Photos of Erdoğan's extravagant 'summer palace' revealed amid mass poverty

The architect of President Erdoğan's 640 million-lira summer house revealed photos of the residence that had been previously veiled, revealing a lavish palace with 300 rooms, a private beach and a swimming pool.

Duvar English - President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's summer home's architect Şefik Birkiye revealed photos of the lavish residence in Marmaris dubbed a "summer palace," the daily Sözcü reported on July 5. 

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Completed in 2019, photos of the residence had been kept secret from the public until the architectural studio released them.

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Reported to have 300 rooms, the residence is home to a private beach, constructed with padding materials that extended the natural shoreline. 

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The construction of the summer palace cost the state a whopping 640 million liras between 2018 and 2021, when the Turkish Lira simultaneously weakened against foreign currencies.

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The lavish residence drew widespread protest from the public throughout its construction as the population became increasingly impoverished, a phenomenon often blamed on the administration for their mismanagement of resources. Most recently First Lady Emine Erdoğan advised the public to shrink their food portions to combat hunger in the country.

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The construction is thought to have been built on about 90,000 square-meters of land and the campus also includes housing for staff.

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The residence includes a large swimming pool alongside small bungalows on the beach with private access to the sea. 

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Aerial views of the residence also revealed the mass deforestation caused by the construction, a common characteristic of most building projects of the state, as the house was a significant expansion on former President Turgut Özal's summer house that it replaced. 

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President Erdoğan welcomed Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in his summer residence in Marmaris over the summer of 2020.

New laws to turn Turkey into a nuclear waste dump

The Turkish Parliament contributed to a nuclear disaster last week. This is a risk of a future disaster. For the moment, it is a political catastrophe. And it only took 15 minutes for the parliament to pave the way for Turkey turning into a nuclear waste dump.

Wednesday October 13 2021 

The Turkish Parliament spent the first week of the new term in a festive mood. On the one hand, there was the ecstasy of the ratifying of the Paris Agreement unanimously, and on the other hand, there was the confidence of the “strengthened parliamentary system” negotiations that six political parties carried out recently in an “exploratory” mode. 

However, those who contributed to the euphoria first thing in the parliament contributed to a nuclear disaster right after that. Let me put it straight from the start. This is a risk of a future disaster, but for the moment, it is a nuclear political catastrophe. This entire disaster process in the parliament lasted 15 minutes.

On Oct. 6, the General Assembly of the Parliament convened. They started to discuss the Paris Agreement while the Parliament TV (Meclis TV) was on, which is live transmission to the public from parliamentary debates.

The Paris Agreement was ratified at 10:08 p.m. after Parliament TV stopped its broadcast and people retreated for the evening. Seven minutes later, another agreement was approved; another seven minutes later, a third one passed.

Those who staged their shows in the evening during the debates on the Paris Agreement were totally quiet this time. There was some kind of an absolute silence. What was that and why was the approval process so quiet? Why didn't anyone object? Why didn’t anyone say a word? Or have they agreed beforehand to hide it from the public?

Bill Number 88

Immediately after the Paris Agreement was approved, the Speaker of Parliament brought up Bill Number 88. This proposed law was submitted to the parliament on April 26, 2019. On May 30, 2019, the Foreign Affairs Committee report was issued. It could have been debated then at the General Assembly.

Bill Number 88 waited for days, weeks and months. Right after the ratification of the Paris Agreement, it was opened for debate at the General Assembly. Its full name is “Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management” (Kullanılmış Yakıt İdaresinin ve Radyoaktif Atık İdaresinin Güvenliği Üzerine Birleşik Sözleşmesi). Even the name is creepy. It was exactly on the 33rd anniversary of Chernobyl that this nuclear deal was opened for debate in our Parliament.

It was on October 6, which was after being kept waiting for 895 days before being submitted to the general assembly. One deputy wrote a dissenting opinion in the committee. That was all. That person that we all should be thankful for is Ahmet Ünal Çeviköz, CHP deputy. He wrote simple and sound critical reasons opposing the bill. First, it was paving the way for the delivery of used nuclear waste to Turkey. It would make Turkey a used nuclear waste transfer country. Also, cracks were discovered twice in the cement foundations of the construction for the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant. No one objected, except for Ünal Çeviköz. This was an agreement that would make Turkey a nuclear waste dump.

This particular agreement passed at 10:15 p.m. on Oct. 6.

Thirteen deputies from the GOOD Party (İYİ Party) voted “YES,” and 23 deputies did not vote. Twenty deputies from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) abstained, 36 deputies did not vote. Of the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), 78 deputies voted against, while 57 deputies did not participate in the voting. The Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) set a record, voting against the bill with three of its four deputies.

Bill Number 210

The next seven minutes were like the previous seven minutes, they went like the wind. The proposed law no. 210 was submitted for discussion. This bill came to the Parliament on November 13, 2019. It was discussed in the committee in April 2020 and its report was written. It waited for 18 months to be discussed at the General Assembly. It was open for debate when the Paris Climate Agreement was negotiated.

The law is called “The Proposed Law on the Ratification of the Protocol That Amends the Convention on Civil Liability Against Third Parties in the Field of Nuclear Energy dated July 29, 1960, amended by the Additional Protocol dated January 28, 1964 and the Protocol dated November 16, 1982.” It is a very strange international agreement. It is dated back to 1960. Why would a regulation of such an old date be approved now? What was the point in waiting so long to approve it? Was the Akkuyu Nuclear Plant being built without signing this deal?

Questions, questions and nuclear fears. There was an objection from a single person, HDP Adana deputy Tülay Hatımoğulları Oruç. She objected on grounds that Turkey has failed to meet its obligations under international agreements, the possibility of an accident and the amount of compensation. There were no objections other than Ms. Oruç’s objections based on the Akkuyu Nuclear Power plant.

That deal passed at 10:22 p.m. on October 6. Thirteen deputies from the GOOD Party voted “YES,” and 23 deputies did not vote. From the HDP, 19 deputies voted against, and 37 did not vote. Of the CHP, 78 deputies abstained while 57 did not participate in the vote. TİP equalized its own record when three of its four deputies voted against the bill.

