text:
THE REAL SCIENCE BEHIND:
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
Inside the Forever War Against Parasites Trying To Control Our Brains
CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia Commons
"You are not understanding our nature."
The voice is gentle. I feel an immediate twinge of guilt, a desire to reconcile. Maybe I'm jumping at shadows. Maybe it's telling the truth.
But maybe not. I'm dealing with a symbiote unlike any in the biological world: One with the power to persuade. To communicate with its host, make rational arguments, physically share emotions and feelings. Even now, I want to believe it's sincere. But is that because I'm actually convinced, or because it's so good at persuasion? Even the sensual warmth I've been feeling could be just another manipulation, a covert hijacking of my neurotransmitters.
I shouldn't trust it, I think coldly, pushing away from my desk.
Anything that can talk to you can also lie to you.
~ an excerpt from Sleep of Reason
THE REAL SCIENCE:
The presence of parasites in such deep parts of pre-history, shaping the animal genome at its most basic level, is why Del Giudice feels they could be forgotten drivers of early, fundamental evolution.
"Many aspects of neurobiology are destined to remain mysterious or poorly understood until parasites—the brain's invisible designers—are finally included in the picture," he writes.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a28941527/brain-parasites/
Strange life-forms found deep in a mine point to vast 'underground Galapagos'
Courtesy Gaetan Borgonie / Extreme Life Isyensya
That question—do we harbor other resident aliens—is a big one. If we do, how can we not have found them already? I would submit it's because we haven't properly looked. And that at every turn, we tend to make assumptions against the possibility of life.
We've said life can't survive boiling, clearly false. We've said life needs sunlight to make food, obviously wrong. We've believed life can't survive freezing, then met species of Arctic flies whose larvae can survive their bodies hitting -76°F. We've said life needs to be part of a food chain; enter Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator which lives 2 miles deep in a South African gold mine, fixing nitrogen, eating sulfate, in utter isolation.
~An excerpt from Sleep of Reason
Sherwood Lollar is excited not only because of the peculiar the mine's rock-eating life seems, but also because of the growing realization that strange forms of life might not be so peculiar after all. Scientists are starting to find similar microbes in other deep spots, including boreholes, volcanic vents on the bottom of the ocean and buried sediments far beneath the seafloor.
"The deep microbial realm reveals a biosphere that's more extensive, resilient, varied and strange than we had realized," said Robert Hazen, a mineralogist at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, and co-founder of Deep Carbon Observatory, a global project to study the deep biosphere.
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/strange-life-forms-found-deep-mine-point-vast-underground-galapagos-ncna1050906
First Titanic dives in 14 years reveal how the ocean floor is swallowing up the shipwreck
Atlantic Productions via AP
Considering we can't even see what's daily under our noses and above our heads, it's no wonder we have such a hard time seeing things that are less obvious—things like the being that is, at this very moment, 12,600 feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean consuming the wreck of the Titanic.
Interestingly, the being is not a singular species. It's a consortium of microbes—20 different species of bacteria, two species of fungus, and at least one species of archaea— working together in concert to carry out an endeavor that would be impossible for any one of them alone. They've come together, each with their own part to play, to harvest the iron out of the ship, 12,600 feet under the sea.
The RMS Titanic was visited by divers for the first time in 14 years, and the ship that was once a picture of luxury was found in the process of being swallowed up by the ocean floor and ravaged by metal-eating bacteria.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/world/titanic-shipwreck-footage-decomposition-trnd/index.html
'Massive Pool' of Methane Hidden Deep Beneath Earth's Surface Discovered by Scientists
Chris German/WHOI/NSF, NASA/ROV Jason 2012, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
"I admit it's a stretch. But you've just proved I might be on to something. We have a creature that doesn't have a large enough methane source to be as big as it is. Maybe we're not looking deep enough."
As well as helping to explain the origins of methane deep beneath Earth's surface, the study could also shed light on the presence of methane on other bodies in the solar system. For example, methane is known to exist on Mars and Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus.
https://www.newsweek.com/massive-pool-methane-hidden-deep-beneath-earths-surface-discovered-scientists-1455408
Viruses may actually be responsible for the ability to form memories
What do we know for sure, and what don't we? If memory makes us who we are, and we don't hold our memories—what does that make us?
Have you wondered why you remember some things and forget others? Whether you are the sum of the memories you have created? Whether our collective memory as a society defines our humanity?
Scientists have just discovered that a protein in your brain behaves like a virus--infecting your cells with memories.
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/12/a-protein-in-your-brain-behaves-like-a-virus-infecting-your-cells-with-memories_partner/
Meet the Endoterrestrials
Image by Zoë van Dijk
At the time, all living things were divided into only two categories called domains. Everything was either a Eukaryote (a plant, animal, fungus, slime mold, or single celled protocist) or a Prokaryote (a bacteria). And this little microbe was neither. They had to create a third domain called Archaea, which has filled over the last 40 years with fascinating creatures like Strain 121 which uses iron instead of oxygen to help render its food into energy. Technically, it reduces ferric iron to ferrous iron, and its waste product is the mineral magnetite. So, I ask you, if there's an organism on this earth that breathes iron and shits magnets, what else is possible?
They live thousands of feet below the Earth's surface. They eat hydrogen and exhale methane. And they may shape our world more profoundly than we can imagine.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/meet-endoterrestrials/571939/
#neveragain, #metoo and Sleep of Reason - A Book Club Discussion
THE SLEEP OF REASON grapples with the question of how people can be so awful to each other, openly wondering if there are things we don't understand about ourselves that explain man's inhumanity to man. Our country is now mired in questions: How do parents live in a world where our children are murdered inside their schools? How do we rationalize the 307 mass shootings that occurred in the first 311 days of 2018? How do we reconcile the fact that women still make less than men, that our president can say he "grabs women by the p****" and still get elected, that when Alyssa Milano on a whim tweets "If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet," she wakes in the morning to find 30,000 responses? With the #metoo movement, and the #neveragain crusade, more and more people are asking—Is there such a thing as evil, or are we broken biology? And if we are broken, how do we fix us? In this way THE SLEEP OF REASON couldn't be more timely. We live in a world that bears more than passing resemblance to the pre-apocalyptic world LeeCee sees approaching; we would do well to consider why.
Surprise Life Found Living 2000 feet underground:
Image: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Thomas Gold's most recent crazy theory, that life did not begin on the surface of our planet or use sunlight as its energy source, has also been either ignored or flatly rejected for 30 years. I believe he is once again correct. I believe that life began through chemosynthesis, that it began deep underground, and that it's still there chugging away. If Gold is correct, life in this "deep hot biosphere" as he named it, likely exceeds in mass and volume all life on the surface. In simpler words, there are more of them than there are of us.
In a surprise to scientists, cyanobacteria have been found thriving nearly 2,000 feet below the strange landscape, where sunlight, water, and nutrients are scarce. Researchers previously thought these microbes could survive only while basking in the sun's rays, although they are otherwise a versatile bunch; researchers have found them alive nearly everywhere on Earth.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/10/news-cyanobacteria-photosynthesis-mars-extraterrestrial-life/
Your gut is directly connected to your brain, by a newly discovered neuron circuit
Image credit: Nicolle R. Fuller / Science Source
I sit staring, my heart skipping. If I was looking for something hidden in plain sight, I've found it. And as tiny as it is, it could be hidden just about anywhere in the human body—finding it hasn't really give me an answer as much as it's given me different questions.
New Physical Gut-Brain Connection found: A new study reveals the gut has a much more direct connection to the brain through a neural circuit that allows it to transmit signals in mere seconds. The findings could lead to new treatments for obesity, eating disorders, and even depression and autism—all of which have been linked to a malfunctioning gut.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/your-gut-directly-connected-your-brain-newly-discovered-neuron-circuit
Newly Discovered Kind of Brain Cell
E. Boldog et al., Nature Neuroscience 10.1038 (2018)
It's in our brain.
Hiding in plain view like our tiny mitochondrial guests. Doing work we don't fully understand, but perhaps cannot live without. I know you are wondering how it's possible to have missed something so huge. But, really, it's no great shock that it hasn't been found until now as the human brain is one of the last and most dense mysteries of humankind.
The brain, excised from its protective case, is an unassuming organ. Mushy, slightly gelatinous, pinkish grey, covered in veins, oozing salty liquid. There's nothing about the brain that looks mysterious. It looks wholly animal, entirely of the flesh. And really, if we're judging on looks, there are far more interesting organs. The constant complex movement of the heart. The impressive now-you-see-it-now-you-don't vanishing act pulled off by the stomach. It's no wonder we studied other organs first, that we tried to seat the mind—all the things we find most intriguing about ourselves, all the ways that we seem to rise above the planet's other animals—in an organ more complex than the mushy white aesthetic simplicity of the brain.
