Thirty years on, I miss the ‘Evil Empire’

As a child of the Cold War, I grew up only knowing the Soviet Union as our enemy. When it collapsed, it created a vacuum when it came to defending the US. It turns out we needed the USSR to bring purpose to our own existence.


© Getty Images / agustavop

I was a child of the Cold War. The year that I was born, 1961, saw the Berlin Wall go up. When I was almost a year and a half old, the Cuban Missile Crisis had my parents wondering if there would be a tomorrow (we lived in central Florida at the time.) My father was an Air Force officer. In 1964, he was deployed to Turkey, where he maintained F-100 Suer Sabre fighter bombers standing strip alert outside Izmir, armed with nuclear weapons.

In 1965-66, he was sent to Vietnam to fight the communists. In 1969, he was sent to South Korea to be prepared to do the same. In 1975, he took our family to Turkey, where I was surrounded by the reality of the Cold War–secret US listening posts in Sinop that spied on Soviet communications, a secret seismic station that monitored Soviet nuclear tests, and secret bunkers armed with nuclear weapons that would be loaded onto Turkish fighters in case of a war with the Soviet Union.

In 1977, we moved to West Germany, where the Soviet threat was a daily reality. US tanks and armored vehicles crowded the German highways and carved tracks into German fields as they prepared to take on a Soviet Army that was massed, literally, right across the border. My home, nestled in a picturesque German village, was a stone’s throw away from a US nuclear weapons storage facility, which meant that if the balloon did go up, we would most likely go up with it. I traveled to occupied Berlin three times, by road, rail, and plane. Each time put me, temporarily at least, at the mercy of the Soviet soldiers surrounding Berlin.

I joined the Army in 1979 for the express purpose of being sent to the front lines so I could fight the Soviets as soon as they crossed the border. Later, as a Marine officer, I trained to fight the Soviet Army using the newly minted precepts of maneuver warfare. My career ambition, as an intelligence officer, was to be assigned to the Military Liaison Mission, in Potsdam, East Germany, where I would be given a de facto license to spy on the Soviet Group of Forces in Germany. Instead, I was one of the first persons assigned to the newly created On-Site Inspection Agency, set up to implement the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed by President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987.

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I was stationed in the town of Votkinsk – west of the Ural mountains – outside of a missile assembly plant, where I monitored the SS-25 road-mobile intercontinental missiles exiting the factory to verify that they were not, in fact, SS-20 intermediate-range missiles banned by the treaty. Life in Votkinsk provided me with a PhD in Soviet reality. I learned to love the language, culture, and traditions of my sworn enemy, making them less so in the process. The treaty was based upon the principle of reciprocity, which meant how we treated the Soviet inspectors based outside the Hercules solid rocket motor production plant in Magna, Utah, impacted how the Soviets treated us in Votkinsk, and vice versa. The treaty cut both ways, and at the end of the day this kind of equality under the law, so to speak, made us equals in the eyes of the other.

I grew up fearing the Soviet Union. After two years of near continuous contact with the citizens and factory workers of Votkinsk, this fear was replaced by the kind of respect that can only be had by truly getting to know someone—the good, the bad, the ugly, but mainly the good. The accumulation of knowledge helped sweep away the ignorance-based fear that had dominated my world-view prior to my assignment in Votkinsk.

I left that job in the summer of 1990 armed with the knowledge that the nation I once viewed as my mortal enemy had become, if not a trusted friend, then a reliable colleague, especially when it came to issues of mutual concern. I fought in Desert Storm as part of an international coalition made possible only because the Soviet Union opted not to continue the Cold War practice of vetoing anything that could be perceived as giving the US a geopolitical advantage.

After the war, as a UN inspector charged with overseeing the disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, I worked closely with Soviet diplomats and military officers to fulfill the mandate given us by the Security Council. In December 1991 I was working closely with one Soviet arms-control specialist on preparing plans for long-term monitoring of Iraq’s industrial capability to produce WMD, while traveling to Iraq with another Soviet, a senior Colonel who was an expert in SCUD missiles, to uncover aspects of Iraq’s past missile activities that they were, at the time, hiding from the inspectors. For me, the weapons inspection experience with the UN was a continuation of the work I had begun with the Soviets in Votkinsk a few years back, where we cooperated with one another in an effort to achieve an outcome that was mutually beneficial.

I returned from the Iraq inspection a few days before Christmas and was seated in my parents’ living room when the news broke about Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I sat in shocked silence as the image of the Soviet flag being pulled down from the Kremlin and replaced by the tricolor of the Russian Federation, played on the television screen.

The talking heads on TV were proclaiming victory in the Cold War, celebrating the demise of a nemesis who had been the dominant force in the US in terms of foreign policy and national security for the better part of 35 years.

I did not share in their glee. I had grown up viewing the Soviets as my enemy, and as a young adult had trained to kill or be killed when it came to any interaction with the citizens of the Soviet Union. Later, I learned to respect the Soviets as hardworking, honorable people who were the product of a history one needed to know and understand to see them in their proper perspective. Most of my fellow Americans, however, only had a superficial understanding of Soviet history. The ignorance derived from such superficiality helped drive the notion of an American victory on the occasion of the Soviet Union’s demise.

I did not share this outlook. Instead, I wondered about the balance that had existed in global affairs during the Cold War that was achieved only because of the parity that existed between the two nations in terms of their respective ability to destroy the other with nuclear weapons. I thought about the progress that had been achieved in mutually walking back from the abyss of nuclear annihilation that came with principled, mutually beneficial, bi-lateral disarmament. And I reflected on the potential that was just starting to prove itself at the United Nations on the issues of Iraq, where US and Soviet interests coincided.

