Western companies are blind to Ugandan investments - President Museveni

Sun, December 5, 2021,
By Elias Biryabarema and Karin Strohecker

KYANKWANZI, Uganda (Reuters) -Chinese private investment in Uganda is growing while Westerners are losing appetite to put money to work in the country, President Yoweri Museveni told Reuters, pledging to step up efforts to tackle corruption that have made slow progress.

Museveni, in power since 1986 and one of Africa's longest-serving leaders, said Uganda was working to sign a number of deals with Chinese private sector lenders in sectors such as agro- and fertilizer-processing, minerals processing and textiles.

"The Western companies have lost their spectacles; they no longer have the eyes to see opportunities. But the Chinese see opportunities, and they come, and they are knocking, they are coming very vigorously," Museveni told Reuters. "But (Western companies) are saturated with wealth. They are not bothered."

Chinese state entities and private-sector firms have long been a driving force of investment in Africa 

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/african-nations-mend-make-do-china-tightens-belt-road-2021-11-22

lending countries on the continent hundreds of billions of dollars as part of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

According to the Uganda Investment Authority, the country ranked third in Africa on foreign direct investment (FDI) from China in recent years.

The ties have not been without conflict, however.

A parliamentary probe in October concluded that China had imposed onerous conditions on a $200 million loan to Kampala, including the potential forfeiture of the east African country's sole international airport.

Museveni flatly denied using the airport as collateral.

"I don't remember mortgaging the airport for anything," Museveni said, adding Kampala would pay what it owed to China. "There is no problem, they will be paid."

Museveni's administration, seeking to finance its infrastructure construction programme and shore up political support, has secured large credit lines from China https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-uganda-debt-idUSKBN2AB1BU 

over the last decade.

Differences over the terms of the contract were also the reason why Kampala had not yet secured a deal with Beijing on the 1,000-km (620 miles) super-fast rail link from Kenya's port of Mombasa to Uganda, though talks were still ongoing, the president said.

FAITH AGAINST CORRUPTION

Talking about the fight against corruption, Museveni acknowledged more effort was needed. Transparency International ranked Uganda 142 out of 179 in its 2020 corruption perceptions index.

"We are still fighting. I wouldn't boast that we have improved - initially we weren't really concentrating much on corruption," the 77-year-old said, adding the battle against graft was one of his main priorities for his current and sixth term as president.

His administration was focusing on recruiting from faith groups, of which the country had plenty, to have enough manpower to fight that war on corruption and would provide an assessment of progress on the issue in two years time, he said.

"That is our struggle: to get clean people to implement - otherwise the laws are there, the institutions are there," Museveni said.

Speaking about the Nov. 16 bombings in Kampala, which killed three people and were blamed on the Islamic State-aligned Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), Museveni said that there was evidence of coordination from abroad with the men who carried out the attack.

The blasts in the heart of the capital shocked a nation known as a bulwark against violent Islamist militants in East Africa, and prompted Museveni to send 1,700 troops into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where the ADF has training camps. But Museveni said foreign links stretched beyond eastern Congo.

"The bombs which they exploded in Kampala recently, we have some indication that they were coordinating with groups in Kenya and in Somalia," Museveni said. "Maybe not command and control but collaboration."

He was coordinating the operation with Congo's president, Museveni said, but he did not answer a question whether there was coordination with Rwanda, which also has security interests in eastern Congo, and which has fought with Ugandan troops there before.

Uganda said on Friday that its troops sent this week into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo would stay as long as needed to defeat Islamist militants.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema in Kyankwanzi, Karin Strohecker in London, Katharine Houreld in Nairobi, Hereward Holland in Kinshasa and Tommy Wilkes in London; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Iraqi fishermen caught in net of water frontiers

On the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, Iraqi fishermen live in constant fear of arrest by Iranian and Kuwaiti forces for mistakenly straying across frontiers with former enemy countries.

© Hussein FALEH An Iraqi youth carries freshly-caught fish in the southern Iraqi port city of Al-Faw

© Hussein FALEH Iraqi men fish in their boat anchored in the Shatt al-Arab waterway next to the wreckage of a ship which was sunk during the 1980s Iraq-Iran war

About 15 kilometres (nine miles) from where the mighty Tigris and the Euphrates rivers merge and flow out to the Gulf lies the fishing port of Al-Faw.

The port town has been on the front line of two wars that have shaped Iraq's modern history -- in the 1980s against Iran and then after Saddam Hussein's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

On the opposite bank of the Shatt al-Arab, the green-white-red flag of Iran flutters in the wind, alongside portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, and his successor as supreme guide, Ali Khamenei.

© Hussein FALEH Head of the fishermen's union in Al-Faw, Badran al-Tamimi

"We have a lot of problems with the Iranians," said Abdallah, an Iraqi fisherman who preferred not to give his surname.

"If we cross the border because of the current, they arrest us."

In the past, the border along the invisible median line of the Shatt al-Arab has been a casus belli.

In September 1980, Saddam's forces invaded after scrapping the 1975 Algiers agreement that aimed to put an end to disputes over the borderline.

After the 2003 US-led invasion, Iraq and Iran said they wanted to return to the agreement, against the backdrop of growing Iranian influence in its Arab neighbour.

- Arrests and fines -

Iraqi fishermen at Al-Faw, such as Tareq Ziad, complain of "being harassed" by both Iran and Kuwait.

When their boats leave the Shatt al-Arab and head for the open seas of the Gulf, they often find themselves in Kuwaiti and Iranian waters because of the currents.

The Iranians "put you in prison and make you pay a fine of $3,000. That is what happened to my brother a few days ago. He was arrested by an Iranian river patrol and he paid $3,000," Ziad said.

Iranian authorities, contacted by AFP, did not respond to a request for comment.