That night, several deputies and their consultants tweeted with enthusiasm the story of how the Paris Agreement was accepted and ratified in the Parliament. When we woke up to a very peaceful morning, everybody was at ease. It was a very organized operation. An exemplary one. We have a lot to learn from this.

Radioactive parliamentary accident

I did learn a lot from these experiences. After the Framework Convention was passed in the parliament in 2004, a law on granting royalties for electricity generation and imported coal plants was passed. I can say that a climate agreement can be preferred to be ratified because it opens ways for several abuses. When we became a party to the Kyoto Protocol in 2009, right after that came electricity generation by royalties, the Third Bridge, the Çanakkale Bridge, the Third Airport, and then a Palace was built on the land that belonged to Atatürk Forest Farm (AOÇ), with questionable legal changes. Now, I found my answers, this time, in the first 15 minutes, about what kind of misuse or manipulation ratifying the Paris Agreement would lead right after its approval. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was quick to give the answers this time, and very precise.

So, what did we all learn? We have seen that six political parties were able to create a wave of enthusiasm in society through the “strengthened parliamentary system” negotiations, but they failed in participating in the parliamentary system right after this. On Oct. 6, 235 opposition deputies did not vote. Those who voted, used their vote in line with the ruling party. The rest either abstained or rejected. Moreover, Law Number 88 that would turn the country into a nuclear dump was passed, which was kept waiting for 895 days while no one raised the issue. Only one deputy gave a dissenting opinion and no one in the General Assembly uttered a word. Also, Law Number 210 that would carry the country into a nuclear mystery was passed.

How come? We all thought you were negotiating a strengthened parliamentary system. But you have pushed the country into a nuclear parliamentary accident.

 

Önder Algedikoalgedik@gazeteduvar.com.tr

Another time capsule found in Robert E. Lee monument

"This is likely the time capsule everyone was looking for."

ByMichelle Stoddart
27 December 2021


Another time capsule found in Robert E. Lee monument in Virginia

There are rumors that it contains a prized photograph of former President Abraham Lincoln's casket.@GovernorVA/Twitter

After a time capsule found last week proved to be a letdown, another one has been found in the pedestal of a now-removed Robert E. Lee state in Richmond, Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam announced in a tweet Monday.

"They found it!," Northam said in the tweet. "This is likely the time capsule everyone was looking for."

The contents of the time capsule, believed to date back to 1887, could be valuable. Historical records show that "37 Richmond residents, organizations, and businesses contributed about 60 objects to the capsule, many of which are believed to be related to the Confederacy," according to a press release from the governor's office.

There are even rumors that it contains a prized photograph of former President Abraham Lincoln's casket. The possibilities excite people like local historian and author Dale Brumfield, who held out hope after a capsule discovered last week didn't live up to expectations.

"I think it will be recovered as they remove the foundation," Brumfield said. "And then we'll finally get a chance to see what in the devil that picture of Abraham Lincoln really is."

Northam watched last week as another capsule was opened by historians at the state's Department of Historic Resources. After hours of working to unseal the small, corroded box, the contents confused and disappointed some local historians who were eager to see the contents of the box.

MORE: What's inside that 1887 time capsule opened in Confederacy's capital

It contained what appeared to be a coin, a few books of varying size and color, what appeared to be an envelope with a photo inside and other items, some of which were difficult to identify given their condition.

The authenticity of the relic was called into question in large part because it did not match the size and material descriptions from historical records. Brumfield suspected it wasn't the correct time capsule when he came to understand it was made of lead, the dimensions didn't match historical accounts and the box was discovered high up in the pedestal.


Steve Helber/AP
Gov. Ralph Northam and lead conservator for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources

"I knew right from the beginning that something was amiss," Brumfield told ABC News after the other time capsule was opened. "And the more I thought about it, the more I studied my notes, and some of the historical records. I said this is a different time capsule."

Brumfield theorized that the first box found was hidden by people involved in the construction of the monument.

"I believe that those guys were left out of the original time capsule, and they decided that they wanted to commemorate themselves by putting this small lead box up 20 feet up, which is the halfway point in the construction."


Alex Wong/Getty Images, FILE
The statue of Robert E. Lee stands at Robert E. Lee Memorial on Monument Avenue 

Although the time capsule won't be opened Monday, the governor said, he specified that conservators are "studying it."

Chinese scholar applauded the upturn brought by the Taliban government after visit, warning risks remained for more investment

By Zhao Juecheng and Hu Yuwei

Published: Dec 27, 2021 03:05 AM

Female workers in a factory on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan

 Photo: Courtesy of Wang Duanyong

What is life like for the Afghan people after four months since the Taliban seized power of the country? A group of Chinese scholars and analysts concluded a field investigation and on-site inspection in Afghanistan in the end of November to learn more about how Afghanistan is facing a mounting humanitarian crisis and to further assess opportunities and risks for Chinese companies to invest.

Wang Duanyong, Associate Researcher of the School of International Relations and Public Affairs and Director of China Overseas Interests Research Center, carried out field research in Afghanistan for 29 days with his fellow visitors, covering major cities such as Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Bamiyan, as well as some border ports, industrial parks and mining areas. In a recent exclusive interview with the Global Times, Wang suggested that security in Afghanistan is better than what he expected but the fight against terrorism is still testing the comprehensive governance capacity of the Taliban government.

China's contribution of winter supplies and infrastructure construction in Afghanistan is widely expected, Wang noted, while warning about potential risks and calling for more careful evaluation.

"Security in Afghanistan is better than I thought. Many locals, even those who are against the Taliban, all agree that security in places like Kabul has improved more than a notch since the previous government," Wang said. "The streets of Kabul are filled with armored vehicles, guns and heavily armed soldiers, and I pass through more than a dozen check points every time when I make a trip. But for foreigners, this sense of security is very complicated, and so much display of force sometimes instead brings insecurity, he highlighted.



Taliban armed forces on the streets of Kabul Photo: Courtesy of Wang Duanyong
But even so, six terrorist attacks took place in Kabul during Wang's visit, proving that counter-terrorism is still challenging for Afghanistan's intelligence, counter-terrorism and governance capabilities.

