Austria’s conservative Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, has criticized Germany’s hampering of his country’s efforts to get needed medical equipment during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. He says this is indicative of larger problems within the European Union as well that need to be addressed.

Austria media has been reporting that the German border authorities prevented trucks carrying medical supplies bound for Austria from crossing the border. The reason the shipments were held was because Germany had banned the export of such supplies in cases where they were not part of “coordinated international action” in response to the outbreak. The border authorities were unsure if the supplies were included under this purview or not, given the lack of a definition, and the trucks were held back for two weeks until Kurz and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had decided the issue through negotiations, according to a report by Remix News.

“It should not happen that we have to fight alone for two weeks to ensure that trucks with protective masks we have already paid for and urgently need get stuck on the German border,” Kurz told the Kronen Zeitung. “And at the same time, we were criticized for our own checks at the border with Italy.”

“Instead of showing mutual solidarity, we are harming each other,” Kurz added. He said that once the crisis has passed, international relations between EU member states will need to be reviewed.

Austria isn’t the only country which has had this problem. Earlier this month, Germany stopped trucks from entering Switzerland that were carrying surgical masks destined for Swiss hospitals, as previously reported by Voice of Europe. Switzerland summoned the German ambassador to voice its displeasure with the move.

Czechia also confiscated some of the Chinese humanitarian aid that was intended for Chinese living in Italy. The Czech government later claimed that it was the result of a misunderstanding and compensated the Italian state for the loss.

Some voices in the Austrian and German media are asking how well the EU is really working, if its members can’t come together in a time of emergency such as now.

EU internal relations have become especially thorny as a result of the pandemic, with sharp divisions between nations over the issue of how the organization should deal with the economic problems stemming from the continent’s shutdown, as previously reported by Voice of Europe.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/03/germany-blocks-medical-supplies-from-entering-austria/

By Monica Showalter

The European Union doesn’t look like it’s going to make it through this coronavirus crisis. 

Italians, as noted yesterday, are out burning the EU flag and calling for an EU “Italexit,” in the wake of Europe’s failure to help them in their coronavirus distress.

Now France, up until now the noisiest advocate for all the European Union stands for, is moving in that direction, too. And they aren’t in the kind of trouble Italy is. 

According to Legal Insurrection:

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has called on his countrymen to buy domestic products as the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak cripples the European single market. Describing his approach as “economic patriotism,” he urged French supermarkets to ‘stock French products.’

The call didn’t go unheard. Following the minister’s remarks on Tuesday, the trade body representing French supermarkets vowed to stock up shelves exclusively with fruits and vegetables produced within France once the foreign products run out, the newspaper Les Echosreported.

The French move comes at a time when the 27 member European Union single market faces a massive supply chain crisis in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Many of the EU member states have set up border controls to restrict the export of food and essential medical supplies to neighboring countries.

It’s a big deal, because since when has any Europe Union stalwart ever uttered the word ‘patriotism’ without yelling ‘Hitler’ somewhere in the backwash? Hasn’t patriotism, in EU eyes, been solely the purview of wild eyed racists and right wing zealots, not to be allowed in polite company? That makes France’s move actually pretty hypocritical, as Legal Insurrection notes:

French President Emmanuel Macron has been among the sharpest critics ‘America First’ policy followed by U.S. President Donald Trump. “By pursuing our own interests first, with no regard to others’, we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and makes it great: its moral values,” Macron declared when the U.S. president joined him at the ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of First World War in November 2018.

The European Union is all about supposedly casting aside selfish interests in the name of global collective goods and forgetting all about where one came from. So now Trump was right all along?

Maybe nations really do act in their national interest, instead of globalism’s after all.

France, as it happens, is in a pretty good position to move toward self-sufficiency as the agricultural big boy of the European Union:

France is the first agricultural power in the European Union. With an agricultural production of 61 billion euros in 2009, it produces 19% of European agricultural goods and has the largest agricultural area.

Since it can, it does. But for EU nations that aren’t France, this won’t go down well. Now that France is pulling up the drawbridge, the rest the European states are likely do the same, bringing on the distant rattle of dominos falling for the EU.

Nations that aren’t as self-sufficient as France are going to step up efforts to get that way. And after that happens, they’re all going to be asking what their European Union membership is good for.

The EU was always an argument about money over patriotism, not all that different from China’s argument that its communist party delivers prosperity so pay no attention to those Mao posters and that socialist absence of freedom.