The head of the fishermen's union in Al-Faw, Badran al-Tamimi, said they have "no support from the (Iraqi) government".

Kuwait also arrests Iraqi fishermen who "inadvertently" venture into the territorial waters of the emirate, he said.

"Yesterday evening, I went to the Kuwaiti border to bring back three fishermen who were arrested. This week, I have been there three or four times," Tamimi said.

A Kuwaiti security official, on condition of anonymity, told AFP: "People seized in the border areas are handed over, in good health, by the ground forces, in coordination with the Iraqi side."

- Marine species in rivers -

The fishermen of Al-Faw also have environmental challenges to grapple with.

"We go out to sea for eight to 10 days and when we return, we've caught between 500 kilograms and one tonne, compared to three or four tonnes 20 years ago," complained fisherman Abdallah.

Fishing expeditions have become much shorter and the boundaries are closely monitored by Iraq's neighbours.

In addition, the price of fuel has shot up.

As Iraqi rivers dry up due to drought and the construction of dams in Iran and Turkey, so too does the amount of seasonal fish that locals relied on for food.

And while the river waters ebb to ever lower levels, the Gulf rises.

"We are seeing more and more marine species in the river as the water becomes saline," said Iyad Abdelmohsen, a marine biologist at Baghdad's Al-Mustansiriyah University.

And "human activities, such as sewage and waste" that end up in Iraq's waterways are causing "digestive illnesses, diarrhoea and even cholera", he said.

gde/tgg/jsa/hc

North Syria's one-legged kung fu master



Othman runs a small martial arts school in the rebel-held town of Abzimu in the western countryside of Aleppo province (AFP/Aaref WATAD)

Aaref Watad
Sun, December 5, 2021, 9:12 PM·2 min read

From butterfly kicks to power jabs, a group of children in rebel-held northern Syria are honing martial arts techniques under the instruction of an unlikely trainer: amputee kung fu master Fadel Othman.

The 24-year-old runs a small martial arts school in the rebel-held town of Abzimu in the western countryside of Aleppo province.

His 100 students include orphans and children who lost their fathers to Syria's decade-old war.

"This is the first team I train after my injury," he told AFP from an open field where he often gives kung fu lessons.

"I strongly believe they will one day grow up to become world champions," he said referring to his students.

Othman was hit by an artillery shell in 2015, during fighting between rebels and government forces in Aleppo.

He became one of the more than 86,000 Syrians that the World Heath Organization says have endured amputations due to conflict-related injuries.

As a result, the young man who started his kung fu training at the age of 12, braced to forgo his life-long passion.

"I felt like the world was closing doors in my face," Othman told AFP in his academy, beneath a large Syrian opposition flag.

But over the course of the three years he spent in Turkey for medical treatment, he continued classes with martial arts trainers and even participated in several tournaments.



Earlier this year, he set up a kung fu academy that trains students at different levels.

Inside the gym equipped with punchbags and pull up bars, pictures of Othman participating in tournaments adorned the walls.

During one lesson, he demonstrated a series of warm up exercises, without even using crutches.

He looked on as students performed sophisticated kung fu sequences on colourful mats before helping them refine techniques to block kicks and punches.

The trainer said he wanted to teach children "useful moves they can use to defend themselves" and to boost their confidence.

The gym has no mains electricity and when the batteries powering the converted warehouse's lights died, Othman propped himself up against a wall in one of the last rays of daylight slanting into the room to catch his young pupil's punches in his sparring mitts.

In an open field in Abzimu, Othman gave another lesson to around 14 school-aged students dressed in matching uniforms.

"I see them as my little brothers," he said.

"My goal is to have a strong team and nurture a generation (of fighters) that can make it to international competitions," he said.

str/ho/jmm/kir

Augmented reality tours open as push to make Cahokia Mounds a National Park advances



Beth Hundsdorfer
Sat, December 4, 2021, 8:00 AM·2 min read

There’s a new way to explore an ancient place in Illinois.

Visitors of Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site can try experiencing it in “augmented reality,” or AR, to see the Grand Plaza as it appeared 1,000 years ago, the Palisade as it once stood and the exterior and interior of the temple that once stood atop Monks Mound.

Cahokia Mounds was the central hub and largest city built by the Mississippian culture of Native Americans. The site has been recognized as a National Historic Landmark, an Illinois State Historic Site and a World Heritage Site by the United Nations.

At its height, Cahokia stretched over six square miles and was home to 10,000 to 20,000 people. Set near the Mississippi River, Cahokia was a trade hub and an agriculture production site. There were 120 mounds in Cahokia, including the largest, Monks Mound. The Mississippians built them between 900 and 1400 AD, according to archeologists.

The augmented reality tour unveiling comes as there is a renewed push to make the site a part of the federal National Park System.

Illinois’ U.S. senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats, sent a letter to President Joe Biden Tuesday asking him to incorporate Cahokia Mounds into the National Park System. In 2016, a study found that Cahokia Mounds met all four of the criteria – significance, suitability, feasibility, and need for National Park Service management.

“We write to encourage you to use your authority under the Antiquities Act to designate the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site as a unit of the National Park System,” Duckworth and Durbin wrote in the letter to Biden. “We support elevating, protecting, and sharing this important archeological and cultural resource that represents the people and landscapes that once made up one of America’s first cities in the Western Hemisphere.”

In April, Durbin introduced the Cahokia Mounds Mississippian Culture National Historical Park Act to change the current designation as a National Historic Landmark to a National Historic Park. This move would add protections for the ancient mounds that straddle St. Clair and Madison counties.

Visitors can experience the site in augmented reality by downloading the app at a cost of $4.99 to their Apple device, or they can rent an iPad for $15 at the site. Developers spent five years creating the new application that allows visitors to step back and experience Cahokia as it once was.

