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Hard Numbers: Meloni suffers Sardinian blow, Russia jails another critic, Japan’s baby bust continues, Big Oil pumps Big Money
0.4: The rugged island of Sardinia has dealt rightwing Italian PM Giorgia Meloni the first serious electoral blow she’s suffered since taking office in 2022. In local presidential elections (Sardinia has special autonomy from Rome, and its own president) a candidate from the left-leaning anti-establishment 5-Star Movement beat the Meloni-backed candidate by a mere 0.4 points. Alessandra Todde will now become not only Sardinia’s first female leader, but the first 5-Star member to head any of Italy’s 20 regions.
30: It must be election season in Putin’s Russia! Leading human rights activist Oleg Orlov was sentenced to 30 months in prison on charges that he had “repeatedly discredited” the Russian army by criticizing the invasion of Ukraine. During the sham proceedings, Orlov – whose Memorial human rights group shared a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize – sat quietly reading Kafka’s The Trial. In his statement to the court he said he regretted nothing, and asked the presiding judges “Aren’t you afraid?”
758,631: Last year only 753,631 babies were born in Japan, a fall of more than 5% from 2022, reaching a record low for the eighth straight year. The Japanese government is struggling to turn around a slow motion demographic crisis that could see the world’s fourth largest economy lose a third of its population in the coming decades, strangling the economy and straining social safety nets.
313 billion: It’s no secret that Big Oil isn’t a Big Fan of Joe Biden, whose climate agenda has antagonized the fossil fuel sector. But the industry can complain all the way to the bank these days: top US producers are on track for net income of $313 billion since Biden took office, triple what they made during the same period of the preceding Trump administration, which was overtly friendlier to the sector. The lesson? Presidents matter a lot less than pandemics and wars when it comes to energy sector profits.Brussels bows to farmers on green goals
On Tuesday, the European Commission scrapped a plan to limit pesticide use and excluded agriculture from its roadmap to cut greenhouse gasses as the ruling coalition attempts to quell bloc-wide protests by farmers.
The concessions follow pledges last week to reduce the burden of environmental policy on farmers after protests erupted in France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries last month. Farmers say they can’t get a decent price for their produce thanks to strict environmental regulations, competition from cheap Ukrainian imports, and insufficient government support.
The EU did limit Ukrainian imports last week and loosened rules on how much land farmers have to leave fallow, but no dice. The protests only grew with farmers in Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Greece all turning out on Monday and Tuesday.
Why is Brussels being flexible? European parliamentary elections are looming in June, and the ruling centrist coalition is sweating the populist surge on the continent.
Knowing they need to keep farmers on their side to retain power, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged last week to rethink a series of climate-related laws.Italy aims to export migrant crisis to Albania
Can Albania accept migrants deported by Italy? A court in Tirana is deciding on the legality of an agreement with the Italian government, in which Rome can send EU asylum-seekers to the Balkan country.
The Albanian courts technically have until March 6 to make a decision, but their verdict is expected to come sooner because both sides have something important to gain. Under the deal, which has been tacitly endorsed by the EU, up to 36,000 migrants a year would wait in Albania while Italy rules on their asylum claims. In exchange, Italy has pledged to support Albania’s bid to join the EU. Italy would fund and run the migrant facilities, but the land would remain in Albania’s hands.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was elected last year in part on a pledge to tamp down illegal migration, is desperate to limit the number of migrants entering the EU through Italy, which has increased by 50% over the past year.
But human rights groups worry the deal could incentivize more EU nations to deport migrants to third countries in Europe, where they are unable to ensure the same standard of asylum rights. The UK, of course, is in the final stages of passing a similar bill in which asylum-seekers would be deported to Rwanda while their asylum claims are processed.
Ciao Ciao China!
All belts are off now in Italy. On Wednesday, Rome officially withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s signature global infrastructure, trade, and investment scheme.
Flashback: In 2019, Italy – then governed by a strongly euroskeptic coalition– became the only G7 country to officially join BRI. For China, it was a coup to bring aboard Europe’s third-largest and the world’s seventh-largest economy. Rome, for its part, hoped for a bonanza of trade and inbound investment from Beijing.
Spoiler: It didn’t pan out. Italy’s trade deficit with China soared, and debates raged about Chinese access to key Italian firms and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the EU and Italy’s NATO allies saw BRI participation as both a strategic risk and a symbolic blow to Western unity in the face of growing challenges from Beijing.
Italy’s current prime minister, right-winger Giorgia Meloni, sees BRI membership as a mistake but has sought to delicately exit the scheme without angering the world’s second-largest economy. While the Italian government will not renew its BRI agreement when it expires next year, local governments and some companies will continue to work with China under BRI terms.
