REAL CRT

The hidden story of when two Black college students were tarred and feathered

Karen Sieber, Humanities Officer, Minnesota Humanities Center, University of Maine

THE CONVERSATION
Sun, January 15, 2023 

Newspaper coverage of the incident is hard to find. New York Herald

One cold April night in 1919, at around 2 a.m., a mob of 60 rowdy white students at the University of Maine surrounded the dorm room of Samuel and Roger Courtney in Hannibal Hamlin Hall. The mob planned to attack the two Black brothers from Boston in retaliation for what a newspaper article described at the time as their “domineering manner and ill temper.” The brothers were just two among what yearbooks show could not have been more than a dozen Black University of Maine students at the time.

While no first-person accounts or university records of the incident are known to remain, newspaper clippings and photographs from a former student’s scrapbook help fill in the details.

Although outnumbered, the Courtney brothers escaped. They knocked three freshmen attackers out cold in the process. Soon a mob of hundreds of students and community members formed to finish what the freshmen had started. The mob captured the brothers and led them about four miles back to campus with horse halters around their necks.

Before a growing crowd at the livestock-viewing pavilion, members of the mob held down Samuel and Roger as their heads were shaved and their bodies stripped naked in the near-freezing weather. They were forced to slop each other with hot molasses. The mob then covered them with feathers from their dorm room pillows. The victims and bystanders cried out for the mob to stop but to no avail. Local police, alerted hours earlier, arrived only after the incident ended. No arrests were made.

Incidents of tarring and feathering as a form of public torture can be found throughout American history, from colonial times onward. In nearby Ellsworth, Maine, a Know Nothing mob, seen by some as a forerunner to the KKK, tarred and feathered Jesuit priest Father John Bapst in 1851. Especially leading into World War I, this method of vigilantism continued to be used by the KKK and other groups against Black Americans, immigrants and labor organizers, especially in the South and West. As with the Courtney brothers incident, substitutions like molasses or milkweed were made based on what was readily available. Although rarely fatal, victims of tarring and feathering attacks were not only humiliated by being held down, shaved, stripped naked and covered in a boiled sticky substance and feathers, but their skin often became burned and blistered or peeled off when solvents were used to remove the remnants.
Discovering the attack

When I first discovered the Courtney brothers incident in the summer of 2020 – as Black Lives Matter protests took place worldwide following the May death of George Floyd – it felt monumental to me. Not only am I a historian at the university where this shameful event occurred, but I’ve also devoted the past five years to tracking down information about the Red Summer of 1919, the name given to the nationwide wave of violence against Black Americans that year.

University alumni records and yearbooks indicate the Courtney brothers never finished their studies. One article mentions possible legal action against the university, although I couldn’t find evidence of it.

The Courtney brothers, pictured tarred and feathered inside the livestock-viewing pavilion on the University of Maine’s campus. 

Seth Pinkham papers, Fogler Library, University of Maine

Local media like The Bangor Daily News and the campus newspaper reported nothing on the event. A search of databases populated with millions of pages of historic newspapers yielded just six news accounts of the Courtney brothers incident. Most were published in the greater Boston area where the family was prominent, or in the Black press. While most of white America was unaware of the attack, many Black Americans likely read about it in The Chicago Defender, the most prominent and widely distributed Black paper in the nation at the time.

Anyone with firsthand memory of the incident is long gone. Samuel passed away in 1929 with no descendants. Roger, who worked in real estate investment, died a year later, leaving a pregnant wife and toddler behind. Obituaries for both men are brief and provide no details about their deaths. My efforts to speak with Courtney family members are ongoing.

No condemnation

The tarring and feathering is also missing from official University of Maine histories. A brief statement from the university’s then-president, Robert J. Aley, claimed the event was nothing more than childish hazing that was “likely to happen any time, at any college, the gravity depending much upon the susceptibilities of the victim and the notoriety given it.” Rather than condemn the mob’s violence, his statement highlighted the fact that one of the brothers had previously violated unspecified campus rules, as if that justified the treatment the men received.
A cross-country search

When I began my research on the Red Summer in 2015, almost no documents about the events were digitized, and resources were spread out across the country at dozens of different institutions.

I spent much of 2015 on a 7,500-mile cross-country journey, scouring material at over 20 archives, libraries and historical societies nationwide. On that trip, I collected digital copies of over 700 documents about this harrowing spike in anti-Black violence, including photographs of bodies on fire, reports of Black churches burned, court documents and coroners’ reports, telegrams documenting local government reactions and incendiary editorials that fueled the fire.

I built a database of riot dates and locations, number of people killed, sizes of mobs, number of arrests, supposed instigating factors and related archival material to piece together how these events were all connected. This data allowed me to create maps, timelines and other methods of examining that moment in history. While each event was different, many trends emerged, such as the role of labor and housing tension spurred by the first wave of the Great Migration or the prevalence of attacks against Black soldiers that year.

The end result, Visualizing the Red Summer, is now used in classrooms around the country. It has been featured or cited by Teaching Human Rights, the National Archives, History.com and the American Historical Association, among others.

Yet most Americans have still never heard about the Black sharecroppers killed in the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas that year for organizing their labor or the fatal stoning of Black Chicago teenager Eugene Williams for floating into “white waters” in Lake Michigan. They weren’t taught about the Black World War I soldiers attacked in Charleston, South Carolina, and Bisbee, Arizona, during the Red Summer.

There is still work to do, but the recent anniversaries of events like the Tulsa Massacre or the Red Summer, which coincided with modern-day Black Lives Matter protests and the killings of Americans like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, have sparked a renewed interest in the past.

This new discovery brings my research back home to campus. It has afforded me an opportunity to engage students with the events of the Red Summer in new ways.

As the humanities specialist at the McGillicuddy Humanities Center, I worked with students in a public history class in the fall of 2020 to design a digital exhibit and walking tour of hidden histories at the University of Maine. This tour includes the attack on the Courtney brothers. Intentionally forgotten stories, or those buried out of shame or trauma, exist everywhere. By uncovering these local stories, it will become more clear how acts of violence against people of color are not limited to a particular time or place, but are rather part of collective American history.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Karen Sieber, University of Maine.

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One year after volcanic blast, many of Tonga's reefs lay silent




 The aftermath of Tonga volcano eruption on Jan. 15, 2022

Sat, January 14, 2023 
By Gloria Dickie

(Reuters) - One year on from the massive eruption of an underwater volcano in the South Pacific, the island nation of Tonga is still dealing with the damage to its coastal waters.

