ABOUT TIME THIS IS ONLY THE HUDREDTH DEATH
US calls on Israel to investigate death of Palestinian boy

A Palestinian throws stones at an Israeli military vehicle following a deadly raid in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. At least four Palestinians were killed and dozens of others wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported, the latest in a series of deadly Israeli operations in the occupied territory. 

(AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed) 

JOSEF FEDERMAN
Thu, September 29, 2022 

JERUSALEM (AP) — The U.S. State Department is calling on Israel to open a “thorough” investigation into the mysterious death of a 7-year-old Palestinian boy who collapsed and died on Thursday, shortly after Israeli soldiers came to his home in the occupied West Bank.

Relatives said Rayan Suleiman had no previous health problems and accused the army of scaring the child to death. The army called the death a tragedy and said its soldiers were not to blame.

The incident added to the rising tensions in the West Bank, where Israeli troops have been conducting daily arrest raids that have frequently escalated into deadly violence in recent months.

Earlier in the day, young Palestinian village boys were seen throwing stones at cars driving on a highway near the Israeli settlement of Tekoa, which lies close to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Later, relatives said that soldiers banged on the door and wanted to arrest Rian's older brothers for alleged stone throwing.

Mohammed Suleiman, a 22-year-old cousin, said Rayan was shrieking in fear at sight of the soldiers and his parents shouted, “come here,” to calm him down. He said after the soldiers left, the boy collapsed. He said Rayan had been healthy.

The boy's father, Yasser Suleiman, said Rayan tried to run away when the soldiers said they wanted to arrest his brothers and was briefly chased by the soldiers. He said Rayan was vomiting blood in the car after collapsing and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

“He was martyred from the fear of them,” the father told Palestine TV.

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a military spokesman, said a senior officer on the scene went to the house after spotting one of the stone throwers on a balcony and told the father to make the children stop throwing stones at motorists. He said the officer spoke in a “very calm manner” and left.

“There was no violence, no entry into the house,” Hecht said.

In Washington, the State Department's deputy spokesman, Vedant Patel, said the United States was “heartbroken to learn of the death of an innocent Palestinian child.”

“We support a thorough and immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the child’s death,” Patel said.

Hecht said the investigation was continuing.

Palestinians and human rights groups say the army is incapable of investigating wrongdoing by its forces and that soldiers are rarely held accountable.

Palestinian social media were awash with photos of Rayan superimposed over the golden Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, with Palestinians declaring him a “martyr” and condemning Israel for his death. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa headlined its report “the death of a child while being chased,” in effect blaming Israel for the death.

The boy was scheduled to be buried on Friday, when Palestinian demonstrators often clash with Israeli soldiers.

The funeral comes at a time of rising violence in the West Bank.

On Wednesday, four Palestinians were killed and 44 wounded during an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank town of Jenin. It was the deadliest episode since Israel launched its crackdown earlier this year.

Israel has been conducting nightly arrest raids, primarily in the northern West Bank, since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel last spring. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed, making this the deadliest year in the occupied territory since 2015.

Most of the dead have been wanted militants who opened fire, or youths who threw firebombs or stones at soldiers entering their neighborhoods. But several civilians who were not involved in any violence have also died.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians seek the territory, now home to about 500,000 Israeli settlers, as the heartland of a future independent state.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed reporting.

Protests Over Water Shortages Shut Longest South African Highway


Rene Vollgraaff
Mon, September 26, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Part of South Africa’s longest highway, which runs from Cape Town to Zimbabwe, was shut on Monday by protesters who were demonstrating over water shortages.

The N1 highway was closed at Ventersburg, a town that’s about 240 kilometers (149 miles) south of Johannesburg, the South African Police Service said on Twitter.

The situation remains tense and the public order police unit is on the scene, police spokeswoman Loraine Earle said by phone. Motorists were advised to use alternative routes when traveling between Johannesburg and Bloemfontein, the capital of the central Free State province.

Many South African towns and cities are struggling to provide reliable basic services, such as water, electricity and sewerage, to residents after years of graft, underspending and financial mismanagement. That has added to discontent over high levels of inequality and poverty, and spurred violent protests aimed at attracting the authorities’ attention.

News website Netwerk24 reported on Monday that people in parts of Ventersburg haven’t had water for almost a month due to aged infrastructure and rolling blackouts implemented by state-owned power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.

DOJ HAS EXPERIENCE WITH PLUMBERS
Justice Department steps in amid warnings that Jackson's water system is at a 'breaking point'


Rogelio V. Solis

Bracey Harris and Zinhle Essamuah and Phil McCausland and Hannah Rappleye
Tue, September 27, 2022

JACKSON, Miss. — The Justice Department threatened possible legal action against Jackson officials Monday if they don’t agree to negotiations to fix the city’s beleaguered water system, warning that “an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health exists.”

In a letter to Mayor Chokwe Lumumba obtained by NBC affiliate WLBT, Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim detailed long-standing problems with the city’s water system, including a recent crisis that left most residents without running water for days, chronic line breaks and more than 300 boil water notices in the past two years.

“The people of Jackson, Mississippi, have lacked access to safe and reliable water for decades,” Michael Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a news release after a meeting with Kim and Lumumba and a coalition of local pastors in Mississippi’s capital city Monday. “After years of neglect, Jackson’s water system finally reached a breaking point this summer, leaving tens of thousands of people without any running water for weeks. These conditions are unacceptable in the United States of America.”

The move from the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division comes less than two weeks after Gov. Tate Reeves and local officials announced that the water in Jackson was safe to drink after a weekslong boil water notice because of problems with turbidity, or cloudiness, which can make it harder to ensure that water is properly disinfected.

But since then, officials have issued new boil water advisories for pockets of the city. And state health officials recently reiterated a six-year-old advisory that pregnant women and children 5 years old and younger should avoid using tap water for cooking and drinking to prevent lead exposure.

The Justice Department gave the city until Wednesday to respond. Lumumba said Monday that his administration intends to cooperate with federal officials.

“We believe that this arrangement represents the best path forward,” he said in a statement.

Reeves’ office has blamed the city for the long-standing water quality issues, but Kim, the Justice Department official, wrote in his letter that both city and state authorities “have not acted to protect public health.”

A spokesperson for Reeves didn’t respond to a request for comment, but the governor wrote on Twitter that he appreciates “continued efforts to ensure that Mississippians in Jackson have clean drinking water.”

Liz Sharlot, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Health Department, said the agency wasn’t included in discussions between the EPA and the city.

Sharlot said that the Health Department, which is responsible for making sure public water systems comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act, “has most certainly acted to protect the public health of the customers of the City of Jackson” and that it would be in touch with the EPA soon.

NBC News reported this month that a team from the EPA’s Office of Inspector General had traveled to Jackson to probe the city’s latest drinking water crisis.

