Never too far from the Fourth Shore.

Neither the Afghan nor the Syrian front create as many problems, in foreign policy, to President Obama's Administration, as the Libyan civil conflict. So, now that the situation in the former Italian colony seems to get out of control, it looks like the U.S. government remembered the special role that Italy has always played in that land: Italy's fourth shore; as someone had called it at time of the Empire.
The following article originally appeared, as an editorial, on the Italian on-line magazine Analisi Difesa, and was published here with permission. (Thanks to J.J.P for reviewing the English text).
Your comments, as usual. will be greatly appreciated.

Now they have the gall to ask for our help.
by Gianandrea Gaiani. (Translated from Italian by L. Pavese).

“Italy, thanks to the privileged relationship that she has with Libya, could have a crucial role in the stability of that country, and we want to work with Rome.” These were the words of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the end of the meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino, during which Libya (as the two officials emphasized) was at the core of the talks. From what has been revealed, the newly appointed Italian foreign minister highlighted the preoccupation, shared by Italy and the U.S., about “the turn of the events on the ground” in the African country, but Mr. Kerry’s statement is paradoxical in at least two aspects.

First of all, Libya is falling apart due to the massive infiltration of al-Qaeda — in Cyrenaica, in the Fezzan and in even in Tripoli — and the chaos created by the dozens of tribal militias who turned the country into a feudal land, after the lynching of Muammar Gaddafi; to the point that, in the past recent days, London and Washington have reduced the number of the diplomatic personnel and alerted their special forces for possible evacuation operations.

Muammar Gaddafi

It is a disastrous situation, which is the consequence of the aerial war that the U.S., Great Britain, and France wanted to conduct in 2011 at any cost  against the Gaddafi’s regime; but they lacked the will (and the “cojones”) to take on the job of stabilizing the country with “boots on the ground”, as it was done in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. The result is that the already very weak Libyan institutions have reached paralysis, and the parliament has been forced (under the threat of the militias who are besieging the building) to pass a law that forbids everyone who was involved in any way with the old regime to hold public office.

Practically speaking, the entire new Libyan ruling class risks erasure, including the leaders of the revolt against Gaddafi, who were all, in the past or even recently, more or less loyal servants of the Raìs. For that reason, when Mr. Kerry stated that “there are still a lot of challenges in Libya, and Italy could play a crucial role in bringing stability,” it would have been appropriate if someone in Rome had put aside the usual attitude of prone subjection with respect to the United States and had answered him, at least symbolically, with an Italian “vaffa”;  a word which was considered vulgar when politics and diplomacy were serious matters, but that unfortunately has become part of today’s political language in Rome.

John Kerry and Emma Bonino

In 2011, the Americans unloaded a torrential rain of missiles and guided bombs on Libya to unhinge the defenses of the regime, which was threatened by a revolt orchestrated by the French and the British; a revolt that had the-not-so-hidden objective to diminish the Italian influence in Libya and subtract a share of her business. Washington then passed the ball to NATO, on the basis of the Obamian doctrine of “leading from behind,” and the organization took seven months to get rid of Gaddafi, leaving the country in chaos and in hands of al-Qaeda and the salafis; as the United States discovered at their own expense with the September 11, 2012 attack against the Consulate in Benghazi in which the U.S. Ambassador Stevens, and three other Americans, were murdered.

The White House tried to hide the terrorist matrix of that crime, which Washington has so far left unpunished, since the Obama administration has not authorized yet any military intervention against the al-Qaeda-affiliated camps in Cyrenaica.

Now that the eggs have been broken but the omelette hasn’t come out right, and Libya is out of control, Mr. Kerry remembers the crucial role that Italy could have “to bring back stability.” Actually, Rome had already achieved stability in the relations with Libya for a long time, at the price of very difficult negotiations with Gaddafi, who was certainly a “son of b..ch,” but, to paraphrase what President F.D. Roosevelt used to say about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, he was our s.o.b. In fact, the Gaddafi government was an important commercial partner, not only for Italy but for the entire western world, and a trusty ally in the fight against islamic terrorism.