When Hunga-Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai went off, it sent a shockwave around the world, produced a plume of water and ash that soared higher into the atmosphere than any other on record, and triggered tsunami waves that ricocheted across the region - slamming into the archipelago which lies southeast of Fiji.

Coral reefs were turned to rubble and many fish perished or migrated away.

The result has Tongans struggling, with more than 80% of Tongan families relying on subsistence reef fishing, according 2019 data from the World Bank. Following the eruption, the Tongan government said it would seek $240 million for recovery, including improving food security. In the immediate aftermath, the World Bank provided $8 million.

"In terms of recovery plan ... we are awaiting for funds to cover expenditure associated with small-scale fisheries along coastal communities," said Poasi Ngaluafe, head of the science division of Tonga's Ministry of Fisheries.

SILENT REEFS

The vast majority of Tongan territory is ocean, with its exclusive economic zone extending across nearly 700,000 square kilometres (270,271 square miles) of water. While commercial fisheries contribute only 2.3% to the national economy, subsistence fishing is considered crucial in making up a staple of the Tongan diet.

The U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization estimated in a November report that the eruption cost the country's fisheries and aquaculture sector some $7.4 million - a significant number for Tonga's roughly $500 million economy. The losses were largely due to damaged fishing vessels, with nearly half of that damage in the small-scale fisheries sector, though some commercial vessels were also affected.

Because the Tongan government does not closely track subsistence fishing, it is difficult to estimate the eruption's impact on fish harvests.

But scientists say that, apart from some fish stocks likely being depleted, there are other troubling signs that suggest it could take a long time for fisheries to recover.

Young corals are failing to mature in the coastal waters around the eruption site, and many areas once home to healthy and abundant reefs are now barren, according to the government's August survey.

It is likely volcanic ash smothered many reefs, depriving fish of feeding areas and spawning beds. The survey found that no marine life had survived near the volcano.

Meanwhile, the tsunami that swelled in the waters around the archipelago knocked over large boulder corals, creating fields of coral rubble. And while some reefs survived, the crackling, snapping and popping noises of foraging shrimp and fish, a sign of a healthy environment, were gone.

"The reefs in Tonga were silent," the survey report found.

FARMING REPRIEVE

Agriculture has proved a lifeline to Tongans facing empty waters and damaged boats. Despite concerns that the volcanic ash, which blanketed 99% of the country, would make soils too toxic to grow crops, "food production has resumed with little impacts," said Siosiua Halavatu, a soil scientist speaking on behalf of the Tongan government.

Soil tests revealed that the fallen ash was not harmful for humans. And while yam and sweet potato plants perished during the eruption, and fruit trees were burned by falling ash, they began to recover once the ash was washed away.

"We have supported recovery works through land preparation, and planting backyard gardening and roots crops in the farms, as well as export crops like watermelon and squash," Halavatu told Reuters.

But long-term monitoring will be critical, he said, and Tonga hopes to develop a national soil strategy and upgrade their soil testing laboratory to help farmers.

SKY WATER

Scientists are also now taking stock of the eruption's impact on the atmosphere. While volcanic eruptions on land eject mostly ash and sulfur dioxide, underwater volcanos jettison far more water.

Tonga's eruption was no different, with the blast's white-grayish plume reaching 57 kilometers (35.4 miles) and injecting 146 million tonnes of water into the atmosphere.

Water vapor can linger in the atmosphere for up to a decade, trapping heat on Earth's surface and leading to more overall warming. More atmospheric water vapor can also help deplete ozone, which shields the planet from harmful UV radiation.

"That one volcano increased the total amount of global water in the stratosphere by 10 percent," said Paul Newman, chief scientist for earth sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We're only now beginning to see the impact of that."

(Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London; Additional reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Katy Daigle and Tomasz Janowski)

Tonga eruption was so intense, it caused the atmosphere to ring like a bell

Kevin Hamilton, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Hawaii
THE CONVERSATION

Sat, January 14, 2023 

The volcano shortly before its eruption. Maxar via Getty Images

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption reached an explosive crescendo on Jan. 15, 2022. Its rapid release of energy powered an ocean tsunami that caused damage as far away as the U.S. West Coast, but it also generated pressure waves in the atmosphere that quickly spread around the world.

The atmospheric wave pattern close to the eruption was quite complicated, but thousands of miles away it appeared as an isolated wave front traveling horizontally at over 650 miles an hour as it spread outward.

NASA’s James Garvin, chief scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, told NPR the space agency estimated the blast was around 10 megatons of TNT equivalent, about 500 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World Word II. From satellites watching with infrared sensors above, the wave looked like a ripple produced by dropping a stone in a pond.

Satellite infrared observations captured the pulse propagating around the world.

 Mathew Barlow/University of Massachusetts Lowell

The pulse registered as perturbations in the atmospheric pressure lasting several minutes as it moved over North America, India, Europe and many other places around the globe. Online, people followed the progress of the pulse in real time as observers posted their barometric observations to social media. The wave propagated around the whole world and back in about 35 hours.

I am a meteorologist who has studied the oscillations of the global atmosphere for almost four decades. The expansion of the wave front from the Tonga eruption was a particularly spectacular example of the phenomenon of global propagation of atmospheric waves, which has been seen after other historic explosive events, including nuclear tests.

This eruption was so powerful it caused the atmosphere to ring like a bell, though at a frequency too low to hear. It’s a phenomenon first theorized over 200 years ago.

Krakatoa, 1883

The first such pressure wave that attracted scientific attention was produced by the great eruption of Mount Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883.

The Krakatoa wave pulse was detected in barometric observations at locations throughout the world. Communication was slower in those days, of course, but within a few years, scientists had combined the various individual observations and were able to plot on a world map the propagation of the pressure front in the hours and days after the eruption.

The wave front traveled outward from Krakatoa and was observed making at least three complete trips around the globe. The Royal Society of London published a series of maps illustrating the wave front’s propagation in a famous 1888 report on the eruption.

Maps from an 1888 report, shown here as an animated loop, reveal the position every two hours of the pressure wave from the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Kevin Hamilton, based on Royal Society of London images, CC BY-ND

The waves seen after Krakatoa or the recent Tonga eruption are very low-frequency sound waves. The propagation occurs as local pressure changes produce a force on the adjacent air, which then accelerates, causing an expansion or compression with accompanying pressure changes, which in turn forces air farther along the wave’s path.