Newly Discovered Kind of Brain Cell: Scientists have learned that the newly discovered rosehip neurons in the human brain don't closely match any previously identified cell in the mouse, suggesting they have no analog in the rodent often used as a model for humans. The discovery also raises the question of whether these neurons are key to certain brain functions that separate us from mice.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/mysterious-new-brain-cell-found-people
Climate Change and The Sleep of Reason: A Book Club Discussion
Thomas Jefferson helped invent modern agricultural science. Lincoln invented and patented a navigation device. Theodore Roosevelt is the father of the modern conservation movement. John F Kennedy helped us land a man on the moon. Long before Obama held SXSL, a party for inventors on the White House Lawn, Yankee Ingenuity made the impossible, possible.
But with the 2016 election, our country has taken a strong right turn. We elected a man who suggested the "concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." With that as our beginning, we have pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, begun drilling in the Arctic, disbanded the EPA Air Pollution review panel, repealed rules about methane releases, and ended NASAs Climate Monitoring Program--the list goes on and on and on.
And yet, the most recent scientific study says between 2006 and 2015, the earth has *already* warmed 0.87℃, and that we are already seeing the effects. From the people in Kiribati who are losing their islands to the rising seas, to the new kind of faster-moving, increasingly aggressive California wildfires, to the devastation of the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Michael, we are already in the middle of the apocalypse we are creating for ourselves. And even if we create the change we need tomorrow, the effects we are now seeing will persist for centuries, potentially even millennia.
In this way, SLEEP OF REASON is a call to arms. In a reader-friendly way, it shows that the changes we carelessly wreak upon the Earth can come back to bite us in ways we don't even begin to comprehend.
Scientists say they've discovered a new human organ
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
I fall asleep thinking about the work I have ahead of me, laying out future research in my mind, hoping there is a way through this insanity that leads back to reality. A reality grown and stretched to include something new.
~An excerpt from The Sleep of Reason
New Organ Discovered in Human Body: Scientists just discovered one of the biggest organs in the human body and it could significantly advance our understanding of cancer and many other diseases:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/scientists-say-they-ve-discovered-unknown-human-organ-could-help-n860601
Chemists Find New Evidence That Life Might Have Started in Space: Life's primordial soup could have been ice-cold.
Photo by NASA
We're taught that the shift from non-life to life began in the warm, soupy puddles of water that dotted the Earth's surface. Over millions of years, the Sun shone, molecules formed and dispersed, until one of the billions of biochemical combinations produced a cell that could change the sunlight into energy. The rest is history, right?
But how likely is that, really? First and foremost, if you're a brand new molecule looking for a food source, the Sun is a poor candidate. That newborn cell, like all cells, is looking for an energy source about one tenth as powerful as a single photon emitted from the sun. As one scientist has suggested, a cell trying to catch the energy in a photon and use it directly to synthesize sugar is like a baseball player trying to catch bullets from a machine gun.
Where was the warm little pond? Many scientists believe that it existed on Earth, most likely near hot hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. There's also a small contingent that believes life emerged on land, among volcanic rocks. But there's an even smaller — but increasingly confident — contingent that thinks life emerged in space, and evidence published in the Journal of Chemical Physics on Tuesday provides support for their daring hypothesis.
https://www.inverse.com/article/39300-origin-life-space-molecules-dna
Scientists Discover Secret Habitats in Antarctica
Photo by Joel Bensing
Though we've been swimming steadily down, there is light in the cave—and it's coming from the wrong direction. It comes not from above, but from below. When I look down to gauge the size of the chamber, I see a slight phosphorescent glow. I point my divelight downward, hoping to see the source of the light, but when the light touches the bottom of the chamber, it bounces off in all directions, reflected again and again around the room.
Surprised, I run my divelight around the sides of the chamber. There is anchor ice along all the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The delicate discs of ice are stuck to the walls at odd angles turning the chamber into a prismatic hall of mirrors.
REAL SCIENCE:
Deep within Antarctica's ice caves, a group of scientists may have discovered a secret ecosystem of plants and animals being supported by the warmth of an active volcano. Forensic analyses of soil samples from the caves revealed intriguing traces of DNA. While most of the DNA was similar to mosses, algae and invertebrates found elsewhere in Antarctica, not all sequences could be fully identified.
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-antarctic-caves-harbour-secret-life.html
Gut bacteria that 'talk' to human cells may lead to new treatments
By Mark Amend - NOAA Photo Library
After staining my sample, I slide it under the microscope. There's no ambiguity. The small sickle shapes are as red as a matador's cape.
Now. You see.
"FUCK YOU!" I scream out loud into the silent room as my patience finally snaps. Suddenly, the silence becomes more than silence. More like a waiting. When the voice comes again, it's stronger.
Ahhhh.
You do … hear me.
It is our … beginning.
I put my head down on my desk. What happened to not playing with your hallucinations?
We Speak the Same Language: We have a symbiotic relationship with the trillions of bacteria that live in our bodies -- they help us, we help them. It turns out that they even speak the same language. And new research from The Rockefeller University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai suggests these newly discovered commonalities may open the door to "engineered" gut flora who can have therapeutically beneficial effects on disease.


Clipping Detector is a simple tool that checks your media files for audio clipping.
* It only works on DRM free media.
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noun The act of employing.
noun The state of being employed.
noun The work in which one is engaged; occupation.
noun An activity to which one devotes time.
noun The act of employing or using, or the state of being employed.
noun Work or business of any kind, physical or mental; that which engages the head or hands; anything that occupies time or attention; office or position involving business: as, agricultural employments; mechanical employments; public employment.
noun The act of employing or using; also, the state of being employed.
They do not stop to reflect that so much wealth has been wiped out of the world, and that _instead of the destruction furnishing so much additional employment, it has only changed the direction of the employment_.
Mooney was hoping his attack would result in employment from a security firm, rather than prosecution, says PC Magazine.
Growth in employment is pretty much all immigrants and Public sector sinecures.
In Rochester that racial discrimination in employment is wrong, even where its ostensible goal is to help minorities?
Moreover, shutting down their ability to gain employment is dangerous.
The current rise in employment can therefore be at least partially attributed to the Bush tax cuts of several years ago (employment is a very lagging indicator – almost the last thing to show results from economic policy changes).
But more women will have to become much more aggressive than they are at present if equal opportunity in employment is to be achieved.


It can be tempting to use the final pages of your script to introduce a new character or plot point. Before you do this, however, take a moment to glance over your screenplay from an audience's perspective. At this point in the story, they should be emotionally engaged and invested in seeing the story you've told them come to a thrilling conclusion. Do they really want to meet that new character this late in the game? Does a new, tangential subplot deepen or improve their understanding of the story?
Most likely, the answer is "no." The third act of a script should be a clean, streamlined race to the finish. This race should also seek to resolve your character's internal and external conflicts and tie-up any loose ends. By populating these final few pages with new subplots or characters, you take the risk of distracting your intended audience with information that has little emotional value to them.
Instead, use the third act as an opportunity to work with the tools you already have. The characters and storylines you implement in these final pages should have been introduced in Acts One and Two. By using pre-established elements rather than introducing new ones, you lower the risk of confusing your audience and putting them off your ending.
One of the most common issues present in many third acts is the "action pile-up" or "bottleneck." Since the climax is the moment of greatest tension in a story, it's tempting to heap loads of action onto the final pages of the script. These "bottlenecks" are often intended to be sequences of high drama and tension, but can often end up feeling over-plotted, cluttered or show-horned in. They can even dramatically stunt the pacing of your screenplay.
These "bottlenecks" come in all forms; but one of the most common and recognizable iterations of this problem come as extended, overwritten action sequences. Often, these sequences lean heavily on plot detail and machinations, while skimping on emotional engagement. It's easy to lose track of our characters amid non-stop spectacle.
When you write your climax, it's important that you take care to make sure your character's motivations remain clear. That way, audiences can maintain a clear sense of who they are tracking throughout the action. The most thrilling climax sequences take care to involve us in the protagonist's emotional stakes, without losing us in the minutia of the climax.
Whether your final pages revolve around an intergalactic space battle or an attempted gatecrash at a riverboat wedding, it is vital that your audience have a clear sense of the stakes at hand. Your audience wants to understand what your character's goals are in these final pages, and why its important to accomplish them. These elements need to shine in your climax, and it's important that big set pieces don't overshadow them.
Movies live and die by their characters. Characters are your audience's entry point to the story; they're what your readers emotionally engage with. When your reader turns to that final page of your script and reads "FADE OUT", they hopefully come away with a connection to your character's overall arc.
