Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Kosovo inaugurates 'Wall of Honor' statue for 23 Albanians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust
SYLEJMAN KLLOKOQI and LLAZAR SEMINI
Wed, August 23, 2023 at 5:43 AM MDT·3 min read

A view of a statue honoring 23 Kosovo Albanians who rescued Jews from the Holocaust during World War II, after an inauguration, in the capital, Pristina, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. The “Wall of Honor” statue was placed in a park in Pristina in the presence of some of the rescuers' descendants, political leaders, and the U.S. and German ambassadors. 

(AP Photo/Sylejman Kllokoqi)

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — A statue bearing the names of 23 Kosovo Albanians who rescued Jews from the Holocaust during World War II was inaugurated Wednesday in the capital, Pristina.

The “Wall of Honor” statue was placed in a park in Pristina in the presence of some of the rescuers' descendants, political leaders, and the U.S. and German ambassadors.

Some 500 Jews lived in Kosovo, then part of former Yugoslavia, at the beginning of the war. Many were arrested, deported to nearby prisons or Nazi-managed camps and almost half of them died.

Local Albanians helped scores of Jews to escape, usually taking them to neighboring Albania.

Leke Rezniqi's great-grandfather Arslan rescued Jewish physician Chaim Abrabanel, who was working in Skopje, now in North Macedonia. Arslan Rezniqi sheltered him and worked with another Albanian, Arif Alickaj, to prepare false documents and take Abrabanel safely to Albania.

“That shows only the example of the uniqueness of Albanian rescue,” Leke Rezniqi told The Associated Press. “He promised with the highest level of promise, the concept of the besa ('trust' in Albanian), that means that you never betray that promise, even though you would have to sacrifice your own family.”

In 2008 Arslan Rezniqi was the first Kosovar to be included in the “Righteous Among the Nations” list from Yad Vashem for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust.

Since 2021, Leke Rezniqi has lived in Haifa, Israel. Abrabanel's niece Rachel-Shelly Levy-Drummer helped him to emigrate and gain Israeli citizenship.

Nowadays, 56 Jews live in the western Kosovar town of Prizren.

The statue showed that “the remembrance of those who risked their lives to save their fellow human beings is a tradition that commemorates a rare, bright light in one of the darkest periods of human history,” according to Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti.

Avner Shalev, former head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, considered Albanians as “a unique case in the history of the Second World War.”

In every other European state, the Jews were fewer in number after the war or totally wiped out, he said. The only exception was "in the territories that Albanians used to live: there were more Jews after the war then in the beginning of the war,” he said, adding that should be told to generations.

Kosovo and Israel decided to establish diplomatic ties at a Kosovo-Serbia summit held at the White House in September 2020 by then-U.S. President Donald Trump.

Kosovo was the first European country, and the first country with a Muslim majority, to establish its embassy in Jerusalem, following the U.S. and Guatemala. An opening ceremony was held in March 2021.

Israel is the most recent country to have recognized Kosovo after Pristina's Parliament declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nine years after NATO conducted a 78-day airstrike campaign against Serbia to stop a bloody crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Most Western nations have recognized Kosovo’s independence, but Serbia and its allies Russia and China have not.


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Llazar Semini reported from Tirana, Albania.

Belarus outlaws prominent rights group Viasna, declaring it extremist

YURAS KARMANAU
Wed, August 23, 2023

Ales Bialiatski, the head of Belarusian Viasna rights group, stands in a defendants' cage during a court session in Minsk, Belarus, on Nov. 2, 2011. Belarusian authorities Wednesday Aug. 23, 2023 declared the country's oldest and most prominent human rights group an extremist organization. The move against Viasna, founded by imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatksi, comes amid a yearslong crackdown on dissent in Belarus and exposes anyone involved in its activities to criminal prosecution. 
(AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File) (


TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian authorities Wednesday declared the country's oldest and most prominent human rights group an extremist organization.

The move against Viasna, founded by imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, comes amid a yearslong crackdown on dissent in Belarus and exposes anyone involved in its activities to criminal prosecution.

Belarus was swept by massive protests, some of which drew more than 100,000 people, after the August 2020 presidential vote handed a sixth term to the country's authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. The election was rejected as fraudulent by the opposition and the West.

Authorities responded with a brutal crackdown. More than 35,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten by police while in custody, and hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and independent media outlets were shut down and outlawed as extremist.

The move against Viasna significantly ramped up the pressure on dissenters in Belarus. Viasna has branches in the majority of the country’s large cities, and hundreds of volunteers and activists all over the country who monitor human rights abuses in Belarus on a daily basis.

The authorities say that anyone who has anything to do with the group and continues to be involved with it will face criminal charges, such as “contributing to an extremist organization." The offense is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Belarus' Interior Ministry on Wednesday accused Viasna of “preparing attacks on the sovereignty and public security of Belarus, (and) discrediting and insulting officials.” Some 30 of its branches and information outlets linked to it were also added to the list of extremist organizations.