In late 2019, the state Health Department notified the EPA about concerns with the city’s water system. An inspection by the EPA raised alarms about problems, including not having enough properly credentialed staff members at the city’s water treatment plants. The EPA also rebuked the city for failing to notify state officials and residents about some of the utility’s water quality violations. The federal agency then issued an emergency order in March 2020 requiring the city to take several steps, including coming up with a plan to replace or repair ineffective monitoring equipment.

As part of an administrative order issued last year under the Safe Drinking Water Act, Jackson was required to make repairs and upgrades to its water system estimated to cost $170 million by certain deadlines. The agreement also mandated that Jackson identify whether the city had any lead service lines, hire appropriately credentialed employees to work at its water treatment plants and finish a corrosion control project designed to prevent harmful contaminants from leaching into tap water.

Jackson is required under the administrative order to give the EPA weekly updates.

A previous public works director for the city said last year that the EPA had informed officials that “as long as we are transparent and progressing and showing effort, the flexibility will come.”

It’s not clear whether Monday’s development affects any previous agreements or deadlines. The EPA’s press office didn’t immediately respond to a question about whether the city was behind on correcting deficiencies.

Kim’s letter cites a number of violations and infrastructure issues, including the previously noted failure to adequately staff its water treatment plants with workers with specialized training. The letter also cites failure to comply with timelines for some repair work, water cloudiness that exceeded acceptable levels and shortcomings in its emergency plan to distribute free water during a crisis.

The Justice Department also flagged the city’s failure to control the acidity of water that flows to residents’ homes. When water grows acidic enough, it can corrode the metal pipes it travels through, allowing hazardous materials like lead to seep from older plumbing fixtures into the drinking water.

As a precaution against lead poisoning, the Health Department issued a warning in 2016 that is still in place cautioning pregnant women and children younger than 6 years old from consuming unfiltered tap water. Prolonged exposure to lead can lead to premature births and rob children of developmental progress.

Over the past three years, the city of Jackson has missed at least two deadlines for a plan to control the corrosiveness of the water. Experts in water infrastructure say corrosion control is a critical and cost-saving step in keeping people safe from lead, and even though tap water samples show lead levels aren’t as alarming as they were in 2015, the city still has more work to do with “optimizing” its control to suppress the threat.

A spokesperson for the EPA’s Region 4, which includes Mississippi, declined to provide details about the city’s progress with corrosion control in a statement, citing “ongoing enforcement activities.”

Some local activists have expressed frustration with the incremental progress, blaming the state and the federal government for missed compliance deadlines as the city struggles to fix long-standing problems.

“Who knows what multiple generations of people have been exposed to while federal agencies and state agencies have dragged their feet and said: ‘Well, Jackson can have more time. Jackson can wait’?” said Laurie Bertram Roberts, the executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, which advocates for abortion rights and also has distributed free bottled water in the city. “I’m not saying that it’s all on the feet of Jackson. I’m saying when does someone actually step in and fix our freaking water so the people of Jackson are not at risk? Because it just can’t always be another four years.”

The city said in a July notice that it expects to finish its corrosion control work almost a year before its May 2024 deadline. But a growing number of residents have joined class-action lawsuits, including a complaint filed on behalf of almost 1,800 children, saying it’s already too late for their families.

Lumumba said last week that he wouldn’t “litigate” the lawsuit in an interview. But he added, “I do believe that there has been a failure to act over these years in a sufficient way — the question is, who are the parties that have failed to do so?”

He defended his administration’s efforts to fix the water system’s challenges, saying that during his term his office has tried to use the resources the city has received to make sure “that the communities that are most disproportionately affected are better served.”

Lumumba said he and his predecessors have pressed state leaders to invest in the city’s water infrastructure.

In a visit to Jackson this month, Regan said the city should get “its fair share” from the roughly $429 million Mississippi will receive over the next five years in federal funds to upgrade water and wastewater systems across the state.

Mark Chalos, an attorney who filed the most recent class-action lawsuit, said many Jacksonians remain suspicious of the city’s water quality.

“Many residents have lost trust in the leadership who are telling them that and are very skeptical of any proclamation from a government official that the water is now magically safe for them to drink,” he said.

Charles Wilson III, 61, is a disabled parent of a 6-year-old boy. He said he welcomes the federal government’s help and oversight, particularly the pressure from the Justice Department and the EPA.

He said he hoped federal officials would act transparently and tell the community exactly what steps they’re taking because state and local officials haven’t had an open process regarding the water’s safety.

“They shouldn’t have to come in. We have a governor, state legislators, city government people who should have been dealing with this for years,” Wilson said. “But because they’re not doing their job, now the federal government has to step in.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Philippines to shut 175 offshore gambling firms, deport 40,000 Chinese workers

Mon, September 26, 2022 

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines will stop operations of 175 offshore gambling firms and deport about 40,000 Chinese workers, a justice ministry official said on Monday, part of a crackdown on the notoriously opaque online gaming industry.

The sector emerged in the Philippines in 2016 and grew exponentially, as operators capitalised on the country's liberal gaming laws to target customers in China, where gambling is banned.

At their peak, Philippine offshore gambling operators, or POGOs, employed more than 300,000 Chinese workers, but the pandemic and higher taxes have forced many to operate elsewhere.

"The crackdown was triggered by reports of murder, kidnapping and other crimes committed by Chinese nationals against fellow Chinese nationals," justice ministry spokesperson Jose Dominic Clavano said.

The POGOs targeted for closure had licenses that either expired or were revoked, for violations like non-payment of government fees, Clavano said, adding the deportation of the Chinese workers would start next month.

The government generated 7.2 billion pesos ($122.21 million) in 2020 and 3.9 billion last year in POGO fees alone, according to the finance ministry. Economists estimate considerably larger amounts are being spent on taxes, workers' spending and office rental.

China's embassy in Manila in a statement said Beijing supports the deportation and crackdown on POGO-related crimes, adding the government "firmly opposes and takes tough measures to combat gambling".

The Philippines regulator, which recently said there were 30 licensed POGO firms versus 60 before the pandemic, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Real estate consultancy Leechiu Property Consultants estimates that a complete exit of the POGO industry would leave vacant 1.05 million square metres (259 acres) of office space - a third of the size of New York's Central Park - and 8.9 billion pesos ($151 million) in foregone annual rent.

The sector employs 201,000 Chinese and 111,000 Filipinos, according to Leechiu's data, which estimates POGOs deliver 190 billion pesos ($3.22 billion) to the economy each year, a boon to the property and retail sectors.

($1 = 59.01 Philippine pesos)

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty)

They are Black. They are Italians. And they are changing their country.

Dominique Soguel
Mon, September 26, 2022 

Michelle Ngonmo fights for inclusion. Her weapon is fashion; her battleground is the catwalks and showrooms of multicultural Milan.

“We are in a society where everything is imagined and imaged as all white,” says Ms. Ngonmo, sitting in a white suit in an office where the corners are reserved for clothes racks loaded with the outfits for Afro Fashion Week. “And there is a real struggle between the people-of-color Italians and [white] Italian society. Asian Italians, Black Italians are really struggling to be accepted as Italians.”

