IT HAD TO BE SAID
The president of Emirates says the 5G rollout that led to flights being canceled is 'one of the most delinquent, utterly irresponsible' situations he's witnessed

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean)

© Provided by Business Insider "This is one of the most delinquent, utterly irresponsible issues, subjects, call it what you like, I've seen in my aviation career," Emirates President Tim Clark told CNN Wednesday. Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images

The president of Emirates lashed out at US 5G rollout plans.

Tim Clark told CNN it was "one of the most delinquent, utterly irresponsible issues" he'd seen in his career.

Airlines including Emirates and British Airways canceled flights over 5G safety concerns.

The president of Emirates has slammed a 5G rollout plan in the US that prompted airlines to cancel flights.

"This is one of the most delinquent, utterly irresponsible issues, subjects, call it what you like, I've seen in my aviation career," Emirates President Tim Clark told CNN Wednesday.

His comments came after Dubai-based Emirates and other airlines announced Tuesday they would suspend flights to some US airports over safety concerns linked to a 5G rollout near airports. Verizon and AT&T agreed last-minute on Tuesday that they would delay the launch of 5G service near airports after airlines warned the technology could cause massive flight disruptions.

Despite the pause of the rollout, some airlines – including Emirates – continued to suspend flights.

Clark told CNN that 5G was being deployed differently in the US compared to other countries, and that Emirates wasn't aware until Tuesday morning of "the extent that it was going to compromise the safety of operation of our aircraft and just about every other 777 operator." He added that Emirates decided to suspend the flights "until we had clarity."

Many of the aircraft used on the affected routes are Boeing 777 airplanes. The Federal Aviation Administration Sunday published a list of Boeing and Airbus aircraft whose radio altimeter models were approved for performing low-visibility landings at many of the US airports where the 5G rollouts were due to take place. The 777 aircraft was not included in the January 16 list, although some 777 models have been included on updated lists.

Emirates said Tuesday that from Wednesday it was suspending flights to six of its 12 US passenger destinations and was switching another three routes from Boeing 777 planes to Airbus A380s "due to operational concerns associated with the planned deployment of 5G mobile network services." It said that this was based on Federal Aviation Administration advice and guidance from Boeing.

Emirates said Thursday that the FAA and Boeing had changed their guidance and that it would resume the canceled routes Friday and switch the A380s back to 777s Saturday.

Airlines including Air India, Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways, and British Airways also suspended some flights over the 5G rollout.

Ten major US air carriers had warned federal officials in a letter Monday that the scheduled 5G deployment could "potentially strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas" and grind the nation's commerce "to a halt."

This is because it could affect the aircraft's radio altimeter, which is used to determine a plane's altitude above ground level when landing or flying above mountainous terrain.

Verizon and AT&T said Tuesday they would continue with the rollout on Wednesday as planned but would voluntarily delay deploying the technology near airports. Both criticized the FAA, with an AT&T spokesperson telling Insider that the company was "frustrated by the FAA's inability to do what nearly 40 countries have done, which is to safely deploy 5G technology without disrupting aviation services."

The bears and the bees: How honey is helping to save the spectacled bear

By Nell Lewis, CNN 

A bear cub with distinctive yellow circling about the eyes is caught on camera, deep in the dry forests of the Andes mountain range in Bolivia. Beside it, a glimpse of the shaggy black fur of its mother.© Ximena Velez-Liendo/Andean Bear Conservation Program

For six months, researchers had laid camera traps across a 600-square-kilometer area, trying to catch sight of the rare spectacled bear. But besides the occasional photo of an indistinguishable hairy figure with its head out of shot, the elusive species had avoided the lens.

The photo was a breakthrough for Bolivian conservationist Ximena Velez-Liendo and her team. "We were over the moon, because it wasn't just a bear, it was a breeding population," she says. "That was one of the happiest moments in my life."

Five years later, Velez-Liendo has gathered essential details on the enigmatic creatures and devised a strategy for protecting them.

As South America's only bear species, the spectacled or Andean bear is renowned worldwide thanks largely to Paddington Bear, the fictional character who hails from "deepest, darkest Peru." But in reality, populations across the continent are dwindling.

Fewer than 10,000 spectacled bears remain, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which lists the species as vulnerable. In Bolivia, the southernmost country in the world where spectacled bears are found and where Velez-Liendo's work is focused, there are believed to be around 3,000 individuals.

Severe drought, as a result of climate change, has led local farmers to replace agricultural production with cattle ranches, says Velez-Liendo. The bears, struggling to find food in their own shrinking habitat, encroach on this land and sometimes kill livestock, which leads to farmers killing the bears in retaliation. Deforestation and exploiting the land for oil and mining contributes to habitat loss, while drought unbalances the ecosystem, pushing the species closer to extinction.

Velez-Liendo wants to conserve the "majestic" and "charismatic" creatures to which she has devoted the last 20 years of her life. But her recipe for conservation involves an unusual ingredient: honey.

Bears and beekeepers

Based in the inter-Andean dry forest of southern Bolivia and funded by Chester Zoo and Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), the project not only monitors the region's bear population, but trains local people as beekeepers. The idea is that by generating a healthy income from honey, it offers an economic alternative to cattle ranching.

"The main threat (to bears) is definitely people," says Velez-Liendo, and "cattle are the main reason for people killing bears." But cattle ranching is not well suited to high elevations and produces small returns at significant environmental cost, requiring 20 times more land, water and resources than it does in the lowlands, she adds.

So the team set up community apiaries, where local people could learn and practise beekeeping. After the first honey harvest, people started building their own private hives. The honey -- branded "Valle de Osos," meaning "Valley of the Bears" -- went on sale, and money started to trickle in.