Europe for sure has said that economics, not patriotism, is what matters. Europe’s money, to take one example, has weird generic images of vaguely European-looking monuments instead of very specific landmarks. That was intentional, a bid to persuade Europe’s denizens that ‘place’ no longer matters in the replacement state of Europe. The EU says this:

On the front of both series of euro banknotes, windows and doorways are shown. They symbolise the European spirit of openness and cooperation. The bridges on the back symbolise communication between the people of Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world.

Like the first series, the new Europa series banknotes show architectural styles from various periods in Europe’s history, but do not show any actual existing monuments or bridges. 

Which sounds wretched in light of this French appeal to authentic patriotism now. 

Up until now, the only ‘patriotism’ the EU stands for loyalty to globalism and the blue 12-star flag, whose 12 stars, again, don’t stand for anything. 

The coronavirus era not only shows that socialism and globalism don’t mix, it also shows that promising prosperity in place of nation and freedom only works so long as there’s actual prosperity. Once there isn’t, the whole thing falls apart, and nations retreat to being nations.

France’s decision may be existentially right for it, just as Trump’s is or America, but it isn’t conducive toward making anyone else want to stay in the European Union. If France does this and leaves others high and dry, they in the end will be left asking what they need the European Union for.

Good question. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/more_globalism_gone_bust_france_declares_buy_french.html

Spain’s health ministry has announced 838 Covid-19 deaths, the country’s highest daily increase in fatalities, bringing the total to 6 528.

Together with the US, the country is setting a grim new record, up from 769 the previous day.

Spain now has the second highest death toll in the world after Italy, according to a new report by the Carlos III public health institute. The report also suggests that the real number of Covid-19 deaths could be much higher. A similar higher than usual death rate has been noted in Italy.

“The real number of victims is more than two and a half times that officially certified,” warned Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, one of the Italian cities most affected by the pandemic. He noted that nursing homes had seen a spike in deaths in March. In most of these fatalities, victims were never tested for the virus.

Despite significant restrictions on the movement of people in Spain since March 14, cases continue to rise while hospitals struggle as demand grows for more ventilators for critical cases and protective gear for workers.

According to Spanish daily El País, civil registry death records which show the average number of deaths in Spain’s regions since 2008, marked significant surges in deaths in Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León in March. However, many victims were never tested for the virus. And as in Italy, the fatality rate is also higher among male patients.

The data shows that even though the virus only affects slightly more men than women (52 percent), the number of men who died from the disease in this data sample was almost double that of the number of women: 376 versus 190.

Madrid’s ice rink was turned into a morgue for Covid-19 victims last week. The company that operates the Palacio de Hielo, or Ice Palace, made their premises available for the dead on Monday, a spokesperson for the regional government confirmed. The ice rink is located in a shopping center filled with shops, restaurants, a bowling alley, a gym and a movie theater.

The first coffins arrived on Monday evening already and were transferred by the army’s Emergency Military Unit (UME), They will be guarding the bodies until they are taken by funeral homes for burial or cremation. According to army sources, the unit has set up a logistics protocol for the regional government.

Meanwhile citizens who have no choice but to work – such as supermarket cashiers, healthcare workers and cleaning staff – have been complaining about Spain’s “balcony police”. These self-appointed vigilantes have hurled objects and insults at those who dare to go out.

In the Madrid region, police have now asked residents to exercise caution “before being disrespectful to anybody”. The police are also advising caregivers to wear a reflective vest is they leave their homes while associations recommend wearing a blue arm ribbon.

More than 3,38 billion people worldwide have been asked or ordered to follow confinement measures in the fight against the new Coronavirus, according to an AFP news agency database.

That represents around 43 percent of the total world population, which is 7,79 billion people according to a United Nations count in 2020.

freewestmedia.com/2020/03/30/spain-announces-highest-daily-increase-in-covid-19-deaths/

The Spanish government, comprised of a coalition of Socialists and Communists, is facing legal action for alleged negligence in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The government is accused of putting its narrow ideological interests ahead of the safety and wellbeing of the public, and, in so doing, unnecessarily worsening the humanitarian crisis now gripping Spain, currently the second-worst afflicted country in Europe after Italy.

A class action lawsuit filed on March 19 accuses the Spanish government — highly ideological by any standard, as the Communist coalition partner, Podemos, was founded with seed money from the Venezuelan government — of knowingly endangering public safety by encouraging the public to participate in more than 75 feminist marches, held across Spain on March 8, to mark International Women’s Day. The nationwide rallies were aimed at protesting the government’s perennial bugbear: the alleged patriarchy of Western civilization.