When I saw the flag of the Soviet Union lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, I felt a hole open up in my psyche. The enemy I had prepared to fight had become a colleague, and even a friend. And now it was gone. Not defeated, because I no longer viewed the Soviet Union as an enemy. Just gone, and with it the sense of balance that had made the world make sense for the three decades I had lived on the earth to that point.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Scott Ritter

is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

Pope Francis sends another signal to US Catholic bishops to lay off the anti-LGBTQ attacks

In two letters to New Ways Ministry, a group persecuted for decades for its outreach to LGBTQ Catholics, the pontiff praised its "neighborly approach."

Commentary by John Gallagher Sunday, December 26, 2021

Photo: Shutterstock


Christmas time is when a lot of Catholics make their periodic visit to church but for LGBTQ Catholics, the welcome mat is seldom out. The US bishops, in particular, have made opposition to LGBTQ rights–and often LGBTQ employees–a hallmark of their muscular dogma.

But the Vatican keeps sending welcoming, if small, signs of encouragement. In the latest instance, Pope Francis sent two letters to New Ways Ministry, an organization that has faced decades-long persecution from the hierarchy for its outreach to LGBTQ Catholics.

Acknowledging the “history has not been an easy one” for the group, Francis thanked the group for its “neighborly work,” in the sense of the commandment to love one’s neighbor. He also called Sister Jeannine Gramick, co-founder of New Ways with Fr. Robert Nugent, “a valiant woman.” (Nugent died in 2014.)

Gramick and Nugent have endured years of attacks from conservatives in the Church, who consider their outreach to LGBTQ Catholics a repudiation of Church doctrine. In 1999, the Vatican banned the pair from ministry to LGBTQ people because of “ambiguities and errors.” That ban was signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who subsequently became Pope Benedict XVI. Catholic bishops have banned New Ways from speaking at churches

The letters from Pope Francis send a strong signal to American bishops to ease up their attacks on LGBTQ Catholics. The conservative wing had just this month scored a victory against New Ways by forcing the Vatican to remove a New Ways video from a list of resources for the Church’s synod, a two-year period of “listening and reflection” for bishops.

That victory turned out to be short-lived, however. Less than a week after the video was removed, it was restored to the site. Moreover, a Vatican official issued a groveling apology, taking responsibility for the decision.

Thierry Bonaventura, the synod’s communication manager, said he had decided to remove the video for “internal procedural reasons.” (The reasons seem to have been a notification that the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops had censured New Ways for supporting marriage equality.)

“This brought pain to the entire LGBTQ community who once again felt left out,” Bonaventura wrote.

In light of Francis’s letters to new Ways, it probably did him no favors with his boss either.

To be sure, Francis is hardly going to deserve a spot as grand marshall in the next pride parade. He continues to uphold Church teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically “disordered” and has spoken out forcefully against marriage equality.

At the same time, though, he is clearly trying to edge the Church away from the virulent homophobia that has characterized it since the papacy of John Paul II. That’s progress, even if it’s too slow and doesn’t address the doctrine that drives the hatred in the first place.

Unfortunately, the Church measures time in millennia, not with a wristwatch, so every step is tiny and achingly late. What the conservatives who hate Francis hope for is that time runs out on his papacy before he sends any more encouraging letters about LGBTQ Catholics.

After NSO Scandal, What’s Next for Israel’s Cyber Industry?

Building housing the Israeli cyber company NSO Group, in a photo from Aug. 28, 2016, in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

KSENIA SVETLOVA
12/24/2021

There may or may not be damage to the Startup Nation’s reputation, and significant change to export regulations is not expected

The year 2021 was not a good one for NSO Group, an Israeli technology firm that became famous, and then notorious, for its Pegasus spyware, capable of remote surveillance of smartphones.

Once a promising startup that developed a unique tool to fight against terror and crime, NSO Group is now associated with targeted attacks against journalists and human rights activists, as well as spying on Israeli allies, among them French President Emmanuel Macron as well as top American diplomats in Africa and elsewhere.

The company is now blacklisted by the American government, along with the worst enemies of Israel and the US; its many contracts with tech giants such as Intel were terminated while Apple and WhatsApp took the NSO Group to court for targeting their clients.

Along with NSO, another Israeli firm – Candiru – stands accused of supplying sophisticated spyware to brutal dictatorships that used it to target and persecute critics, civil society activists and journalists.

The heads of NSO Group and similar companies claim they do not bear any responsibility for malign use of their products, just as gun manufacturers are not responsible for murders that might be carried out with their guns. Moreover, every sale they made was approved by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, which closely regulates NSO and other producers of hacking spyware and issues contract-specific export licenses.

The Israeli cybersecurity sector currently generates $10 billion in annual revenue, with “offensive software” – such as Pegasus – accounting for approximately 10% of the sales. Following the backlash from the NSO scandal and especially the US decision to blacklist the firm, Israel promised to narrow the list of countries eligible to purchase such spyware, possibly dropping the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and some other African countries. While the reputational damage to NSO might eventually force the firm out of business, it is also unclear how great the damage is to Israel’s image as the “Startup Nation.”

I really do not think that there will be any negative effect for Israeli high-tech. It’s more of an isolated event.

Arik Segal, technology and innovation adviser at Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, believes that while NSO and others like it will feel the heat, the current storm will not greatly affect the Israeli high-tech sphere.

“I really do not think that there will be any negative effect for Israeli high-tech. It’s more of an isolated event,” he told The Media Line.