There have been three harvests since the beekeeping project began in 2018, producing 2,750 kilograms of honey and almost $20,000 in revenue, says Velez-Liendo -- more than double that generated by cattle.


Circle of life

At the same time, the process is teaching locals about the ecosystem and the bear's crucial role in maintaining it: by spreading seeds, the bears help to restore forests, which in turn helps to secure water supplies. "People need to see the benefit of protecting the bears," says Velez-Liendo, and through beekeeping, "we show them that by protecting the bear, they are protecting the forest, and by protecting the forest, they are protecting the bees."

© XimenaVelez-Liendo/AndeanBearConservationProgram Velez-Liendo (left) works closely with local communities on the project.

The project has been widely recognized as crucial in preserving the species, winning the 2017 Whitley Award for grassroots wildlife conservationists. Last month, the Whitley Fund for Nature announced it would fund Velez-Liendo for the next two years, as she works to create a "productive protected landscape" -- a management framework that respects traditional land-use while combining restoration and nature-positive economic activity.

She hopes that by presenting a viable framework, other countries with spectacled bear populations will follow suit. Conservation efforts are already underway across South America, including in Ecuador, where a bear corridor has been created north of the capital, Quito, and in Peru, where the Spectacled Bear Conservation Society (SBC) works with indigenous communities to create private protected areas, as well as offering alternative livelihood programs.

Read: 'Indigenous people have the knowledge': Conservation biologist Erika Cuéllar on restoring the planet

Community engagement is essential in long-lasting population change, agrees Canadian biologist Robyn Appleton, who founded the SBC in 2009. "If you don't have communities onside, you will not be doing any conservation," she says. "You could have the last bear in Peru, and it wouldn't matter."

By building relationships with local communities, Appleton says they have successfully reduced the use of slash and burn -- the clearance of land by burning all the trees and plants on it.

The important message to get across is that protecting the bear protects people, too. "We love the bears and we care about wildlife, but we also care about humans," says Appleton. "For us, it's about protecting a place -- protecting the humans, protecting the wildlife, protecting the ecosystem. They all work together."

Gardeners of the Andes

Spectacled bears play a vital role in the survival of the whole ecosystem, of which there is not much left. The dry forests of Bolivia, which flank the eastern Andes with shrubs and dense thicket, are critically endangered. According to research from the Arizona Center for Nature Conservation, only 6% remains intact.

Primarily vegetarian, spectacled bears feed on fruit, berries and cacti, and move up to five miles a day, dispersing seeds within the area as they defecate and generating new growth and biodiversity.

Read: Solving India's deadly conflict between humans and elephants

"Bears are the gardeners of the Andes," says Velez-Liendo. "In areas where bears have been exterminated, the quality of forest is extremely poor."

Thanks to Velez-Liendo's bear program, scientists are now more aware than ever of what other life exists within the ecosystem. Eight species of wild cats have been spotted on the site, including jaguars and pumas, and there have also been sightings of the critically endangered chinchilla rat.

"Because of all our efforts to protect just one species, we're protecting 31 species of mammals, about 50 species of birds, and 20 species of other amphibians," says Velez-Liendo. "By protecting bears we're protecting an entire ecosystem."

© XimenaVelez-Liendo/AndeanBearConservationProgram The honey's label references the bears, as they are at the root of the project, says Velez-Liendo.

© XimenaVelez-Liendo/AndeanBearConservationProgram This candid photo of a bear cub, taken by camera trap on 9 February 2017, marked significant progress for Velez-Liendo and her team.

Hundreds of academics ask Freeland to scrap carbon capture tax credit

"This is one of the largest groups I've seen sign a letter of this type in Canada," 

OTTAWA — More than 400 Canadian climate scientists and other academics are pleading with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to scrap her plan to create a tax credit for companies that build carbon capture and storage facilities.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Freeland floated the idea of the tax credit in last year's federal budget and consultations to design it ended just before Christmas.

A letter sent to Freeland Wednesday asks her to ditch the idea altogether, calling it a massive subsidy to the oil and gas industry.

"As well as undermining government efforts to reach net zero by 2050, the introduction of this tax credit would contradict the promise made by your government to Canadians during the election period to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies by 2023 as well as our international commitments under the Paris agreement," the letter reads.

"And once new subsidies are put in place, they are very hard to repeal."

Carbon capture, storage and utilization systems, known as CCUS, trap and isolate carbon dioxide emitted mostly from large-scale industrial operations and store it deep underground. Most projects currently use the added pressure created by the stored CO2 to push more oil out of the ground, known as enhanced oil recovery.

In Canada the biggest project is at the Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant in Saskatchewan, but there is also at least one project in the oilsands as well. Both include enhanced oil recovery.

Freeland has made clear enhanced oil recovery will not qualify for any tax credit but the academics want her to go further and limit its use only to industries that have no other options for reducing emissions, such as cement or steel. They want oil, gas, petrochemical and plastics producers to be excluded.

Adrienne Vaupshas, spokeswoman for Freeland, said in an email that the tax credit is about reducing emissions by at least 15 million tonnes a year.

That's about five per cent of the total emissions Canada needs to eliminate to hit its new targets for 2030 set last year.

"Consultations with the industry and other stakeholders with respect to the design of this CCUS measure have been positive and productive," Vaupshas said.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told The Canadian Press last fall that there is a role for CCUS in Canada, but it's not a solution for everything, and would only be supported if it captures all emissions.

The Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan, for example, captures maybe 70 per cent, which also isn't good enough for the dam to pass muster on federal regulations requiring an end to unabated coal power by 2030.

"I would say to you, at this stage in Canada, CCS technology has not reached the level of commercial maturity nor cost maturity, that is likely going to be a solution before 2030," Wilkinson said.