Bialiatski founded Viasna in 1996. The renowned human rights advocate was arrested after the 2020 protests and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 while serving a 10-year prison sentence. Five other top Viasna advocates are also behind bars.

According to Viasna, a total of 1,489 political prisoners are incarcerated in Belarus, and the authorities deliberately create unbearable living conditions for many of them.


Pakistani children rescued from a broken cable car say they repeatedly feared they would die

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Schoolchildren who were rescued from a broken cable car dangling high above a valley in Pakistan said Wednesday they repeatedly feared they were about to die during the 16-hour ordeal despite attempts by their parents to reassure them over cellphones.

Several of the children, who had been on their way to school Tuesday when one of the car's cables snapped, also appealed for a school and bridge to be built in their village so they wouldn't have to ride the cable car in the future.

Six children and two adults were pulled from the cable car in a daring rescue Tuesday. One of the youngest was grabbed by a commando attached to a helicopter by rope, while others were lowered to the ground with the help of volunteers using a makeshift chairlift constructed by villagers from a wooden bed frame and ropes. Volunteer Mohammad Sohaib emerged as a hero after helping to rescue three of the children, one by one.

“I had heard stories about miracles, but I saw a miraculous rescue happening with my own eyes,” said 15-year-old Osama Sharif, one of those rescued.

Osama was headed to school on Tuesday to receive the results of his final exam when one of the cables snapped.

“We suddenly felt a jolt, and it all happened so suddenly that we thought all of us are going to die,” he said in a telephone interview.

Some of those aboard had cellphones and started making calls. Worried parents tried to reassure the children.

“They were telling us don’t worry, help is coming,” he said. After several hours, the passengers saw helicopters flying in the air.

Locally made cable cars are a widely used form of transportation in the mountainous Battagram district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Gliding across steep valleys, they cut down travel time to schools, workplaces and businesses. But they often are poorly maintained, and every year people die or are injured while using them.

On Wednesday, police arrested Gul Zarin, the owner of the cable car, on charges of ignoring safety measures. Local authorities in the northwestern mountainous regions said they would close all cable cars believed to be unsafe.

Thousands of people turned out to watch the risky operation on Tuesday. At one stage, a rope lowered from a helicopter swayed wildly as a child, secured by a harness, was pulled up.

In fact, the choppers added an element of danger. The air currents churned up by the whirling blades risked weakening the only cable preventing the cable car from crashing to the bottom of the river canyon.

“We cried, and tears were in our eyes, as we feared the cable car will go down,” Osama said.

After sunset, with the helicopters no longer able to fly, rescuers shifted tactics. They used a makeshift chairlift to approach the cable car using the one cable that was still intact, local police chief Nazir Ahmed said.

Shouts of “God is great” erupted as the chairlift was lowered to the ground in the final stage of the operation just before midnight.

Ahmed said the children received oxygen as a precaution before being handed over to their parents, many of whom burst into tears of joy.

Two other survivors, Rizwan Ullah, an 11-year-old boy and Gul Faraz, 25, told The Associated Press that they would not forget the ordeal for years.

Gul said he feared while waiting for rescue that the cable car would crash to the ground and “we would die soon.” He appealed to the government to build a school in the area and link their village to nearby towns with a bridge and a road “so our elders and young people don’t face such things.”

Rizwan said he doesn't want to use the cable car again, but that would only be possible if a school is built nearby.

Ata Ullah, another rescued student, said he would try to be brave the next time he has to ride one.

“I feel fear in my mind about using the cable car, but I have no other option. I will go to my school again when the cable car is repaired,” he said.

















Japanese astronomers are waiting for a reply from aliens to a space message sent 40 years ago

Michelle De Pacina
Wed, August 23, 2023



[Source]

Japanese astronomers are eagerly awaiting a reply from aliens after sending a message into space 40 years ago.

The 40-year-old message: On Aug. 15, 1983, astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi at Stanford University sent a message into space as part of a project celebrating the 15th anniversary of the weekly comic anthology Shonen Jump.

The message, which contained 13 drawings depicting the history of life on Earth and the structure of our DNA, was transcribed into radio waves and transmitted toward a star called Altair with the intention of receiving a reply. Altair is the 12th brightest star in the night sky and is situated 16.7 light years away from Earth.

About the astronomers: Morimoto, who died in 2010 at the age of 78, was a Japanese pioneer in the field known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He worked at the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory of the University of Tokyo and was described as “an inspiration for the younger generations entering the newly born radio astronomy community in Japan” by the International Astronomical Union.

Hirabayashi, 80, is currently an emeritus professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. He has published several books on the possibilities of intelligent life in the universe.