“Also, regarding people who work there, I also believe that there will be no shortage of candidates [seeking employment]. In the past, people worked in tobacco or lobbying companies, and now they are working at NSO Group. In terms of branding and Israel’s image – it’s mostly in the eye of the beholder. Israel already has a militaristic image, and people who previously held this view of Israel will probably get a boost in their belief, while those who were unconcerned before will probably not even notice,” Segal said.

Dr. Lev Topor, a senior research fellow at the University of Haifa’s Center for Cyber Law and Policy, shares this point of view. He explains that in Israel and throughout the world there is simply not enough oversight of the cyber industry. “The NSO Group operates in an arena without regulation. There are no international cyber laws, there are no do’s and don’ts,” he said.

Each country decides for itself whether or not to establish laws and regulations in this field. In Israel, the companies are subject to state provisions and regulations, but if NSO or any other company for that matter passes this hurdle, the international market will accept it, Topor told The Media Line.

“Also, in the worst-case scenario, states and other firms could work via a business proxy and cooperate with NSO, bypassing the blacklists of the US or of other countries that might follow suit,” he said.

West Bank Needs Armed UN Peacekeeping Force

12/26/2021

Thanks to the honesty of the current prime minister, as well as the statements by the former US president regarding his assessment of the previous premier, there is clearly no interest in Israel for a negotiated peace with the Palestinians.

In the absence of a desire for peace by the Israeli occupiers and a rejection of the globally accepted two-state solution, a period of chaos and the absence of any semblance of tranquility is bound to take place. Israeli Jewish settlers living illegally in the Palestinian territories are armed to the teeth and, as Israeli human rights organizations have documented, are supported by the Israeli army.

In fact, it is now clear that what Palestinians have always said was true: Settlements and settlers are part of Israel’s long-term occupation strategy. Settlements are built in strategic locations to cut off a contiguous Palestinian state and make the Israeli army’s work easier. Most countries warn their population to stay away from areas of trouble that could put their lives in danger, but Israel encourages its citizens to live in troubled areas.

The United States, which has abandoned any effort to push for an independent Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel, is focusing on the dangers that illegal Jewish settlers are posing. What the US needs to do now is follow the wise advice of activist Gershon Baskin. If it is genuine about supporting the two-state solution, he argues, then the US can’t continue to refuse to recognize the Palestinian state which makes up the second part of the two-state solution, since Israel has been recognized since 1948.

The violence by Jewish settlers is not going to stop no matter what Washington says and regardless of the lip service that some Israeli defense officials pay to the concept of rule of law. We have seen what the courts can and cannot do. At best, they postpone honorable and just decisions such as the case of Sheikh Jarrah or that of Mohammad El Halabi, in jail for five and a half years on trumped-up charges and a mountain of evidence denying any wrongdoing by the humanitarian worker whose only sin is that he refuses to accept a plea bargain admitting to something he never did.

With the absence and inability of any serious Israeli effort to stem the illegal Jewish settlers’ violence and with the potential of a negotiated solution being vetoed by the new “three no’s” of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – no talks with the Palestinians, no meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and no to a two-state solution – the only remaining solution is an armed peacekeeping force.

What is needed is a neutral armed force that will ensure that the Jewish settlers stop their violence; their burning and destroying of Palestinian farms; and their almost nightly raids on unarmed Palestinian homes.


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United Nations-sponsored blue helmets are needed now more than ever in the occupied territories.

In addition to putting an end to the illegal Jewish violence and Palestinian resistance to the illegal settlers, what is needed now is a neutral force that can keep things quiet until there is a change in Israel that will bring about a government that understands the need for a negotiated end to their occupation.

A blue-helmeted UN force can be made up of any neutral party including NATO or, if Israel insists, it can be made up of a multinational force such as the one that has been stationed in Sinai for decades.

The world community has plenty of experience in keeping peace and the UN has the power and the mandate to provide the political and legal cover for such a peacekeeping force.

With the absence of a political horizon, it is impossible to think of anything else. Palestinians are not going anywhere and, unfortunately, the well-armed illegal Jewish settlers also are not going anywhere soon. The only way to ensure there is no further bloodletting and violence in the areas surrounding these illegal settlements is by deploying a badly needed international peacekeeping force.

The current Israeli government led by right-wing zealots might reject such an idea on ridiculous claims that all of historic Palestine is their God-given territory. That could be explained in some radical Jewish circles but doesn’t muster credibility anywhere else. No matter what the Israelis, or the Palestinians, for that matter, claim, the facts are clear: Palestinians are not going anywhere and the sooner they are protected by an armed neutral force, the better for all concerned and the faster we will be able to bring sanity and proportional justice to this conflict.

Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Arab journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Kuttab is the deputy chair of the Vienna-based International Press Institute and is a regular columnist with the Washington-based Al-Monitor and a reporter for Arab News. He is the director-general of the Amman-based Community Media Network which manages Radio Al Balad and Ammannet news site. Kuttab was born in Jerusalem and is a graduate of Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. Daoud Kuttab on twitter is @daoudkuttab

Blue-helmeted Nepalese peacekeepers arrive in Juba, South Sudan in February 2014. (UN Photo/Isaac Billy via Flickr)

The author of this blog or other opinion piece is a third-party contributor who is independent of The Media Line Ltd and its partners or supporters. All assertions, opinions, facts, and information presented in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and are not necessarily those of The Media Line and/or all parties related thereto, none of whom assumes any responsibility for its content.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Slams LeBron James for ‘Uninformed’ Covid Meme: He ‘Encouraged Vaccine Hesitancy’

By Brandon Contes

Dec 27th, 2021


Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fired back at LeBron James on Monday after the current Lakers superstar seemed to compare Covid with the flu and a common cold.

Last Friday, James shared a meme on Instagram featuring three identical-appearing Spider-Man characters pointing at each other while garnering the labels Covid, cold and flu — implying that there is no difference between the three. James captioned the meme with “help me out folks.”




