Canada Sanctions 14 People in Venezuela After ‘Illegitimate’ Elections
Sputnik – 30.05.2018
Canada has imposed new sanctions against key figures in the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Global Affairs Canada said in a press release on Wednesday.
“In response to the illegitimate and anti-democratic presidential elections held in Venezuela on May 20, Canada today announces further sanctions on key figures in the Maduro regime,” the release said.
The sanctions target 14 individuals responsible “for the deterioration of democracy in Venezuela,” the foreign ministry added.
Canada is not the first country to introduce restrictions against Venezuela following the re-election of Nicolas Maduro. Previously, Washington, citing “fraudulent vote,” banned US citizens from all transactions tied to Venezuelan government debt. The order he signed also prevented Venezuelan officials from selling equity in any entity majority-owned by the government. The EU, in its turn, froze some assets belonging to a number of Venezuelan individuals, companies and organizations
On May 20, Venezuela held its presidential election, with four candidates in the running. According to the National Electoral Council (NEC), incumbent leader Nicolas Maduro was re-elected as Venezuelan president for his second term, having secured 68 percent of votes, with slightly over 46 percent voter turnout. A number of states, including the EU members, have slammed the vote as either unfair or illegitimate.
US imposes new sanctions against Iran
Press TV – May 30, 2018
The United States has imposed sanctions on several Iranian individuals and organizations, including Evin Prison and the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), over “human rights abuses” and “censorship.”
The US Treasury Department announced the sanctions Wednesday on its website, saying the listed persons and entities will be blocked from the US financial system.
Individuals and companies who do business with the targeted Iranians could face sanctions from Treasury as well.
“Iran not only exports terrorism and instability across the world, it routinely violates the rights of its own people. The Iranian regime diverts national resources that should belong to the people to fund a massive and expensive censorship apparatus and suppress free speech,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
Iran has rejected US and Western accusations of human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic as “untrue” and “politically-motivated.”
On Thursday, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions against nine Iranian and Turkish individuals and companies as well as a number of aircraft providing goods and services to four Iranian airlines.
The move by Washington was part of President Donald Trump’s plans to impose harsh sanctions against Tehran after pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Many countries, including America’s European allies, have said that they would not back Trump’s new plan.
The UK, France and Germany– all signatories to the deal– are already in talks with Iran to protect their businesses from possible punishment by the US.
Russia and China have also expressed willingness to back the deal and even fill the void should any European companies leave Iranian markets.
Lebanon launches search for first oil & gas reserves despite Israeli threats
RT | May 30, 2018
Beirut has announced the start of its oil and gas exploration for offshore energy reserves in the Mediterranean after approving a plan submitted by a consortium of France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek.
Energy and Water Minister Cesar Abi Khalil said Lebanon plans to launch a second offshore licensing round by the end of 2018 or early 2019.
In February, the country signed its first offshore oil and gas exploration and production agreements with the Total-Eni-Novatek consortium for offshore Blocks 4 and 9.
Part of Block 9 contains waters disputed with neighboring Israel but the consortium said it had no plans to drill in that area. Lebanese authorities gave the go-ahead this week for exploration of the two blocks to begin, said Khalil.
The exploration period can last up to three years and the first well is expected to be drilled in 2019, providing all government departments grant necessary licenses and permissions “on time and without delay”, he added.
The minister explained that drilling would determine whether Lebanon had commercial reserves and, if so, their scale. Lebanon shares the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean with Israel, Cyprus, and Syria. A range of big sub-sea gas fields have been discovered in the area since 2009.
However, the country was far behind Israel and Cyprus in exploring and developing its share of resources as a result of political issues over the past few years, and a dispute with Israel over Lebanon’s southern maritime border.
Israel had earlier threatened Lebanon over drilling in areas which it considers to be disputed. It warned Lebanon that it would pay a “full price” if another war breaks out between the two countries.
Three months ago, Lebanese President Michel Aoun appealed to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, asking for Washington’s “effective role” in settling the dispute with Israel over offshore oil drilling areas. After the US proposed sharing the offshore blocks, Lebanon rejected its offer to “help.”
