Italian-American Emerges as New Star of Italy's Left-wing




Sunday, 02 February 2020 

BOLOGNA, Italy (AP) — A dual U.S.-Italian citizen who cut her political organizing teeth on two Barack Obama campaigns is emerging as the latest rising star in Italian politics.

Inside a week, 35-year-old Elly Schlein, a former European lawmaker who grew up in Switzerland, has gone from relative obscurity as a political operative to the face of Italy's new leftist forces.

That political front — embodied also by t he new left-wing Sardines grassroots protest movement — thwarted right-wing populist Matteo Salvini’s attempt to unseat the center-left regional government in its historic stronghold of Emilia-Romagna. That loss in the Jan. 26 regional vote also delayed Salvini's ambition to re-take power in Italy's national government.

Schlein’s visibility skyrocketed just days before the election when a video went viral of her confronting Salvini — Italy’s former firebrand interior minister — over his failure to show up for 22 negotiating sessions on migration policy when they both represented Italy as European lawmakers. He made her wait 80 seconds for a response while he looked at his phone, then said that he was present when it counted.


With just three months of campaigning for a place on Emilia-Romagna's regional council, Schlein won the most write-in votes in the region's electoral history. Her party, Emilia-Romagna Courageous, boosted the center-left Democratic Party incumbent’s 51% majority support by nearly 4%.

The stunning result has made Schlein’s political future the subject of national speculation.

She has been compared to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, for her unexpected rise and activist-outsider status. Strangers now stop Schlein to shake her hand as she walks through Bologna, the northern Italian city where she has lived for the past 15 years, including five years shuttling to and from Brussels as a European lawmaker.

During a recent interview walking through Bologna’s famed porticoes, she was stopped multiple times. One passer-by praised her as "a marvel" and declared her the next leader of the Italy’s left. Another lobbied her to stop plans to route a tram through the city center — and then acknowledged she hadn’t gotten his vote because he hadn’t heard of her, just four days previously.

‘’Something has changed,’’ Schlein acknowledged.

Her success could give her leverage to ask for a key role in regional politics. It also has forced the head of the Democratic Party, Nicola Zingaretti, to field questions about a possible role for Schlein in the party, which she left in 2015 as part of an internal schism.

‘’For now, I am clearly happy where I am,’’ Schlein said. ‘’I am watching with interest moves inside the Democratic Party. I am looking with interest and with respect for their autonomy moves within the Sardines. I believe that the whole progressive, ecological area of the left needs to be reconstructed.’’

Schlein believes her experience volunteering on two Obama campaigns boosted her organizational skills, namely bringing together ‘’diverse worlds" across generations and interests and learning to ask not just for votes but for political action.

Schlein’s goal is to help create a “political home” for the many in Italy who feel disaffected as liberal, left-wing forces have splintered into more than half a dozen parties, including the Democratic Party, with similar ideals but divided by political personalities. She also aims to unite popular movements that are growing in strength in Italian piazzas, including the Fridays for Future environmental protests, movements to welcome foreigners and reinvigorated pro-LGBT and union demonstrations.


But Schlein is also looking beyond Italy’s borders, with a larger goal of creating a united left that can tackle the climate emergency, migration and economic inequalities and counter the far-right model embodied by Salvini and far-right forces in France, Hungary, Britain and the United States.

“They reinforce each other with the same rhetoric of hatred and of walls, of intolerance that they carry to extremes,’’ she said. "But where are we? Where is the international progressive and ecological front that connects battles that we are already waging?’’

Schlein put together her civic list ‘’Emilia-Romagna-Courageous’’ in November, at the same moment that the Sardines launched their campaign in Bologna against Salvini’s anti-foreigner, anti-institutional rhetoric. The timing was coincidental, and their projects remain separate even if they shared a vision to counter the decisive rhetoric coming from Salvini, who campaigned hard for his populist League candidate in the region.


The Sardines rose to unexpected success, gathering 6,000 people in Bologna during their first protest in November, and reaching some 40,000 just before the election. Their activism is credited with sharply boosting turnout in the regional election, according to the SWG polling organization.

Yet the Sardines still remain outside politics, so for now it's not clear how their energy can be channeled into future Italian elections, including six regional votes this spring. They plan to meet in Naples in March to chart a way forward.

Schlein’s family history embodies the European experience of the last century, which she says informs her politics.

One paternal grandfather emigrated from Lviv, in present-day Ukraine, to the United States before World War II, and lost the rest of his family who stayed behind in the Holocaust. A maternal grandfather in Italy suffered insults as a lawyer defending Jews under Fascist rule.

‘’I feel like a citizen of the world, a citizen of Europe. I was born in Switzerland. I am American, but I have never lived in the United States. I am culturally Italian. But these incomplete origins that overlap have formed me in a very profound way,’’ Schlein said. ‘’They have surely informed my belief in a European federalism. I am convinced that we need true European integration to respond to new challenges.’’


© Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

Journalist injured as press covering Ramallah protests BARRAGED by Israeli tear gas canisters (VIDEO)

1 Feb, 2020 16:22 / Updated 4 hours ago

A group of journalists reporting from the scene of clashes between Palestinian protests and Israeli soldiers came under fire from the Israeli side, which apparently targeted them with a barrage of tear gas canisters.

The incident happened amid the so-called ‘days of rage’ — a series of protests against Donald Trump’s proposal to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. One of the demonstrations against the plan was held on Saturday outside of Ramallah, near the city of Al-Bireh in the West Bank.

The confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers was quite intensive. The demonstrators pelted the Israeli side with stones and burned tires, as the soldiers fired tear gas grenades. At one moment, a barrage of gas canisters landed right next to where a group of journalists covering the event stood, sending them fleeing and scurrying for gas masks.

Journalist injured as press covering #Ramallah protests barraged by #Israeli#TearGas canistersMORE: https://t.co/E8oHz4veMVpic.twitter.com/ZUhUSRwacO— RT (@RT_com) February 1, 2020

“The soldiers deploy a large number of tear gas grenades in one go, firing them from vehicles equipped with launchers,” RT Arabic correspondent Yafa Staiti reported. “The grenades land close to each other. And the gas is really strong. It knocks your breath out.”

Footage of the incident shows a group of people carrying a man from where the clouds of smoke seemed denser. The man was an Al Jazeera cameraman, who was reportedly injured in the altercation.

The “Deal of the Century” proposed by US President Donald Trump this week would see the creation of a Palestinian state in the form of several enclaves within Israeli territory and with a capital outside of East Jerusalem. The proposal was rejected by the Palestinian side, which was not involved in formulating it and which sees it as an attempt to legitimize Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

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THE STORY OF 2019: PROTESTS IN EVERY CORNER OF THE GLOBE2010-2020 THE DECADE OF MASS PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY

By Robin Wright December 30, 2019

Widespread demonstrations in 2019—including a protest in Santiago, Chile—speak to a broader need for a new social contract between citizens and state power.Photograph by Alberto Valdes / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

When historians look back at 2019, the story of the year will not be the turmoil surrounding Donald Trump. It will instead be the tsunami of protests that swept across six continents and engulfed both liberal democracies and ruthless autocracies. Throughout the year, movements have emerged overnight, out of nowhere, unleashing public fury on a global scale—from Paris and La Paz to Prague and Port-au-Prince, Beirut to Bogota and Berlin, Catalonia to Cairo, and in Hong Kong, Harare, Santiago, Sydney, Seoul, Quito, Jakarta, Tehran, Algiers, Baghdad, Budapest, London, New Delhi, Manila, and even Moscow. Taken together, the protests reflect unprecedented political mobilization. The global consequences dwarf the turmoil of the Trump year and his rippling impact beyond America’s borders.


“People in more countries are using people power than any time in recorded history. Nonviolent mass movements are the primary challenges to governments today,” Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard, told me. “This represents a pronounced shift in the global landscape of dissent.”

Popular protests have long been part of the human story in the modern era: the Protestant upheaval (so named for its protests), in the sixteenth century; the French Revolution and the Boston Tea Party, in the eighteenth century; and the uprisings that brought down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet empire, in the twentieth, to name just a few. They have always come in waves. One of the most famous waves was in 1968, a year of social activism that included antiwar demonstrations in the United States, workers’ strikes in France, the Prague Spring’s challenge to communism in Eastern Europe, and student protests in Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Britain, Germany, Italy, Pakistan and Poland. “At a time when nations and cultures were still separate and very different . . . there occurred a spontaneous combustion of rebellious spirits around the world,” Mark Kurlansky writes in “1968: The Year That Rocked the World.” “There has never been a year like 1968, and it is unlikely there will ever be one again,” he predicts.

Until now. Civil resistance in 2019 brought down leaders—some democratically elected, others dictators long in power—in Algeria, Bolivia, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan. Movements still threaten regimes in Ecuador, Egypt, Georgia, Haiti, Peru, Poland, Russia, and Zimbabwe. They forced governments—through peaceful means—to reverse course on controversial policies in China, Chile, and France, countries with starkly different political systems, economies, and cultures.

The difference today, Chenoweth said, is that in 1968 there was still a widespread belief that real power flowed from the barrel of a gun. “In our time, that belief is crumbling. There is a falling away from the consensus that you need armed struggle” to change political systems, and an increasing sense that violent protest leads to a disproportionate loss of life. “People are not picking up guns as they did in earlier eras. They’re instead looking to civil resistance to assert their claims and seek transformation,” she said. “It’s what binds the different movements of our time.”
 