The timing is telling. Meloni’s move comes on the eve of a big EU-China summit, the first since 2019, where the two sides will seek to manage an increasingly contentious and competitive relationship. (Read our Viewpoint about that here.)
How Tolkien’s hobbits got political
What do Italian conservatives and American hippies have in common? A love for The Lord of the Rings. Though JRR Tolkien insisted his books were apolitical, his fantasy epic has fueled movements across the political spectrum and around the world.
Giorgia Meloni, a huge Tolkien fan, became Italy’s first female prime minister and its most conservative since World War II last year. At her final campaign rally, Pino Insegno – the voice of Aragorn in the Italian-dubbed version of “The Lord of the Rings” – introduced her by invoking Middle Earth’s Kingdom of Men with “Sons of Rohan, my brothers, people of Rome … the day of defeat may come, but it is not this day!”
Now, Insegno’s voice can be heard throughout Italy’s new Tolkien exhibit, a €250,000 traveling exhibition funded by Italy's culture ministry and opened by Meloni herself last week in Rome. Meloni, who considers the trilogy sacred texts, said that “Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in.”
Meloni’s tribute to Tolkien is no coincidence. “The Lord of the Rings” has influenced Italy's conservative movement since the fall of Mussolini.
After the Italian government flipped sides to join the Allies during World War II, fascists flocked to the Italian Social Movement, aka MSI, and they were largely excluded from post-war culture and politics. Veterans of fascism embraced Tolkien’s series, which was released in Italy in 1970 with a preface by Elémire Zolla, who argued that the books represented conservatives’ rejection from the modern world and an allegory about “pure” ethnic groups fighting against the contamination of foreign invaders.
The books provided MSI with a means of reconstructing a post-fascism hard-right identity. Rather than identifying with the warrior Aragorn, MSI glorified the hobbits, who reflected their party’s weakness. They even established “Hobbit Camps” for young activists, molding a new generation of conservatives to see themselves as an underdog fellowship fighting against the “Lidless Eye'' of the European Left.
Meloni, like many members of the Brothers of Italy Party she helms, grew up attending these camps (yes, costumes were involved). In her biography, she explains that she sees “The Lord of the Rings” as a nationalistic, anti-globalization, and hyper-conservative tale that has given her a way to explain her struggle to preserve tradition in socially acceptable terms.
Meloni rose to power on nationalistic rhetoric. She has called for a naval blockade against illegal migrants and warned her supporters about the conspiratorial forces of globalism. She has evoked the hobbits' battles against invading orcs in speeches calling for stricter immigration policy.
By playing up her passion for Tolkien, Meloni can appeal to the broader public’s love for the books while nodding to conservative hobbit camp veterans.
But Tolkien has also been a champion of the left. The hippies of the 1960s loved hobbits too.
It was a time of rapid social change in America, accelerated by 42 million Baby Boomers coming of age at a time when “The Lord of the Rings” was required reading. In 1966, Time Magazine wrote that “going to college without Tolkien is like going without sneakers.” The trilogy’s sales skyrocketed throughout the 1960s, outselling the Bible in 1967 and 1968, much to their devout Catholic author’s dismay.
The story was an escape for a generation haunted by the Vietnam War and determined to upend the established order. “Frodo Lives!” became a popular slogan for the counterculture movement, which – like Italian neo-conservatives – latched onto the political subtext of diminutive hobbits launching a revolution.
So what are the politics of Middle Earth? Tolkien expert John Pagano, a Barnard professor, thinks that the author would disagree with Meloni’s appropriation of his life's work.
“Whenever [the books] are co-opted by people to enhance their own power, it's flying in the face of Tolkien’s point. Galadriel refuses the ring, Aragorn refuses the ring, Gandalf refuses the ring, the whole idea is to eventually give up absolute power.” Having fought in the trenches and lost friends during World War I, and having sent his two sons to fight in World War II, Tolkien launched the series in 1954 with a deep distrust of unchecked power.
Pegano doesn’t think Tolkien would be keen on being associated with Meloni’s immigration agenda either. “I mean, what is it that saves Middle Earth? It was a coalition of the various races that joined together in a communal endeavor to push back against evil.”
“It's not shutting down your borders and demonizing others who don't quite fit.”
Hard Numbers: Malaysia backs Hamas, Democrats win key races, fighting in Ethiopia's Amhara region, South Africa’s highway terror, Europe invests in space
77 billion: Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim jeopardized his country’s $77 billion trade relationship with the United States this week by coming out hard in support of Hamas, with which Malaysia has long maintained ties. Anwar, who compared the group to Nelson Mandela, could run afoul of the Hamas International Financing Prevention Act and invite US sanctions on his country — but the rise of the Islamist PAS party and the fragility of his multi-ethnic coalition are pushing him to appeal to such sentiment despite his reputation as a liberal reformer.