The US proposal reportedly specified that the Lebanese would take up 65 percent of the disputed sections of the shelf. Commenting on the proposal Aoun said Lebanon will not give Israel a “millimeter.” He underlined that the offshore energy blocks are located in Lebanon’s waters and thus are within Beirut’s exclusive economic zone.
Lebanon and Israel’s dispute runs over a triangular area of around 860 square kilometers (332 square miles) of waters, which could contain huge reserves of natural gas and maybe even crude oil.
Italy’s anti-euro bloc likely to gain crushing majority in new elections
Asia Times | May 30, 2018
After investors hailed for a brief moment Italian President Sergio Matterella’s stand against a fledging populist coalition, a sense of dread began to set in. Matterella’s move to foil the League party and Five Star Movement’s bid to form a government forestalled the installation of an anti-euro finance minister, but may ultimately make the newly-formed, anti-euro alliance an even more powerful force.
What comes next could be a nightmare scenario for those hoping to blunt the determination of Italy’s populists to enact policies which many fear will prove disastrous for Italy’s debt solvency. The prospect of tax cuts along with a massive increase in entitlements has already triggered a selloff in Italian bonds. If new elections are held, despite the market turmoil the populists have caused, some analysts say they will only be emboldened.
An election simulation conducted by the Bologna-based Cattaneo Institute, as reported by Italy’s Ansa news agency, found that the League-Five Star coalition would sweep elections across most of the country, winning more than 90% of uninominal parliamentary elections. Just over one-third of the seats in both the Senate and the Chamber are awarded based on a direct first-past-the-post basis (uninominal), with voters electing specific candidates.
More than 90% of that uninominal vote will give the League-Five Star juggernaut around 35% of the seats in parliament just to start with. The remaining seats, which are awarded on a proportional basis between parties, would give them a two-thirds majority, according to Cattaneo’s projection. That represents a 15% bonus over what they achieved in the March elections.
The upshot: All the populists have to do is sit back and let the establishment attack them until the election, and clean up.
Italian president appoints ex-IMF official Cottarelli as interim PM, gives him mandate to form govt.
Press TV – May 28, 2018
Italian President Sergio Mattarella has appointed Carlo Cottarelli, a former senior director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as interim prime minister, giving him mandate to form a government ahead of snap elections in the country, which has been without a government for two months.
Cottarelli made the announcement after a meeting with Mattarella on Monday, saying he would put together a transitional government “very quickly” and lead the country to fresh elections slated in the fall or early next year.
“I have accepted the task to form a government as the president has asked. As an Italian I am very honored by this task and I will do my best,” Cottarelli said.
The former senior IMF official also told reporters that he would soon return to parliament with a budget program to be put to the vote for approval.
“I will present myself to parliament with a program, which, if it wins the backing of parliament, would include the passage of the 2019 budget, and then parliament would be dissolved with elections at the beginning of 2019,” he said.
“In the absence of a confidence (vote), the government would resign immediately and its main function would be the management of ordinary affairs until elections are held after August 2018,” Cottarelli added.
The appointment came after anti-establishment forces abandoned efforts to form a ruling coalition in the European country and hit a standoff with the president over his refusal to endorse a eurosceptic pick for the post of finance minister.
Mattarella vetoed the nomination of Paolo Savona as economy minister in a coalition of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and far-right League party.
The 76-year-old president said he would accept every proposed minister except Savona, who had formerly asserted that Italy’s entry into the European Union’s single currency, euro, was a “historic mistake.”
Mattarella stressed that he had done “everything possible” to aid the formation of a government but an openly eurosceptic economy minister ran against the parties’ joint promise to simply “change Europe for the better from an Italian point of view.”
The two populist parties accused Mattarella of betraying voters and later dropped their plan to take power.
Mattarella’s action sparked angry calls for his impeachment and the chaos sent Italian stocks tumbling by as much as two percent at one stage.
Cottarelli, 64, is widely known at home as “Mr. Scissors” for making cuts to public spending. To become prime minister, he is required to gain the approval of parliament with Five Star and the League holding a majority in both houses.
Italy — a founding member of the European Union — has been without a government since an election in early March when Five Star and League emerged as the biggest parties.