In our normal experience with higher-frequency sound waves, we expect sound to travel in straight lines, say, from an exploding firework rocket directly to the ear of onlooker on the ground. But these global pressure pulses have the peculiarity of propagating only horizontally, and so bending as they follow the curvature of the Earth.

A theory of waves that hug the Earth

Over 200 years ago, the great French mathematician, physicist and astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace predicted such behavior.

Laplace based his theory on the physical equations governing atmospheric motions on a global scale. He predicted that there should be a class of motions in the atmosphere that propagate rapidly but hug the surface of the Earth. Laplace showed that the forces of gravity and atmospheric buoyancy favor horizontal air motions relative to vertical air motions, and one effect is to allow some atmospheric waves to follow the curvature of the Earth.

For most of the 19th century, this seemed a somewhat abstract idea. But the pressure data after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa showed in a dramatic way that Laplace was correct and that these Earth-hugging motions can be excited and will propagate over enormous distances.

Understanding of this behavior is used today to detect faraway nuclear explosions. But the full implications of Laplace’s theory for the background vibration of the global atmosphere have only recently been confirmed.

Ringing like a bell

An eruption that sets the atmosphere ringing like a bell is one manifestation of the phenomenon that Laplace theorized. The same phenomenon is also present as global vibrations of the atmosphere.

These global oscillations, analogous to the sloshing of water back and forth in a bathtub, have only recently been conclusively detected.

The waves can connect the atmosphere rapidly over the whole globe, rather like waves propagating through a musical instrument, such as a violin string, drum skin or metal bell. The atmosphere can and does “ring” at a set of distinct frequencies.

Images from a weather satellite captured the volcanic eruption on Jan. 15, 2022.

  Japan Meteorology Agency via AP

In 2020, my Kyoto University colleague Takatoshi Sakazaki and I were able to use modern observations to confirm implications of Laplace’s theory for the globally coherent vibrations of the atmosphere. Analyzing a newly released dataset of atmospheric pressure every hour for 38 years at sites worldwide, we were able to spot the global patterns and frequencies that Laplace and others who followed him had theorized.

These global atmospheric oscillations are much too low-frequency to hear, but they are excited continuously by all the other motions in the atmosphere, providing a very gentle but persistent “background music” to the more dramatic weather fluctuations in our atmosphere.

Laplace’s work was a first step on the road to our modern computer forecasting of the weather.


This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts

It was written by: Kevin Hamilton, University of Hawaii.

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UN: Al-Qaida and Islamic State driving insecurity in Mali


Mon, January 16, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Al-Qaida and Islamic State extremist groups are driving insecurity in central Mali and continue to clash near populated areas in the northern Gao and Menaka regions, the U.N. chief said in a new report circulated Monday.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “the level and frequency of incidents of violence remain exceptionally high,” with attacks by “violent extremist groups” against civilians accounting for the majority of documented human rights abuses.

“The attacks carried out against civilians by terrorist groups, the battle for influence among them and the violent activities conducted by community militias remain a chilling daily reality, as do the attacks against the Malian Defense and Security Forces and against MINUSMA,” the U.N. peacekeeping force, he said.

Guterres said in the report to the U.N. Security Council that “going forward, military operations to combat the extremist groups will continue to be a crucial component for the restoration of security.”

In central Mali, he said, the extremists are capitalizing on intercommunal conflicts to expand their influence and secure new recruits.

In the northern Gao and Menaka regions, Guterres said fighters from the al-Qaida affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin known as JNIM and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara also continue to clash, causing civilian casualties and thousands to flee the violence.

He said the number of people displaced in Mali increased from 397,000 to 442,620 as of October, with some 1,950 schools closed affecting over 587,000 children. Humanitarian assistance is reaching only 2.5 million people of the 5.3 million in need, he said.

The secretary-general stressed that the ultimate success against the extremist groups will hinge of whether the operations are accompanied by efforts “to ensure respect for human rights and international humanitarian law, foster social cohesion, address structural fragility and deliver basic services.”

Mali has struggled to contain an Islamic extremist insurgency since 2012. Extremist rebels were forced from power in Mali’s northern cities with the help of a French-led military operation, but they regrouped in the desert and began launching attacks on the Malian army and its allies. Insecurity has worsened with attacks on civilians and U.N. peacekeepers.

In August 2020, Mali’s president was overthrown in a coup that included Assimi Goita, then an army colonel. In June 2021, Goita was sworn in as president of a transitional government after carrying out his second coup in nine months. France, Mali’s former colonial power, pulled out the last of thousands of French forces in August 2022 amid acrimonious exchanges with the transitional government.

In late 2021, Goita reportedly decided to allow the deployment of Russia’s Wagner group, a private military contractor with ties to the Kremlin that is also operating in Ukraine to support Moscow’s troops in the 11-month war.

The report does not name Wagner, but says MINUSMA “documented violations of international humanitarian and human rights law allegedly committed during military operations conducted by the Malian armed forces, accompanied by foreign security personnel and dozos,” who are traditional hunters.

It says the U.N. force also documented “some instances in which foreign security personnel appear to have committed violations of human rights and international humanitarian law while conducting both air and ground military operations in the center of the country.”

On the political front, Mali’s presidential election which had been scheduled for February 2022 is now slated to take place in February 2024.

Guterres pointed to progress in putting a single electoral management body into operation and the submission of a preliminary draft constitution. He urged authorities to expedite implementation of the electoral timetable published in July 2022.

Equally important to Mali’s lasting stabilization, he said, is implementation of the 2015 peace agreement signed by three parties — the government, a coalition of groups called the Coordination of Movements of Azawad that includes ethnic Arabs and Tuaregs who seek autonomy in northern Mali, and a pro-government militia known as the Platform.

“However," Guterres said, “the recent decision by the movements to suspend their participation in the implementation process is cause for serious concern.”

The secretary-general stressed that the primary responsibility for moving the peace process forward lies with the parties, and he urged them “to engage constructively with each other and the international mediation team to overcome the current hurdles.”