Hundreds of thousands of people participated in those marches, and several high-profile attendees — including Spain’s deputy prime minister, as well as the prime minister’s wife and mother, and also the wife of the leader of Podemos — have since tested positive for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). It is unknown how many people were infected by the coronavirus as a result of the rallies.

The lawsuit, involving more than 5,000 plaintiffs, accuses Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his representatives in Spain’s 17 autonomous regions of “prevarication” — a Spanish legal term that means lying and deceiving. The government was allegedly so determined to ensure that the feminist marches took place on March 8 that it deliberately downplayed warnings about the pandemic. These warnings include:

• September 2019. The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, an international panel of experts convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), warned of a “very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5% of the world’s economy.
• December 31. China alerted WHO to several cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan, a port city of 11 million people in the central Hubei province. The virus was unknown.
• January 1. Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a live animal and seafood market, was shut down.
• January 7. China identified the new coronavirus as the cause of a mystery disease in Wuhan.
• January 21. WHO confirmed human-to-human transmission of the virus.
• January 29. Spanish pharmaceutical cooperatives warned that pharmacies were running out of masks due to a surge in demand. Sales of masks surged by 3,000% in January compared to the year before.
• January 30. WHO Director-General declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
• January 31. The first known case of COVID-19 in Spain was confirmed in La Gomera, Canary Islands, where a German tourist tested positive and was admitted to a local hospital.
• February 12. Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile phone trade fair, which draws more than 100,000 participants from 200 countries, was cancelled due to fears of coronavirus. The financial loss to Barcelona and the city’s hospitality industry was estimated to be €500 million ($560 million).
• February 24. More than 1,000 guests and employees at the Costa Adeje Palace hotel in Tenerife, Canary Islands, were quarantined after an Italian citizen tested positive for COVID-19.
• February 27. A 62-year-old man from Seville tested positive for COVID-19. His was the first case of local transmission of the virus in Spain. The man said that he believed he was infected during a banking conference in Malaga, where he sat next to a partner who traveled to the Canary Islands on vacation and had had contact with people from Asia. Doctors said that the diagnosis was of “great importance” because it proved that COVID-19 has been circulating in Spain without detection.
• March 2. The European Center for Disease Control and Prevention advisedEuropean countries to cancel mass gatherings of people to prevent the transmission of coronavirus.
• March 2. The Spanish Medical Agency sent a letter to pharmaceutical distributors to restrict the marketing of masks and to block their distribution across Spanish pharmacies. The agency’s objective, on the advice of the Ministry of Health, was to ensure the supply of masks to hospitals and health centers at a time when the number of confirmed cases was beginning to multiply. The measure blocked sales to Spanish pharmacies, as well as sales abroad.
• March 3. The regional health ministry in Valencia announced that the first coronavirus fatality in Spain died on February 13. Health authorities did not know he had the virus until 19 days after his death — an indication that Spanish authorities have been slow to understand the outbreak. Since coronavirus cases that end in death last between two and eight weeks, in addition to a 14-day incubation period, it is possible that the man was infected as early as the beginning of January.
• March 3. Spanish authorities ordered major football and basketball matches to be held behind closed doors with no spectators allowed to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
• March 6. The Spanish Ministry of Health advised: “The precautionary principle must prevail. The emergence of a hitherto unknown virus means that precautionary measures must be taken based on the existing scientific knowledge regarding viruses.”

On March 7, despite these warnings, the Spanish government’s main point man for the coronavirus, Fernando Simón, claimed in a nationwide press conference that there was no risk of attending the rallies on March 8. “If my son asks me if he can go, I will tell him to do whatever he wants,” he said.

The intrepid, Spain-based journalist Matthew Bennett discovered that the Spanish government failed to report new coronavirus cases between March 6 and March 9, apparently in an effort to downplay the danger to the public of attending the rallies.

On March 9, after the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Madrid doubled in one day, the President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, ordered all schools in the capital to be closed for at least two weeks. The decision by the regional government caught the central government by surprise and effectively forced it to act.