The two parties have vowed to battle the EU over its financial and immigration policies. The two have formerly been open to the possibility of Italy holding a referendum on euro.
The prospect of a eurosceptic government in Rome has concerned EU leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who are pushing for further political and economic integration.
America’s Incredible Shrinking Influence
By Ron Paul | May 28, 2018
Just two weeks after President Trump pulled the US from the Iran nuclear agreement, his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, issued 12 demands to Iran that could never be satisfied. Pompeo knew his demands would be impossible to meet. They were designed that way. Just like Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia in July, 1914, that led to the beginning of World War I. And just like the impossible demands made of Milosevic in 1999 and of Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003, and so many other times when Washington wanted war. These impossible demands are tools of war rather than steps toward peace.
Secretary Pompeo raged at Iran. The mainstream news media raged at Iran. Trump raged at Iran. But then a strange thing happened: nothing. The Iranians announced that they remained committed to diplomacy and would continue to uphold their end of the nuclear agreement if the Europeans and other partners were willing to do the same. Iranian and European officials then sought out contacts in defiance of Washington in hopes of preserving mutually-beneficial emerging commercial relations.
Washington responded to the European snub by threatening secondary sanctions on European companies that continued doing business with an Iran that had repeatedly been found in compliance with its end of the bargain. Any independent European relationship with Iran would be punished, Washington threatened. But then, again, very little happened.
Rather than jump on Washington’s bandwagon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made two trips to Russia in May seeking closer ties and a way forward on Iran.
Russia and China were named as our prime enemies in the latest National Security Strategy for the United States, but both countries stand to benefit from the unilateral US withdrawal from the Iran deal. When the French oil company Total got spooked by Washington threats and pulled out of Iran, a Chinese firm eagerly took its place.
It seems the world has grown tired of neocon threats from Washington. Ironically the “communist” Chinese seem to understand better than the US that in capitalism you do not threaten your customers. While the US is threatening and sanctioning and forbidding economic relations, its adversaries overseas are busy reaping the benefits of America’s real isolationism.
If President Trump’s canceled meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un remains canceled, North and South Korea have shown that they will continue with their peacemaking efforts. As if Washington was no longer relevant.
I’ve often spoken of the unintended consequences of our aggressive foreign policy. For example, President Bush’s invasion of Iraq only helped Iran – our “enemy” – become more dominant in the Middle East. But it seems new consequences are emerging, and for the neocons they must be very unintended: for all of its bellicosity, threats, demands, sanctions, and even bombs, the rest of the world is increasingly simply ignoring the demands of Washington and getting on with its own business.
While I am slightly surprised at this development, as a libertarian and a non-interventionist I welcome the growing irrelevance of Washington’s interventionists. We have a far better philosophy and we must work hard to promote it so that it can finally be tried after neocon failure becomes obvious to everyone. This is our big opportunity!
Western leaders back in Russia as tensions appear to ease
East-West relations seem to have changed over past 10 days, as three major Western leaders attend St Petersburg forum
By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | May 28, 2018
East-West relations have transformed over the past 10-day period. Russia’s isolation from the West after the Maidan coup in Kiev appears to have warmed as abruptly as it began.
Three major Western leaders – German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – visited Russia during the period since May 18, mainly to attend the St Petersburg Economic Forum. But they had one mantra to chant: Russia is an indispensable partner – and one offer to make – despite sanctions, economic and political ties with Russia are possible and necessary.
On the other hand, US President Donald Trump’s critics, who accuse him of causing a trans-Atlantic rift, have had a rethink, since he may have instead triggered an overall easing of East-West tensions, as America’s European partners dust off their “Ostpolitik” to seek an apparent rapprochement with Russia.
Of course, the three Western leaders who traveled to Russia were not acting in concert. Merkel, Macron, Abe – each had a specific agenda with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. They were not interested in taking advantage of Russia’s tense relations with the US. Their intuition probably told them that things have come to such a pass in world politics that high-level contact between Russia and America might now be only a matter of time.