“Once the app is downloaded to your device, visit Cahokia Mounds and begin your tour at the Monks Mound parking lot where the first ‘Waypoint’ can be found,” Cahokia Mounds site superintendent Lori Belknap said in a news release. “These Waypoints are unique images mounted to concrete blocks and will launch the app once scanned.”

The Cahokia AR Tour application was developed and produced by the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society and Schwartz and Associates Creative of St. Louis and was funded by two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Bill That Could Protect Abortion Rights If Roe Is Overturned

The Women’s Health Protection Act would outlaw hundreds of state anti-abortion laws — but passing it would likely require eliminating the Senate filibuster.

Alanna Vagianos
Updated December 3, 2021

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) speaks at an event on behalf of the over 400,000 people who signed petitions to urge the Senate to protect abortion rights at an event outside of the U.S Capitol Building on Sept. 29.
PAUL MORIGI VIA GETTY IMAGES

Inside the Supreme Court on Wednesday, justices heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson, a potentially landmark abortion case involving Mississippi’s attempt to ban all abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy. Experts agree, based on what some justices asked during arguments, that the court’s conservative majority is prepared to not only uphold the Mississippi law but perhaps take an ax to the fundamental abortion rights guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

Outside, on the steps of the Supreme Court, lawmaker after lawmaker offered a potential solution: The Senate needs to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA).

The legislation would protect the right to access legal abortion care across the country by providing safeguards against state bans and medically unnecessary hurdles. The bill, which passed with historic support in the House in September, would outlaw all abortion restrictions that “are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures ... do not significantly advance women’s health or the safety of abortion services, and … make abortion services more difficult to access.”

Essentially, WHPA would make all of the hundreds of anti-abortion laws passed on the state level since 2011 illegal. In 2011, the country saw an unprecedented slew of unnecessary abortion restrictions ― like specific requirements for the width of a clinic door and waiting periods before getting an abortion ― enacted by anti-choice lawmakers who were trying to cut off access.

“The Court may never say Roe v. Wade is overturned, it may just chip away at it. That’s why in that building, in the United States Capitol, we need the Women’s Health Protection Act,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

“While the Supreme Court must do their constitutional duty and uphold that right, the Senate must do theirs by passing the Women’s Health Protection Act,” tweeted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) shortly after stepping off the podium on Wednesday.

It’s likely that the law would face serious challenges in court, and probably end up back in front of the same 6-3 conservative majority, but that’s a fight many Democrats and abortion advocates want to have. “The Women’s Health Protection Act would make the provisions of Roe v. Wade the law of the land regardless of what zip code you are in. There would be challenges, of course, but yes, it would be indeed the law of the land,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), the lead sponsor of the bill, told HuffPost.

The bill, originally introduced in Congress in 2013, was reintroduced in June. After passing in the House, energy to set a vote in the Senate languished as the Build Back Better bill worked its way through Congress. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said the legislation will still get a vote in his chamber.

A serious effort to enact the WHPA would almost certainly have to involve eliminating the Senate filibuster. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Wednesday that she opposes the WHPA, though supports codifying Roe in some fashion — but in any event, it’s extremely unlikely that nine other Republican senators agree, meaning any such legislation would never clear the current 60-vote threshold.

Some Senate progressives are calling for exactly that. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a release Wednesday morning, “We must act immediately, including abolishing the filibuster if necessary, to pass federal legislation that protects millions of Americans’ access to legal abortion care.”

The majority of Americans, 60%, want the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade, and 75% believe that the decision to have an abortion should be left to a person and their doctor. But state laws don’t reflect that. Since Roe was codified in 1973, states have enacted 1,327 abortion restrictions into law, 580 of which were put in place since 2011. Nearly 100 of those restrictions were put in place this year alone.

“The Women’s Health Protection Act is really about helping to ensure that abortion access is more available across the country. We’re not in the situation where getting an abortion in Louisiana looks all that much different than getting an abortion in New York,” explained Elizabeth Nash, a principal policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute.

Advocates and lawmakers told HuffPost that passing WHPA and the Equal Access To Abortion Coverage (EACH) Act is the best solution to combat the potential fall of Roe. The EACH Act aims to reverse the Hyde Amendment and other insurance-related abortion coverage restrictions. The bill would largely benefit low-income people, who account for 75% of those seeking abortion care.

“People who are on Medicaid, people who are poor, have a financially burdensome job when trying to access abortion,” Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), a sponsor of WHPA, told HuffPost. “Wealthy women always have and always will be able to get access to abortion. [If Roe is overturned], they’ll fly to a state that makes it legal because they’ll have the money to do it. But, really, the average woman won’t have the ability to do that.”

There is no set date for a Senate vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act. The Supreme Court decision after Wednesday’s arguments isn’t expected until spring or early summer 2022.

Madison Cawthorn Thinks Your Pregnancy Is A Polaroid Or A Sunset Or Something

Sara Boboltz
Sat, December 4, 2021, 10:44 AM·2 min read

Rep. Madison Cawthorn, the 26-year-old extremist from North Carolina, demonstrated his brittle knowledge of the issues surrounding abortion earlier this week as he argued for the reversal of Roe v. Wade on the House floor.

The Donald Trump-style Republican read out an analogy on Wednesday comparing pregnancy to a Polaroid picture in what amounted to a sermon that labeled women “earthen vessels sanctified by almighty God.”

His minute-and-a-half speech came the same day that conservatives on the Supreme Court appeared openly willing to turn back the clock on abortion rights in America by overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide.

Cawthorn began by inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to “imagine you’ve just walked out of this chamber” to see a “gorgeous sunset.”

“You have a Polaroid camera and you snap a beautiful picture, and a great photo prints out the front,” he continued.

