Opinion
A beloved butterfly is in peril. It’s not alone.

By the Editorial Board
August 1, 2022 

Monarch butterflies are pictured at the El Rosario sanctuary on March 18, 2008, in Michoacan, Mexico. (Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images)

It’s one of nature’s most incredible sights: Millions of monarch butterflies, clustered together across the tree line, moving their wings in near unison. As the temperature warms, the butterflies take flight, cascading through the forest in a sea of orange, white and black. No wonder these swarms are, evocatively, also called kaleidoscopes.

Every year, monarch butterflies undertake the arduous 3,000-mile journey from the Great Lakes to winter in California and Mexico. They have followed this migratory path for centuries, pollinating flowers across the continent and inspiring awe in generations of Americans. Now, these creatures — an indelible part of many childhood memories — are under threat.

In July, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) placed the species on its “Red List,” designating it “endangered.” Estimates suggest that the monarch population has declined between 22 percent and 72 percent in the past decade alone; the population in the west has shrunk by an estimated 99.9 percent since the 1980s

Some variation in butterfly numbers is normal. But looking at 10-year averages, it is clear the population is fluctuating around a mean well below the range of the 1990s and 2000s. Experts attribute the decline to habitat loss and climate change. As North American farms increasingly use herbicides associated with genetically modified corn and soybeans, milkweed plants — the sole diet of monarch caterpillars — are disappearing. That, coupled with urbanization and the extreme weather events of the past few years, has imperiled monarch breeding.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spent years assessing whether it should list monarchs as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. It eventually decided that, though monarchs met the criteria for protection, many other species were at higher risk and had greater need of federal intervention. It is a sad reflection on the state of the world that so many species merit this designation, with limited resources on hand to help them.

The recent IUCN classification does not trigger any legal or regulatory responses. Still, the news should drive attention to the pressures facing monarchs — and other flora and fauna affected by deforestation, global warming and other threats to biodiversity. This includes creatures that are less recognizable and beloved. A 2019 scientific review found that a third of insect species were endangered, with a rate of extinction eight times higher than reptiles, birds and mammals. Data suggests that the total mass of insects worldwide is declining by more than 2 percent annually

Planting more milkweed and nectar-producing flowers could help monarchs. But, as with all forms of conservation, individual efforts can only do so much. Policies that address climate change, maintain protected lands and curb cultivation on marginal land with little commercial value would have far greater impact — for butterflies and many other forms of wildlife.

Our natural world is full of marvels. We should do what we can to preserve them for future generations — and ensure our planet’s ecosystems can survive and thrive.

Beloved monarch butterflies now listed as endangered


Monarch butterflies land on branches at Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. On Thursday, July 21, 2022, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said migrating monarch butterflies have moved closer to extinction in the past decade – prompting scientists to officially designate them as “endangered.” (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File)

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: July 21, 2022

By Christina Larson | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The monarch butterfly fluttered a step closer to extinction Thursday, as scientists put the iconic orange-and-black insect on the endangered list because of its fast dwindling numbers.

“It’s just a devastating decline,” said Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University who was not involved in the new listing. “This is one of the most recognizable butterflies in the world.”

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly for the first time to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct.

The group estimates that the population of monarch butterflies in North America has declined between 22% and 72% over 10 years, depending on the measurement method.

“What we’re worried about is the rate of decline,” said Nick Haddad, a conservation biologist at Michigan State University. “It’s very easy to imagine how very quickly this butterfly could become even more imperiled.”

The monarch butterflies are photographed in the Pacific Grove butterfly grove on Monday, November 7, 2005.

 (Vern Fisher/Monterey County Herald)

Haddad, who was not directly involved in the listing, estimates that the population of monarch butterflies he studies in the eastern United States has declined between 85% and 95% since the 1990s.

In North America, millions of monarch butterflies undertake the longest migration of any insect species known to science.

After wintering in the mountains of central Mexico, the butterflies migrate to the north, breeding multiple generations along the way for thousands of miles. The offspring that reach southern Canada then begin the trip back to Mexico at the end of summer.

“It’s a true spectacle and incites such awe,” said Anna Walker, a conservation biologist at New Mexico BioPark Society, who was involved in determining the new listing.


A monarch butterfly rests on a flower at Palo Alto’s Rinconada Park Community Garden near Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021.

 (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)

A smaller group spends winters in coastal California, then disperses in spring and summer across several states west of the Rocky Mountains. This population has seen an even more precipitous decline than the eastern monarchs, although there was a small bounce-back last winter.

Emma Pelton of the nonprofit Xerces Society, which monitors the western butterflies, said the butterflies are imperiled by loss of habitat and increased use of herbicides and pesticides for agriculture, as well as climate change.

