Giorgia Meloni gains power in Italy and Donald Trump's shadow hangs over US midterms

It will of course be a coalition government. One that will include Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and the right-of-centre Forza Italia of Silvio Berlusconi.

This past week the 86-year-Berlusconi, a former prime minister, was at the centre of a row after audio surfaced of him saying he rekindled his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and laying the blame of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The leak of the audio recordings came also just days after Berlusconi was spotted holding a handwritten note that described Meloni as “domineering, arrogant and offensive”.

Salvini, Meloni’s other coalition partner, is also a long-time Putin admirer, while the coalition’s pick for speaker of the lower house is a pro-Russia arch-conservative who publicly questioned the usefulness of sanctions on his first day on the job.

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Almost from the very start the consultations to cobble together Italy’s new government have been overshadowed by disagreements with Meloni’s two would-be coalition partners over her ardent support for Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

But such differences appear to have been parked for now – at least – to present a united front to President Sergio Mattarella, enabling Meloni to be sworn in as prime minister yesterday. That said, few political analysts believe such differences have simply gone away.

Berlusconi for one is not used to playing the role of a junior coalition partner, his ‘top dog’ mindset say observers makes it almost guaranteed that fights will go on until either he or Meloni wins.

But for now, Meloni (below) and her Brothers of Italy - a party with neo fascist roots, Eurosceptic and anti-immigration, appear keen to keen to reassure Italy’s European partners that they will not upset the political apple cart.

That much was evident from Meloni’s list of 24 ministers. She named Giancarlo Giorgetti as economy minister, who served under the previous government of Mario Draghi and named ex-European Parliament president Antonio Tajani, of Forza Italia, as foreign minister and deputy prime minister.

Draghi used his last day on the European stage on Friday to warn both his fellow leaders and Meloni that a united Europe should remain their “guiding star.”

Whether Meloni takes note remains to be seen, but no shortage of challenges lies in wait for her government, Italy’s 68th since 1946. This is a country where inflation rose to 8.9% in September over the previous year, threatening to put Italy in recession next year.

Maintaining the stability of Italy’s public finances and keeping public debt currently 150% of GDP, the highest ratio in the eurozone after Greece, will be Meloni’s main challenge along with rising energy bills and how to present a united front over the Ukraine war.

But others in Italy and elsewhere have concerns of their own over her coming to office. While Meloni has sought in recent times to distance her party from its neo-fascist roots her election campaign was run on a “God, homeland, family” agenda leaving many opposition leaders to raise concerns that her government would seek to erode abortion rights and same-sex civil unions.

“The easiest way for people around the world to understand what is going on in Italy is think of what would happen if Marine Le Pen became president of France, or what would happen if the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland led Germany,” was how Alan Friedman, a journalist and well know commentator on Italy recently summed up Meloni’s rise to power.

“This is the first time a party that traces its roots to the fascist era has taken power in Italy. Many of Meloni’s supporters are still nostalgic for the dictator Mussolini,” Friedman told AlJazeera.

But while some political observers insist that Italian history gives reason to worry about what lies ahead others maintain that Meloni’s desire to demonstrate she and her government will be reliable partners for Italy’s European and North American allies will bring a different kind of realpolitik to her approach. That might well yet prove to be the case but these are very early days.

Ukraine

Firefighters work on a blaze after a drone fired on buildings in Kyiv earlier in the week (Image: PA)

TWO photographs appeared side by side on social media last week. One showed an Iranian-made Kamikaze drone in the sky above the Ukrainian capital Kyiv moments before it plunged earthwards onto civilian targets in the city.

The other photograph published alongside it showed a Second World War Nazi V1 flying bomb or ‘doodlebug” an early form of cruise missile used to hit targets in the UK in the final years of the Second World War.

The letter ‘V’ in the Nazi weapon’s name came from the German word Vergeltungswaffen, meaning weapons of reprisal or ‘Vengeance Weapons,’ as Hitler realising the outcome of the war was turning against Germany turned his wrath on London in part seeking to break the morale of Britain’s civilian population.

Today, his modern counterpart, Russian president Vladimir Putin, is resorting to similar tactics as Moscow’s forces struggle on the battlefields across Ukraine.

In fact, the start of last week most likely set the tone for Russia’s strategy for the bitter winter that lies ahead in the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

Across the country missiles rained down including on the capital Kyiv killing scores of people, triggering cuts in electricity, internet services and water supplies.

To date Ukraine’s Ministry of Infrastructure has logged more than 4,000 Russian strikes on its infrastructure since the start of the conflict. But that is expected to intensify as frustration builds in Moscow over losses to Ukrainian forces that have outmanoeuvred their Russian enemies at every turn.

But just as Putin’s military commanders have been found wanting, so too will this latest tactic of trying to subjugate and break the will of the Ukrainian people. Already there are signs that far from undermining morale, attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure have only galvanised the civilian population.