“You hold it and shake it, waiting for the picture to appear, but suddenly someone walks by and snatches your photo, ripping it to shreds,” Cawthorn said, describing a task that would be nearly impossible without scissors.

“You cry, ‘Why did you destroy my picture?’” the congressman wailed. The callous passerby then asserts that because the Polaroid “wasn’t fully developed yet,” it was “not a picture.”

“All of us in this room realize how asinine that reasoning is,” Cawthorn said, accidentally landing on an apt description of his entire speech.

Among the numerous problems with Cawthorn’s analogy are the facts that human babies ― unlike Polaroids ― require care and feeding, take an immense physical toll on the body, and an immense financial toll on caregivers who may have any number of reasons why they are not prepared to take on such a responsibility, among them a lack of governmental support.

We also have questions: Is the passerby supposed to represent a woman seeking an abortion? Certainly the analogy makes more sense if she is holding the Polaroid camera and making decisions about what happens to the photograph. Or is the Polaroid camera itself ― an inert object with no feeling ― supposed to represent a human woman in Cawthorn’s analogy?

He concluded his weird speech with a heavy dose of apocalyptic imagery: “One day, perhaps when science darkens the soul of the left, our nation will repent.” OK.

You can watch the whole thing below.



This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Savannah Archives: Hanukkahs past and present feature chocolate gelt drops, menorah lightings and dreidel games

City of Savannah Municipal Archives staff
Sun, December 5, 2021
Savannah Morning News

Chag Samaech! Monday December 6th is the last night of Hanukkah.

“Chanucah,” Savannah Morning News (December 4, 1874), page 3, column 6. Available online through the Georgia Historical Newspaper Database at:

 https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn82015137/1874-12-04/ed-1/seq-3/

Hanukkah is most commonly celebrated at home with fried foods, songs, dreidel games, and of course lighting the menorah. In Savannah, one of the earliest mentions of Hannukah in the Savannah Morning News appeared in 1874.

“Menorah and Advent Wreath Are Used in Christmas Program” Southern Cross (December 2, 1965), page 6, column 3. Available online through the Georgia Historical Newspaper Database at: https://gahistoricnewspapers-files.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn22185748/1965-12-02/ed-2/seq-6.pdf

In the 1940s, public celebrations of Hanukkah became popular nation-wide and, as a 1965 article about the Christmas program at Sacred Heart Parish demonstrates, celebrations of Christmas and Hanukkah were often combined into one Christian-Jewish celebration.

Chanukah party at the Jewish Education Alliance, circa 1953. Pictured from left to right, Earnest Siegel, Edith (Green) Fodor, Fannie (Ehrenfeld) Rabhan, and Tillie Simon. Savannah Jewish Archives collection, The Breman Museum.

Recollections by Savannah’s Jewish citizens include celebrating the holiday modestly. The Savannah Jewish Archives’ oral history collection preserves memories of Hanukkah in Savannah.

Bertha Freedman recounted how “the children…wore a little cloth sack that had a ribbon…through it… For the eight days you wore that and anybody that wanted to give you Chanukah gelt would open up your little bag and put money in it.” Norton Meleaver recalled “having latkes for Chanukah. We didn’t get all the presents that they get now… but just having latkes with applesauce and sour cream was just wonderful.” Savannah’s synagogues and the Jewish Educational Alliance celebrate the Festival of Lights with a range of activities.

The City of Savannah, in partnership with Chabad of Savannah, hosts “Chanukah in the Square,” featuring a Great Chocolate Gelt Drop and a nightly lighting of a public menorah in Ellis Square.

City of Savannah Municipal Archives, Archives@savannahga.gov, Discover the Archives: savannahga.gov/MunicipalArchives.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah Archives: Hanukkah's past and present feature gelt drops, menorahs and dreidel games

Former Christians Are Sharing The Turning Points That Made Them Leave The Faith, And They Did Not Hold Back


Sat, December 4, 2021, 1:46 AM·12 min read

We recently asked the former Christians of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us what was their turning point to leave the religion. Here are some of their insightful stories:

Warning: This post contains topics of sexual assault and suicide.

1."The breaking point for me was when the pastor of the church I was attending went on a rant about abortion and ended it with 'The holocaust that is currently happening in the United States makes it look like Hitler was playing in the sandbox!'"
"After picking my jaw up off the floor, I got up and left and never looked back."
—samk35

Monashee Frantz / Getty Images

2."I grew up in an EXTREMELY religious Roman Catholic household and right after my first suicide attempt, I had woken up in the hospital after being unconscious. My parents were sitting in the room and instead of comforting me or saying absolutely anything my father just said, 'You do know suicide is a sin? If you had been successful, you would've been in hell.'"

"I was 15. That was the moment that I realized I will never believe in God or any organized religion again."
—cracklinrosie

3."A priest told me that the reason I developed an autoimmune condition was because I wasn't living a life free from sin and it was my punishment. He said one of those sins was wearing a short skirt (not in church) because I was tempting men to have impure thoughts. Bye-bye church."
—kayblu02

Godong / Getty Images

4."I attended church as a teenager and among the many, many issues I had with them, there were two final straws for me which made me leave the Christian belief system. First was when the youth leaders locked me in a room and yelled at me for losing my virginity."

"The second was when they organized a church get-together which involved a two-hour 'motivational talk' from a 'reformed homosexual' who basically told everyone that being gay is a death sentence. That killed it for me because there could have been kids there looking for guidance and acceptance being in that situation and you've just told them they should die."

—Anonymous

5."When I got pregnant at 16, most of my church turned their backs on me. My decision to leave the faith was further confirmed when I realized that they knew about the child abuse my siblings and I were subjected to yet did nothing."