“There are things people can do to help,” she said, including planting milkweed, a plant that the caterpillars depend upon.

Nonmigratory monarch butterflies in Central and South America were not designated as endangered.

The United States has not listed monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act, but several environmental groups believe it should be listed.

The international union also announced new estimates for the global population of tigers, which are 40% higher than the most recent estimates from 2015.

The new figures, of between 3,726 and 5,578 wild tigers worldwide, reflect better methods for counting tigers and, potentially, an increase in their overall numbers, said Dale Miquelle, coordinator for the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society’s tiger program.

In the past decade, tiger populations have increased in Nepal, northern China and perhaps in India, while tigers have disappeared entirely from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, said Miquelle. They remain designated as endangered.

 

NGOs: Thailand may be planning to deport Uyghurs to China

Detainees have been relocated to a center in Bangkok, prime minister’s chief security adviser tells BenarNews.

By Nontarat Phaicharoen for BenarNews
2022.07.27
Bangkok

People believed to be Uyghurs are transported to a detention center in Songkhla town in southern Thailand after visiting women and children at a separate facility, March 26, 2014.

 Reuters

Thailand has moved dozens of Uyghurs from around the kingdom to a single facility in Bangkok, a security official confirmed Wednesday, raising fears among NGOs that the government may deport them to China after three detainees escaped earlier this month.

Thai authorities had moved the Uyghurs to the detention center in Thailand’s capital for their own good, according to Panitan Wattanayagorn, the chief security adviser to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha.

“I understand it was a relocation for security reasons and to improve their living conditions,” Panitan told the RFA-affiliated BenarNews by phone, but he did not respond to a question about whether the Thai government would send the Uyghurs back to China.

“For a broad overview of solving the troubles, we can say that they escaped death to stay with us. We have to handle them according to international standards and obligations,” he said. 

“We won’t breach their basic rights – that is there is no separation of the families. But the problem is more convoluted than that, and we try to solve it bit by bit.”

BenarNews reached Panitan a day after seven local NGOs and Thailand’s Islamic council issued a joint statement questioning the Muslim Uyghur detainees’ transfer to Bangkok. 

“This action raised concerns among the civil society network monitoring the Uyghur situation that the Thai government will force the Uyghurs to return to their country of origin at the request of the Chinese government,” said the NGOs and the humanitarian council of the Sheikhul Islam Office, the top Islamic authority in majority-Buddhist Thailand. 

The relocation to Bangkok came after three Uyghur men escaped from an immigration detention center in central Thailand on July 11, said Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, a Thai NGO that assists Uyghur refugees in the country. The trio is believed to be at large. 

“Our sources have told us that Uyghurs were brought from different detention centers across the country and are now all held together at the Suan Plu immigration detention center,” Chalida told BenarNews on Wednesday. “We fear they could be sent back at China’s pressure. So far, they are still here, as far as we know.”

Fifty-two to 56 Uyghurs have been in limbo in Thailand after they allegedly entered the country illicitly while fleeing from northwestern China seven to eight years ago, Chalida said. At least 44 of them are at Suan Plu, but it was not clear what happened to the others. 

Activists said those held in detention centers are in an immigration limbo because China wants them back, while Thai authorities have not yet decided what to do with them.

Meanwhile, a foreign affairs committee of the Thai parliament has summoned the foreign ministry and other related agencies on Aug. 4 to clarify the situation. 

“We also want to have the national human rights commissioners be debriefed on the relocation and allowed to make a visit to them and monitor their health,” Chalida said.

No visits 

She said the NGOs and the human rights officials had not been allowed to visit the Uyghurs despite requests to the government.

Previously, Chalida noted that they were living in unhygienic, cramped cells after seven Uyghur inmates tried to escape from a detention center in Mukdaharn province in 2020. 

The NGOs and the Muslim council also called on the government to be mindful of an incident in 2015 when it deported 109 Uyghurs to China. The fates of those deported are not known. 

“Thailand must not make the same mistake twice. There is no reasonable reason for the Chinese government to ask the Thai government to force these Uyghurs to return to China where they will face persecution,” the statement said.  

The Uyghur people, who live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), are a Muslim minority who have endured persecution and repression by the Chinese government, cases of which have been well documented by human rights groups.  

Thai officials said the Uyghurs were detained after fleeing from XUAR as they tried to travel through Thailand, hoping to find asylum in Turkey or other countries. The exodus began in 2013 and 2014 when about 475 fled to Thailand. Since then, other Uyghurs have entered the country in a series of smaller waves. 

Human rights activists said human smuggling rings allegedly aided Uyghurs in entering Thailand from Myanmar and Laos. The asylum seekers traveled by roads and sometimes trekked through jungles to avoid police checkpoints along the way to Malaysia, but most ended up being rounded up in the far southern province of Songkhla, near the Malaysian border. 