Waiting for a reply: Professor Shinya Narusawa at the University of Hyogo, who is leading a team to search for unusual radio signals, started listening for a reply on Tuesday as the lunar calendar date coincides with Japan’s Tanabata star festival.

Narusawa deployed an antenna 64 meters (approximately 210 feet) in diameter in Saku, Nagano prefecture, to observe radio signals in response to the 40-year-old message: “Hello, is anybody there?”

Scientists are reportedly prepared to wait longer as no answers were found on Tuesday.

“A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s,” Narusawa told The Asahi Shimbun. “Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life.”

Last month, former Air Force officer and intelligence official David Grusch testified to Congress that the U.S. government has captured UFOs and is withholding the information from the public.

 

Joe Biden Unveils Aggressive Plans For Mandatory Artificial Intelligence Regulations

32Aditi Ganguly
Wed, August 23, 2023 

The U.S. is lagging when it comes to regulating artificial intelligence (AI).

Several industry leaders rallied for the need to regulate the technology after the viral success of the generative AI platform ChatGPT. Some speculated this was due to their incredible lead in the AI space. Other worries also persist that AI could lead to job displacement and that unscrupulous actors might unlawfully exploit the intellectual property of businesses, artists and others. These concerns resulted in a series of legal actions.

Europe passed the AI Act in June. It is deemed to be the "world's first comprehensive AI law" and one of the toughest regulatory guidelines for space. Shortly after releasing the guidelines for the AI Act, more than 150 executives signed an open letter to the European Commission to address the aggressive policies.

"In our assessment, the draft legislation would jeopardize Europe's competitiveness and technological sovereignty without effectively tackling the challenges we are and will be facing," the letter stated.

White House Joins The Game

The White House has been urging companies to pledge to develop AI in a responsible manner amid widespread concerns regarding the potential for the technology to amplify misinformation and cybercrime, presenting a national security threat.

Key figures in artificial intelligence, including Microsoft Corp.Alphabet Inc.'s Google and OpenAI, were scheduled to convene at the White House in mid-July. Pioneered by the federal government, industry leaders pledged to incorporate protective measures into their advancements in a technology that has garnered substantial attention on Wall Street and caused concern among numerous global leaders.

Billionaire polymath Elon Musk was a co-founder of ChatGPT maker OpenAI but later parted ways with the company. Has been a long-standing advocate of AI regulations, stating that a "Terminator-like" outcome awaits if development continues unchecked. He hosted a Twitter Spaces event last month, alongside two notable members of the U.S. House of Representatives, with a primary focus on artificial intelligence. Despite this, AI continues to advance and thrive. Startups like AvaWatz have already raised millions from retail investors for cooperative AI drone teams that work together, and companies like Microsoft continue to invest billions into the space.

"I've known Elon for years," U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said. "We will be examining the potential benefits and downsides of AI."

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) touted Musk's knowledge base in the field before the event, stating that he is "the foremost figure aligned with the AI cautious approach, representing those who harbor concerns about the existential threats and advocate for a temporary halt."

During a White House gathering, Biden tackled mounting apprehensions surrounding the possible exploitation of artificial intelligence for disruptive intentions. He emphasized the need for a discerning and watchful stance toward the risks posed by emerging technologies to the integrity of U.S. democracy.

Regulating AI: Next Steps And Challenges

"We'll see more technology change in the next 10 years, or even in the next few years, than we've seen in the last 50 years. That has been an astounding revelation to me, quite frankly," President Joe Biden said about the robust adoption of artificial intelligence.

As part of the White House's ongoing efforts to regulate AI, Biden convened a meeting with executives from the seven companies at the White House on July 21. Notable attendees included pioneers such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Inflection AI Inc. and Anthropic.

As a component of this initiative, the companies pledged to establish a mechanism to "watermark" various types of content, encompassing text, images, audio and AI-generated videos. The embedded watermark, implemented through technical means, is anticipated to facilitate the identification of content manipulated by AI. Its purpose is to assist users in detecting instances of deep-fake visuals or audio, which might falsely depict violence, enhance fraudulent schemes or manipulate images of politicians to portray them negatively.

The companies also made a commitment to prioritize safeguarding users' privacy during the advancement of AI. They expressed their dedication to creating AI-driven solutions.



A sex educator in Michigan refused to be shamed. Then came the backlash.

HOLLAND, Mich. - Heather Alberda watched as her elected representatives on the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners sought to dismantle what remained of her life's work.

As the sex educator for the county's health department, Alberda, 46, developed programs to lower teen pregnancy and curb the spread of sexually transmitted infections. She spoke about sex and sexuality with a directness that was rare in her conservative county and sometimes got her into trouble.

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A late June meeting of the county board was streaming on Alberda's living room TV. The board's vice chair, Sylvia Rhodea, was introducing a resolution that sought to "protect childhood innocence" by blocking the county from spending money on programs that "normalize or encourage the sexualization of children."