"To solve the problem of terrorist attacks, the Taliban should strengthen their intelligence capacity and network in the short term and hasten cooperation with relevant international organizations and countries. But in the longer term, it is a matter of how to promote the overall development of the country," Wang said.

The Taliban authorities said on Sunday that women can only travel short distances without being accompanied by a close male relative, media reported.

But as Wang observed, local women seem to be more independent and less restricted than expected. "In some cities I visited, I found that the percentage of women wearing the burqa was not high. Even in Kandahar, many women wore abaya or chador instead of full-body burqas. I have also seen women working in some factories and although some of them are unmarried, they are not always escorted by men."

"Currently, Afghanistan is short of adult male labor force, considering the large number of men killed or disabled in past wars. It is possible that the Taliban's acquiescence for women to work out of home independently is partly out of objective economic pressure. The Taliban's attitude towards women and other social policies remain unpredictable and need further observation."

Several of the Taliban officials Wang met during his trip were from highly educated elites and overseas returnees. "Some of the current government personnel are not strictly Taliban. Some worked with the previous government, such as traffic police, airport police and other professionals," said Wang.

The Taliban's own bureaucracy is also undergoing adjustment and refreshment. "The rector of Kabul University, for example, left when the Taliban took over power and the replacement appointed by the Taliban was originally a mullah with only seminary education. As a result, 70 faculty members signed a letter of protest and resigned. But when we visited Kabul University, we met the latest appointed headmaster who earned his doctorate in another Islamic country and taught Islamic theology and law at a prestigious university for more than a decade. Given his level of knowledge and expertise and his past weak involvement in Afghanistan, he became an ideal choice for all sides. This can be seen as an example of how the Taliban adapt and compromise in new occasions," Wang mentioned.

With millions facing starvation and nearly the entire population teetering on the brink of poverty, Afghanistan is experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis, an official of the United Nations Development Program told CNBC.

Some 23 million people are in desperate need of food, the $20 billion economy could shrink by $4 billion or more and 97 percent of the 38 million population are at risk of sinking into poverty, Abdallah Al Dardari, resident representative for the UNDP in Afghanistan, told media.

According to Wang's observation during his visit to several cities, the crisis is not caused by the lack of food and other basic necessities but by the lack of purchasing power of the residents.

On one hand, after the Taliban entered Kabul, many former government officials had lost their jobs and had no income for about five months. The existing employees were also owed wages and lived without income.

On the other hand, partly because the US has frozen nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, the Taliban ordered all private and international banks to limit cash withdrawals to $20, media reported by the end of August, further inhibiting the ability to purchase, Wang told the Global Times.

"We also want to get a clear picture of the situation of the livelihood crisis in Afghanistan. We have asked several ministers for the exact number of supplies needed but none of them can give a clear picture. I do not doubt that there is a very serious food security problem in Afghanistan right now but no one has the specific numbers," Wang noted, adding that "conditions in rural Afghanistan could be worse than in the cities."

Wang and his fellow travelers also used their personal travel allowance to provide a modest help to 70 local families. With the support of businesses and enthusiasts in China, Wang and his group also collected dozens of tons of supplies in China and are trying to get them to Afghanistan.

Since the political situation of Afghanistan has changed, China announced a donation of 3 million doses of vaccines and other medical supplies. In order to help Afghanistan overcome the current difficulties, China is now accelerating the delivery of 200 million yuan ($31 million) worth of emergency assistance to Afghanistan, including food, winter supplies, vaccines and medicines, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The Global Times reported in November that Chinese firms explored lithium projects with on-site inspections in Afghanistan. However, despite growing interest , major hurdles and risks remain for Chinese firms to actually implement such projects, Wang warned, and called for more concrete risk analysis and practical plans.

Afghanistan is a landlocked country. For this reason, transnational trade is faced with problems and difficulties to transport its exports. Its shipping routes to China are not completely clear yet, Wang said.

"I've been talking to some mining experts about the exploitation of mineral deposits in Afghanistan. Some of them said Afghanistan's mineral wealth looks beautiful but its economic geography limits the value and actual benefits," Wang remarked.

Louisiana researchers ID 14 new shrew species on Sulawesi


In this image taken by doctoral student Heru Handika and provided by Louisiana State University, shows a field camp from which scientists and students worked to collect shrews in April 2018 on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. A decade of trips to a dozen mountain and two lowland areas on the island enabled the group to identify 14 newly recognized species of shrews in one genus on the island, tripling the previously known total. 

(Heru Handika/Louisiana State University via AP) Associated Press

Show photos

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY

Updated12/26/2021 

NEW ORLEANS -- Louisiana researchers have identified 14 new species of shrews on an Indonesian island where seven in that genus were previously known.

There were so many and some look so similar that after a while Louisiana State University biologist Jake Esselstyn and his colleagues began hunting for Latin words meaning 'ordinary.'

'Otherwise I don't know what we would have named them,' said Esselstyn, who also named the seventh known species of the pointy-nosed insect-eating mammals on the island of Sulawesi.

That's why shrews whose species names mean such things as 'hairy-tailed" and 'long" have been joined by 'Crocidura mediocris,' 'C. normalis,' 'C. ordinaria,' and 'C. solita' - the last of those meaning 'usual.'

The 101-page paper will be 'super valuable for all current and future students of mammal biodiversity,' said Nathan S. Upham, assistant research professor at Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences and lead creator of the American Society of Mammalogists' online Mammal Diversity Database.

He was not involved in the study, which was published Dec. 15 in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History and also involved researchers from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Museums Victoria in Australia, and the University of California.

It's been 90 years since this many new species were identified in one paper, Esselstyn said. The 1931 paper by George Henry Hamilton Tate identified 26 possible new species of South American marsupials, but 12 were later found not to be separate species for a total of 14 new ones, he said.

Esselstyn led a decade of trips to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi to collect the animals, which are relatives of hedgehogs and moles. All weighed less than a AA battery, ranging from about 3 grams - just over one-tenth of an ounce, or about the weight of a pingpong ball - to about 24 grams (0.85 ounces). The largest species had bodies averaging 95 millimeters, or about 3.7 inches long.