• March 10. Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa, a Catalan philosophy major with no experience in medicine, said: “Today’s situation may be different from yesterday’s, it is changing, and this will continue to be so until we overcome this situation.”
• March 11. The Spanish government acknowledged that it knew on March 8, before the feminist rallies took place, that the coronavirus outbreak in Madrid was out of control.
• March 12. Prime Minister Sánchez, defending himself against criticism that he allowed the marches to go ahead, said that his government was responding to the “dynamic” situation of the coronavirus by “adapting” to the “hourly” recommendations of scientific experts.
• March 14. The central government announced a nationwide state of emergency that effectively placed 46 million people in lockdown for at least 15 days. All non-essential travel has been prohibited and people are confined to their homes except in cases of emergency or to purchase food or medicine. All schools and universities in the country are closed.
• March 29. The lockdown, the strictest in all of Europe, was extended until April 11.

The lawsuit has been forwarded to the Spanish Supreme Court due to the prime minister’s immunity.

Article 404 of the Penal Code establishes a penalty of between nine to 15 years of disqualification for public office for public officials convicted of the crime of prevarication.

Víctor Valladares, a Madrid-based lawyer who is leading the lawsuit, said:

“The result of the calls for these demonstrations and their direct approval by government delegations and by the inaction of the central government chaired by the accused, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, could not be more antagonistic to what the EU indicated in its report. Why was not an order issued to prevent any type of mass event?”

Meanwhile, the Association of Doctors and Medics of Madrid (AMYTS) and the Confederation of Medical Trade Unions (CESM) also filed lawsuits against the government. The complaint demands that the federal and local governments provide hospitals in Madrid with masks, protective glasses and waste containers within 24 hours.

The Spanish blogger Elentir, who operates the blog Contando Estrelas, a politically astute website that is essential to understanding contemporary Spanish politics, wrote:

“As we found out, 16 days late, the first death from coronavirus had occurred in Spain on February 13. Faced with the risk that the massive feminist mobilizations on Sunday, March 8 could be cancelled, Fernando Simón commented: ‘We have no specific recommendation on the suspension of the rally on March 8.’

“On March 9, one day after the feminist marches, Health Minister Salvador Illa expressly recommend that all people with chronic diseases or multiple pathologies do not leave their homes except for emergencies…. He said this immediately after the feminist rallies held on March 8.

“Honestly, it seems to me a joke that the government has waited until today, clearly for political reasons, to make this announcement. The Socialist-Communist government has once again put its political interests above the common good. This gross negligence should lead to resignations.”

Criticism of the Spanish government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has also come from members of the Socialist Party itself. On March 22, Juan Luis Cebrián, a co-founder of the newspaper El País, a notorious mouthpiece of the Socialist Party, wrote:

“The crocodile tears of so many political leaders who claim that no one could have imagined such a thing such as the coronavirus do not make any sense. There were not only those who imagined it: they foresaw it, and they seriously warned about it. There has undoubtedly been negligence on the part of the various health ministers and their bosses, and in France three doctors have already filed a complaint against the government for this reason. The consequence is that most Western nations today are overwhelmed in their abilities to fight the epidemic. They reacted late and erroneously. Lacking is: hospital beds, medical personnel, respirators and transparency in official information.

“On February 24, WHO officially declared the probability that we would be faced with a pandemic. Despite this and knowing the magnitude of the threat, which has already been fully realized in several countries, hardly any measures were taken in most of the potential scenarios for the spread of the virus. In the case of Spain, attendance at gigantic demonstrations was encouraged, the holding of massive popular festivals was promoted, urgent funding for research was delayed, the threat was minimized, and even the official still in charge today of the scientific recommendations dared to say between smiles that there was no risk to the population.

“This is not the time to open a debate on the subject, but it is legitimate to assume that in addition to political responsibilities, citizens… will have the right to demand legal redress if there is guilty negligence.”

Spain is one of the European countries most effected by the virus: As of March 29, more than 80,000 people had been diagnosed with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and more than 6,500 had died as a result. The actual number of people infected may be ten times higher due to the lack of testing of asymptomatic cases. As the pandemic runs its course, Spain is on track soon to overtake Italy as Europe’s hardest-hit country.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15821/coronavirus-spain-ideology

The German Spiegel magazine journalist Christoph Sydow on Saturday walked back his description of Israel’s government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the first “Corona Dictatorship,” after he faced days of intense criticism that he spread antisemitism on the website of the news outlet.
Sydow tweeted that “If I wrote the text again today, I would not use the word ‘dictatorship’ again. I stick to the assessment that the damage that has been done to the democratic system and that may be further inflicted is immense and will have ramifications for the country.”The Jerusalem Post was the first news organization to report on the allegations that Sydow stoked antisemitism in his article.