Violence soars in Mali in the year after Russians arrive




This undated photograph handed out by French military shows Russian mercenaries, in northern Mali. Western officials say violence against civilians in Mali has risen in the year since hundreds of Russian mercenaries have started working alongside the West African country's armed forces to stem a decade-long insurgency by Islamic extremists. Diplomats, analysts and human rights groups say extremists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have only gotten stronger and there's concern the Russian presence will further destabilize the already-troubled region. (French Army via AP)

SAM MEDNICK
Sat, January 14, 2023 

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Alou Diallo says he was drinking tea with his family one morning last month when groups of “white soldiers” invaded his village in central Mali, setting fire to houses and gunning down people suspected of being Islamic extremists. He scrambled to safety in the bush, but his son was shot and wounded while fleeing, then was finished off as he lay on the ground.

“I watched my 16-year-old son die,” Diallo told The Associated Press in Mali's capital, Bamako, where he lives in a makeshift camp for displaced people. As he recounted that awful Saturday in his village of Bamguel, the 47-year-old former cattle breeder made no attempt to hide the anger toward the troops, which he believed to be Russian mercenaries, who turned his world upside down.

“I really want peace to return and things to go back to normal,” he said. "Here in Bamako, I live a life I didn’t choose.”

It’s been more than a year since hundreds of fighters from the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian military contractor, began working alongside Mali’s armed forces to try to stem a decade-long insurgency by Islamic extremists in the West African country, Western officials say.


But since the mercenaries arrived, diplomats, analysts and human rights groups say indiscriminate violence against civilians has grown, the extremists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have only gotten stronger, and there’s concern the Russian presence will further destabilize the already-troubled region.

More than 2,000 civilians have been killed since December 2021, compared with about 500 in the previous 12 months, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nongovernmental organization. At least a third of those deaths recorded last year were from attacks involving the Wagner Group, according to the data compiled by ACLED.

“They are killing civilians, and by their very presence, giving Malian security forces a green light to act on their worst inclinations,” said Michael Shurkin, senior fellow at Atlantic Council and director of global programs at the consultancy group 14 North Strategies.

Military contractors from Wagner, which was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, have been bolstering Moscow's forces during its invasion of Ukraine. But experts say they also operate in a handful of African countries.

Ever since Mali's military seized power in two coups starting in 2020, a junta led by Col. Assimi Goita has had tense relations with the international community.

France sent troops to Mali in 2013 to help its former colony drive Islamic militants from northern areas of the country but withdrew them in August as relations frayed and anti-French sentiment grew in the population. The West says Mali is increasingly looking to Moscow for security, although the junta says it has only invited in military trainers.

Alassane Maiga, head of communications for the junta, insisted that Wagner was not operating in the country. Asked about the attacks on civilians, Maiga said Mali’s government protects its citizens and their property.

“The army’s protection and security missions are carried out with respect for human rights and international humanitarian law,” he said.

The Wagner Group did not respond to requests for comment. At a U.N. Security Council debate on Tuesday, Russia’s deputy ambassador Anna Evstigneeva rejected attempts from abroad “to besmirch Russian assistance to Mali,” where Moscow has a bilateral agreement to assist the transitional government. She did not mention the Wagner Group.

Up to 1,000 mercenaries have been deployed and the Wagner Group is being paid nearly $11 million a month to provide security and training, according to a report by the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center, which studies extremist violence.

The report said Wagner’s forces are struggling to make significant gains, with jihadi violence increasing. During the rainy season between June and September when fighting usually subsides, there were over 90 attacks against civilians and the military by an al-Qaida linked extremist group, compared with six in the same period a year earlier, it said, and an August assault on a barracks by an Islamic State-linked group killed at least 42 Malian soldiers.

In the bloodiest attack, Human Rights Watch said Mali’s army and foreign troops suspected to be Russian rounded up and killed an estimated 300 men in the town of Moura in March. Some were believed to be Islamic extremists but most were civilians. The investigation cited 27 people, including witnesses, traders, community leaders, diplomats and security analysts.

Mali’s Defense Ministry reported a similar incident at the time but said it had killed 203 “terrorists” and arrested 51 others.

“There are broad reports of human rights abuses across the region where they are working,” U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said of the Wagner mercenaries. “And we worry that these forces are not interested in the safety and security of the people of Mali but, instead, are interested in enriching themselves and strip-mining the country and are making the terrorism situation worse.”

Samuel Ramani, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank, said Russia is not very credible at counterterrorism in Africa or more broadly.

“What we’ve seen repeatedly is that Russia and the Wagner Group forces are much better at strengthening the hold of authoritarian regimes in power than actually combating rebels and terrorist groups,” Ramani said, citing their limited knowledge of the terrain, strained relationships with low-ranking officers and a rigid command and control structure.

Many Malians accuse the military and the white soldiers working with them of arbitrary arrests of civilians herding cattle, farming or going to market. Most of them are ethnic Fulani who are increasingly targeted by security forces suspecting them of supporting the Islamic militants.

Rights groups say these alleged abuses aid the extremists, who capitalize on public grievances for use as a recruiting tool.

A 29-year-old cattle herder named Hamidou said he was arrested at his home in Douentza village in central Mali with two other people in November and accused of being an Islamic militant. He was locked in a tiny room where he was bound, beaten and interrogated by “white soldiers.”

“We were severely beaten daily. We didn’t think we’d survive,” said Hamidou, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisal, adding that most of those detained were ethnic Fulani, like him. “From the day Wagner came to Mali until today, arbitrary arrests and killings of Fulani civilians have been increasing tremendously.”

The AP was unable to verify all of his account independently but a human rights researcher who also asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal said he saw the scars on Hamidou’s back and forehead after his release.

Thousands of United Nations peacekeeping troops have been in Mali for nearly a decade to protect civilians from violence, but Mali’s government has constrained their ability to operate, and countries such as Benin, Germany, Sweden, Ivory Coast and the United Kingdom have announced troop withdrawals, according to the International Crisis Group.

Nuland, the U.S. diplomat, said the Wagner Group has encouraged the junta to deny the peacekeepers access to areas where it has a mandate to investigate abuses. Security is “becoming more difficult as Wagner forces and others take on a larger role in the country and squeeze out U.N. peacekeepers,” she said.

While many locals say they detest Wagner, they fear nothing will change until there is a new government following elections scheduled for February 2024.

“It is up to the Malians to decide what steps to follow for the return of peace in Mali," said Seydou Diawara, head of a political opposition group. "Force and pressure by the international community on the military can only worsen the security and humanitarian situation.”

