Italian Economist Sees Euro Currency as Harmful, Likewise Germany's Stifling Role

Paolo Savona is an Italian economist of the older generation. A veteran official at the Italian central bank, the Banca d'Italia, he was nominated by the two main political parties in Italy, the Lega [League] and the Movimento Cinque Stelle [Five Stars Movement], to be minister of finance when the Italian government was being formed last May and June [2018]. But Savona's positions on the euro currency and German domination in the single currency [euro] zone were anathema to the EU/Eurozone and to various domestic Italian interests.
His views were summed up by the Wall Street Journal:
Savona . . . sharply criticized the euro and compared the dominant role of Berlin in determining Eurozone financial policy to Nazi German aggression in the Second World War. [Globes, 5(29-30) 2018]

In any event, the president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, nixed Savona's appointment as finance minister on the grounds that a new government with Savona as finance minister might endanger Italy's membership in the Eurogroup [that directly sponsors the Euro currency]. Now, criticism of the EU and its institutions and Germany's role in particular are nothing new in Italy. Former socialist Prime Minister Matteo Renzi sharply criticized the EU and Germany's dominant role in it [here].

In any case, the man who did become finance minister in the new government, Giovanni Tria, was quite conciliatory towards the Euro and the EU. In contrast to Savona. But he too indicated tensions with the EU and the Eurogroup, Germany in particular, but France as well that --under Macron-- wants to expand the powers of the EU central authorities in Brussels through greater political and financial integration of the Eurogroup [the single currency group] and the EU. Tria told an interviewer:
"Look, paying attention to keeping the accounts in order and to bringing down the debt  is not appropriate because Europe tells us but because we should not take the chance of damaging confidence in our financial stability"[qui Corriere della Sera, 9 (modified 10) June 2018; Eng. trans. here]. Thus Tria expresses fear of what the Eurogroup and Germany in particular will say or do if Italy acts in such a way as to damage their confidence in Italy's financial stability. Nevertheless, as long as Germany enforces an austerity policy on Greece, Italy and other Eurozone states, economic growth in the Zone will be low --and it is now low in Germany too. But the Germans and the Brussels bureaucrats, the unelected rulers over millions --sometimes called Eurocrats-- are rigid. Thus needed changes will not be made or only very slowly and too little will be done in the way of changes out of the austerity straitjacket. The Greek case is blatant because the country cannot pay its debt in the long term --debt which was mostly incurred by the initial refusal of Germany led by Wolfgang Schaeuble to help Greece keep up with a smaller debt than now starting in 2010. Even the International Monetary Fund, notoriously friendly to fiscal stinginess, now agrees that the Greek debt should be restructured if not forgiven in part. But this does not happen. German domination of the Eurogroup seems to be still intact.

We have already explained why the EU is  not democratic [here] and we believe that the more the EU integrates and centralizes control and regulations in Brussels (the EU parliament at Strasbourg hardly counts) the less democratic each member country will be.  That is the less democratic power or influence the various peoples of the member states will have over their own lives. This greater political and financial integration is what Macron is seeking. He gave a speech on this subject just the other day. However, looking at France today, what with the mass terrorist attacks and the Yellow Vest movement which opposes Macron's proposed reforms, reveals that things are not going smoothly in what French people call the Hexagon. Safety on the streets especially for Jews, but not only, cannot be taken for granted in France today. Maybe it is not Macron's proposed reforms that have brought France down --reforms mostly not yet implemented-- but the EU and Eurogroup policies that have been in effect up till now.

Yes, the dream of a united Europe has its attractions but the reality is not so rosy.
Knowing what we do about the EU explains to us why nothing good for Israel is likely to come out of the EU. Israelis and Jews generally have to start seeing the EU as a body that cannot act for the best of its own several peoples let alone helping to bring peace to Israel and the Middle East generally.

Italian Jewish Response to the UNESCO Big Lie & Western Collaboration In It

Fiona Diwan, editor of the Bulletin of the Jewish Community of Milan, had some sharp words for UNESCO over its sinister vote "revising" the known history of Jerusalem and the Jewish role in that history. She also had sharp words for her own government and other EU and Western governments that collaborated in that vote by voting in favor or by merely abstaining. By abstaining they refused to take an honest stand on the integrity of known history. The West stays on the route towards barbarism.

