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Italy Tag

French President Emmanuel Macron has reached a deal with the newly-formed Italian government, agreeing to resettle migrants that enter Italy by boat. Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte "have agreed on a new system to distribute migrants across the European Union," German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle disclosed.

Italy's government has collapsed as Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned after Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini tabled a no-confidence vote. Conte unloaded on Salvini in a speech to the Senate, accusing him of putting his individual wants ahead of the country. Salvini has demanded snap elections since opinion polls have shown that his Northern League as the most popular party in Italy.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini hit back at Richard Gere for criticizing the country's immigration policy. He told the U.S. celebrity to take illegal migrants with him to Hollywood. "Given this generous millionaire is voicing concern for the fate of the Open Arms migrants, we thank him," the Italian politician responded sarcastically. "He can take all the people aboard back to Hollywood, on his private plane, and support them in his villas. Thank you, Richard!"

Europe's open-doors immigration policy will lead to a European "Islamic caliphate," Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini has warned voters ahead of the upcoming European Union election. "For our children, to leave behind an Islamic caliphate with sharia law in our cities is not something I want to do and I’m going to do everything in my power to avert this sad ending for Europe," he said during a visit to Hungary this week.

France's nationalist politician Marine Le Pen and Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini have announced plans to create a "Freedom Front" electoral coalition ahead of next year's European parliamentary vote. Speaking with Le Pen at a press conference on Monday, Salvini called for a "common sense revolution" to defeat EU's political elite in the May 2019 elections. "Europe's enemies are those cut off in the bunker of Brussels," Italy's League party leader Salvini told reporters. "The Junckers, the Moscovicis, who brought insecurity and fear to Europe and refuse to leave their armchairs."

Italy’s new government has declared victory in a standoff over a German-owned rescue boat that brought hundreds of migrants to its shores. Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini refused MS Aquarius, which carried 629 migrants on board, to dock over the weekend. Spain’s newly elected Socialist government accepted the boat, which ended the impasse. "Saving lives at sea is a duty, but transforming Italy into an enormous refugee camp is not," Minister Salvini wrote on Facebook. "Italy is done bowing its head and obeying. This time there's someone saying no."

Anti-European Union parties made a huge leap in Italy's general election, but no party has (so far) come away with a majority. This means Italy faces a hung Parliament and can take a long time to form a government. The situation mirrors the UK when Prime Minister Theresa May held snap elections last year and no party came out with a majority.

Italy has been struggling to deal with a flood of migrants from Libya and has received little to no help from the EU. This has led to strife, as we pointed out in earlier posts.

Italy is being overwhelmed by migrants from northern Africa due to its geographic location. As we previously reported, the situation has become so bad that Italy has threatened to close its ports. In order to get the rest of the EU to help, Italy is now threatening to just give these migrants, mostly from Libya, visas which would allow them to live anywhere in Europe. This is threat to flood the rest of Europe with hundreds of thousands of Libyan migrants is being termed the "nuclear option."

While progressives decry fossil fuel use as the source of our climate change woes, Mother Nature may be presenting us a more serious, immediate and real threat. Most Americans are familiar with our supervolcano in Yellowstone. However, there is one in Italy that shows signs of potential activity.
A massive supervolcano under the city of Naples, Italy, is showing signs of life again, prompting concern among some scientists. The Campi Flegrei, Italian for "burning fields," that make up the vocano's crater, or caldera, have been full of boiling mud, steam, and even smaller volcanoes for centuries. The people of ancient Rome believed the area to be the home of the Roman god of fire and volcanoes, Vulcan. Today, the fields are a popular tourist destination. But the caldera has been showing signs of an explosive awakening since 2012, and a new study indicates that a destructive eruption of the volcano could be coming soon.

Authorities in Milan have killed the Tunisian man who drove a truck through a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Italian police in the gritty Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood stopped Anis Amri just after 3 a.m. outside a train station for a routine check. When the officers asked the 24-year-old Tunisian for his identification, the man—who, according to Italian officials spoke fluent Italian—became agitated, pulled out a 22-caliber gun and began to shoot, shouting “Bastard police!”

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has announced he will resign from his post after Italians rejected a referendum to amend the country's 1948 constitution. Renzi said:
"Tomorrow the President of the Republic will have a meeting with me and I will hand in my resignation," Renzi said. "I take on full responsibilities for defeat and so I say I lost, not you," he told supporters. The defeat of the referendum was resounding, with nearly 60% of voters saying "no."

2016 has been a crazy year for governments with the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union and Donald Trump winning the presidency here in the states. Now Italy is moving towards uncertainty as polls show Italians do not want Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's referendum. Renzi promised to step down if his referendum fails. These referendums will "reduce the role of the Senate and transfer powers to central government from the regions." The Wall Street Journal reports a rejection could tumble bank shares and weaken the euro.

The push back against the progressive left's agenda that culminated in the election of President-elect Trump had been gaining steam for a while now and not just on this side of the Atlantic. Faced with poor economic growth, an influx of refugees, a sense of losing their national identity, and a variety of country-specific reasons, the entire Western world seems on the verge of the same sort of election-revolution we just witnessed in America. Heralded as the "the liberal West's last defender," Angela Merkel has been under intense pressure based on her open door policy to refugees, and she now finds herself feeling the growing dissatisfaction of the German people even more powerfully than before Trump's victory.