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Italy's crucial vote (FT.com)

Posted on January 22, 2013 12:06 AM in ,

Medium  English posts are also on medium.com/@lucianog.

Read the complete article on FT.com

ft.jpg

Parties are shying away from the radicalism Rome needs

Italians go to the polls to choose their next prime minister in a little less than five weeks. The election result will reverberate well beyond Italy. The eurozone's future prosperity will depend on whether its third-largest economy can keep its fiscal house in order and resume growth after a decade of stagnation.

The technocratic government led by Mario Monti as well as decisive action by the European Central Bank have helped restore Rome's fiscal credibility. Foreign investors have resumed buying Italian paper and yields on 10-year bonds are significantly lower than what they were in November 2011. Yet the economy is stuck in the longest recession since the second world war. Italy's external competitiveness has not improved since the start of the crisis. Productivity is stagnant and, unlike Spain, Portugal and Ireland, unit labour costs have barely started to fall.

Solving these deep-rooted problems requires a trustworthy leader with a credible economic programme. Neither applies to Silvio Berlusconi, the plutocrat-cum-politician who is planning a comeback after taking his country to the edge of the fiscal precipice. Some elements of his election manifesto, such as steep cuts to government spending that would finance a reduction in business taxes, are sensible in principle. But we have heard it all before. In his nine years in power, Mr Berlusconi, the laughing cavalier, promised much but delivered nothing. Italians should not be beguiled again.

Pier Luigi Bersani, candidate for the centre-left Democrats, and Mario Monti, who is heading a centrist coalition, both have personal credibility. During his time in government, Mr Bersani passed many reforms, including liberalising the legal professions and pharmacy shops. Mr Monti, meanwhile, is trusted both by investors and Italy's eurozone allies

However, neither leader has yet to set out a convincing economic vision for the country. The Democrat leader has to prove he will not be taken hostage by the left wing of his party, which opposes reforms to an inefficient labour market. Mr Monti is right to argue for tax cuts but must spell out where he will find the savings needed to deliver them.

Read the complete article on FT.com

Copyright © Financial Times. All rights reserved

Election in Russia

Posted on December 2, 2007 9:15 PM in

Medium  English posts are also on medium.com/@lucianog.

Here starts the dictatorship?

MOSCA - The leader of the opposition movement "Other Russia", Garry Kasparov, said, in an interview to the TG1 (the main italian tv news journal), that the victory of the Vladimir Putin party, "United Russia", at the legislative elections, signs the beginning of the dictatorship in the Country. "All that powership that Putin has built around him and that, in the electoral campaign, is transformed in a political-administrative structure able to destroy any form of dissent: in one word dictatorship". (Agr)

(From Corriere.it; Here is the link to a Kasparov post in english language about the elections)

Other links (in italian):
ANSA.it: OSCE: ELEZIONI IN RUSSIA 'NON CORRETTE' (OSCE: ELECTIONS IN RUSSIA HAVE BEEN "NOT CORRECT")

Comments from another world

Posted on February 23, 2007 11:21 PM in

Medium  English posts are also on medium.com/@lucianog.

How the world knows well us... Read now on the BBC News about italian government crisi, a comment of a Buenos Aires's reader:

The beauty of Italy is that life goes on, despite their anachronistic, difficult to understand politics – it is like a parallel universe, a game with its objectives and a life of its own. Politics is an art practiced in Italy for its own sake, democracy a way of getting into power and staying there, but quite unconnected with people's everyday aspirations, wishes and problems. Of these, the important ones are solved by taking matters into their own hands.

Iran defence or military option

Posted on December 20, 2005 12:52 AM in

Medium  English posts are also on medium.com/@lucianog.

On one side we have this:

Russia confirms Iran missile deal

Russia has confirmed a deal to sell surface-to-air missiles to Iran, insisting they are for defence only.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said a contract to deliver TOR-M1 missiles to Iran had been signed.

He said the deal "in no way upsets the balance of forces in the region," Russian news agencies reported.

Iran has reportedly agreed to buy 29 of the mobile air defence systems in a contract worth more than $700m (£400m; 600m euros).

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says the sale is not banned under any treaty, but it has already been criticised by the United States and Israel.

Earlier, Iran announced that it was planning to build a second nuclear power plant in the south of the country, despite coming under pressure from the international community over its nuclear ambitions.

On the other side we have:

Iran president bans Western music

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned Western and "indecent" music from state-run TV and radio stations.

The ban follows a ruling in October by the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, which he heads, to ban Western songs from the airwaves.

"Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required," a statement from the council said.

Songs by artists such as Eric Clapton and George Michael will be affected.

Songs such as Clapton's Rush, Michael's Careless Whisper and The Eagles' Hotel California are often used as background music on Iranian TV programmes.

Songs by American easy-listening artist Kenny G are also often featured.

"This is terrible," said Iranian guitarist Babak Riahipour, a musician whose songs featured on state TV and radio. "The decision shows a lack of knowledge and experience."

Mr Ahmadinejad became president this year promising to reverse a recent series of reforms and return Iran to the ultra-conservative atmosphere of the 1979 revolution.

"Supervision of content from films, TV series and their voice-overs is emphasized in order to support spiritual cinema and to eliminate trite and violence," the council said on its website in reference to the October ruling.