There is also a second, and not less important aspect of the question, for which it would be justified to tell Mr. Kerry to take a walk (maybe even in Libya). Nobody seems to remember that it was actually the now Secretary of State Mr. Kerry who virtually imposed on Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi a more active role in the war against the Tripoli’s regime. Notwithstanding the pressure exercised on him internationally and by the highest Italian institution (the President of the Republic) to take a side against Gaddafi, Prime Minister Berlusconi refused for more than a month to employ Italian airplanes in the operations against the Jamahiriya, a country to which Italy was tied by a non-aggression pact: an agreement that Italy had in any case already betrayed providing an Italian base for the aircraft of the NATO coalition.

Silvio Berlusconi

The Italian Prime Minister at the time declared that the Italian aircraft “have not bombed and will never bomb Libya”; but on the Friday before Easter, Mr. John Kerry, who at the time was Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, arrived in Rome. Mr. Kerry was President Obama’s “special envoy,” with the task of handling the most thorny international issues, like the very tense relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In Rome, Mr. Kerry only met with PM Berlusconi and delivered to him a letter from President Obama, who followed up with a phone call to Berlusconi on Easter Sunday. Maybe that wasn’t just a Happy Easter call, since the following day, April 25th, the Italian Prime Minister announced that the Italian aircraft were going to bomb Libya.

The conflict not only opened the doors wide to the destabilization of the central-eastern Mediterranean area and of the Sahel, but it coincided with the lowest level of national sovereignty expressed by the Italian republic.

As of today, it seems like the Italian level of national sovereignty has not risen a lot; since nobody has cordially invited Mr. Kerry and the United States to stabilize Libya all by themselves, or maybe with a little help from France and Great Britain.


Gianandrea Gaiani is the editor of the Italian on-line magazine Analisi Difesa, and contributes regularly to several other Italian publications.
If you are interested in another article by Mr. Gaiani about the situation in Libya, please check out: "Libya Delivered?", on this blog.
Thank you very much.

Leonardo Pavese

Red Cross in the Crosshair.

Is the International Red Cross backing terrorism?

by Ugo Volli (translated from Italian by L. Pavese)

Dear friends,

I know, we shouldn’t shoot the Red Cross. Or the U.N., Amnesty International and all the other nice and unarmed organizations who are only trying to do some good. We shouldn’t strike the schools of the UNRWA, at least not physically; even if during the war they don’t house any students but they are transformed instead into depots of missiles and enemy headquarters. And we shouldn’t attack them either from an ethical standpoint, when they are used to train terrorists in peacetime. We shouldn’t shoot hospitals when they are turned into the seat of terrorist military commands, and above all we shouldn’t shoot ambulances when they are transformed from a refuge for the wounded to transports for combat reinforcements. No, we shouldn’t shoot the bases of the Red Cross, even if they are actually operational bases of Hamas.

Above all, we should never question the organic link which, in the course of decades, the forces for good of the international organizations have built with terrorists, financing with international funds — therefore with our money — their “educational initiatives.”  And we should never insinuate the doubt that there exists a “caste” of people in the UN and in the various ONG’s, who are materially and ideologically invested in a continuation of the conflict in the Middle East, because they gain from it in terms of prestige, career advancements and maybe even compensations and benefits.

But no shooting, no. Let’s leave the shooting and the slitting of throats to their friends the “resistance fighters.” Reporting though? Yes, we will continue to report and inform. Listen to this story. The PNA, the Palestinian National Authority, imitates shamelessly all the forms of expression and political mobilization of Zionism. (For example as to the city of Jerusalem, which has become in their narrative “the eternal and indivisible capital of the people”; not the Jewish people, of course, but the Palestinians; and by appropriating monuments and historical documents, like the tombs of the patriarchs, the archeological remains of King Herod’s era and the scrolls of Qumran).

