‘Io Sono Giorgia’
This is the spitfire woman who was just elected Prime Minister of Italy. Savor it:
If this is fascism, let's have more of it!
Of course it's not in any way fascism -- a slur that the US media apply to Meloni to avoid having to take her ideas seriously.
Do we have a single American politician capable of speaking words like that with such force, and such conviction? I can't think of one. Giorgia Meloni has more balls than a Congress full of Republicans. She is going to wipe the floor with Ursula von der Leyen, Mark Rutte, and the Brussels gang. Last year, via our mutual friend Francesco Giubilei, she sent me a nice gift, which I pulled off a storage unit shelf today to admire:
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UPDATE: Lord have mercy, look at this clip. It is golden. She is the one we have been waiting for! When even one finds the courage to live not by lies, it can be contagious!
She's not going to change abortion laws, at most she's going to give more funds to pregnancy centers. And she won't challenge the LGBT status quo. But she won't give them an inch more.
Seriously, the Journal story spent most of its space talking about the bond market, which where Ursula has her leverage.
Italy needs money, and Italy needs to detach itself from the Russian sanctions regime particularly on energy. Italy has very little leverage vis a vis the eurocrats currently. Any rebellion would end up like Greece - "you want to eat? do as I say!"
If Italy finds a way to band together with others to beat more money out of the Germans, in any form, that would be a win.
Italy in the long term needs to decouple from reliance on European energy infrastructure, which will subject Italians to Germany's energy objectives and disputes, and get its own pipelines. There would be tremendous competitive advantage in using cheaper Russian gas when the rest of the euro market can't. Turkey is not that far away...
We also need to reopen the drilling stations in the Mediterranean, which were shut down because buying gas from Russia was cheaper.
Moreover, Eni owns discovery rights from some of the largest gas reservoirs in the world: we need more LNG terminals to ship it into Italy.
I agree that we need to decouple ourselves from the European energy market. The EU failed miserably to address the price rises before voting the sanctions.
But I'm entirely against lifting sanctions on Russia. Russia crossed a red line and we need to keep up the pressure.
Italy having significantly cheaper energy than Germany - because it's willing to burn pipeline gas from anyone who will ship it - would flip the script on the eurozone and favor Italy competitively.