At the start, he was hoping to clarify how the six species then known in the genus Crocidura had developed. 'œI was interested in questions about how shrews interacted with their environment, with each other, how local communities were formed,' he said.

But he quickly realized that species had been sorely undercounted.

"It was overwhelming because for the first several years, we couldn't figure out how many species there were,' he said.

Five had been identified in 1921 and a sixth in 1995. Esselstyn's team identified the seventh species, the hairy-tailed shrew, in 2019.

For this paper, they examined 1,368 shrews, more than 90% of them collected by Esselstyn's group, which trapped the animals on a dozen mountain sites and two in the lowlands of Sulawesi.

The island is shaped rather like a lower-case letter k with the top of the stem bent sharply eastward.

That odd shape has contributed to species diversity, Esselstyn said. 'There are consistent boundaries between species ... whether you're looking at frogs or macaques or mice. It suggests some sort of shared environmental mechanisms.'

Researchers have found at least seven such zones - roughly, the island's central mass, the three 'legs' of the k, and three zones on the long bent neck.

Genetic analysis may indicate how long ago or recently similar species split apart and whether they've been in regular contact with each other since then, Esselstyn said.

'It's a difficult problem. But I think we can do it now that sequencing genomes is relatively low-cost,' he said. 'A few years ago we couldn't have done it but it's relatively feasible now.'

PERSONAL ESSAY

Best of 2021: I grew up in a Christian commune. Here's what I know about America's religious beliefs

Classifying American Christians into the imaginary phyla of cults and not-cults is a dangerous mistake

By SHAWNA KAY RODENBERG
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 26, 2021

 

Holy Bible (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/Krisanapong Detraphiphat)

This essay was originally published in Salon on June 26, 2021. We're revisiting Salon's Best Life Stories of 2021 now through the end of the year. Read more Best of 2021 here.

The only time I saw Brother Sam in person, he was marching like a soldier as he preached, with sweat running like tears from his temples and the Bible a heavy brick in his right hand.

It was 1978, I was five, and my family had traveled to Lubbock, Texas, for a Body Convention, which was what we called the semi-annual gatherings of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of members of The Body, or Body of Christ, an expansive network of charismatic communities created almost singlehandedly by Brother Sam.

My family lived on a Body Farm, a mostly off-grid outpost on the northern shore of Lake Superior, where I grew up singing, clapping, hollering and dancing in the Tabernacle aisles as shamelessly as King David. In our insular community, Holy Spirit-led practices like speaking in tongues, visions, prophecies, laying on hands and faith healing, altar calls, mass conversions, river baptisms and even demon deliverance were as commonplace as eating or sleeping or, for us children, playing with smooth stones in the frigid stream at the edge of the woods. Back then, if you had asked me if church scared me, I would have been confused by the question, and I would have said no. In retrospect, I was scared all the time.

RELATED: How extremist Christian theology is driving the right-wing assault on democracy

If this were a face-to-face conversation, you might stop me here, as many have. "So, you grew up in a cult," you might say, hoping to preface any further conversation with a caveat that my religious experience had to have been uniquely harrowing, an aberration of wholesome, mainstream American Christianity. After all, unlike The Body, most denominations and church networks don't ask parishioners to sell their possessions and tithe half, or even all of their savings. Most pastors don't nudge their congregations as Brother Sam did into the wilderness, and demand that they pare their lives down to the most ascetic essentials — plain clothes, plain food, no TV, no holidays, no toys. Perhaps most importantly, most people in 2021 don't believe in spiritual warfare reminiscent of the Dark Ages; they are not warned by their spiritual leaders that they are under assault by demons and the Devil at every turn. If you're a Christian, you'd probably want to put as much distance as possible between The Body and whatever church you belong to. If not, you'd need reassurance that my experiences with religion are extraordinary — the stuff memoirs are made of.

But, only a couple years ago, Franklin Graham, son of "America's Pastor," Billy Graham, declared any criticism of former president Donald Trump to be the work of demonic powers. The following year, one of the president's closest evangelical advisors, Paula White, publicly commanded "all satanic pregnancies to miscarry." Polling in recent decades indicates that around half of all Americans continue to believe that the Devil and demonic possession are very real, and though some recent numbers suggest that figure may be lower among Democrats, the percentage of Americans who believe in the Devil rose from 55 percent in 1990 to 70 percent in 2007 — as of 2018, even Catholic exorcisms appear to be on the rise. Around half of all Americans believe the Bible should influence U.S. laws, and 68 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe the Bible should take precedence over the will of the people. In other words, if you find yourself talking to an American Christian, chances are they have been reared in the fear of making a wrong move, of choosing the wrong side, and believe that doing so could have nightmarish results in this life and the next. Chances are that fear is so deeply ingrained that it no longer registers as fear. Fear is simply the lens through which they view the world.

I had a friend in college who liked to call me Jonestown after she heard my story. But she'd grown up in Kentucky like I did after my family left communal life, and the longer I knew her, the more I came to understand that the preachers of her childhood were virtually interchangeable with Brother Sam, that the only difference between her church and mine was devotion, the degree of commitment to doctrine. In my church, we were instructed to live out our beliefs one step at a time, then another, then another, but they were the same beliefs my friend had. Long after my family "left" The Body, whether we were holding home church, attending Body Conventions, or going to regular services in Pentecostal, Baptist and Methodist churches, I was 19 and in college before I encountered a single person who challenged the doctrine I was raised in, and I've since had similar experiences in urban Virginia, rural New Hampshire, and suburban Indiana where I now live. Classifying American Christians into the imaginary phyla of cults and not-cults, of dangerous, fringy, irregular churches and a safe, mainstream, religious majority is a terrible mistake and just as dangerous as extremism itself.

RELATED: The Christian nationalist assault on democracy goes stealth — but the pushback is working

In fact, religious extremism has been if not the then a national norm for the duration of my lifetime. In my experience, you only need press most Christians for a few minutes before you encounter many of the "strange and sinister" beliefs that are supposed to be a marker of cults. This is why unlearning religious extremism in America is so difficult, and often takes a lifetime — akin, I imagine, trying to be sober in a brewery. If more than three quarters of all American evangelicals believe we are living in the End Times described in the Bible, then it is not only probable but inevitable that some of those believers will take action and remove themselves and their families from the corrupt, materialistic, Babylonian world. Likewise, if the Bible was written by the finger of God, as I was taught, then questioning it — in fact, questioning anything about the church and church leaders, from the authenticity of teachings by men like Brother Sam to the sincerity of whichever right-leaning politicians are being praised in the pulpit, might render a believer vulnerable to unseen "powers and principalities" that circle above us like vultures, eager for our destruction.

