St. Paul scouting troop to celebrate 100th anniversary with reunion

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Former Troop 9013 Eagle Scout Tim Fah whittles wood in front of his 5-year-old nephew, with the hopes that both his nephew and 2-year-old niece will eventually follow his scouting path.

“You really don’t understand what you get out of scouting till you’re looking back at it,” said Fah, 25.

Eagle Scouts, from left, Phil Walk, Eli Baynes-Marsh, Andrew Wussler and Tim Fah gather during Baynes-Marsh’s Eagle Scout ceremony, June 5, 2017. Troop 9013 (previously known as Troop 13) is celebrating its 100th Anniversary on Saturday at St. Columba School. (Martha Wald / Scouting Troop 9013)

Minnesota Troop 9013 of Scouting America is celebrating its 100th anniversary Saturday at St. Columba School, 1330 Blair Ave. in St. Paul, with a reunion event for past and present troop members, family and anyone interested in attending. Since 1924, Troop 9013 (previously known as Troop 13) has provided opportunities for personal development, leadership and outdoor skills for Scouts in Hamline-Midway and nearby St. Paul neighborhoods.

“I think the value is that we get to have a whole bunch of different generations of scouts meet up and talk about shared stories, connect and network,” Fah said.

The open house runs from 1 to 4 p.m. with a flag ceremony at 2 p.m. Guest speakers, camp stories and an open mic will follow. Troop memorabilia and archives will be on display and appetizers will be served.

The mission of Scouting America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law, according to the group’s website.

Fah, who grew up in the Midway area, said that his father was also a Boy Scout at one point and Fah became inspired to become a Scout after watching his older brother climb the ranks.

“It’s honestly surprising just how much I ended up learning from Boy Scouts,” Fah said.

Now an assistant scoutmaster with Troop 9013, he’s witnessed positive changes to the scouting program over the years. He looks back fondly on memories of camping with his troop and said he actively applies lessons he learned about wood lashing, knot tying and managing stressful situations still to this day.

“It’s just insane to me,” Fah said. “It’s kind of hard to comprehend that the troop has been around that long.”

Role models and traditions

Julie Ludowese, a Troop 9013 committee member since 2014, said her now adult son joined the Scouts when he was in first grade. She said that, as a single mother, being involved in scouting helped them form a community in a safe environment.

“The thing that I really appreciate was the leadership he was shown,” Ludowese said.

Ludowese said her son had great role models and mentors because of the program. She said that she values the amount of community service projects and initiatives the troop is involved with in St. Paul.

“For being a really small troop, it has carried some really big continuous traditions,” Ludowese said.

The Hi-lex Gnomes march during the 2024 St. Paul Winter Carnival King Boreas Grande Day Parade along West Seventh Street downtown on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Troop 9013 has been active in St. Paul with events such as the St. Paul Winter Carnival, where they are known for wearing the antique Hi-lex Gnome costumes in the Grande Day Parade.

For 65 years, the troop has served more than 250 meals to friends and neighbors annually through their spaghetti dinner fundraiser, which Ludowese helps organize along with other projects.

Nick Denkinger joined Troop 9013 as a scout leader in 2001, when he enrolled his 12-year-old son in the troop.

“It was such a worthy program that I stuck around, and I help out,” Denkinger said.

Denkinger said his son learned a lot about the outdoors, building fires, wildlife and camping through the program. He said he enjoys seeing the growth within troop members as they age, and is impressed by how the program has changed to include over 100 merit badges from physical fitness to environmental science.

“All of these kids are so incredibly different and it’s really a treat to work with them,” Denkinger said.

Learning from mistakes

Scouting has had to deal with negative connotations after grooming and sexual abuse scandals were reported in scouting programs across the U.S. since the 1970s.

Denkinger said he believes the program has learned from past mistakes. What used to be the Boy Scouts is now Scouting America and includes all genders and aims to be more inclusive.

“What was acceptable 20 years, 40 years ago is not acceptable now, and they’ve adapted to it,” Denkinger said.

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Ludowese said a lot of organizations start something that fizzles out within a few years, but she is impressed with the longevity of Troop 9013, and believes it is a reflection of the strength of its community.

“Most of us will be lucky to live 100 years,” Ludowese said. “A hundred years I think is a huge milestone.”

Sponsors, funders and supporters of the troop include Hamline-Midway neighbors, St. Columba Parish, Midway Men’s Club, American Legion Post 8 and Westcott Station.

Saturday’s reunion event is open to the public; no reservations are needed.

To learn more about Troop 9013, visit www.facebook.com/ScoutTroop13/ or contact them at mntroop13@gmail.com.

Today in History: September 12, Voyager 1 leaves the solar system

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Today is Thursday, Sept. 12, the 256th day of 2024. There are 110 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 12, 2013, Voyager 1, launched 36 years earlier, became the first man-made spacecraft ever to leave the solar system.