Rhodea, one of eight self-described conservative Christians elected last November to the 11-person board, began by describing what she saw as the threat posed by LGBTQ+ groups and the Pride flag. In much of America, the rainbow banner represented the acceptance of gay, lesbian and transgender people.

To Rhodea, it meant something very different. It was, she announced, "time to define the plus" in the LGBTQ+ movement. "Over 50 different flags are flown under the LGBTQ+ flag," Rhodea said. Their ranks, she continued, included pedophiles, polygamists and furries, which she described as "those who dress as furry animals and may use litter boxes."

Alberda stared at her television, where Rhodea had begun talking about the health department's role in pushing "radical" ideas, rooted in "pedophile-based studies," on the county's parents and children.

"It's pretty much my entire job she's complaining about," Alberda said. "It's so hateful how they do things."

Alberda had already endured months of scorn from the new commissioners, who had publicly accused her of promoting abortion and sexualizing children. What she'd been doing was her job, which required her to talk about birth control, sexually transmitted infections, abstinence and consent. She met with high school students, migrant farmworkers, teens in juvenile detention and people struggling with addiction.

In her 21 years at the health department, the county's teen pregnancy rate had decreased by 76 percent and is the fourth-lowest among Michigan's 83 counties. The abortion rate for Ottawa County during the same period fell by 18 percent, according to state data.

The county's successes, though, were colliding with the fears of many Christian conservatives that they were losing the culture wars; that their faith and families were under siege. The new board members and their backers saw Pride flags - which had become a common sight in stores along Ottawa's Lake Michigan shore - as markers of a society that they believed celebrated sex, promiscuity and perversion.

Nationally, this anger and anxiety had become a driving force in GOP politics. It fueled the rise of figures like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who championed laws that constrained what teachers could say in the classroom about sex and sexuality. And it fed QAnon movement conspiracy theories of a burgeoning child trafficking epidemic, secretly supported by the nation's elite.

In Ottawa County, a fast-growing community of 300,000, the GOP's focus on religion, sex and morality was increasingly consuming the essential and often unremarkable work of county government.

Few felt the sting of this shift as acutely as Alberda. Her bosses had tried to protect her by scaling back her sex education work, but the change just felt like punishment. Her job, which she had described as her "passion," was quickly becoming a source of mental anguish.

"I have to go into the community, and people think I am a pedophile," Alberda said. "They don't think I stole a car or embezzled money. They think I'm a sexual predator."

In the county board meeting room, Rhodea had finished introducing her "childhood innocence" resolution. Doug Zylstra, the board's lone Democrat, was pushing her and the measure's other backers to provide examples of taxpayer-funded activities that sexualized children. County employees, he said, deserved to know specifically what was being prohibited.

Alberda's husband, Ryan, was watching the proceedings from the kitchen, where a buck's head was mounted by the cupboard. He'd just returned from coaching the high school's trap shooting team.

"They aren't going to answer!" he called out in frustration.

To Alberda, the resolution's language seemed purposely vague; its goal, she believed, was to stop the health department from providing services to LGBTQ+ residents and give the county an excuse to fire her.

"They are setting people like me up for failure," she said.

Her thoughts turned to a few of the new commissioners who had run for office vowing to fix a county government that they believed too often acted in ways that were hostile to their Christian faith. Lately, they had begun to express unease with the board's direction.

"Do you think [they're] going to vote for this crap?" Alberda asked her husband and a friend from the health department who was watching the proceedings with her.

They shrugged. The county clerk began calling the roll. Soon Alberda would get her answer.

On the table next to the television sat a picture of Alberda's three children, taken at a park about a mile from their house. She had given birth to Tyler, her eldest son, a few months after finishing high school when she was 17.

"No one knew I was pregnant until after I had graduated," she said. "My parents didn't want me to tell anybody." Because she had sex out of wedlock, the elders at the church where her family worshiped told Alberda that she had to take part in a profession of faith ceremony before her son could be baptized. And so, one Sunday in 1994, about two weeks after Tyler was born, she stood in front of the congregation. The pews were packed. A relative videotaped it.

"I do not want to make light of the fact of sin in your past life . . ." the pastor began.

At the time, the pastor's words and the ceremony, which wasn't required of others seeking to baptize their children, didn't stand out. But years later, after she'd graduated from college, found a job at the health department, and became certified as a sexuality educator, Alberda re-watched the tape. By this point, she'd met and married her husband; they were raising three children.

The pastor's words, she said, sent a message that there was a hierarchy of sin, and that sexual sins, like hers, were "the most heinous." That sense of shame permeated the county, where Alberda and her husband had spent their lives. It led parents and pastors to cede conversations about sex to popular culture and the increasingly ubiquitous porn industry, both of which "sexualized everything," Alberda said. The unwillingness to talk about sex contributed to teen pregnancy and untreated sexually transmitted disease, she believed.