Mr Ahmadinejad's programme has included sacking more moderate members of the government and replacing them with ex-military commanders and politically inexperienced religious leaders.

In recent weeks he launched an outspoken attack on Israel, calling for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map".

He also claimed the Nazi Holocaust, which killed six million Jews, was a "myth".

So let's ask to ourself if it's an option to give Iran some availability of defence or it's an option to safeguard the international treatments against nuclear proliferation.

Sources: BBC News

How much the Center counts?

Posted on January 17, 2005 2:26 PM in

Medium  English posts are also on medium.com/@lucianog.

It's some time that I don't speak about politics..

Maurizio on the today's post resumes a political topic that could be defined as the "abandonment of the extreme electorate" when elections come closer. In the post, .mau. gives a mathematical interpretation to the phenomenon, showing that the politicians don't do good accounts. Read it, because it is interesting. A synthesis cannot be made, if not that the conclusion of the mumbling is that the politicians prefer to move to "center" - watching to uncertain ballots of the moderate flanges - than losing (with smaller uncertainty) the ballots of the more extremist zones.

The temptation has come me to make a reflection, that I forward also to my few readers.

I guess that if politicians (those that make true politics) make this move, as they think that is worth moving to the center in order to take more ballots than to lose some leaving at the extreme sides, there must be one (or more) reason. The problem of the thought, (always considering that it is a metaphor on politics) is that if some percentages of voters don't go to vote anymore, perhaps it's not a problem: since numerically it counts who takes more ballots, it counts therefore who succeeds to "bring" the votes of the center electorate. Mathematically speeching: if a political formation loses 100 ballots on the left and 100 ballots to the right, but then it earns 10 ballots to the center that concur of having the game, so it has won. In a perfect bipolar system, it would win therefore who had sold 50% of voters plus one, and not how many votes has placed. A true objection to my reflection could be that since the system is symmetrical, also the other part earns 10 ballots to the center and - at the end - nothing changes. But in truth the center is so volubile..and politics unfortunately is not one mathematical demonstration (or perhaps).

Another on the conscience of mr.Berlusconi

Posted on August 27, 2004 12:20 AM in

Medium  English posts are also on medium.com/@lucianog.

Enzo Baldoni, the journalist that has been taken as hostage in Iraq, has been murdered. :-(

He was a blogger, as me and (probably) you. He was well known in the Internet community.

Probably you don't know italian situation: in Italy we're living the war in Iraq in a worst way.

We should not gone in Iraq. Only Blair+Bush. But we've go the same. In recent elections italians have expressed live the orientation we shouldn't partecipate to this war (which our government obstinately calls "peace operation"), and we are the same.
The Pope did in 2003 all His possibility to avoid the entry of Italy in this Iraqi war, but nobody heared the Pope.
Mr.Berlusconi (our "prime minister") didn't it.

This is the result. Enzo isn't the first civilian to be murdered -captive, not to mention italian soldiers.

How many lives we must still lose for this insulse-war? I don't speak only of italians, but also Iraqi people, also Usa soldiers...

Here it's the "wonderful" and completely useless declarations of our foreign minister:

Italy to pull troops out 'if asked'

Thursday 26 August 2004, 14:02 Makka Time, 11:02 GMT

Italy is prepared to pull its troops out of Iraq if the interim government in Baghdad requests it, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has told Aljazeera.

But his government has insisted it will not bow to pressure from the captors of an Italian journalist who have demanded a troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Frattini's message was delivered on Thursday, one day after the family of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni appealed to his Iraqi captors, via Aljazeera, to release him.

"We are ready to pull out of Iraq, even tomorrow, if the government of Mr (Iyyad) Allawi asks us," said Frattini, speaking just hours ahead of the expiry of a deadline set by Baldoni's captors for Italy to withdraw its 3000 troops from Iraq.

(source: Al Jazeera)

European vote 2004: an italian analysis

Posted on June 17, 2004 2:48 PM in

Medium  English posts are also on medium.com/@lucianog.

The political situation in Italy has to be analyzed by politic professionals, who know their electorate, why has voted why.
My analysis will be limited to some common consideration on the european and italian vote for UE Parliament on june 11-13 2004.

In this table you can see the results of vote in Italy. The name of the parties are in italian.

First of all, there's been an embaracing european vote. The eurosceptical have been prevalent, and the vote expected the european organization was just from the East countries, the new ones that have voted with the lowest affluence, too. In all the countries, except for the Spain, the vote punished the governements. In the UK, Tony Blair's party falls to the 3rd floor and his popularity index crashes down of dozen points. Not bad, for a left party that has firmly desired the Iraqi war.

But considering the italian situation is not so bad to view other countries retirement from public estimation. We have Berlusconi as premier, the incarnation of a sort of "self made government/commercial man" with full control over private television and in part on the public television. His debacle has been evident and for the party "Forza Italia" (sort of "Go Italy!") the fall has been of 4 percentual points. Berlusconi leads a coalition of right-center parties, but seamlessly the right part counters more than the centrist one, and this makes this model of governing very conservative and not-so-liberal as publicly declared. In effect, the more problem of interest conflict, the more premiership resolves in an anthipaty that's now shown by the vote cab. Nevertheless, the colation in the whole has growth since the past elections. (continue..)

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I teach in higher courses about Communication and digital media. I've been coorganizer for TEDxViadellaConciliazione, plus founder of BETA magazine et al.
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