Politics

Back In December, Spain held what turned out to be inconclusive elections.

To be sure, voters were clearly sick of the status quo. The country’s three decade old political duopoly was broken when PP and PSOE garnered their lowest combined share of the vote since the eighties.

Mariano Rajoy’s PP still won the most seats, but fell short of a majority and with a grand coalition comprised of PP and PSOE largely out of the question, the quest to build consensus and form a government has been stuck in the mud for two months.

The Russian Foreign Minister has dismissed alternative plans by the US for a political settlement of the Syria crisis. On Thursday Sergei Lavrov  rejected claims by his US counterpart John Kerry that there was a ‘Plan B’ if an imminent truce deal for Syria fails to reduce hostilities in Syria. Moscow will focus on “Plan A” in accordance to the agreement signed between the US and Russia on the cessation of hostilities in Syria and is not looking at “Plan B,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

The US is discussing “Plan B” options should the Syrian ceasefire and political transition fail, the Secretary of State told a Senate committee. While giving testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Kerry said: “There is a significant discussion taking place now about a Plan B in the event that we do not succeed at the [negotiating] table” Kerry stressed that the partitioning of Syria could be part of the Plan B… He told the committee it ‘may be too late’ to keep Syria whole and suggests Washington would support partition if ceasefire is unsuccessful.

Submitted by Joao Peixe via OilPrice.com,

The Islamic State (ISIS) is taking on recruits faster than anyone can keep up with, and it’s heading towards Libya’s oil crescent, eyeing billions of barrels that a country at war with itself cannot protect - even with U.S. air strikes.

This year is shaping up to be the most unconventional moment in American politics in a generation. A race that mere months ago seemed to promise yet another Bush vs. another Clinton has so far given us instead the populist insurgencies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Whether or not either of them gets his party’s nomination, the neoliberal consensus of the past two decades seems about to shatter. Free trade, immigration, waging war for democracy, and even the relative merits of capitalism and “democratic socialism” have all come into question.