That’s one of the reasons why in 2015 she created the Afro Fashion Association, with a base in Italy and Cameroon. The organization represents 1,400 designers in Africa or the African diaspora. In Italy, it works with about 500 multicultural Italian designers. “People tend to think that Afro culture is just about wax fabric,” she says. “They think that it is the boubou or the foulard or the turban that you put on your head. And they look at it in a folkloristic way, not as something that can be really part of fashion.”

But that is slowly changing. In 2020, in collaboration with the Camera della Moda (Italy’s national fashion chamber), her association launched “We Are Made in Italy,” a fashion project highlighting the work of Italy’s five top multicultural talents. The Afro Fashion Show 2022 marked the first time that the collections of the “fab five” hit the catwalk, due to COVID-19. “Their creativity is super rich,” she says with pride. “These designers have two or three cultures inside. And the creativity is the mix of those cultures.”

The battle against racism and for equal rights for Black Italians extends far beyond the catwalks of Milan. Even as some of their fellow citizens have trouble envisioning Italians as anything other than white, Black and multicultural Italians are asserting their place in their country’s society. By pushing for legal changes to systemically racist citizenship laws, providing support for Black Italians who feel isolated, or using media like Italian fashion to bridge divides, they are staking their claim in a country that sometimes tells them they’re not wanted.

“For this generation of young people who were born and raised in Italy ... they see themselves as totally Italian,” says Camilla Hawthorne, who studies the racial politics of migration and citizenship at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “But there is always this moment that happens in school, whether it is a classmate or teacher, that pulls them out of this sense of, oh, I am just like another kid, where they realize that even though they feel totally Italian, they are not viewed by the rest of the world as Italian. They are always seen as different, as outside, as other, as immigrants.”

“They hardly ever recognize anyone like me”

Today, notions of national belonging in Italy center on whiteness, even in the country’s citizenship law. The country does not grant nationality based on being born within Italian borders, but rather on bloodline.

In practice, this means that the great grandchild of an Italian who migrated to Argentina, even if she or he does not speak Italian and has never set foot in Italy, faces fewer bureaucratic hurdles to get Italian citizenship than the child of African nationals who was born and schooled in Italy, and who speaks only Italian with a local accent to boot. Those in the latter’s situation only have a year to apply for citizenship once they turn 18, but the process is riddled with pedantic bureaucracy that many consider institutional racism.

Dr. Hawthorne, who was brought up in the United States as the child of an African American father and an Italian mother, has been grappling with what it means to be Black and Italian her whole life. She ended up writing a book on the experiences of Black people who were born and raised in Italy but struggle for citizenship. While family histories vary widely, there are some common denominators in a generation often labeled “second-generation migrants” rather than first-generation Italians, she says. She prefers to use the term Black Italians in relation to a person’s sense of identity and belonging over citizenship status.

Black Italians include people who were born and raised in Italy, but not only that. The mix encompasses people who feel Italian but also hold a pride in their Blackness and a broader sense of connection to a Black diaspora, she says. They may have roots in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, or Latin America. Or they may be children of migrant workers who came to Italy well before the 2014-15 refugee crisis; Africans who pursued university degrees and made a home in Italy; descendants of Italians who settled in the former colonies of Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, and Ethiopia; or descendants of African-American soldiers who moved to Italy after World War II or the Cold War.

Italy does not collect racial data in its population census, so it is hard to estimate the number of Black Italians. But citizenship rights activists put children born and raised in Italy but lacking citizenship at about 1 million.

Though citizenship reforms finally got a spot on the legislative agenda under former Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the prospects of change collapsed along with his government this summer. Now, with a right-wing coalition led by a party which regularly airs racist views set to take power, political change appears off the table.

“In this country when you start talking about citizenship, it becomes a hot matter,” says Hilarry Sedu, a Napoli-based lawyer. “No one really wants to put their hands on it because part of the country is a bit racist.”

Mr. Sedu was born in Nigeria but arrived in Italy at the age of six months. Eventually, he was able to acquire Italian citizenship after proving that he had been a resident for 10 years and paid taxes for three. Today he is one of about two dozen Black lawyers out of 260,000 lawyers working in Italy and part of a broader community pushing to resolve the citizenship question for Black Italian minors whose struggles are not dissimilar to the Dreamers generation in the U.S.

“Most feel that Italian citizens are those with the white skin,” he says. “They hardly ever recognize anyone like me, a Black Italian, [as Italian], so it becomes hard to tell the voters that there is something going on, that Italian citizens are not only those who have the white skin.”

TikTok and cocktails

It is not just a matter of persuading white Italians. Ronke Oluwadare, a psychotherapist in Milan, works with Black Italians to help them work through feelings of alienation from their country and community. “Identity is one of the topics I often navigate with my patients because they don’t feel whole,” says Dr. Oluwadare, noting that African Italians hail from families not only from different countries but also varied socioeconomic classes.

“I usually use this image of a cocktail, right? Like you have different ingredients and then you use different portions to make different cocktails. ... When you are a second generation, part of your journey is deciding which cocktail you want to make.”

Today Black Italian children have comedian Khaby Lame and other influencers on TikTok to show them that they are not alone, that success is possible despite structural and everyday racism. Born in Senegal and brought to Italy as a baby, Mr. Lame shot to fame with silent but funny spoofs of “life hacks” and other social media videos. He gained international recognition as the most followed TikToker in the world, described as “from Italy.” (Though like many young Black people in Italy, he did not have Italian nationality – until recently. It was granted in August, shortly after he reached the pinnacle of TikTok.)

Whether on TV or TikTok, representation matters. But what matters more in Dr. Oluwadare’s view is education: proper discussions of Italian colonialism in the classroom, lessons on Africa that recognize the achievements and diversity within it, and better responses to racial bullying. The murder of George Floyd in the U.S. resonated in Italy for a reason.

“Before that tragedy, all these people thought they were the only one in the room, in each room,” she says. “Then they figured out, ‘Wait, we’re not.’”

“The mask shows who you are”

For Paul Roger Tanonkou, identity and migration played directly into his choice of the logo for his fashion brand: an African mask. Masks in African culture once served as passports, a manifestation of a person’s origins necessary to enter the villages of other tribes. “In Europe, the mask hides who you are,” notes Mr. Tanonkou, who grew up among the fabrics of his mother, a seamstress in Cameroon. “In Africa, the mask shows who you are. The issue of passports, identification, already existed in Africa.”

Mr. Tanankou, whose printed silk shirts combine bright designs with soothing color palettes, sees fashion as a force with the power to celebrate difference but also create unity across cultures. “We hope to create a fashion that is inspired by Africa but that is accessible to everyone,” he says. “Sometimes I walk past someone on the street wearing one of my shirts and I just smile.”