Carbon footprinting still an important tool for raising climate change awareness

Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Ind.
Sat, January 14, 2023 

Jan. 14—ANDERSON — Just before Thanksgiving last year, the world's population surpassed 8 billion people, according to United Nations estimates.

The milestone carries with it ramifications for several facets of society, from economic development to health care to a host of policymaking decisions for governments across the globe.

For climatologists and environmental advocates, it's also a stark reminder that their messages challenging governments and individuals to make meaningful, climate-friendly lifestyle choices — articulated more urgently in some quarters than others — remain largely unheeded.

Those choices, they contend, could determine how long humanity can live comfortably within the planet's environmental boundaries while averting — or at least postponing — some of the more dire climate disasters that have been predicted.

"This is the existential issue of our time," said Dr. John Mulrow, a visiting assistant professor of environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University.

For decades, Mulrow and other earth scientists have paid close attention to carbon footprinting, a method used by individuals, corporations and government entities to estimate their emission volumes of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to warming temperatures.

According to the Nature Conservancy, the average carbon footprint for a person in the United States is 16 tons, among the highest rates in the world and more than four times the average global carbon footprint.

Environmentalists say that carbon footprinting is an important tool for raising awareness and, especially for individuals, helping make informed lifestyle choices. But, they caution, there's more to solving the climate change puzzle than consumers tracking and reducing their own carbon emissions.

"Having an awareness of our carbon footprint is really important," said Melissa Widhalm, associate director of the Midwestern Regional Climate Center. "But it's certainly not the most important thing or the only important thing. Personal choices alone are not enough to stop our world from warming to dangerous levels. Hard stop, bottom line."

Widhalm also noted that many lifestyle choices cannot be mandated.

"Really, what it comes down to is that as individuals, we just don't control the majority of our carbon footprint," she said. "When I flip a light switch, I don't get to pick where my energy company is sourcing that energy from. Even if I could afford an electric car, when I plug it in, what's the source of that electricity?"

Mulrow, who has studied environmental science for nearly 20 years, has come to understand that a holistic approach to cutting carbon emissions — even one that produces economic benefits — is easier talked about than accomplished.

"I went through a phase where I was all about getting online, measuring my carbon footprint, doing that one thing to lower my carbon footprint," he said. "What the footprint calculators don't ask you is what you do with your dollar savings. Anyone saving money is going to go spend it on something else that has its own carbon footprint."

In Indiana, several industries are wrestling not only with how much weight carbon footprinting should carry in decisions on materials and production methods, but also with arriving at a consistently reliable standard for calculating emissions.

Agriculture, for example, employs a variety of conservation techniques to preserve resources, including cover crops, direct planting and seeding and integrated pest management. But documenting those measures to comply with myriad federal and state regulations is a daunting task, according to some industry officials.

"We don't know what the right measurements are, and we don't know who knows what the right measurements are when it comes to quantifying those things," said Jeff Cummins, director of state government relations for the Indiana Farm Bureau. "It's a challenge as you've got essentially the entire supply chain right now trying to figure out how to measure and report what makes sense."

Widhalm said that for Hoosiers, the ripple effects of unrestrained carbon emissions could be far-reaching.

For example, she said, those with allergies could notice longer allergy seasons as warming temperatures contribute to winters becoming wetter, spring arriving earlier and autumn ending later. Drier summers, forecast by many climate scientists, could exacerbate droughts and impact crop yields.

"There are a lot of tangible, very local ways that this global problem becomes our everyday problem if we don't take steps collectively as a world to reduce our carbon footprint," she said.

Follow Andy Knight on Twitter @Andrew_J_Knight

Satellites detect no real climate benefit from 10 years of forest carbon offsets in California

Shane Coffield, Postdoctoral Scientist in Biospheric Sciences, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA 

James Randerson, Professor of Earth Science, University of California, Irvine

The Conversation
Sun, January 15, 2023

Redwood forests like this one in California can store large amounts of carbon,

 but not if they're being cut down. Shane Coffield

Many of the companies promising “net-zero” emissions to protect the climate are relying on vast swaths of forests and what are known as carbon offsets to meet that goal.

On paper, carbon offsets appear to balance out a company’s carbon emissions: The company pays to protect trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The company can then claim the absorbed carbon dioxide as an offset that reduces its net impact on the climate.

However, our new satellite analysis reveals what researchers have suspected for years: Forest offsets might not actually be doing much for the climate.

When we looked at satellite tracking of carbon levels and logging activity in California forests, we found that carbon isn’t increasing in the state’s 37 offset project sites any more than in other areas, and timber companies aren’t logging less than they did before.

The findings send a pretty grim message about efforts to control climate change, and they add to a growing list of concerns about forest offsets. Studies have already shown that projects are often overcredited at the beginning and might not last as long as expected. In this case we’re finding a bigger issue: a lack of real climate benefit over the 10 years of the program so far.

But we also see ways to fix the problem.

How forest carbon offsets work

Forest carbon offsets work like this: Trees capture carbon dioxide from the air and use it to build mass, effectively locking the carbon away in their wood for the life of the tree.

In California, landowners can receive carbon credits for keeping carbon stocks above a minimum required “baseline” level. Third-party verifiers help the landowners take inventory by manually measuring a sample of trees. So far, this process has only involved measuring carbon levels relative to baseline and has not leveraged the emerging satellite technologies that we explored.

Forest owners can then sell the carbon credits to private companies, with the idea that they have protected trees that would otherwise be cut down. These include large oil and gas companies that use offsets to meet up to 8% of their state-mandated reductions in emissions.

Most offset projects are verified by manually measuring the size of a sample of trees. Jerry Redfern/LightRocket via Getty Images

Forest offsets and other “natural climate solutions” have received a great deal of attention from companies, governments and nonprofits, including during the U.N. climate conference in November 2022. California has one of the world’s largest carbon offset programs, with tens of millions of dollars flowing through offset projects, and is often a model for other countries that are planning new offset programs.

It’s clear that offsets are playing a large and growing role in climate policy, from the individual to the international level. In our view, they need to be backed by the best available science.

3 potential problems

Our study used satellite data to track carbon levels, tree harvesting rates and tree species in forest offset projects compared with other similar forests in California.

Satellites offer a more complete record than on-the-ground reports collected at offset projects. That allowed us to assess all of California since 1986.