The most recent form of imitation — at least as far as I know — is planting trees in memory of someone, which is now a centuries old habit in the Jewish world. When someone passes, or when there’s something happy to commemorate, like a wedding for example, the Jews plant trees, gardens and woods. The KKL, the National Jewish Fund, made it its mission. That way, in the course of the decades, the landscape and even the climate of Israel have changed; and where before there was a stoney field now there grow pines and oaks. Touring the country, one can tell a Jewish village from an Arab one also because, wherever it is possible, the Jews surround themselves with plants, greenery and life.

As I was saying though, imitation is an irrepressible urge; and it looks like that the Arabs too have begun to plant trees to preserve their memories. Not a lot, at least from what I read: fifty trees to be planted near the town of Jenin, moreover out of season; because the rain season is over in Israel, and now the long and dry summer has begun. But it doesn’t matter, trees are better than nothing. Certainly better than rockets and knives. That’s right. Because, do you know why, or better, in honor of whom, will these trees be planted? In honor of fifty “veteran prisoners” who the evil Israeli had the gall to have kept in prison for a long time.

Who are these unfortunate “veterans”, who have been so cruelly separated from the world and from their families for so long? Resistance fighters no doubt. Local emulators of Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Here’s a few names:

Karim and Maher Younes, two Israeli Arabs who were convicted in 1981 of killing a soldier.

Issa Abd Rabbo, convicted in 1984 of killing two university students, Ron Levi and Revital Seri, who were taking a walk in a field south of Jerusalem.

Osama Al-Silawi, sentenced to four life sentences for the killing of three Palestinians (“informants”, according to him) and an Israeli.

Muhammad Turkeman, sentenced to life imprisonment for the same crime.

Nasser Abu Suror and Mahmoud Abu Surour found guilty of murder in 1993.

Zaid Younes, who in 2002 took part in a suicidal attack in Tel Aviv that wounded about twenty people.

Ikram Mansur, convicted of killing an Israeli man, Yitzhak Yosef Trumpeldor in 1979.

Ahmed Ka’abna, sentenced to two life sentences for the stabbing to death of two women in 1997.

Nael and Fakhri Barghouti, convicted of the killing of an Israeli official.

Should I go on with the list of the people who were honored with the planting of the little grove by the P.N.A? I think it’s pretty clear that we’re dealing with killers. People who murdered soldiers, women, unarmed kids and sometimes even infants, like Samir Kuntar, who is part of the above-mentioned group, who smashed the head of a four years old girl with a rock, destroyed the rest of her family with a weapon, and then was ceded to the Hezbollah in exchange for the bodies of two fallen Israeli soldiers.

Some of these crimes were committed twenty or thirty years ago. Some are more recent. In Italy, like in Israel, these crimes would call as well for life imprisonment. In other countries, for example in all the Muslim countries who back the P.N.A, they would receive the death penalty, which Israel inflicted only once in her history, in the case of Adolf Eichmann.

Experience, even the most recent, proves that if these terrorists are released from jail for a prisoner exchange, like in the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, they don’t lay down their weapons but immediately return to their terrorist activity. The prisoners who were freed in an exchange and engaged again in terrorism are dozens; including the last one, who has knifed to death Eviatar Borovsky, a father who was waiting for the bus in Samaria.

Not only the P.N.A honors every way it can these killers, and compensates them too, becoming an accomplice of their past and future crimes, but it has set their liberation as a precondition for any negotiation. Can freeing thousands of potentially recidivous murderers be a precondition for peace? Is honoring them and inciting the youth to emulate them the attitude of people who want peace?

Jenin ca. 1920

One might ask what the Red Cross had to do with that. Read at the bottom of this link. The ceremony of the macabre grove of Jenin, the green monument to the murderers, had a glamorous sponsor: the International Red Cross, which in this occasion was unfortunately represented by an Italian compatriot of ours, one Giorgio Ferrario, who, as the permanent International Red Cross delegate in the Palestinian Territories, is probably familiar with this sort of apology of crime which is nothing but a betrayal of every humanitarian principle.