Barely 48 hours after Russia’s intensified missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine this month a crowdfunding appeal aptly named “You Have Enraged Ukrainians” raised almost $10million to buy 50 kamikaze drones of their own. From every walk of life, Ukrainians are putting their shoulder to the wheel in a war effort that military analysts are now calling a society of “total resistance.”

Throughout my own visits to the country since the start of the war following the Russian invasion on February 24, this massive collective role that civilians have played as been apparent. The contrast with Russia, where reportedly more than 200,00 men have fled abroad to escape the military draft could not be more obvious.

That said, no one is expecting Putin to do anything but intensify the pressure over the coming winter. Across the country Ukrainians are facing “rolling blackouts” in a region where temperatures can regularly drop to -10 and even-20C. There are worries too of a renewed refugee crisis as people in parts of the country already without electricity heating and food and forced to move.

Among those Ukrainians I spoke with on my last visit, none were under any illusion of how tough this winter could be. But whatever they have to endure neither for one moment did they give the impression that it would undermine their resolve to resist the occupiers of their country.

United States

AND so, the legacy of Donald Trump (above) and his associates continues to play put in American politics. In all it’s not been a good week for the former US President or his former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Not for the first time one can only wonder what is going through Trump’s mind after the congressional panel investigating last year’s Jan 6 Capitol riot issued a legal summons on Friday ordering him to testify before politicians. The subpoena was issued just hours after Bannon was fined $6,500 and sentenced to four months in jail for contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the congressional committee. This you might think must weigh heavily even on Trump, a man known for his casual disregard towards attempts to hold him to account. The fact that along with the subpoena came a four-page document directing Trump to produce an extensive list of documents and communications - including phone calls, texts, encrypted messages and email - related to nearly every aspect of his effort to invalidate the 2020 election, sets the scene for another dramatic chapter in this political saga. At the very least it paves the way for a potentially historic court fight over whether Congress can compel testimony from a former president.

As the New York Times highlighted only yesterday should Trump decide to fight the subpoena, his legal team will likely “muster a battery of constitutional and procedural arguments for why a court should allow him not to testify.”

This of course would be only one of numerous legal problems facing the former president which also includes the Department of Justice looking into the removal of government documents from the White House, which were then taken to Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, after he left office. Then there is the ongoing examination by prosecutors of the Trump Organisation, the former president’s family company and whether it committed various acts of fraud over several decades in New York state.

It would be easy to see all this as a series of sideshows alongside the political battle on which most are focused right now, the US midterm elections on November 8. But already the latest polls suggest Republicans candidates are gaining ground. Should they end up controlling congress, Republicans in the House of Representatives say they will not only shut down the January 6 committee but will launch an investigation of their own into Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business ties to China. One way or another Trump’s shadow continues to hang over the midterms.

Qatar

IN little more than a month’s time the sounds of extensive new building work that has filled the air these past years across the Qatari capital Doha will cease.

It will be replaced by the chants of football fans from across the world as the game’s greatest spectacle, the Fifa World Cup, gets underway12 years after the gas-rich country won the right to host the competition. Qatar has pulled out all the stops, spending $200billion on infrastructure to ensure the tournament is a success, with this being the first time the competition has been held in the Middle East.

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But despite its best efforts as the clock ticks down to the November 20 opening match, when the hosts take on Ecuador, there are lingering concerns over human rights and labour abuses which according to a new report by Amnesty International are still happening “on a significant scale” ahead of the World Cup opening.

“Although Qatar has made important strides on labour rights over the past five years, it’s abundantly clear that there is a great distance still to go,” says Steve Cockburn (below), head of economic and social justice at Amnesty International.

“Thousands of workers remain stuck in the familiar cycle of exploitation and abuse thanks to legal loopholes and inadequate enforcement,” explained Cockburn (pictured) following the release of the report entitled: Unfinished Business: What Qatar must do to fulfil promises on migrant workers’ rights. In a nutshell the big fear is that any progress made while Qatar was under international scrutiny in the run up to the competition will stop after it finishes.

Amnesty is one of many rights groups that have pressured Fifa and Qatar to compensate families of migrant workers who died or suffered injuries during the building of vast World Cup facilities. Last year The Guardian newspaper reported that 6,500 migrant workers had died in the country since work started after the country secured the right to host the event in 2010. According to Amnesty, thousands of these deaths remain uninvestigated.

Though Fifa insists it remains in “positive ongoing dialogue” with labour groups and the Qatari authorities over “initiatives that will benefit migrant workers in Qatar long after the final game of the World Cup,” concerns remain over foot dragging. The rights of such workers could be kicked into the long grass very quickly once the event is over activists say. That prospect is food for thought as countless numbers of us sit down next month to watch football’s biggest spectacle.