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

 

Vietnamese religious leader appeals five-year sentence

Lawyers say six other Peng Lei House Buddhist Church members are also innocent.

By RFA Vietnamese
2022.08.01

Le Tung Van submits his appeal to the Duc Hoa district People’s Court on July 28.

Facebook: Trinh Vinh Phuc

The man at the center of allegations of incest, fraud and abusing freedoms has appealed against his five-year prison sentence.

Le Tung Van from the Peng Lei House Buddhist Church, now known as Thien Am on the Edge of the Universe, was sentenced on July 21 on charges of "abusing democratic freedoms".

Police have since suspended investigations into claims the church was an incest cult whose leaders personally profited from charitable donations.

Le’s lawyer, Dang Dinh Manh of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, brought the accused to the Duc Hoa district people’s court to file an appeal, accompanied by a team of defense lawyers.

Le raised five points to assert his innocence. He said he did not offend the Vietnamese Buddhist Church in Long An province, or the Duc Hoa district police. He said, on the contrary, he and members of his group suffered years of humiliation and slander.

Le repeated a call made at his trial for his accusers to stand up to him and make their claims in court.

The church leader accused five organizations of persecuting his religion: The Duc Hoa district Police Agency, the Long An provincial Police Department, the Duc Hoa district People's Procuracy, the Long An province’s People's Procuracy and the People's Court.

He called on the appeals court to drop the charges against him and his colleagues and free them immediately and unconditionally.

Le’s lawyer Dang Dinh Manh told RFA that he and four associates believed the Duc Hoa district court had unfairly tried six members of Peng Lei because of at least 22 procedural violations.

“With Le Tung Van's appeal we hope the appeals court will reach a verdict in accordance with the law, declaring there was no crime under Article 331 of the Criminal Code,” he said.

“If we have a guarantee that the procedural regulations will be strictly implemented, it will have a very positive impact on the policy of building a state based on the rule of law, restore people's trust in the law and enhance the prestige of the prosecuting agencies.”

So far only Le has filed an appeal but lawyer Dao Kim Lan said he believed the six others charged to be innocent.

"Personally, as a lawyer directly involved in the case and having access to all the files, I determine that my clients have not committed a crime according to the charges and documents and evidence shown in the case file,” he said.

 HONEY HAVE YOU SEEN THE CHOW CHOW

Hungry North Koreans bristle as elites feast on expensive dog meat

Food is in short supply and prices continue to rise, but the privileged aren’t feeling the squeeze.

By Chang Gyu Ahn for RFA Korean
2022.07.21

A file photo shows a North Korean soldier holding a badminton racket on the banks of the Yalu River near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong.

 REUTERS

While citizens in North Korea are nearly starving in the face of food price hikes and shortages, the country’s elite are feasting on one of the country’s most expensive delicacies: dog meat.

Meat of any kind is a rarity in the North Korean diet these days, and dog meat costs twice as much as pork. A single bowl of dog meat stew, called dangogi-jang, can cost the same as two kilograms of rice.

After a ban on imports at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in January 2020, and with harvests failing to yield enough food for the country’s needs, food shortages are widespread, a resident of Chongjin, in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Prices for food such as rice, corn and flour keep rising. Residents are frustrated as they suffer, … but high-ranking government officials and the wealthy class, for whom money is not an object, are busy looking for dog meat restaurants and taking care of themselves,” the source said.

Dog meat is not common in the typical diet of either North or South Korea, but it is considered by some to be a summer delicacy with purported virility-enhancing and medicinal properties. 

This summer, while the bellies of average citizens in the country of 25 million people rumble, the most popular dog meat restaurants in Chongjin and elsewhere are still bustling with powerful military and ruling party clientele.

“Since last summer, the Kyongsong Dangogi Restaurant has been operating out of a two-story traditional Korean building in Chongjin’s Pohang Square. As the hot days of summer begin, it is buzzing with people who have come for their fill of dog meat,” the source said.

“Kyongsong is the second largest dog meat restaurant in the country next to the Pyongyang Dangogi Restaurant on Tongil Street in Pyongyang. I believe [former leader] Kim Jong Il gave the restaurant its name. He was treated to dog meat stew every time he came to North Hamgyong province, and stayed at a hotel within the Kyongsong restaurant that has a scenic view,” he said.

The source was aware that outside of Korea, dog meat consumption is rare.

“In foreign countries, people don’t eat dog meat, but in our country, dangogi-jang is known for its invigorating effect on the body in summer. There’s even a saying that if you were to spill some of the soup on your foot, it would be like medicine to heal the body,” he said. 