Abdul-Jabbar has been very outspoken about the dangers of the global pandemic and the need for influential people to like James to advocate getting vaccinated.

“The meme’s implication is that LeBron doesn’t understand the difference among these three illnesses, even after all the information that’s been presented in the press,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote on his Substack. “Well, since he asked, let me help him out by explaining the difference—and how knowing that difference might save lives, especially in the Black community.”

“As is evident by some of the comments that cheer LeBron’s post, he’s given support to those not getting vaccinated, which makes the situation for all of worse by postponing our health and economic recovery,” Abdul-Jabbar continued. “The CDC reports that those who are unvaccinated are 9 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital and 14 times more likely to die from COVID than those vaccinated. The number rises to 20 time more likely when compared to someone who’s gotten a booster shot. By posting the uninformed meme, LeBron has encouraged vaccine hesitancy which puts lives and livelihoods at risk.”

In October, the basketball Hall-of-Famer and activist criticized James for acknowledging he got vaccinated, but failing to promote or endorse the jab for others. Instead, James reiterated that the decision to get vaccinated is a personal choice.

Like Abdul-Jabbar, James has been outspoken on social and racial issues throughout his NBA career. Unlike Abdul-Jabbar, James has not placed preaching the dangers of Covid on the list of issues that are important to him.

“While LeBron is a necessary and dynamic voice critical of police brutality against the Black community, he needs to be the same necessary and dynamic advocate with vaccines, which could save thousands of Black lives right now,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote. “The racism is just as real—and just as lethal—in both cases.”

LeBron James Divides NBA Fans With Meme Equating Covid to the Flu and the Common Cold

By Kipp Jones 

Dec 25th, 2021

Harry How/Getty Images)

LeBron James appeared to compare Covid-19 to both the flu and the common cold online Friday amid a nationwide outbreak of cases which are mostly being attributed to the Omicron variant.

The Lakers star posted a Christmas Eve meme on Instagram which used the popular Spider-Man Points at Spider-Man meme format. The image shared by James showed three identical Spider-Man characters pointing one another, and it implied there is no distinction between Covid and the other illnesses.

The star commented, “Help me out folks.”

The post of course drew a mixture of condemnation and praise from prominent NBA fans on Twitter.

The Lakers will enter into a matchup against the Brooklyn Nets Saturday without their head coach and a number of players, who have all entered the NBA’s Covid health and safety protocols, CBS Sports reported.

Avery Bradley, Kent Bazemore, Malik Monk, Austin Reaves and Trevor Ariza will sit out the game, as will coach Frank Vogel. The Nets will also be without some notable players for the contest, including Kevin Durant, who entered protocols a week ago.

James’ Covid-skeptical Instagram post was shared a day after professional golfer Phil Mickelson received a seemingly endless number of responses when he enlisted Twitter to help him gain insight into the severity of the Omicron variant.

Fox News Host Challenges Republican Senator With Data Showing How Child Tax Credit Decreases Poverty

By Alex GriffingDec 26th, 2021, 5:21 pm184 comments

Mike Emanuel, guest-hosting Chris Wallace’s old show Fox News Sunday, challenged Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) over the Republican Party’s opposition to extending the Child Tax Credit – a key provision of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.

“Senator, one of the casualties of the collapse of that bill is the child tax credit that expires at the end of the year,” Emanuel, who is Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent, noted.

“According to the Urban Institute, continuing the benefit could have a significant impact on child poverty, reducing child poverty to about 8.4 percent from 14.2 percent, a fall of roughly 40 percent,” Emanuel explained, flashing a graphic on the screen.

“Is that a compelling argument to extend it?” Emanuel asked.

Blunt responded by saying the Republicans previously doubled the child tax credit and argued Democrats’ House bill “just simply doesn’t make sense.”

“You know, putting a cap on families in need is what we can do, should do and would do in the country—and I think could do in a bipartisan way,” Blunt continued, adding:

Again, we doubled the child tax credit just a handful of years ago. And we need to look at that if that’s no longer meeting the need of moving kids out of poverty. But families that make $150,000, for instance, aren’t in poverty in Missouri. I don’t think they are in poverty almost anywhere in the United States.

Emanuel pushed the senator further noting that some analysts say the extension of the credit would “bolster financial security and spur economic growth in Missouri by reducing taxes on the middle class and those striving to break into it. How do you respond?”


Blunt didn’t directly answer the question, instead, he argued that the Build Back Better bill was full of “gimmicks” which would result in programs included in the bill, which are only meant to be temporary, inevitably becoming permanent spending.

Blunt jested his friends call the bill “build back broker” due to its massive spending increase.

Could Sharks Help Humans Fight COVID-19?
A new study has grounds for optimism

A nurse shark.
Wouter Naert/Unsplash

BY TOBIAS CARROL

Generally, when you think about sharks in terms of their relationship to human health, those terms tend to be negative. Sharks may not eat people as much as some believe, but they’re certainly capable of doing a lot of damage to the human body with a single bite. But it turns out that sharks might be able to help improve humans’ health as well — including with our current battle against COVID-19.

Smithsonian Magazine has news of a recent study that suggests that antibodies found in a species of shark might have an application in human medicine. In a relatively serendipitous moment, the species in question is the nurse shark.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, focuses on the Variable New Antigen Receptors (VNARs) found in sharks’ immune systems, which are described therein as “the smallest naturally occurring binding domains found in nature.” The Smithsonian article notes that shark VNARs are 10% the size of their human counterparts.