Nigerian-born Joy Meribe went to fashion schools in Modena and Bologna after first getting an MBA in international business in Italy. Today she has her own brand. Ms. Meribe says her experience shows that being Italian and Black can go hand in hand.

Though she is fluent in Italian, she says Italians consider her Nigerian. Nigerians sometimes see her as Italian due to her penchant for dramatic hand gestures, although she is not a citizen. Her son cheers for Italy when it plays against Nigeria in soccer, and her Italy-born daughter who recently turned 18 has applied for Italian nationality.

“I’ve come to love Italy like home,” Ms. Meribe says. “My children were born here. They are Black. But in all of their mannerisms, in their tastes, in everything they do, they are Italians.”

IN EDMONTON'S LITTLE ITALY THE ETHIOPIAN CAB DRIVERS SHARE THE COFFEE SHOPS WITH THE POST WWII ITALIANS, EVERYBODY SPEAKING ITALIAN

Tucker Carlson Suggests GOP Should Be Like Italy’s Fascist PM, Who He (Incorrectly) Says Isn’t Fascist

 
Ross A. Lincoln
Mon, September 26, 2022

On Monday’s episode of his Fox News Show, Tucker Carlson appeared to be a huge fan of newly-elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a neo-fascist who was elected as part of a group called the ‘centre-right coalition’ on Sunday night.

In a twisty commentary on Monday, Carlson asserted that Meloni isn’t actually a fascist because she is religious, and then said that Republican leaders in congress basically suck compared to Meloni and the movement she leads.

Watch that clip here:Tucker Carlson Suggests GOP Should Be Like Italy’s Fascist PM, Who He (Incorrectly) Says Isn’t Fascist (Video) (thewrap.com)

First, in a clip you can see above, Carlson contrasted the public policy pitches Republicans are making ahead of the 2022 election to Meloni’s. Tucker isn’t a fan of the Republican pitch.

“House Republicans just spelled out what they’re running on, it’s a document called the ‘Commitment to America’. It’s fine. Probably not much in it you disagree with it (sic). Have you heard of it? No, you probably haven’t. You probably haven’t read it. Nobody really cares. Why? Because there is nothing real in it.”

Carlson complained that the GOP document doesn’t mention “the attacks on the American family that you see every day,” listing for example concerns like dwindling prosperity and lower upward mobility. “People are upset about that, why wouldn’t they be? But nobody says it.”

Then a couple of minutes later Carlson attempted to refute the highly accurate description of Meloni as a fascist, saying “fascists don’t believe in God. God is a rival to their power. Of course. [Meloni] is a person publicly professing faith in God.”

Watch that clip here: Tucker Carlson Suggests GOP Should Be Like Italy’s Fascist PM, Who He (Incorrectly) Says Isn’t Fascist (Video) (thewrap.com)

OK so the reason we know that Meloni is a fascist is that she is a member of the “Brothers of Italy,” a party formed by breakaways from the country’s center-right The People of Freedom party. Those breakaways, including Meloni herself, were largely drawn from membership of the National Alliance, a neo-fascist party that literally uses the symbol of the defunct neo-fascist party Italian Social Movement, which itself was founded by members of fascist parties that were banned after World War II.

But if that wasn’t enough, Meloni has, quite literally, expressed admiration for Mussolini (the guy who founded fascism) and for Giorgio Almirante, an Italian Nazi collaborator who founded Italian Social Movement. Read more here.

So, to sum up: She’s a member of a neo-fascist party descended from the original fascist parties, and has expressed admiration for Mussolini and one of Italy’s most prominent Nazis.

As for Carlson’s suggestion that belief in God means someone can’t be a Fascist, it is true that in his youth, when he still professed left-wing beliefs, Mussolini was an atheist. After his rise to power, he embraced the Catholic Church, became a huge supporter of it, and was widely supported by an organization of priests. He also had his children baptized Catholic, and even deployed violence to quell opposition to the agreement that created Vatican City as an independent country. Read more about it here

How a party of neo-fascist roots won big in Italy

1 / 13
Right-wing party Brothers of Italy's leader Giorgia Meloni, center-right on stage, addresses a rally as she starts her political campaign ahead of Sept. 25 general elections, in Ancona, Italy, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. The Brothers of Italy party has won the most votes in Italy’s national election. The party has its roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement. Giorgia Meloni has taken Brothers of Italy from a fringe far-right group to Italy’s biggest party. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis, File)


Mon, September 26, 2022

ROME (AP) — The Brothers of Italy party, which won the most votes in Italy’s national election, has its roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement.

Keeping the movement's most potent symbol, the tricolor flame, Giorgia Meloni has taken Brothers of Italy from a fringe far-right group to Italy's biggest party.

A century after Benito Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, which brought the fascist dictator to power, Meloni is poised to lead Italy's first far-right-led government since World War II and Italy's first woman premier.

HOW DID POST-FASCISM BEGIN IN ITALY?

The Italian Social Movement, or MSI, was founded in 1946 by Giorgio Almirante, a chief of staff in Mussolini’s last government. It drew fascist sympathizers and officials into its ranks following Italy’s role in the war, when it was allied with the Nazis and then liberated by the Allies.

Throughout the 1950-1980s, the MSI remained a small right-wing party, polling in the single digits. But historian Paul Ginsborg has noted that its mere survival in the decades after the war “served as a constant reminder of the potent appeal that authoritarianism and nationalism could still exercise among the southern students, urban poor and lower middle classes.”

The 1990s brought about a change under Gianfranco Fini, Almirante’s protege who nevertheless projected a new moderate face of the Italian right. When Fini ran for Rome mayor in 1993, he won a surprising 46.9% of the vote — not enough to win but enough to establish him as a player. Within a year, Fini had renamed the MSI the National Alliance.

It was in those years that a young Meloni, who was raised by a single mother in a Rome working-class neighborhood, first joined the MSI’s youth branch and then went onto lead the youth branch of Fini’s National Alliance.

DOES THAT MEAN MELONI IS NEO-FASCIST?

Fini was dogged by the movement’s neo-fascist roots and his own assessment that Mussolini was the 20th century’s “greatest statesman.” He disavowed that statement, and in 2003 visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel. There, he described Italy’s racial laws, which restricted Jews’ rights, as part of the “absolute evil” of the war.

Meloni, too, had praised Mussolini in her youth but visited Yad Vashem in 2009 when she was a minister in Silvio Berlusconi's last government. Writing in her 2021 memoir “I Am Giorgia,” she described the experience as evidence of how “a genocide happens step by step, a little at a time.”

During the campaign, Meloni was forced to confront the issue head-on, after the Democrats warned that she represented a danger to democracy.

“The Italian right has handed fascism over to history for decades now, unambiguously condemning the suppression of democracy and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws,” she said in a campaign video.

HOW DID BROTHERS OF ITALY EMERGE?

Meloni, who proudly touts her roots as an MSI militant, has said the first spark of creating Brothers of Italy came after Berlusconi resigned as premier in 2011, forced out by a financial crisis over Italy’s soaring debt and his own legal problems.