“Ordinary residents cannot even dare to eat a bowl of dangogi-jang, no matter how good it is for the body,” the source said. “It is the cheapest dish among the various other dog meat dishes like steak or braised ribs. The stew costs 12,000 won [U.S. $1.70] for a single bowl, about the price of two kilos [4.4 lbs] of rice.” 

Besides Kyongsong, there are several other restaurants in Chongjin that serve dog meat dishes, according to the source.

This file photo shows a meal at the Pyongyang Dangogi Restaurant on Tongil Street in the North Korean capital. Photo: Yonhap

“People in power, such as party officials, prosecutors, social security agents and state security agents do not like to stand out and be seen in public, so they prefer to go to privately run restaurants to eat dog meat rather than public ones,” he said.

A source in the northwestern province of North Pyongan said he believed dangogi-jang helped to heal his sick mother.

“Everyone knows that dog meat is good for your health in the summer. But most residents cannot afford to eat even a single bowl each year,” the second source said.

“There are several restaurants serving dog meat in Uiju county. On July 16, the first of the three hottest days of summer, for the first time in five years, I visited a dog meat restaurant with my mother, who was suffering from a fever and was terribly weak,” he said. 

The second source said that there were many elites at the restaurant, including officials of the ruling Korean Workers’ party, agents of the Ministry of State Security and law enforcement officials.

“It took a long time for my mother to eat her bowl of stew because her teeth are weak. So when other customers finished their meal and new customers replaced them, I recognized the faces of several well known Uiju county officials,” said the second source.

“Ordinary residents are angry now because food prices are too high and there is no way to make money,” the source added. “I felt a sense of disappointment when I saw so many people in power who lined up to eat expensive dog meat … without a care about worrying how they would be able to earn a living.” 

Dog meat is available at restaurants in both North and South Korea, but the dog meat trade is of questionable legality in the South. A South Korean court ruled in 2018 that killing dogs for their meat was illegal, but the law did not specifically ban selling or eating the meat.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung O. Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Biden Administration Challenges GOP to Get Burn Pits Bill Passed

Victoria Cavaliere - Yesterday 

(Bloomberg) -- US Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough expressed confidence the Senate has enough votes to pass a bill to provide health care and benefits to 3.5 million veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, even after Republicans stalled the legislation.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 28: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during a news conference about the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act on Capitol Hill July 28, 2022 in Washington, DC. A procedural vote to advance the bill, which would expand health care access for military veterans who became ill after being exposed to toxic burn pits, failed to pass in the Senate on Wednesday. 

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)


Forty-one Republican senators switched tactics and moved to force a debate on amendments that would reduce future mandatory spending in the bill. The majority of those lawmakers had supported an essentially identical version of the bill last month.

“There’s been one change since then” on “something completely unrelated to this issue,” McDonough said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “So if everybody does what they did before, this has 84 votes, so I think they should just get on with it. Have the vote.”

The bill has drawn support from comedian Jon Stewart and President Joe Biden, who told veterans protesting for expanded benefits outside the US Capitol that he’ll invite them to the White House once his Covid-19 infection clears. Some veterans exposed to burn pits, used to burn trash at military sites, have reported illnesses ranging from respiratory difficulties to cancer.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he will bring the legislation back to the floor this week, and that he’ll allow Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey to bring an amendment addressing his party’s concerns for debate.

Toomey, who has consistently voted against the bill, says it creates an additional $400 billion in discretionary spending unrelated to veterans, allowing Congress to hide a spending binge.

Toomey said Sunday he’s sticking to his demand for a fix. “We could bang that out tomorrow night, literally,” he said on CNN.

Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said Toomey’s budget concerns will be addressed.

Related video: Veterans react to Burn Pit vote fail

“Pat’s going to get his amendment and then we will see where it goes,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Read more: Jon Stewart and Democrats Urge GOP to Back Burn Pits Bill

The House passed the bill on a 342-88 vote in mid-July. An issue for Senate Republicans are nontaxable benefits. The Constitution requires all bills with tax items to originate in the House.

‘Drafting Error’

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican who initially voted for the legislation but switched his position, said ultimately he believes the health care funding will pass.

“We have to stand by our veterans who have been exposed to these chemicals,” Cassidy said on ABC’s “This Week.” “There was a drafting error, a $400 billion drafting error.”

McDonough pushed back on the $400 billion cited by Toomey, saying “you won’t see it” in the bill. It might be “deep in some charts” in the back of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the legislation’s budgetary impact, he said.

A spending cap proposed by Toomey’s amendment could eventually amount to “rationing care for vets, which is something I just can’t sign on to,” McDonough said.

A spokesperson for Toomey said Sunday the fix will not amount to a cap, but instead “limits the amount of spending” that can be shifted from the discretionary category to the mandatory category.

The Department of Veterans Affairs opened a voluntary registry in 2014 for service members who might have been exposed to airborne hazards from burn pits.