Emily Eaton, an associate professor of geography and environmental studies at the University of Regina, said even if CCUS technology cuts emissions during fossil fuel production, that oil and gas is eventually going to be burned somewhere.

"So the federal government, I think, really has a choice to make," she said. "Either join countries around the world and plan for a sort of managed phaseout of oil and gas or it can prop up this industry with this unproven technology and sort of extend the life and also the emissions of the fossil fuel sector indefinitely."

The letter also argues that carbon capture and storage is still unproven on a large scale, and is very expensive relative to investments in renewable energies like solar and wind power.

Last summer Canada's biggest oil companies said getting the oilsands alone to net-zero emissions by 2050 would cost about $75 billion and about half the cuts will have to be made with CCUS. They also said the government would have to shoulder a lot of the cost.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said in August it wanted the CCUS tax credit to cover 75 per cent of the cost.

Matthew Paterson is a politics professor with a focus on climate, who until recently worked at the University of Ottawa. Now at the University of Manchester in England, Paterson said there is a political tension in Canada that exists for governments trying to maintain both climate action and the fossil fuel industry, which accounts for more than five per cent of the Canadian economy.

"They're a really good test case of how if you don't pick a side you are failing from a climate point of view," Paterson said. "At some moment those conflicts between fossil fuel interests and climate action are pretty sharp."

Freeland's office has not yet responded to the letter writers. University of Victoria geography and civil engineering professor Christina Hoicka, one of the lead authors of the letter, said she was pleasantly surprised by how many people signed it in just a few weeks.

"This is one of the largest groups I've seen sign a letter of this type in Canada," she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 20, 2022.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Mount Royal professor makes fossil breakthrough in overlooked section of the Burgess Shale

Brodie Thomas 

The world-famous Burgess Shale fossil bed in Yoho National Park is continuing to reveal its mysteries to scientists more than a century after the site was first discovered.© Provided by Calgary Herald Paul Johnston at one of the stenothecoid localities near the Burgess Shale, Mount Field.

The shale’s two-dimensional fossil images have puzzled scientists for years as they have tried to determine what the 505-million-year-old creatures looked like in the real world.


However Paul Johnston, PhD and associate professor at Mount Royal University’s earth and environmental sciences department, used a unique technique to extract three-dimensional fossils from a mostly overlooked limestone deposit at the site.

“People tend not to bother with the limestone beds in the Burgess Shale because the best fossils tend to come from the shales,” said Johnston.

“I had to get down on my hands and knees because these fossils are small. And then I saw there were in fact some fossils, and with my hand lens I could see they had been replaced with silica during their long burial history.”

As a student, Johnston had used hydrochloric acid to extract fossilized shells from younger limestone deposits in Australia. He realized he might be able to do the same thing with these older deposits, and made an application to Parks Canada to try it.

“And voila — I was able to get these things out as three-dimensional objects,” he said.

Mount Royal University associate professor Paul Johnston extracted fossils from limestone at the Burgess Shale site in Yoho National Park.

What he had discovered was a new species of the mysterious Stenothecoids. Johnston named his discovery Stenothecoides rasettii , in tribute to Italian physicist Franco Rasetti, who worked with Enrico Fermi on the problem of nuclear fission and had a side interest in paleontology.

“(Rasetti) came up to Yoho National Park and he found Stenothecoids in rock strata older — below — the Burgess Shale,” said Johnston, adding that he often relies on Rasetti’s previous work in his own research.

With about 200 examples of the new Stenothecoid species in his possession, Johnston was able to make a breakthrough in the question that had puzzled scientists since Stenothecoids were first discovered: what exactly were they?

Previously, the best guess was that they were a type of mollusk, although some had suggested they might be brachiopods, while others wanted to create a new phylum to categorize them.

“I work on the evolutionary history of mollusks. Like other paleontologists, I couldn’t make them fit very well in the evolutionary tree of mollusks,” said Johnston.

However, one tiny hole that was common across his collection of fossilized shells revealed that the Stenothecoids were in fact more closely related to brachiopods, and were likely an early offshoot of that evolutionary branch.

“We were able to resolve that because the preservation was quite good and we could see anatomical details that really told the story,” he said.

He teamed up with brachiopod expert Michael Streng at Uppsala University in Sweden. Together they published their findings in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Coincidentally, the paleontologist who first found Stenothecoids in Nevada in the 1800s was the same person who discovered the Burgess Shale.

Paleontologist Charles Walcott was administrator of the Smithsonian Institution for 20 years. He noted his discovery of Stenothecoids in 1884, and later documented the Burgess Shale in 1909.

Johnston’s discovery brings Walcott’s two discoveries together in a unique way across time and geography.

“Obviously, Walcott didn’t look at the limestone component because he was busy with the shales,” said Johnston.

Johnston’s fossils will now reside at the Royal Tyrrell Museum and at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Saskatchewan challenges Alberta to build its half of permanent Fort McMurray-La Loche road

Jamie Malbeuf

© CBC Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe committed this week to finishing the eastern half of an all-weather road between La Loche and Fort McMurray.

The Saskatchewan government is calling on Alberta to commit to building it's portion of an all-weather road connecting Fort McMurray to La Loche.

The premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan signed an agreement to complete a permanent 110-kilometre road in 2005.

Currently the road is only passable in winter.

"Saskatchewan has been working diligently," Premier Scott Moe said this week. The province has completed 44 of 53 kilometres of road.

"What we have done here today… is committed to the final nine kilometres," Moe said Tuesday. So far Saskatchewan has spent about $6 million on the road, he said.

Many people in the north work in Fort McMurray and this would allow for easier ground access, Moe said.