Meloni refused to support Mario Monti, who was tapped by Italy's president to try to form a technocratic government to reassure international financial markets. Meloni couldn't stand what she believed was external pressure from European capitals to dictate internal Italian politics.

Meloni co-founded the party in 2012, naming it after the first words of the Italian national anthem. “A new party for an old tradition,” Meloni wrote.

Brothers of Italy would only take in single-digit results in its first decade. The European Parliament election in 2019 brought Brothers of Italy 6.4% — a figure that Meloni says “changed everything.”

As the leader of the only party in opposition during Mario Draghi's 2021-2022 national unity government, her popularity soared, with Sunday's election netting it 26%.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PARTY'S LOGO?

The party has at the center of its logo the red, white and green flame of the original MSI that remained when the movement became the National Alliance. While less obvious than the bundle of sticks, or fasces, that was the prominent symbol of Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, the tricolor flame is nevertheless a powerful image that ties the current party to its past.

“Political logos are a form of branding, no different than those aimed at consumers,” said Rutgers University professor T. Corey Brennan, who recently wrote "Fasces: A History of Rome’s Most Dangerous Political Symbol.”

He recalled that when Almirante made his final MSI campaign pitch to voters in the 1948 election at Rome’s Spanish Steps, he put the party’s flame symbol on top of the obelisk and illuminated it with floodlights.

“You can make whatever you want out of a flame, but everybody understood that Almirante was making a deeply emotional appeal to keep the spirit of fascism alive,” he said.

HOW DO ITALIANS FEEL ABOUT IT?

In general, the party's neo-fascist roots appear to be of more concern abroad than at home. Some historians explain that by noting a certain historical amnesia here and Italians’ general comfort living with the relics of fascism as evidence that Italy never really repudiated the Fascist Party and Mussolini in the same way Germany repudiated National Socialism and Hitler.

While Germany went through a long and painful process reckoning with its past, Italians have in many ways simply turned a willful blindness to their own.

Historian David Kertzer of Brown University notes that there are 67 institutes for the study of the Resistance to Fascism in Italy, and virtually no center for the study of Italian Fascism.

In addition, Mussolini-era architecture and monuments are everywhere: from the EUR neighborhood in southern Rome to the Olympic training center on the Tiber River, with its obelisk still bearing Mussolini’s name.

The Italian Constitution bars the reconstitution of the Fascist party, but far-right groups still display the fascist salute and there continues to be an acceptance of fascist symbols, said Brennan.

“You don’t have to look very hard for signs,” Brennan said in a phone interview. “Fully a quarter of all manhole covers in Rome still have the fasces on them.”

DOES THAT MEAN ITALIANS SUPPORT FASCISM?

If history is any guide, one constant in recent political elections is that Italians vote for change, with a desire for something new seemingly overtaking traditional political ideology in big pendulum shifts, said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs.

Tocci said the Brothers of Italy's popularity in 2022 was evidence of this “violent” swing that is more about Italian dissatisfaction than any surge in neo-fascist or far-right sentiment.

“I would say the main reason why a big chunk of that — let’s say 25-30% — will vote for this party is simply because it’s the new kid on the block," she said.

Meloni still speaks reverently about the MSI and Almirante, even if her rhetoric can change to suit her audience.

This summer, speaking in perfect Spanish, she thundered at a rally of Spain's hard-right Vox party: “Yes to the natural family. No to the LGBT lobby. Yes to sexual identity. No to gender ideology."

Back home on the campaign trail, she projected a much more moderate tone and appealed for unity in her victory speech Monday.

“Italy chose us,” she said. “We will not betray it, as we never have.”

___

Sabrina Sergi contributed to this report.

Getting an abortion in Italy can be difficult. Is it about to get much tougher?

 “We can’t go back to the Middle Ages.”

By Andrea Carlo • Updated: 29/09/2022 -

People stage a protest on 'International Safe Abortion Day' in Rome. Wednesday, 28 September 2022. - Copyright 

In the middle of a leafy Roman suburb, a tattered billboard glows under the scorching summer heat.

“I am against abortion,” it reads, accompanied by a black-and-white picture of the late film director, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The use of Pasolini — an avowedly progressive, gay man — in an anti-abortion advertisement has not been well received by some, who have vandalised the poster by ripping it at the side.


After all, in this Mediterranean country, abortion is still a thorny issue.

The right to terminate a pregnancy in Italy has been in place since 1978 and is recognised by the Constitutional Court as an unalterable, binding law.

But as Catholicism still exerts a powerful sway on social mores — resulting in high rates of medical staff refusing to carry out abortions — what is technically a right can often feel like something one still has to fight for.

Now that the conservative far-right has won Italy's snap elections, bolstered by the revocation of Roe v Wade in the US and the rising tide of anti-abortion populist movements, an already complex situation could become even more precarious.


The vandalised anti-abortion posterCredit: Pro-Vita e Famiglia

‘Objectors of conscience or convenience?’

Together with 22 other EU member states, Italy gives its doctors the right to abstain from performing abortions, which are legally available to all pregnant women up to 90 days from conception following an obligatory one-week waiting period.

The right to conscientious objection is enshrined in Article 9 of Law #194, which states that “health and assistant personnel are not required to take part in […] interventions for the termination of pregnancy when conscientious objections are raised”.

But according to some pro-abortion campaigners, frequent misapplication of the provision has created a challenging situation where many women are essentially barred from accessing the services they need to obtain an abortion.

As of 2020, 64.6% of gynaecologists in Italy are conscientious objectors, a figure which soars to over 90% in parts of the south. While the nationwide percentage has decreased slightly since 2019, it has broadly grown over the years — in 2005, for instance, it stood at 58.7%.

In relatively rural southern Italian regions like Molise, this can result in there being fewer than a handful of doctors willing to carry out the operation.

For Giovanna Scassellati, a gynaecologist at Rome’s San Camillo hospital, the situation is of particular concern. Living in a city dominated by Catholic hospitals that do not provide abortion services, Scassellati works in one of the few secular facilities that perform approximately 2,000 procedures every year.

“The number of conscientious objectors has increased since the 1980s,” Scassellati told Euronews. “It can be hard to find a doctor who wants to carry out the procedure, [especially] in summer months.”

An anti-abortion activist displays a placard reading "Yes to Life, no to abortion" during a "March for Family" in Verona

Credit: AFP

Anti-abortion activists defend the right of all medical staff to object to any kind of abortion care — including pharmacists, who may even refuse to provide women with emergency contraceptives like the morning-after pill.

As Jacopo Coghe, spokesperson of the Pro-Vita e Famiglia or Pro-Life and Family association, told Euronews, “the objection of conscience in Law #194 […] speaks of ‘medical staff and assistants’ and certainly includes pharmacists too”.

But such arguments are contested by pro-abortion campaigners, who point out that Article 9 only exonerates staff who are “directly involved in the termination of a pregnancy” and not those assisting “before and after the event”.