Many of the catalysts in 2019’s protests were originally small. In Lebanon, a tax on WhatsApp usage, in October, spawned weeks of anti-government protests in Beirut and across the country.Photograph by Sam Tarling / Corbis / Getty

The triggers have been as diverse as the movements they spawned. Many of the catalysts in 2019 were originally small, even unlikely, and the initial demands modest. In Sudan, the spark was the price of bread, in January; in India, the price of onions, in October; in Brazil, it was a cutback in funding for school textbooks, in August; in Lebanon, a tax on WhatsApp usage, in October; in Chile, a hike in subway fares, in October; and in Iran, a four-cent increase on a litre of gas, in November. But virtually all protests worldwide quickly escalated, and began issuing ultimatums for their governments to embrace sweeping changes—or to move aside.

The numbers have been blinding and the energy and endurance of the protesters staggering. An estimated three million Algerians—almost ten per cent of the population—turned out in the country, in February, to demand an end to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s twenty-year rule. He resigned in April. The demands of the protesters then grew to include the ouster of “the system,” which in Algeria includes high-level military officers, politicians, and well-connected or corrupt businesspeople. Algeria elected a new president this month, but protesters are still on the streets, because the man elected, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, was a crony of Bouteflika’s.

In June, millions of protesters in tiny Hong Kong (population 7.4 million) demanded that the government—and its backers in Beijing—withdraw a controversial plan that would allow residents to be extradited for trial in China. It was the biggest challenge to Asia’s behemoth (population 1.4 billion) in three decades. In September, the Hong Kong protesters prevailed—and then daringly went on to demand universal suffrage and an investigation of police violence. In November, the pro-democracy camp of the protesters swept local elections in a record turnout. And the protests are now headed into their seventh month.

“It’s simplistic to think of these movements simply as protests,” Carne Ross, the author of “The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century,” told me. When that kind of energy is mustered, he said, it’s difficult for governments to resist unless they use repression.

Paolo Gerbaudo, a political sociologist at King’s College London and the author of “The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest,” said the demonstrations may signal an even greater crisis in the future. “These protests are popular insurgencies. They reflect the failure of nation-states in the global era. They’re not a passing crisis that can be remedied through the regular levers of the state,” he said.“These movements may be the early symptoms of a new global crisis. They are like seismographs. They are like dials that announce things that are coming on the horizon.”

Vastly different protests have borne common slogans and symbols. Hong Kong protesters adopted a phrase from the late martial artist Bruce Lee’s admonition to “Be formless, shapeless, like water,” in order to be impossible to suppress. The “Be Water” slogan was adopted in Catalonia and by student protesters in Chile, whose initial tactic was to jump subway turnstiles to protest fare prices. Since the unrest erupted in France, the term “yellow vest”—apparel used in emergencies or associated with working-class industries—has become synonymous with public demonstrations. Diverse protests have also adopted common tactics—organizing with social-media technology and wearing masks to hide identities—that have complicated the ability of governments to contain them. Together, the protests of 2019 have produced an emerging global political culture.

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER

Why Hong Kong’s Protests Exploded


Protest movements will almost certainly be a feature of 2020 as well. “Protests are becoming part of ordinary political engagement,” Richard Youngs, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “Civic Activism Unleashed: New Hope or False Dawn for Democracy?,” told me. “The range of protests is quite staggering if you think about what’s happening across Latin America, in several African countries, in Eastern Europe, in both poor and wealthy Asian nations and even in the most difficult of circumstances in Russia. It’s remarkable. There’s not a political model that seems to be doing well or that is inoculated from the kind of uprisings the world is witnessing.”

The growing array of protests has coincided with a notable decline in voter turnout around the world, despite an increase in the number of voters and the number of countries with elections, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. For five decades, between the nineteen-forties and nineteen-eighties, the average global turnout was stable: at least seventy-six per cent. By 2015, it had dropped to sixty-six per cent. The data suggests less confidence that elections make much difference, and that citizens are instead voting with their feet, on the streets.

Many of the protests of 2019 have been loose-knit and leaderless, such as the demonstrations against Chinese overreach in Hong Kong, which are now heading into their seventh month.Photograph by Anthony Kwan / Getty

“What ties Hong Kong and Lebanon and Iraq with what we’re seeing in Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador is the notion that political establishments have seized too much power,” David Gordon, a former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, who now works at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told me. “There’s a common discontent and a common disillusionment and a common sense among protesters that they deserve more—and that the political establishment is to blame.”

Whatever the original flash points or agendas of the individual protests, taken together, they speak to a broader need for a new social contract between citizens and state power that goes beyond traditional political reforms, economic adjustments, or shifts in who sits at the top, Youngs said. In 1989, another year notable for unrest in China, Eastern Europe, and southern Africa, protests were regionally centered. “Today there is something structural and global that transcends the geo-political factors that triggered unrest in Europe in 1989,” he said. Protesters are challenging the political order not only of the twenty-first century but of the modern era.

The protests of 2019 have also altered the tactics, tools, and structure of civil resistance. Many have been loose-knit and leaderless and have drawn in people who consider themselves to be neither political nor civil-society activists. “They all represent a crisis of agency—of people who feel unrepresented,” Ross said. “For that reason, philosophically, they tend to not be top-down movements. If people want their own voice, they’re not happy if someone stands up and says they represent you. ‘We represent ourselves’ is a common feature of these protests.”