Also on this date:

In 1857, the S.S. Central America (also known as the “Ship of Gold”) sank off the coast of South Carolina after sailing into a hurricane in one of the worst maritime disasters in American history; 425 people were killed and thousands of pounds of gold sank with the ship to the bottom of the ocean.

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In 1940, the Lascaux cave paintings, estimated to be 17,000 years old, were discovered in southwestern France.

In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Cooper v. Aaron, unanimously ruled that Arkansas officials who were resisting public school desegregation orders could not disregard the high court’s rulings.

In 1959, the Soviet Union launched its Luna 2 space probe, which made a crash landing on the moon.

In 1962, in a speech at Rice University in Houston, President John F. Kennedy reaffirmed his support for the manned space program, declaring: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

In 1977, South African Black student leader and anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, 30, died while in police custody, triggering an international outcry.

In 1994, truck driver Frank Eugene Corder piloted a stolen single-engine Cessna airplane into restricted airspace in Washington, D.C., and crashed it into the South Lawn of the White House.

In 2003, in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, U.S. forces mistakenly opened fire on vehicles carrying police, killing eight of them.

In 2008, a Metrolink commuter train struck a freight train head-on in Los Angeles, killing 25 people.

In 2011, Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal to win his first U.S. Open championship.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Linda Gray is 84.
Singer Maria Muldaur is 82.
Author Michael Ondaatje is 81.
Actor Joe Pantoliano is 73.
Photographer Nan Goldin is 71.
Composer Hans Zimmer is 67.
Actor Rachel Ward is 67.
TV host-commentator Greg Gutfeld is 60.
Actor-comedian Louis (loo-ee) C.K. is 57.
Golfer Angel Cabrera is 55.
Country singer Jennifer Nettles (Sugarland) is 50.
Rapper 2 Chainz is 47.
Singer Ruben Studdard is 46.
Basketball Hall of Famer Yao Ming is 44.
Singer-actor Jennifer Hudson is 43.
Actor Alfie Allen is 38.
Actor Emmy Rossum is 38.
Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman is 35.
Country singer-songwriter Kelsea Ballerini is 31.
Actor Sydney Sweeney is 27.

Marc Champion: Putin’s ‘troll farm’ isn’t necessary. We have our own

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When it comes to disinformation warfare, Russian President Vladimir Putin is, of course, a pro. As a career KGB agent, it’s what he knows and what he does. That point was again underscored by the recent U.S. Department of Justice case alleging a systematic Russian effort to interfere in November’s presidential election.

That did happen in 2016, but it’s 2024. By now you have to ask why Putin bothers — given the industrial quantities of homegrown disinformation we’re producing ourselves — and just how much attention we should be paying to his so-called active measures.

The DoJ’s 277-page affidavit alleges that Russia has been running a broad, covert election interference project called Doppelganger, and as a result has shut down dozens of websites traced back to the country. All of this was being organized in meetings at the presidential administration in Moscow, better known as the Kremlin. According to notes taken during these meetings, at least some were presided over by Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, Sergey Kiriyenko.

It’s hard to overstate Kiriyenko’s centrality to the Kremlin. A one-time liberal, he’s now the point man for Putin’s domestic political strategy, including the recent presidential elections, as well as for digital media and for administration of the four Ukrainian regions that Putin unilaterally annexed to Russia on Sept. 30, 2022. He’s deeply loyal, runs the Russian association for Putin’s beloved martial arts, and is a close ally of Yury Kovalchuk, the billionaire often described as “Putin’s banker.”

And just for the avoidance of doubt, the meeting notes that the U.S. somehow got hold of — and which I assume to be genuine — confirm that a report on Doppleganger’s progress was sent to Putin himself. The Kremlin denies the existence of Doppleganger.

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According to the DoJ’s case, Doppelganger directed troll farms to write comments on posts, as well as to produce fake articles under fake or forged bylines, often on fake websites made to mimic those of U.S. and European flagship media outlets.

The goals laid out include not just influencing the next U.S. election, but also undermining public support for the defense of Ukraine and discrediting the U.S., U.K. and NATO in general. A project called “International Conflict Incitement” aimed to stir up existing domestic conflicts within U.S. allies or to “artificially create” new ones. One enthusiastic suggestion recorded by the Kremlin meeting’s notetaker was to: “make a fake on an American soldier that raped a German woman. That would be great!”

There’s detailed written guidance for the troll farms on what messages to push, as well as quotas for them to meet — 60,000 comments per month for Germany and France combined. And there’s astute advice for those less steeped in the ways of disinformation “to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information.”

But Putin’s obsession with disinformation displays a weakness. It reflects his deeply held belief that voters and populations as a whole have no thoughts or agency of their own; that their attitudes are instead the products of manipulation, either by his own special services and other branches of the state — especially within Russia, where the Kremlin exercises tight control over traditional and social media — or by foreign agencies, such as the CIA.

