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Anger simmers for Dutch farmers who oppose pollution cuts
By MIKE CORDER
today
MAASLAND, Netherlands (AP) — Bales of hay lie burning along Dutch highways. Supermarket shelves stand empty because distribution centers are blocked by farmers. Then, at dusk, a police officer pulls his pistol and shoots at a tractor.
Dutch farmers are embroiled in a summer of discontent that shows no sign of abating. Their target? Government plans to rein in emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia that they say threatens to wreck their agricultural way of life and put them out of business.
The reduction targets could radically alter the Netherlands’ lucrative agriculture sector, which is known for its intensive farming, and may also foreshadow similar reforms — and protests — in other European nations whose farmers also pump out pollutants.
That turmoil seems a long way off Friday at Jaap Zegwaard’s dairy farm, which occupies 80 hectares (200 acres) of grassland close to the port city of Rotterdam, whose chimneys and cranes form a backdrop to his fields.
Most of Zegwaard’s herd of 180 cattle, mostly black and white Holstein-Friesians, graze in meadows close to a traditional Dutch windmill and large white wind turbines. And even if the farm has been in Zegwaard’s family for five generations, some 200 years, he doesn’t know if he would recommend the farming life to his a 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old twin boys.
“If you ask me now, I’d say, please don’t even think about it,” the 41-year-old said. “There are so many worries. Life’s much too beautiful to deal with what’s going on in the agriculture sector at the moment.”
“Ask the average farmer: it’s profoundly sad,” he said.
At the heart of the clash between farmers and the Dutch government are moves to protect human health and vulnerable natural habitats from pollution in the form of nitrogen oxides and ammonia, which are produced by industry, transport and in the waste of livestock.
The Netherlands, a nation of 17.5 million people inhabiting an area a little larger than Maryland, has 1.57 million registered dairy cattle and just over 1 million calves being raised for meat, statistics show. The country’s farms produced exports worth 94.5 billion euros in 2019.
Nitrogen oxides and ammonia raise nutrient levels and acidity in the soil, leading to a reduction in biodiversity. Airborne nitrogen leads to smog and tiny particles that are damaging to people’s health.
When the Council of State, the country’s top administrative court and legislative advisory body, ruled in 2019 that Dutch policies to rein in nitrogen emissions were inadequate, it forced the government to consider tougher measures.
Unveiling a map detailing nitrogen reduction targets last month, the Dutch government called it an “unavoidable transition.” It said the coming year would finally bring clarity for Dutch farmers, “whether and how they can continue with their business. The minister sees three options for farmers: become (more) sustainable, relocate or stop.”
The Dutch government aims to slash nitrogen emissions by 50% by 2030 and has earmarked an extra 24.3 billion euros ($25.6 billion) to fund the changes. Provincial authorities have one year to draw up plans for achieving the reductions.
Nitrogen expert Wim de Vries, a professor at Wageningen University and Research, doubts that deadline is realistic.
“It seems to be very fast and there is a legacy, already for 40 years, because the problem was much bigger in the 1980s. We then called it ‘acid rain,’” he said. “Considering that legacy, it doesn’t make so much difference if we do it in 7 or 10 or 12 years. We anyhow have to wait for decades for nature to improve seriously.”
Farmers have been protesting for years against the government’s nitrogen policies, but the emissions targets unleashed new demonstrations, with tractors clogging highways and supermarket distribution centers that led briefly to some shortages of fresh produce.
Farmers also clashed with police outside the home of the minister in charge of the government’s nitrogen policies. And this week an officer opened fire on a tractor driven by a 16-year-old. After initially being held on suspicion of attempted manslaughter, the young driver was released without charge.
The Dutch government has appointed a veteran political negotiator to act as a middleman, but the gesture was immediately rejected by activist farmers and the nation’s largest farming lobby group.
“The government does not offer any space to enter into a real conversation,” said the farming lobby group LTO. “Under these conditions, speaking with the mediator is pointless.”
The LTO, which represents about 30,000 farms — nearly a half of the Dutch total — described the nitrogen reduction target as “simply unfeasible.” Dutch farms produced exports worth 94.5 billion euros in 2019.
