The West’s cognoscenti – perhaps better the “condescenti” – appear to have grossly underestimated Giorgia Meloni, reports Benjamin Braddock in The American Mind. While Italy’s populist new prime minister has, as expected, begun to distance her country from the European Union and crack down on illegal immigration, Meloni’s mature statesmanship and shrewd cultivation of the U.S. are confounding predictions of a rapid flame-out. Making the conservative all the more popular among Italian voters.
Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.