This however, can't happen if you don't tie your character's arc to the resolution of the story. When your protagonist defeats the bad guy, or finds the hidden treasure, they need to do so by overcoming their central character flaw. This not only makes your characters more relatable, but also gives your ending emotional stakes.
Say, for example, that your protagonist is cripplingly shy; it's the character flaw that prevents them from succeeding in life and getting what they want. It's important that the climax of the story involves them overcoming their shyness and getting what they want: it could be a love interest, a debate team trophy or the recognition of their peers.
If you fail to tie your character's arc to the story resolution, you run the risk of losing the emotional engagement of your audience. Readers might be drawn to your script by an intriguing logline or the promise of spectacle, but they stay for your characters. By making your character's growth intrinsic to your story's ending, you create a more dynamic, involving note to leave readers off on.
By taking care to identify and correct these common third act problems, you greatly improve your chances of creating an emotionally resonant and a more satisfying closure for your script, and ultimately for your audience too.


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The other side of the immigration coin | Gervais Chisihayo
Immigration does not only refer to asylum seekers entering the country without documents. Even fully legal immigrants like Gervais Chisihayo – a geophysicist and university lecturer who has been resident here for 20 years – can be affected by rising xenophobia
23 July 2013, 12:00am
by Raphael Vassallo
One thing that has been lacking in the ongoing debate on immigration so far is an outsider's perspective. Public discussion has for the most part been limited to the inherently lopsided views of, on the one hand, activists and NGOs concerned with human rights and, on the other, a much larger but less easily defined swath of people who are clearly uneasy with the phenomenon of mass-immigration as a whole.
Extreme opinions and emotive hysteria exist on both side of the fence. But what has increasingly characterised this same debate is a constant stream of often astonishing sweeping statements along the lines that all immigrants are criminals; all immigrants are uneducated; that they take local jobs (and occasionally women) to the detriment of the local population... undercutting local salaries, 'threatening' the long term survival of the indigenous culture, and so on.
On the other side there are those who claim - not without plausible reason, but without any clear evidence - that migrants do not even stay here for very long; and the few who do have a positive impact on the economy.
In all this uncertainty many people have lost perspective on what immigration really is: forgetting, among other things, that there are perfectly legal and regular immigrants who have been naturalised Maltese citizens for years, of not decades - yet who now suddenly find themselves exposed to naked hostility or suspicion, merely because of the colour of their skin.
Gervais Chisihayo is one such example A qualified geophysicist specialising in oil exploration, he came to Malta from his native Burundi in the 1980s and eventually settled here after obtaining his PhD in the Netherlands in 1992.
Like many other visibly different ethnicities present on the island, he acknowledges that people's attitudes towards him seem to have changed somewhat since the phenomenon of large-scale immigration from Africa began around 15 years ago.
"First of all, I must say that living in Malta was a choice for me, and not an imposition of some unfortunate circumstances," he says when asked if the recent outburst of apparent racism had affected him in any way. "I have been resident here for more than 20 years now: time enough to develop formed an informed opinion how Malta views and treats perceived 'outsiders'... and in particular an 'in-outsider par excellence' like me. But I can only reliably speak about my own experience. This has evolved with time along with events that shape the host society... yes, including the ongoing immigration crisis."
Gervais's circumstances are entirely different from the waves of mostly Somali or Eritrean asylum seekers; and even from other perceived economic immigrants who may not be fleeing persecution at all.
"Because of my origins and my cultural parcours, I can define myself as a Burundi-born 'African Maltese' and 'African European', strongly supportive of the EU integration process. Whether I am accepted as such is however not up to me to determine..."
But with a recent upsurge in openly racist sentiment expressed on the island, it is becoming clear that 'acceptance' of even legitimate foreign residents may be in jeopardy.
"Owing to my skin colour, with the wave of immigrant arrivals, to some people I have become just any other immigrant, a role that I did not ask for but in which I find no shame because I understand better the causes and the challenges and opportunities that it entails..."
He admits that problems arose even before the first boatloads of irregular migrants started arriving I earnest in the very late 1990s.
"My conspicuously different appearance has always made me stand out in almost every social and/or professional gathering," he recalls. "Attitudes could range from friendly welcoming, compassionate curiosity to unacceptable and unjustified aggressive hostility..."
He adds that he has had experience of direct discrimination in certain circumstances. "Sometimes I felt like banging my head against the wall and seeing stars as the whole system of rule of law let me down... especially when most of my Maltese compatriots would stand in my defence only to be overruled by an almighty powerful minority. I learnt how to win by losing, to surf the waves during challenging times and used my intuition and emotional intelligence to sense and appreciate people as individuals and to steer clear of stereotyping my Maltese compatriots."
Nonetheless he distinguishes between different types of discrimination - conceding that a certain natural tendency to favour indigenous locals in certain areas is understandable (and common to all countries everywhere).
"The preferential treatment and comparative advantage that comes with nationality is something that I accept with grace and humility, whenever applied in a transparent manner. But it becomes less acceptable and bitter when it is only applied through unwritten discriminatory rules that sometimes defy common social sense."
Interestingly enough such discrimination is by no means limited to skin colour: EU nationals of all hues recently protested at Malta's 'institutionalised discrimination' against foreigners in general in the form of higher utility bills, for instance, or different wage structures.
Gervais found similar obstacles when trying to settle into life in Malta. "Although I was regularly established with the same family challenges as other taxpayers (my children and spouse were all Maltese nationals) the fact that I was not a Maltese citizen was a serious handicap whenever it came to competing for employment appointments, promotion and/or business opportunities. However, I had made it my own life challenge, and I waited until I had earned a professional position on my own merits [as a teacher at the university] to apply and became a Maltese citizen. In this respect, I have always sought to be and remain loyal and faithful to the oath freely undertaken to become a Maltese citizen."
But while Gervais Chisihayo is careful to avoid lumping all Maltese in the same xenophobic basket, he does not exactly mince his words when it comes to how the authorities and various institutions involved - including the media - have in some respects ducked their responsibilities.
"The 'Mediterranean boat people' phenomenon is a complex problem that calls for immediate, medium- and long-term proactive solutions to global challenges. Yet for some reason, the issue has been sensationalised and to some extent exploited by opportunistic politicians, who capitalise on the common citizen's fear of the unknown and stir up all types of negative and hostile sentiments that never look beyond skin colour in a bid to score points..."
As for the public debate on immigration, he observes that in Malta this tends to be shallow and to focus essentially on the emotional dimension of the fundamental issues that underpin this complex issue.
"To date, the press is failing to fulfil its mission to enlighten the local, regional and international opinion with researched information and facts. Investigations can and should be carried out in the countries of origin, transit and destination of migrants..."
Such investigative journalism may bring to light invaluable information that may even assist in addressing the problems: for instance, by highlighting the operations of criminal organisations involved in people trafficking.
But this is not happening. Instead, the media tend to take the easier and less helpful route of simply pandering to popular sentiment.
"Media are independent and have their own styles, but the press coverage tends to have different overtones depending on the melanin dose of the subject..."
Still, I put it him that there has been some improvement since the early days, when asylum seekers were actively compared to jellyfish on the PBS news (among other examples of truly shocking racist reporting in Malta).
He nods in agreement. "While some progress was registered with respect to the way these events were reported in the not-too distant past, the press coverage is still asymmetrical as it does not give a balanced view through contributions of people who may be at the receiving end of intolerance and discrimination..."
This is however likely to change, as the newsrooms on major media houses no longer enjoy a monopoly on news reporting.
"Thanks to the democratization of publication with the advent of the new technologies, stories of discrimination and other racist and xenophobic assaults can no longer be easily hidden from the public. Nowadays they tend to be fairly reported by the media in general and even better in certain media..."
He is less optimistic about the way politicians and political parties have responded to the recent challenges, however.
"The extreme hostile and aggressive attitudes arise from the political vacuum and opportunism, whereby the political leadership's failures to address societal problems are blamed on immigrants."
This blame game, he adds, invariably finds its way into public discourse on the topic.
"While this issue sporadically flares up in the media, to date the political parties in Malta have failed to address the issue of immigration and integration of migrants. Their electoral manifestos are there to bear me witness..."
The publication of online comments may be the responsibility of the editorial boards of individual media houses, but the actual opinions that get published are often simply extensions of the way the country's policy-formers have approached the same issue.
Invariably, certain common features can be identified: there is a tendency to talk in apocalyptic terms of the possible consequences of a 'full-scale invasion' (to use the typically alarmist parlance commonly associated with far-right thinking on the subject). There have even been open suggestions of 'leaving immigrants to drown'.
Nonetheless Gervais cautions against a blanket policy of censorship to counter this phenomenon.
