May 31st, 2015

My friend,

How is America treating you? Colorado seems like an exciting place. Have you left Denver or even your University and been to in the Rocky Mountains yet? I may go to the Italian Alps later this summer as an outdoor trip and also see the Italian/ Austro-Hungarian fortification on the Alpine Wall from the First World War, I have so longed to see. It’s going well here, I was just admitted to go study in Switzerland, but in the meantime, I will be taking a year off to gain some money to afford living there. While you’re in America, I will give you some updates about back home, just as a pastime for myself. 

June 30th, 2015

Friend,

I have finally found the time and funds to travel to the Italian Alps, and I am writing to you from Bolzano, Italy. Tomorrow, I will go on a day hike to some of the most pristine parts of the Alpine Wall. Italy is a wonderful country, full of so much unique culture. I especially enjoy the food, which has much more character and rich flavors than the UK cuisine.  It makes me excited for studying in the Italian region of Switzerland.

As you may know, Italy is experiencing a large influx of migrants, and many are calling it a “crisis.” As of June, more than 50,000 migrants have entered Italy.These migrants are very different from Italians, and may have trouble with integrating. It makes me wonder if this situation and the influx of people will escalate by the end of the year. If this situation keeps going, there will be an opposite reaction in some way. This is due to the way the world works with equal and opposite reactions, and that reaction may be heightened nationalism. Hopefully this situation will pass soon enough, and the European Union will carry on.

Oliver

July 5th, 2015

Friend,

In my hotel in Bolzano, I watched a story on the news about a man in an alley breaking into a black SUV. The reporter was in front of the caution tape crime scene, and was describing the incident. The subtitles read that this crime happened the night before, and the car was not completely broken into because someone saw the criminal and scared him off. The witness described the individual to the police, and the criminal was arrested this morning. The suspect was a Libyan immigrant. Is this the start of stereotypes about the migrants? Although I do not have even close to a definitive answer, I cannot see the reaction to this incident being miniscule. Right after hearing about this incident, I found an article written by the London School of Economics and Political Science that there has been a steady decrease in crime across Italian regions for the past 10 years. The current migrant crisis Europe and especially Italy is facing could be the flap of the butterfly’s wings that brings the hurricane. This crime is an insignificant determining event within this indefinite timeline could be cause. I am probably being too paranoid, but I know the power that the butterfly effect has on this world, and I will not underestimate it anymore, not after what I have been through.

Your friend,

Oliver

December 14th, 2017

Dear friend,

The Visegrád is speaking out. The states of Poland, Chechnya, Slovakia, and Hungary will be the first on the frontline of curbing the policies of Brussels. The European council president, Donald Tusk, has spoken at an EU summit saying that the refugee quotas which were set in 2015, are not effective and were counterproductive, and the policy needed to change. Tusk stated that if there wasn’t a resolution to the quota problem in 6 months, he will decide the fate of a new policy. This effectively means that he will let Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic will not be required to take in refugees. These states have pooled money and offered €35m and support for Italy to stop illegal migrants from reaching Europe. My prediction is this will cause the Visegrád states to work closely together and unite forces to achieve a common objective. This collaboration will cause closer relations than before. This could be the beginnings of a new Pan-Slavic philosophy in Eastern Europe, and may cause a regional divide within the EU if this anti-immigrant sentiment is made official. The next few years for the EU will be interesting. If this regional divide keeps up, then who knows where Europe will be in 10 years.

Your friend,

Oliver

June 1st, 2018

Dear friend,

The tensions are starting, the ones I have pondered over and considered since that summer of 2015. Italy will have an election that may decide the fate of Italy leaving the Eurozone for good. Since the summer of 2017, migrants from Libya coming to Italy has dropped by a staggering 87%. This is due to a security arrangement by the Italian government to stop smuggling people from Libya; however, this is not stopping the migrant crisis, and now Tunisia has become the hub for migrants to make the journey to Europe. Now the Italians and the Italian government won’t stop there, and the current social, political, and economic crisis Italy has been confronted with is  gasoline over the tinder. The Italian voters believe the EU is responsible for this crisis, and they will cast their ballots accordingly. The vote is currently unsettled, and exposed secret plans by Italian politicians and the quivering markets, is seeming to make the anti-establishment even stronger in the elections. This is getting out of hand, and this election may be the stepping stone to destabilizing an already unsettled EU.

I have come back to this letter, and I have just found out that the two anti-establishment parties, the Five-Star Movement and Lega Nord, have made a coalition to overcome the standstill of Italian politics. The coalition had picked Giuseppe Conte to be prime minister. Conte is a lawyer, and claims he is an expert in “debureaucratization.” However, when the Coalition declared that they will resurrect the Lira, separating Italy from the Eurozone. Italian president Sergio Mattarella has prohibited the formation of the Coalition’s new government. Mattarella appointed economist Carlo Cottarelli as Prime Minister, to help lead Italy toward new elections. Many of the Coalition have said that it was illegal seizure of power, and against the will of the people. The Coalition had nominated Paolo Savona for Economy Minister, who has compared German domination of the eurozone to Nazi Germany occupation. Which infers that his goal in office is to withdraw Italy from the Euro. When the two parties joined together and had finally scraped up an agreement for how the new government should be conducted, a big policy that both parties wished to pursue was large tax cuts and more handouts to poor families. After the Italian bond market had plunged, Mattarella objected these decisions and Paolo Savona being economy minister. He did so on the premise that these decisions and the appointment would imperialize Italy’s Economy and cause a great economic downturn within Italy. Mattarella then refused the Coalition to form a new government, and asked for more suitable changes from the Coalition. Leader of the Five Star Movement, Luigi Di Maio, proposed impeachment against Mattarella, and said that he would willingly drop Savona from the position of Economy Minister. Mattarella and Cottarelli responded by granting more time for a new Minister of Economy to be appointed by the Coalition.