Alberda understood the unease because she had felt it, too. She had started with the health department after college teaching prenatal classes to teen moms. When that program ended, her bosses asked her to give talks on birth control and bloodborne diseases.

"I never even said the word 'vagina' in my house probably, let alone in public in front of a bunch of strangers," she said. But she found that most of the groups she spoke with were eager to talk and desperate for reassurance that their desires and problems were normal. What started as a job became a calling. Alberda trained through the University of Michigan's Sexual Health Certificate Program, where she sometimes lectured.

Public school teachers invited her to speak with their students. She developed sex-ed programs for women in drug rehabilitation and inmates in the county jail. She spoke to uterine and cervical cancer survivors who were seeking alternatives to vaginal sex.

Often, Alberda had groups write anonymous questions for her on scraps of paper, which she kept in a drawer in her desk. They asked her about pain during intercourse, penis size and consent. "If a guy presses me into sex and I say no five or six times and he starts touching me is that molestation?" read one question from a high school student. Alberda talked with the students about sexual consent and the importance of reporting abuse.

Gradually, she expanded the health department's reach. She knew that young women in juvenile detention were at high risk for becoming pregnant in their teens. So she arranged for them to visit the health department and, with their parents' permission, get birth control implants. She brought regular testing for sexually transmitted diseases to migrant farmworker camps, homeless shelters and Grand Valley State University.

In 2014, she started a program to distribute free packages of condoms and lube to liquor stores, bars, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors throughout the county. Sometimes her work provoked resistance. She put a container of condoms in the courthouse office where people who had recently been released from prison met with their probation officers. Alberda reasoned that the former inmates were more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior. The courthouse's chief judge thought the condoms would encourage people to have more sex and demanded their removal.

Alberda's condom program, which she called Wear One, became a model, expanding to more than 50 Michigan counties. Even as teen pregnancy and abortion rates have fallen, the county hasn't been able to reduce infection rates from sexually transmitted disease, which have risen statewide. Alberda often reminded her bosses that changing sexual behavior took time, persistence and a willingness to set aside the shame that inhibited frank conversations about sex.

She didn't realize that other forces were reshaping the way people in the county talked about sexual health and sin. The biggest driver was Ottawa Impact, a political group that formed in 2021 and pledged to field county board candidates who would govern according to conservative Christian principles. The group's leaders drew inspiration from Matthew Trewhella, a Wisconsin-based pastor who preaches a version of Christianity that focuses on using politics and the law to purify the community of evildoers and sin. Trewhella and the leaders of Ottawa Impact didn't respond to requests for comment.

In 2013, Trewhella self-published a book called "The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates," which argues that low-level elected officials - "lesser magistrates" - have a sacred duty to oppose higher authorities who attempt to enforce immoral or anti-Christian laws.

Trewhella drew inspiration for the book, which he said has sold more than 80,000 copies, from 1500s-era treatises written by Protestant leaders resisting the tyranny of the Catholic Church. His roots, though, were in the 1990s antiabortion movement. In 1993, he signed a letter describing the murder of doctors who provided abortions as "justifiable," and he often boasted of the 15 months he spent in jail for blocking the doors to abortion clinics.

More recently, some anti-maskers and election deniers have embraced Trewhella's views. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former president Donald Trump's national security adviser and an influential proponent of disproven election fraud theories, has praised Trewhella's book as a "masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist tyranny." State and local officials in Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, Montana, Illinois and Michigan have touted his ideas, said Anna Rosensweig, a University of Rochester professor who has tracked Trewhella's influence.

Most of the voters who supported Ottawa Impact's candidates were not familiar with Trewhella. They were angry at their old commissioners for complying with federal and state pandemic masking and vaccine policies, which they viewed as an unconstitutional and tyrannical overreach. Some feared that new anti-discrimination laws would force the county to support policies that promote homosexuality or abortion.

Many of the group's most ardent supporters were convinced that the nation was in the midst of a moral crisis so deep that it had precipitated a massive surge in child sex trafficking that had reached west Michigan. At county board meetings, they insisted that the media was conspiring with the state and federal government to hide the heinous problem. One of the area's biggest churches was building a shelter for trafficking victims. (The county's prosecuting attorney, Lee Fisher, said in an interview that he hasn't seen an increase in sex trafficking cases in the area.)

Trewhella's theories provided Ottawa Impact's leaders with a template for resisting the forces that they believed were corrupting their community.

The group's leaders and local Republicans invited the Wisconsin pastor to Ottawa in 2022 and again earlier this year. In his appearances, Trewhella told them that good legislation, grounded in the word of God, could lead men to Jesus. And he preached that resistance to "wicked tyrants" and "anti-Christian" laws, such as those protecting abortion or "homo sex," could "abate the just judgment of God" on their community.

Alberda had never heard of Ottawa Impact when the group released a report in May 2022 accusing her and the health department of using county resources to promote abortion and sexualize children.