Samuel Drew Fife III was an ordinary man who wielded extraordinary power over his followers. His parents were blue collar Floridians, and like many veterans of the Second World War, he returned home to them from battle emotionally and spiritually cored, nursing an existential void that must have made the task of assembling an ordinary life for himself feel impossibly daunting. Understandably, only something as grand and incomprehensible as God could have matched the breadth of that void, shoring up the shaken world in fervent black-and-white certainty. Such was the experience of millions in the wake of the wars of the 20th century — this is the rock upon which Latter Rain and subsequent Charismatic churches were built.

In 1957, in a Baptist seminary in New Orleans, Sam would learn how to weaponize his own fear and cast himself as a savior of souls in the spiritual battle he imagined raging around him, and demons were an important part of this education. In 1960, he submitted a graduate thesis to Tulane University that described his personal anointing with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the "rain" of the Later Rain, and detailed his successful deliverance, as he saw it, of Jane Miller, a mentally ill mother of six, from her demons. Many people with mental illness, after hearing tapes of Jane's deliverance sessions, would flock to Brother Sam for healing. I grew up listening to those and other similar tapes, and eventually, more than a decade after Brother Sam's death, when Jane Miller tried to deliver me from my own demons at a Body Convention in Chicago, it felt like he was present throughout the ordeal. After all, he had delivered Jane, and she was delivering me.

In 1971, just as my father was returning from Vietnam, Billy Graham delivered a message in Dallas, Texas, called "The Devil and Demons," and in the same year, Brother Sam began preaching the End Times that were already a staple of Billy's Crusades. Both men, and many, many other preachers like Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker, all technically outside the Body, and Buddy Cobb, John Henson, and Doug McClain, all inside The Body, saw the polluted, diseased, war-torn world as proof that a Great Tribulation was fast approaching. All taught the very biblical duality-laden concepts of demonology, of believer/nonbeliever, of us/them. And nearly all would fall from grace, charged with numerous crimes from fraud to solicitation to sexual misconduct to kidnapping, though believe me when I say that those falls never mean an end but a beginning, a new flush of pastors, rebranded, contemporized, fortified now by social media, and every bit as eager to wield fear as a weapon in the endless crusade for power.

Maybe I grew up with the Jane Tapes, but millions of Americans cut their teeth on similar messages from countless other pastors, mainstream or not. Not every extreme form of Christianity ends with cyanide Kool-Aid in Guyana. The rapid growth and clout of QAnon is another potential outcome, proof that a legion of pastors have spent decades nudging faithful Americans in the direction of paranoia, conspiracy theories and ultimately the dismantling of a government they insist is on the wrong side. If between 15 to 20 percent of Americans believe the government is controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that an apocalyptic storm will soon sweep away the evil elites and restore "rightful leaders" to power, America's pastors are why. The Body became The Move became the IMA, or International Ministerial Association: corporate, benign and dull as toast to the untrained eye, but still holding conventions in Lubbock and elsewhere, still raising up a generation, at this very moment, to believe what I believed for so long, to understand the world beyond the shelter of the church as hostile, malevolent and scary — a worldview I still wrestle with from time to time.

Even decades after my last Body Convention, when I began working as an ER nurse, every time I was assigned a patient with hallucinations of demons or The Devil, I had to exorcise myself of the belief in them. I often passed the hours of those shifts in a kind of extended adrenaline surge. I remember one patient in particular who had attacked her husband with a chainsaw and saw demons in the corners of the locked hospital room where I was caring for her. "There he is!" she kept whispering, pointing behind me, her eyes registering a presence there, her expression shifting dynamically from glare to terror and back to glare. I had to concentrate not to feel the presence, too, to slow my breathing and repeat to myself, "She's just sick, that's all. Just sick, like any other patient."

Read more of Salon's Best of 2021 Life Stories.

SHAWNA KAY RODENBERG  is the author of "Kin: A Memoir," out now from Bloomsbury. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and her reviews and essays have appeared in Consequence, Salon, the Village Voice, and Elle. In 2016, Shawna was awarded the Jean Ritchie Fellowship, the largest monetary award given to an Appalachian writer, and in 2017 she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. A registered nurse, community college English instructor, mother of five, and grandmother of two, she lives on a hobby goat farm in southern Indiana.

IT SHOULD INCLUDE THE RIGHTS OF MAN

How a universal constitution can save democracy across the globe

US President Joe Biden

 

Updated: 26 Dec 2021

Kaushik Basu

A strategy drawn from game theory involving a global guarantee of human rights may work against authoritarian regimes

US President Joe Biden’s recent Summit for Democracy (bit.ly/3ErvHt8) was an important global event, but it slipped by almost unnoticed. With democratic norms fraying from Southeast Asia to Central Europe, Biden was right to warn (bit.ly/3yWsBfH) of “the sustained and alarming challenges to democracy and universal human rights." But too few acknowledge that rising authoritarianism around the world, like climate change and the evolution of lethal viruses, can pose an existential risk to humanity.

Most people do not appreciate the extent to which civilizations depend on pillars of norms and conventions. Some of these have evolved organically over time, while others required deliberation and collective action. If one of the pillars buckles, a civilization could well collapse. Efforts to counter the current threats to democracy should start with the fact that every economy is embedded in culture and institutions. As Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson have argued, long-run growth may depend more on institutions than on anything else. But institutions are not always exogenous. As the growing field of cultural evolution shows, human beings are adaptive learners who rely, often unwittingly, on social learning (bit.ly/3EjsVpW) to entrench norms that are necessary for a society to flourish.