Using satellite data, we can track carbon changes and harvest rates in offset projects (red) compared with other private forests (black and gray). The highlighted example project started in 2014 (dashed vertical line). Adapted from Coffield et al., 2022, Global Change Biology

From this broad view, we identified three problems indicating a lack of climate benefit:

Carbon isn’t being added to these projects faster than before the projects began or faster than in non-offset areas.


Many of the projects are owned and operated by large timber companies, which manage to meet requirements for offset credits by keeping carbon above the minimum baseline level. However, these lands have been heavily harvested and continue to be harvested.


In some regions, projects are being put on lands with lower-value tree species that aren’t at risk from logging. For example, at one large timber company in the redwood forests of northwestern California, the offset project is only 4% redwood, compared with 25% redwood on the rest of the company’s property. Instead, the offset project’s area is overgrown with tanoak, which is not marketable timber and doesn’t need to be protected from logging.

Example of one large timber company’s properties and offset project, which appears to be protecting lands at less risk of logging. Adapted from Coffield et al., 2022, Global Change Biology, CC BY-ND

How California can fix its offset program

Our research points to a set of recommendations for California to improve its offsets protocols.

One recommendation is to begin using satellite data to monitor forests and confirm that they are indeed being managed to protect or store more carbon. For example, it could help foresters create more realistic baselines to compare offsets against. Publicly available satellite data is improving and can help make carbon offsetting more transparent and reliable.

California can also avoid putting offset projects on lands that are already being conserved. We found several projects owned by conservation groups on land that already had low harvest rates.

Additionally, California could improve its offset contract protocols to make sure landowners can’t withdraw from an offset program in the future and cut down those trees. Currently there is a penalty for doing so, but it might not be high enough. Landowners may be able to begin a project, receive a huge profit from the initial credits, cut down the trees in 20 to 30 years, pay back their credits plus penalty, and still come out ahead if inflation exceeds the liability.

Ironically, while intended to help mitigate climate change, forest offsets are also vulnerable to it – particularly in wildfire-prone California. Research suggests that California is hugely underestimating the climate risks to forest offset projects in the state.

The state protocol requires only 2% or 4% of carbon credits be set aside in an insurance pool against wildfires, even though multiple projects have been damaged by recent fires. When wildfires occur, the lost carbon can be accounted for by the insurance pool. However, the pool may soon be depleted as yearly burned area increases in a warming climate. The insurance pool must be large enough to cover the worsening droughts, wildfires and disease and beetle infestations.

Considering our findings around the challenges of forest carbon offsets, focusing on other options, such as investing in solar and electrification projects in low-income urban areas, may provide more cost-effective, reliable and just outcomes.

Without improvements to the current system, we may be underestimating our net emissions, contributing to the profits of large emitters and landowners and distracting from the real solutions of transitioning to a clean-energy economy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

It was written by: Shane Coffield, NASA and James Randerson, University of California, Irvine.

Read more:

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Shane Coffield received funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program for his graduate studies at UC Irvine.

James Randerson receives funding from NASA, the US Dept. of Energy Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the State of California Strategic Growth Council.

AMERICAN PROTESTANTS ARE BAPTISTS
Christians hold many views on Jesus' resurrection – a theologian explains the differing views among Baptists

Jason Oliver Evans, Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Studies, University of Virginia

THE CONVERSATION
Sat, January 14, 2023 

Resurrection of Christ depicted in 14th-century fresco in Chora Church, Istanbul, Turkey. LP7/Collections E+ via Getty Images

Every year, Christians from around the world gather for worship on Easter Sunday. Also known as Pascha or Resurrection Sunday, Easter is the final day of a weeklong commemoration of the story of Jesus’ final days in the city of Jerusalem leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection.

Most Christians refer to the week before Easter as Holy Week. In Western Christianity, Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, which commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Easter is the third day of the larger three-day festival known as Holy Triduum, which begins on the evening of Maundy Thursday, marking the night of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples. Good Friday marks Jesus’ suffering, crucifixion and death. Holy Saturday marks Jesus’ burial in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea. The festival reaches its climax on early Sunday morning with the Easter Vigil and ends on the evening of Easter Sunday.

As a Baptist minister and theologian myself, I believe it is important to understand how Christians more generally, and Baptists in particular, hold differing views on the meaning of the resurrection.

The resurrection

According to the Christian faith, resurrection is the pivotal event when “God raised Jesus from the dead” after he was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

While none of the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe the actual event of the resurrection in detail, they nonetheless give varying reports about the empty tomb and Christ’s post-resurrection appearances among his followers both in Galilee and Jerusalem.

They also report that it was women who discovered the empty tomb and received and proclaimed the first message that Christ was risen from the dead. These narratives were passed down orally among the earliest Christian communities and then codified in the Gospel writings beginning some 30 years after Jesus’ death.

The Earliest Christians believed that by raising Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, God cleared Jesus from any wrongdoing for which he was tried and unjustly condemned to death by Pilate.

By affirming the resurrection, Christians do not mean that Jesus’ body was merely resuscitated. Rather, as New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson writes, resurrection means that “[Jesus] entered into an entirely new form of existence.”

As the risen Christ, Jesus is believed to share God’s power to transform all life and also to share this same power with his followers. So the resurrection is believed to be something that happened not only to Jesus, but also an experience that happens to his followers.

Christ before Pilate: Detail of a tile from the Cathedral of Siena, Italy. 

DeAgostini/Getty Images

Opposing views

Over the years, Christians have engaged in passionate debates over this central doctrine of Christian faith.

Two major approaches emerged: the “liberal” view and the “conservative” or “traditional” view. Current perspectives on the resurrection have been predominated by two questions: “Was Jesus’ body literally raised from the dead?” and “What relevance does the resurrection have for those struggling for justice?”

These questions emerged in the wake of theological modernism, a European and North American movement dating back to the mid-19th century that sought to reinterpret Christianity to accommodate the emergence of modern science, history and ethics.

Theological modernism led liberal Christian theologians to create an alternative path between the rigid orthodoxies of Christian churches and the rationalism of atheists and others.

This meant that liberal Christians were willing to revise or jettison cherished Christian beliefs, such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus, if such beliefs could not be explained against the bar of human reason.
Baptist views on the resurrection

Just like all other Christian denominations, Baptists are divided on the issue of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Arguably, what may be unique about the group is that Baptists believe that no external religious authority can force an individual member to adhere to the tenets of Christian faith in any prescribed way. One must be free to accept or reject any teaching of the church.