Equally, Putin was not inclined to turn the visits of three top Western leaders into an “anti-American” platform to exploit the current trans-Atlantic rift. Putin’s focus was on what these leaders could bring to the Russian economy by way of trade and investment. But in political terms, as much as Russia sizes up Germany, France and Japan as partners, the US still remains the partner of its heart’s desire.
Suffice to say, Russia grapples with the geopolitical reality that while the trans-Atlantic rift could become the “new normal,” an outright rupture between the US and its European allies or an unraveling of the Western alliance is not in the cards. Again, in the final analysis, without the United States’ participation, it is impractical to address issues such as Syria, the Iran nuclear problem, Ukraine, etc.
Macron audacious, Merkel wary
Between Merkel and Macron, the latter seemed far more eager and audacious to turn a new leaf in relations with Russia. France’s Total has taken US$2.5 billion in equity in Russian major Novatek’s Yamal LNG 2 project in the Siberian Arctic (with an option to double it). Macron promised to overtake German investments in Russia ($18 billion). He sought a new “mechanism” to solve the Syrian crisis; he stated France’s intention to protect its companies operating in Iran; and he even harked back to the defeat of Nazism to invoke France’s and Russia’s common destiny as United Nations veto powers and world leaders.
Nonetheless, Moscow is yet to figure out the potential of Macron, who began one year ago as the alpha male vis-à-vis Trump but went on to invite the latter as guest of honor on Bastille Day and become his best friend in the Western world, and is now presenting himself as an incorrigible Gaullist. Putin wore a quizzical look as Macron plunged gustily into an extraordinary speech lasting half an hour at the improbable forum of their joint press conference in St Petersburg on May 25.
The point is, Gaullism didn’t survive Charles de Gaulle. Will Gaullism-2 survive the second year of Macron’s seven-year presidency? Time only can tell. How far will Macron go out on a limb to drop the European Union’s hostile sanctions against Russia or to break loose from the West’s strategy to provoke Russia? Actually, he didn’t forget to add that France remains all the while a US ally.
As for Germany, Russia has always viewed it as the pace-setter in the EU. But there is a catch here too, since Merkel was also a midwife to the Maidan in Kiev (where it all began) and worked shoulder to shoulder with Barack Obama to erect a harsh sanctions regime against Russia. Those were halcyon days when Merkel was de facto leader of the EU and the champion of the liberal international order – “The Iron Frau” who doubled up as the “Matti” – Otto von Bismarck and Mother Teresa at the same time.
Things have changed since then. Obama has left the stage; the migrant problem became controversial and eventually diminished Merkel politically (despite the brilliant performance of the German economy); and she is besieged today by several negative factors. Brexit came out of the blue; the Franco-German axis that was integral to her pet project of European integration lost verve; and America First began incessantly battering Germany (and Merkel personally). To borrow a poignant metaphor from Mikhail Gorbachev over the sad plight of managers of Soviet state enterprises in the era of perestroika, Merkel is afraid to leave the open cage and take wing and fly into the firmament.
Perhaps her timidity is due to the fear that assertiveness may provoke accusations of Germany’s inordinate geopolitical ambitions triggering another tragic cycle of history (“German Question”), and due to a genuine distrust of Russia among Germany’s political class, which is weaned on Euro-Atlanticism. But it is there. As top Moscow pundit Fyodor Lukyanov wrote recently, in Berlin “change is feared.”
Within earshot of the visiting Western leaders, Putin again signaled his interest in a full-bodied Russian-American dialogue. But alas, Washington speaks in multiple voices. Meanwhile, bad tidings have arrived from Syria – an attempted drone attack on Hmeimim air base; a US threat to take “firm and appropriate measures” against any Syrian operations against extremist groups ensconced in southwest Syria; and the killing of four Russian military personnel in Dier ez-Zor on Sunday.
If only Russian wishes had wings, Americans should have been better soccer players. That might have just about brought them into the finale of the FIFA World Cup – and Trump to Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium on July 15 in front of a capacity crowd of 87,000 fans in one of the most picturesque districts of the Russian capital with the Moskva River flowing gently alongside the stadium, and Putin sitting beside him, with no aides present, for a full 90 minutes.