"I’ve now been married for over 20 years to my husband (the father of my child), with two adult children who are amazing. I’ve exposed them to multiple religions and allowed them to make their own decisions, with neither opting to join any organized religion. Both are amazing, kind, and caring and I have no regrets."

—Anonymous

Skaman306 / Getty Images

6."My spouse and I were having marital problems. I was told to go back into the house without dealing with our problems, or the pastor would excommunicate me."

—Anonymous

7."The turning point for me was when I realized that my sexual assault could have been prevented if I had better understood sex and consent. Being taught abstinence prevented me from coming forward because I was told early on that if I had sex before marriage I was dirty and it was a sin."

—Anonymous

8."A priest told me I should only have friends who shared my faith after I told him my best friend was Jewish. I had been moving away from religion for a while, but that was the last straw."

—juliel4e89ecc7d

Sébastien Désarmaux / Getty Images

9."I was born with a physical disability and was bullied continuously until high school. My parents are devout Christians and they never did anything to help me. Even when I would come home every day crying, they said that it was all part of 'God’s plan.'"

"The bullying was even worse at church, and again, no one, not even the Bible study teachers, stepped in to stop it. When I felt suicidal in sixth grade, my parents screamed as if I were the devil and threatened to disown me. I quickly shut up after that but suffered alone in silence."

—eternalrealms

10."When I was 12, my parents sent me to a Christian summer camp for a week. The counselors always told us to talk to them if we had any questions. One night after the campfire, I told one of them that I understood sex outside of marriage was bad, but what about all the other stuff? The counselor asked me what other stuff, and I (very foolishly) explained first, second, and third base."

"She asked me how I knew that, and I told her it from the advice section of gurl.com (doesn’t exist anymore, but it was an excellent resource for pre-teen and teen girls). Then she proceeded to go back to our cabin and tell all the other campers and counselors that I was a pervert. I had been pretty involved in our church before that, but after that I was done."

—sadielady3

Lokibaho / Getty Images/iStockphoto

11."Once COVID hit and my church actively denied science and talked about the 'evil' vaccines, I had to walk away completely."

"How could leaders of a religion preach a message that was actively putting their congregation in danger and still claim to be Christians? It went against everything they claimed to believe so I realized that their beliefs weren't real for them so why should they be real to me."

—Anonymous

12."While I was visiting my parents’ rural Georgia megachurch one Easter, the pastor went off sermon for a full 20 minutes about the 'abomination of homosexuality.' I’m bisexual and so is my wife."

"I just remember my wife squeezing my hand as the pastor was scream-rallying to a sanctuary of red-faced, full-neck, vein bulging amen-sayers, especially when he was mocking the community as the 'LGBTQ-A-B-C-D-E-F-G…' He went through the whole alphabet spewing hate and everyone was roaring with laughter. The whole congregation was amped. I looked over at my parents and they were nodding emphatically."

—sweetbref

Unknown / Getty Images

13."My Christian uncle assaulted me on and off until I was 32. I had never allowed myself to believe it actually happened because he and his wife were the whole reason I was a believer. After I told my family, they believed me and were supportive...until I told others. I shared my experiences with other survivors to support them. My Christian family freaked out."

"They all turned on me and said it should have been kept 'in the family' since I had forgiven him. I do not believe there is EVER a time a victim of abuse should be quiet about it. These people still have high standing in the church and have families and children in their home who have no idea what he is. I refuse to believe their way is right. Forgiveness does not mean there aren't consequences."

—thekimmer1234

14."What made me think something wasn't right was when the church ostracized me for getting pregnant outside of wedlock, and slut shamed me. The last straw was when my religious father told me it was my fault I was abused, and punishment for my sin. I told him and evangelical Christianity to fuck all the way completely off, and never looked back."

"I grew up fundamentalist Christian. It felt like an abusive relationship. I would sin, I would be reminded what a terrible person I was, and if I begged and pleaded, God would *maybe* think about taking me back. I was also taught nothing but obedience to my parents, but especially my father. My father was God's representative on earth, and when I got married, his authority would transfer to my husband. Then I was expected to submit unto my husband."

—elizabethannez

15."My college roommate and I attended the same church as kids. I always thought it was a warm and welcoming place. However, she told me when her dad cheated on her mom, abused her, and left her to raise three kids on her own. The church made her mom feel guilty about it like it was her fault."

"They offered no support and encouraged her to take him back. It opened my eyes to the abuse and neglect of women in the faith as well as the hypocrisy."

—seekyou

D-keine / Getty Images

16."I, a white female, went to a high school dance with a Black boy. When I told my mom who was taking me to the dance, she said it was unacceptable for me to go with someone of a different race because the bible says, 'Birds should only be with other birds and bees should only be with other bees.'"

"She used Christianity to justify her position against interracial relationships and compared people of different races like they’re different species. That was the turning point for me."

—Anonymous

17."My parents were getting divorced, I went to see my youth leader to ask why God wasn’t answering my prayers to just help my mom stop crying everyday. She said, 'Well, sometimes God answers big prayers and sometimes he answers little prayers. Just yesterday I asked him to give me a front parking spot at the grocery store and I got one!'"

"It was my *come to Jesus* moment of why Catholicism is rooted in selfishness. God is there in the good times but he leaves you to your own devices in the bad? Nah."

—Anonymous

Pascal Deloche / Getty Images

18."My journey to leaving was a long time coming, but the big event I can point to was the church's response to the George Floyd protests. Their statement was full of white denial and tone policing and it didn't sit right with me. That's when I really started asking questions and learned about Mormonism's true origins and all of their lies, brainwashing, and atrocities."

"From there I started seeing those same problems with Christianity in general and once you see those things you can't unsee them. At this point I don't have any sort of solid belief system, but I don't think I'll ever go back to any sort of organized religion, but especially not Christianity."