In the early 20th century, Baptists in the United States found themselves on both sides of a schism within American Christianity over doctrinal issues, known as the fundamentalist-modernist controversy.

The Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a liberal Baptist pastor who served First Presbyterian Church and later Riverside Church in Manhattan, rejected the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Rather, Fosdick viewed the resurrection as a “persistence in [Christ’s] personality.”

In 1922, Fosdick delivered his famous sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” rebuking fundamentalists for their failure to tolerate difference on doctrinal matters such as the infallibility of the Bible, the virgin birth and bodily resurrection, among others, and for downplaying the weightier matter of addressing the societal needs of the day.

In his autobiography, civil rights leader and Baptist minister the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. explained that in his early adolescence he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

While attending Crozer Seminary in 1949, King wrote a paper trying to make sense of what led to the development of the Christian doctrine of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. For King, the experience of the early followers of Jesus was at the root of their belief in his resurrection.

“They had been captivated by the magnetic power of his personality,” King argued. “This basic experience led to the faith that he could never die.” In other words, the bodily resurrection of Jesus simply is the outward expression of early Christian experience, not an actual or, at least, a verifiable event in human history.

It is not clear from his later writings that King changed his views on the bodily resurrection. In one of his notable Easter sermons, King argued that the meaning behind the resurrection signaled a future where God will put an end to racial segregation.

Others within the Baptist movement disagreed. Like his fundamentalist forebears, conservative evangelical Baptist theologian Carl F.H. Henry argued in 1976 that all Christian doctrine can be rationally explained and can persuade any nonbeliever. Henry rigorously defended the bodily resurrection of Christ as a historical occurrence by appealing to the Gospels’ telling of the empty tomb and Christ’s appearances among his disciples after his resurrection.

In his six-volume magnum opus, “God, Revelation, and Authority,” Henry read these two elements of the Gospels as historical records that can be verified through modern historical methods.

Alternative views

Despite their predominance, the liberal and conservative arguments on the resurrection of Jesus are not the only approaches held among Baptists.

In his book “Resurrection and Discipleship,” Baptist theologian Thorwald Lorenzen also outlines what he calls the “evangelical” approach, which seeks to transcend the distinctions of “liberal” and “conservative” approaches. He affirms, with the conservatives, the historical reality of the resurrection, but agrees with the liberals that such an event cannot be verified in the modern historical sense.

Other than these, there is a “liberation” approach, which stresses the social and political implications of the resurrection. Baptists who hold this view primarily interpret the resurrection as God’s response and commitment to liberating those who, like Jesus, experience poverty and oppression.

Given this diversity of perspectives on the resurrection, Baptists are not unique among Christians in engaging matters of faith practice. However, I argue that Baptists may be distinct in that they believe that such matters must be freely believed by one’s own conscience and not enforced by any external religious authority.

This is an updated version of a piece first published on April 15, 2021.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation is trustworthy news from experts, by an independent nonprofit. 

It was written by: Jason Oliver Evans, University of Virginia.

Read more:

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Penance and plague: How the Black Death changed one of Christianity's most important rituals

Nicole Archambeau, Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University
Sun, January 15, 2023 

Confession, circa 1460/1470. Artist unknown. 

Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

The 14th century is known for catastrophe. By midcentury, the first wave of plague spread through a Europe already weakened by successive famines and the Hundred Years War between England and France. And crises just kept coming. After the first wave, which has come to be called the Black Death, the disease returned at least four more times before 1400. All the while, fresh conflicts kept erupting, fueled in part by the rising number of soldiers available for hire.

As a medieval historian, I study ways that community leaders used Catholic practices and institutions to respond to war and plague. But amid the uncertainty of the 14th century, some Catholic institutions stopped working the way they were supposed to, fueling frustration. In particular, the unrelenting crises prompted anxiety about the sacrament of penance, often referred to as “confession.”

This uncertainty helped spark critics like Martin Luther to ultimately break from the Catholic Church.

Saints and sacraments

During this era, European Christians experienced their faith predominantly through saints and sacraments.

In art, saints were depicted as standing near God’s throne or even speaking into his ear, illustrating their special relationships with him. Pious Christians considered saints active members of their communities who could help God hear their prayers for healing and protection. Throughout Europe, saints’ feast days were celebrated with processions, displays of candles, and even street theater.

Fourteenth-century Christians also experienced their faith through Catholicism’s most important rituals, the seven sacraments. Some occurred once in most people’s lives, including baptism, confirmation, marriage and extreme unction – a set of rituals for people who are near death.

A 15th-century manuscript depicts deathbed scenes: doctor’s visit; confession; Communion; extreme unction; and burial. From the Bedford Hours of John, Duke of Bedford. British Museum/Print Collector/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

There were two sacraments, however, that Catholics could experience multiple times. The first was the Eucharist, also known as Holy Communion – the reenactment of Christ’s Last Supper with his apostles before his crucifixion. The second was penance.

Catholic doctrine taught that priests’ prayers over bread and wine turned those substances into the body and blood of Christ, and that this sacrament creates communion between God and believers. The Eucharist was the core of the Mass, a service which also included processions, singing, prayers and reading from the Scriptures.

Religious Christians also encountered the sacrament of penance throughout their lives. By the 14th century, penance was a private sacrament that each person was supposed to do at least once a year.

The ideal penance was hard work, however. People had to recall all the sins they had committed since the “age of reason,” which started when they were roughly 7 years old. They were supposed to feel sorry that they had offended God, and not just be afraid that they would go to hell for their sins. They had to speak their sins aloud to their parish priest, who had the authority to absolve them. Finally, they had to intend to never commit those sins again.

After confession, they performed the prayers, fasting or pilgrimage that the priest assigned them, which was called “satisfaction.” The whole process was meant to heal the soul as a kind of spiritual medicine.
Broken up by Black Death

Waves of plague and warfare, however, could disrupt every aspect of the ideal confession. Rapid illness could make it impossible to travel to one’s parish priest, remember one’s sins or speak them aloud. When parish priests died and were not immediately replaced, people had to seek out other confessors. Some people had to confess without anyone to absolve them.

An illustration in the Annales of Gilles de Muisit, from the 14th century, depicts people burying victims of the Black Death.

Photo by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Meanwhile, Europe’s frequent wars posed other spiritual dangers. Soldiers, for example, were hired to fight wherever war took them and were often paid with the spoils of war. They lived with the constant weight of the commandments not to kill or steal. They could never perform a complete confession, because they could never intend not to sin this way again.