She was accustomed to the occasional angry parent stopping her in a parking lot and haranguing her for promoting sin. But this was different. The report ran 59 pages and included photos of Alberda and emails she had sent to local school officials offering to help them develop their sex education curriculums.

Her supervisors' initial reaction was to take down a link she had posted on the health department's sexual health page to a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that offered birth control advice. The site had recently added an "abortion finder" tool to help women navigate rapidly changing state laws. Alberda said she hadn't noticed the addition. Everyone assumed the controversy would quickly pass.

Two weeks later, Libs of TikTok, a social media account that has attracted more than 2.3 million followers and become an agenda setter in right-wing politics, shared screenshots of a pamphlet Alberda had created for parents seeking to better understand their children's sexual development.

The 30-page guide advised parents on how to talk with children about sexuality, menstruation and body image. It noted that 47 percent of Ottawa County 12th-graders said in a survey they had been involved in "sexting." And it urged parents to talk with their teens about the ways sexually explicit photos could be misused online.

Libs of TikTok zeroed in on one page of the guide, which advised parents that it was normal for children under age 5 to play with themselves and experience "genital pleasure." The right-wing account twisted Alberda's words and warned that she was advising parents to teach toddlers "about masturbation."

The information in the guide came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Planned Parenthood and the American Academy of Pediatrics. None of that mattered. Soon, dozens of people on social media were calling for her to be fired and accusing her of being a pedophile and a groomer.

In the run-up to the 2022 Republican primary, the Right to Life of Michigan PAC pulled its endorsements of the GOP incumbents on the county commission - some of whom had donated to the organization for decades - and backed Ottawa Impact's slate of more hard-line challengers.

In the November general election, Ottawa Impact-endorsed candidates won eight of the board's 11 seats. Shortly after they took office in January, the head of the county health department appeared before them. Alberda, who had never been actively engaged in county or national politics, took off work so that she could attend the meeting in person.

On the dais, Jacob Bonnema, one of the new Ottawa Impact commissioners, was asking the county's public health officer if she knew the name of the employee who had posted the links to "vulgar," "activist," "pro-abortion" sites on the department's webpage. The health department officer dodged the question.

"The person who did that needs to be found out," a second commissioner insisted.

Alberda glared at Bonnema. He wasn't the person who sent her parent guide to Libs of TikTok. But he had circulated the account's tweet, and he had identified her on social media as one of the people responsible for the department's "vile approach to over sexualizing our children."

Bonnema knew her name and what she did for the county. His questions, Alberda believed, were designed to single her out for more public scorn.

"What are you going to do?" she recalled thinking. "Hang me in the public square?"

Alberda wasn't the only one feeling pressure from the county board. In April, Bonnema and the new board members toured the Children's Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group that works with law enforcement to prosecute sex offenders and counsel their victims.

They listened as Darcy Fluharty, the center's executive director, explained its mission. Each year, law enforcement officials referred about 250 to 300 children who said they had been sexually abused to the center so that they could be questioned by specially trained professionals in a less intimidating setting.

Fluharty talked about the therapists who worked with the victims and their families. She showed the commissioners interview rooms, which included comfy chairs, toys and two-way mirrors that allowed detectives and prosecutors to follow along and suggest questions. And she explained how the center worked with the schools on prevention programs that aimed to help students and teachers recognize grooming and report abuse.

Then she offered to answer the commissioners' questions.

Bonnema recalled suggesting that they discuss "the elephant in the room." At first, Fluharty wasn't sure what he meant. Then Bonnema began talking about the 3-by-5-inch LGBTQ+ Pride sticker on the center's front door. Several of the commissioners had spotted it along with other Pride flags in staff members' offices. The commissioners saw the Pride sticker as an "activist symbol," something that had no place in a facility that aimed to serve the entire community. "Their agenda was very clear," Fluharty recalled. "Take that Pride sticker off the front door."

Fluharty told the commissioners that parents and their children turned to the center at one of the darkest moments in their lives. "If in some small way we can make it a little less horrible, it's worth it," she believed. The sticker sent a message to marginalized, sexually abused children that they were safe and would be accepted, Fluharty explained.

The discussion continued for 45 minutes, according to Fluharty and several of the commissioners at the meeting. One of the commissioners said that she knew someone who had turned to the center for help but decided not to return after seeing the Pride sticker. The person was worried that the center's counselors might encourage children to identify as gay or transgender. Another commissioner, Fluharty said, asked her if she would put a swastika on the door to let neo-Nazis know that they should also feel welcome. To Fluharty, the notion that a Pride sticker and a swastika were in any way similar was ridiculous and offensive.

The county provided about $120,000 a year to the center and had promised it an additional $274,000 in federal covid relief funds to bolster its $1.7 million annual budget. After the commissioners left, Fluharty warned her board of directors that the Pride symbol could put their county funding at risk. The board hasn't decided whether to keep or remove the sticker.

