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In this mailing:
- Soeren Kern: Italy's Pro-EU
President Flouts Voters
- Burak Bekdil: Turkey and Israel:
From Loveless to Fracas
by Soeren Kern • May 29, 2018 at
5:00 am
- The political
situation reflects the stranglehold on power wielded by the
pro-EU establishment, which is evidently determined to preserve
economic austerity at the expense of democracy.
- "We need to
prepare a plan B to get out of the euro if necessary... the
other alternative is to end up like Greece." — Paolo
Savona, a former industry minister who has called Italy's entry
into the euro a "historic mistake."
- "In Italy, there
is a problem of democracy. In this country, you can be a
convicted criminal, convicted for tax fraud, under investigation
for corruption and be a minister... but if you criticize Europe,
you cannot be the Minister of the Economy in Italy." — M5S
leader Luigi Di Maio.
Italian
president Sergio Mattarella has asked Carlo Cottarelli (pictured
above), a former official at the International Monetary Fund, to form
a government of unelected technocrats. Cottarelli is known as
"Mr. Scissors" for making cuts to public spending. (Photo
by Stephen Jaffe/IMF via Getty Images)
Italy's new populist government-in-waiting resigned on
May 28 after its choice of a eurosceptic finance minister was
rejected by the country's pro-EU president — who instead asked an
unelected technocrat to from a pro-EU government.
The political wrangling ends a bid by Italy's two
anti-establishment parties — the left-leaning Five Star Movement
(M5S) and the center-right League (Lega) — to form a populist
coalition government, which would have been the first of its kind in
Europe.
The political situation reflects the stranglehold on
power wielded by the pro-EU establishment, which is evidently
determined to preserve economic austerity at the expense of
democracy.
Italian president Sergio Mattarella refused to accept
the nomination for finance minister of Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old
former industry minister who has called Italy's entry into the euro a
"historic mistake."
by Burak Bekdil • May 29, 2018 at
4:00 am
- How can there ever be
a lasting peace between a Zionist state and another nation where
the president thinks that Zionism is a crime against humanity?
Pictured:
Israel's ambassador to Turkey, Eitan Na'eh, hands his credentials to
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, December 5, 2016. (Image
source: Courtesy Turkish Presidency)
When Turkey and Israel decided to normalize their
badly strained ties in December 2016, after more than six years of
downgraded diplomatic relations, the first thing they did, as the
protocol dictates, was to appoint ambassadors to each other's
capital. With a theoretical new chapter opening in troubled
relations, Turkey and Israel appointed two prominent career
diplomats, Kemal Ökem and Eitan Na'eh, respectively.
This author's pessimistic guess at the time was:
"The diplomats may be willing, but with (Turkish President Recep
Tayyip) Erdoğan's persistent Islamist ideological pursuits, they
would seem to have only a slim chance of succeeding". In
essence, Erdoğan had pragmatically agreed to shake hands with Israel,
but his ideological hostility to the Jewish state and his ideological
love affair with Hamas had not disappeared.
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