Rare Earths, Oil, Gas, Other Commodities Up For Grabs As Arctic States Grants China, India, Japan, Other Select Nations ‘Observer Status’

It won’t be long before the essential raw minerals and commodities of the planet’s Far North such as rare earths, oil and gas get gobbled up by the industrialists.

On Wednesday, the Arctic Council granted China, India, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea and Singapore new Observer States status. Essentially, the six nations gained rightful entry to listen in on meetings of the council, as well as propose and finance policies.

EU: Bonino urges ‘United States of Europe

(ANSAmed) – Rome, May 15 – Italy’s foreign minister Emma Bonino has called for a ‘United States of Europe’.

“I am a confirmed federalist and so is this government,” Bonino said on Wednesday.

“Our objective remains the United States of Europe” and “a system that guarantees major results and also savings in the area of defence, research, major infrastructure and obviously foreign policy”.

Francis ‘will open files on Hitler’s Pope’, says friend

Decades of doubt over the role played by “Hitler’s Pope” under the Fascist regimes in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and 1940s may be answered if Pope Francis, as a close friend has suggested, opens the Vatican archives.

Rabbi Abraham Skorka, who has known the Argentine former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio for 20 years, said he had discussed the role of Pius XII – the man long dubbed as “Hitler’s Pope” – at length with the new pontiff.

The Rabbi, who recently co-authored On Heaven and Earth, a book of interviews with his friend, said he had made clear that he thought Pius’s legacy ought to be “investigated thoroughly”.

Gerald Warner: Cyprus caught in proxy war between old enemies

When Angela Merkel – to cut out the middlemen – feels entitled to arrest the bank accounts of individuals and institutions in another country and help herself to 10 per cent of their deposits, then the rule of law has become a folk memory in German-occupied Europe. Is this what was meant by negative interest rates? The sheer irresponsibility of risking a bank run, not just in Cyprus but ­potentially in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and everywhere else the dominoes might ­topple, betrays the stupidity of those ­shoring-up the deluded euro project.

1,000 companies going bankrupt in Italy every day as country faces full-scale ‘credit emergency

Italy’s industry chiefs have warned that the country faces a “full credit emergency” as thousands of companies run out of critical funding, threatening a slide into deeper depression.

Confindustria, the business federation, said that 29% of Italian firms cannot meet “operational expenses” and are starved of liquidity. It said that a “third phase of the credit crunch” is under way that matches the shocks in 2008-09 and again in 2011.

Beppe Grillo warns that Italy will be ‘dropped like a hot potato’

Some think he’s still a comedian, however, he has it right in knowing that all roads in the European economic crisis lead to Berlin as it seeks to control Europe’s destiny for the fourth time.

In an interview with the German business newspaper Handelsblatt, Mr Grillo said: “The northern European countries are only holding onto us until their banks have recouped their investments in Italian sovereign bonds. Then they’ll drop us like a hot potato.” The comic-turned-political activist, who campaigned against austerity measures implemented by Prime Minister Mario Monti, compared the technocrat prime minister to “a bankruptcy trustee acting on behalf of the banks” and described his Five Star Movement as: “the French revolution – without the guillotine.”

He repeated his call for a referendum on Italian membership of the euro and insisted he was not anti-European, but a critic of the way the EU has evolved.

“I have only said we need a plan B. We need to ask ‘What has become of Europe? Why do we have no common tax or immigration policy? Why is only Germany getting richer?‘,” he said.

‘Nuclear Iran would permanently change region’

Italy’s foreign minister on Wednesday said that a nuclear Iran would permanently change the political landscape of the Middle East and urged immediate action to prevent a regional nuclear arms race.

Speaking at the 2013 Herzliya Conference in the eponymous Tel Aviv suburb, Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata said that even if a nuclear-armed Iran were to act rationally, it would still constitute an unacceptable international threat.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina elected pope, takes name Pope Francis I

VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope Wednesday, becoming the first pontiff from Latin America and taking the name Pope Francis I.

Appearing on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica a short time later, the new pope greeted a vast crowd gathered below in St. Peter’s Square with salutations in Italian and led a prayer for his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

“As you know, the duty of the conclave was to appoint a bishop of Rome, and it seems to me that my brother cardinals went to fetch him at the end of the world,” he said. “But here I am.”

This Is Why Central Planners Are So Scared of Italy’s Beppe Grillo

Incredible Video: Beppe Grillo Dissects the Financial System… on 1998

Italy paralysed as Grillo plots exit route from euro

Italy plunged deeper into political chaos this weekend after Beppe Grillo, the quixotic former comedian who holds the balance of power in parliament, suggested that the country may have to abandon the euro and return to the lire.

The rebel comic’s warning came amid a growing rebellion among grass-roots supporters of his Five Star Movement, with 150,000 signing a petition calling for him to open up dialogue with the centre-Left Democratic Party, the biggest force in parliament.

Europe Riots Against … What?

Across Europe, the people are protesting. But they’re not fed up with a particular party or person. They’re rallying against the whole political system.

Between 100,000 and 200,000 people turned out to protest in Bulgaria last Sunday. That’s a lot of people for a small country—around 2 percent of the whole population. “Bulgarians rarely overcome their apathy to go out on the streets,” notes the EU Observer. “They don’t usually believe they can make a difference by protesting.”

What prompted them to turn out this time? The government had already stepped down a few days earlier. They were protesting against no one.

Prepare for a new ride on eurozone’s rollercoaster as Italy tires of austerity

For three or four months, European leaders have been confidently proclaiming the crisis essentially over. It seems they spoke too soon, as indeed they always seem to in this long-running euro-soap.

Last time a political crisis threatened to undermine the euro, the response was to impose unelected technocratic governments on the offending nations. It won’t be so easy this time around. Italians are in open rebellion, with Mario Monti’s pro-reform Civic Choice finishing a distant fourth in the elections. Italians have voted en masse against Berlin’s prescriptive austerity agenda.

The left-leaning Pier Luigi Bersani is still hoping to form a minority government, possibly with support from the comedian Beppe Grillo. Please don’t laugh: this is serious. They’ll make odd partners. The dull Mr Bersani could hardly be more different, yet to him almost anything would be preferable to leaping into bed with Silvio Berlusconi, which is the alternative. Whatever.