anyone else who crossed his path. At the height of Hauer's fame, he was even set to be cast as RoboCop in the film directed by old friend Verhoeven, although the role ultimately went to American everyman method actor Peter Weller. That same year, however, Hauer starred as Nick Randall in Wanted: Dead or Alive as the descendant of the character played by Steve McQueen in the television series of the same name.

Italian director Ermanno Olmi mined the gentler, more mystic and soulful side of Hauer's personality in The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1989), the story of a lost soul who dies of drink in Paris while attempting to pay a debt of honour in a church. Phillip Noyce also attempted to capitalize, with far less success, on Hauer's spiritual qualities in the martial arts action adventure Blind Fury (1989). Hauer returned to science fiction opposite Joan Chen with Salute of the Jugger (1990), in which he played a former champion in a post-apocalyptic world. He and Chen would work together again in two more science fiction films, Wedlock and Precious Find.

By the 1990s, Hauer was as well known for his humorous appearances in Guinness commercials as for his screen roles, which had increasingly involved low-budget films, including Split Second, which was set in a flooded London after global warming; Omega Doom, another post-apocalyptic story in which he plays a soldier-robot; and New World Disorder, opposite Tara FitzGerald. He also appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video On a Night Like This. In the late 1980s and 1990s, as well as in 2000, Hauer acted in several British and American television productions, including Inside the Third Reich (as Albert Speer); Escape from Sobibor (for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor); Fatherland; Hostile Waters; Merlin; The 10th Kingdom; Smallville; Alias; and 'Salem's Lot.

In 1999, Hauer was awarded the Dutch “Best Actor of the Century Rembrandt Award”.^[3]

Hauer played an assassin in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2003), a villainous cardinal with influential power in Sin City (2005) and a devious corporate executive running Wayne Enterprises in Batman Begins (2005). He also acted as the host in the British reality television documentary Shock Treatment (2005). He recently starred in Goal! 2: Living the Dream... as Real Madrid coach Rudi Van Der Merwe.

In 2009, his role in Dazzle (Oogverblindend), by avant-garde filmmaker Cyrus Frisch, received positive reviews. The film was praised in Dutch press as "the most relevant Dutch film of the year" ('Parool' newspaper). The same year Hauer starred in the title role of Barbarossa, an Italian film directed by Renzo Martinelli. It co-starred Israeli actor Raz Degan. In April 2010, he was cast in the live action adaptation of the short and fake Grindhouse trailer Hobo With a Shotgun, which was released in 2011.^[4]

Hauer at the Odessa International Film Festival, 2010

On March 4, 2011, it was announced that Hauer would play vampire hunter, Van Helsing in legendary horror director Dario Argento's Dracula 3D. Filming is scheduled to begin sometime in 2011.^[5]

Personal life[link]

Hauer is a dedicated environmentalist. He fought for the release of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society leader, Paul Watson, who was convicted in 1994 for sinking a Norwegian whaling vessel.^[1] Hauer has also established an AIDS awareness organization called the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association.^[1][6] He married his second wife, Ineke, in 1985 (they had been together since 1968); and he has one child, actress Aysha Hauer, who was born in 1966 and who made him a grandfather in 1987.^[1] His grandson Leandro Maeder is a fashion model.

In April 2007, he published his autobiography All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners (co-written with Patrick Quinlan), where he discusses many of his movie roles.^[7] Proceeds of the book go to Hauer's Starfish Association.^[8]

Filmography[link]

Discography[link]

• Lost in the New Real (2012) - narrator/Voight Kampff

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rutger Hauer

• Rutger Hauer
• Rutger Hauer at the Internet Movie Database
• Rutger Hauer at AllRovi
• Rutger Hauer at Box Office Mojo
• Rutger Hauer at Virtual History

The Honorable Maria Rosaria "Mara" Carfagna
Italian Minister for Equal Opportunity
In office May 8, 2008 – November 16, 2011
Prime Minister	Silvio Berlusconi
Preceded by	Barbara Pollastrini
Succeeded by	Elsa Fornero
Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies
Incumbent
Assumed office April 21, 2006
Constituency	Campania 2
Personal details
Born	(1975-12-18) December 18, 1975 (age 36) Salerno, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Political party	The People of Freedom
Alma mater	University of Salerno
Religion	Roman Catholic[1]

Maria Rosaria (Mara) Carfagna (born December 18, 1975 in Salerno) is an Italian politician and former showgirl and model. After obtaining a degree in law,^[2] Carfagna worked for several years on Italian television shows and as a model. She later entered politics and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Forza Italia party in 2006. From 2008 to 2011 she served as Minister for Equal Opportunity in Berlusconi IV Cabinet. Carfagna had been named "the most beautiful minister in the world",^[3][4] and was ranked number one on Maxim's "World´s Hottest Politicians".^[5]

Background[link]

Carfagna was born in Salerno, where she attended the Liceo scientifico Giovanni da Procida.^[6] In 2001 she graduated in law from the University of Salerno, with a thesis on information law and broadcasting systems.^[6]

Career as showgirl and model[link]