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Aaron LeBeau was one of the leaders of the study, and spoke of the work done here as a means to prepare for the future. “What we’re doing is preparing an arsenal of shark VNAR therapeutics that could be used down the road for future SARS outbreaks,” LeBeau said. “It’s a kind of insurance against the future.”

Sharks are known for the effectiveness of their immune systems, and this is the latest scientific foray into what from it could apply to human biology. Given that preparedness against future pandemics is a concern among many — even as we deal with the current one — the work being done by these scientists could be transformative in the years to come.

World leaves United States behind on commitment to Indigenous Peoples' language rights

BY KRISTEN A. CARPENTER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/26/21 

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

On Jan. 1, 2022, the world community embarks on the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, a ten-year commitment by all 193 countries of the United Nations to take action protecting the language rights of Indigenous Peoples. The initiative could not be more timely. Experts estimate that one of the world’s 7,000 languages dies every two weeks, and that half of the world’s languages will be gone by the next century.

Accordingly, national and Indigenous leaders from dozens of countries including Australia, Canada, Iceland, Thailand, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe met last week in Paris to discuss the Global Action Plan of the IDIL2022-2032.Several countries announced national action plans committing to transformative language revitalization for the decade. All seem to realize that when languages cross borders, histories of oppression are shared, and innovation is both local and global, worldwide cooperation is necessary to solve this human rights issue.

All except the United States. The U.S. was not in the room for the discussions. The U.S. has no national action plan, nor any plan, for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. While the U.S. has recently opted out of international human rights institutions for various political reasons, this absence is particularly unfortunate.

The U.S. has an incredibly rich heritage of Indigenous languages ranging from Anishinaabe to Cherokee, Navajo to Tewa. But they are almost all endangered, in part because the U.S. spent two hundred years and $2.81 billion trying to destroy them. The infamous federal boarding schools of the 19th and 20th centuries taught English, Christianity, and manual labor, as part of a program to “assimilate” Indians into mainstream society. Lessons were enforced through violence. Some children reported teachers (or priests) sticking pins in their tongues if they spoke their own languages. After hundreds of children’s graves were discovered on school grounds in 2021, Secretary of the Interior Debra Haaland formed the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to investigate this “troubled history.”

The contemporary legacies are painful. Those who died at boarding schools did not transmit their languages and some survivors are still too traumatized to do so. Today, Indigenous individuals face discrimination when they try to vote, testify in court, or receive medical treatment in their own languages. The cultural impacts are also devastating. Linguists have shown that when an Indian tribe loses a critical mass of native speakers, it loses entire traditions of religion, governance, education, and science that were carried in the language.

COVID-19 has accelerated these losses, which extend beyond families and tribes. Research into the correlation between language diversity and biological diversity, along with the role of traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation, suggests that Indigenous Peoples’ languages may contain keys to humans’ ability to survive on this earth.

The U.S. eventually abandoned its formal policy to eradicate Indigenous languages and has several federal programs supporting tribal language instruction. But the funding available under these laws isn’t enough – and the aims of the legislation are too limited -- to teach most Indigenous children even the colors and numbers in their own languages. As the Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle has noted, the Administration for Native Americans funded only 29 percent of tribal applications for language support in 2018.

The Biden administration has promised an additional $220 million, but even this welcome announcement stops short of the transformational change in mindset and funding necessary to heal the harm of the boarding schools and restore flourishing multilingual societies. Census data shows that of 169 Indigenous languages in the U.S., less than twenty have over 2,000 speakers.

Tribes have taken matters into their own hands. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., addressed the UN General Assembly on language rights in 2019 to share his tribe’s investments in tribal immersion schools, Cherokee language media, and technology putting the Cherokee syllabary on smart phones. The Shawnee Tribe has declared a Decade of the Shawnee Language, to mirror the UN’s Decade, with the goal of producing “new generations of fluent speakers.” The Wampanoag people have brought their language back from dormancy and, at the Navajo Nation, there are over 170,000 speakers using the Diné language in tribal courts, schools, and homes.

Yet tribes shouldn’t have to do it all on their own, and most cannot because they lack the resources necessary for comprehensive language revitalization. Language rights are human rights, recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Accordingly, other countries are taking responsibility for their roles in destroying Indigenous Peoples’ languages and committing to broad-based initiatives to restore them. The plan is to lay a “solid foundation” for Indigenous Peoples’ language rights by honoring the right of self-determination, focusing on Indigenous language speakers, sharing best practices globally, and integrating Indigenous languages into all domains of life.

The International Decade of Indigenous Languages starts in two weeks, the same period during which experts predict another language will die or go dormant. If the U.S. will not lead, it is at least time to join the global commitment to Indigenous Peoples’ languages.

Kristen A. Carpenter directs the American Indian Law Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. She served on the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 2017-2021, as its member from North America, and is currently an Observer on the Global Steering Committee for IDIL2022-2032.

First U.S. gay bishop remembers Desmond Tutu’s generosity, kindness

Gene Robinson said Tutu used his own experience of oppression to understand and empathize with others.


“There was probably at that time, and maybe still, no one better known around the world than Desmond Tutu," Gene Robinson said. | Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images


By ASSOCIATED PRESS
12/26/2021

CONCORD, N.H. — In 2008, when the Right Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire was excluded from a global Anglican gathering because of his sexuality, Desmond Tutu, who died Sunday, came to his defense.

“Gene Robinson is a wonderful human being, and I am proud to belong to the same church as he,” Tutu wrote in the foreword to a book Robinson published that year.

Robinson, who in 2003 became the U.S. Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, said Sunday he has been trying to live up to those words ever since.

“It was quite surreal because I was taking grief from literally around the world,” he said in a phone interview. “There was probably at that time, and maybe still, no one better known around the world than Desmond Tutu. It was an astounding gesture of generosity and kindness.”