Yesterday, the leaders of the coalition and the presumptive Prime Minister Conte met in Rome, and made a new list of appointed officials, with Giovanni Tria as the new Minister of Economy. This was agreed upon, and the coalition was granted to make the new government. Today, the Conte cabinet was sworn into office. This has been one of the most interesting elections in Europe since the European Union was established. Considering that Luigi Di Maio, who is now Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development, had a father was apart of The Italian Social Movement, which is heavily considered to be a neo-fascist organization, that the members of this coalition may have a bigger vision than what they are presenting of policy that they wish to pursue. Italy is moving further to the right, and as time goes on, we may see the true sentiment that the Politicians in the Coalition have.

Oliver   

September 15th, 2018

My dear friend,

I’m starting to understand what the Polish President Andrzej Duda said about the EU a little over a year ago. He stated that member states of different social, political, and economic standards of one another will cause rising conflict and tension within the bloc, which could ultimately end in the EU’s demise. The current situation with Europe is becoming exceptional. Brussels desires for more politicized centralization and bureaucracy, and many are not having it. Viktor Orbán has stated that Hungary is for the Hungarian people, and that mass immigration is not in the best interest for Hungary. The Hungarian Parliament has passed the “Stop Soros” law, which has prohibited the help of illegal migrants gain status to stay in Hungary, and anyone engaged in that activity is subject to imprisonment. There was also a constitutional amendment passed, which affirms that an alien population cannot be settled in Hungary. This is in clear contrast with the objective of Brussels, who wish to fulfil the migrant quota. Viktor Orbán has stated that Angela Merkel is a subversive entity, who wants to take control of Hungary’s border security. Mária Schmidt, the Government Commissioner who leads the Memorial Year of the 1956 Revolution, says that Angela Merkel wants to Germanize Europe, and finish the deed of Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler! “Merkel chose. She decided that it was time to openly take over the European Union and thus unite Europe under German leadership. This is in line with the aspiration to which II. Emperor Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler, who also made an attempt.” The Open Society Foundation has taken this matter to the European Court of Human Rights, but Budapest has said no matter what the judges decide, they will not repeal the laws. The European Parliament has decided to take action to punish Hungary in a unparalleled way, due to the infringement of core values. As time goes on, it’s seeming more that Europe’s harmony and dreams of a peaceful and cooperative future are ending. The European project has lost its way, and core purpose. I fear the ideas of Kalergi and the principles for which the EU was laid upon will become less influential in the near future, and Europe will start the pendulum swing into national sovereignty. I feel that throughout the history of humanity, the pendulum is always swinging. This situation in Europe is no exception, it’s just another swing back over. A time when the pendulum was swinging the other direction within Europe. However, I believe that this trend shift for all or majority of Europe will be much slower than the accelerating domino effect hypothesis. Take the March Revolution of 1848-49 in Germany. Activism for liberal reform was in part inspired by the protests and demonstrations in Paris with the abdication and banishment of King Louis-Philippe. Inspiration and getting an engine going and once something starts, it’s hard to stop it from spreading, a common theme from history, falls short when the force of reform hits the wall of the structure of society already in place. Although some of the monarchies of the German principalities knew about what happened with King Louis-Philippe, and complied with the reform that the protesters wanted, the ultimate deciding factor was the system already in place, because it’s very hard to push through an already structured state. From where the revolutions started in Vienna Austria, to southern German principalities of Baden and Bavaria, to Prussia, Saxony, and the Rhine, all were crushed by the pre-existing state. A dream of radical reform turned into nothing, with many of the advocaters, worried of the repercussions of their actions, emigrating to the United States. Even when the liberal, democratic activists had succeeded in making a Parliament mock-up in a Church in Frankfurt that was to represent all of the German people, was the reform not successful

It wouldn’t be for almost 30 years when the principalities of Germany would be united into one. That only including as south as Bavaria and Wurtemburg, and not Austria or any other ethnic Germans living in the Habsburg Empire.

And it wouldn’t be for 90 years, that the Philosophy of Pan-Germanism that the liberal reformers would become reality, although from a government that the Revolutionaries would have never been able to fathom, and would very much not agree with. Not to show a degree of historicism but those young protestors wouldn’t really understand why the National Socialists wasn’t just uniting all of the German peoples, but as apart of a bigger plan of Lebensraum, mass industrialization and colonization of the East, and for Europe to be united under one very alien ideology. The way the world works surely is strange, you really can’t have everything you want at once. If the anti-establishment wants to be successful, they will have to go many leaps and bounds to get to the Europe they so desire.

Your friend,

Oliver