—Anonymous

19."For me, it was the hypocrisy of the Christian faith. I got married outside the church and was told that it wouldn't be recognized by God because it needed to be in the church, even though God is omnipresent? It made no sense."

—Anonymous

Hinterhaus Productions / Getty Images

20."I lost my brother to cancer when he was 15 (I was 6). The response given to me was that 'He must have been so good that God needed him in heaven.' I then lost my father to cancer when I was 13 and on the day before his funeral, two of my teachers tried to comfort me by saying that 'He wanted to go and be with (my brother) in heaven.'"

"What in the world made them think that was an okay thing to say to a child who had just lost her father? After that I called bullshit. Even if there was a God, I wanted nothing to do with them if they could do something as horrible as that to a family."

—Anonymous

21."For me, it was how they treated my mother when my parents divorced. They placed all the blame on her. Mom wasn’t perfect, but my dad played a big part in it as well. It takes two to tango."

—Anonymous

22."I was 13, active in a Southern Baptist church, best friends with the preacher's kids, never missed a youth group meeting, studied to teach Bible study when I was able, helped with VBS, the whole 9 yards. We had a 'fall festival' (because we can't celebrate Halloween) with a hayride and I FELL OFF AND WAS RUN OVER. There was a whole fight with the insurance company to get bills covered and church members fighting against me while I had to reconstruct my cheek and learn to walk again."

"When I returned to church months later, there was a 'business meeting' instead of service that everyone had to attend. Why would children need to be there? Because they wanted to discuss 'removing insurance liabilities' AKA me. At 13, I jumped up and said 'I can fix that for ya' and walked out of the building. I tried a couple of other churches later in my teens, but that was definitely the beginning of my distaste of organized religion."

—belle82

Donald Iain Smith / Getty Images

23."I was leaning away from Christianity since I was 11 but my final turning point happened in my early 20s. Mom took me to a play being held at a church and it was mostly about what you’d expect: Various sins acted out and the sinners going to hell while the righteous going to meet Jesus. One segment though really got to me."

"A mom was driving her teenage daughter to church and the daughter asked her mom to go to church with her to which the mom replied that she couldn’t because she had to work that day. They get hit by a car driven by some drunk boys and the boys and the mom die. The boys get dragged to the fires of hell, but then after a minute so did the mom because she chose to go to work instead of church. The daughter was crying when that happened but as soon as Jesus showed up everything was sunshine and rainbows. There was no way I could follow any religion that faults a mother for providing for her child."

—nightmareampersand

24."A church elder told me that my disability would disappear if I prayed harder."

—Anonymous

25."My pastor told me I should get my act together if I wanted to amount to anything. At the time I was working around 60 hours a week and studying part time."

"I was literally clawing my way out of poverty but because mommy and daddy weren't loaded and I didn't fit into the image the church wanted to portray. I never went back."

—Anonymous

Seventyfour / Getty Images/iStockphoto

26.And "I was conned into attending a retreat in college and one of the leaders started his little sermon about how God made everything happen for a reason, and therefore God elected Trump so if we didn’t obey Trump, we weren’t obeying God. I got up and walked out."

—Anonymous


Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical anger

Jessica Glenza
Sat, December 4, 2021

Public opinion on abortion in the US has changed little since 1973, when the supreme court in effect legalized the procedure nationally in its ruling on the case Roe v Wade. According to Gallup, which has the longest-running poll on the issue, about four in five Americans believe abortion should be legal, at least in some circumstances.

Yet the politics of abortion have opened deep divisions in the last five decades, which have only grown more profound in recent years of polarization. In 2021, state legislators have passed dozens of restrictions to abortion access, making it the most hostile year to abortion rights on record.

This schism played out in the US supreme court on Wednesday, when the new conservative-dominated bench heard oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the most important abortion rights case since Roe.

In somber arguments, justices questioned whether the state of Mississippi should be allowed to ban nearly all abortions at 15 weeks gestation, nine weeks earlier than the current accepted limit. While the ruling, expected by the end of June next year, is far from a foregone conclusion, justices in the conservative majority appeared to signal their support for severely restricting abortion access, a right Americans have exercised for two generations.

The divisive question among the conservative majority appeared to be whether abortion should be restricted to earlier than 15 weeks, weakening Roe, or if the precedent set in Roe should be overturned entirely.

Summarizing Mississippi’s argument, the conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was controversially nominated to the court by Donald Trump in 2018, said “the constitution is neither pro-life nor pro-choice … and leaves the issue to the people to resolve in the democratic process.” If the issue is returned to the states, 26 states would be “certain or likely” to ban or severely restrict abortion access.

***

The religious right in the US has been laying the foundations of this decisive challenge to abortion rights for years. According to historians and researchers, it has taken decades of political machinations for the campaign to reach this zenith. The movement has intersected with nearly every major issue in American politics for the last five decades, from segregation to welfare reform to campaign finance.

The conservative anti-abortion movement “was a kind of historical accident”, said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Dartmouth University and author of the recently released book Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.

It wasn’t until Republican strategists sought to “deflect attention away from the real narrative”, which Balmer argues was racial integration, “and to advocate on behalf of the fetus”, that largely apolitical evangelical Christians and Catholics would be united within the Republican party. Balmer argues that advocacy was nascent in 1969.

Although the supreme court decision in Brown v Board of Education called for an end to racial segregation in schools in 1954, many schools continued de facto segregation 14 years later.

Then, the supreme court weighed in again, and ordered schools to integrate “immediately”. This prompted white southerners to form “segregation academies”, whites-only private Christian schools which registered as tax-exempt non-profit charities. African American parents in Mississippi sued, arguing this was taxpayer-subsidized discrimination. They won, and in 1971, tax authorities revoked the non-profit status of 111 segregated private schools.