"It allows us to share that labour pool more and provide jobs for everyone in a more ready fashion, and more accessible than what we have today," he said.

With new mining ventures coming in on the Saskatchewan side, the road would give workers in either community better accessibility to the neighbouring province.

"It's been too slow, admittedly, on both sides of the border," Moe said.

Moe sent a letter to Premier Jason Kenney asking him to commit to building Alberta's segment of the road.

"I haven't heard back as of yet, but I'm sure we'll have discussions about it in the days ahead," Moe said.

Kenney's press secretary Justin Brattinga said in an email, "We're currently examining the proposal from Premier Moe and will be providing a response soon."

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo manages Alberta's half of the winter road, about 57 kilometres.

Kevin Weidlich, president and CEO of Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo Economic Development and Tourism, said he was "delighted" to hear about Moe's commitment.

"It's a long time in the works," Weidlich said. "One of the great issues that Fort McMurray struggles with, is it's generally at the end of a very long highway."

He said this road would connect the town to another northern town, making it more interesting for investors and businesses.

"It draws potential employees and people that would be willing to spend money, shop or work in Fort McMurray."

It would also allow those in northern Saskatchewan to access the Fort McMurray airport.

Weidlich said he would encourage the Alberta government to make a commitment to investing in infrastructure in the region, including other projects.

"The more the province invests in the region in terms of infrastructure, the greater the payoff in economic impact for the entire province," Weidlich said.

Coun. Keith McGrath has been an advocate for infrastructure projects in Fort McMurray for years, and in November he put forward a bylaw to create a Regional Transportation Committee.

"The Government of Saskatchewan is on the right track," McGrath said. "It's about linking people to jobs and industry, healthcare professionals, education."

'Made in China' KN95 Masks Distributed to Congress Leave Conservatives Outraged

WHY? THEY DON'T WEAR MASKS

Darragh Roche 

Conservatives have expressed outrage after it emerged that KN95 masks distributed to congressional offices were made in China, with House Republicans demanding answers from Speaker Nancy Pelosi

.

© Ian Forsyth/Getty Images Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, walks through to the plenary with members of the U.S. Congressional delegation at COP26 on November 9, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. Republicans have criticized Pelosi for the fact KN95 masks distributed to Congress are "Made in China."

More than 120 GOP lawmakers have signed a letter to Pelosi describing their "disbelief and outrage" that the masks were being handed out "when American alternatives are available."

Some have also been posting about their anger on social media, but Pelosi's office told Fox News on Thursday that the Architect of the Capitol was responsible for the purchase rather than any "House entity."

Nonetheless, Republican lawmakers blamed her for the decision to use Chinese-made masks.

"Speaker Pelosi sent out N-95 masks to every House office. Unfortunately, I can't read the instructions," tweeted Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin.

Steil shared a photo of one of the KN95 masks as well as a small certificate that came with it. The certificate was written in both Chinese and English.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has encouraged Americans to wear KN95 or N95 masks, explaining on its website that N95 masks offer the highest level of protection.

Rep. Troy Balderson of Ohio tweeted a video of the masks distributed in Congress, with the caption: "Speaker Pelosi's Capitol Hill mask mandate now comes with a complimentary KN95 emblazoned with MADE IN CHINA.

"No thank you, Madam Speaker. I support MADE IN THE USA!"

Rep. Bill Posey of Florida tweeted on Wednesday: "I wonder if @SpeakerPelosi knew before she purchased and distributed KN95 masks which prominently say 'MADE IN CHINA,' that a Florida company is currently making 2 million N95 masks a day, employing 350 Americans. #BuyAmerican #MakeAmerican."

Posey shared a Fox News article about the company, Advanced Concept Innovations in Polk County.

The Republican Office of the Committee on House Administration tweeted: "Why in the world is the House purchasing hundreds of thousands of KN95 masks that are made in China? Ranking Member @RodneyDavis and more than 120 other House Republicans are asking @SpeakerPelosi for answers."

That letter says if members are required to wear masks officials should "at least respect the institution and the taxpayers enough not to line the pockets of our adversary whose actions led to the current pandemic."

It continues: "Under your tenure, you have closed the Capitol to the American people, implemented COVID-19 protocols in the House that conflict with the Senate, and now, you have handed out masks from China when American alternatives are available.

"Quite simply, there is no reason that our elected officials and government workers should be given KN95 masks manufactured in China."

A spokesperson for Pelosi told Fox News on Thursday that "no House entity was involved in this purchase" and said the Architect of the Capitol had "made the purchase."

Newsweek has asked Nancy Pelosi's office and the Architect of the Capitol for comment.

Elizabeth Warren says Elon Musk launches personal attacks on her, rather than actually discussing the tax system

insider@insider.com (Isobel Asher Hamilton) 

© Provided by Business Insider Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty/Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images

Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke to tech journalist Kara Swisher about her spat with Elon Musk.

Musk called Warren "Senator Karen" in December after she said he pays too little tax.
Warren told Swisher: "What he's hoping for is that this is personal."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Tesla CEO and world's richest man Elon Musk prefers to make things "personal," rather than engage with criticisms of how much tax he pays.

Warren made the comments during an appearance on The New York Times Sway podcast. Host Kara Swisher asked her about a December Twitter exchange in which Warren said Musk should "actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else."

Musk responded: "You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason."

He added: "Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen."

Asked by Swisher whether she minded the insult, Warren said: "What he's hoping for is that this is personal."

"It's about trying to make it personal instead of talking about what's wrong with the tax system," she added.

Warren told Swisher that Musk paid no federal income tax in 2018.

"Every nurse who paid taxes, every firefighter who paid taxes, paid more than Elon Musk. That's a broken taxation system," she said.