Technology has accelerated the organization and efficiency of protesting in 2019. In 1968, when sit-ins swept my campus at the University of Michigan, plans for protests were spread on landline telephones, through leaflets, or by word of mouth. In 1989, protesters had the fax. In 2011, as uprisings swept the Middle East, protesters had cell phones and social media, notably Twitter and Facebook. By 2019, encrypted apps, such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and AirDrop, offered a more secure means of communicating, a degree of anonymity, and less need for a single leader to mobilize. “There may be a global contagion due to social media. Seeing protests in other places motivates people to be willing to go to the streets in their own countries,” Gordon said.

To be enduring, movements today need to succeed in four factors, Chenoweth said. They need large and diverse participation. They need to create cracks in their opponents’ pillars of support, whether in business, politics, or the military. They need to employ a diverse set of tactics, including strikes, boycotts, or other forms of noncoöperation with the state. And they need to maintain discipline when government pressure tries to control or repress them. Because many of the movements today are leaderless, they find it harder to maintain control or unity.

Statistically, protests in the twentieth century that had at least a thousand people participating had a fifty per cent success rate—twice as high as violent campaigns, Chenoweth said. Between 2000 and 2010, between sixty and seventy per cent of nonviolent campaigns were successful. From 2010 to 2019, the success rate declined to thirty per cent—but they were still far more successful than campaigns using guns, which were successful only ten per cent of the time. “One of the ironies is that, even as their absolute success has declined, the relative success of nonviolent resistance has increased,” Chenoweth told me. “The rate of success used to be two to one over armed conflict. Now it’s three to one.”

Protest movements have serious limits, however. “Movements are called movements because they are not static and therefore can’t last,” Gerbaudo said. “They tend to come in waves. They give voice to concerns that are not in the public sphere. Once they have fulfilled the function, they tend to disperse.” Leaderless movements are not designed to govern, but they often generate momentum among politicians who take up or exploit their causes. “The rise of Bernie Sanders as a candidate would have been unthinkable without Occupy Wall Street,” Gerbaudo said.

Yet popular movements may have staying power well into the next decade and even beyond, Ross said, because of three accelerating stresses on every society: starker signs of environmental degradation that will increasingly impact daily life, worsening economic conditions and inequality generated by greedy globalization, and more mass migrations. And they can overlap. “If Europe has faced such a powerful rise of the extreme right since 2015, over a few thousand Syrian refugees reaching its shore, how are societies going to handle millions of climate refugees who will knock on the door of the West?” Gerbaudo said.

Many Americans, distracted by the antics of their President, have paid little attention to the turmoil beyond their borders. Ignoring them comes at a perilous cost. The protests of 2019 have been epochal, the fury real, and the underlying message profound for the future.

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Robin Wright has been a contributing writer to The New Yorker since 1988. She is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”

Hill.TV's Saagar Enjeti: GOP attacks against Sanders would fail in general election

Hill.TV host Saagar Enjeti warned Thursday that Republican attacks against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won’t work if the Democratic primary candidate goes on to take on President Trump in November's general election.

“Half of them think that Sanders will be easy to beat and yelling ‘socialism sucks’ will do the trick,” Enjeti said. “The smarter ones — including Trump himself — know that he’s going to be a lot more formidable.”

“Trump has increasingly mentioned Bernie Sanders on the campaign trial and has a brewing war with his advisors as to how to deal with the Vermont senator,” he said,

Click on video to watch the Enjeti’s full remarks

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A progressive group is urging supporters of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to back the other candidate in the Iowa caucuses on Monday should their preferred candidate not reach the required threshold to be counted.

THEY CAN DO THAT BY MAKING EACH OTHER THEIR SECOND CHOICE FOLLOWED BY THIRD AND FOURTH ETC. AS IT IS A PREFERENTIAL BALLOT 

Charles Chamberlain, chairman of Democracy for America (DFA), which has voiced support for both Sanders and Warren in the 2020 race, emphasized that Democrats should be united behind the progressive candidates heading into the caucuses.

“What we’re saying is if you’re a supporter of a candidate who gets less than 15 percent, then it’s absolutely critical that you don’t go home — make sure you move to one of the top two progressives, so that we make sure that a progressive wins the caucus," he said.

During the first round of the caucus, caucus goers walk around and stand in different areas indicating their support for a candidate. Candidates who fail to secure 15 percent of the total voters are removed and their supporters can then back another contender. 

“Making sure that we’re supportive of all of the progressives that are in this race and that we’re not attacking our own is really important because President Sanders or President Warren’s going to need Sen. Sanders or Sen. Warren to make sure to actually pass their agenda and that’s the best situation we could be in,” Chamberlain said.