Marchers in St Paul, Minnesota, protested against the supreme court’s Roe decision, January 1973. Photograph: AP

In Balmer’s view, revoking the non-profit status of segregated private schools catalyzed evangelical Christian leaders, but even in the early 1970s defense of racial segregation was not a populist message. However, defense of the fetus could be.

Republican operations began to test abortion as a vessel for the collective anxieties of evangelical Christians, and Roe as a shorthand for government intrusion into the family after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Eventually, abortion became the reason for evangelicals to deny the Democratic president Jimmy Carter, himself an evangelical Christian, a second term.

Evangelical opposition to abortion “wasn’t an anti-abortion movement per se”, said Elmer L Rumminger, an administrator at the then whites-only Christian college Bob Jones University, said in Balmer’s book. “For me it was government intrusion into private education.”

At the same time, the anti-feminist Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly was connecting anxiety about women’s changing roles in society with abortion. In a 1972 essay, she described the feminist movement as “anti-family, anti-children, and pro-abortion,” and the writing of contemporaneous feminists as “a series of sharp-tongued, high-pitched whining complaints by unmarried women”.

Phyllis Schlafly opposed abortion as part of her anti-feminist agenda. 

Photograph: Anonymous/AP

By the 1978 midterm congressional elections, Paul Weyrich, one of the architects of modern conservatism, was testing abortion as a campaign issue with evangelical Christians with a small fund from the Republican National Committee. Roman Catholic volunteers distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets in church parking lots in Iowa, New Hampshire and Minnesota, and their efforts prevailed. Four anti-abortion Republicans ousted Democrats.

The groundwork laid by Schlafly and Weyrich made “Roe shorthand for a host of worries about sex equality and sexuality”, wrote Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and author of After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate.

“Even as late as August 1980, the Reagan-Bush campaign wasn’t certain abortion would work for them as a political issue,” said Balmer. However, as Reagan sailed to victory, he was carried in part by religious voters hooked on the promise of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. When a constitutional amendment failed, a new strategy took hold: control the supreme court.

An anti-abortion demonstration in Boston, January 1981.

 Photograph: Boston Globe/Getty Images

Historians said segregation was only one part of a complex and multifaceted movement, which has long seen itself as a human rights campaign. By the 1970s, “there was an anti-abortion movement which was influential and pretty effective in the states that was ready for the new right to work with,” said Ziegler.

In the coming years, Reagan would recast the politics of reproduction through a new racist prism, as he introduced the mythical stereotype of the “welfare queen”. The image allowed politicians to portray “all single mothers as persons of color and all persons of color as dependent on public assistance”, wrote the reproductive rights activists Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger in their 2017 book Reproductive Justice: An Introduction.

The image divorced family wellbeing and welfare support from abortion access and rights. Thus, the “broad middle ground” of issues that anti-abortion and pro-choice voters agreed on became “firmly partisan”, said Julia Briggs, author of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics, and professor and chair of women, gender and sexuality studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

***

By the 1990s, anti-abortion activists had professionalized. So called “right to life” organizations rallied the base, and religious law firms dedicated themselves to fighting abortion in courts. The supreme court weighed in on abortion again in 1992, in another watershed case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey. The case allowed states to restrict abortion, as long as such restrictions did not create an “undue burden” on the right to abortion and served the purpose of either protecting the woman’s health or unborn life.

States hostile to abortion passed “Trap” laws, or targeted regulations of abortion providers, which required abortion clinics to become the “functional equivalents of hospitals”, according to legal scholars. States instituted 24-hour waiting periods for abortion, state-mandated inaccurate information and invasive sonograms.

Many clinics went out of business as they struggled to meet the expensive new requirements, and pregnant people struggled to obtain abortions as they had to travel further and spend more to find a provider.

These laws would also play an outsized role in the Dobbs hearing. Conservative justices debated whether they could keep the “undue burden” standard while jettisoning a central tenet of Roe, that women can terminate a pregnancy until a fetus can survive outside the womb, or “viability”.

“Why is 15 weeks not enough time?” asked Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, in the hearings.

The politics of reproduction spurred new debates on acceptable restrictions on birth control, stem cell research and sex education during the George W Bush administration. But it was the election of Barack Obama, America’s first Black president, that supercharged Republican opposition.

In 2010, the Tea Party swept the midterm elections. More extreme candidates entered Congress and statehouses through the practice of challenging incumbents in districts gerrymandered to be reliably Republican. And, in a decision not typically thought of as an anti-abortion victory, the chief counsel for National Right to Life successfully argued a supreme court case that would unleash vast sums of dark money into American elections – Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.

“The anti-abortion movement, over time with other conservative allies, worked to change things like the rules of campaign finance for the conservative movement,” said Ziegler. “Anti-abortion lawyers played an integral part in cases like Citizens United.”

By the time Donald Trump ran for president, evangelical Protestants had become more anti-abortion than the Catholic voters who were once the bedrock of anti-abortion advocacy. Seventy-seven per cent of white evangelical Christians say the procedure should be illegal, compared with just 43% of Catholics, according to the Pew Research Center.

A Trump supporter with an anti-abortion T-shirt at a September 2020 rally. 

Photograph: Amy Harris/REX/Shutterstock

Trump harnessed the anger of white evangelicals for a victory in 2016, with a mix of hardline anti-abortion politicsand xenophobic nativism. Trump abandoned his 1999 stance as “very pro-choice”, saying there should be “punishment” for women who have abortions, and promised to nominate conservative supreme court justices who would “automatically” overturn Roe v Wade.

Today, overwhelmingly white “Christian nationalist” voters believe their religion should be privileged in public life, a goal to be attained “by any means necessary”, according to social researchers such as Indiana University associate professor Andrew Whitehead.