These problems caused despair and anxiety. In response, people turned to doctors and saints for help and healing. For example, some Christians in Provence, in present-day France, turned to a local holy woman, Countess Delphine de Puimichel, to help them remember their sins, protect them from sudden death, and even leave warfare to become penitents. So many people described feeling consoled by her voice that a medical doctor who lived near the holy woman set up meetings so people could hear her speak.

But most people in Europe did not have a local saint like Delphine to turn to. They looked for other solutions to their uncertainties about the sacrament of penance.

Indulgences and Masses for the dead proved the most popular, but also problematic. Indulgences were papal documents that could forgive the sins of the holder. They were supposed to be given out only by the pope, and in very specific situations, such as completing certain pilgrimages, serving in a crusade, or doing particularly pious acts.

During the 15th century, however, demand for indulgences was high, and they became common. Some traveling confessors who had received religious authorities’ approval to hear confessions sold indulgences – some authentic, some fake – to anyone with money.

Catholics also believed that Masses conducted in their name could absolve their sins after their death. By the 14th century, most Christians understood the afterlife as a journey that started in a place called Purgatory, where residual sins would be burned away through suffering before souls entered heaven. In their wills, Christians left money for Masses for their souls, so that they could spend less time in Purgatory. There were so many requests that some churches performed multiple Masses per day, sometimes for many souls at a time, which became an unsustainable burden on the clergy.

A Black Death burial trench under excavation between rows of individual graves and the later concrete foundations of the Royal Mint in East Smithfield, London. 

MOLA/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

The popularity of indulgences and Masses for the dead helps scholars today understand people’s challenges during the Black Death. But both practices were ripe for corruption, and frustration mounted as a sacrament meant to console and prepare the faithful for the afterlife left them anxious and uncertain.

Criticisms of indulgences and penance were a focus of reformer Martin Luther’s famous “95 Theses,” written in 1517. Though the young priest did not originally intend to separate from the Catholic Church, his critiques launched the Protestant Reformation.

But Luther’s challenges to the papacy were not ultimately about money, but theology. Despair over the idea of never being able to perform an ideal confession led him and others to redefine the sacrament. In Luther’s view, a penitent could do nothing to make satisfaction for sin, but had to rely on God’s grace alone.

For Catholics, on the other hand, the sacrament of penance stayed much the same for centuries, although there were some changes. The most visible was the creation of the confessional, an enclosed space within the church building where the priest and the penitent could speak more privately. The experience of penance, especially absolution, remained a central ritual meant to heal Catholics’ souls in times of trouble, from the Black Death to the COVID-19 pandemic today.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation is trustworthy news from experts, by an independent nonprofit.

It was written by: Nicole Archambeau, Colorado State University.

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Israel’s Netanyahu moving ahead on legal overhaul despite outcry


Oded Balilty/AP Photo

Associated Press
Sun, January 15, 2023

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday his government plans to charge ahead with an overhaul of the country’s judicial system, despite fierce criticism from top legal officials and protests against the changes that drew tens of thousands of people.

Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, has made the legal changes the centerpiece of his new government’s agenda and the surging opposition to them is presenting an early challenge for the Israeli leader. Opponents say the changes could help Netanyahu evade conviction in his corruption trial, or make the court case disappear altogether.

The overhaul would weaken the power of the Supreme Court, granting legislators the ability to pass laws the court has struck down with a simple majority, as well as give the government greater power over the appointment of judges and limit the independence of government legal advisers.

The proposed changes have sparked an outcry from the Supreme Court’s top justice, who in rare criticism called the overhaul an “unbridled attack on the justice system.” The country’s attorney general has also spoken out against the plan, as have many of her predecessors, and tens of thousands protested the proposed changes in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

Despite the opposition, Netanyahu told a meeting of his Cabinet that voters cast their ballots in November elections in support of his campaign promise to overhaul the justice system.

“We will complete legislating the reforms in a way that will correct what needs correcting, will totally protect individual rights and will restore the public’s faith in the justice system that so much requires this reform,” Netanyahu said.

A poll released Sunday painted a more complex picture.

The survey found that 58% of Israelis believe the Supreme Court should have the power to overturn laws passed by parliament if they conflict with democratic principles. The survey, conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in October, just before the election, questioned 1,092 people and had a margin of error of 2.8%.

The poll was part of the nonpartisan institute’s annual “Israeli Democracy Index.” The same survey, however, found that public trust by Israeli Jews in the Supreme Court fell to 42% last year, down from a multiyear average of 59.5%. Trust in parliament was just 18.5%, it said. Levels of trust were slightly lower among the country’s Arab minority.

There have been calls in the past to reform Israel’s justice system, which was given greater clout in the 1990s and has been seen since by critics as being too interventionist in the process of lawmaking. But the sweeping changes sought by Netanyahu’s justice minister have raised an alarm among opponents who see them as a death knell to Israel’s system of checks and balances and in turn, its democratic fundamentals.

Netanyahu and his allies see the changes as a way to ease the process of governance and recalibrate what they say is an imbalance between the country’s executive and judicial branches.

The proposed changes, tabled weeks after the government was sworn in, have exposed how deeply polarized Israeli society is, torn between preserving the country’s liberal and democratic ideals or shifting away from them. They have also shown how quickly the country’s government, its most right-wing ever, is intent on advancing its policies, many of which have sparked criticism, including from unexpected quarters.

Netanyahu heads a government of ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties who at times in the past have seen their agendas thwarted by Supreme Court decisions or unfavorable counsel by government legal advisers. That prompted them to make sure the legal changes were a top priority during negotiations to form the government. Netanyahu, eager to return to power under the shadow of his corruption trial, appeared to be generous to his partners in the talks.

Among those concessions was a promise to make Avi Maoz, head of a small, radical, religious ultranationalist party who has repeatedly spouted anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, in charge of certain educational programs. The Cabinet approved the pledge Sunday, despite an outcry from mayors and Israeli parents when it was initially discussed.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who normally wields a largely symbolic role, has stepped in to bridge the divide over the judicial changes. In a statement, Herzog said he was working to avert “a historic constitutional crisis” in a series of meetings with political figures. Hundreds of people protested outside his residence in Jerusalem on Saturday.

Netanyahu has claimed the overhaul will be carried out cautiously and with parliamentary oversight.