Swisher said Musk is due to pay billions in income tax this year. The Tesla CEO said in December he will pay over $11 billion in taxes for 2021.

Warren countered that this is only because he sold off a large swathe of his stock in 2021.

"Pretty much everybody in America would be a little richer today or a lot richer today if they had not had to pay any federal income taxes for years and years and years," Warren told Swisher. "So to say now that he's in this position where he can sell off a slice of his business and make a bazillion dollars and because he chose to take that action he will pay taxes this year — I'm sorry, I just don't think that wins him the Good Tax-Paying Citizen of the Year Award."

Swisher asked Warren why she thinks tech leaders, in general, criticise her and characterise her as a stern schoolteacher.

"I just assume it's the same as anybody who doesn't like someone who challenges them. And they look for what they think is a vulnerability. And somehow, they think that's my vulnerability," Warren said.

"I don't know. I don't actually spend a lot of time worrying about it. I am not a thin-skinned billionaire," she added.

SAUDI ATTACK TRAINED BY USA

Children among more than 60 killed in airstrikes in Yemen, NGO reports

United Nations envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, voiced grave concern over the military escalation and called on both sides to “exercise maximum restraint.”


Jan. 21, 2022
By Reuters

Three children and more than 60 adults are reported to have been killed in air strikes in Yemen on Friday, Save the Children said. A Reuters witness said several people including African migrants were killed in a raid in Saada province.

Rescue workers were still pulling bodies out of the rubble around midday local time (4 a.m. ET) following the dawn strike on the temporary detention centre in Saada in north Yemen, but it was not immediately clear how many people had been killed.


A Saudi-led military coalition has intensified air strikes on what it says are Houthi military targets after the Iran-aligned movement conducted an unprecedented assault on coalition member the United Arab Emirates on Monday and further cross-border missile and drones launches at Saudi cities.

The aftermath of an overnight Saudi-led coalition strike on a telecommunications hub in the port city of Hodeidah that triggered a nationwide internet blackout, on Friday.Ansarullah media center / via AFP - Getty Images

A statement from Save the Children said more than 60 adults were killed in air strikes around the country on Friday, adding three children were killed when missiles struck the western port city of Hodeidah.

It called on parties to the conflict to protect children and their families from “the horror of the ongoing violence” and avoid the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Houthi-run Al Masirah television channel said tens of people had been killed and injured in the strike in Saada. It showed footage of men trying to clear rubble using their hands to reach those trapped and of wounded at al-Jamhuri hospital.

Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that the hospital had received “around 200 wounded and they say that they are so overwhelmed that they cannot take any more patients.”

June 2021: Houthi attack on gas station is war crime, Yemen authorities sayJUNE 7, 2021

00:36

Despite Yemen’s war, migrants from the Horn of Africa still go there en route to Saudi Arabia or wealthy Gulf states.

Yemen was experiencing a nationwide Internet outage on Friday with the exception of the southern city of Aden. Houthi media blamed it what it said was a coalition strike on a telecommunications facility in Hodeidah. Reuters could not immediately confirm the cause of the outage.

The Saudi-led alliance on Thursday reported operations against “Houthi military capabilities” in Hodeidah, ballistic missile launch platforms in Bayda province in central Yemen and military targets in Yemen’s Houthi-held capital Sanaa.

The conflict, in which the coalition intervened in March 2015 after the Houthis ousted the internationally recognised government from Sanaa, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and pushed Yemen to the verge of famine.

United Nations envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, on Friday voiced grave concern over the military escalation and called on both sides to “exercise maximum restraint.”

The Everyday Practicality of Evil

BY AL CARROLL • 13 JANUARY 2022

“Protecting the Settlers,” by J. R. Browne, 1864. In the 19th century, thousands of indigenous people in California were massacred by United States government agents and private citizens in a campaign now known as the California genocide.
“After every atrocity, one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies; it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim[s] brought it upon [themselves]; and in any case, it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”
—Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence

Hannah Arendt famously spoke of “the Banality of Evil.” To the Banality of Evil, we must add the Everyday Practicality of Evil, the Ordinary Pragmatism of Evil. This is the whole subject of this essay.

When Holocaust deniers deny the Holocaust, we usually know why. They know their neo Nazi or anti-Semitic beliefs are discredited by the massive horror of genocide their ideological clones committed. When many Turks deny the Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek genocides, we know why. It offends their sense of pride in the Turkish nation and people.

For American deniers, it’s more complex. When Americans deny genocide took place in America, they often are not doing so from malice, but ignorance. Most are actually repeating the poor, heavily whitewashed, and highly censored and sanitized schooling they had, and thus are blameless.

But many other Americans often are no different in motive than their anti-Semitic or Turkish nationalist counterparts. American pride often demands the Myth of American Innocence, the ludicrously unlikely claim that every American has always been as innocent of wrongdoing as an infant, or perhaps Jesus himself. In recent years, there has even been the bizarre resurgence of an idea discredited in academia for two generations, American Exceptionalism, with fealty to a patently absurd claim to unique American virtue. Genocide denial in America is a product of cognitive dissonance. Genocide in America is denied because it is uncomfortable to admit to it if you strongly believe in American patriotism.

There was no such genocide denial while the most obvious forms of physical genocide were going on, when it was openly called or even celebrated as the extermination of inferiors and heathen savages. Only after the worst and most blatant of mass murders ended did the denials begin.

This denialism grew stronger over time, in the name of colonialist nostalgia and hagiography for American Founding Fathers. Nomadic conquerors from Europe and their descendants transformed into “settlers.” The true settlers, indigenous people building and living in established nations, are depicted as “nomads” who magically vanished away like snow in the spring, their genocide supposedly natural, its perpetrators unmentioned, but obvious to any discerning eye.