The group says the government is focused on reducing livestock and buying up farms and not paying enough attention to innovation and sustainable farming practices.
Environmentalists say now is the time to act.
“You rip a plaster off a wound in one go,” said Andy Palmen, director of Greenpeace Netherlands. “Painful choices are now necessary.”
And if you do it too soon, you will have to apply another plaster.
Zegwaard’s farm is in an area where the government is seeking only a 12% cut in emissions, yet he also demonstrates out of solidarity with others and supports the protests.
“The average person currently sees the Netherlands as a nitrogen polluter, while we are also a food producer. It seems like people have forgotten that,” he told The Associated Press.
Italy's Draghi urged to fix crisis as resignation refused
AFP - Yesterday 6:36 AM
Italy's teetering government was thrown a lifeline Thursday after the country's president refused to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, insisting he address parliament in a bid to avoid snap elections.
Italy's coalition government teetered on the brink of collapse after the Five Star Movement refused to participate in a confidence vote in Italy's parliament
© Alice PALUSSIERE
Italy's parliament
Draghi had earlier vowed to resign after a party in his coalition government -- the Five Star Movement -- sat out a confidence vote, sending tremors through the eurozone's third largest economy.
Draghi said the "pact of trust" on which the government was based had been broken, and the conditions to carry on were "no longer there".
He said he had made "every effort" to "meet the demands that have been put to me", but the vote showed "this effort was not enough".
President Sergio Mattarella, a figurehead who takes on a key role in moments of political crisis, asked Draghi not to throw in the towel but instead "assess" the situation in parliament.
He was expected to address both the lower and upper houses on Wednesday.
"We now have five days to make sure parliament votes its confidence in the Draghi government," Enrico Letta, head of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), said on Twitter.
The crisis comes as Italy battles raging inflation and races to push through key reforms required by the European Union in exchange for post-pandemic funds.
The Five Star Movement (M5S), headed by former premier Giuseppe Conte, has been haemorrhaging parliamentarians and support in the polls over policy U-turns and internal divisions.
Draghi’s fall is a win for Putin – and for the Italian far right
Italy’s progressive forces will need to change path to counter the rise of right-wing populism.
Vito Laterza is associate professor in development studies at the University of Agder, southern Norway.
Published On 23 Jul 2022
Al Jezeera
Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi reacts during the debate on the government crisis, at the Senate in Rome on July 20, 2022 [Andreas Solaro/ AFP]
Italy is once again in political turmoil. On Thursday, after key coalition partners – the post-ideological Five Star Movement, far-right League and centre-right Forza Italia – withdrew their support from his “national unity” government, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced his resignation.
The country is now left with a caretaker government until a snap general election scheduled for September 25, 2022 amid a growing energy crisis, rampant inflation, yet another COVID-19 wave, and an ever-deepening geopolitical conflict between the European Union and Russia on the back of the latter’s invasion of Ukraine.
Moreover, Draghi’s government was the authority Brussels relied upon to ensure the €210 billion ($214bn) allocated for Italy from the EU Next Generation Fund – the biggest recovery programme since the US Marshall Plan – would be efficiently managed. With Draghi gone, there are now serious concerns over delays in reimbursements and implementation.
Draghi’s cabinet is also credited with swiftly finding alternative sources of gas to reduce dependence on Russia. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, Italy has secured increasing supplies of Algerian gas, which could also be moved further northwards to Germany, if needed. But with Draghi out of power, Italy’s energy future is once again in question.
Under Putin’s shadow
The dissolution of Italy’s government is a major win for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. While Draghi has acted as a major curb to Putin’s influence in Italy and Europe, the three political leaders that are responsible for the government crisis all showed support for the Russian dictator in the past.