“Here in Rome, I would prescribe women the morning-after pill,” Scassellati recounted, “and they would often come back to me with their hairs standing on end after the local pharmacy rejected their request.”

“One time we even had to get law enforcement involved. Women need to learn to fight for themselves and their rights,” she added.

While the permeation of Catholic doctrine — which explicitly condemns the voluntary termination of pregnancy — among medical staff has been deemed responsible for such a high rate of conscientious objectors in Italy, Scassellati takes a more cynical view shared by a significant proportion of Italian women.

“Many of these ‘objectors of conscience’ should be called ‘objectors of convenience’ instead,” she said. “As a non-objecting doctor, I have felt judged. People are afraid not to be objectors as they worry it could affect their careers.”

Indeed, objections on the grounds of conscience have not stopped gynaecologists from carrying out abortions — just under the rug.

In 2008, an investigation found that the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples was more than just a famed holiday resort. The picturesque isle became a destination for clandestine abortions, despite all doctors there being conscientious objectors on paper.
Allowing adoption of embryos 'would attack Italy’s abortion rights’
Abortion is legal in Italy — so why are women being refused?

Scassellati’s sentiments are echoed by Mirella Parachini, the former medical director of gynaecology at Rome’s Filippo Neri Hospital and previously president of the International Federation of Professional Abortion and Contraception Associates (FIAPAC).

For Parachini, the supposed increase in conscientious objectors is a red herring — or “a narrative peddled by journalists” — and the crux of the matter lies in systemic inadequacies in the country.

“I can state for a fact that I know many so-called ‘conscientious objectors’ who refer pregnant women to me,” she told Euronews.

“There a very few ‘real’ objectors. If you believe abortion is murder, would you send a pregnant woman to a hitman?”

“The fact is that Law 194 doesn’t get uniformly applied,” she said. “The problem at hand is structural.”
‘Finding a non-objecting gynaecologist is kind of a treasure hunt’

Conscientious objections may be protected by Italian law, but so is the obligation of every hospital facility to provide women with options to obtain an abortion. However, this is not unanimously respected by hospitals throughout the country.

A study from the Luca Coscioni Association, which fights for the right to euthanasia and reproductive healthcare, found that 31 medical facilities in Italy do not have a single non-objecting doctor.

This is part of the problem gynaecologists like Scassellati and Mirichella flag, as many women find themselves unable to access the options they need.

The Council of Europe denounced Italian practices in 2016, deeming there to be a systematic violation of women’s rights to reproductive healthcare.

Chiara Lalli, a journalist who has been researching abortion rights in Italy, said that accessing accurate information about abortion, especially when trying to find out if a certain facility provides the procedure, is still a challenge for many women.

“The problem is, we only have aggregated numbers, like averages by region,” Lalli told Euronews. “If you’re a woman who wants to abort, regional averages are of little use. Abortions happen in hospitals, not in regions.”

“Obtaining an abortion often turns into a kind of treasure hunt. It ends up boiling down to whether you know a gynaecologist, or not. And if you don’t, you end up going abroad.”

Members of Militia Christi group hold a banner reading in Italian "abortion is homicide", in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, 7 February 2021

AP Photo/Gregorio Bo

According to Europe Abortion Access, Italians, in particular, are often forced to make difficult decisions.

A 2019 study found that 4,363 Italian women had to leave their region to obtain an abortion, and hundreds have potentially had to travel abroad, with 48 going to the UK alone.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on healthcare services may have made this worse. A statistical lull in the number of abortions from 2020 might mean a greater number of women are now seeking abortions through clandestine or foreign means.

“Many prenatal services are conducted by Catholic hospitals and diagnoses are late, meaning that women have to go abroad to get one,” Scassellati noted.

“And during the pandemic, nurses were focused on battling COVID”, making the already meagre options even more scarce, she pointed out.

But some campaigners are taking action to combat such structural failings. One recently opened platform, Freedom Leaks, allows women to report injustices they have encountered while trying to obtain an abortion, as well as for medical staff to blow the whistle on what they witness at their facilities.

“It just isn’t acceptable that women don’t know which hospitals to access,” Filomena Gallo, a lawyer working on the Freedom Leaks platform, told Euronews. “Women need to know they can report any disservice.”

‘A long and embarrassing process’

Mariella is a chef living in Rome with her partner. Enjoying a successful career and what she described as a happy life, she ended up seeking an abortion six years ago at the city’s San Camillo hospital after facing an unwanted pregnancy.

While she did not regret her choice, Mariella — who asked to be introduced with a pseudonym out of concerns for her safety — recounted her experience with a mixture of frustration and indignation.

“You have a one-and-a-half hour queue at 5 am,” she told Euronews, “and the 30 to 45 women there were left in the cold without being welcomed in any shape or form. You’re basically made to feel like you’re worthless.”

“After that, you are subjected to embarrassing questionnaires on your personal and family life,” she added.

“The interview with the psychologist veers into the absurd, especially in moments when you’re asked about your personal relationship with your own mother.”

Mariella is one of the roughly 60-70,000 women who choose to get an abortion in Italy every year.

And while her experience was unpleasant, she said, she is far from being the only Italian woman to encounter various social or even legal obstacles in trying to obtain the procedure.

“The one-week waiting period is nonsensical,” she added. “Many women end up falling out of the maximum timeframe for an abortion and then have to find other solutions to obtain one.”

Mariella herself concurred with the arguments put forward by pro-abortion campaigners in Italy, who see such struggles as rooted within wider, structural complexities.

“I know of stories of women who can’t access abortions [in smaller regions in Italy] who then end up having to pay €5,000 to get one privately,” she said.
‘We don’t want to go back to the Middle Ages’

In a country marked by a long-standing and deeply complex relationship toward abortion, matters could be muddied even further after recent political developments.

Snap elections were held on 25 September, following Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s resignation and the collapse of his big-tent coalition government, leading to a surprising shift in power.

Giorgia Meloni's right-wing bloc — a broad church encompassing her nationalist Brothers of Italy or Fratelli d'Italia, Matteo Salvini’s populist Lega Nord, and former PM Silvio Berlusconi’s more moderate Forza Italia — emerged triumphant with 43.8% of the vote, and is prepping itself to form a new government.

The right-wing Brothers of Italy party leader Giorgia Meloni attends the Italian state tv show "Porta a Porta" in Rome, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020

Credit: AP

Meloni may have confirmed her respect for Law #194, but the political tradition to which she belongs is fiercely opposed to abortion.

“Yes to the culture of life! No to the promotion of death,” Meloni yelled from the podium of a pan-European far-right rally in Marbella in neighbouring Spain in July.

The Brothers of Italy manifesto for this year's elections did not explicitly decry abortion, but it did state that it wanted to advocate its "prevention".

“It’s difficult to imagine a frontal attack against abortion,” Lalli noted. “But you don’t need a frontal attack to make it inaccessible, to make it more complicated.”