Fiona Diwan in Mosaico, il Bollettino of the Milan Jewish Community, November 2016, no. 11:
Every month, here on earth, we cannot even count the pieces of archeological evidence and the discoveries of Jewish, Biblical, Hasmonean, and Herodian antiquities. However, France and Italy pretended not to know that. and were ready to exhibit the most scandalous silence when they abstained from the vote on the motion at UNESCO labeled "occupied Palestine," in which last month any tie between the Temple Mount and Judaism and Christianity was definitively denied. Among so many things that it did, the motion cancelled the Hebrew names of all the places on the Temple Mount in order to keep only the Arabic names. By now, everything has been written about this ignominious text. It is a text that falsifies history, denies the ancestral tie between Jerusalem and the Jewish people, once again giving in to the pressures and the intellectual terrorism of the Arab states and the Palestinian Authority. I want to point out that England, Holland, the United States, Germany, Lithuania, and Estonia voted against the motion.
We hoped that Italy and a France would have been more courageous by rejecting this buffoonish text. We would never have thought that at the session of the definitive vote, they would have chosen to abstain, thereby endorsing UNESCO's perverse calling in the delegitimization of Israel. Because, obviously, this is what was at stake. A delegitimization that runs in parallel with the demonization of Israel and the new European antisemitism with an Arab-Muslim matrix and its demographic explosion on the continent of Europe.

Ogni mese, quaggiù, non si contano le evidenze archeologiche e le scoperte di antichità giudaiche, bibliche, asmonee, erodiane. Eppure Francia e Italia hanno fatto finto di non saperlo, pronte a esibire il più scandoloso silenzio quando si sono astenute al voto della mozione Unesco denominate "Palestina occupata," con cui si è negato il mese scarso, in via definitive, qualsiasi legame tra il Monte del Tempio, l'ebraismo e il cristianesimo.  Tra le tante cose, la mozione cancellava i nomi ebraici da tutti i luoghi del Monte del Tempio per mantenere solo quelli in arabo. Su questo testo ignominioso si è ormai scritto di tutto, un testo che falsifica la storia, nega il legame ancestrale tra Gerusalemme e il popolo ebraico, cedendo, una volta di più, alle pressioni e al terrorismo intellettuale degli stati arabi e dell’Autorità palestinese. Voglio qui ricordare che Inghilterra, Olanda, Stati Uniti, Germania, Lituania e Estonia avevano votato contro. Speravamo in una Italia e Francia più coraggiose nel rigettare questo testo buffone. Mai avremmo pensato che, in sede di voto definitivo, avrebbero scelto l’astensione avallando così la vocazione perversa dell’Unesco alla delegittimazione di Israele. Perché, ovviamente, di questo si tratta.
 Una delegittimazione che corre in parallelo con la demonizzazione di Israele e col nuovo antisemitismo europeo di matrice arabo-musulmana e la sua esplosione demografica in terra d’Europa. [testo qui]

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The Italian daily newspaper, Il Foglio, sponsored a demonstration against the UNESCO in Rome, in front of the UNESCO offices, I believe. It was rather well-attended for an event of this kind.
See the video at the link [qui]

Colosseum Built with Money from Loot from Rome's Jewish War

See additional info at bottom of page

UNESCO disgraces its assigned mission to protect the world's cultural heritage and enhance it and defend it. It did so by adopting a resolution proposed by Arab states, working with the PLO/Palestinian Authority/, that denied the Jewish historical connection to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and its sacredness in the Jewish religion.

However, Italian archeological authorities are more honest. They frankly state that the Colosseum in Rome was built with loot from the Jewish War finally concluded while the Colosseum was already under construction. This determination was made in the last 15 years on the grounds of the recent discovery, or shall we say reexamination of previously discovered monumental stones that had not yet been thoroughly and sufficiently examined in the past, a common problem in archeology. Furthermore, it is likely that much or most of the loot taken from Judea [IVDAEA CAPTA to the Roman Empire of the time] was taken from the very Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount. We say this since we know that monetary contributions to the Temple from Jews throughout the Diaspora for ritual purposes were stored in the Temple. Further, the Arch of Titus, only about 150 or 200 meters north or northwest of the Colosseum, shows loot from the Temple, such as the golden menorah, being carried in a Roman victory parade, a triumph, through the streets of ancient Rome.