DFA was among a number of progressive groups who signed a three-part unity pledge vowing to focus their fight on the “corporate wing” of the Democratic Party, ensure that a progressive candidate wins the party's presidential nomination and that they'd join forces to make sure the candidate they back defeats President Trump.

The move came after Sanders and Warren became embroiled in a bitter dispute earlier this month.

Though the two progressives had agreed not to attack one another, that comity broke down after reports that Sanders’s campaign was instructing volunteers to question whether Warren was electable.

Warren later alleged that Sanders told her in a private meeting in 2018 that a woman could not win the White House. Sanders, meanwhile, has denied ever making such a claim.

The spat culminated in an exchange following the Iowa debate. Warren confronted Sanders on the debate stage, and accused him of calling her a “liar on national TV.”

It is unclear whether the two candidates have spoken since, though Sanders’s campaign co-chair Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) came to Warren’s defense amid the public fallout and joined calls for unity.

“There are ups and downs in campaigns, but I have tremendous admiration and respect for Sen. Warren,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Hill.TV, noting Warren’s record on anti-corruption and founding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Both progressive heavyweights have polled near the top of the Democratic field for most of the primary race, though Warren appears to have lost some momentum recently in state and national polls while Sanders has seen a surge going into the Iowa caucuses.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Sunday showed Sanders with 25 percent support followed by former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 18 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden at 17 percent and Warren at 15 percent.

However, other Iowa polls show Biden holding a narrow lead. According to a poll by Park Street Strategies, the former vice president garners 20 percent support and is trailed by Sanders with 18 percent. Warren and Buttigieg were tied at 17 percent each.

—Tess Bonn

BAM! TAKE THAT 

The Virginia House of Delegates passed seven Democratic gun reform laws 10 days after large protests at the state capital over the proposed measures.

The bills include regulations implementing universal background checks and “red flag” legislation allowing officials to take guns from those determined to be dangerous to themselves or others.

The other regulations involve requirements to report lost and stolen firearms, a limit of one handgun that can be bought per month, rules to ensure those under protective orders cannot own a gun, child access prevention and legislation giving local officials the authority to determine how firearms are regulated in public spaces.

“Today we answer the majority of Virginians who called for gun violence prevention legislation at the polls last November,” state House Majority Leader Charniele Herring (D) said in a statement. “Our goal is to save lives and promote responsible gun ownership in the Commonwealth. Public safety is our number one concern.”

The legislation will now move to the Virginia Senate for consideration. The state’s upper chamber has already passed four gun reform bills, including red flag and mandatory background checks bills.

The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence celebrated that the bills' passage “put us one step closer” to Gov. Ralph Northam's (D) signature.

“These are sound public policies that do not violate individual rights and will make our communities safer,” Brady Campaign President Kris Brown said in a statement. 

Virginia Democrats ran on a pro-gun control agenda last year and captured united control of the state government for the first time in more than two decades.

The nation had its eyes on Virginia when pro-gun activists took to Richmond earlier this month to protest the reform bills, prompting Northam to declare a state of emergency.

At least 91 out of 95 Virginia counties, in addition to other localities, have now declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” where local officials say they will not enforce gun restriction laws.

Gun Owners of America condemned the bills’ passage, saying the legislature is “ignoring the voice of the people on gun control.”

“Gun-grabbing Democrats in Virginia seem to be headed for that same electoral cliff, because voters will ‘remember in November,’ ” group President Erich Pratt said in a statement.

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Executed by Hitlers Army Noor Khan’s Last Word : Liberte (Azadi)!

A Gandhian in Europe

MEHRU JAFFER | 30 JANUARY, 2020 

The story of Noor Inayat Khan is popular on European television to this day. The film was screened again this winter about an Indian Muslim woman who sacrificed herself so that countless European lives could survive the terror unleashed on the continent by Adolf Hitler throughout the 1930s.

Noor’s last word before her execution by the German military was azadi!

Noor had imbibed sufi values from her musician father Inayat Khan, and her American mother. Inayat Khan was founder of a sufi order in 1910. He was an Islamic mystic and a lover of peace. He was a follower of Gandhi and practiced non violence. He valued human life and enjoyed what is common to all cultures. He talked to Noor about Buddhists and their attempts to practice non-violence and compassion.

He admired Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Pashtun and an ally of Gandhi. Since 1912 Khan had talked about gaining independence from the British by participating in a non-violent movement called Khudai Khidmatgar, or the servants of god.

Inayat Khan died in 1927 but Noor must have known how hurt her father would be to see Hitler spew such hatred for other human beings. The mass murder of human beings at the orders of Hitler would have pained him no end.

The values she had inherited from her family of concern for others, of faith and patience surely inspired Noor to challenge divisive nationalism and ethnic genocide in Europe.

Born in Moscow in 1914, Noor’s family had fled Russia at the break of the first world war. She grew up in Paris and studied music. She wrote books for children, translating 20 Jataka Tales from the voluminous body of literature about the various births of the Buddha in human as well as animal form. From the life of the Buddha Noor learnt that challenging circumstances give rise to courage and the capacity to love conquers all problems. Her elders taught her that hope and patience have the power to open the way to solutions against impossible odds.