The issue is personal for President Joe Biden, who lost his son Beau to brain cancer. Beau, who was a major in the Delaware National Guard, served overseas near burn pits, and Biden has suggested that the toxins from the pits may have caused the disease.

Christianity Was A Major Part Of Indigenous Boarding Schools – A Historian Whose Family Survived Them Explains


By Brenda J. Child
07/31/22


During a weeklong trip to Canada, Pope Francis visited a former residential school for Indigenous children in Maskwacis, Alberta, on July 25, 2022. The Ermineskin Residential School operated between 1895 and 1975 in Cree Country, the largest First Nations group in Canada.

As at many boarding schools set up to assimilate Indigenous children, students were punished for speaking their language and sometimes experienced abuse. According to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, 15 children died at this particular school over the years. Several of them succumbed to tuberculosis.

During his visit, the pope said he was “deeply sorry” for “the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples.”

Like many other Indigenous people of the U.S. and Canada – especially those, like me, whose family members attended the schools – I listened with interest as Pope Francis asked his audience for forgiveness “for the evil committed by so many Christians.” He apologized “for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities cooperated” in projects of forced assimilation while not acknowledging the role that the Catholic Church as an organization played in residential schools.


As a historian who has written about American Indian boarding schools in the United States, and as the granddaughter of school survivors, I have often been troubled by the misinformation in regional and the national media about this complex history.

Religion was a pillar of the forceful campaigns to assimilate Indigenous peoples on both sides of the border but played out differently in the U.S. and Canada. Christianity’s central role is responsible for lingering resentment today, and many Indigenous people, me included, question whether the pope’s apology fell short in holding the church responsible.

Outsourcing assimilation

Canada’s residential schools were different from those in the U.S. in two significant ways. First, the Canadian government farmed out First Nations education to the Catholic and Anglican churches and other Protestant denominations.

The U.S. federal government, on the other hand, operated its own Indian school system both on and off the reservations. Twenty-five were off-reservation boarding schools, the first of which was established in 1879: the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, whose most famous student was the Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe. The boarding schools dominated Indian education in the U.S. for a half-century.

Significant political and educational reforms led to new Indian policies under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, backing away from the previous generation’s goal of assimilation. Many boarding schools closed during the 1930s as FDR’s bureaucrats started to integrate American Indians into public schools. Ironically, that same decade saw the highest enrollment at boarding schools – largely at the request of American Indian families who used them as a form of poverty relief during the Great Depression so their families could survive.

In Canada, however, residential schools continued to be the dominant form of Indigenous education for another 50 years.

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Pope Says Genocide Took Place At Church Schools In Canada For Indigenous Children

‘Civilizing’ students

U.S. government boarding schools and Canada’s residential schools did share features in common. Family separation, enforcing the English language – or French, in some areas of Canada – manual labor training and the imposition of Christianity were core characteristics.

Though churches did not operate the U.S. schools, most Americans and lawmakers in Washington, D.C., were committed to the idea that Indian people needed to be “uplifted” from an “uncivilized” life through education and assimilation into American culture, and that included Christianity. Native spirituality came under assault at boarding schools, and students were given “Christian” names to replace their “pagan” and “unpronounceable” ones.

Christianity was also imposed on Indigenous people through the reservation system. I sometimes like to give the example of my own grandparents, Fred and Jeanette Auginash, who “married” before an Episcopal minister on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota in October 1928.

According to the Ojibwe community in which they resided, they were already married. As my mother had been told, her father asked my grandfather to marry his daughter, and he brought the family gifts of money, food, blankets, horses and other items. For an Ojibwe family, the ritual exchange of gifts is what made a marriage.

However, when my grandparents went to apply for a housing loan on the reservation, they needed a marriage certificate signed by the local Christian minister. In this way, Christianity and the federal government blended their authority in another form of settler colonialism.
Cultural survival

Not surprisingly, Indigenous children and youths were often resistant to the boarding school regimen of family separation and enforced assimilation and Christianity. Young people frequently expressed themselves through rebellions large and small, most often through running away from school. They stowed away on trains and headed home to visit their families.

Parents and other relatives, meanwhile, demonstrated their commitment to their children by writing letters, staying in touch despite the distance and school terms that could last four years without visits home. Parents of boarding school children also wrote to school administrators, insisting that their children visit the doctor and maintain their good health in an era when there was no cure for diseases like tuberculosis and trachoma, an eye infection that can cause blindness.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Francis’ visit to Alberta was met with mixed emotions on the part of Indigenous Canadians. He also blessed a Native church known for blending Christian and Native traditions that is being rebuilt in Edmonton after a fire. In Maskwacis, site of the Ermineskin school, one Cree man gave him a headdress.