"However erroneous they may be, anti-immigrants lobbyists have the right to voice their concerns within the confines of the rule of law. However I personally think that many of their assertions - for instance, that large populations of naturalised foreigners will force a change on Maltese culture, for instance by forcing the country to adopt Sharia Law - are clearly far-fetched and verge on deliberate alarmism and political fiction..."
On another level, he also argues that the same vociferous lobby picks and chooses its battles with caution.
"Anti-immigrant lobbyists attack the weakest component of the immigration problem - the immigrants - but they would not confront the more powerful forces that drive immigration, that is, human traffickers and other criminal elements, as well as the transnational political forces that fuel and benefit from illegal immigration..."
This all adds to the image of what he describes as a political fiction: one whereby the immigrant is to blame for the country;s problems, while no effort is made to address the immigration issue at source.
Precisely the same fiction lies at the heart of Malta's 'official' response to this issue, at least towards the beginning of the phenomenon: a response which involved actively stoking the above far-fetched fears for political gain.
Gervais confesses to having been dismayed by the political approach to this issue so far.
"It was certainly predictable and unavoidable that the spectacular stand-off we saw recently would bring to the surface any underlying latent negative sentiments of the common citizen, who has been left without any sound guiding policies on this matter."
The consequences of this policy vacuum are serious, he adds; and the effects are not felt only by irregular asylum seekers.
"The scourge of racist and xenophobic intolerance is such that even Maltese citizens of foreign extraction are not protected and are the subject of unwritten institutionalised discriminatory rules when it comes to access to education and training, employment and justice, just to name a few..."
There is also an institutional lacuna in this regard: Gervais points towards the absence of any local authority equipped to deal with such discrimination.
"The National Commission for the Promotion of Equality is perceived as a toothless government policy resonance box, which is unable to fulfil its intended role to combat discrimination and intolerance. So NGOs were left alone to confront the ugly monster of racism and xenophobia that has accompanied the wave of immigration..."
Though regrettable, this situation is by no means unique to Malta.
"Having said all this, the Maltese certainly do not have a monopoly on acts of racism and xenophobic attitudes. These are found, to different degrees, even in Malta's EU partner countries, which have more advanced integration policies and procedures towards immigration and integration."
Naturally this brings us to the altogether more difficult problem of treating the malady rather than merely diagnosing it. And while there is clearly no such thing as a magic wand solution, this does not mean there are no courses of action available at all.
"Immigration in Malta and elsewhere in the world is a double-sided coin. In times of crisis, immigration entails human resources displacement, and 'one country's brain drain is another's brain gain'. Without going into any details or legal merits, the USA, Canada and Australia are just a few examples of countries where the population and social fabric are made of immigrants; and they are amongst the world leading nations when it comes to global development centred on technological innovation."
Yet here in Malta, there has been no real effort to acknowledge the changing demographics of the country.
"I admit this might sound provocative, but while discrimination and xenophobia is prohibited by Maltese law and in public service policy, isn't it strange that with the sizeable proportion of Maltese citizens of foreign descent (including black Africans and their offspring) there is not even a symbolic member from the minority groups within the law enforcement, diplomatic service, professional and even public administrative agencies? Even NGOS and the media, which are rightly so vocal in the war on racism and xenophobia, rarely include any such people in their own structures."
Rather than view immigration only as a problem, Gervais argues that it should be seen also as an opportunity which can even be turned into a win-win situation, if only a concerted effort were made to adopt a more positive and less alarming political approach to the problem.
"As an island nation with all that this entails in terms of demographics... and given its geo-strategic position at the cross-roads of the Mediterranean, Malta has always benefited from an injection of foreign dimension in many respects. There are many other gains that the Maltese population and Malta could draw from a controlled immigration, for its survival as a nation. But this entails long-term vision and strategic choices that go far beyond the short lifespan of individual politician's careers."
But by threatening mass-deportation in defiance of the human rights convention, Malta has arguably moved in the opposite direction.
"Ad hoc spectacular diplomacy is counter-productive and self-damaging," Gervais points out. "Malta stands to gain more respect by having an assertive coherent integrated immigration and integration policy that is in line with national interests and respectful of international law."
More from Raphael Vassallo
More in Interview
Unfairness makes Maltese businesses 'second-class' | Abigail Mamo
Raphael Vassallo
Now is the time to learn from past mistakes | Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca
Libya: a conflict between hope and pragmatism | James Sater
The only way is up | David Agius
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It was 40 degrees, mostly sunny, and windy this morning when I went to the gym. I stayed about an hour after my workout to help Amy seal envelopes for the golf tournament mailing.
We had a lot of nasty weather yesterday and last night. We were under tornado watch for most of the day and last night and at times under a warning. I only had high winds and heavy rain here at the house. Trees were down in some areas not far from here. Colin was not happy with the television alarm warnings going off constantly.
Today we are still under a wind advisory until 6pm with mostly sunny skies but winds 20 to 30 mph and gusts near 50.


My new approach to washing the dishes is to not wash them and just tell people it's part of a science experiment my kids are doing.
There should be a service where you can rent parents to go see your kids play sports in your place.
Save your voice calling for your kids. Just open a bag of chips and they'll materialize out of nowhere.
Whenever I feel like a bad parent, I pick myself back up by thinking about the parents who brought their children to Jurassic World for vacation knowing exactly what happened at Jurassic Park.
Today my toddler farted at the dinner table, told me she broke her chair, and then burst out laughing. So, I gave her the password to my twitter account.
A pretty good way to tell if someone has kids is to ask them how many cups of coffee they drink just to get through a Wednesday.
I buy my kids cereal based on which kinds I think my vacuum cleaner will be able to pick up best.
I highly suggest you tell your kids to help clean up. They won't do it, but they will disappear and leave you the hell alone for a few.
My dad is vacuuming while chewing sunflower seeds and he's spitting them out right in front of the vacuum to clean them up as he goes. I have so much still to learn from this man that gave me life.
Mom Truth #78: Sometimes I buy chips that are spicy because I know my kids won't eat them.
[walks into maternity ward with my teenagers] Nurse: Can I help you? Me: What's your return policy?
I know this would be wrong, but how much do you think I would have to pay my 5-yr-old's teachers to never send home another art project?
Anytime I take my kid to a store with a toy department, I always blast Eye Of The Tiger on the way there to help me stay strong when they freak out about whatever thing I refuse to buy them.
I'm totally into baby-wearing, but I mostly wear them as a hat.
My kid complained there's "too much chocolate" in his ice cream so I'm making him read "The Road."
I always choose the tiger when I ride a carousel so people know I mean business.
If persuading my kids to eat the dinner I cook every night doesn't count as sales experience, I don't know what does.
Making breakfast for a child: Step 1: take order. Step 2: make whatever you want because they're going to hate it & you'll end up eating it.
Can the lady-friendly chips concept be converted to parent-friendly chips, so my daughter can't hear me crunching from the next room then come running to find me?


text:
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text:
YWAM Memorial Remembering those who gave their lives.
Doug Kinne
Doug Kinne, MD Medical Missionary – Finisher
Doug Kinne, had worked as a physician in Petoskey Michigan so long he said that, "kids I'd delivered as an Obstetrician were themselves going into missions." But Doug and his wife Jan had a growing conviction that there was something more for them and so at age 49 and 48 respectively, they joined YWAM, serving in Guyana, Albania and the Ukraine, among many places.
I first met Doug when he came to lead the Crossroads DTS in Kona Hawaii, but worked with him closely after 1997, when he was asked to give leadership to YWAM's local College of Counseling & Health Care on the University of the Nations-Kona Campus. With a heart and vision that bridged both the counseling and health care streams, Doug helped develop the HIV/AIDS and Children's Social Service courses as well as seminars introducing health professionals to missions. Doug gave wise counsel serving on the Kona Academic Leadership Team and as a member of the UofN CHC Int'l. Committee. In missions, he knew he was doing what he was meant to do and he wanted to make his life count.
In early 2000, Doug was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died in October of that year. For me he was a mentor, an advocate and a friend.
Doug had commented to a number of us, that "For the first half of my life I made a living, but for the second half, I'm making a difference."
His wife, Jan Kinne Conway has recently published a book about Doug and her journey into missions entitled THE FINISHER – A NEW PATH FOR YOUR SECOND HALF.
Year of Death 2000
Ahmed Abdi Welli
Karin Lautrup Ramachandra
Sumalee "Mot" Phromtarawong
Andy French
SAMUEL DIAZ
The Last Words of St Teresa of Avila
My Lord, it is time to move on.
Well then, may your will be done.
O my Lord and my Spouse,
the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time for us to meet one another.
© 2019 YWAM Memorial. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy | YWAM International | YWAM-Mercy


Wouldst make thy life go fair and square?