Austria’s New Coalition Betrays on CETA Trade Agreement
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 28.05.2018
US President Trump told the world his government rejects negotiations on the highly controversial TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). Citizen groups and EU opponents of the Obama comprehensive trade agreement breathed a sigh of relief. Too little attention has been given to the agreement reached between Canada and CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (German: Umfassendes Wirtschafts- und Handelsabkommen), sometimes called the Canada-EU Trade Agreement. Secretly and behind any public open discussion, the largest global multinational corporations are moving the world closer to a top-down corporate dictatorship, a 21st Century version of Mussolini’s Corporativism. A major potential roadblock to CETA approval has now fallen in Austria under a new populist coalition government of Sebastian Kurz.
Legally the CETA must be approved by the national parliaments in a majority of the 28 EU member states before becoming operative. Now it comes out that Sebastian Kurz’s populist Austrian coalition, after campaigning on a platform of NO to CETA and TTIP, secretly agreed late in 2017 to renege on their election campaign promises opposing CETA as a precondition for the refugee-critical conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) of Sebastian Kurz as Chancellor, to be able to form a coalition government with the right populist FPÖ. It represents a major betrayal of Austrian voters as well as of the future of EU sovereign national laws on environment, health and safety. But it gets worse.
In terms of the legitimacy of the Austrian elections in October 2017, the coalition FPÖ party campaigned hard against any acceptance of the multinational CETA trade deal. It promised a Swiss-style “direct democracy” referendum process of citizen vote on issues where a substantial number of citizen petitions warranted such. In their election campaign the FPÖ promised repeatedly such slogans as ”with us no CETA” and “… CETA only with a peoples’ referendum.”
Pre-election polls showed that 72% of Austrians opposed both the TTIP and the closely-related CETA on grounds it would damage Austrian small and mid-size businesses to the advantage of global multinationals. Citizen groups gathered an impressive 562,000 signatures opposing both CETA and TTIP before the election.
Only days following the election, on November 21, 2017, the FPÖ showed signs of retracting that opposition when they surprised voters and voted in Parliament in favor of the CETA’s most controversial proviso, the so-called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism (German: Investitionsschiedsgerichten). That ISDS proviso allows Canadian corporations sue any EU government over any new law or policy that might reduce their profits in future such as a new German minimum wage law or stricter laws prohibiting toxic chemicals such as glyphosate or neonicotinoids. However, the Canadian company or investor in say, Germany, does not sue in a German court. They rather go to a special secret arbitration tribunal over which the EU state has no control. Opposition to the ISDS was a central platform of the Austrian FPÖ campaign before October 15. Most USA large corporations have subsidiary companies in Canada meaning CETA is a backdoor for the now-frozen TTIP with the USA.
Forcing EU states to dilute laws
Among its provisions, under CETA as under TTIP if there is a difference in rigor for example in the environmental or safety and health standards for EU states and the Canadian rules, the lowest standard (North American) applies. The Canadian government has largely followed US loose corporate regulations in recent years and this under CETA now would threaten a diminishing of EU strict regulations. According to an Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
and Greenpeace-Holland study, “Canada has weaker food safety and labelling standards than the EU, and industrial agriculture more heavily dependent on pesticides and GMO crops. CETA gives Canadian and US multinationals the tools to undermine rules concerning cloning, GMO crops, growth hormones and country of origin labelling, among others.”
According to the September, 2017 joint study, CETA will “promote the harmonization of food safety standards to the lowest common denominator, and the weakening of the EU’s risk assessment standards for food products.” A horrifying example is the decision in March 2016, by the Canadian authorities to approve AquAdvantage Salmon, the first genetically modified animal to be approved for human consumption in the country. Canada did not require labelling. Under CETA now, unlabeled GMO salmon will be sold across the EU. That holds for other unlabeled Canadian GMO foods as well as industrial agribusiness products such as beef.
Giant Agribusiness Threatens EU Family Farm
With CETA, for example, current EU laws requiring Country of Origin Labeling for meat and fish could be challenged by Canadian agribusiness whose meat exports will now come almost tariff-free to compete with carefully-controlled EU meat products.
