right-wing extremism, nationalistic and inclined towards Russian President Vladimir Putin, sneaks into the upper house of European governments on velvet paws. A few months ago in France, combined forces managed to prevent Marine Le Pen, who was wearing a bourgeois invisibility cloak, from becoming president, but a similar operation in Italy has now failed. According to initial forecasts, an alliance around Giorgia Meloni and her right-wing extremist Fratelli d’Italia won the majority of seats in the parliamentary elections with 41 to 45 percent of the votes.
Thus, the third largest economy in Europe, a founding member of the European community, is likely to have a woman and post-fascist prime minister for the first time. She had spent her youth worshiping the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The logo of Meloni’s ten-year-old party shows a flame reminiscent of Mussolini, a symbol of the right. Meloni apparently attracted around 25 percent, much more than its partners, the right-wing populist League of Matteo Salvini (8.5 percent) and the conservative Forza Italia of the aged media entrepreneur and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (8 percent).
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(Photo: AP)
Salvini quickly tweeted “Grazie.” However, democracy had nothing to thank: She was the biggest loser in an election called on by more than 50 million Italians. Voter turnout was at a historic low of just under 65 percent.
The electoral alliance of Enrico Letta’s Social Democrats with left-wing parties and the Greens apparently only achieved 25.5 to 29.5 percent. The Five Star Movement, discredited by its tactical games, only managed 13.5 to 17.5 percent of the votes, the Central Alliance came to a meager 6.5 to 8.5 percent.
The fact that she and her club of obscurants had never been part of a Roman government obviously spoke in favor of the combative, demagogically well-disposed election winner. They were also the only significant opposition to the multi-party government of the internationally renowned Mario Draghi. The former President of the European Central Bank will remain in office as an executive until a new government is sworn in – and that can take many weeks.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said that one lives with Italy as with a lover, “today in violent quarrels, tomorrow in adoration”, with Germany, on the other hand, as “with a housewife, without great anger and without great love”. But the quarrels that a woman could trigger with racist, EU-critical and discriminatory statements are a greater danger in the current fragile world situation.
Olaf Scholz’s Sherpa’s sentences about America are like a loud, shrill ringing of an alarm clock. “Germany is threatened with an exodus of important industries,” says Jörg Kukies (SPD), State Secretary in the Chancellery.
The USA lured aluminum, glass, ceramics and steel producers with cheap energy prices: “We will take countermeasures in the relief package.” The statements made by the representatives of two US states in our cover story can only be interpreted as bait.
One region has the lowest energy costs in the USA (Oklahoma) in the last eleven out of fourteen quarters, nuclear reactors are replacing harmful coal-fired power plants for climate policy reasons and the grids are stable (Georgia). More than 60 German companies followed the call from Oklahoma alone, and German companies are also investing in other US locations.
Vance Packard has unerringly speared American marketing for many years: “Advertising is the art of aiming for the head and hitting the wallet. Communication is the art of aiming for the heart to hit the head.”
Since 1890 dead ends with mirror walls have been the fashion at the Munich Oktoberfest, a so-called “labyrinth” that confuses clientele who are particularly fond of beer. There is also something confusing about the debates about the gas levy that have been going on for weeks.
The SPD hasn’t wanted this inflation driver and economic killer for a long time, the majority of the Greens apparently don’t think much of it either, only their economics minister recently made argumentative rescue attempts after he had previously addressed constitutional concerns.
And the FDP, party three of this community of experience called “Ampel”? For statistic reasons, he was long considered a supporter of the gas levy, before party leader Christian Lindner cleared the contaminated thing in “Bild am Sonntag” with publicity: It was “less a legal question, but more and more a question of economic meaning”. The levy will not survive this week. My colleague Thomas Sigmund has asked the question of political meaning: “The traffic light has completely lost its way in its maze for the gas levy.”
(Photo: via REUTERS)
In many places, Arabs are now occupying positions that Russians held for many years. This is the case with the valuable real estate fillets in London, which oligarchs have long cleared and which are now occupied by investors from the Gulf States who are not rich in stone, but rich in oil.
Russia has also resigned from the role of gas supplier to the energy-hungry Western states, constantly discovering turbine damage and will in future be dependent on the major customers China and India. Who jumps in? Golf potentates, of course.
Chancellor Scholz comes back from his supply source expedition with a deal. The RWE Group signed a first contract for 137,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the United Arab Emirates, which is scheduled to arrive in Wilhelmshaven in December. Further deliveries are planned.
In Qatar, of course, where the third-largest natural gas deposits in the world are located, Scholz was not able to achieve any similar success. And he said what Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel should have known by now: Being dependent on one supplier (meaning Russia) “will certainly not happen to us again”. One no longer wants to be limited to a few suppliers, “but to have a wide range of sources in order to be able to guarantee energy security in Germany”.
And then there is Stefan Schaller, previously little-known managing director of the North Hessian utility Energie Waldeck-Frankenberg (EWF), who is likely to lose his job this Monday due to geopolitical escapades. Important bodies in the district have already spoken out in favor of this.
Apparently, the graduate engineer felt so flattered by a Russian invitation that he accompanied those surveys in Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine as an election observer, which are known as sham referendums.
Schaller described his involvement in Vladimir Putin’s political hunting ground to the “Hessische Niedersächsische Allgemeine” (HNA) as “purely private” and that he took vacation for it. According to his own statement, Forrest Gump from Waldeck, who stumbled into world politics, wanted to “get a picture of the situation on site” – also because he believes “that objective information can never be wrong”.
However, reading newspapers would have been enough to understand the enforced referendums as part of a policy contrary to international law. And maybe the ambitious energy manager would have before his trip Winston Churchill to read: “A clever man does not make all mistakes himself. He also gives others a chance.”
I wish you a flawless start to the week.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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