Must ever act as if new-born.
And all the future leave to the All-Seeing.
We know we need to let go, to forgive; most of all we know we need to move on.
How do we do that when the injustice, the hurt, the humiliation, the pain, the loss is still so fresh and sharp, even though the original incident happened years ago?
The best, most effective way is to stop looking at the past and the thing that happened. Instead, look to the future.
But what if we can't tear your focus away from the past; what if the future has no joy or hope?
The solution is to build a better image of the future, something we can look forward to. If we can't do this then that means we've built up a much stronger, more compelling image of the past than we have of the future.
Focus on you. Focus on where you are headed. Focus on your dreams. If this is too much and you can't do it, then focus on the next best step you can take in the next moment, the next hour, the next part of the day. Keep focusing on this–taking the next best step. Focus on it minute by minute.
Be relentless about this focus and you will find one day that you have dropped the heavy baggage from the past–the injustices and insults, the hurts and humiliations, the pain and pessimism.
Give it a try and let me know how it's working out for you. You can do it!
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Sorting is an algorithm that arranges the elements of a list in a certain order [either ascending or descending].
Bubble sort is the simplest sorting algorithm. It works by iterating the input array from the first element to the last, comparing each pair of elements and swapping them if needed. Bubble sort continues its iterations until no more swaps are needed. This algorithm is not suitable for large datasets as its average and worst case complexity is of Ο(n2) where n is the number of items.
The only significant advantage that bubble sort has over other implementations is that it can detect whether the input list is already sorted or not.
We take an unsorted array for our example. Bubble sort takes Ο(n2) time so we're keeping it short and precise.
Bubble sort starts with very first two elements, comparing them to check which one is greater.
In this case, value 23 is greater than 20, so it is already in sorted locations. Next, we compare 23 with 21.
We find that 21 is smaller than 23 and these two values must be swapped.
Next, we compare the 23 and 25. We find that both are in already sorted positions.
We know then that 15 is smaller 25 and these values are not sorted. Let's swap these values and we find that we have reached the end of the array.
Notice that after each iteration, at least one value moves at the end.
And when there's no swap required, bubble sorts learns that an array is completely sorted.
So far, we have seen what is bubble sort and how it works so now let's implement bubble sort using Java.
Let's write bubble sorting logic in three different ways such as iterative, recursively and optimized.
// is moved (or bubbled) to end.
The above logic for bubble sort algorithm takes O(n2) (even in best case). We can improve it by using one extra flag. No more swaps indicate the completion of sorting. If the list is already sorted, we can use this flag to skip the remaining passes.
This modified version improves the best case of bubble sort to O(n).
I will paste the complete program for your reference here.


Jacob Fadley served multiple tours in Iraq, and got into a near-fatal car accident upon his return home. He visits a psychologist to understand the PTSD he is suffering from; the therapist believes childhood physical abuse has had a significant impact on his current mental state.
Fadley was not prepared for his experiences in combat. He speaks with the director of The Sparta Project, a retreat for veterans suffering from PTSD. His wife helps him pack and drops him off at the airport.
Fadley arrives at a healing camp for military veterans, to try and confront the post-traumatic stress disorder he developed following childhood trauma and later, as a combat photographer. Veterans share their goals and talk about military experiences.
Fadley used his military service as a way to validate childhood physical abuse, but has realized he needed to be vulnerable to heal. He asks his wife if she has noticed changes in his behavior. He speaks with his therapist about the mental health retreat.


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Sept. 12—In what could fairly be described as a ``shot heard 'round the world,'' Rachel Brown, candidate for the 4th C.D. Democratic Congressional nomination in Massachusettts, demolished longtime incumbent Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in a one-hour televised debate on Barney's home turf, in Newton, on Sept. 7. The primary will be held Sept. 14. Brown, 29 years old, a member of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) running in her first campaign, handled the lying and blustering Frank—a self-proclaimed master debater—with a calm confidence which rattled not only the befuddled Frank, but his controllers, who are losing their grip on the U.S. population.
LaRouche Democrat Rachel Brown, running for the Democratic nomination for Congress in Massachusetts, against incumbent Rep. Barney Frank, confidently demolished the sophistical, blustering Barney, in a Sept. 7 TV debate, rattling both Frank and his Wall Street and Boston Vault controllers. Brown contrasted the LaRouche Plan for rebuilding the U.S. and world economies, with Bailout Barney's toadying for the banks.
The complete transcript of the historic debate between Rachel Brown and Barney Frank, aired live from the studio of New-TV, in Newton, Mass. Sept. 7.
The Inter-Alpha Group of Banks was formed for the explicit purpose of destroying not only the existence, but the very concept, of national sovereignty—with the United States as its primary target—as a way of permanently reducing the population of the planet. At the center of this spider-web of international banks is the Venetian-style manipulator, Lord Jacob Rothschild, who is virtually a member of the British royal family.
What Is There To Celebrate, Now?
LaRouche, writes that two, possibly three developments make his 88th birthday an historically significant occassion: One, the confirmation of his July 25, 2007 warning of the crash of the global financial system, which occurred immediatly afterwards; two, his stunning April 11, 2009 anaylsis, now validated, that President Obama is a failed personality, in the image of Nero and Hitler; and third: that unless his proposals are immediately enacted, the entire planet will disintegrate in a chain-reaction collapse of the world economy.
The potential for the transformation of Eurasia through large-scale infrastructure projects, was significantly advanced by Russian Prime Minister Putin's August tour of Siberia and the Far East, which culminated in the Sept. 6-9 Baikal Economic Forum, in Irkutsk, eastern Siberia.
The media-driven fury in Germany around the anti-immigrant rantings of Thilo Sarrazin is aimed at diverting attention away from the disintegration of the global financial system.
by Oyang Teng and Sky Shields of the LaRouche Basement Team.
The adoption of the NAWAPA project will inaugurate an era of continental-scale infrastructure development that will revolutionize the very idea of infrastructure as mankind's conscious management of the biosphere. A program for truly 'greening' the planet requires the elimination of solar panels, and replacing them with high energy-flux density power sources, including chlorophyll for photosynthesis.
Sept. 5 (EIRNS)—Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Reich accurately locates Nerobama vs. FDR, in his latest blog posting about mass unemployment, which calls for a "new WPA" to create immediate employment on a large scale in infrastructure.
In "The Great Jobs Depression Worsens, and the Choice Ahead Grows Starker," Reich, noting the constantly growing number of Americans outside the workforce, puts "real unemployment" at 22 million, not including those forced to work part-time (who are another 9 million officially). "The last time we saw anything on this scale was in the 1930s. The last time we did anything about this on the scale necessary to reverse the trend was in the 1930s and 1940s.... We know what to do. We need massive public spending on jobs—infrastructure, schools, parks—a new WPA."
Nerobama? "Obama should be storming the country, demanding the largest responses to the jobs emergency in history," said Reich. "Instead, Obama is all over the map: a mosque controversy, an Israeli-Palestinian peace talk (that may take years to complete, if ever), a symbolic withdrawal from Iraq, and lots of little tax-cutting ideas."
Economists are trying to estimate the employment creation needed even to return to 5% unemployment: Leo Hindery says 23 million jobs; Reich, 22 million jobs; the Economic Policy Institute (affiliated with the AFL-CIO), 17 million jobs; former Clinton economic advisor Laura Tyson, 20 million jobs. This means a net 300,000-400,000 new jobs created, on average, every month for five years.
But there is no "average" in this breakdown crisis. As Lyndon LaRouche says, the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) concept, as he has revived it, can create 3-4 million skilled and unskilled jobs as soon as it is launched; and even before that, hundreds of thousands of jobs in state and local government, and high-speed rail transport can be created on an emergency basis, if Obama is booted out and Glass-Steagall implemented to free up the nation's credit.
Sept. 5 (EIRNS)—Economist Laura D'Andrea Tyson of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board pushed for large-scale infrastructure spending, in an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" this morning, saying, "Let's not forget what's important. Let's focus on job creation."
Emphasizing that "24 million people are still looking for full-time work," Tyson recommended "something like a new WPA" to the Congress and her deaf boss at the White House. "We should look at infrastructure because we know—before the recession, before the great recession, we know that we were vastly underspending on the nation's infrastructure.... Infrastructure spending is terrific in two ways. It creates demand right away, when you go out and get the project started and get the workers started and get all—it also creates the ability to grow and be productive in the future.... You want to start with something really big; start with developing a high-speed rail system. Start with developing, improving our air control, modernizing our air control traffic system, for goodness sake."