A standing sign inside the Colosseum states in two languages, Italian and English:

the colosseum, history

In AD 72 the emperor Vespasian used the spoils of his Jewish campaign to build Rome's first permanent amphitheater to host hunting spectacles and gladiatorial combats . . . .

il Colosseo, la sua storia

Nel 72 d C,  l'imperatore Vespasiano intraprese con il bottino della guerra giudaica, la costruizione del primo amfiteatro stabile di Roma . . .

It is a shame that the honesty of the Italian archeological authorities and their promptness in bringing the newly discovered information to the public's knowledge was not matched at the UNESCO vote by the Italian foreign ministry, which abstained on a matter of well known historical fact. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, to be sure, expressed his regret over the vote. Could someone please notify UNESCO, and its Arab members especially, about the extensive literature in ancient Latin, Greek, and Hebrew writings, as well as in other languages, about the Jewish War, not to mention the archeological discoveries, the continuously known Arch of Titus, the coins and other concrete reminders of that war and the battle against the Jews in Jerusalem?
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Other Related Info
The war, called by the Romans the Jewish War, started in 66 CE and ended in 73 CE (or in 74 CE, according to some scholars) with the fall of the fortress of Masada to Roman forces. Incidentally, Arab auxiliary troops fought for Rome in the war, including at Jerusalem. All considered, the bulk of the fighting was over in the summer of the year 70 CE when the Romans captured the Temple of Jerusalem and looted it, as said above. Thus they would have been able to start building the Colosseum before the actual end of the war.
--on the Menorah's importance for Jews here  and here.
--the Menorah goes from Jerusalem to the Roman "Peace" Temple   here.
-- better pix of the bas reliefs on the Arch of Titus plus inscriptions on it here. Click on the photos to enlarge.
-- Depiction of the Temple utensils in an ancient Jewish mosaic from the Byzantine period here. By the way, these photos of ancient Jewish mosaics are found in a book published by UNESCO. But that was long ago.
-- commentary on outrageous UNESCO vote here.
-- The Romans minted coins to commemorate their victory over the Jews with at least two types of insciptions on them. One was Judea Captured/Conquered [IVDAEA CAPTA]. Another was Judea Defeated [IVDAEA DEVICTA]. A third inscription used was Judea Recaptured [IVDAEA RECEPTA] on a gold coin (aureus). Few of these IVDAEA RECEPTA coins were minted although they may have been minted first. It seems that they were then replaced by IVDAEA CAPTA and others. I will report on the Judea Recaptured coin soon. One of this type is on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
See pix of Jewish coins of the Revolt as well as other ancient Jewish coins here.

ADDED 5 December 2016
The scholar who determined that loot from the Jewish war, especially from the Temple in Jerusalem, financed the building of the Colosseum in Rome was Professor Geza Alfoldy, a Hungarian. See links here & here.

Contemptible Europe: EU & non-EU Collaborated with PLO Terrorism against Israel

We have written here at Emet m'Tsiyon about the corruption of the European Union. The corruption also extends to Switzerland, a non-EU state. Lately, the EU wants to label products from Jewish enterprises from the parts of the ancient homeland beyond the old, 1949 armistice line. What Westerners call the "West Bank" which the UN's 1947 partition plan proposal called "Samaria and Judea." This EU policy denies Jewish rights to dwell and produce in those parts of the ancient Jewish homeland, whereas the Land of Israel was recognized in international law as the Jewish National Home (League of Nations in 1922, etc). This EU policy constitutes anti-Jewish racism and anti-Jewish apartheid.

 Moreover, the EU has shown itself stingy and cruel to Greece, one of its member states, plunging Greece into a grave economic crisis, thus failing to abide by one of the EU's supposedly cardinal principles, that is, solidarity among the members of the Union in time of need.