So, when more than a million Ukrainians took to the streets in 2013-2014, spending months outdoors in subzero temperatures and often under brutal police attack to protest, this was not — in Putin’s view — an expression of popular will, but a coup d’etat orchestrated by the CIA. That same misconception led him to believe the local population wouldn’t fight back when he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later. It was a catastrophic error.

The sad truth is that by now Putin can probably save himself some money. When you have the likes of Donald Trump, Elon Musk or the U.K.’s Nigel Farage to stir up social conflict and amplify disinformation in the name of free speech, who needs operation Doppelganger?

Twitter alone publishes about 6 billion posts a month, a third of them political, dwarfing the quotas set for Russia’s troll factories. And while it’s hard to quantify how many of those posts consist of deliberate falsehoods, several studies have found that fake news gets shared more on social media — 70% more, according to one by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.

Russian interference operations are real, but these are our own problems. Our homegrown websites, talk show hosts and bloggers are now churning out more fake news, conspiracy theories and incitement to violence than Russia could ever hope to invent.

This kind of disinformation is so filled with malice that it’s comforting to think of it as a foreign plot. When riots erupted in the U.K. town of Southport in July, over the stabbing of 6-year-old girls at a Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance class, a fabricated story gave the attacker an Arabic sounding name and said he had come to Britain by boat, as an illegal immigrant the previous year. The story spread like wildfire. It was passed on by far-right U.K. sites, political parties and influencers — as well as by a website called Channel3Now that appeared to have Pakistani and Russian connections and has since been shut down. Violent anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim protests continued for days after the court gave the perpetrator’s true identity, as a 17-year-old, U.K.-born Christian.

There’s no hard evidence Russia set that fire, though no doubt the officials heading Doppleganger would be celebrating if so. What’s certain is that Putin believes himself to be in a zero-sum conflict with the West, and sees both free-speech protections and the democratic process of choosing leaders as vulnerabilities he can exploit. But let’s not make the same mistake as an aging Cold War spy, believing our chaos and dysfunction are in any significant respect the work of the Kremlin. He’s just egging us on and enjoying the show.

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

Other voices: Ukraine needs more weapons and the permission to use them

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Although President Joe Biden’s administration has pledged “unwavering support” for Ukraine, it has been cautious to a fault in practice. The latest example: supplying the Ukrainians with sophisticated long-range missiles but prohibiting their most effective uses.

Since last year, the West has been sending Ukraine British and French long-range missiles, as well as the more versatile U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS. Such munitions have proved effective in hitting military facilities in Crimea and elsewhere in occupied Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has vetoed their use inside Russia itself.

To an extent, this caution is understandable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that attacks within Russia would amount to an escalation, and Biden is rightly keen to avoid World War III. Yet a closer analysis of the policy shows that it makes little sense. If Biden wants to help bring this war to an acceptable ending — and he should — he needs to stop vacillating and give Ukraine the arms it needs to defend itself.

For one thing, the restrictions on long-range weapons play directly into Putin’s hands. They create a zone of safety from which Russian troops can launch attacks with impunity. They buy time for the Kremlin to adjust to changes on the battlefield and resupply its own forces while preventing Ukraine from effectively counterattacking. They also amplify Russia’s advantages in manpower and weaponry. In effect, they give Ukraine enough help to prolong the war but not enough to make real progress.

The flaws of this policy were laid bare when Kharkiv came under intense attack earlier this year from forces gathered just across the border. This led the Biden administration to carve out an exception to the rule, allowing Ukraine to strike military targets just inside Russia to thwart attacks. The result was that the offensive was much diminished as Russia scrambled to defend its assets. But while tactically successful, this experiment also highlighted how strategically misguided the larger policy is.

It makes little sense to keep tying Ukraine’s hands. There are, by conservative estimates, hundreds of military targets — including communications centers, training grounds and air bases from which attacks are being launched or resupplied — that long-range missiles could target.

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Of course, Putin’s dark threats of nuclear escalation shouldn’t be ignored. He has repeatedly warned the West about “red lines,” from the supply of battle tanks to aircraft, only to downplay them once they’ve been crossed. That’s entirely logical: The use of tactical nuclear weapons would be a strategic mistake for Putin, giving him no clear battlefield advantage, galvanizing the West and likely losing remaining support from Beijing. And there’s little reason to think that long-range missiles — which, remember, have already been supplied and used within Russian-occupied Ukraine — will be any different.

The Biden administration is right to make its own interests and red lines clear. Western forces should not be deployed to fight in Ukraine, and the use of Western weapons against civilian targets within Russia should be proscribed. But granting Ukraine greater freedom to bring the fight to Putin makes both strategic and moral sense.

It’s reasonable to expect Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to articulate how this latest round of assistance will fit into a plausible strategy to bring an end to the war closer. But only Putin ultimately has the power to end the vast destruction and killing he has unleashed. He must be convinced that that is his best option.

— The Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board