The act of generosity was widely criticized and mocked on Native social media. Many Indigenous people felt Pope Francis did not deserve the honor, and that his apology did not acknowledge the Catholic Church’s role in family separation and the abuse of children in residential schools.

As many Indigenous people work to rebuild their language and spiritual traditions, Christian traditions no longer have the same influence over their lives and destinies.

Pope Francis told Indigenous delegations that the abuse in church-run schools in Canada caused him 'pain and shame' Photo: AFP / Vincenzo PINTO

This article originally appeared in The Conversation.

Brenda J. Child is a professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota.

Analysis: The West should not trust Ukrainian spy agencies. Neither should Ukrainians

JULY 28, 2022 BY JOSEPH FITSANAKIS 

ON SUNDAY, JULY 17, the Ukrainian administration of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the most extensive shake-up of the nation’s security leadership since the Russian military invasion. Two key members of Zelenskiy’s inner circle, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and domestic security chief Ivan Bakanov, were summarily fired. Venediktova was the public face of Kyiv’s war crimes campaign, which was launched in March in response to the Russian invasion. Bakanov, a childhood friend of Zelenskiy, had headed the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) since 2019.

In a subsequent video statement, Zelenskiy said he fired the two officials after he was informed that at least 60 employees of the SBU and the Prosecutor General’s office had defected to the Russians in eastern Ukraine. Last week, in an article for SpyTalk, Kremlin watcher Olga Lautman said Bakanov’s dismissal had been expected for a few days. Regardless, the move has shaken Western observers, and has given rise to legitimate questions about the susceptibility of Ukraine’s security and intelligence services to Russian meddling. Should the Western alliance, and Western intelligence agencies in particular, trust their Ukrainian counterparts? The answer is, invariably, no. In fact, even the Ukrainians themselves are not in a position to trust their own intelligence services.

From the KGB to the SBU

On September 20, 1991, just one week after Ukraine secured its independence from the Soviet Union, the SBU was founded in place of the Soviet KGB. Initially, the new agency handled both internal security and external intelligence functions. But in 2005, the SBU’s Department of Intelligence became a stand-alone agency under the title Foreign Intelligence Service (SZR). Since then, the SZR has functioned as the institutional equivalent of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), while the SBU has performed domestic security functions that resemble those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

As is the case with the entirety of Ukraine’s state sector, the two agencies are endemically bloated. Intelligence observers report that the SBU’s 30,000 employees make it far larger in size than its British counterpart, the Security Service (MI5). Meanwhile, according to the latest information, the SZR has “double the number of personnel than the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and is larger than Britain’s [Secret Intelligence Service, or] MI6”. By all accounts, even today, more than 30 years after the dissolution of the USSR, the two agencies continue to resemble Soviet-style bureaucracies in terms of size, sluggishness, and corruption.

The Ukrainian State’s Pro-Russian Enclave

In 1999, intelligence observers Julie Anderson and Joseph Albini were noting that, in comparison to its Soviet predecessor, the SBU was “new in form, but not in substance”. A shortage of trained intelligence and security personnel meant that, even a decade after its establishment, the agency had to rely on Russian personnel for over a third of its needs. According to Anderson and Albini, these Russian-born —and largely Russian-affiliated— employees had been “trained by and retained contacts with Moscow”. Meanwhile, longtime counterintelligence officer Nikolai Golushko, who had headed of the Soviet KGB in Ukraine until 1991, had fled to Russia, taking with him “key Ukrainian files”. For many years later, these files constituted “a valuable source for blackmail and exploitation of Ukraine’s remaining intelligence officers and their informants”, the authors noted.

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Throughout that time, the SBU and the institutional descendants of the Soviet-era KGB in Russia, worked closely on several programs and operations. Numerous senior officers in the SBU continued to receive training in Russia. Unsurprisingly, by 2014, when Russia invaded the Ukrainian region of Crimea, the SBU was known to be “riddled with Russian spies, sympathizers and turncoats”, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Philip Shishkin, who has kept a closer eye on Ukraine’s intelligence services than almost any other foreign media correspondent. Almost as soon as Russia annexed Crimea, the local head of the SBU defected to its Russian counterpart agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB). It was reported at the time that, within days of the Russian invasion, close to a third of SBU employees in Crimea and the Donbas had joined the pro-Moscow separatists.

By then, the SBU’s untrustworthiness was commonly acknowledged and understood in Ukraine. In fact, under the five-year rule of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014), the SBU effectively became a branch of Russian intelligence. During that time, the agency deliberately ignored —and may have even assisted— Russian espionage operations against Ukraine, as the Kremlin’s “intelligence agencies met no obstacles to the infiltration of the SBU and [Ukrainian] military intelligence”. Even after Yanukovych fled to Russia following massive popular pressure, the SBU remained the most pro-Russian part of Ukraine’s labyrinthine government.