However, Switzerland, preserving its facade of neutrality, is also guilty of collaborating with Arab terrorism against Jews and Israel. The Swiss are even worse because Switzerland is the headquarters of the International Red Cross, the world red cross movement, and the International Committee of the Red Cross which is a semi-official arm of the Swiss government which played a morally corrupt role in the Holocaust by deliberately withholding information it had about the early stages of the Holocaust and other acts of commission and omission.

New information has lately come out about Switzerland's dirty role in promoting Arab terrorism. Vic Rosenthal at the Abu Yehuda blog has done a great job of compiling and laying out for the reader many of the corrupt acts and policies of the European Union and supposedly "neutral" Switzerland. His recent blog post on the subject begins with the morally corrupt Swiss. Bear in mind, that Swiss corruption also bears on the morally corrupt and anti-Israel ICRC [international committee of the red cross]:
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Posted on January 24, 2016 by Vic Rosenthal

It has been revealed that a secret deal kept Switzerland free of PLO terrorism:

According to the author, Swiss journalist Marcel Gyr, Switzerland was in turmoil after a spate of Palestinian terror attacks, including the February 1970 bombing of a Swissair flight from Zurich to Tel Aviv, which killed all on board shortly after takeoff. Gyr recounts that in the wake of the attacks in 1969 and 1970, then-foreign minister Pierre Graber contacted the PLO clandestinely and without informing his fellow ministers, the BBC reported Friday. …

Graber, through a Swiss member of parliament, purportedly reached an agreement with the PLO to free those charged for [a deadly 1969 attack on an El Al plane in Zurich] in return the release of the hostages in Jordan. Furthermore, he agreed that Switzerland would “quietly shelve” the investigation into bombing of the Swissair plane, and make a diplomatic push for international recognition of the PLO.

The Swiss MP, Jean Ziegler, now 81, confirmed that he had been the go-between and said “This might be absolutely shocking, but the reward was that there were no more attacks.”

Shocking? No, it was standard operating procedure. Take Italy for example:

…former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed that the government of Italy agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks in Italy. Cossiga wrote that the government of the late Prime Minister Aldo Moro reached a “secret non-belligerence pact between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance [sic] organizations, including terrorist groups,” in the 1970s. According to the former president, it was Moro himself who designed the terms of the agreement with the foreign Arab terrorists. Ironically, Moro later met his death at the hands of homegrown Italian terrorists, the Red Brigades, in 1978. [we can add to this paragraph the apparent guilt of PLO terrorists for the awful Bologna train station massacre circa 1980 for which an Italian neo-fascist was sentenced to jail, whereas the bomb was set in the train station by Germans, members of the Red Army Fraction, who were working for a PLO terrorist sub-group].

Even Germany, with its “special relationship” to Israel, sold its soul. Matt Rees, in his book Cain’s Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East (p. 100) explained,

Arafat put Zakaria Baloush in charge of European operations and contacts. He built a fine relationship with Italian antiterrorist intelligence. His biggest coup, however, was a secret mission to West Germany. Through Libyan intelligence, West Germany asked the PLO for a deal. In 1980 Zakaria went to West Germany with a delegation of PLO officials. They agreed not to carry out any attacks on West German territory. In return they were allowed to operate in West Germany and exchange information with the West Germans.

Today European governments and the European Union provide a hefty part of the cost of running the PLO-based Palestinian Authority, spend millions of Euros financing illegal Arab construction in Area C – the part of Judea/Samaria that according to the Oslo Accords is under full Israeli control – and of course provide tens of millions to Israeli left-wing NGOs which act as a fifth column inside Israel. These NGOs, which have been called “wholly-owned subsidiaries” of the EU and European governments, provide raw material for anti-Israel UN resolutions, ‘lawfare’ against Israeli leaders and IDF soldiers, and provoke violent confrontations to try to destabilize the country. There is no doubt that this anti-state movement would barely exist were it not for European subsides.

The hypocrisy of claiming to oppose terrorism while giving its greatest perpetrators a free pass is obvious. It is no less hypocritical to oppose Israeli construction in disputed areas while paying for illegal Arab building there, and to require products of Judea/Samaria to have special labels while products of countless other “occupied” and disputed territories in the world need not be labeled.