The Israeli author and expert on antisemitism, Arye Sharuz Shalicar, who was born in Germany to Jewish-Persian parents and made aliyah in 2001, tweeted to Sydow: “I hope you now understand why there are people who claim that your reporting has antisemitic tendencies. Because you ONLY accuse the Jewish state of things that so many other countries and states do.”Shalicar first exposed the alleged antisemitism scandal involving Sydow and Spiegel.Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Post in response to Sydow’s article that, “Germany remains a hot spot for the virus of antisemitism and false demonization of the Jewish state.”The German journalist Stefan Frank – who has an expertise in contemporary German antisemitism – wrote, according to observers, a devastating criticism on the website of the Austrian think tank Mena-Watch, covering the alleged falsehoods and antisemitism contained in Sydow’s article. He used the famous definition from former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky of modern antisemitism to argue that Sydow’s article met the criteria. 

For example, Frank cited a March 13 Washington Post article titled: “A ‘travel log’ of the times in South Korea: Mapping the movements of coronaviruscarriers.”
Sharansky’s definition states that when double standards, demonization or delegitimization (the so-called”three Ds” or the “3D test”) are applied to Israel, criticism of the Jewish state is an expression of antisemitism.Ahmad Mansour, an Israeli-born psychologist and book author, told the Post on Sunday that “It’s not just about headlines, it’s about fair journalism! The obsessive preoccupation with Israel, the double standards, the negative attitude, that is already a system and Spiegel should change that.”

Mansour, who lives in Germany, works to counter radical Islam and is an expert on antisemitism. 
Sydow argued that Netanyahu’s administration was apparently creating the first “Corona Dictatorship” because the government was tracking Israelis infected with the virus who could be in contact with other Israelis.  He refused to answer numerous Post press queries.  The Post sent a new media query on Saturday to Ann-Katrin Müller, a reporter in Spiegel’s Berlin newsroom,  asking if she planned to correct the headline about the“Corona Dictatorship.”Sydow, who has previously been accused of co-writing an antisemitic Spiegel article with Müller and other of the news magazine’s reporters, claimed in his March 20 report that “demonstrations are prohibited because of the coronavirus” in Israel. Müller and the other reporters have denied previous accusations of antisemitic reporting.Protests on social media from Israelis and Germans prompted a correction.Spiegel changed the headline to: “Demonstrations with more than ten participants are prohibited due to the corona crisis.”The magazine did not recognize its error in an editorial note at the end of the article. The magazine merely wrote “An earlier version contained a shortened sub-headline. We have made it more precise.”When asked last week about the criticism, Anja zum Hingst, a spokeswoman for Spiegel, told the Post that “Of course the Spiegel article you quoted is not antisemitic. It reports criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu expressed in Israel. We regret the original headline.  It was replaced after a short time. We have transparently corrected the error in the sub-headline, in the text itself. However, the point with the rallies was represented precisely from the start.” A Post press query on Saturday was also sent to zum Hingst in connection with a planned correction of the “Coronavirus Dictatorship” headline.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/german-journalist-withdraws-criticism-of-israel-as-corona-dictatorship-622748

To have a laugh, a pair of Arab immigrants in Eskilstuna, Sweden recorded a video of themselves approaching people on the street while coughing, sneezing, and pretending as if they’ve been infected with the coronavirus.

The video, which was published on YouTube on March 25^th under duo’s shared account “Alpha & Ali”, shows the two men – Ali Qasem and Hussein Matar – walking up to people, invading their personal space while they cough, sneeze, and pretend as if they’ve been infected with COVID-19. When the passers-by pull retreat, the migrants pursue them and continue coughing and sneezing in their direction.

During the interactions, the migrants ask where hospitals are located and explain that they may have been infected with the coronavirus.

The so-called “joke” begins at 1:30.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/03/video-migrant-pranksters-in-sweden-film-themselves-coughing-and-sneezing-on-people/

The Corona virus has also spread to the Asylum Centre in Geldersheim (district of Schweinfurt), seven “refugees” have tested positive and one external employee has also tested positive, now around 600 residents of the facility are under quarantine.

Merkel’s decision taken on her own in 2015 and the fact that the magic word ” political asylum” is still one of the valid reasons for entering the country, that deportations of people who are obliged to leave the country have not been consistently enforced in the past and were rather prevented,all this will still cost us dear, and shows once again the messy asylum policy.

politikstube.com/sieben-corona-faelle-im-ankerzentrum-geldersheim-600-fluechtlinge-unter-quarantaene/

By Monica Showalter

Now that Italy has recorded its 10,000th coronavirus death, a third of the global total, and nearly a thousand just yesterday, Italians are questioning the value of globalism, and more specifically asking what good its European Union membership does it. Sentiment is soaring for getting out and going it alone. Britain did it, why not Italy?