Another proviso of CETA relates to reducing business costs and limiting regulation. In reality it will mean stronger EU food and agricultural policies will be weakened under pressure from large Canadian-US agribusiness companies such as IBP or Cargill Foods. To date the EU agriculture associations have largely contained the economic cost-reduction pressure that has destroyed family farming smaller units in North America since the 1980’s and replaced it with cartel formations of giant food industry.
Driven by US agribusiness lobbying at the USDA and Canadian Department of Agriculture, economies of scale in meat processing as an example have created documented horrendous sanitary conditions in giant processing operations that slaughter up to 1,000,000 cattle a year at a plant. Now with CETA, EU small farmers will simply be driven into bankruptcy as was done since the 1980s in North America. There the giant meat processing firms had 25-30% lower costs than smaller meat packing firms that were driven out of business.
The creation of North American agribusiness, a major focus of the TTIP as of the CETA, involves the dramatic reduction of labor costs and speedup of the meat processing portions that are not automated. Work is not protected by trade union agreements, labor is mostly immigrant and largely illegal meaning they are vulnerable to threat from employers demanding longer hours and lessened safety conditions.
North American slaughterhouse workers face conditions of speedup on the meat chains that they must cut and process that they have abnormally high rate of work-related injuries or nerve damage but the Government regulators turn a blind eye and the workers are mostly sub-minimum wage illegal workers from Mexico or Central America who have little recourse to change it.
As I account in my book, Seeds of Destruction, the cartelization and vertical integration of agriculture in North America after World War II was a brainchild of the Rockefeller Standard Oil family, notably Nelson Rockefeller and a project they financed at Harvard Business School that created the term “agribusiness.” The countries of the European Union until today have largely defended more small-scale meat and food production by way of safety, health, environment and labor laws. With the flood of far cheaper Canadian (North American in reality) beef and other foods into the EU under CETA, European small scale, high quality agriculture producers will be literally slaughtered to the gain of mass agribusiness cartels that can now globalize in the all-important EU market as well.
Austria is a Warning Bell
Now on May 16 the Austrian coalition parties, FPÖ and the ÖVP of Sebastian Kurz, turned on the voters and voted in the Council of Ministers in favor of approving CETA including with the controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. It will now come to the full Parliament before Summer for a final vote where passage looks certain.
The European Commission proposed the signature of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and despite need for national parliaments to ratify, CETA entered into force provisionally on 21 September 2017. National parliaments in EU countries have still to approve it before it can take full effect.
With an Austrian coalition government, one that owes its existence to vigorous opposition to CETA and defense of the right of citizens to hold a referendum on it and other issues, now betraying that voter pledge and backing CETA, implications for not just Austrian citizens—farmers and all consumers—but as well for the quality of world food exports, the health of world eaters (meaning us all) is to undergo a dramatic decline at a time we can ill afford it.
Under CETA now the world food chain will face over the coming decade or so an overwhelming concentration of corporate agribusiness control that will combine the two great agriculture production regions—North America and the EU. That, if it is allowed, will be devastating.
EU Extends Sanctions Against Syria for One Year
Sputnik – 28.05.2018
The European Union has decided to extend sanctions against Syria by one year, until June 1, 2019, the EU Council said in a statement on Monday.
“On 28 May 2018, the Council extended EU restrictive measures against the Syrian regime until 1 June 2019. Given the ongoing repression of the civilian population, the EU decided to maintain its restrictive measures against the Syrian regime and its supporters, in line with the EU strategy on Syria,” the document read.
The European Union introduced sanctions “against Syria and persons responsible for the violent repression against the civilian population” in May 2011, during the Arab Spring protests, which led to the ongoing civil war in the country.
In 2017 EU also imposed restrictions on Syrian officials who relate to the development an the use of chemical weapons in the country, with over 250 individuals targeted by the sanctions for the involvement in the development and use of chemical weapons against the civilian population. Damascus strongly denied those accusations, also noting that the international organizations didn’t find any evidence of the chemical weapons development by the Syrian government.
In its turn, the US ruled out any American reconstruction support to Assad-controlled territories in the war-weary country.