Likewise, Avinash Dixit and Simon Levin argue (bit.ly/3mvMCF0) that, in some contexts, we may need to take deliberate steps to instil pro-social preferences that can help us adapt to our changing world. We can do this through education, and by deliberating and deciding as citizens to promote certain kinds of collective behaviour. That is what happened when delegates from American states convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the existing Articles of Confederation and ended up drafting the US Constitution, which became the cornerstone of the new country’s long-term growth and prosperity.

We are in a similarly challenging situation today, as cross-border flows of goods, services and capital flatten the world economically. The rapid advance of digital technology, accelerated by the covid pandemic, is causing huge strains. Increased outsourcing of production has contributed to hyper-nationalism, which in turn is fuelling the rise of anti-democratic leaders who exploit people’s desperation. These changes have come so swiftly that deliberate collective action is needed to defend democracy. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for norms and institutions to evolve.

Fortunately, we are better equipped for this task today than ever before, because of a methodology that we lacked a century ago. Game theory, which began as an abstruse mathematical discipline, is now a staple of the social sciences, from economics to politics, in domains such as moral contracts and the negotiation of conventions and constitutions. To understand the power of such strategic analysis, consider why some authoritarian leaders, like former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, succumb to popular rebellion, while others, like Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, stay in power. When a vast majority of a country is ready to rebel, as seemed to be the case in Belarus in 2020, and the leader has limited capacity to suppress the uprising, how can he or she prevail?

To address this question, I developed an allegory I call the Incarceration Game. One million citizens of a country want to join a rebellion to overthrow a tyrannical leader, who can catch and jail at most 100 rebels. With such a low probability of being caught, each person is ready to take to the streets. The leader’s situation looks hopeless.

Suppose he announces that he will incarcerate the 100 oldest people who join the uprising. At first sight, it appears that this will not stop the rebellion, because the vast number of young people will have no reason to abandon it. But, if people’s ages are common knowledge, the outcome will be different. After the leader’s announcement, the 100 oldest people will not join the revolt, because the pain of certain incarceration is too great even for a good cause. Knowing this, the next 100 oldest people also will not take part in the revolution, and nor will the 100 oldest people after them. By induction, no one will. The streets will be empty.

Authoritarian rulers’ intentional or unwitting use of such an approach may help explain why earlier revolts crumbled on the verge of success.

To demonstrate this empirically in history or in recent cases, like that of Belarus or Myanmar, will require data that we do not have yet. The Incarceration Game is a purely logical conjecture. What it does, importantly, is to remind us that toppling a dictator requires a strategy to foil such a tactic. Good intentions alone are not sufficient; the upholding of democracy needs a strategy based on sound analysis.

So do we. Today, we can marshal this kind of strategic analysis to advance the honourable aims that motivated Biden’s Summit for Democracy. In some respects, the world is now at a similar stage as that of late-18th-century America. We need a minimal global constitution that provides a set of guarantees, like basic human rights and press freedom, and authorizes countries to intervene when a government violates them. This will have to rely on creating an edifice of self-enforcing beliefs.

Drafting such a universal constitution cannot be left to any particular country, however democratic and powerful it may be, because self-interest will invariably intrude. If the United States took on this task, then no matter what the initial intention, it would end up defending its own economic interests in the name of helping the world, as it has done many times already.

While Biden should be applauded for taking the lead on reinvigorating democracy, he should establish an autonomous group to draft a strategy and then create an autonomous multilateral authority to help achieve it. It would, of course, be naive to think this will be easy. But we have an existential reason to try. 

©2021/ project syndicate

Kaushik Basu is a former chief economist of the World Bank and chief economic adviser to the Government of India, and presently professor of economics at Cornell University

Harris: US won't be ‘role model’ of democracy if voting rights legislation isn’t passed

Rebecca Morin
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris said the United States may lose its standing as a role model for the world – and democracy itself would be put at risk – if voting rights legislation is not passed.

Harris, who has taken the lead on voting rights, said during a wide-ranging interview broadcast Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that people around the world are watching the United States “because we have held ourselves out to be a model of … the ability of a democracy to coexist with an economic strength and power.”

But Harris warned that if lawmakers don’t pass legislation to preserve voting rights, the United States’ standing could be in jeopardy.

“We have been a role model saying, 'You can see this and aspire to this and reject autocracies and autocratic leadership,'” Harris said. “Right now, we're about to take ourselves off the map as a role model if we let people destroy one of the most important pillars of a democracy, which is free and fair elections."

Harris recognized the issue isn't a top concern for many Americans but said it should be.

More:Biden accuses GOP of 'unrelenting assault' on voting. Can he deliver on voting rights legislation?

“Given the daily grind that people are facing, this may not feel like an immediate or urgent matter, when in fact it is,” the vice president said. “And the more we have the opportunity to talk about it, the more I think people will see, ‘Yeah, I don't want an America of the future for my kids to be in an America where we … are suppressing the right of the American people to vote.’”

In recent weeks, President Joe Biden and Democrats have put voting rights legislation at the top of the priority list as the Build Back Better Act, the president’s signature domestic policy bill, has stalled. Harris has also been under extreme pressure by voting rights activists to help pass legislation.

But the legislation faces tough odds in the Senate. Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have said they oppose changing Senate rules to get around a GOP filibuster for voting rights legislation that passed in the House. In addition, a separate voting rights bill that was written with Sinema and Manchin’s involvement does not have enough support from Republicans to avoid a filibuster.

In October: 'Use your soapbox': Activists urge Biden to step up voting rights push as latest bill fails in Senate

Freedom to Vote Act: Senate Democrats unveil new voting rights bill in latest effort to bring federal rules to elections

Biden has said that if it comes down to it, he would support a carve-out of the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. But Harris would not say whether she would support that, explaining only that “we are going to urge the United States Congress, and we have been, to examine the tools they have available to do what is necessary to fight for and retain the integrity of our voting system in America.”

Harris on Build Back Better, Joe Manchin

Harris touched on the Build Back Better Act, saying the administration is not giving up on getting the legislation passed.

But when asked about Manchin’s lack of support of the bill, Harris refused to blame him directly for the bill's delay: “I think the stakes are too high for this to be in any way about any specific individual.”

“We can't afford in this moment of time, where we have an opportunity to do something so substantial in terms of public policy in America, to literally help families,” Harris said. “I refuse to get caught up in what might be personal politics when the people who are waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning worried about how they're going to get by could care less about the politics of D.C. They just want us to fix things.”