The purpose of someone who interposes oneself between the fighters to tend to the wounded (which was the original purpose of the Red Cross), and helps the sick in peacetime as well, is as noble as it is ignoble that under the same flag murderers are protected and allowed to persevere. Unfortunately, that is nothing new. A lot has been said about the role of the Catholic Church under nazism; but not enough about the role of the Red Cross, who helped nazi officials such as Mengele, Priebke and Eichmann to hide and get away.

So, Mr. Ferrario is not very different from his seventy-years-ago predecessors, who tried really hard to be on good terms with the nazis.

Therefore, we shouldn’t shoot the Red Cross, no. But, without detracting from the great work that its volunteers do, we should tell everyone what the Red Cross does when it engages in political activity. Yes, that we should do.

Dr. Ugo Volli is an Italian academic, and an author, who teaches semiology at the University of Turin. His ""Postcards from Eurabia" appear periodically, in Italian, on the on-line magazine Informazione Corretta, from which I took and translated this post. Your comments will be greatly appreciated. (I'd like to thank J.J.P for reviewing the English text).
Thank you.

Leonardo Pavese  

The Not-So-Hidden Secret of the Wedding at Cana

Giotto and the secret of the Marriage at Cana.

By Massimo Introvigne

In these times, in which we are talking again about Dan Brown, it is worth remembering that, besides the nonsense of the American novelist, Christian art and literature are filled with symbols, secrets and mysteries. Sometimes, in a symbolic way, works of art provide an explanation of the truth of faith according to codes that we have now lost but were understandable to the people who lived at the time of the artists; and sometimes they reveal legends, which are not the truth of the faith — and often they’re not even true — but, compared to Dan Brown, they have at least the merit of a long tradition.

An interesting example is the panel of the Wedding at Cana, from the series of frescoes by the Italian painter Giotto (ca.1267-1337) in the Scrovegni's Chapel in Padua, Italy. It is a series of frescoes that we all presumed to know, but which turned out to be an inexhaustible mine of hidden details that researchers have brought back to light, little by little. We probably owe the details to Giotto’s theologian of reference, the Augustinian Albert of Padua (1269- ca.1328), identified by the scholar Giuliano Pisani as the person who inspired the painting of the Chapel. Albert was a thoroughly orthodox theologian who had been appointed as an apostolic preacher by Pope Boniface VIII (1230-1303) and who cultivated a very strong interest for ancient legends.

It is true that Giotto also often visited the much less orthodox Pietro d’Abano (1257-1316 or 1317), but Giotto asked the latter to explain to him astrology, and the result of that was the series of frescoes in the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, which were unfortunately destroyed in the fire of 1420, and repainted between 1425 and 1440 by much less talented artists.

In the panel of the Wedding of Cana, what really strikes the observer is the prominent role of the six jars, the “six stone water jars...for the Jewish rites of purification....” (John 2:6), which Jesus had filled with the water that later will be transformed into wine. They represent the six ages in which, following Eusebius Pamphili (265-340), Saint Augustine divides history: from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David, from David to the deportation of the Jews to Babylon, from the deportation to the birth of Jesus, from Christmas to the Last Judgement. And, since the human microcosm resembles the macrocosm, the six stone jars also represent the six phases in the life of man, from infancy to old age. The emotion of the portly master of ceremonies, also on the right side of the panel, attests to the miracle. But the true secret of the fresco resides in the characters. On the left, the groom sits between Jesus and Saint Andrew. In the center, there is the bride, between the mother of the groom and the Virgin.

Who are the wedding couple of Cana? If we observe the face of the groom, at this wedding reception, we discover that he is the same character that is represented somewhere else in the cycle of frescoes of the Chapel. He is Saint John the Evangelist, without the halo, because he wasn’t yet a disciple of the Lord. What was saint John doing at the wedding?