Locals are now burning European Union flags, and Italian politicians are ramping up the talk about getting the heck out of the European Union altogether. I suspected this was going to happen during the Italian balcony singing event, noting that most of the songs sung were classical Italian songs, not global pop hits.

The horror has since increased in that country and here’s what’s now going around on Twitter:

The discontent has boiled right into the halls of the European Union, which one Italian pol is calling “a den of snakes and jackals,” calling for an “Italexit” or an Italian pullout from the European Union altogether.

There’s quite a bit of bitterness — and it’s quite sparsely reported, the most reliable source of which is the pro-Brexit Express of London:

Here’s March 29, today:

The coronavirus pandemic has sparked an unprecedented crisis throughout the European Union, with a huge rift erupting between the 27 member-states. This week’s failure to agree a joint EU economic response to the crisis has already set off a wave of furious criticism from leaders in Italy, Portugal and Spain. On Thursday, Germany, the Netherlands and other northern European countries rejected the plea of nine EU countries for so-called “corona-bonds” to soften the economic impact of the pandemic. 

Following the heated exchanges, Italian newspaper headlines condemned the EU response, describing Brussels as “dead” and “ugly”.

Former Italian Prime Minister and main opposition leader Matteo Salvini said Italy should consider leaving the European Union once the country wins its fight against the outbreak.

On Friday he tweeted: “First let’s beat the virus, then think about Europe again. And, if necessary, say goodbye. Without even thanking it.”

Translation: No $1,200 coronavirus checks for you. That has got to be painful for Italy which is suffering so severely in the open borders of the European Union.

Here’s March 13:

Enrico Franceschini, the foreign correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, warned Brussels response reignited fears of a resurgence of demands for Italexit. 

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Franceschini said: “Italy expects more of Europe at this time.

“Christine Lagarde from the Cental Bank…people were very disappointed.

“Decisions have to show that we are in this all together otherwise Italians are warning we might have again people pushing for Italexit after Brexit.”

 Here’s another March 13, over the European Central Bank’s refusal to issue bonds to help Italy recover. Italy was told in this instance it was on its own.

Mr Trichet’s comments came after his successor Christine Lagarde sparked controversy after failing to confirm the ECB will do “whatever it takes” to protect the eurozone from a potential recession sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Ms Lagarde confirmed the institution will roll out measures to support commercial bank lending, effectively signalling governments are responsible for protecting the economies of indebted eurozone countries rather than the ECBs. 

There is an argument to be made that this is an external shock, not typical Italian government bad bookkeeping going on here, which could justify the issuance of bonds to be repaid when the economy returns to normal. Italy’s being treated like a typical miscreant instead, which has got to be infuriating to them.

What the Italians have learned in this instance is that globalization, as personified by the European Union, has failed. In their hour of need, they’re getting aid from places like Albania, Russia and Cuba, not their big EU neighbors. Oh, the Germans did send in a jet the other day for grave cases to be taken to Germany for treatment – but the plane houses 44. It’s unlikely to make much difference given what Italy is up against.

Caroline Glick wrote a tremendous piece on the high cost of globalization, citing Israel but the lesson applies to every nation in terms of its survival:

The coronavirus pandemic won’t destroy global markets. But it will change them radically and reduce their size and scope. In the case of agriculture, the coronavirus has exposed large-scale vulnerabilities in both agricultural import models and domestic production. At the outset of the crisis, cargo ships laden with foodstuffs from China and Italy were laid up in the ports for weeks until port workers and the Health Ministry could develop protocols for safely offloading them. Dozens of shipments were diverted to Cyprus, at great cost to importers.

Who is to say that food supplies in China or other countries won’t be compromised again in the future? And what happens in the event of war? Naval warfare can easily endanger food imports to Israel over a prolonged period. The model of dependence on foreign suppliers needs to be adapted in the face of what we are learning.

Nowhere is that more evident than Italy, whose nationalistic moves against the EU – are effectively an effort to save itself from total destruction.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/globalism_gone_bust_italians_burn_eu_flag_vow_to_leave_eu_over_eus_lousy_coronavirus_response.html