Giuseppe Conte, the head of what remains of the rapidly shrinking Five Star Movement (support for the group fell from 32 percent in the 2018 general election to two percent in local elections in June this year, for example), supported the removal of sanctions against Russia and called for Moscow’s return to the G8 in 2018. Five Star’s links to Russia are well documented and date back to the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
League leader Matteo Salvini’s support for Putin is also no secret: in 2017, under Salvini’s leadership, League signed a formal cooperation agreement with Putin’s party United Russia. In 2019, BuzzFeed News and Italy’s Espresso unearthed what they alleged to be a plot to funnel funds from Russia to the League involving men close to Salvini and Putin – a judicial inquiry for international corruption is ongoing.
Forza Italia’s head, Silvio Berlusconi, meanwhile, has been a long-term friend of Vladimir Putin. They visited each other in their holiday homes and were close allies on the international scene when Berlusconi was prime minister in the 2000s. The two leaders also have joint commercial interests.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Salvini released a vague statement condemning “all military aggressions”, and only after some criticism did he admit that “Russia is wrong”, but barely ever mentioned Putin by name since. Berlusconi kept quiet for a month and a half after the invasion before saying that he was “deeply disappointed and saddened by Vladimir Putin’s behaviour”. Conte’s condemnation of the Russian invasion has been unambiguous, but his recent position against sending more arms to Ukraine – linked to a similar sentiment among many Italians – has been interpreted by some as a sign of soft support for Russia.
Draghi’s exit undoubtedly favours Putin – but even more important for the Russian leader would be a victory in the ballot box of leaders and parties close to him.
Berlusconi’s legacy
The current electoral law is a mix of proportional representation and first-past-the-post electoral colleges. It favours electoral coalitions. The only coalition that formally exists at the moment is the right-wing alliance of League, Forza Italia and Brothers of Italy – the far-right party led by Giorgia Meloni.
The latter is first in opinion polls (23 percent), with the centre-left Democratic Party trailing shortly behind (22 percent). However, the Dems’ plans to form a broader alliance with the Five Star Movement are now in jeopardy – Democrats are resolutely pro-Draghi and disapprove of Five Star’s anti-Draghi U-turn. The Democratic Party is in talks with breakaway centrist factions that left the Dems recently, but it is unclear at this stage whether they will be able to form an electoral alliance.
When it comes to internal cohesion, the right-wing coalition is also experiencing problems. Disagreements have already stopped them from winning mayoral races in many cities in recent local elections, but the prospects of a landslide national victory if they manage to keep their alliance together until election day will probably act as a strong catalyst for unity.
While Berlusconi and Salvini feel threatened by Meloni’s rising star – Brothers of Italy is ahead of League (15 percent) and Forza Italia (seven percent) by several points – Meloni might indeed be the most presentable option for premiership in the eyes of national and international institutions because she took a decisive pro-Ukraine position since the invasion.
Even before her pro-NATO turn, she received significant endorsements from centrist quarters, raising fears that her skilful weaving of “respectability politics” with a fundamentally far-right platform might turn out to be more effective than the flamboyant “strongman” style of Salvini, who has been steadily losing votes and popularity.
The right-wing electoral alliance is a direct descendant of Berlusconi’s government coalitions of the 1990s and the 2000s: back in 1994, for example, Forza Italia was the largest partner in the ruling coalition, followed by National Alliance, which came out of the dissolution of the far-right Italian Social Movement and a formal rejection of their fascist roots. Back then, Northern League (which later became League) was rooted in the north of the country, limiting its national impact in the polls.
Today, Meloni’s party comes from a section of National Alliance that, despite its earlier rejection of fascism, has strong and close documented links with fascist supporters and backdoor political operatives.
In 1994, Berlusconi enabled the entry into national government of allegedly post-fascist political forces and the early populists of Northern League. Northern League started in the late 1980s as an anti-establishment movement that supported northern Italy’s independence from Italy, and blamed the Italian south for the country’s ills.
Nearly 30 years later, Berlusconi is playing a key role in supporting two openly far-right movements that now hold the vast majority of the coalition votes.
Setting aside their differences on Russia, Brothers of Italy and League share a militant anti-immigration agenda, and opposition to most EU policies and reforms demanded by Brussels in exchange for Next Generation EU money. They both deploy populist tactics and rhetoric.
If they realise their electoral ambitions in September, the right-left convergence of the populist government alliance of Five Star and League formed in 2018 would be replaced by a fully fledged far-right government with fascist inclinations.