America is mostly a nation in denial about the genocides (yes, plural) that took place on its own soil. America is mostly a nation in denial about genocides carried out by some of its people, including governments and leaders. This denial is taught by most of its schools and teachers, and led by and enforced and reinforced by its leading commentators, journalists, politicians, and even scholars.

Most individual Americans are guiltless of genocide denial. They cannot be blamed for what they were not taught, or more often, deliberately mis-taught, falsely indoctrinated, and outright lied to. But for their leaders, their media and government figures and especially academia, it is a different matter. All guilt is theirs, all shame, and all the harm caused by such denial needs to be laid upon them, almost as much as that of the ones carrying out physical genocide. Those who deny genocide need to be recognized as collaborators after the fact, like a criminal who helps another criminal conceal evidence of a crime.

There are, to be sure, many without blind spots. Some scholars have done noble, important, penetrating, insightful and deeply necessary work. There are entire fields like Genocide Studies and American Indian Studies. Entire disciplines like anthropology have spent several generations coming to grips with the legacy of their earlier record of endorsing scientific racism and justifying the worst evils humanity has done, including genocide. Just on the subject of California Indian Genocide alone, we have outstanding history works like An American Genocide by Benjamin Madley; Murder State by Brendan Lindsay; A Cross of Thorns by Elias Castillo; Diggers: Tragic Fate of the California Indians by Jerry Stanley; and Exterminate Them! by Clifford Trafzer. Trafzer, himself a California Indian, deserves the greatest credit for a lifetime of devotion to remembering those lost and understanding the mechanisms of genocide.

But much of this valuable research and insight remains unknown to the American public. This is in spite of the great popularizers of history from below, works that debunk popular myths and strip away falsehoods. Books like James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States have a huge impact, eagerly devoured by much of the American public, especially younger generations weary of nationalist, imperialist, or outright racist lies posing as neutral and objective, or most obscenely of all, pretending to be patriotic history.

Yet the push back from many, whether nationalists, racists, or simply those who don’t want to believe anything negative about America, has prevented such truths and insights from making their way into public schools. I know firsthand as a college professor who teaches primarily first year students. Not one in fifty of them ever heard the term genocide in their high schools except when discussing the Holocaust. In seventeen years of teaching over 2,000 students, not a single one of them ever heard of California Indian Genocide before.

Try to imagine something comparably disturbing, that very few Germans except scholars knew about the Holocaust. Would the world not rightfully be concerned that Germany might be part of the rise of fascism or another mass murdering dictatorship again? Would it not make sense that Jews and others would fear history repeating itself, and a future German genocide seem almost inevitable? In the US, failing to teach accurately about genocides on American soil made it far more likely it would happen again…seven times.

To its credit, German society teaches extensively about Holocaust Studies in its high schools. Germany is more honest about its history because the Nazis lost power. In the US, genocide perpetrators won, and their descendants remain powerful and prospered unchallenged. Only with the start of the civil rights movement did a powerful moral counter narrative begin.

Holocaust deniers are deservedly outcast pariahs, regarded as the cranks and bigots they are. But deniers of genocide against American Indians and others in the US have the highest levels of respectability, and are often rewarded for their denial. American genocide deniers are likely to be praised as “thoughtful” and “non-ideological” and “calm” for their arguments when they should be seen as they truly are: nakedly aggressive, carrying out a willfully blind murder of the truth, and ultimately hateful.

What is the effect of such mainstream American genocide denial? First, look at the effect Holocaust denial has on Jewish people. Denial comes from bigots or cranks arguing, “Your relatives did not die in camps. You made that up. You just want to make Germans feel guilty. Jews own all the banks anyway. Jews were traitors to Germany and a threat to the world.” Such claims are horrifying, deeply ignorant and prejudiced, but done almost entirely by the fringe.

Now imagine yourself as an American Indian, say one who is 30 years old, born in 1989. Nine tenths of your people were killed during the Gold Rush, or a third killed on the Trail of Tears, or many of them slaughtered at Sand Creek or any number of other massacres. But the textbooks, when they discuss this at all, often call such massacres “battles.”

Your people likely lost their homeland a century and a half ago. You don’t know your own language because your grandparents and great grandparents were beaten if they dared speak it at government boarding schools they were forced to attend. There is as much as a one in four chance your female relatives were forcibly sterilized by the US government. One aunt may have gone in to have her tonsils taken out and then had her tubes tied without being asked. Or an older female cousin might have been told she had to be sterilized, threatened that she would lose custody of her children if she did not.

There is also a one in four chance you were forcibly adopted by white fundamentalists, Mormons, or others convinced it was for your own good. Perhaps they never told you about your people’s past, or if they did, taught you it was “savage” and better forgotten. Maybe you did not find out you were Native until adulthood. Possibly only then did you discover your real family was intact all along, and there were relatives out there you didn’t know.

Still, you hold onto traditional knowledge to help you deal with being stopped yet again by the police for Driving While Indian, and by so many people being surprised Natives still exist when nearly one in 50 Americans are also American Indian. You try not to get discouraged realizing most other Americans don’t know about genocides done by American governments, even presidents, against American Indians and Latin American Indians as recently as 1974 and 2000, respectively.

But everyone keeps telling you, “Native Americans never went through genocide.” The schools claim this, and most non-Natives do not know any better, even while Natives do. The list of justifications many repeat to you is long:

“It was all by accident. Disease did all the killing.”

“Those Natives were savages. They killed each other too.” (But raiding is not genocide.)

“Besides, they get all that money from casinos.” (Actually, most tribes don’t have them.)

“There’s no real Indians left anyway.”

“There’s only about 10,000 Natives left.” (Actually said to me by students.)

“I don’t care, and I’m one myself. I heard we had a Cherokee princess in our family.”