Bonnema was concerned about what would happen if the center's relationship with the county unraveled. Both the Ottawa County sheriff and prosecutor told him that it would cost the county more than $800,000 a year to replace the center with something that might not serve abused children as well.

Bonnema, an insurance agent who was new to politics, didn't approve of the Pride symbol. But he was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the way some Ottawa Impact commissioners viewed any compromise as betrayal - a view he had shared in interviews and at public board meetings. He exchanged text messages with Fluharty in an unsuccessful effort to find common ground. One alternative sticker he suggested featured the words "YOU ARE LOVED" in rainbow colors.

In the spring Bonnema, 45, broke with Ottawa Impact. "I am not extreme," he said in an interview. "I just want government to work better for people."

The board's criticism of Fluharty and the Children's Advocacy Center didn't stop. In June, the center sponsored one of the county's Pride festivals, which included a drag queen reading books to children. Fluharty and other attendees insisted there was nothing perverse about the festival or the performance. But several commissioners expressed outrage at pictures of children handing the drag queens tips.

Some donors pulled their financial support for the center, Fluharty said. Her board of directors instructed her that any future sponsorships needed their approval. "When we have people in positions as high as our county commissioners that are making allegations that we are in some way associated with the grooming and oversexualizing of children, it is devastating," Fluharty said.

On June 27, two weeks after the Pride festival, Rhodea introduced her resolution to "protect childhood innocence" by prohibiting the county from supporting any groups that "encourage the sexualization of children."

The leaders of several nonprofit groups spoke in opposition. Among them was Barbara Lee VanHorssen, the executive director of the Momentum Center, which runs programs for people with developmental disabilities and mental illness. Some commissioners had condemned her group's work on behalf of LGBTQ+ residents, and VanHorssen worried that her group's county funding - about $290,000 a year - could be in jeopardy.

"I implore you to stop the moral grandstanding and start engaging with the leaders in this community who can help you understand the real-life struggles of people in this county," she told the board.

Kate Leighton-Colburn, the director of Out on the Lakeshore, a community center for LGBTQ+ residents, also pleaded with her elected leaders: "If there's even one of you tonight planning to vote yes who even a little bit questions the righteousness of that decision, please reach out to me."

Ottawa Impact's supporters blasted the county's Pride festivals and the recent drag queen story event. "Don't get mad when we refer to you and everyone else who doesn't denounce this garbage as groomers," said George Maierhauser, a 63-year-old accountant and an officer in the county Republican Party.

They demanded that the commissioners do something to protect Ottawa's children from shadowy actors and sex traffickers. "If you're saying this is not happening in our community, you're wrong," Christi Meppelink, a member of the county GOP's executive committee, told the commissioners. "Our children are at risk."

Bonnema listened and, before the commissioners voted, voiced some concerns about the resolution: Who would decide which content was sexualizing children? What standards would they use? "Good policy is not vague," he said. "It's specific, so that you know what you're addressing."

Two holdovers from the previous board - a Democrat and a Republican - complained that the resolution's broad language could be used to "trap" or retaliate against county workers such as Alberda.

The Ottawa Impact board members defended the resolution as a necessary first step toward protecting the county from a culture that was increasingly corrupting children. "We're seeing a slow normalization of adult-child sexual relationships," warned Roger Belknap, one of the commissioners.

The resolution passed 9-2. All of the new commissioners, including Bonnema, supported it. He believed that the measure addressed a real and growing problem - one he saw referenced regularly on sites such as Libs of TikTok. He also knew that voting against a resolution to preserve childhood innocence was a political death sentence. "Try to explain that to your neighbor," he said.

By early July, Alberda's supervisors at the health department had largely shut down her work as a sexuality educator and assigned her new, bureaucratic tasks that mostly kept her confined to her office cubicle.

Public school health teachers were still teaching sex-ed classes, but Alberda was no longer allowed to talk to their students about birth control or sexually transmitted disease. Alberda's Wear One condom program was still running, but she was told not to add any new locations. Her parent guide, which had drawn the scorn of Libs of TikTok, had been taken down months earlier. Initially, her supervisors said they would review it and put it back online. It still hasn't returned.

"It feels like I don't even exist anymore," she said. "Twenty years of what I worked so hard to build literally was in one instant destroyed."

Her supervisors told her that they were trying to protect her from being fired. "Heather is talented, passionate, smart, bilingual," said Marcia Mansaray, the deputy health officer for the county. "She's important to the health of this community."

Alberda's bosses were also fighting in the courts to keep their jobs and protect the department. In January, the new commissioners had voted to remove the head of the health department and install a safety manager from a local HVAC company who hadn't worked in public health but had been an outspoken critic of mask requirements and other covid policies.