This would mark the total failure of the strategy systematically pursued by the left and the centre left in recent years of trying to break populists into some kind of “right” and “left” fronts, as a way to contain the rise of the far right. Now, with the Five Star crumbling, League and Brothers of Italy have little competition in the populist camp.
Bleak days ahead
Progressive forces will need to drastically change their path if they want to block the electoral rise of the far right. The smaller left formations have been preoccupied with critiquing Draghi’s technocratic approach and are stuck on an interpretation of the current moment that dates back to the eurozone crisis of the early 2010s – in any event, the narrative of “technocracy vs the people” has been successfully hijacked by populists.
The centre-left Democratic Party has been very good in manoeuvring in the corridors of power of Italy’s representative democracy, and has played a prominent role in government for most of this legislature despite its 2018 electoral defeat. It is struggling to propose a forward-looking programme that goes beyond defensive – although admittedly valid – arguments that a government without it would put Italians in a worse spot than they already are. In the aftermath of Draghi’s demise, the Democratic leader Enrico Letta rightly indicated a social agenda for Italy as the main party platform for the elections, as it is the only OECD country where salaries have declined in real terms since 1990. The policy details are yet to be defined.
The biggest challenge for Democrats and the left remains how to attract those disaffected voters that have moved in recent years to populist formations such as Five Star or might not vote altogether – after all, a large number of voters are undecided or do not plan to vote in September.
Despite the hype about the Mélenchon model in France, the erratic and destructive actions of Five Star politicians are a clear sign that the idea of a “progressive populism” that would act as a viable alternative to the far right is a chimera that is best left to the annals of political history.
Progressives should rather focus on concrete social democratic measures that would benefit the whole of society, such as putting an end to the wild west of precarious contracts, increasing wages, raising spending on public health and family and labour welfare, and adopting inclusive citizenship laws for people of migrant and refugee background.
The writer, here, makes very little of migrants and refugees' effects on the next election. After the Lake Garda incident last weekend, and the sexual assault of half a dozen teen girls on the train to Milan, an effective refugee strategy would seem to be vital to any party planning on being in the government in October.
If they fail to come up with a new, more efficient and attractive electoral strategy, they cannot prevent a major victory by the far right, and Putin, in Italy.
Russia adds 5 more countries to join U.S., other nations on 'unfriendly' list
By Clyde Hughes
The Ukrainian Embassy is seen in Moscow, Russia. Ukraine is one of more than two dozen countries
on Russia's "unfriendly" list. File Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA-EFE
July 22 (UPI) -- The Russian government on Friday added several countries to its "unfriendly" list for supposedly committing "acts against" Moscow's diplomatic and consular missions and being hostile to Russian companies and citizens.
The "unfriendly" list was created in March after Russia began its war with Ukraine, and the registry forces the blacklisted nations to limit their staffs at their respective embassies in Russia.
On Friday, officials said that five more countries have been added to the list -- Greece, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia.
Nearly two dozen countries were already on the list -- including the United States, Britain, Ukraine, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea.
The American flag hangs from the main building of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia.
The U.S. and a number of other countries were already on Russia's "unfriendly" list
when it was first created four months ago. File Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA-EFE
Interesting shot with what appears to be an eagle flying past the American Embassy
Appearing on the "unfriendly" list also restricts entry into Russia for travelers of the blacklisted countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin came up with the list to punish countries that issued sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine war.
"The list ... specifies the number of individuals in Russia, with whom diplomatic missions of unfriendly countries and their consular offices may conclude employment contracts," the Kremlin said according to the state-run TASS news agency.
Greece now has a limit of 34 employees at its embassy in Russia; Denmark's is 20 and Slovakia's is 16. The decree says Slovenia and Croatia can't hire employees for their diplomatic missions and consular institutions from Russia.
"The ambassador was handed a note, notifying that as a response measure, eight Greek diplomats were declared 'persona non grata,'" Greece's foreign ministry said according to the Greek Reporter.
Greece said it has summoned its ambassador to Russia Ekaterini Nassika.
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