{"id":19644,"date":"2016-04-07T12:57:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T17:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19644"},"modified":"2016-04-07T12:57:37","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T17:57:37","slug":"dutch-voters-reject-ukraine-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19644","title":{"rendered":"Dutch Voters Reject Ukraine Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Dutch Voters Reject Ukraine Deal<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
\n

Dutch voters struck a blow against the E.U.\u2019s Ukrainian association agreement \u2013 and the incessant Russia-bashing that has surrounded it \u2013 creating hope for less belligerence in Europe, writes Gilbert Doctorow.<\/p>\n

\n

On this overcast Thursday morning in Brussels, the political capital of Europe, rays of bright sunshine are breaking through from the east as the latest results of vote counting in neighboring Netherlands suggest that Wednesday\u2019s referendum against the European Union\u2019s Association Agreement with Ukraine won two out of every three votes and passed the 30 percent participation requirement of all eligible voters to be considered valid.<\/p>\n

If those results are confirmed by the official results \u2013 to be released on April 12 \u2013 this referendum marks a resounding defeat for the Brussels-led conspiracy to pursue Russia-bashing policies of sanctions and information warfare without consulting public opinion at home.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Dutch<\/a><\/p>\n

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To change metaphors and speak in terms of Dutch folklore, it is the first crack in the dam that many of us have been waiting for, the opportunity for common sense to prevail over the illogic, hubris and plain pigheadedness of those who control the E.U. institutions in Brussels, and afar from Berlin and Washington.<\/p>\n

While the referendum was formally just \u201cadvisory,\u201d both the public statements of parliamentarians and the acknowledgements of the Dutch government ahead of the voting indicated that it will force a new vote in parliament on ratification and likely send Prime Minister Mark Rutte to Brussels. hat in hand, requesting a renegotiation of the Association Agreement.<\/p>\n

As such, it may bring the E.U. foreign policy machinery to a shuddering halt and open the illogic of all its policies towards its eastern borderlands over the past several years to public scrutiny and, possibly, to revision.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dutch Voters Reject Ukraine Deal Dutch voters struck a blow against the E.U.\u2019s Ukrainian association agreement \u2013 and the incessant Russia-bashing that has surrounded it \u2013 creating hope for less belligerence in Europe, writes Gilbert Doctorow. On this overcast Thursday morning in Brussels, the political capital of Europe, rays of bright sunshine are breaking through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[95,6963,13319,279,281,284,12827,1479,821],"class_list":["post-19644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-brussels","tag-consortium-news","tag-dutch-referendum","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-gilbert-doctorow","tag-netherlands","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19646,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644\/revisions\/19646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}