'I want to get things done':Defiant Biden insists Build Back Better can pass despite Manchin opposition

As vice president, Harris has been tasked with several key issues. In addition to voting rights, Harris has taken the lead on addressing root causes of migration from Central America. Some Democrats and former colleagues of Harris have said she was given an “impossible portfolio,” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan noted.

Brennan then asked whether the vice president believes she’s being set up to fail.

“I don't believe I'm being set up to fail,” Harris responded.

“Because these are Democrats saying this,” Brennan interjected.

“More important, I’m the vice president of the United States, anything that I handle is because it's a tough issue,” Harris responded. “It couldn't be handled at some other level. And there are a lot of big, tough issues that need to be addressed. And it has actually been part of my lifelong career to deal with tough issues, and this is no different.”

Contributing: Maureen Groppe and Bart Jansen
Reach Rebecca Morin at Twitter @RebeccaMorin_

It Was bell hooks Who Taught Me How to ‘Talk Back’
Dec. 26, 2021

NYT

OPINION
GUEST ESSAY

Credit...Claire Merchlinsky/The New York Times; 

photograph by Karjean Levine/Getty Images

By Kovie Biakolo
Kovie Biakolo is a journalist who writes about culture and identity.

Growing up, parents, teachers or elders sometimes scolded me for speaking when not called on, for not instinctively accepting what they said about me or the world around me. In other words, for talking back. “Rude” is what they called it.

That didn’t deter me. I had the audacity to believe my voice not only mattered but was at least of equal value to those around me, if for no reason other than my own youthful enthusiasm. Still, I felt a certain guilt in talking back.

That contradiction ran deep. You must understand, I’m Nigerian — Urhobo. Although my family and I lived stints in countries between Africa and the West, I was still raised in an ostensibly Nigerian way: with a spoonful of “speak when spoken to” and a deference to authority.

When I encountered the work of the feminist, scholar and cultural critic bell hooks (née Gloria Jean Watkins), who died at 69 on Dec. 15, I was in graduate school and 22 years old. The first book of hers I read was the 1989 collection of essays, “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black.” It was only then that my habit of talking back to adults took on a new meaning for me. As a child, it felt like a personal act of necessary disobedience. As an adult, it became a politic worth abiding.

In the collection, a young Ms. hooks dissected and pushed back on existing conventions that insisted she speak only when spoken to. She situated her work primarily in her experience as a Black woman who belonged, in particular, to the American South and Kentucky, where she was born. Yet like many other Black women of a different generation, nation and experience from Ms. hooks, I found a home in her work.

She gave me language to understand the shame and triumphs of Black girlhood through describing her own childhood in which she was punished for talking back, or “speaking as an equal to an authority figure.” Children, and especially girls, were not supposed to have this audacity. The triumph, in part, was having it anyway.

She also considered it necessary to do. Ms. hooks noted that when girls became women, they would be allowed more room to speak, but that their words would be “audible but not acknowledged as significant.” Women could say the right, socially acceptable things in everyday conversation, but if their ideas called into question the structure of patriarchy, they would often be dismissed. That’s a reality that won’t change unless we reject it.

Indeed, the mere act of speech isn’t enough; we must also speak truth to power, sometimes even within our own communities. Ms. hooks understood what this looks like for Black girls and women who are often socialized under a “cult of privacy” — the belief that it breaks a certain code to openly discuss the things that take place within our homes and personal relationships. She made it clear that talking back in your own communities can be a radical act.

As a writer and cultural critic, I’ve found this to be true. For example, I’ve found that when I call out the ways that art, films and stories about Black cultures in Africa are filtered through the mostly white gaze of industry gatekeepers to people who look like me, we often agree. And yet when I direct such critiques at them for upholding that same white gaze, I am accused of being divisive.

Yet I know both realities can be true. In a society not designed to take our pains seriously — where it can be difficult for us to even see ourselves as the inflicters of pain — I’m learning and re-learning how to use my speech. Ms. hooks understood that voice and language are how marginalized people humanize themselves to themselves.

“Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side,” Ms. hooks wrote, “a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of ‘talking back,’ that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject — the liberated voice.”

She was tough yet compassionate, and ahead of her time in how she talked about feminism and representation, whether in the casts of Hollywood films or in the workplace. These discussions are incomplete if they don’t consider history, race, class and gender together. In the light of this truth, the guilt I attached to speaking out as a child fades away.

On the day Ms. hooks died, I returned to the first chapters of “Talking Back” after some years. I felt familiarity, a restoration of the rawness of reading her still revolutionary ideas.

Her passing is a sorrowful occasion for multiple generations of women whose voices took shape through her work. For us, Ms. hooks was a lighthouse, and talking back was how we found our way.

More on bell hooks

Opinion | Tressie McMillan Cottom
On bell hooks and the Solace of Ritual
Dec. 24, 2021

The Wide-Angle Vision, and Legacy, of bell hooks
Dec. 16, 2021

bell hooks, Pathbreaking Black Feminist, Dies at 69
Dec. 15, 2021

Kovie Biakolo (@koviebiakolo) is a journalist who writes about culture and identity and is the author of the forthcoming “Foremothers: 500 Years of Heroines From the African Diaspora.”

NASA, private space industry may reach new heights in 2022
By Paul Brinkman

SpaceX's deep-space, orbital Starship spacecraft is stacked atop its Super Heavy Booster in August at the company's South Texas facility as engineers prepare for more test firings. Photo courtesy of SpaceX | License Photo


Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Space exploration may shatter records in 2022 with the launch of the most powerful rocket ever in a flight beyond the moon, a space telescope that will peer into the dawn of the universe and groundbreaking science on Mars.

The New Year also may see SpaceX's deep space Starship rocket fly above the atmosphere, expansion of space tourism and new rocket launches from companies such as United Launch Alliance and Firefly Aerospace.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to dominate the global launch industry again with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy after launching a record 31 orbital missions in 2021. Most of those launches will carry the company's own Starlink broadband Internet communications satellites.