After Tyson's enthusiasm on the subject of big infrastructure now, Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, virtually the official economist of the U.S. news media, tried to throw cold water on it. "But it's important to realize, though, that none of this is going to make a difference in the next year," Zandi lied. "I mean, these are projects that are long-lived and take a long time. And we have to pay for them. We can't do this until we pay for them."
Sept. 11 (EIRNS)—Last year, the Obama Administration turned down more than 2,000 distressed municipalities, for Federal grant money to keep their fire and rescue services up to strength. Among them was the City of Detroit, which suffered fires Sept. 7 that destroyed 71 homes and caused extensive damage. Firefighters fought 85 blazes in four hours. As the city admitted this week, budget cuts have decimated vital services. Response time and staffing were terribly inadequate to the Sept. 7 conflagration.
Stiffing cities is par for the course for the Obama White House, as the President continues in his own world about, "green jobs," and "upward job trends."
On Sept. 10, Detroit officials announced their immediate recourse: They filed for a grant of $11 million in Federal aid to strengthen their fire and rescue department as fast as possible. This request goes to a fund set up for this year by Congress, called the Adequate Fire & Emergency Responses program, which has an inadequate total of only $420 million to dole out to thousands of localities which are applying.
This Detroit crisis is the latest in dramatic manifestation of the urgency of getting through the Glass-Steagall reinstatement, and issuing Federal credits and grants on the scale required to keep in operation the basic services and staffing of local and state governments cross country.
Also on Sept. 10, in Detroit, a citizens group, Committee Against Utility Shutoffs (CAUS), made the specific appeal that cut-offs of electric and gas supplies to impoverished households that can't pay bills be stopped. With no other resort, the practice of illegal tapping into electric lines is increasing. This contributed to the Sept. 7 fires, and in general, constitutes a hazard.
Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—Malaysia's biodiesel industry has come near to a total collapse because of a slight rise in palm oil prices, plus a delay in governmental mandates to force use of palm-oil-based diesel.
This "industry," which takes high-quality palm oil suitable for human consumption and turns it into low-quality diesel fuel at high cost, produced only 137 metric tons last month, a 95% drop from the previous month's output of 2,518 tons, and 99% from 12,640 tons in March, which is, in itself, a fraction of the 2.6-million-ton installed annual capacity.
Malaysian Biodiesel Association vice president U.R. Unnithan says the problem is "the high cost of production and the lack of the much needed incentive and subsidies from the Government."
There is almost $7 billion invested in biodiesel production facilities in Malaysia, or enough to have built, instead, a few nuclear plants.
Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s recently published biennial report, "International Status and Prospects of Nuclear Power," makes clear that one of the major barriers to the rapid development of nuclear power across the globe is the growing shortage of nuclear-skilled manpower. The availability of human resources is a critical challenge to the expansion and growth of nuclear power. It is a challenge for the nuclear industry to recruit and train a large number of qualified individuals, just to replace those very experienced individuals who are retiring, the report said.
Years of rule by the anti-nuclear, anti-development authorities in the developed countries, manipulated by the investment bankers and various supranational financial institutions, using the no-growth environmentalist lobby as their legitimate spokespersons, have created this critical vacuum. Of the more than 40 countries that have expressed an interest in developing nuclear power in recent years, over 20 are actively considering nuclear power programs to meet their energy needs. However, their programs may get delayed, due to the lack of human resources, causing worsening economic distress for the people of all those countries.
Another disappointment cited in this report is that only a few countries currently use nuclear energy for purposes other than electricity production, and even then, only to a limited extent. However, it expressed hope that nuclear power use in non-electricity generation applications may increase in the future for applications such as desalination of seawater, district heating, process heat for industrial applications and coal liquefaction, and hydrogen production.
On the positive end, the report makes evident that the IAEA foresees no shortage of uranium in the short- to medium-term future. It also points out that the current enrichment and fuel-fabrication capacities are adequate to meet the expected demand for the next decade.
Sept. 8 (EIRNS)—In March 2010, the China National Nuclear Corporation announced that it would be building its first nuclear power base, "China Nuclear Power City," at Haiyan in coastal Zhejiang province, 70 miles southwest of Shanghai on the Yangtze delta. In Zhejiang province there are five nuclear reactors in operation and two more under construction. In July, local and provincial officials met to formally endorse the project, and to finalize the location, scope, and industries involved. Detailed engineering and construction preparation work was expected to start almost immediately.
In addition to the nuclear power plants, Haiyan hosts the headquarters of 18 leading Chinese nuclear equipment suppliers as well as branch offices of all the major Chinese nuclear design institutes and construction companies. The Nuclear City is expected to have four main areas of work: development of the nuclear power equipment manufacturing industry; nuclear training and education; applied nuclear science industries (medical, agricultural, radiation detection, and tracing); and promotion of the nuclear industry. It was said to have been modelled on Burgundy, France, which has become something of the center of the French nuclear industry complex.
There are also two reactors under construction at the Fangjiashan plant. By 2014, when all nine units should be in operation, electrical generating capacity will total some 6300 MWe.
Sept. 11 (EIRNS)—Senior Democratic Party officials have conceded that they failed to see the early signs of Barack Obama's synthetic personality, but now clearly recognize that the President is a psychological basket-case. Witness yesterday's White House press conference—Obama's first such event since May. The President spent most of the time blaming everyone, from the Congressional Democrats, to George W. Bush, to the Congressional Republicans, for the economic mess that he has inherited, and for which he is now (rightly) blamed.
Behind the scenes, the President and his Chicago White House posse are reportedly scrambling to preempt what is now seen as a full-scale revolt by endangered House Democrats. To head off any possibility of some concrete legislative action during the brief post-Labor Day session, which begins Sept. 13-14, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), under White House orders, is saying that she may cut the House session, already scheduled for a mere three weeks, back by ten days. As of now, House members are supposed to end their deliberations on Oct. 8, but Pelosi is threatening to gavel them out of session before the end of September.
Sept. 11 (EIRNS)—Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), the lead target of the Obama White House's racist Operation Frühmenschen revival, is fully mobilized in the final days before his Sept. 14 primary election. In the past few days, former President Bill Clinton and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have both recorded endorsements of Rangel, that are going out as robo-calls to all voters in Rangel's Harlem district. In his recording, Bloomberg says, "Tough times require tough leadership, and that is what Charlie Rangel has provided for us, and will continue to provide for us going forward." Clinton's endorsement will carry special weight, given both his enormous popularity, particularly in the African-American community, and the fact that the headquarters of the Clinton Foundation is in Harlem.
A victory for Rangel will be a dramatic defeat for Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. The House Speaker played a vicious role in forcing Rangel to step down from the chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and the Obama White House has been running a non-stop effort to oust Rangel, covertly funding his challengers, particularly Adam Clayton Powell IV, who has campaigned as an "Obama Democrat," a foolish move.
Lyndon LaRouche commented today that Sept. 15 will be a "break point" in the current political situation. Between the Rangel race in New York and LaRouche Democrat Rachel Brown's Sept. 14 primary challenge to Barney Frank in Massachusetts, this could be a real setback for Pelosi and Frank.
Sept. 10 (EIRNS)—In July, Lyndon LaRouche denounced the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the Soros-Pelosi-Obama-backed thug apparatus against Congress, as unconstitutional, and called for it to be "uprooted" and abolished.
On Sept. 9, the Tulsa World reported that Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) said "that the Office of Congressional Ethics might need to be eliminated." With that, Boren is the first Democrat, beyond members of the Congressional Black Caucus, to come out for action against OCE. In 2008, after strong-arming and rule-breaking by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the OCE was created by a one vote margin of 207-206, after the vote was kept open past deadline, and members were pressured to change their votes. Boren was the only Oklahoma Congressman to vote for OCE. But now, after OCE went after Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) in a high-profile accusation, but then dismissed the charges as unfounded on Sept. 9, Boren has defended Lucas's record and reputation, and blasted the OCE.
On Sept. 8, the Washington Independent reported that the opposition is growing against OCE, but that the Republican leaders will not say whether they will eliminate it if the GOP wins the House.
There is already a bill by Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) and 19 other members of the Black Caucus, to curtail the powers of the OCE. When she introduced the bill, she declared that "OCE is currently the accuser, judge, and jury. This isn't the case in the American justice system, and it shouldn't be so in Congress." Since the House Ethics Committee's witchhunt against Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) became official—and since their decisions to fight back—opposition against OCE has grown.
Sept. 10 (EIRNS)—President Obama came out to counter Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the drug cartel's threat to Mexico, one day after she had presented an alarming, and accurate assessment of the horror to which Mexico is being subjected by the drug cartels. Obama's decision a year ago to stop using Federal law to prosecute marijuana trafficking in California has aided the drug cartels in Mexico, facilitating an explosion of purveyors (100 in San Diego alone) of highly concentrated "super-pot" products, mostly made with marijuana trafficked from Mexico.