Two books, which were known to Albert of Padua, and were indeed very well known throughout the Middle Ages, provide the answer: the “Legenda Aurea”, the Golden Legend, by Jacobus de Voragine (1228-1298) and the “Meditations on the Life of Christ”, erroneously attributed to Saint Bonaventure (between 1217 and 1221-1274). Both the pseudo-Bonaventure and Jacobus de Voragine relate that the wedding of Cana was actually Saint John’s. Therefore, the mother of the groom, portrayed by Giotto, would be Mary Salome, the mother of the apostles John and James; according to these texts, John, impressed by the miracle, left the house and his newly wed wife to follow Jesus.

And who would be the bride, who sits at the table with an absorbed-in-one’s-thoughts expression, almost as she was already foreboding the abandonment? Her red dress, and some features of her face —  comparable to others that appear in different Giotto’s paintings — allow us to presume that she’s Mary of Madgala.

In the chapter entitled “De Maria Magdalena” in the book of the blessed Jacobus de Voragine, we read that: “Some say that Mary was the spouse of John the Evangelist, who had just married her when Jesus called him.... She was so indignant because her husband had abandoned her, that she left and she abandoned herself to all sorts of pleasure seeking. But because it was inconvenient that the vocation of John was the cause of her damnation, the Lord converted her to penance, by his mercy.”

It is a story that could make Dan Brown jealous, about which the Golden Legend does not commit: the book just posits, “Some say....” Nevertheless, Giotto portrayed it, turning the known scene of the wedding at Cana into something different: a dramatic moment in the lives of John and the Magdalene against the background of the great historical drama symbolized by the six jars.

Massimo Introvigne is an Italian sociologist and an author. The article originally appeared on the Italian daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, and was translated (by me) and published here with permission.
There are two other translations of interesting articles by Dr. Introvigne on this blog. One is about the alleged relation of Pope Francis I with the extreme right. The other is a look at the later work of Spanish painter Salvador Dalí.
Your comments will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

Leonardo Pavese

The St. Petersburg Ecumenical Council.

When Salvador Dalí painted Vatican II. 
By Massimo Introvigne. (Translated from Italian by L. Pavese).

I was in St. Petersburg, Florida (U.S.A.) for a convention, and I had the opportunity to visit the new futuristic venue of the Dalí Museum, designed by Yann Weymouth. Actually, the fantastic shape of the building probably functions to protect the museum from the frequent hurricanes, since it is built dangerously close to the ocean.

Other than the artist’s collection in his house-turned-museum in Figueres, Catalonia, St. Petersburg’s is the largest collection of works by Salvador Dalí in the world - 96 oil paintings, sculptures and various other objects.

The collection, which belonged to plastics magnate and Dalí’s friend, Albert Reynolds Morse (1914-2000), arrived in Florida in 1982 when the billionaire, hounded by tax collectors, was forced to dispose of it. The new museum was inaugurated in 2011.

The great merit of the St. Petersburg’s museum consists in presenting the entire arc of the professional life of Salvador Dalí. Although at the core of the exhibit there is a robust collection of Dalí’s most famous phase, Surrealism, the sections dedicated to the youth and to the last ten years of the life of the Spanish painter are particularly rich. Although today Dalí is mostly known for his bizarre behavior and his desire to amaze at any cost, his early works show Dalí’s great mastering of different techniques; but the works of his maturity and his old age, after the break with Surrealism, are characterized by the rediscovery of religion.

Dalí had experienced in his family the cultural conflict between the Catholics and the anti-clerical forces which would eventually lead to the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War: his father was an atheist (probably a Mason) who was very hostile to the Church, but his mother was a very devout Catholic. The tension in his family predisposed Salvador Dalí to espouse the violent anti-clericalism of the Surrealists, a view he shared, and was also stoked by his relationship with Gala Djakonova (1894-1982), who was a Russian model and the wife of the poet Paul Éluard (1895-1952). After divorcing Éluard, Gala married Salvador Dalí, in a civil ceremony, in 1932.