The PLO is possibly one of the most malign entities to come into being in the 20th century, no less than the Nazi party or the Stalinist soviet regime, albeit on a smaller scale. In the years from its founding in 1964 and through its unfortunate legitimization by Israel as the representative of the Palestinians – one of the two greatest strategic mistakes made by an Israeli government since the founding of the state – the PLO brought terrorism into the mainstream of international politics, started wars and destabilized governments. It always kept its primary objective foremost: to destroy Israel by killing Israeli Jews. Thanks to Oslo it now has the status of a governmental authority.

The Palestinian Authority has no economy to speak of except the international dole, and much of this flows directly into the Swiss bank accounts of PLO officials. Some is also used to pay PLO fighters that are incarcerated in Israel for murder and terrorism, as well as pensions for the families of ‘martyrs’, who died in the process of killing Jews. Over the years, literally billions of dollars of aid that has been given to ‘the Palestinians’ has been used to support terrorism and the lifestyle of PLO honchos.

The PLO never allowed any voices to be heard among the Palestinian Arabs except those calling for confrontation. Moderates were liquidated and a reign of fear established. The PLO rules the areas under its control with an iron fist. Those who want to cooperate with Israel in any way are silenced.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas claims to be opposed to “violence,” but what he means is that he does not advocate that the PLO return to organized attacks on Israelis using firearms and explosives. On the other hand, he encourages what he calls “popular resistance,”calling on individual Palestinians and groups on their own to kill Jews with knives, Molotov cocktails, stones, automobiles, meat cleavers, and so on. And the PA continues to name schools, streets and sports teams after terrorists, as well as treating the ‘martyrs of the popular resistance’ as heroes in its official media. It also makes numerous false accusations to stir up trouble, such as that Israel plans to build a third Temple on the Temple Mount, or that soldiers and police murder Palestinians and plant knives nearby.

The PLO/PA’s educational system continues to present Israeli Jews as subhumans who stole the land from them and to present the recovery of all of ‘Palestine’ from the river to the sea and the expulsion of the Jews as their objective, and not the creation of a peaceful Palestinian state on part of the territory. This system and the PA media which glorify martyrdom in the name of Palestine are directly responsible for children as young as 11 trying to murder Jews and often being killed themselves.

The PLO is a cancer in the international body. Initially given life by Egypt in 1964 as another weapon against Israel, it took its own direction when it was taken over by Yasser Arafat in 1968. It drew strength from the great-power conflict of the cold war, when it was armed by the Soviets as part of their struggle against the West. More recently it has parasitized the US (which provides the PA with $400 million/year, including a program to arm and train its ‘security’ forces) and of course the EU which gives it somewhat less. It’s difficult to determine the total amount of international aid, because it comes through many different sources (the US, UN, EU and other donors) and multiple programs. But it is at least $1 billion/year.

What is truly shocking is not that the Europeans made deals with the devil in order to protect themselves. It’s that after all these years nobody – not even Benjamin Netanyahu – has been prepared to stand up and say “enough.”

Enough money and assistance has been given to these terrorist murderers. Enough blackmail has been paid. Enough resources that could have been used to help alleviate hunger and fight disease have been squandered on this destabilizing force which has demonstrated over and over that its primary objective – its only objective – isn’t peace, but the destruction of a nation.

One of the main reasons that the PLO has continued to exist is that Israel since Oslo has believed or pretended to believe that it is in some sense a peace partner. Now that there seems to finally be a consensus here that the Oslo idea has blown up in our faces and there will not be a two-state solution in the near future, Israel has a great opportunity to do the world – including the Palestinian Arabs – a favor.

The PLO and its creature the PA has proven to be a failure – a failure as a peace partner, and a failure as a governing authority for the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria. Israel could root out and destroy this cancer by removing the PLO from power, disarming its militias, and going back to its pre-Oslo position that it would only negotiate with non-terrorist entities.

This might end up with Israel in full control of the territories again, something that many Israelis see as a burden they are loathe to undertake. But in the long term there is no alternative. The PLO, like a tumor, can’t be fixed. It must be removed.