In the discussion following her address to the Council on Foreign Relations on Sept. 8, Clinton stated that the drug-trafficking threat in the Western Hemisphere "is in some cases morphing into, or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency, in Mexico and Central America." Citing the appearance of car bombs in Mexico, she noted that Mexico "is looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narcotraffickers control certain parts of the country ... significant parts; in Colombia, it got to the point where, you know, more than a third of the country—nearly 40% of the country at one time or another was controlled by the insurgents, by FARC."
In an exclusive interview the next day with the Los Angeles La Opinion daily, Obama flatly contradicted Clinton, asserting that "Mexico is a broad and progressive democracy, with a growing economy, and consequently you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago."
Sept. 8 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche commented today that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's decision not to seek a seventh term, will drive President Obama wild, with the expectation that his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel will leave the White House to campaign to succeed Daley. Financial Times Washington bureau chief Ed Luce headlines today's column, "Disaster Looms at the Polls as President Finally Eyes Economy." He writes, "While Mr. Obama is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, his fellow Democrats are putting on dresses and heading for the lifeboats."
Obama provoked more questions about his sanity today, when he went to Cleveland for an almost hour-long Jeremiad against House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who had demanded two weeks ago, in the same city, that Obama fire White House economics advisor Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. It was already clear that the White House cabal had been badly stung by Boehner's call; after today, one can only guess what the level of hysteria was in that looney-bin.
Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—The Washington Post calls the Obama Administration, "The Incredible Shrinking Presidency"; Time magazine publishes an article, and a video interview titled, "Why Is Obama Mr. Unpopular?"; CNN's Situation Room asks Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic Party, if the party is going to cut off election funding for Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) and any other Democrat in Congress who criticizes the President; and the Post, Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other newspapers publicize polls that the Republicans are going to mop up in the mid-term elections because of Obama.
Lyndon LaRouche nailed the situation in a discussion today: "The President is not in good mental health," and is "approaching a crack-up." This means that "there's only one thing on the agenda for action ... there's only one thing that can be done, which has a correlation of forces behind it that will work: the immediate retirement of this President, combined with, and possibly triggered by, the onset of the existing proposed law, draft law, which is sitting there, ready to be voted up—for the renewal of the original Glass-Steagall policy." LaRouche specified that the Democrats up for re-election can survive in only one way—come out en masse for restoring Glass-Steagall. This will only work if it is done in large numbers, and it would drive Obama out, said LaRouche.
Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—In mid-August, construction was completed on the Sheikh Zayed Canal, to convey Nile water from Lake Nasser, westward to the Toshka Desert oases, to ultimately establish a new 100,000-acre area of irrigated farming, and domicile for 3 million people. The main transfer canal runs more than 50 km westward from the giant Mubarak Pumping Station, adjacent to Lake Nasser. This giant pump operation, completed in 2005, is considered one of the world's "mega" engineering projects.
These Upper Egypt canals, pumps, new town sites, and farming areas are in the spirit of geo-engineering new resources for the future, in opposition to the "fixed resources" mind-set of the era of globalization, now crashing to a close.
The overall "Toshka Project" was inaugurated in January 1997, and is to be completed by 2020. Its official name is the National Project for Developing Upper Egypt (NPDUE). Its aim is to "go out from the Nile Valley," and constitute new agro-industrial towns, for what is sometimes called a "New Delta" project. The Nile canal water runs along a route some geologists believe was the former western branch of the Nile. Groundwater, as well as Nile flow, will be used for the new irrigation programs.
Eventually, 10% of Egypt's allotment of Nile flow may be channeled into this new Toshka Desert development project. The Nile River waters are shared by 10 nations, and opponents of improvements in use of the water are attempting to play off the Nile Basin countries against each other. However, with eventual nuclear-powered desalination in the region, plus use of aquifer water in the meantime—such as that of the Nubian Aquifer—there is no need to bow to apparent physical constraints.
Because of the volume of water to be conveyed, a canal, not a pipeline was used. To reduce seepage, construction has involved lining the canal with layers of cement, sand, concrete, and polymer sheeting, plus a final coating of paint.
The Zayed Canal was named in recognition of the $100 million donation to the project, made through the Abu Dhabi development fund, by Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan El Nahayan, President of the U.A.E.
Sept. 6 (EIRNS)—In a discussion with EIR, Dr. Mohamed Mounir Megahed, a former director of Egypt's nuclear power authority, confirmed that Egypt will be issuing a tender for the construction of a nuclear power stations at the El Dabaa site on the Mediterranean. The specifications will be finished by the end of the year and a tender will follow soon after. This will be the culmination of the relaunching of Egypt's nuclear program in 2007.
Megahed said the site was proposed many years ago for a reactor. The Worley Parsons company of Australia re-studied the site and confirmed that it was still the best site for a reactor. What is new is the fact that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak intervened to prevent hotel developers from grabbing the land; he said that all major nuclear power station constructors have made presentations, including the U.S.A.'s Westinghouse, the Chinese, Russians, French, and South Koreans. He said already 40 Egyptian experts are undergoing training programs in Russia.
Megahed said the first power station will be used exclusively for electricity, but follow-on projects would involved desalination.
The name "Parsons" in Worley Parsons comes from the acquisition of Parson EE, the hydrocarbon engineering division of The Ralph M. Parsons Co. which designed the NAWAPA project. Worley Parsons also bought out the American nuclear engineering company UniField Engineering.
Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—A Time magazine cover story, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace," has the Israeli right wing screaming that Time has committed a "blood libel" against Israel. Author Karl Vick writes that "Israelis are no longer preoccupied with" peace with the Palestinians. "They're otherwise engaged: They're making money; they're enjoying the rays of the late summer ... they have moved on." Vick has visited Ashod—about 14 miles north of Gaza, and quotes an Israeli real estate agent there named Heli Itach, who tells him, "Even when the Qassams fell, we continued to sell.... What the people see on the TV there is not true here.... I sold, this week, 12 apartments. You're not a client, I tell you the truth." Another real estate seller says, "People are indifferent. They don't care if there's going to be war. They don't care if there's going to be peace. They don't care. They live in the moment."
Vick counterposes this hedonistic, ultra-chic scene to the Washington summit that was about to begin, that brought together three Presidents, a King, and a Prime Minister for peace talks that are going nowhere.
Time's article is the latest of a spate of comments from U.S. institutions that ask if Israel has become a strategic liability. Even Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan—commander of secret assassinations—told the Israeli Knesset on June 1, one day after the Israeli commandos killed an American citizen on the humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza, that Israel is turning from an "asset" into a "burden" to the United States.
Sept. 10 (EIRNS)—National Security Advisor Jim Jones is proposing a multi-national peacekeeping force for the West Bank, after a state agreement, like the peacekeeping force in Sinai or the Lebanon border force. Israel opposes this completely, says the Jerusalem Post. "Experience shows us that we cannot trust multi-national forces to do the job like in Lebanon," one senior defense official said. "If the Palestinians are not capable of preventing the rise of terrorism independently, they are not yet ready to receive control of the territory." Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly supported this. The Post adds, "Another idea being floated is the deployment of a pan-Arab force in the Gaza Strip as a way to assist the PA in restoring a foothold there."
Sept. 6 (EIRNS)—UN investigators, ordered to write a report about Israel's atomic capabilities, said they couldn't compile enough information to assess Israel's nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has released documents showing a split between member countries who want more light shed on Israel's nuclear work, and others that say that the IAEA doesn't have the right to pry. In September 2009, the IAEA's 151 members voted to have it review Israel's program, as part of an effort to create a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East. Israel has refused to cooperate with IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano's inquiry, on "political and legal" grounds. Canada, the U.K., and U.S. opposed the probe, saying that the inquiry risked turning the IAEA into a political battleground, according to the documents. Others, including China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey, supported the investigation. This will be discussed at the IAEA's annual General Conference which convenes Sept. 20 in Vienna.
Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—The IAEA'S latest report on Iran's nuclear program actually breaks no new ground, providing technical data on the volume of low-enriched uranium produced by Iran, and quantities of uranium enriched to 20%. Based on review of all available information, the report concludes that the agency has received insufficient information from Iran to accurately determine whether work has taken place on weaponization since 2004. A preliminary reading is that the media hype about an Iranian nuclear breakout is not consistent with the 11-page IAEA document.
Sept. 10 (EIRNS)—South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in Moscow for a two-day visit, met first with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and announced that the two nations will work closely together on both the development of the Russian Far East, and on the diplomatic dead-lock between North and South Korea since the sinking of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan in March.