Gala

Between the years 1949 and 1950 Dalí began his tormented, and never really completed trek to the rediscovery of Catholicism. His old family-generated issues (which also explain his fascination with Sigmund Freud, whom the artist would travel to visit, in London, in 1938), created the persona almost everyone knows: a histrionic character, who was enamored only of himself, and whose exhibitionist attitudes were difficult to bear even for his friends and were eventually even  turned out to be bad for his health. Therefore, it is not surprising if many consider Dalí’s return to Catholicism just the last trick of someone who just wanted to shock and amaze all who knew him as a fierce anti-clerical. Whatever the case, he did manage to cause a stir: when in 1952 he decided to sell his painting of the previous year, “The Christ of Saint John of the Cross,” to the Kelvingrove Museum of Glasgow, Scotland, Arts students and politically correct intellectuals organized a march to protest the purchase (which nevertheless was eventually finalized) of such a scandalous, Catholic and retrograde painting by a progressive museum.

But it is exactly the pictorial itinerary shown by the St. Petersburg’s museum that demonstrates that Dali’s desire was not just to stun and scandalize, although that element is never totally absent in his work. In 1949, Dalí was received in Rome by the venerable Pope Pius XII, who was interested in modern art and had very kind words for “The Virgin of Port Lligat,” the very first “Catholic” painting of the Catalan artist, although still marked by surrealist influences.

Dalí always stated that  his return to religion was by the way of science, and in that sense his Catholicism, during his late years, was influenced by scientist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (whose orthodoxy is certainly dubious). Science, according to Dalí, with the discovery of DNA for example, made it impossible for him to avoid the conclusion that a God who created an universe so complex and orderly must exist. Nevertheless, during a famous conference Dalí stated: “I believe in God, but I have no faith. Science and mathematics tell me that God must exist, but I don’t believe it.”

So, beyond his ever-present flair for the paradox, Dalí meant to say that he was rationally convinced of the existence of God and even - as he stated in another occasion - of the truth of Catholicism, but he could not “feel” faith. Nevertheless, he would later impose on a reluctant Gala, whose husband had died, a Catholic religious wedding in 1958.  He died in 1989 comforted by the sacraments of the Church.

The St. Petersburg’s collection includes two large canvases. One is the 1958 “The Discovery of America, by Christopher Columbus,” which is a celebration of Catholic Spain and of the epic deeds of Columbus as a triumph of faith. The second painting is “The Ecumenical Council,” which perhaps would be interesting to revisit in this year of faith, during which Catholics celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. The canvas was painted in 1960, after the calling of the Council by Saint John XXIII.

This enormous picture has a strong symbolic character. In the lower left corner, Dalí represented himself as Diego Velázquez in front of a completely blank canvas, that probably represents a totally new phase of Dalí’s life. Dalí also wrote that it couldn’t have been an accident that the artists he most admired, Velázquez, Vermeer and the architect Antonio Gaudí, had also been Catholic.

At the top of the painting Dalí’s wife Gala appears as Saint Helen (248-329), the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine (274-337) who is a much venerated saint in Catalonia. In the upper right there are: The Son, the Logos, whose body is transforming in subatomic particles (an allusion to Dali’s thoughts about the relation between faith and modern science); the figure of the Father, which is an obvious tribute to Michelangelo, and the Holy Spirit. In the center, the coronation of the blessed Pope John XXIII dissolves into a dream-like vision of the future Council.

Everything may appear strange in the works of Dalí and The Ecumenic Council is no exception. Dalí’s Catholicism is also peculiar, and today very few people would take as seriously as he did Teilhard de Chardin’s acritical enthusiasm for modern science. Nevertheless, this painting and, more generally,  the final decades of Dalí’s life prove (if it were necessary) that a meeting between the Church and modern art, although at the risk of possible misunderstandings, is certainly possible.

