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Take Heed Italy, Brussels Doesn’t Care One Whit About You

November 22, 2018

Take Heed Italy, Brussels Doesn’t Care One Whit About You

Take Heed Italy, Brussels Doesn’t Care One Whit About You

Watching the complete betrayal of Brexit by British Prime Minister Theresa “The Gypsum Lady” May is proving to be a wake up call for Italians. The latest polling results coming out of Italy show that while the populist coalition in Italy is unpopular in Brussels it is still very popular with Italians.

And that’s a good thing because when you look closely at Brexit negotiations it is clear that all that matters is the EU retaining power over the U.K. and not what is in the best interest of anyone involved, British or otherwise.

The Italian coalition partners still command nearly 60% of all Italians’ support, only their preference has changed. Lega now outpolls Five Star Movement (M5S) 33% to 26%, while the other center-right parties, namely Silvio “Stalking Horse” Berlusconi’s Forza Italia have collapsed (from 14% at March’s elections to just 7% now).

And roughly that same number now see the EU as mistreating Italy. These numbers will only get worse if the EU goes through with levying fines against Italy for submitting a budget Brussels doesn’t like.

Moreover, now we’re seeing support for Italeave rise as well. A recent poll by Politico Magazine posted over at Zerohedge shows a slight majority of Italians under age 45 are ready to do just that, leave the European Union.

The over 45 crowd is still enamored with the ideal of the EU tying together a warring Europe rather than confront the reality of what it actually is, a distant and tyrannical oligarchy led by unelected technocrats with strong ties to old money and old power.

The source of this support comes from, I think, the stark contrast between May’s appeasement of rankled EU leadership over the British people’s temerity to want out of their wretched union and how Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini is attacking Brussels’ hypocrisy over fiscal restraints.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy Declares War on Merkel and the EU

October 13, 2018

Italy Declares War on Merkel and the EU

Italy Declares War on Merkel and the EU

If there were ever any doubts that the leaders of the Euroskeptic coalition that now runs Italy has a plan to defy the European Union its proposed budget should quell them. Both Deputy Prime Ministers, Luigi Di Maio of Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini of The League, were adamant about locking horns with European Union leadership over all issues of sovereignty between now and May’s European Parliamentary elections.

Their budget proposal which included both tax cuts and universal income blew past the EU budget limit of 2.0% of GDP, coming in at 2.4%. It has put their Finance Minister, Giovanni Tria, in a difficult position because Tria doesn’t want to negotiate this budget with Brussels, preferring a less confrontational, read more pro-EU, approach.

Salvini and Di Maio, however, have other plans. And since I began covering this story last year on my blog, I’ve said that it was imperative that Salvini force the issue of the Troika’s demands – the EU, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – back down their throats on debt restructuring/forgiveness.

What I meant then, and I was focused on Salvini’s emergence as the leader of this fight, was that Salvini and Italy, because they are more than technically insolvent, have all the leverage in the negotiations. The size of their outstanding debt and the liabilities existent on the balance sheets of banks across Europe, most notably the nearly $1 trillion in TARGET 2 liabilities, are something Juncker, Draghi, Merkel and Christine LaGarde at the IMF simply cannot ignore.

But, to do this Salvini and now Di Maio have to make a good faith effort to negotiate a good deal for Italy with Brussels, Berlin and the IMF. This is why the budget squeaked past the 2.0% limit and then they walked it back to 2.0% but with provisions they knew would anger the EU finance ministers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy Threatens To Stop EU Funding Unless Other States Accept Refugees

August 23, 2018

Italy Threatens To Stop EU Funding Unless Other States Accept Refugees

Europe’s refugee mess is back with a bang.

On Thursday, out of the blue, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio threatened to stop financial contributions to the European Union next year unless other states agreed to take in migrants being held on a coastguard ship in Sicily. The Italian’s ultimatum comes less two months after Europe triumphantly announced a “vaguely worded” deal  on how to resolve the continent’s migrant influx.

“If tomorrow at the meeting of the European Commission nothing is decided on the redistribution of migrants and the Diciotti ship, I and the entire Five Star Movement are not willing to give 20 billion to the European Union,” Di Maio said in a video posted on his Facebook page.

He echoed statements by Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini, who has refused to allow 177 migrants to leave the Italian coastguard ship Ubaldo Diciotti, which is docked in the Sicilian port of Catania. While Italian prosecutors opened an investigation into the detention of the migrants and 29 children were allowed to disembark, Salvini still won’t allow the rest of the people to come ashore and has attacked the EU for its “cowardly silence.”

Salvini described those aboard as “illegal immigrants,” and said they won’t be allowed to step foot on Italian soil. Instead, he insisted fellow European Union nations take in some of the asylum-seekers.

“Italy’s no longer Europe’s refugee camp,” he tweeted. “Upon my authorization, no one is disembarking from the Diciotti.”

Salvini, who is also interior minister, was defiant in the face of a criminal probe into possible kidnapping charges for forcing the migrants to remain on the vessel. The chief prosecutor from the Agrigento court, Luigi Patronaggio, on Wednesday boarded the Diciotti and said afterwards he had opened a probe against “unknown” persons for holding the migrants against their will.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

One Word: Contagion

June 3, 2018

One Word: Contagion

Terrible news, I’m afraid.

The trainwreck that is Italian politics has always been a hoot to watch. But this time around the implications to what happens in Rome are, as Trump would say, yuuuge.

You’ve probably seen the news-flow out of Europe.

Tasked with finding a suitable candidate to head a coalition between Luigi Di Maio’s Five Star Movement and the far-right League headed by Matteo Salvini, a coalition, which I might add has to be scaring the living isht out of Brussels, has not been an easy task.

Firstly, they went and chose someone nobody has ever heard about.

Why?

Well, Italy has many “colourful characters” in politics, and that is what scares Brussels more than anything else. Draghi’s worst nightmare must be sitting across the table from this guy discussing Italy’s bill to Germany.

In case you’re not up to speed on what these gents stand for here’s a sampling from Matteo Salvini.

Slaves of the European Union? No, thanks!

I can’t wait for Italy, with our government, to regain its sovereignty to defend the national interest in any way possible. Unacceptable intrusion from a European bureaucrat in Italy’s elections. The immigration policies and economic sacrifices imposed by the European Union have been a disaster and will be rejected by the free vote of Italians.

European bureaucrats calm down. League will always defend our fisheries and the agriculture of Italy. Enough with the European standards that slaughter our businesses and our territory!

No! What this coalition needed was someone entirely vanilla, very unlike their own leaders, a nobody, a perfectly useful idiot.

And so they picked Giuseppe Conte.

Who, I hear you say?

Precisely.

But poor Giuseppe didn’t last very long. Heck, he was tasked with what was one helluva job — sugarcoating this…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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