The year ahead also will see a continuation of NASA astronaut launches by SpaceX to the International Space Station and many new accomplishments, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in an interview.

Nelson said he also is certain Congress will provide sufficient funding for a return to the moon in the next few years.

"I'm confident because the American people do not want to land [again] second to China," Nelson said. "And neither does Joe Biden, and he reflects the will of the American people."

NASA plans to launch the massive SLS moon rocket in March or April for the Artemis I mission. It will pack a thrust of 8.8 million pounds --15% more than the Apollo-era Saturn V.

With that power, the rocket would send an uncrewed Orion capsule 280,000 miles from Earth, much farther than the previous record set by Apollo 13 at 249,000 miles in 1972.

NASA plans to collect data first from the rocket, and then for weeks from the capsule as it orbits the moon, flies 40,000 miles past and returns to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The space agency had planned to launch the SLS rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in February. But NASA postponed that target date in mid-December due to a problem with an engine flight controller, which is to be replaced.

NASA plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2024, but the agency has acknowledged that goal may be difficult to achieve because of a lack of congressional funding.

Looking for signs of life on Mars

NASA's rovers, Perseverance and Curiosity, along with the Ingenuity helicopter, will continue roaming Mars, looking for signs of ancient life.

Perseverance will continue drilling rock samples in the Red Planet's Jezero Crater, which NASA believes was an ancient lake that could have supported primitive life. Tiny Ingenuity will continue scouting for the rover after 18 successful flights.

No one knows how long the 4-pound helicopter will last on Mars. Ingenuity was designed for a 30-day test purely to demonstrate flight in the thin Martian air. But it has now flown 18 times over eight months. And NASA leadership fully supports funding the helicopter as long as it can fly, administrator Nelson said.

As the robotic explorers make progress, NASA and the European Space Agency plan to send another mission to Mars in 2028 to collect drilled rock samples and bring them to Earth.

SpaceX and Starship

NASA intends to send people to Mars and the moon, and the agency has chosen SpaceX's Starship to provide the first human lunar lander for such a mission when it happens.

Starship and its booster would tower over the SLS and the Saturn V as the largest rocket ever -- more than 390 feet high. The ship is designed to take people and cargo to the moon and Mars, and is considered a key to Musk's plan to launch thousands of Starlink communications satellites.

But Starship hasn't flown in space, and SpaceX hasn't set a date for another test flight. If and when the company sends Starship into space, it would fly around the globe, re-enter the atmosphere and splash down off the coast of Hawaii, according to plans filed with federal regulatory agencies.

But all these plans were shrouded in uncertainly after Musk warned company employees in an email the day after Thanksgiving that snags in Starship Raptor engine production threatened SpaceX's progress and viability

"What it comes down to is that we face a genuine risk of bankruptcy if we can't achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year," Musk said in the email, which was first obtained by the website Space Explored.

Nelson expressed confidence in SpaceX Starship development, but said he's pushing for extra congressional appropriations to fund a competitor, such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

The Amazon founder's company proposed a separate human lander in a three-way competition with SpaceX and Alabama-based Dynetics, but NASA said lack of funding forced it to choose only SpaceX.

"I work ... daily to try to get the additional funds to make the process competitive again," Nelson said. "I believe that you're going to see some exciting things coming out of SpaceX with regard to the Starship having its first flight test in orbit -- sometime early next year."

Many space industry observers have confidence in SpaceX, but aren't sure if the Starship design can be successful, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.

"If they can fly the upper stage in orbit, and bring it back down successfully, they will change the space industry forever," McDowell said. "The tests they've done so far are amazing, but it's not clear to me when or if they will ever accomplish orbital flight."

James Webb Space Telescope

Another major space project that took longer than anticipated to build is due to reveal new secrets of the universe in 2022.

The most powerful observatory ever built, the James Webb Space Telescope, is fully booked to peer at other planets and the origins of the universe for a year after its planned launch from the European Space Agency's spaceport in South America on Christmas morning.

The telescope will travel 1 million miles from Earth and orbit the sun.

The astronomy community will be waiting anxiously for the telescope's deployment, which could take up to a month, McDowell said.

"I've been watching my friends on Twitter panic about this launch. ... Everyone is nervous as hell," he said.

The Webb telescope will look billions of light years into the universe's history, according to NASA. Its powerful infrared instruments are designed to see more clearly and a few hundred million light years farther than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists have scheduled about 400 studies that could reveal secrets about the oldest galaxies, inhabitable planets and even the dawn of the universe, according to NASA and astronomers involved in the project.

Preparing for something going wrong, engineers designed the Webb telescope with 50 deployment mechanisms and 178 releases or latches. They've even practiced shaking and spinning the observatory to jostle anything that doesn't unfurl property, such as its tennis court-sized sunshield.

"It's a crazy overcomplicated machine," McDowell said. "There are so many things that can go wrong, and it would be astonishing if we don't have at least one or two heart-stopping moments."

The sunshield will keep solar energy from interfering with the cold infrared instruments on the other side, which will be chilled to about -394 degrees F.

By comparison, the coldest temperature recorded on Earth was in Antarctica at -128.6 F.

ULA Vulcan rocket coming along

Another big rocket that was to have been launched by now -- United Launch Alliance's Vulcan -- should see its maiden voyage in late 2022, company CEO Tory Bruno said in an interview.

"The rocket for the first launch is in the final stages of production and testing in our Decatur factory, and operations have been completed at [Cape Canaveral Space Force Station] Launch Complex 41 to test receiving, assembling and transporting a Vulcan to the launch pad," Bruno said.

ULA has been the primary launch provider for U.S. national security missions with the Atlas V rocket, which the company intends to retire. The new rocket relies on BE-4 engines manufactured by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space company, but they haven't been delivered to ULA yet, Bruno said.

He said the engines have performed better than expected in testing.

"The first flight engines are being manufactured. We look forward to receiving them in early 2022 to support the inaugural launch later in the year," Bruno said.

ULA also intends to launch Boeing's Starliner capsule on an Atlas V rocket for the spacecraft's second and delayed uncrewed test flight bound for the International Space Station, he said.

If that flight is successful, Starliner could carry astronauts by the end of the year on regular missions launched by ULA.