After having studied dance and piano, she participated in the Miss Italy contest in 1997, finishing in sixth place.^[6] About the experience she later said: "That competition makes you as a woman, it matures you...all that stress, that desire to win, it makes you understand who you are."^[7]

Later she started working in television for the company Mediaset, controlled by the family of Silvio Berlusconi.^[8] From 2000 to 2006 she participated as a showgirl in the television program La domenica del villaggio ("Sunday in the Village") with Davide Mengacci. In 2006 she led the program Piazza grande ("Main Square") together with Giancarlo Magalli.^[9] Carfagna has also been part of the television programs I cervelloni, Vota la voce and Domenica In.^[10]

Mara Carfagna has in the past posed nude on several occasions, for magazines such as Maxim.^[11] Reluctant to talk about her modelling past, she has nevertheless suggested that she had certain reservations about the work. On one occasion she said: "I am a bit of a prude and I found getting undressed in front of a camera not a pleasant experience."^[8] She states that she is a firm believer in family values, and claimed in an interview that she once refused to take part in a movie directed by erotic filmmaker Tinto Brass.^[12]

Political career[link]

Carfagna entered politics in 2004, and became responsible for the women's movement in the political party Forza Italia (presently The People of Freedom).^[6][13] In the elections of 2006 she was elected into the Chamber of Deputies for Forza Italia, and in the 2008 elections – running as the third candidate from The People of Freedom in the district "Campania 2" – she was reelected.^[14] When she first entered parliament Berlusconi jokingly commented that Forza Italia practiced the law of primae noctis; the right of a feudal lord to take the virginity of his female subjects.^[15] As a deputy she was secretary of the Commission for Constitutional Affairs,^[6] and has been described as a diligent, hard-working parliamentarian.^[16] On May 8, 2008 she was appointed Minister for Equal Opportunity,^[17] in the fourth cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi, an appointment that was widely publicised internationally, with focus on her special background.^[3][7][18]

Gay pride protest against Carfagna in Catania, 2008.

Carfagna has been vocal on certain issues, such as the level of crime in her home town of Salerno, after having herself been the victim of burglary on three different occasions.^[19] She describes herself as an antifeminist, as she believes that "liberty" depends not on independence, but on rules and discipline.^[20] She opposes gay marriage, and says that matrimonial rights should be tied to reproduction.^[21] Soon after her accession she refused to back a gay pride march, arguing that discrimination was no longer a problem for homosexuals in Italy because the homophobia was just a thinking offence, a statement that was strongly criticised by gay rights groups.^[22]

In September 2008, Carfagna introduced proposal for a new law making street prostitution a crime, with fines for both clients and prostitutes. The bill was her first major initiative as a minister. She said that at present in Italy, "as in the great majority of Western countries", brothels and the exploitation of prostitutes by pimps were illegal but prostitution as such was not. She described street prostitution as a "shameful phenomenon".^[23] Carfagna was criticized by prostitutes' representatives and other charities for introducing the bill. However, some Catholic charities praised her for having the courage to "take on prostitution as a serious social evil".^[23]

In 2009 she became the first political promoter of the law against stalking offence. This law was finally approved in 23 February 2009, introduced as a package of bills known as the Decreto Maroni. In the same year she signed a campaign against homophobia in Italy, with television spots, images on magazines and wall attachments on cities.^[24] She also proposed a bill against homophobia, in which homophobia was considered as an aggravating circumstance in bullying events. This bill was next refused by the Parliament.

In 2010 during political debate for the 8th March celebration she claimed that women gained the right to vote in Italy in 1960 (while they did in 1946) and that the law that rules intrahousehold relationship was reformed in 1970 (while it was in 1975)^[25]

Controversies[link]

In January 2007, Carfagna was at the center of a controversy that received international attention. On the evening of the Telegatto award show, Berlusconi said about Carfagna that "If I was not already married I would have married her immediately". The comment caused Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, to demand an apology through a national newspaper, something which she also received.^[7] Carfagna herself has later described the comment as "gallant and harmless," and said that she did not quite understand Lario's reaction.^[26]

On July 5, 2008, the Argentine journal Clarín reported about telephone wiretap records authorized for an anti-corruption investigation. Reporter Julio Algañaraz wrote that Carfagna and Silvio Berlusconi engaged in a telephone conversation with explicit allusions to oral sex.^[27] The wiretap transcripts have not been published, but the Italian newspaper La Repubblica interviewed the former vice-minister of Foreign Affairs in the Berlusconi II Cabinet and socialist executive Margherita Boniver, who admitted the existence of some messages.^[28]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ministry biography
• Personal blog
• Mara Carfagna - slideshow and video by The Huffington Post

v t e Berlusconi IV Cabinet (2008–2011) Berlusconi | Tremonti | Maroni | Alfano | Palma | Frattini | Sacconi | Fazio | Gelmini | La Russa | Scajola | Romani | Zaia | Romano | Prestigiacomo | Matteoli | Bondi | Galan | Bossi | Ronchi | Bernini | Vito | Brunetta | Calderoli | Fitto | Meloni | Carfagna | Rotondi | Brambilla | Brancher