Foreign Digest: Italy, Syria, Sudan

Italy

            The European Union accepted the populist Italian Government’s budget for fiscal year 2019 for the Italian Republic last week.  The Government had wanted to exceed the EU’s limit for a budget deficit of 2% of gross domestic product by .4 with a spending spree, but made other cuts to the budget, thereby paring down the excess to .04% while maintaining its budget priorities.  The Italian Parliament approved the budget this weekend.  The EU had found the budget non-compliant and was prepared to invoke punitive measures.  Italy, with the eighth largest economy in the world (third in the eurozone) has a national debt of over $2.3 trillion, one of the largest in the world in terms of GDP.  The Italian debt is slightly over 100% of Italy’s GDP. 

Syria

            Israel continues to strike threatening targets, including Iranian forces, in Syria.  Syria is in civil war because of a rebellion by non-Islamist Arab Muslims, as well as Kurds and Islamist Arabs, against the tyrannical regime of Bashar Assad.  Assad is backed by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorists.  The United States leads an international coalition of Western and Arab forces against the “Islamic State” and al-Qaeda Islamist terrorists, but is withdrawing before the last bit of territory is retaken from the Islamic State.  The Islamic State, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, proclaimed a caliphate in Iraq and Syria and has attracted support from other Islamists throughout the world, but is being deprived of all of its territory, which is necessary in order to prove it is not divinely favored and to prevent it from regaining a safe haven from which to train and launch more attacks.  Meanwhile, Turkey intervenes against Kurds in Syria and Iraq.

Sudan

           There have been protests in Sudan since mid-December, first about the cost of living, and now against the tyrannical Sudanese leader.  There were demonstrations in several cities in Sudan, in addition to the capital.