A state judge had so far blocked their efforts, ruling that the commissioners had to prove that the current county health officer, Adeline Hambley, was "incompetent" or had neglected her duties before they could dismiss her. On Tuesday, the county administrator gave Hambley three days to cut the department's 2024 budget in half, to $9 million from $18.1 million. In a statement, Hambley called the request "ridiculous" and an "act of unlawful retaliation."

The commission's chairman, Joe Moss, countered in a blog post that it was time to "rein in" the health department's "out-of-control expenditures" and excessive "influence."

Amid all the lawsuits and turmoil, Alberda has been allowed to keep one sex education-related assignment: a class she teaches at Harbor House, a facility for women recovering from addiction. She said she knew why it was still okay: The organization served a population that the vast majority of the county's residents didn't think about.

The women at the facility reminded Alberda of the son she'd had at 17. Tyler had struggled with addiction and depression for most of his adult life. On June 13, 2020, he died in a motorcycle crash. He was 25.

Today, Alberda keeps his ashes on a bookshelf at home along with his sneakers, his baseball cap and the last family photo that he took with his siblings. She had planned to bury his ashes in a cemetery that borders a soybean field and a new subdivision a few miles from their home but couldn't bear to part with them. "Eight to 10 years of his life was taken from me by his addiction," she said. "So I am going to hold onto him a little longer."

Alberda pulled into the driveway at Harbor House, a large Victorian-era home with a neatly trimmed lawn and flowers wilting in the afternoon heat. Three women who were standing outside eating ice cream cones and smoking cigarettes waved at her. At Alberda's first meeting with the group a week earlier, they had talked about birth control. Several women mentioned that their period had stopped while they were using drugs, and Alberda reminded them that they could still get pregnant even when they weren't menstruating.

The second session focused on preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections. The women sat on couches as Alberda unpacked her props, a plastic vagina, a speculum and packages of condoms. She showed them photographs of untreated infections from gonorrhea, chlamydia and herpes, which she described as a "forever gift."

"Dang," one person said.

"So, leave the lights on," another added.

Alberda encouraged the women to ask future partners about their sexual history and reminded them that the health department offered free testing for sexually transmitted infections and cervical cancer. After about an hour of discussion, she began packing up her teaching tools.

"We think we know everything," one woman told her. "But even when I was out on the streets using drugs and involved in prostitution, I didn't always use a condom."

Another woman confided that the last time she had sex she hadn't thought about her risk of contracting a disease: "I was high on cocaine and decided to mess around with somebody and I didn't check for any of this. I'm sitting here guilt-ridden and feeling so disgusted with myself."

Alberda paused and met the woman's eyes. "I don't want you to feel any guilt or shame," she told her. "We're here to be better than we were yesterday. We've all been in similar situations. I had my first son - who was actually killed three years ago - when I was 17. What's important is now you know and now you can share that information with others."

And with that, she walked out to her car and drove back to her cubicle at the health department.

On a Sunday morning in early July, Alberda and her husband headed to church. Several years ago, the large, slightly run-down sanctuary was regularly packed with hundreds of worshipers. "Now you have a choice of any seat you want," Alberda said, eyeing the three dozen people who remained.

The church's losses were driven, in part, by the rise of bigger, newer evangelical churches that featured pop-style praise bands, colored lights and an array of fellowship and support groups. The divisive 2020 presidential election and arguments over whether to ask members to mask during the pandemic also contributed to the attrition. Amid all the rancor, the church's pastor asked to take a short sabbatical and never returned.

Alberda had considered leaving both the church and Ottawa County. The attacks from the Ottawa Impact commissioners weren't going away. Late last year, she applied for a job with the state of Wyoming doing suicide prevention work. "I am done with all this," she thought. Then she was offered the position, and she and her husband decided they weren't ready to leave behind their grown children and their home. So they stayed.

At the front of the church, the lay leader was telling the story of the scathing criticism that Jesus received when he invited prostitutes and tax collectors to share a meal with him. "His was a superabundant grace, a scandalizing grace," the lay leader preached.

This was the spirit that had drawn Alberda to Christianity and sustained her faith. She had long believed that Tyler's birth had been God's way of calling her to work as a sexuality educator. Many years later, when Tyler was struggling with addiction, Alberda and her husband prayed that the Lord would give him strength to overcome his addictions and return home.

"God does answer prayers," she said. "But his answer to our prayer was no."

She wanted to believe that her son's death and the public scorn she had endured were still part of God's plan - his way of making her stronger, "pruning" her back and giving her a "different lens to see . . . a different worldview."

"I don't know what that looks like," she said. "I don't know if I'm supposed to be at the county or if I'm even supposed to be a sexuality educator anymore."

The service had ended and people were drifting toward the doors. Alberda couldn't stop thinking about the people in the county who had never met her but still seemed to hate her. The intrusive thoughts would lead her a few days later to take a leave from work and check herself into a faith-based, outpatient psychiatric facility. She had never felt more anxious and lost. She didn't know what she was supposed to do.