Noor’s world was shattered when Hitler marched his army into France, in 1940. She was 25 years old and her family was forced to flee their home once again. She moved to London and was hurt to see the Germans drop bombs on France. While in England she joined Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive and offered herself as a spy in Hitler occupied France. She worked with French resistance fighters against Hitler’s troops and as a wireless operator she passed on critical information back to Britain. Unfortunately she was betrayed by a colleague and imprisoned in Paris. She was later sent to a concentration camp in Germany where she was killed a year before World War II ended, in September 1945.

As she knelt on the ground, and before she was shot at the back of her head she had shouted, liberte in French or azadi!

This was the last word uttered by the 30 year old Noor before her death on a continent that had looked upon Muslims with suspicion.

Throughout the 19th century it was popularly believed by Europeans that Islam was spread by the sword and that Muslims preferred warring to peaceful co-existence. This impression was formed by groups of Muslims who challenged the invasion of their homeland by European imperial powers in different parts of the world. As far as European colonisers were concerned, the Muslim population behaved like warriors when it came to giving up their homeland. As a cover up of European economic ambitions in the Middle East in contemporary times that reputation of Muslims as warriors, or terrorists is deliberately kept alive.

Islamophobia is fuelled by those who allow irrational hostility, fear and hatred of Muslims to continue. The idea is to divert annoyance with non performing governments to a section of ordinary citizens. Minorities have always been made scapegoats by unimaginative politicians without talent in times of economic and political difficulties.

There are approximately 20 million Muslims living in the European Union today. Vested interests pretend that Muslims are a threat to the European way of life although they have lived in some parts of Europe for generations. It is in the interest of vested interests to keep myths alive that Europe will be Islamised. Any talk of invasion by Islam is enough to whip up xenophobia especially by populist political parties that have tasted success at the ballot box across Europe in recent times.

Most European governments do not see the disturbance they cause by meddling in the affairs of Muslim populated areas of the world. The chaos that they cause is not seen as something that merits local resistance. They look upon all resistance to their interference in local affairs as Muslims being inherently opposed to living peacefully with other human beings.

However lofty traditions inherited from her peace loving family inspired Noor to resist evil that was let loose around her. She could not sit in the comfort of her home and ignore what Hitler’s armed forces did to other human beings.

Therefore she chose to take sides in the last world war without fear of losing her own life.

 

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‘India is Secular and Will Remain that Way, Even After We Have Left this World’

“In the longer run it will hurt everyone’

UTKARSH ROSHAN | 31 JANUARY, 2020

PATNA: Salma Khatoon has never ever gone out for any public rallies or protests, but seeing what has happened on university campuses and the overall scenario in the country, she could no longer sit at home. “Maybe it wasn’t our children who were beaten and brutalised at JNU and Jamia, but they were still somebody’s kids, and we can’t sit and wait for something like that to happen to our kids, that’s why we sit here,” she says.

It’s been more than ten days since the protests started in Sabzibagh. Women from around the locality join the dharna when they can and sit out in the cold. Halma Noori, who has been part of the protest since it began, says “I come from Kankarbagh every day, I cook for the family, take my medicines and come here.”


Many women also take turns within their family to balance household chores with protesting. “In the morning when I come here, my daughter and daughter-in-law look after the home. Then in the evening when I go back, they come here and I look after the home, but we all make sure that we sit in and take part in the protests,” says Noor Jahan, who has also been protesting for the last ten days.

Much is said about how protestors don’t even know what they are protesting for, or have been misinformed. The women at Sabzibagh completely disagree. “We understand what is going on, and we know that it’s not only about Muslims, in the longer run it will hurt everyone,” says Noori.






For Salma Khatoon, who has joined protests for more than a month now, “It’s not about us or any individual, it is about our Constitution, and I’m here to protect it.” She says she has kept her household work and other responsibilities at stake to be part of this. “India is secular, and will remain that way even after we have left this world,” she adds.

Recent allegations that the protestors at Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi are “paid protestors” have also made these women wary of the media. “It shows that what they’ve been doing for years: they think we do the same. Earlier we would feel about news like this that the government was stating the truth, but now we know that’s not the case!” Salma Khatoon exclaims.

Pained by the media’s portrayal, Noori adds “It’s sad to see how the media, instead of understanding our plight, tries to discredit our movement.” She further states that if the protestors are being paid, “they should try to pay us more money and make us stop, we won’t.”

Noor Jahan agrees: “This rumour that’s been going on that we are being paid is absolute rubbish. We sit here all day without proper food, all these assertions by the media anger me.” Their lack of trust in the press could also be gauged by their constant questioning of what I was going to do with their quotes, whether I was going to spin it a certain way.

The demonstrators emphasise that it is out of dire need that they have come out on the streets. Daziya, who was at the protests with her little girl, says, “My girl studies and her schoolwork is also getting affected, but we are still here, because this is more important.”

