Friday, May 30, 2008

The Lega Nord Wants a Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty

According to AGI:

Calderoli, ‘Lega’ Wants Referendum on Treaty

Rome, May 30 — The ‘Lega’ party has accepted with reservation in the Council of Ministers the parliamentary bill that ratifies the Lisbon Treaty that modifies the EU treaty.

[Minister for Federalism Roberto] Calderoli speaks of “a major loss of sovereignty” and hopes that the Italian population will be granted a referendum on the matter.


Hat tip: insubria.

[post ends here]

7 comments:

Beach Girl said...

Baron, it may be too late, but have you seen this: Qur'an critic to be executed in Iran within days

I'm trying to pass this around but don't know if it is too late. It was just posted on Jihad Watch today.

Conservative Swede said...

Excellent. The wheels are grinding according to plan. Yet again these wonderful Italians! What happened to the Danes? Oh well, of course, they are led but that EUro-junkie Anders Dhimmi-Fog Rassumsen.

It will be interesting to see how Berlusconi plays this. On one hand he's an excellent diplomat keeping good relations with everyone: America, Russia and Israel. While at the same time respecting the will of the people of his nation. Amazing politician! So I'm sure he wants to keep good relation with with the EU too.

However, it boils down to the rhetoric issue of how to motivate the referendum. If he could present it as a necessity, that he had no choice. and the Italian people vote no, then he can still describe himself as innocent.

Regarding Israel btw. Berlusconi was awarded as the statesman of the year in 2004 by the Anti-Defamation League for his staunch support of Israel. Yes he was. From this I conclude that if Filip Dewinter manages to become prime minister, that he will receive the same award from ADL. But up until then they will continue to kick on a man lying down. It's the school yard bullying logic.

evilislam said...

Urgent appeal from the Foundation for Democracy in Iran
Www.iran.org

May 29, 2008: Monarchist reportedly faces imminent execution in Tehran. Dr. Forood Fouladvand, a self-styled monarchist who disappeared along with two associates on the Turkish border with Iran on Jan. 17, 2007, now faces imminent execution by the Iranian authorities, Iranian exiles in London tell FDI. According to these sources, Dr. Fouladvand will be executed tomorrow. "He is like the Robert Spencer of Iran," one supporter in London said. "He has been studying Islamic texts and using them to convince people to leave Islam" on radio and satellite television broadcasts from London.

Dr. Fouladvand heads a group called Anjomane Padeshahi Iran (API), the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, which advocates restoration of the constitutional monarchy abolished by the Islamic Republic in 1980. He had gone to Iran, apparently lured by promises from an opposition group that was either infiltrated by the regime or that had been cooped by the regime. Fouladvand was traveling with a fake passport under the name of Jahangir Irani and disappeared along with two supporters, identified on his website as Simorgh and Kouroshe Lor.

Continued....www.iran.org
Kenneth R. Timmerman
President and CEO
Foundation for Democracy in Iran
Www.iran.org
Reply to: exec@iran.org

Baron Bodissey said...

Two comments -- one a verbatim repetition -- have been posted so far on this thread about an issue I've already posted on.

Please check our recent posts before announcing something in the comments; we may already have covered it.

Fjordman said...

CS: As I've written before, for instance in my essay On Fascism and Islamophobia: In the book The New Totalitarians, the British historian Roland Huntford in the early 1970s pointed out that it was easier to establish the Fascist model of the corporate state in Sweden than in Mussolini’s Italy for cultural and historic reasons, since Sweden had a centralized bureaucracy even before Marxism whereas Italians are skeptical of state authority. Put simply: Swedes have tended to trust their bureaucrats, which no Italian in his right mind would ever do.

Both Italians and non-Italians make jokes about the fact that Italy is less "organized" than, say, Sweden, the Netherlands or Germany. It is. But in some cases, this can also be an advantage. Us northern Europeans tend to trust the state a bit too much because, by and large, the state did serve our best interests, for a while. The problem is, the massive state apparatus that we have built up, which for a while did serve our best interests, is now an increasingly hostile entity used to keep us down and take away our freedom and our countries. The national and transnational bureaucracy has become a Frankenstein monster, and the state an organism with a will of its own. The state is no longer here to serve us, we are here to serve the state.

The Italians are less surprised by this than we are because they never trusted the state in the first place. They've always viewed it as an alien and potentially hostile body. In a situation where the state actually does behave like an enemy, they have an important advantage over us.

randian said...

If they want a referendum, why accept a bill ensuring there won't be one?

Zenster said...

Fjordman: The state is no longer here to serve us, we are here to serve the state.

Those words shall become this new century's own version of:

Arbeit macht frei