‘Unprecedented institutional clash’: Italy fails to form govt over anti-EU economic minister
RT | May 27, 2018
Italy’s PM-designate Giuseppe Conte said he’s given up on attempts to form a government after President Sergio Mattarella rejected his candidacy for economy minister. The country may now face a new election by the end of 2018.
“President [Mattarella] has received Prof. Giuseppe Conte …. who returned the mandate given to him on May 23 to form the government. The president has thanked him for his effort in fulfilling this task,” Ugo Zampetti, an official within the presidential administration, told RAI. After the talk, Mattarella said that he was going to make a decision on the new parliamentary vote in the country in the coming hours.
The president had summoned Conte to his office in order to find a way to break the two-months-long deadlock on forming the coalition government after a similar meeting on Friday ended fruitlessly.
The candidacy for economy minister has been the main stumbling block for the creation of the new cabinet in the country. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and its rightist coalition ally Lega Nord, which won the most parliamentary seats in the March vote, insist on having Paolo Savona in the vital role.
M5S was outraged by Mattarella’s decision, with 5-star leader Luigi Di Maio calling it “an institutional clash without precedent” in a Facebook live video.
“What’s the point of going to vote if it’s the ratings agencies that decide?” Di Maio fumed.
Paolo Savona is a distinguished economist who served as the industry minister in 1993-94 and also worked at the Bank of Italy. But Mattarella has been refusing to appoint the 81-year-old due to concerns over his criticism of euro, the EU and Germany’s economic policies. In a book, which Savona co-authored in 2015, he argued that Italy should have a “plan B” to leave the eurozone with minimum damage if the situation calls for it.
Earlier on Sunday, Savona made a public statement to clarify his views, saying that he stands for “a different Europe, stronger, but more equal.” He said that he believes Italy’s debt should be reduced through targeted investment and stimulation of the economy, but not austerity or tax cuts.
Barbarians at the gate? End of democracy? Most hysterical establishment takes on new Italian govt
By Igor Ogorodnev | RT | May 23, 2018
Mainstream political analysts have unleashed their doom-laden predictions about the impact of Italy’s Five Star-Lega coalition, though their hostility is tempered by new-found concern for the “desperate,” misguided electorate.
‘The Weimar Republic’
“It may be too late. The spiral of populism is: unhappy voters; irresponsible promises, bad outcomes; even unhappier voters; still more irresponsible promises; and worse outcomes. The story is not over. It may have just begun,” writes Martin Wolf in the Financial Times.
The FT has been one of the most apprehensive publications since Silvio Berlusconi stepped aside to allow the two upstart parties to form a coalition. An article last week went under the headline “Rome opens gates to modern barbarians” – presumably the majority of the Italian electorate, who voted for the two biggest parties in March – while another FT column on Monday said that the election paved the way “to liberal democracy’s demise,” and invoked the mistakes of the Weimar Republic before the ascent of Adolf Hitler.
For many centrist observers, the two parties are a devilish blend of retrograde baseness and cynical online savvy, a prototype of political activity that won’t just be in charge of Italy until the next election (feasibly just months away), but will somehow poison the well of modern politics.
“These parties are incoherent, angry, unrealistic and often anti-science; they are also clever users of information technology. The Northern League and the Five Star Movement represent every powerful emotion, resentment, suspicion and anxiety that can be mobilized and weaponized by modern political parties. Above all, they reflect the disillusionment with politics — the disillusionment with everything — that inevitably sets in when populism fails,” writes Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post, who connects their rise with supposedly Trump-like failures of Berlusconi’s previous terms.
Applebaum is merely continuing the view expressed by New York Times pundit David Brooks, who suggested back around the time of the election that the decline of established centrist parties will lead to “political groups that are crazier than anything you could have imagined before.”
“Once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them. Instead, you get this cycle of ever more extreme behavior, as politicians compete to be the most radical outsider,” wrote Brooks, notably without asking once why the first-world Italian society would want to be governed en-masse by these supposed lunatics. It would also be curious to detangle the assemblage of loaded terms – what is “acceptable” or “extreme” or “weakened” in Brooks’ understanding?