Noori tells The Citizen she has been suffering from illness and the doctor has advised her to take rest, but says she comes and sits here after taking her medicines. “One day I forgot to take my medicines, so my husband came and gave me them. But it wouldn’t stop me from coming here.”

They say they are not afraid of police action any more, and while their protest has continued without any such incidents, they are prepared to endure anything. “We are ready to take bullets even, kill us once and for all, but don’t do it through a slow and painful process,” says Noori.

“I am not afraid of anyone, and no matter what happens I will continue the protest,” Jahan tells The Citizen.

The women are looking to the courts with hope. “I hope the Supreme Court will give us our justice, because this is not about Hindus and Muslims, it is about our Constitution.” In any case, Noori thinks the struggle of the people will not go in vain: “I hope all the efforts and blessings of all these people will work. I believe the tears of so many mothers will not be treated with injustice.”





  Shaheen Bagh Echoes in Bengaluru, Women on Indefinite Sit-in

 Power Shut Off, Toilets Locked but Women at Lucknow’s Ghanta Ghar Refuse to Budge

‘If Women Come Together Their Non Violence Will Crush the Atom Bomb’: GANDHI 

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‘If Gandhi Were Alive, He Would Be at Every Protest Today’

ANANYA SINGH | 30 JANUARY, 2020

“I think if he (Gandhi) was alive, he would be at every protest site,” Tushar Gandhi, journalist and great-grandson of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi told The Citizen on the eve of January 30, Gandhi’s 72nd death anniversary.

With the citizens of the country up in arms against the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the National Register of Citizens and the alleged first step to implementing both of these, the National Population Register, Tushar Gandhi remembers the iconic leader of the Indian Independence movement, reflecting on what Gandhi would have done were he alive today to witness the nationwide protests.

Gandhi would have actively participated in the ongoing protests, according to Tushar Gandhi. “But if he was alive, I am also confident that we wouldn’t have reached this state… He would have been working to prevent this much much earlier,” he added.

Holding true to his ideals of non-violence, Gandhi “would have endorsed the non violent protests that are happening”, Tushar Gandhi stated. “He would have endorsed the individual statements of displeasure being voiced. He would have created public opinion against the situation and he would also have kept a door open for negotiation,” he told the Citizen. In fact, Gandhi and his ideals remain alive today, having been invoked at protest meetings across the country.

Citizens have taken to the streets to express their opposition to the CAA and NRC. Sloganeering and chanting are widespread, but so are poetry sessions, music, speeches, singing and artwork. Whether it is a 24X7 sit-in protest at Shaheen Bagh or a march in Malegaon, women have come out across the nation to express their dissent and lead the movement along with the youth.

If Gandhi were here today, would he have led the anti-CAA protests himself? Tushar Gandhi believes otherwise, stating that his great-grandfather would have given the responsibility of the protests to the citizens of India instead. “He would have been the iconic leader or the inspiration behind the protests but he would have made the ordinary citizens responsible for protecting the nation as he had done in his Non-Cooperation Movement and in the Quit India Movement,” he told The Citizen.

January 30 is designated as Shahadat Diwas or Martyr’s Day. Today, in remembrance of Gandhi, massive protests have been organised across the country. From Rajghat to Shanthi Van, a “human chain across Delhi” will be built, scheduled to begin at 3:30 pm with the singing of the national anthem taking place at 5:17 pm—the exact time Gandhi was martyred on January 30, 1948 by Nathuram Godse.

Speaking about the significance of the protest, Tushar Gandhi stated, “I don't even care if it’s a mammoth protest or not. Even a few human beings coming together, few concerned citizens coming together and standing up in defiance counts.”

“Maybe it won't be noticed as an event but it will have an impact over all,” he said. “So I think that is the way the protests should develop. I support the idea, I feel that everything possible and everything that an individual is capable of doing from within their comfort zones also is of importance,” Tushar Gandhi added.

Organised by Jan Ekta Jan Adhikar Andolan (JEJAA), with 109 social organisations under its ambit, the human chain will cover Hanuman Mandir, Red Fort, Jama Masjid and Delhi Gate, as per the JEJAA statement released on January 28.

Delhi is not the only city where a human chain will be built. A group of eminent citizens, including Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahadev Vidrohi, Medha Patkar, H.S. Doreswamy, Harsh Mander among others—under the banner ‘We the People of India’—have issued a call for a nation-wide human chain today. The call was endorsed by the Working Group of the All-India Coordination for National Action Against Citizenship Amendment.

The All-India human chains will begin forming from the afternoon and will end at 5:17 pm. The group has also urged lamps or candles to be lit outside every home to commemorate Gandhi’s martyrdom. “The programs will collectively be called Bharat Jodo and the value that will be upheld is “Fraternity” (from the Preamble of the Constitution of India)” reads their press release.