Lee and Putin agreed to "substantial collaboration" to develop Siberia and the Far East, as beneficial for both nations. They emphasized that solving the conflict between North and South Korea was urgent, both to assure peace, and in order to complete the vision of connecting the Eurasian rail lines from Russia into South Korea, and constructing an oil and gas pipeline through the North to the South.
LaRouche noted the importance of this Korean/Russian cooperation in terms of bringing Japan into the regional scheme. "It's complicated," LaRouche said. "The Japan question in Asia, is a very crucial question, which depends, from the standpoint of Russia, on Japan's relationship to China. So, Japan's relationship to China is crucial for Japan's relationship to Siberia and Russia in particular, as such. The Koreans are much freer on this thing, which is crucial to this whole development of this part of the world. Japan has a technological base which is very useful for this entire area; and the interest and survival of Japan depends upon it. But Japan has been a 'bad guy,' in a sense, in some respects, in this area; where Korea—South Korea, in particular—is neutral on that issue. I mean, you have conflicts in Asia which are still there, and you cannot ignore them. But what you do, if you bring a formula into place, between Russia and South Korea, Japan can come in on that."
Sept. 6 (EIRNS)—A London-based private military company (PMC), Blue Hackle, providing security in Afghanistan, has been told to leave the country because of the company's involvement in smuggling arms out of Afghanistan to some other killing fields. Officials said President Hamid Karzai revoked Blue Hackle's operating license on Sept. 5, to take effect immediately. But that did not go well with British allies, such as Gen. David Petraeus, who reportedly met with Karzai to pressure him to reverse his decision. The Scotsman reported that "tense meetings between Karzai, General David Petraeus ... and other senior western officials were taking place in Kabul."
Although the news broke today, the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) had unearthed Blue Hackle's smuggling operation on Aug. 30, when it seized "a large amount of military equipment including arms and munitions" from a private security firm. NDS said the mat@aaeriel was "being illegally transferred by a private security company from Kabul city to the airport and then to unknown destination." The NDS statement named the security firm as Blue Hackle, a member of the British Association of Private Security Companies. "The weapons were provided to this company by arms smugglers," NDS said, adding that they had been confiscated amid an investigation.
Sept. 6 (EIRNS)—The 20-day strike by public-sector workers in South Africa was halted for three weeks today by trade union leaders, so that members can consider the government's latest offer. The leaders of the 1.3 million-member public-sector workers union have not accepted the offer.
As the global economic crisis deepens, there has been a wave of strikes or threats of strikes in South Africa, Africa's largest economy, as the cost of living is growing faster than earnings for those fortunate enough to have a job. Although some miners' strikes have been settled, others have not, and about 1.3 million civil servants have been on strike for nearly three weeks, leading to the closing of schools and crippling of hospitals.
The government says that there is no money available beyond what has been put forward in the latest offer, and that something else would have to be cut from the budget if it offered more. The latest offer still lags behind price increases, according to reports. The government earlier this year dismantled its project to develop its Pebble Bed modular fourth generation nuclear reactor, saying that it was too expensive. South Africa reportedly had a ten-year advantage over other nations working on this technology.
The strike wave, which has shut down some tire and automobile manufacturing concerns, threatens the ability of the government to survive. President Jacob Zuma was elected with the support of organized labor. Since South Africa plays a critical role in the economies of southern Africa, if the ruling party, the African National Congress, loses its traditional alliance with labor by refusing to budge in its battle with the civil servants, all southern Africa would be destabilized as a result. The next most vulnerable would be Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—The Mozambique government announced today that it was rescinding the announced price increases for bread, electricity, and water. The decision to raise bread prices by 30%, along with substantial increases in electricity and water prices, led to riots in Maputo, the capital, Sept. 1-3 which resulted in 10 deaths, according to reports, as troops in some cases resorted to live ammunition.
Sharp recent increases in wheat and other food prices could trigger a repeat of the 2007-08 unrest across Africa. Since African countries are to a large degree dependent on food imports, because the globalization policies imposed by the ruling IMF monetary system prevent the development of infrastructure and industry, they are forced to rely on exporting cash crops, as opposed to prioritizing food production for the domestic market. Prices of cereals, sugar, and meat are up over 15% since last year. Mozambique has recently tacked on a more than 10% increase of water and electricity costs.
On Sept. 2, the government announced that the price hikes would be irreversible. Protesters reportedly had intended to continue the demonstrations.
In addition to recently proposed investments of $13 billion from China, Mozambique has made agreements to develop hydroelectric generating capacity, electrical transmission lines, and a huge mining development. Despite these investment prospects, Mozambique is still extremely vulnerable to destabilization because of the imposed rules of globalization, which prevent the necessary development of infrastructure to advance agricultural production for local consumption. Diverting land use that could potentially produce food, to cash-crop biofuel production, had left the African countries which have been sucked into these ventures more dependent on food imports. The crisis calls into question Mozambique's recovery from the effects of a prolonged civil war.
With or without investment prospects, the globalized system has made African countries extremely vulnerable to food price increases resulting from speculation.


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VP Osinbajo condemns putting blame on victims of sexual harassment
September 9, 2020 September 10, 2020 Web DeskComment(0)
Nigeria's Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has condemned the notion that victims or potential victims of sexual harassment are architects of their fate especially by their attitude, dressing, or willingness to be in a compromising place with their violators.
He said the notion was wrong and should be resisted in every situation, stating that victim must always be seen as the victim and not to be blamed.
Prof. Osinbajo stated this on Wednesday at a webinar on Anti-Sexual Harassment themed "Finding Safe Spaces for Female Students in Nigerian Universities", organised by the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. The event was based on the book authored by notable journalist and former presidential spokesman, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi, titled NAKED ABUSE: SEX FOR GRADES IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES.
He said: "the victim must always be seen as the victim. There cannot be an excuse, especially given the power configuration between students and lecturers, that the victim could have somehow invited the abuse upon themselves.
"I think it is an important consideration to be made and we must not allow that notion to persist."
Advocating stricter punishment for rape offenders especially in situations involving lecturers and their female students, Prof. Osinbajo said "there cannot be an excuse especially given the power configuration between students and lecturers that the victim could have somehow invited the abuse upon themselves. I think it is an important consideration to be made and we must not allow that notion to persist.
"There is also the comparison sometimes made between demanding bribes for service and sex for grades.
"Sometimes people will argue that a bribe is a bribe and there is no reason why the punishment for sex as the currency of the bribe, should be stricter than an ordinary bribe."
Referring to Adeniyi's book, Prof. Osinbajo said developing and adhering to a set of ethical codes of conduct for conversations and interactions involving lecturers and students in universities would greatly address the problem.
He said: "to ensure that both faculty and students are sufficiently clear about the issues and rules, there is a need for a code of conduct or ethical guidelines based on best practices in appropriate student/lecturer interactions.
"It is important that these are clearly defined in ethical guidelines that are contained in some documents that people can refer to and see. It is important both for the lecturer and the student that there is some reference to some code of conduct."
Speaking further on ways of resolving issues around sexual harassment in Nigerian universities, Prof. Osinbajo said the search for answers to creating safe spaces for female students in universities must begin from the question of why is it that such an evidently rampant crime is so under-reported?
According to him, "there are obviously many cases of people who share their anecdotal experiences without necessarily reporting to the authorities.
"I think the answer is clearly that this low reportability is on account of the fact that many victims do not feel confident that they will get redress, or that they will be treated fairly or that they will not be visited with the same fearful consequences that were the subject of the demand in the first place.
"The fear that they will neither get a sympathetic nor understanding hearing, let alone justice, and that they will end up suffering the same consequences the predator had threatened would occur if they did not submit to their demands. Then there is, of course, the shame and stigma that could attend speaking up."
He added that in ensuring that safe spaces are created to at least the basics, which is providing the support and resources they need to report abusers.
He said every institution must make it easy for victims or potential victims to report perpetrators to trusted formal structures or secure channels created specifically for the purpose of resolving such cases.
Prof. Osinbajo also recommended the adoption of a mandatory whistleblower process emphasizing confidentiality, professional legal and medical help for victims or potential victims.
Dignitaries who also spoke at the webinar besides Adeniyi, the Guest Speaker, included the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege; the Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq; the First Lady of Ekiti State, Mrs Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi; and the Vice Chancellor of OAU, Prof. Eyitope Ogunbode.
Meanwhile, in another development, Prof. Osinbajo has underscored the synergy between the legislature and the executive in supporting policies and programmes of the administration especially those geared towards boosting the nation's economic base.
The Vice President stated this on Wednesday at a virtual Citizens' Dialogue on the Green Imperative Project.
The Green Imperative Project is a bilateral initiative between the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Brazilian government to develop Nigeria's agricultural production base through a mechanization programme that is spread across the 774 Local Government Areas in the country.
Source: Voice of Nigeria
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