Tutu, South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice, died at age 90. He was an uncompromising foe of apartheid, South Africa’s brutal regime of oppression against its Black majority, as well as a leading advocate for LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage.

“Now, with gay marriage, it’s hard to remember how controversial this was, and for him to stand with me at the very time I was being excluded ... it completely floored me,” Robinson said.

In the foreword to Robinson’s book, Tutu also apologized for the “cruelty and injustice” the LGBTQ community had suffered at the hands of fellow Anglicans.

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Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s moral conscience, dies at 90

Tutu, Robinson said, used his own experience of oppression to understand and empathize with others.

“He used that as a window into what it was like to be a woman, what it was like to be someone in a wheelchair or for someone to LGBTQ or whatever it was,” he said. “It was the thing that taught him to be compassionate.”

Robinson recalled the way Tutu’s laugh rippled across crowds of thousands as well as a private moment when they prayed together in the seminary Robinson graduated from in New York.

“There was nobody in pain that he wasn’t concerned about, whether that pain was a physical ailment of some kind or a mental illness or something to do with cruelty or degradation. It pained him,” Robinson said. “To sit in the room and hear him praying about those people was about as close to knowing the heart of God as I ever expect to know. I mean, I don’t even need to know more than that.”

Robinson served as the ninth bishop of New Hampshire until his retirement in early 2013 and later as a fellow at the Center for American Progress. Now 74, he recently retired as the vice president of religion and senior pastor at the Chautauqua Institution.

Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid leader who identified with Jews and criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, dies at 90

BY SHIRA HANAU DECEMBER 26, 2021 9:17 AM

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu attends a celebration for his 86th birthday on Oct. 7, 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP via Getty Images)
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(JTA) — Desmond Tutu, the archbishop who identified closely with the historical suffering of the Jewish people in his forceful advocacy against apartheid in South Africa, died Sunday at age 90.

Tutu, the first Black archbishop of Cape Town, used his role as a church leader to bring religion into the fight against apartheid, South Africa’s repressive system of racial segregation. Advocating for nonviolence and, later, restorative justice, Tutu gained renown far beyond South Africa, earning a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

In the years preceding and during the negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa, Tutu frequently praised the many South African Jews who opposed the apartheid system and worked alongside Black South Africans to transition to an equitable system of governance. He often invoked the Holocaust, comparing the struggles of the Jews under Nazism to the struggles of Black South Africans under apartheid.

Speaking to a gathering of British Jews in 1987, he spoke of that shared experience of exclusion and persecution.

“Your people know what one’s talking about, having suffered because you belonged to a particular racial group. You were forced to wear arm bands. We don’t carry arm bands … they just have to look at us,” Tutu said, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch from the event.

Desmond Tutu during a visit to Jerusalem in December 1989. 

(Esaias Baitel/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

But Tutu’s identification with the Jewish people did not spare them from his criticism. While consistently defending Israel’s right to exist and calling on Arab nations to recognize Israel, including when speaking to Palestinian audiences, Tutu was a frequent critic of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and questioned how people who had survived the Holocaust could perpetrate an occupation of another people.

“The Arabs should recognize Israel, but a lot must change also. I am myself sad that Israel, with the kind of history and traditions her people have experienced, should make refugees of others. It is totally inconsistent with who she is as a people,” he said in a 1984 speech at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

Tutu also criticized Israel for continuing to work with South Africa on military matters despite apartheid.

“Israel’s integrity and existence must be guaranteed. But I cannot understand how a people with your history would have a state that would collaborate in military matters with South Africa and carry out policies that are a mirror image of some of the things from which your people suffered,” he said in his 1987 speech to British Jews.

Those comparisons, along with remarks that some Jewish leaders called antisemitic, earned Tutu criticism from some Jewish leaders. In his 1984 JTS speech, he addressed some of that criticism while further fanning its flames with references to a “Jewish lobby.”

“I was immediately accused of being antisemitic,” Tutu said in his speech, referring to the reaction to an earlier speech. “I am sad because I think that it is a sensitivity in this instance that comes from an arrogance — the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.”

In a 1989 visit to Israel and the West Bank, Tutu made the controversial suggestion during a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, that the Nazis ought to be forgiven for their crimes against the Jewish people. The suggestion reflected Tutu’s role as the chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which aimed to move the country into a new era by allowing those who participated in apartheid to atone for their sins and to let victims of the system air their grievances and, in some cases, receive reparations.

“We pray for those who made it happen, forgive them and help us to forgive them, and help us so that we, in our turn, will not make others suffer,” he said, according to a JTA dispatch from the time.

Jewish leaders criticized Tutu for his remarks. “For anyone in Jerusalem, at Yad Vashem, to speak about forgiveness would be, in my view, a disturbing lack of sensitivity toward the Jewish victims and their survivors. I hope that was not the intention of Bishop Tutu,” Elie Wiesel said at the time.

(Earlier that year, Tutu had suggested that he and Wiesel could work together to mediate peace in the Middle East.)

Despite his comments, Tutu was frequently honored by Jewish organizations. In 1989, he was honored for his work fighting racial discrimination by the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. In 2003, Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School gave him an award for furthering world peace.

In 2009, the same year that then-President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Tutu was disinvited from giving a speech at a Minnesota university over remarks he had made about Jews and Israel.

Abraham Foxman, then national director of the Anti-Defamation League, urged the university not to rescind the invitation.

“Tutu has certainly been an outspoken, sometimes very harsh critic of Israel and Israeli policies, and has sometimes also used examples which may cross the line,” Foxman told JTA at the time. But Tutu “certainly is not an antisemite and should not be so characterized and therefore refused a platform.”