Following a human chain in Jaipur, programs that celebrate “multicultural interfaith music” has been organised at Central Park. Bangalore too, will witness the formation of a “harmony chain” from Town Hall to Mahatma Gandhi Statue after “paying homage to the Mahatma”.

A human chain is scheduled to be formed at Dharna Chowk, Indira Park, Hyderabad at 4 pm. Lawyers in Chennai will venture out on a “Peace and Unity Padayatra” around the Madras High Court this morning, resolving to defend the Indian Constitution.

“Safeguarding the Constitution Rally”, a candle light march organised by Dwarka Collective will also be taken out at 6 pm today from Sector-12, Dwarka “to resist every assault on the constitution including the CAA, NPR and NRC.” A long march is scheduled to take place from Jamia Millia Islamia University to Rajghat. Humari Urdu Mohabbat (HUM) is also organising an evening of “Gandhi in Poetry and Recitation” at Jawahar Bhawan, New Delhi.

Cities and small towns across India will observe a day of marches and cultural programmes in ‘Baapu’s’ memory. “It is very essential in times like this when we feel bereft of iconic leaders, we need to restore the memory of our icons and get inspired by them,” Tushar Gandhi told The Citizen, reflecting upon the protests organised. It becomes even more essential today, “when the idea of India that our founders had envisaged is under such grave threat.”

Kinder Morgan secures all land needed for pipeline, despite protests from Central Texans

SO CALLED CONSERVATIVE SCOTUS JUSTICE; TONY SCALIA APPROVED THE STATIST RULE OF EXPROPRIATION AKA EMINENT DOMAIN WHICH RESULTS IN THIS: 

Kinder Morgan secures all land needed for pipeline, despite protests from Central Texans

By Christian Flores Friday, January 31st 2020

In just a matter of weeks, Kinder Morgan may soon break ground on construction in Central Texas for a massive natural gas pipeline, after months of back-and-forth with landowners that continue today.

Earlier this week, the energy infrastructure company announced they have secured 100 percent of the right of way for the Permian Highway Pipeline Project, which is a 42-inch, 430-mile pipeline extending from West Texas to the Gulf Coast. They can now begin construction in Central Texas once they get the necessary federal permits.

"To have that piece in a manner that is fair, that takes into account hundreds and hundreds of issues and concerns raised by landowners has led us to adjust the pipeline route almost 200 times," said Kinder Morgan Vice President Allen Fore. "These projects are absolutely critical, not only for the economic benefit for the state of Texas, but for the energy security of the United States. We're confident we followed the regulations."

This development comes amid months-long protest from Hill Country neighbors who own land the pipeline will go through.


Kay Pence says she moved to Fredericksburg for the peace and solitude the countryside has to offer. However, she knows that may soon become a thing of the past when construction begins.

"The quiet we enjoy at night will be gone," Pence said.

Last week, Pence joined a lawsuit with other Hill Country landowners, claiming the pipeline will be carrying natural gas that's not only from Texas, requiring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to regulate the pipeline, not the Railroad Commission of Texas.

This week, Hays County commissioners voted to join a lawsuit set to be filed against Kinder Morgan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in order to try and stop construction, claiming the pipeline will go through environmentally sensitive areas and put endangered species at risk.

Pence says these are attempts to at least slow down the start of construction.

"I give it a 50-50 shot that they won't have issues with their permitting, or I know there's several lawsuits pending, that that may hopefully have a judge place an injunction, and stop any building until it's finally decided in the courts once and for all that will decide whether or not they have the right to put the pipe through here," Pence said.

A court has already dismissed a lawsuit aimed at Kinder Morgan by the City of Kyle.

Fore says they have done everything by the book.

"We've always been confident not only in our legal position, but for the overall public purpose of this project," Fore said.

Pence says she feels she and other landowners never had a chance to decline Kinder Morgan's offers to place the pipeline through their property because of a lack of protections from eminent domain laws.

During the 2019 legislative session, lawmakers did not pass laws that sided with landowners, and throughout the process, Pence and other landowners have fought the assertion that the pipeline is considered a public benefit, which is protected under eminent domain.

Currently, Hill Country neighbors are still in the process of having condemnation hearings, which allows a court to hand down land values after hearing from both sides. More than 70 percent of Hill Country residents have taken this route.

Pence had her hearing after asking Kinder Morgan for $1.8 million to build through her land. The company provided two offers close to $100,000, before a final offer of $45,000. The court awarded Pence just more than $1.2 million.

Kinder Morgan has deposited the $1.2 million in the court registry, allowing them to begin construction. However, Pence is not withdrawing that money yet.

"If I leave it in the registry of the court, I am making a statement that I don't believe they have the right to take my land in the first place."

Pence says now, all she can do is wait for the court process to carry out.

"There is no process. We have no voice. We need a voice in this process," Pence said. "They're taking our land, so myself and the rest of the landowners in Gillespie County are frustrated. We haven't given up the fight. We'll continue the fight until the first shovel goes into the ground, and we'll probably continue to fight during that also."

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