‘Can’t be trusted to run the country’
As witnessed previously following Brexit and Donald Trump’s election, Italy’s government seems to have turned political analysts, often of a nominally center-left persuasion, into avid market watchers, nay, defenders, with particular concern over the fate of the eurozone (Paul Mason in the New Statesman described the prospect of an EU-Rome stand-off as “bloodcurdling”).
“Brussels is allowed to be concerned, because the populists set to take over the EU’s third-largest economy could rattle the euro zone with irresponsible financial policies,” an opinion piece in Deutsche Welle said. “To bail out an economy as large as Italy’s in a way that is similar to what happened in Greece would be practically impossible.”
“Another reason to beware is the parties’ programmes,” proclaims the Economist, which two sentences earlier said the parties “can’t be trusted” to run Italy. “Their visceral Euroscepticism threatens the integrity of the euro zone. The Five-Star Movement has only recently stepped back from pledging to hold a referendum on leaving the single currency.”
Indeed, why would anyone question, not to mention ask the public, whether the euro has been a success? While a new economic crisis in Europe would have seismic consequences for Italy first of all, this sort of analysis entirely misses the point of the coalition’s manifesto (they were not elected to save the euro!) and turns them, a symptom of the continent’s troubles, into its cause.
The Economist, and other publications, whose offices are located in other countries, have also enjoyed the luxury of lecturing Italy, which has borne the brunt of recent illegal immigration (over 600,000 are still in the country) into Europe on its election of anti-migrant parties.
“The League goes well beyond reasonable concern over refugees, advocating xenophobic and unworkable deportation policies,” on one of the issues where perspective seems to make all the difference – migration was the biggest worry for Italians polled before the vote, and the inability to control it was likely the primary reason for the decimation of the ruling center-left.
Will there be a better time to deploy Game of Thrones parallel?
Of course, other than accusations of fascism, made somewhat difficult by the thoroughly un-Mussolini-like two months of patient coalition-building – it’s hardly been the March on Rome – the other powerful and trump card remains Russia.
“This single-minded dedication to improving ties with Moscow as a panacea for all that ails the world is in line with the close links both parties are known to have cultivated with the Kremlin,” Haaretz insinuates of the new government’s desire to drop sanctions against Moscow.
And undoubtedly, what the Economist calls “excessive Russophilia” is liable to cause deleterious and sinister effects – there is only one step from liking Putin, to actually becoming Putin.
“Populists like Salvini understand that – as Petyr Baelish puts it in Game of Thrones – ‘chaos is a ladder,'” writes Mason in his New Statesman piece. “Salvini is a fan of Putin and Le Pen, and knows that the route to power for authoritarian right-wing nationalists is through the drama of increasingly chaotic situations.”
So to summarize: Italy is on course to destroy the euro, bankrupt itself, but bounce back by turning into a dictatorship, ushering in a new age of authoritarianism across Europe. Not even Italy’s new leaders themselves could conjure up such power fantasies, as they doze off during the fifth hour of a Brussels finance ministers’ meeting.
READ MORE:
Ditching Russia sanctions is part of draft coalition deal with Lega Nord – M5S to RT
Featured Video
Trump Announces Operation To Escort Ships – Fmr. CIA Analyst Larry Johnson
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Israel’s recurring use of terror on civilians
By Bob Finch | January 26, 2009
Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran rejects Trump’s ‘Project Freedom,’ warns US over Hormuz role
- TRUMP ANNOUNCES OPERATION TO ESCORT SHIPS – Fmr. CIA Analyst Larry Johnson
- A few observations on Iran’s latest proposal to Trump
- ‘I urged that our objective be regime change… so did Netanyahu’ – ex-Trump adviser on Iran
- “STAGED”: Conspiracy Theories Are Everywhere!
- NATO courts screenwriters to embed alliance messaging in film, TV
- Iran replaces UAE ports with Pakistan corridor to break US blockade
- Iran sets one-month deadline for end to US-Israeli war, blockade: Report
- At the edge of the Strait: A superpower in a narrow sea
- Iran unveils new control measures over Strait of Hormuz transit
- If Americans Knew
- As Palestinians die, Ben-Gvir celebrates birthday with golden noose cake – Daily Update
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- No Tricks Zone
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
Aletho News 