In regions where right-wing politicians are in power, women’s access to different kinds of reproductive healthcare and abortion services is already limited.

In Umbria and Le Marche, which are respectively governed by Lega and Brothers of Italy, women are restricted in their ability to obtain medically-induced abortions.

To make matters even more alarming for Italian pro-abortion supporters, the revocation of Roe v Wade in the US has seemed to empower conservatives’ fight against abortion rights.

“The ripping-up of Roe shows us that no sentence or law, however long-lasting and ‘politically correct’ is untouchable, as many would have us believe,” noted anti-abortion spokesperson Coghe. “Now, other Western states, primarily Italy, can take a cue.”

Crosses bearing tags with names are seen a graveyard of the Flaminio Cemetery in Rome in October 2020

AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

While the effects of Roe’s overturning may not necessarily impact Italian legislation, it could make the overall social climate — where women are often shamed and denigrated for choosing to terminate a pregnancy — even more fraught.

In the Italian capital itself, the discovery of a makeshift “foetal graveyard” back in 2020 prompted major outrage.

“The right to abortion is constitutionally protected, but there are other ways of denying this right,” Lalli added. “The current scenario is very complex and fragile. And it’s not just a question of the [political] right. No one in this country has had this issue to heart.”

For certain gynaecologists like Scassellati, maintaining the status quo is not enough, which is why an upcoming Meloni-led government is so concerning.

“We need to insist on a medical curriculum that teaches reproductive healthcare, and we need to reform Law #194,” she stated. “We need to bring the limit up to 14 weeks.”

“We just don’t want the right in this country,” Scassellati concluded. “We can’t go back to the Middle Ages.”

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Giorgia Meloni: Far-right leader criticised for posting video of woman's rape

'My whole world collapsed': Russians on fleeing home after Putin's speech

Italy election: In Rome's progressive neighbourhood, Meloni's victory causes anger and concern

'Fears' for Italy's LGBT community after far-right win

Tue, September 27, 2022

STORY: Italy's LGBT community has "very real fears," after a conservative bloc dominated by the far-right won the country's general election.

That's according to leading gay rights campaigner and political candidate for the Gay Party, Fabrizio Marrazzo.

He's worried about a possible erosion of civil rights under the new administration.

"We have big concerns for new generations, because they are creating an ideological battle due also to the deep economic crisis, because of energy and other reasons. So hate was used as a tool against a given community also in many other instances in the past which we hope won’t happen again."

The nationalist Brothers of Italy group, led by Giorgia Meloni, emerged as the largest party in the September 25 ballot.

She will lead the most right-wing government in Rome since World War Two.

As part of a conservative coalition, Meloni is allied with the League - another far-right force led by Matteo Salvini...

As well as the mainstream conservative Forza Italia of former premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Marrazzo fears that the bloc's conservative views may lead to discrimination for the LGBT community.

"If there’s no action in conjunction with schools, social services, help centres risk failing to create synergy, because you can offer support to young people but if in the school or the place of work where the act of discrimination happens there’s no law to intervene, we can only give moral and psychological support to the people affected. Therefore, there can’t be a social change. This means not only to go backwards, but also that the situation would get worse and we are very scared about that."

There is already some evidence behind Marrazzo's concerns.

Conservative Catholic lobby, Pro Vita & Famiglia, has called on the new government to pick an education minister opposed to "any gender and LGBT ideological colonization in schools."

45-year-old Meloni herself presents as a defender of Christian values and an enemy of what she calls "gender ideology" and the "LGBT lobby."

Explaining her opposition to gay parenting rights, she has said that "unlucky children" who are up for adoption "deserve the best" - meaning a father and a mother.

She has, however, denied suggestions that her outlook would stretch to abolishing existing legislation on abortion rights or same-sex partnerships.

Meloni is not expected to take office before late October, so it is too early to say what her premiership will look like.

But her party's culture spokesman remarked just last week that gay couples "are not legal," later claiming he was referring only to gay couples who adopt.

In terms of public opinion, an Ipsos poll in June showed that 63% of Italians backed marriage rights for gay people, and 59% were in favor of gay adoptions - numbers that have increased in recent years.

COLD WAR 2.0

Nord Stream sabotage mapped: How Putin could have carried out the attack

THIS COULD APPLY TO ANY NATO NATION

Dominic Nicholls
Tue, September 27, 2022

APARENT PROOF OF PUTIN GOING TO BLOW UP 

NORD STREAM

Putin submarine - TASS / Barcroft Media

Three offshore lines of the Nord Stream pipeline system supplying Germany with Russian gas suffered “unprecedented” damage on Monday.

Gas pipe leaks at sea are rare. Three at the same time strongly suggests sabotage. How might that be achieved?

With a depth of only around 70m, covert entry into the Baltic Sea by nuclear submarine is very difficult if not impossible.

Divers can operate at such depths, although the currents may be tricky, and any supporting vessel, be it a submarine or surface vessel, would likely have been spotted, given the density of traffic in the area.

The water column - the mix of fresh and salt water - would also make it difficult for a submarine to maintain the right buoyancy for such a mission. Messing around with divers and explosives in such conditions would be an extremely risky venture.

Russian submarines are very well practiced at this sort of thing, though, having honed their skills over decades "investigating" the undersea internet cables running across the north Atlantic.

The old Soviet Union’s submarine force was highly regarded by Western naval chiefs for its ability to operate specially designed seabed engineering assets during the Cold War.

For all Moscow’s military humiliation in Ukraine, today’s Russian submarine fleet has been modernised and is considered a potent force once more.

That is one of the reasons Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, has ordered naval chiefs to conduct a review to see whether Britain has the right balance of surface and sub-surface capabilities.

The Russian spy submarine Belgorod, a modified OSCAR III-class boat operated by GUGI (the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research), is thought capable of interfering with undersea communications. If cables, why not also pipelines?

It is questionable though, whether Putin would risk using his submarine force on a job like this, with all the diplomatic ramifications if it went wrong.

So, autonomous underwater vehicles? Submarine drones carrying explosives?

Possible, but they would have had to come from a host ship somewhere and, as stated above, the area is quite shallow and well traversed; somebody would have seen something. Plus, of course, the possibility of an underwater drone dropping an explosive charge in the wrong place would have been ever attendant.

A mystery unravelled

So, a (not so) deep-sea mystery, never to be solved? Perhaps not.

If we assume a bomb of some sort was used, the explosive charge would not have had to be very large - pipes are not armoured, after all, and are just a few centimetres thick. Similarly, the explosion would not have had to be directly on top of the pipe; blasts are magnified underwater and for the same amount of charge, a much bigger effect can be achieved below the waves than on the beach.

Modern sea mines come in many forms. Some can be deployed to an area and pre-programmed with the acoustic signature of potential targets.

Picture a torpedo-shaped mine "floating" nose up, listening to the propellers of ships passing overhead.

