Haaretz: Return of Mussolini: Will Italy's Powerful Anti-immigrant Populists Really March on Rome?

Under Italy's constitution, the president serves as an arbiter above the political fray, and he is in charge of choosing government ministers in consultation with the prime minister-designate. Past presidents have vetoed multiple names for top cabinet posts, and each time the leading coalition submitted a different, more acceptable, candidate and went on its merry way to form a government. [...]

The firebrand populist demanded that the president immediately dissolve parliament and call new elections, "otherwise, we'll see you all in Rome," a not-too-veiled reference to the 1922 March on Rome that brought Benito Mussolini to power. [...]

The deal was based on an improbable mix of ultra-liberalist policies – such as introducing a flat tax rate – and socially-minded moves such as reducing the retirement age and granting citizen stipends. How the coalition could have fulfilled such costly, crowd-pleasing promises without further inflating Italy's enormous public debt (now at 132 percent of GDP) remains a mystery.

But that is beside the point, because this unprecedented yellow-green alliance (named after the colors of the 5 Stars and League) was not really planning to govern. There are still vast differences and strong rivalries between the nationalist, xenophobic League and the social-media-addicted conspiracy theorists of the 5 Stars, and their pact, backed by a slim parliamentary majority, was unlikely to last long. 

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Haaretz: How the Saudi-led Blockade of Qatar Actually Made the Tiny Emirate Stronger

As the crisis continued fears of a Saudi-led military incursion into Qatar grew - although with the U.S.’s largest military base in the Middle East located in the country that seemed unlikely. Doha turned for support to Turkey, which deployed troops to Qatar and, along with Iran, sent food and supplies. In the following months there were regular complaints of Qatari and UAE jet interceptions, reports of a missing Sheikh and even a Saudi plan to turn Qatar into an island - cutting the peninsula off with a maritime-canal, turning the border area into a military zone and nuclear waste site.

In the initial weeks after the blockade was announced, Qatar’s imports dropped nearly 40 percent from the same time a year earlier.  Today those numbers have returned to normal as Doha, the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas, responded by developing new trade routes, propping up its banks with state money and helping local firms develop domestic output of some goods - including food. Qatar has also begun to develop the world’s largest LNG field that it shares with Iran in the Persian Gulf. [...]

Human Rights Watch has praised Qatar in its World Report 2018 - entitled, “Qatar: Year of Crisis Spurred Rights Reforms.” The report credits Qatar for a range of significant human rights reforms during 2017 that if fully implemented “would usher in some of the most progressive human rights standards in the gulf region.” [...]

Qatar is one of the most heavily invested countries in the world. For such a small country, it wields an oversized influence on global politics largely because it has invested hundreds of billions of its energy wealth, through its national wealth fund, in companies and property (there is a “Qatari quarter” in London) overseas - although it is nowhere in the ballpark of countries like China or Norway.

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BBC4 Analysis: #metoo, moi non plus

Do French women really think differently about sexual harassment - and if so, does feminism have national borders?

Catherine Deneuve was one of 100 prominent women who signed an open letter to Le Monde critiquing the #metoo movement.

"We believe that the freedom to say yes to a sexual proposition cannot exist without the freedom to pester," they wrote.

Have the French mastered a more sophisticated approach to relations between men and women, based around seduction - or is this a myth that sustains male power?

Parisian journalist Catherine Guilyardi investigates.

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The Guardian: Gay, black and HIV positive: America's hidden epidemic

If you are a black, gay man in America, your risk of contracting HIV is one in two. Leah Green travels to Atlanta, Georgia, which has the largest gay and black community in the country. She finds out how stigma, education and structural racism continue to feed into this startling statistic.

The Atlantic: Why Don't Democrats Take Religion Seriously? (Jan 27, 2017)

Many religious voters feel alienated from the Democratic Party, says Atlantic staff writer Emma Green. Why haven’t liberals tried harder to reach the broad percentage of Americans who identify as religious? “Democrats in Washington often have trouble speaking in religious terms, and they reflect a broader liberal culture that doesn’t take religion seriously,” she explains. But this is an uncomfortable shift, one that has a political costs. Previous progressive figures have actively relied on religious rhetoric to move policies forward. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jimmy Carter, for example, framed their ideals in religious terms and audiences were receptive. Is it time for Democrats to incorporate religious identity back into their outreach and politics?

Welcome to Unpresidented, a new series from The Atlantic where writers explore different aspects of this new era in American politics. Comment with questions and suggestions for topics to cover.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Graphics in this video show symbols of many faiths, including a Star of David. One image of that star, associated with Judaism, originally contained a cross—a combination typically associated with a movement known as Messianic Judaism, whose adherents identify as Jewish believers in Jesus. We have replaced the original symbol with a standard Star of David in certain parts of the video, including the image at the beginning.

The Guardian: Why forcing cyclists to wear helmets will not save lives

Bicycle helmets are compulsory in countries such as Australia and Canada, but as the Guardian's Peter Walker  explains this does not help save lives. Despite a series of helmet promotion campaigns in the UK, a growing amount of evidence suggests forcing people to wear protective headgear leads to greater risk-taking and can even put people off cycling altogether, exacerbating the crises in obesity and inactive living.

SciShow: Which is Worse For You: Sugar or Fat?

For decades, we’ve heard how terrible fat is for us, but more recently, sugar has become the new villain. What does the science actually say about these two macronutrients and how they affect our health?

Politico: Italy’s real euro referendum

Public polling shows most Italians like Europe’s single currency. It also reveals that increasing numbers think it is good for the country, and even larger numbers think it is good for Europe. The euro may not be as popular in Italy as it is in other countries that have adopted it. And Italians may be skeptical about the European Union more generally — with some truly strange polling data that suggests Italians would like to leave the EU but stay inside the euro. But the opinion polls gives us no reason to believe that Italians are hell-bent on staging a vote to bring back the lira.

There are other reasons to be optimistic as well. Italy’s economy has recently been improving, which generally takes some of the sting out of euro criticism. And even the League and its partners in the failed effort to form a government, the anti-establishment 5Star Movement, seem to understand that campaigning to leave the euro is no way to win an election. If they thought differently, they would have done that last March. Instead, they distanced themselves from their most extreme proposals and emphasized other issues instead: migration, security, taxes, a minimum basic income. [...]

For years, Italy’s ruling class has portrayed painful reforms not as necessary improvements to the economy, but as as impositions from Brussels, done at the behest of distant bureaucrats. What Salvini has done is taken the argument to the extreme: Only by breaking free from European tutelage can Italians have what they want.  

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Politico: Grazie Günther!

Instead of embracing the poll’s outcome, however, Tsipras fired Varoufakis. To keep the bailout funds flowing, Tsipras set about implementing everything the EU and other creditors had been demanding for months with the zeal of a convert. The reason? As tough as the bailout terms were, the alternative — default and ejection from the euro — was worse. [...]

Italians may opt to learn Greece’s lesson the hard way. If they do, there’s a good chance the euro won’t survive. Considering the difficulty Europe had coping with Greece, a country the fraction of Italy’s size, there’s little hope the common currency could withstand such a crisis.

The consequences of such a scenario would obviously be catastrophic, not least for Italy, whose savers would see the value of their assets decimated if the country reverts to the lira. Italy’s massive debt load, now at €2.4 trillion, would continue to balloon as its borrowing costs surged, assuming it could even find investors.

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