In 2015, Tutu addressed an event hosted by the Israeli organizations Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle on Israel’s Memorial Day for Israeli and Palestinian parents who lost children to the conflict in a short video speech.

“If change seems impossible, consider our experience in South Africa,” he said. “You can make it happen in Palestine and Israel, too.”

‘We and the Palestinians have lost an indomitable fighter’: mourning the loss of Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“We and the Palestinians have lost an indomitable fighter, a courageous leader and a moral icon without equal." - #Africa4Palestine Board Member, Professor Farid Esack.

BY AFRICA4PALESTINE DECEMBER 26, 2021 

DESMOND TUTU SPEAKING AT THE GERMAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN 2007.

 (PHOTO: ELKE WETZIG/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

Editor’s Note: The following statement was released by Africa4Palestine on December 26, 2021 on the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the age of 90.

The human rights organization #Africa4Palestine joins fellow South Africans, Africans and peace-loving peoples across the world in mourning the loss of Archbishop Desmond Tutu – a dear friend of the Palestinian people.

Archbishop Tutu was a close confidant of #Africa4Palestine – someone whom we consulted with, asked for advice and sought support from. Tutu was an ally of all oppressed peoples across the globe and specifically of the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli Apartheid.

#Africa4Palestine Board Member, Professor Farid Esack, a personal friend of the Archbishop, commented:

“We and the Palestinians have lost an indomitable fighter, a courageous leader and a moral icon without equal. We are bereft of a prophet who consistently warned against ideas of cheap peace which may come without justice. I am immensely grateful for having travelled and worked with the Archbishop in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, in solidarity with the Palestinians against Israeli occupation and in supporting various other causes. His boundless love, his wit and humour and his unflinching and principled commitment to a better world will always inspire us”.

The human rights organization, #Africa4Palestine, pays homage to the life and struggle of our comrade and father, Archbishop Tutu, and we offer our deep condolences to Mama Leah and his children – Trevor Thamsanqa, Naomi Nontombi, Theresa Thandeka, and Reverend Mpho.

We, in a profound and deeply painful way, say “Hamba Kahle” (go well) our leader, inspirer and energiser of the oppressed.

Here is a short video of Archbishop Desmond Tutu addressing a rally for Palestine in Cape Town. The protest march, attended by over 250,000 people, was the largest that South Africa witnessed (on any issue) since the dawn of democracy. The protest march for Palestine was organized by the MJC, ANC, NC4P and #Africa4Palestine together with other organizations. It was attended by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chief Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada, several government Ministers, MPs and others including members of the South African Jewish community.

 

“Implacable Champion of the Oppressed—and the Fervent Opponent of Tyranny” Desmond Tutu Has Died

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  TOM PHILPOTT

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Desmond Tutu in Washington, 2008. Gerald Herbert/AP Photo

Nearly a half-century ago, when apartheid, a racial caste system rooted in colonialism, ruled South Africa, a middle-aged cleric became the first Black dean of Johannesburg, which is an important position in the Anglican church. He could have wrangled a special permit to live in the city’s prosperous white quarter where the church was located, and emerged as a de facto token of phony progress for the racist regime. 

Instead, he chose to live in the township of Soweto, home of the impoverished Black working class that made the South African economy hum. Rather than serve as window dressing for the white elite, Desmond Tutu—who died at 90 on Sunday after a 24-year bout with cancer—became its worst nightmare, challenging the system and ultimately helping hasten its demise. 

“At a time when the African National Congress’s leadership was either in jail or in exile, there was Tutu—cassock flowing, crucifix swaying front and side, as he strode through the brutality of the townships and the mendacity of apartheid,” the UK journalist Gary Younge wrote in an excellent 2008 profile in the Guardian well worth reading today. 

Unsparing in his critiques of the regime, Tutu also preached non-violence and unity among its victims as they sought to overthrow the tyrants. In those years, his routine involved “delivering blistering attacks on the regime one minute,” Younge wrote, and “diving into a crowd to save a suspected ‘informer’ from being necklaced [by anti-Apartheid activist] the next.” He was jailed at least once for his activism; but only for a few hours, possibly because the apartheid regime was wary of turning another political prisoner into a global cause celebre, as it has done with Nelson Mandela. 

Even so, using the power of his pulpit and his position on the ground in South Africa’s segregated townships, Tutu emerged as a global celebrity anyway, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. When apartheid crumbled a decade later, the clergyman’s agitations for justice—no matter the popularity of the cause—had only just begun.

He chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which took on the monumental task of delivering justice for apartheid’s crimes without tearing up a racially divided society. The strategy was to give the regime’s victims the chance to formally testify and document the wrongs done to them and receive reparations, and allow the perpetrators the opportunity to seek amnesty after admitting their crimes.

Formally concluding in 2001, the TRC left behind a complex legacy. For Black South Africans, the televised hearings provided “an acknowledgment of the daily horrors that they were subject to during apartheid,” Ereshnee Naidu-Silverman, senior director for the Global Transitional Justice Initiative, wrote in a 2019 Washington Post op-ed. “With testimony from 21,000 victims, the 2,000 public hearings and 7,112 amnesty applications made it difficult to cling to denialism because a collective narrative of a racist past began to emerge.”

Yet the TRC’s call for broad-based reparations for Black South Africans ended up being ignored by the government, while few perpetrators admitted to crimes or were punished for them, she writes. Still, the commission remains a model for societies trying to peacefully move beyond systemic wrongs in a just way—imagine if the United States had held public hearings, say, on the horrors of the Iraq War or those of the Jim Crow era.