The SBU Under Zelensky

Despite sporadic attempts to reform the SBU’s pro-Russian culture after 2014, by 2019, when Zelensky assumed office in Kyiv, the SBU remained “porous vis-à-vis the Russian Security Service”. It was, by all accounts, “a service which Western counterparts [were] hesitant to engage with”. When they took over power, Zelensky and his close collaborators were aware of the SBU’s pro-Russian identity. But this problem was not easy to solve. When Yanukovych had fled to Russia, his SBU lieutenants had made sure to steal or destroy literally all internal data on the agency’s personnel, as well as “anything related to cooperation between the Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services”. It was reported at the time that every SBU “hard drive and flash drive” was literally smashed with hammers by officers loyal to the departing regime. Meanwhile, the agency’s entire senior leadership fled to Russia.

Zelensky knew that he had to act quickly. In his inauguration speech, which he delivered on May 20, 2019, he called on the Ukrainian parliament to immediately dismiss a number of senior government officials, including the head of the SBU, Vasyl Hrytsak. Having received the memo, Hrytsak resigned on his own initiative before he was fired. In the months that followed, Zelensky fired 90 percent of SBU officers, ranging from low-level technical staff to regional heads from across the country. They were replaced by a new generation of freshly minted officers, who underwent polygraph tests prior to being admitted into the SBU’s ranks. By late 2021, Zelensky and his closest aides believed they had successfully tackled the SBU’s “Russian problem”.

The SBU’s Russian Problem Persists

But they were wrong. The pace of reforms was too rushed and too unsystematic to sack the inner sanctum of the SBU’s Russian enclave. Like some of his predecessors, Zelensky consciously refrained from making his reforms seem like a purge, as doing so could reawaken longstanding divisions that are deeply entrenched in Ukrainian society. As a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) noted, “in a country aspiring to protect its democracy, there is […] an unwillingness to begin arresting [pro-Russian] Ukrainians, since [it could] fracture Ukrainian politics, creating precisely the conditions to facilitate a Russian takeover”.

That hesitation, however is what denied Zelensky political control over the SBU. In the words of that same RUSI report, the result of that hesitation was that Russia now “has a bureaucracy in waiting”, a “shadow structure […] inside the Ukrainian government to move information around known Kremlin assets”. Last week’s dismissals of the head of the SBU and the prosecutor general, were clear signs that Zelensky has recognized that his efforts to reform these institutions have been far from successful. The Ukrainian president is thus beginning to realize the very size of the Russian shadow structure within the Ukrainian state, which now directly threatens the cohesion of his administration and the very survival of the Ukrainian resistance against the Kremlin.

The Future

What will happen from now on? It will be difficult for the Zelensky government to survive without implementing an extensive and far-reaching cleanup of the state apparatus. There are reports that this is already underway. However, any such move runs the risk of being perceived as a Soviet-style purge, and could alienate large segments of Ukraine’s Russian speaking population.

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The situation is particularly problematic in areas under Russian control. As everyday Ukrainians, as well as government officials, are trying desperately to survive in the occupied areas, they face the dilemma of quitting their jobs, or continuing to work in hopes of receiving a much needed monthly paycheck. If they choose the latter option, they can easily be viewed as collaborationists by Zelensky and his government. Such an approach, combined with extensive purges in free Ukraine, may create the preconditions of a civil war. That would be an anathema for the Ukrainian cause, and would derail the efforts of the Western alliance to save Ukraine from the brink of disaster.

* Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis is Professor of Intelligence and Security Studies at Coastal Carolina University. He specializes in intelligence collection.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 28 July 2022 | Permalink

EU’s Drone Is Another Threat to Migrants and Refugees

Frontex Aerial Surveillance Facilitates Return to Abuse in Libya


“We didn’t know it was the Libyans until the boat got close enough and we could see the flag. At that point we started to scream and cry. One man tried to jump into the sea and we had to stop him. We fought off as much as we could to not be taken back, but we couldn’t do anything about it,” Dawit told us. It was July 30, 2021, and Dawit, from Eritrea, his wife, and young daughter were trying to seek refuge in Europe.


Click to expand Image

Reconstruction of the July 30, 2021, interception facilitated by Frontex drone. In addition to the track of the Frontex drone, the map shows the track of Seabird (a Sea-Watch airplane) that witnessed the interception. It also shows the NGO vessel Sea Watch 3 in the vicinity. There is no vessel tracking data for the Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat Ras Jadir or the intercepted vessel. Map courtesy of Border Forensics.

Instead, they were among the more than 32,450 people intercepted by Libyan forces last year and hauled back to arbitrary detention and abuse in Libya.