One shaft and seven blades? That’s a Destroyer; not interested, thinks the mine. Two shafts each with seven blades? That’s an aircraft carrier, time to go bang.

The benefit of pre-placing such mines is that the operation can be carried out when the world’s attention is elsewhere and possibly months before any detonation might be called for.

Similarly, if the waters were too choppy, literally or diplomatically, when the mission to place the explosives was planned, the team could just come back a week later.

A device small enough to punch a hole in a thin metal pipe need not be that big. It could have been dropped months ago by a Russian Kilo-class hunter-killer submarine (risky), a St Petersburg-registered fishing vessel (suspicious) or a passing oligarch's yacht.

Nord Stream 2 - Stefan Sauer

Three small devices, 70m under the water, close to the pipelines could have been left months ago, perhaps when the world was looking at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant or the atrocities uncovered in Bucha. Perhaps the mission crept under our attention as we watched the Winter Olympics in China?

They may have been sitting there for months, listening for the pre-programmed acoustic signature of a "friendly" vessel transiting close by (but far enough from any blast).

Perhaps they were listening for a signal transmitted by an electronic device dropped from an aircraft passing overhead?

The Russian navy is known to take great interest in undersea infrastructure, usually for the purposes of tapping internet cables. It is highly likely Western navies visit the same areas afterwards, to see if any "surprises" have been left behind.

Was this location chosen as the "fault line" between two nations? Who should have been responsible for checking the Nord Stream pipes for any unwanted barnacles?

Has the Russian undersea fleet shown, once again, what a capable and potent force it is?

YA THINK

Nord Stream: Russian gas pipe leaks could have an 'unprecedented' environmental impact

Euronews - Yesterday 

Gas leak at Nord Stream 2 as seen from the Danish F-16 interceptor on Bornholm, Denmark, 27 September 2022.© Danish Defence Command/Forsvaret Ritzau Scanpix via REUTERS

Unexplained leaks in two Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea are spewing out greenhouse gas emissions.

It is feared that the disruption could cause a climate calamity - although to what extent is still unclear.

Neither pipeline was in operation, but both contained natural gas. This is largely composed of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the second biggest cause of climate change after CO2.

"There are a number of uncertainties, but if these pipelines fail, the impact to the climate will be disastrous and could even be unprecedented," says atmospheric chemist David McCabe, senior scientist at the non-profit Clean Air Task Force.

Over a 20-year timeframe, methane has more than 80 times the planet-warming potency of carbon dioxide, and roughly 30 times its potency over 100 years. Scientists say sharp cuts in methane emissions over the next few years will be a vital lever in curbing climate change.
Why is it hard to quantify the climate impact of the Nord Stream leaks?

McCabe and other emissions experts say it is not yet possible to assess the size of the leak. This is due to uncertainties around factors such as the temperature of the gas in the pipeline, how fast it is leaking, and how much gas would be absorbed by microbes in the water before reaching the surface.

But since both Nord Stream pipelines contained mostly methane, "the potential for a massive and highly damaging emission event is very worrisome", says McCabe.

Jasmin Cooper, a research associate at Imperial College London's Sustainable Gas Institute, agrees it will be difficult to quantify exactly how much gas is reaching the atmosphere - especially given scarce existing data on leaks from subsea pipelines.

France becomes first European country to ban fossil fuel ads - but does the new law go far enough?

Six months on, how is Russia's invasion of Ukraine impacting Europe's climate progress?

"Gazprom will probably have an estimate based on gas throughputs, but in terms of how much gas/methane is emitted into the atmosphere... they need to send out a team now to measure and monitor," she says, referring to the state-owned Russian gas firm.
How much methane could be leaking from the Nord Stream gas pipelines?

A "conservative estimate" based on available data suggests the leaks together were releasing more than 500 metric tons of methane per hour when first breached, with the pressure and flow rate decreasing over time, says Jean-Francois Gauthier, vice president of measurements at the commercial methane-measuring satellite firm GHGSat.

By comparison, the huge Aliso Canyon gas leak in the United States in 2016 spewed around 50 tons of methane per hour at its peak. "So this would be an order of magnitude more," Gauthier adds.

Related video: Nord Stream gas leaks raise climate fears

Duration 11:43

View on Watch

A spokesperson for Nord Stream 2 - one of the leaking pipelines, which never started operating and was shelved by Germany just before Russia invaded Ukraine - said this week the system held 300 million cubic metres of gas.

Releasing that amount in entirety to the atmosphere would result in around 200,000 tonnes of methane emissions, says chemical engineer Paul Balcombe at London's Queen Mary University.

German non-profit Deutsche Umwelthilfe gave a similar estimate of the pipeline's potential emissions.
What impact do methane leaks have on global warming?

That amount of methane would have about the same global warming potential over a 100-year timeframe as about 6 million tons of carbon dioxide, according to calculations based on IPCC conversion factors.

That's roughly on par with the amount of CO2 emitted in an entire year by mid-sized cities such as Havana or Helsinki.

The amount of gas leaking from the Nord Stream 1 pipeline system is less clear, with a pipeline spokesperson declining to say how much was left in the system when it was taken offline for maintenance a few weeks ago.

Stefano Grassi, head of the European Union energy commissioner's cabinet, said on Tuesday that the leaks risked becoming "a climate and ecological disaster".

"We are in contact with [EU member states] to look into what happened and find the fastest way to stop leaks and avoid worse damage," Grassi said in a tweet.

EU nations were among more than 100 countries, including the United States, Brazil, Pakistan and Mexico, that pledged last year to slash their combined methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, in a bid to help stave off disastrous levels of climate change.
How will the Nord Stream gas pipe leaks impact marine life?

While oil spills can immediately affect and ultimately kill wildlife, authorities say the gas pipeline leaks pose a limited threat to the surrounding plant and animal life.

The German environment ministry said the leaks would not pose a significant threat to marine life, but Greenpeace raised concerns on Tuesday that fish may get caught in plumes of gas, which could interfere with their breathing.

Only 1% of the high seas are safeguarded: Can the UN's ocean treaty finally change that?

Greenpeace is using boulders in the fight against bottom trawlers - but why?

Denmark's Energy Agency said it is too early to say who will investigate the Nord Stream 2 leak, and no-one has been to look at the pipeline yet.

It added the leaks will likely continue for several days and perhaps even a week.
What caused the Nord Stream gas leaks?

Although the cause of the Nord Stream gas leaks is still unclear, recent reports from Brussels suggest signs of "sabotage" and "deliberate" action.

The first leak was discovered on Nord Stream 2 on Monday evening around the Danish island of Bornholm. Hours later, two leaks were detected on separate sections of Nord Stream 1, reaching both the Danish and Swedish economic zones of the Baltic Sea.

The infrastructure is at the centre of geopolitical tensions between the EU and Russia, which has been accused of manipulating gas supplies in retaliation for Western sanctions.

Seismologists recorded what they think were explosions before gas began pouring out of two Russia-to-Germany pipelines under the Baltic Sea.