“We honor those people with sports mascots. Go Braves!”

“They live on free government money.” (Old racist myth.)

Such heinous moral callousness is the inevitable result of teaching genocide denial. When schools teach accidental-disease-as-genocide-denial, what should we expect? When schools spread the Myth of Native Isolation, what should we expect? When professional sports and public school institutions teach that degrading, mockery, and stereotyping are “honoring,” what should we expect? When Hollywood teaches that you are not truly Native unless you lived before 1900 and dressed in buckskin, it’s no wonder many Americans ignore six million American Indians in their midst, imagining all or almost all Natives are gone. These justifications for genocide are what American Indians contend with all the time, often said or shouted directly, face to face.
“American pride often demands the Myth of American Innocence, the ludicrously unlikely claim that every American has always been innocent of wrongdoing.”

No respectable newspaper, magazine, or network would hire Holocaust deniers. No museum or university would sponsor or countenance such unethical bigoted denial, not without rightfully facing condemnation. Heads would roll. A politician, newscaster, or scholar would see their career ended quickly for Holocaust denial. But never has that condemnation or outcast status happened for denying Native genocides, and some are rewarded. The disgust and horror dealing with genocide deniers is a constant daily occurrence for Natives.

Denialism plagues America. The word plague is a deliberate choice, for this illness greatly weakens, even cripples, this nation. Denialism cripples efforts at reconciliation among different backgrounds, harming those in denial as well as the minorities attacked. It also cripples American efforts to deal with human rights abuses and atrocities, ongoing or potential genocide overseas, by removing any claim by America to have the moral high ground, making the US look hypocritical and ignorant of its own past.

This is not even a distant past, as the earlier examples made clear. Natives personally live with genocide right now. Many thousands of Native women living today bear the scars, both literal and psychological, of forced sterilization. Hundreds of thousands of American Indians living today deal with the great trauma of forced assimilation by boarding schools and forced adoption from intact families…


Passengers shooting buffalo from the Kansas-Pacific Railroad, 1871 (Library of Congress)

These should not be shocking revelations or arguments. One of the mistakes made by those who argue what was done to Natives was genocide is to label all seven acts of genocide as only one. Genocide deniers and racists eagerly leap upon this error and exploit it. But we do not say that all genocides ever done against Jews were one genocide. We make a distinction between genocide by Romans, Crusaders, Russians, and Nazis because they took place separately, by different perpetrators over many centuries. These were distinct even though those carrying them out had similar motives, beliefs, and in some cases methods.

We must and should make those same distinctions between genocides against Natives over the course of more than 500 years, beginning with Columbus’s genocide in Hispaniola and ending (for now) with forced sterilization in Peru.

As a rule, perpetrators of genocide must be defeated, thrown out, and punished to end it. Staying in power leads to denials genocide ever happened. Much of the public argues there was no wrongdoing. How could such a horrific crime really be a crime if no one was executed or imprisoned?

Deniers make genocide likely to happen again and again. An entire industry of genocide denial in America, almost all public schools, parts of universities, and textbook companies lazily reproduce denial. Genocide deniers should be named and shamed.

This article is a passage from a forthcoming book entitled Genocide Denial in America.


Published in the Winter 2022 Humanist

Al Carroll is Associate Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College. He is the author or editor of four history books and one of alternate history, and numerous articles for Beacon, Counterpunch, History News Network, Indian Country Today, LA Progressive, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Truth Out, Wall Street Examiner, and elsewhere.

INTERNATIONALIST HUMANIST

Celebrate Thomas Paine’s Birthday on January 29th

BY MARGARET DOWNEY • 

13 JANUARY 2022

Thomas Paine portrait via New York Public Library

On Saturday, January 29th the newly-formed Thomas Paine Memorial Association will hold a virtual celebration of Thomas Paine, founding father and humanist.

Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-8) opened last year’s Thomas Paine Day celebration by saying, in part, “There’s so much to celebrate with regard to Thomas Paine, whose memory and message have only become more urgently relevant as every day goes by. Thomas Paine put democracy itself in government by the people and the sovereignty of the people at the very center of our political philosophy. Paine has a lot to teach us about civil rights and about social justice and reconciliation of the country. His legacy is endlessly rich and fertile for us who continue to fight for strong democracy against all of the fascist undertones of our day.”

On January 29, 2022, at 1:00 PM (PST)/4:00 PM (EST), hundreds of people will gather on Zoom to celebrate the birthdate of an often-forgotten Founding Father, Thomas Paine. Paine is hailed as a “Freethought Hero,” and great patriot and the event will be, as far as we know, the very first Zoom celebration of his birth, creating connections from all over the world. All are invited to share a toast in celebration of the life and work of this champion of reason, independent thought, and revolutionary ideas.

The Thomas Paine Memorial Association (TPMA), is a new non-profit organization, with the mission of educating the public and installing statues of Thomas Paine in Washington, DC and other places of significance to his life.

Event cosponsors include American Humanist Association, Center for Inquiry, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Freethought Society, the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, and the Thomas Paine National Historical Association.

During the Thomas Paine Birthdate Celebration, the Stiefel Freethought Foundation (SFF) is pleased to offer an opportunity to TRIPLE any donation to TPMA that is received. A $17.76 donation will be matched to become $53.28 and a $1,776 donation becomes $5,328. Don’t miss this opportunity to support an important endeavor. Todd Stiefel, founder and president of SFF stated, “Thomas Paine was a patriot, revolutionary, Founding Father, and a victim of colonial America cancel culture. His advocacy for freedom from authoritarian organizations made him both lionized and ostracized. It is past time for his legacy to be restored and for him to be honored for his critical role in driving and sustaining the American Revolution. Without Paine, there likely would not be an America.”