Despite overwhelming evidence of torture and exploitation of migrants and refugees in Libya – crimes against humanity, according to the United Nations – over the last few years the European Union has propped up Libyan forces’ efforts to intercept the boats. It has withdrawn its own vessels and installed a network of aerial assets run by private companies. Since May 2021, the EU border agency Frontex has deployed a drone out of Malta, and its flight patterns show the crucial role it plays in detecting boats close to Libyan coasts. Frontex gives the information from the drone to coastal authorities, including Libya.

Frontex claims the surveillance is to aid rescue, but the information facilitates interceptions and returns to Libya. The day Dawit and his family were caught at sea, Libyan forces intercepted at least two other boats and took at least 228 people back to Libya. One of those boats was intercepted in international waters, inside the Maltese search-and-rescue area. The drone’s flight path suggests it was monitoring the boat’s trajectory, but Frontex never informed the nearby nongovernmental Sea-Watch rescue vessel.

Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics, a nonprofit that uses innovative visual and spatial analysis to investigate border violence, are examining how the shift from sea to air surveillance contributes to the cycle of extreme abuse in Libya. Frontex’s lack of transparency – they have rejected ours and Sea-Watch’s requests for information about their activities on July 30, 2021 – leaves many questions about their role unanswered.

Dawit and others panicked when they saw the Libyan boat because they knew what awaited upon return. He and his family ended up in prison for almost two months, released only after paying US$1,800. They are still in Libya, hoping for a chance to reach safety in a country that respects their rights and dignity.

Judith Sunderland
Associate Director, Europe and Central Asia Division

Lorenzo Pezzani
Co-director, Border Forensics

Scientists Discover Europe's "Last Known" Giant Panda 

Scientists have discovered a new species of giant panda in the wetlands of Bulgaria. Scientists say it may be the "last known" and "most evolved" species. of the type found in Europe.

Unlike its modern black and white relatives, researchers, including those from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,A. He said that he did not rely on bamboo.

"It is not a direct ancestor of the modern giant panda genus, but it is closely related," explains study co-author Professor Nikolai Spasov of the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History.

Findings published last week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontologysuggest that ancient pandas likely ate softer plant material, suggesting that this group This is consistent with the general trend of increasing dependence on plants during the evolution of humans. history.

"This discovery shows how little we still know about ancient nature, and how historical discoveries in paleontology can lead to unexpected consequences even today." It shows," Dr Spasov said.

Scientists have evaluated the upper carnivorous tooth and upper canine tooth, first unearthed in northwestern Bulgaria in the 1970s and added to the museum's fossil treasures.

"There was only one vaguely handwritten label. It took me years to figure out its provenance and age. Then I realized that this was an unknown giant panda fossil." It took me a long time to realize that," said Dr. Spasov.

The tooth was found in a coal deposit and had a blackened color. This indicates that pandas lived in forested wetlands.

At this time in the late Miocene, about 10 million to 4.5 million years ago, fossils of the staple grass that supports modern pandas are rare in Europe, researchers say.

Fossil records and tooth tips from this period suggest that pandas at that time did not have teeth strong enough to crush tree trunks.

Instead, ancient pandas likely ate softer plant material, scientists say.

"Possible competition with other species, particularly carnivores and possibly other bears, is a major concern for giants. He explains that pandas specialize in plant foods in humid forest conditions. ,” Dr. Spasov said.

However, researchers suspect that the teeth provided "sufficient protection against predators."

Since the canine teeth are comparable in size to modern pandas, scientists speculate that ancient pandas were similar in size or slightly smaller.

According to them, the species may have become extinct due to climate change, most likely due to the "Messinian salinity crisis." This is an event in which the Mediterranean basin dried up and the surrounding terrestrial environment changed significantly.

"Even if A. niklovi were not as specialized in habitat and food as modern giant pandas, fossil pandas are well specialized and their evolution has It was related to wet forest habitats," said Dr. Spasov.

"Climate change, which led to aridification at the end of the Miocene in southern Europe, likely had a negative impact on the last European panda presence," he added.

This study narrowed down the identity of the beast behind the fossil specimen to one belonging to the Ailropodini, a tribe of the Ursididae.

This group of animals , best known by its sole living representative, the giant panda, but scientists say it once lived in Europe and Asia.

As one possible evolutionary trajectory, researchers suggest that Aillopodini may have left Asia and reached Europe inA. nikolovi . thinking about.

However, they cautioned against this hypothesis, stating that paleontological data indicate that "the earliest members of this group of bears were found in Europe." 57}

This indicates that the group may have developed in Europe and then headed to Asia, where the ancestors of another genus Ailurarctosdeveloped.

These early pandas may have later evolved into the modern giant pandas, scientists say.