Massimo Introvigne is an Italian sociologist and the author of several books about the sociology of religion. In 2012 he was appointed chairman of the newly instituted Observatory of Religious Liberty of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to investigate the issues related to religious freedom in the world.
The article you just read appeared originally on the Italian daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, and it was translated and published here with their permission.
Your comments will be greatly appreciated. Thank you,
Leonardo Pavese

Quo Vadis, Germania?

Germania (Hermann Wislicenus) 

By Antonio Martino (Translated and edited by L. Pavese)

All the countries of the Eurozone, albeit in different measure, have entered the deepest economic depression in their  history. Unemployment is rapidly increasing; the rate of growth, for many of them, has been negative for too many months; all the indexes suggest that the consequences of the simultaneous adoption of recessive policies are compounding. The cause was pointed out by J.M. Keynes in 1936:

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, the right ones as well as the wrong ones, are much more powerful than it is commonly thought. In reality, the world is governed by few other factors besides those. Political philosophers and economists, who believe to be totally free from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” (The translation from Italian is mine. L. Pavese).

Let’s see. Generally, the Germans, and in particular Chancellor Merkel, are convinced that the countries that adopted the Euro are tied by a solidarity bond which would force the “virtuous nations” to take on the debt of the profligate ones. The widespread belief is that, if a country of the Eurozone can’t honor its debt, it is the duty of the others to help prevent it from defaulting. This thesis is strengthened by the belief that the default of one country would have a domino effect on all the others; but these theses are not only baseless, they are also totally contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Maastricht Treaties. 

In fact, the Treaties, after having established that the objective of the ECB (European Central Bank) should be monetary stability, coherently prohibit the ECB from monetizing the debt of the Member States by buying their public debt. These admirable dispositions are unequivocal: the stability of prices and currency are the responsibility of the ECB, but the decisions in matters of taxes and budgets belong exclusively to the autonomous national states. That is, there should be an European monetary policies distinct from a national budgetary policy. Then what sense does the so-called "Fiscal Compact" make? How can the grotesque attempt to strip the national states of their budgetary sovereignty be justified? Nothing in the Treaties authorizes that, and it is contrary to logic and common sense.

The fifty United States of America use the same currency (the U.S. Dollar)  but each one of them is perfectly free to adopt the tax and budgetary policies that they see fit. They implement them and they bear the consequences. In Texas, for example, there’s no state income tax; the state is growing at a fast clip; the workforce is increasing; the state finances are florid. On the other hand, California is burdened by a very expensive welfare state, exaggerated taxes, high unemployment and a busted budget. Nobody ever suggested that Texans should pay the debt of Californians; or that the U.S. federal government (which has existed for more than two centuries, unlike the E.U.) should bail out California, or that the Federal reserve should monetize California’s debt.

The policies of standardization, harmonization and unification pursued in Europe are unjustified, ridiculous and harmful.

Italy and Germany. (Friedrich Overbeck)

In conclusion, the Euro-bigots who want different people to wear the same size clothes are causing hundreds of millions of Europeans to fall into the abyss of economic depression and they deserve to be treated like what they are: pompous and ignorant charlatans who want to impose their fantasies on the citizens of free countries. The sooner we understand that that is totally baseless, grotesque and that is has nothing to do with the European ideal, the better will be for everybody.

Pope Benedict XV was convinced that the divine origin of the Catholic Church was demonstrated by the fact that the clergy had not managed to destroy it, yet. The survival of the European ideal to the crookedness of the Eurosaurus maybe demonstrates its validity. Let’s be careful though, Jesus promised the Church immortality, but nobody promised it to the E.U.

Antonio Martino is the former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and former Minister of Defense. He is now a professor of Economics, currently on parliamentary leave.

The article was taken from his personal blog (in Italian), and was translated and published here with his permission.

You comments will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Leonardo Pavese