Closing remarks at the event will be delivered by Congressman Jamie Raskin.

Educator, songwriter and recording artist James Klueh will perform two Thomas Paine-themed songs prior to the interactive social hour. He said, “My primary experience of all things Thomas Paine has been through the endeavor of setting his verse and poems to music. This minor contribution constitutes my addition to the continuing celebration of one of history’s most important actors.”

Please register here for this international event: https://bit.ly/ThomasPaineBirthdayCelebration

The following statements are from some of the TPMA board members who will be speaking at the event.

Gary Berton, Thomas Paine researcher and expert:
The age of democratic revolutions was sparked by Paine—the modern concept of democracy was placed before humanity by him – with the possibility of liberty from tyranny, from poverty, from the chains of superstition, and from helplessness. That is his legacy. 1776 began with Common Sense and closed with the first Crisis. If this country should honor him, a statue in its capital is necessary.

Robyn Blumner, CEO, Center For Inquiry:
Thomas Paine said, ‘To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.’ How relevant for today’s epidemic of COVID misinformation and anti-vax hysteria. If only more people read and understood the writings of Thomas Paine, perhaps rabbit holes would just be where rabbits lived.

Christopher Cameron, history professor:
In addition to inspiring the Declaration of Independence with his pamphlet Common Sense and stirring the hearts of weary troops with his Crisis essays, Thomas Paine was a pioneering abolitionist who published anti-slavery essays as early as 1776 and helped make Pennsylvania the first state to adopt a gradual emancipation law. Throughout his life, Paine was a stalwart champion of the downtrodden and the oppressed and should be remembered as one of the leading humanitarian thinkers of his age. This statue will go a long way toward preserving that memory.

John de Lancie, actor, director, producer, writer, and educator:
The more I read Thomas Paine, the more I feel we’ve let him down. We have a lot of work to do.

Marnie Mosiman de Lancie, actor and singer:
In these perilous times for democracy, no doubt Thomas Paine would once again say, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’ I think he would be astonished that, so long after he fought against the notion that voting rights extended only to those of wealth and property, we would once again be fighting for all citizens to have the simple right to vote.

Ann Druyan, author, producer, and director:

Thomas Paine is that rarity, a Founding Father, for whom we need not make any excuses. More than two hundred years after his death, the writings of this least celebrated, yet possibly most influential architect of the dream of America, requires no special pleading. They are the blueprint for equality, diversity, and freedom. For too many of his contemporaries it is time to come to grips with their crimes and tear down their statues. For Thomas Paine it is long overdue to raise one up.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President, Freedom From Religion Foundation:

My favorite Thomas Paine quotation is, ‘The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.’ The Freedom From Religion Foundation invites everyone to celebrate Thomas Paine’s enlightening wisdom on the date of his birth, January 29, 2022.

Julia Sweeney, actor, comedian, and writer:

Thomas Paine said, ‘He who dares not offend, cannot be honest.’ I think of this all the time. Paine’s words challenge me to be more honest. He didn’t retreat. He explained and encouraged this country to strive to be more honest, more equitable, more reasonable, and more democratic. I want to help promote his ideas, so that they become a part of our common understanding of what it means to be a citizen.

Actor Ian Ruskin will speak about his experiences portraying Thomas Paine. He will share photos of appearances and will include an overview of his “Walk in the Footsteps of Thomas Paine” tour that took place in England. Ruskin said, “A statue helps us to remember someone’s life and work, and who could be more deserving than Thomas Paine, who had such an impact on the birth and soul of America? Yet I know of only three in all of the world. Performing my play To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine in England, I found them in country towns large and small, in Thetford, Lewes, and London. There are great monuments to a number of men in Washington, DC, and it’s time to add a statue of Thomas Paine. It’s time to remember, thank, and celebrate this truly visionary man.”

Freethought Society president Margaret Downey will be talking about the many Thomas Paine-themed activities she has sponsored, including her “Walk in the Footsteps of Thomas Paine” that took place in Paris, France. In regard to the January 29th celebration, Downey said, “The first formal gathering to celebrate the birth of Thomas Paine took place on January 29, 1825. One hundred and ninety-seven years later, I’m looking forward to conveying how Thomas Paine became my freethought hero and what I’ve done for 30 years to honor his life and work.”

Sculptor Zenos Frudakis will join the festivities from his studio in Glenside, Pennsylvania. He recently stated, “To me, Thomas Paine represents common sense and reason in politics. As such, a statue of Paine would embody those ideals and inspire others by his words and example. Paine was a critical voice in the Enlightenment of the last quarter of the 18th century. His continued relevance in presence of form and substance of thought is dearly needed now. I’m pleased to be the sculptor selected for this important project.”

Margaret Downey is the founder and president of the Freethought Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE

EDITED BY DR. PHIL S. FONER

TWO VOLUMES

Publication date 1945

The writings of Thomas Paine helped shape the American nation and left their imprint on democratic thought all over the world. This two-volume set represents an attempt to make these writings available to both the general reader and the student. Every effort has been made to include all of Paine's writings available at present, and to present them in a manner that would make clear their historical background. Emphasis has been placed throughout on presenting Paine's writings in their essential clarity, and for this purpose efforts have been made, without in any sense distorting Paine's meaning, to modernize the spelling, capitalization and punctuation wherever it was necessary to make the meaning clear to a present day reader.

Volume One contains Paine's major works: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, and Agrarian Justice.

https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWritings/mode/2up

Volume Two contains Paine's political and economic essays, theological dissertations, scientific papers and political and personal correspondence. Much of the material found in the second volume has never been included in any previous collection of Paine's writings.

https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWritings2

 

 

texts

The Complete