In the 2000s, Tutu remained an outspoken crusader for justice, repeatedly clashing with the ruling African National Congress, which ruled South Africa after apartheid, over various corruption scandals. Tutu also used his platform to speak out on a range of global affairs, from the Israeli occupation of Palestine to the Iraq War, which he opposed from the start; from toothless international climate policy to homophobia within religious institutions.

Younge’s 2008 profile paints him as a playful, introverted man who really just wanted to be loved. “They call him Father, but as he sits at the breakfast table eating Cheerios with fruit and yogurt, giggling as he teases and is in turn teased, Archbishop Desmond Tutu looks more like a mischievous little boy,” Younge wrote. “He has been known to bust out a dance move whether or not there is a dancefloor in sight.” 

He remained active well into his 80s. “Ever the rebel, he came out in support of assisted suicide in 2014, stating that life should not be preserved ‘at any cost,'” reports the BBC in its obituary. “In 2017, Tutu sharply criticised Myanmar’s leader and fellow Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, saying it was ‘incongruous for a symbol of righteousness’ to lead a country where the Muslim minority was facing ‘ethnic cleansing.'”

Tutu is gone, but his memory—and if we’re lucky, his example—will live on. For him, using his voice to defend marginalized people against oppression was a kind of vocation, a life’s work. And so was maintaining a sense of humor. 

President Joe Biden has not yet released a statement, but former President Barack Obama wrote:

New partnership aims to investigate UFOs in New Mexico

Griffin Rushton
Updated: December 24, 2021 

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - For decades -- New Mexico has been known for its connection to UFO's and now, one of the state's U.S. Senators wants to help get some answers

Sen. Martin Heinrich wants to create a new federal office to investigate unidentified aerial phenomenon or UFO's.


He does but it turns out there's already a lot of boots on the ground. Civilians and trained scientists are using their skills to answer one of the world's burning questions -- are we alone in the universe?

A new proposal aimed at creating a federal office to investigate and report sightings of unidentifiable aerial phenomenon.


“It acknowledges it, it admits that it is, it really is an entity out there that indeed, in need of more research, and more attention and to be taken seriously,” said Maria Tellier with MUFON New Mexico Chapter.

In a statement-- she said the American people deserve transparency and wants to end the cycle of sweeping sightings under the rug.

The bill still has to make it through congress but the search for answers is already well underway.

“I believe in flying saucers. I know what that is. It's a flying saucer. I don't know where it came from. And I don't know why it's here. That's what I want to know,” said Tellier.

Tellier is the assistant director for the New Mexico chapter of MUFON-- the Mutual UFO Network.

"We're a civilian organization that keeps the identity of our witnesses confidential, we investigate sightings of UFOs, or anomalies and whatnot, throughout the country, and also, you know, the world. And we report back what we find,” Tellier said.

She joined the group back in 2012 after her own experience in southern New Mexico between Las Cruces and Alamogordo.

"One time I saw something to the west, hovering, and I thought oh my God, you know, I thought I saw a day saucer day disc as we refer to that. And I took pictures of it. And it was, Oh my God, what is this.”

She went looking for answers and the group gave her one.

“It was a blimp! It was a, it was a border patrol blimp that's what MUFON investigated and that's what they found it to be. It was identifiable.”

A lot of cases end up the same way. MUFON has investigated nearly 80 sightings in New Mexico this year alone and just about half were identifiable.


"The starlink satellites, for instance, is are reported quite often as anomalies in the sky, depending on what angle you're looking at, it really can be confusing,” said Tellier.

But sometimes -- there just aren't answers.

"Two years back, I had some sightings over around Three Rivers Park. And it was a glowing light that I had four cases within the month of June. I couldn't identify what they were. And they all saw something similar at a similar time. But not this thought the same day,” said Tellier. "I thought maybe I was on to something there for a little while. But the the Lincoln forests in the Sacramento mountains are around that sacred area. And there's a lot of things in and out of there that we just don't know what they are. And I still keep my eye on that area.”

But figuring out what people saw is just the first step. The next big question -- where did it come from?

"I'd be really truly surprised if we were the only, you know, sort of form of life in this galaxy, or even in this part of the galaxy,” said Tony Beasley director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Researchers at NRAO near Socorro are trying to find answers -- by looking in the stars. They partnered with the SETI Institute to scan the cosmos for powerful radio waves.

“The reason why radio has been a pretty popular place to look for these signals, is that radio waves pass through clouds of gas, and dust, and so on. So you can pick up radio signals from every part of our galaxy,” said Beasley.

Crews finished assembling the tech just about a month ago -- so no major discoveries just yet -- but researchers say don't get your hopes up.

“I seem to remember reading somewhere that the estimate was like 10,000 years,” said Beasley.

And even if they do find a powerful signal, the chances whatever sent it are still around are pretty low.

"We've only been transmitting radio signals for 100 years, 120 years, or something like that. So the problem with radio is you're looking a lot further, but it's only a narrow window in time, at least it was for us. So there's only been a narrow window in time,” Beasley said. "If you took our Earth, and you took the radio signals that are coming out of it, and you moved it to the distance of a lot of the stars you see in the night sky, we would not be able to detect it.”

But he says the search for intelligent life in the cosmos is just getting started.

"It turns out the the amount of space that we've searched is like a glass of water in the Pacific Ocean. It's tiny. So okay, maybe your chances aren't so fantastic. But if you don't look, you won't detect anything.”

A few small steps to answer a big question.

“I've been looking all my life. Honest to God. I wish, I wish one would land in my backyard,” Tellier said.

Officials from the NRAO say they are working to build even more antennas and soon, they say they'll be able to look at the everything in the night sky all at once, not just a small portion.

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