3: Democrats won three major off-cycle elections in the US last night, taking the Kentucky governorship, keeping the Virginia state senate, and winning a ballot measure in Ohio to protect abortion rights. The wins come despite weak poll numbers for President Joe Biden, and seem to reinforce the view that GOP overreach on abortion helps turn Democrats out on voting day. For more on the long term consequences, read Eurasia Group expert Kylie Milliken's take.
3,000: Fighting between federal troops and local militias in Ethiopia’s Amhara region has displaced 3,000 people in recent months, according to the Ethiopia Human Rights Commission. From 2020-2022, Amharan troops helped the government to put down a rebellion by militants in the Tigray region, but since then they have refused orders to integrate with national security forces. As a result, government forces have begun cracking down on people suspected of supporting the Amharan militias.
280,000: South Africans suffered 280,000 carjackings between April 2022 and March 2023 (the latest period for which statistics are available) amid an epidemic of violent crime on the roadways that recently ensnared the country’s transport minister. More shocking: The figure for 2021/22 was even higher, with carjackings totaling 330,000.
340 million: France, Germany, and Italy agreed to jointly put up €340 million ($365 million) annually for European space exploration company Arianespace to launch its Ariane 6 rocket at least four times per year and another lighter launcher at least three times. The investment is intended to make Europe’s space sector more competitive with American firms like SpaceX.Hard Numbers: Mass shooter kills in Maine, Mexico slammed by sudden hurricane, UAW makes deal with Ford, South African miners resurface, and Meloni takes a breakup break
16: A man in Lewiston, Maine, killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more in two mass shootings last night at a restaurant and bowling alley. The killer remains at large, and authorities urge all residents to shelter in place.
165: Hurricane Otis barreled into southwestern Mexico on Wednesday with sustained winds of over 165 mph after a sudden intensification overnight transformed it into a Category 5 storm — and left authorities in Guerrero state with virtually no time to respond. Damage is expected to be severe, and experts at the National Hurricane Center said, “There are no hurricanes on record even close to this intensity for this part of Mexico.”
25: United Auto Workers reached a tentative four-year deal with Ford on Wednesday that would, if approved by union members, mean a 25% salary boost in addition to cost-of-living raises. UAW advised members to return to work at Ford, which will pressure the other car brands involved in the six-week strike, GM and Stellantis, to follow suit.
107: More than 100 miners locked in a tense dispute between rival labor unions in South Africa’s Gold One mine have emerged from underground, where they had been trapped since Sunday night. Those who resurfaced confirmed that more of their colleagues are being held against their will by miners associated with the other union and that over a dozen people were injured in scuffles between the groups.
1: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni took a personal day this week following her sudden breakup with television presenter Andrea Giambruno. Her partner of 10 years and the father of her seven-year-old daughter, Giambruno was caught on a hot mic bragging about a workplace affair while trying to pick up a third woman. Calling into a party conference, Meloni reminded Italians that “I, too, am human.”
Hard Numbers: North Korean arms to Russia, terror in Brussels, Meloni eyes tax cuts, pro-Russian Georgian politicking, Palestinian-American boy murdered
1,000: White House officials say North Korea has sent up to 1,000 shipping containers of “equipment and munitions” to Russia recently. Satellite images purportedly show clear evidence of Russian ships linked to military transport networks collecting the cargo – signs that Pyongyang is aiding Moscow’s war efforts.
2: Two Swedish nationals were killed in a shooting in Brussels on Monday. The attack in the Belgian capital took place during the Belgium-Sweden Euro 2024 qualifier soccer match, and play was subsequently halted. The gunman, who is believed to have been Tunisian, posted a video on social media claiming to have waged the attack in the name of God. He was shot dead by police late Monday.
24 billion: Italian PM Giorgia Meloni aims to cut taxes and boost public sector incomes next year, and her cabinet approved a budget on Monday to spend 24 billion euros ($25.3 billion) to make it happen. Meloni needs to boost growth and consumption quickly, before next June’s European Parliament elections, which could test her coalition government.
100: The Constitutional Court of Georgia found the country's pro-western President Salome Zourabichvili guilty on Monday of breaching the constitution by conducting visits with European leaders and lobbying for her country's membership of the European Union without government consent. While her opponents in the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia are unlikely to get the 100 votes they need to remove her, the president – who constitutionally represents the country in foreign relations – is expected to face intense pressure to resign, perhaps paving a route for a pro-Russian leader to take the helm.
26: As we’ve mentioned, the war in the Middle East has sparked an uptick in hate crimes around the globe. One of the latest victims was six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoume, from the Chicago area, who was stabbed 26 times on Saturday and died from his injuries. His mother was also stabbed and remains in hospital, and police have charged the suspect with murder and hate crimes.