Arkiv-Global View

Quando Letta creò il suo governo inventando per l’occasione un ministero dell’Integrazione affidato a Cécile Kyenge «donna e nera», laureata in farmacia (o medicina) e specializzata in oculistica, pensai che questa signora, spuntata dal nulla e manifestamente incompetente in materia di integrazione, fosse una super protetta di chissà quanti colli e montagne. Per fortuna mi ero sbagliato visto che non è stata inclusa nel governo Renzi.

A rift appeared to be opening up on Monday night between the US and Europe on how to punish Vladimir Putin for his occupation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, with European capitals resisting Washington's push towards tough sanctions.

Even cynics like to feel moral. Even hard-eyed men who play power politics need to feel that their efforts are part of a great historic mission. So as he has been throwing his weight around the world, Vladimir Putin has been careful to quote Russian philosophers from the 19th and 20th centuries like Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Solovyov and Ivan Ilyin.

To understand what motivates Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukrainian crisis and how he will proceed, we have to recall two key things about his strategy and his tactics.

First, Russian foreign policy – whether under Brezhnev, Yeltsin, Putin or anyone after him – is informed by three imperatives: Russia as a nuclear superpower, Russia as the world’s great power, and Russia as the central power in the post-Soviet geopolitical space. And a power that is political, economic, cultural, diplomatic and most certainly military.

AMERICA’S president sees himself as the champion of a fairer society. He decries an economy in which 95% of the gains of the recovery have flowed to the richest 1% of households, and in which social mobility has stagnated even as inequality has widened. He wants to narrow income gaps and build “ladders of opportunity” for those at the bottom. By and large, those are admirable aspirations.

Over the three decades I have watched the Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ status as an elite tastemaker has vaporized, and awards season has become a long, politicized hunger games among exhausted contestants. With the mystique of Hollywood’s signature event so eroded, it’s sad to dispel the myths that survive — but these legends deserve to be played off the stage by the orchestra.

IT TOOK Vladimir Putin less than a day to trample on President Obama’s warning against a Russian military intervention in Ukraine.

As the dance numbers are perfected, the polythene seal is pulled back on the red carpet, and Jack Nicholson is given his annual respray and tune-up, one question about the Academy Awards lingers in the air, pertinent but unasked. What, in their 86th year, do the Oscars actually mean?

The brash, 39-year-old Matteo Renzi is Italy's third unelected prime minister since November 2011. Mario Monti lasted 13 months, and his successor, Enrico Letta, resigned two weeks ago after less than a year in office. The generational leadership change is an opportunity. But can Italy break from its past?

The newly installed, pro-Russia prime minister of Crimea declared on Saturday that he had sole control over the military and the police in the disputed peninsula and he appealed to President Vladimir Putin of Russia for help in safeguarding the region.

Ukraine’s government accused Russian armed forces on Friday of taking up positions in Crimea, an autonomous republic on the Black Sea, in what Ukrainian officials said was an invasion and a violation of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. President Obama on Friday warned Russia against military intervention.