***

Supreme court decisions are notoriously difficult to predict, but abortion rights activists believe Wednesday’s hearing shows that conservative justices are ready to significantly weaken or perhaps overturn Roe v Wade.

If that happens, young, poor people of color will disproportionately suffer, forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Such an outcome is so severe human rights advocates have said state abortion bans would violate United Nations conventions against torture and place the US in the company of a shrinking number of countries with abortion bans.

On Wednesday, the court’s three outnumbered liberal justices argued neither the science, the enormous consequences of pregnancy nor the American polity had changed since the court last decided a watershed abortion rights case. But, because of the work of anti-abortion politicians, the makeup of the court’s bench had.

“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?” asked the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “I don’t see how it is possible.”

We The People: What triggered the U.S. entry into World War II


Rob Kauder, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
Sun, December 5, 2021

Dec. 5—Each week, The Spokesman-Review examines one question from the Naturalization Test immigrants must pass to become United States citizens.

Today's question: Why did the United States enter World War II?

Eighty years ago this week, on a sleepy Sunday morning over Oahu, Hawaii, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was flying his Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bomber, leading the first wave of raiders from the Kidō Butai — an armada of six Imperial Japanese Navy carriers — toward his target when Pearl Harbor came into view.

There were no planes in the air to greet him; no anti-aircraft fire to challenge him. He ordered his radio operator to send word back to the fleet they had achieved complete surprise: "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

Moments later, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Logan Ramsey watched as a dive bomber flew low over Ford Island. He was trying to get a look at the aircraft tail number to report it to his command when it completed its dive and pulled up. Seconds later, a bomb detonated.

Ramsey, realizing it wasn't an American pilot hotdogging over the airfield, rushed into the command center to send the most important message of his and millions of Americans lives: "Air Raid Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill."

The United States had fought hard to stay out of the resurgence of entangled alliances that thrust the world into the last war back in August 1914, isolating itself behind its giant moat — the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — to shield itself from the rising tide of fascism and ultranationalism in the Far East and Europe.

In the early 1920s, Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy, seeking to reclaim the former glory of the Roman Empire by seizing colonies across the Mediterranean in Africa. To his north, Adolf Hitler completed his ascendancy to power in 1933 and began a crash program to jumpstart German industry to arm and equip his "Thousand Year Reich." In the Far East, Army leaders with extremist views of continental expansion through the subjugation of Korea, Manchuria and China pushed the government in Tokyo toward a more militarist Japan and its vision of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The dominoes fell one by one: The Italians seized Libya and Ethiopia in Africa, while the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland, completed the Anschluss (political union) with Austria and demanded the return of Sudetenland — a province of the newly formed, post-World War I Czechoslovakia — to German control. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931. In the summer of 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge incident — in which reports of a single missing Japanese soldier led to shooting between the Chinese and Japanese armies encamped near each other — signaled the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Despite many in the United States holding on to an isolationist worldview, the signs World War II was on the horizon were as big as any billboard you'll see driving north up Division Street.

Between 1935 and 1937, Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts drafted to keep the country out of another European war, but the country's leaders realized they weren't going to be able to stay out of the coming conflict.

In October 1937, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to invoke the Neutrality Act against the belligerents fighting in Asia; he wanted to support the Chinese in their fight against the Japanese, but could not do so outright. During a visit to Chicago that month, Roosevelt gave his famous Quarantine Speech, in which he shifted American foreign policy away from neutrality.

"It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease," Roosevelt said.

One more Neutrality Act was passed in November 1939, two months after the Germans invaded Poland, but this time most pretenses of American neutrality were gone.

Congress added a "cash and carry" clause to the act, saying foreign powers could purchase arms from the United States as long as they paid with cash and carried the materials on their own ships. This allowed British ships to keep the Chinese supplied in their fight against Japan and the Allied forces supplied in their fight against the other two Axis powers — Germany and Italy — in Europe.

The following year, with France fallen and the Battle of Britain raging in the skies above London, new Prime Minister Winston Churchill hammered out a deal with Roosevelt to trade 50 U.S. destroyers in exchange for rent-free rights to a number of British bases in the West Indies for 99 years. The trade was lopsided in America's favor as the destroyers were antiques by the time they were pressed into Royal Navy service, but the deal's significance was in the beginning of the Anglo-American "special relationship" between London and Washington.

The Japanese naval fleet maneuvers of 1939-40 included a simulated attack by torpedo planes on ships anchored in a harbor. The head of the Combined Fleet — Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto — was impressed by the results and was convinced just such an attack would be successful if the raiding force maintained the element of surprise.

Thus the genesis of Yamamoto's plan for the raid on Pearl Harbor was born. Yamamoto was not a proponent of attacking the United States; he'd attended Harvard University, served as a naval attache in Washington, D.C., and also participated in the London Naval Conferences of 1930 and 1935. He knew what Japan would be facing if it attacked the United States: "In the first six to 12 months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

With General Hideki Tojo installed as prime minister, however, the country demanded resources like oil and rubber to fuel its Army and Navy's expansionist plans. Those resources could be seized from places like the Dutch East Indies, which would mean taking on Great Britain and the United States, delivering a killing blow to the American Navy at anchor in Pearl Harbor and forcing it to sue for peace.

The only problem for the Japanese was that the United States didn't sue for peace.

"I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

"Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

"With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounded determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God," President Roosevelt said in an address to a Joint Session of Congress on Dec. 8, 1941.

With that speech, the United States was marching toward the sound of distant guns again. Unfortunately for the Japanese, Yamamoto predicted its outcome with reasonable accuracy. Nearly six months to the day after Pearl Harbor, four of the six carriers involved in the strike on Pearl Harbor were lost at the Battle of Midway. For the next three years, the Japanese were on the defensive and losing ground.