themoscowtimes--2019-05-20--Russian Church Leader Calls to End Abortions to Boost Population

Russia legalized abortion in 1955 and has the second-highest abortion rate in the world after China. While Russia’s anti-abortion movement has largely failed to change the law, it has gained momentum in recent years, spurred by the rise of the Orthodox Church as a powerful political force.  The head of Russia’s Orthodox Church has proposed a national ban on abortion to boost the country's lagging population numbers.  “We must first of all remove the topic of abortion to the extent that it exists,” Patriarch Kirill was quoted as saying at a pro-life event in Moscow on Sunday by Interfax.  With an estimated 1 million fewer abortions per year, he projected population numbers could reach 156 million in the next decade and 166 million in 20 years.  Russia has grappled with a demographic crisis in recent years, with its population declining for the first time in a decade last year to 146.8 million.


thetelegraph--2019-01-04--Homosexuality is to blame for sexual abuse not Catholic church claims German cardinal

Homosexuality is to blame for sexual abuse, not Catholic church, claims German cardinal

A German cardinal on Friday provoked anger and controversy when he claimed the Catholic church was not responsible for sexual abuse by its clerics, and instead sought to pin the blame on homosexuality.  “What has happened in the church is no different from what is happening in society as a whole,” Cardinal Walter Brandmüller said. “The real scandal is that the Catholic church hasn’t distinguished itself from the rest of society.”  A study commissioned by the German Bishops Conference and published last year found that more than 3,600 children were sexually abused by Catholic clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014.  But Cardinal Brandmüller claimed that only a “vanishingly small number” of clergy had committed abuses. He said the real problem was homosexuality and claimed it is “statistically proven” that there is a link between homosexuality and abuse.  Society “forgets or covers up the fact that 80 per cent of cases of sexual assault in the church involved male youths not children,” he told Germany’s DPA news agency in an interview a few days ahead of his 90th birthday.  Cardinal Brandmüller’s outburst comes days after the Pope urged Catholic bishops in the US to confront the “sins and crimes” of sexual abuse by the clergy and “the efforts made to deny or conceal them”.

religious institutions and state relations


thetelegraph--2019-01-08--Smartphones are paving way for the Antichrist says head of Russian church

Smartphones are paving way for the Antichrist, says head of Russian church

The Russian Orthodox patriarch has warned that the popularity of smartphones is paving the way for the coming of the Antichrist.  In an interview on state television for Russian Orthodox Christmas on Monday, Patriarch Kirill warned that the widespread use of gadgets connected to the Internet has opened the possibility for “universal control over humanity”. The “devil acts very wisely” in offering people such a “toy”, he said.  "Such control from one place forebodes the coming of the Antichrist,” Patriarch Kirill said. “The Antichrist is the person that will be at the head of the world wide web controlling all of humanity. That means that the structure itself poses a danger. There shouldn't be a single centre, at least not in the foreseeable future, if we don't want to bring on the apocalypse."  The patriarch maintained he wasn't categorically against gadgets, but warned that people should be careful not to “fall into slavery to what's in your hands”.  “You should remain free inside and not fall under any addiction, not to alcohol, not to narcotics, not to gadgets,” he said.  The Russian Orthodox church has been trying to attract young believers, in part through the web. At a press conference featuring B-movie action star Steven Seagal in October, church officials announced they would create a council for youth affairs with a strong digital presence.


thetelegraph--2019-01-13--Rome authorities and Catholic church in unholy row over coins in Trevi Fountain

Throw a coin over your shoulder into Rome's Trevi Fountain, the legend says, and it will bring you good fortune and you will one day return to the Eternal City.  It is an essential tradition for millions of tourists. But few will have suspected their loose change would also spark a bitter row between Rome's secular authorities and the Catholic Church.  Traditionally, the €1.5 million (£1.3 million) of coins scooped out of the stunning Baroque fountain each year are actually destined for the Catholic charity, Caritas, to help the city’s poor and homeless.  Now Rome’s Mayor, Virginia Raggi, says the €4,000 (£3,600) worth of coins tossed into the fountain every day belong to her administration.  From April 1 the donations will no longer be paid to Caritas, but are to be used by Rome City Council for the maintenance of cultural sites and social welfare projects.  The proposed changes, reportedly approved by the council at the end of December, have provoked a backlash from the Catholic Church.  Avvenire, the daily paper produced by the Italian Bishops Conference, launched a scathing attack on the council in its Saturday edition, describing the city’s bureaucracy as “the enemy of the poor” in a front-page article headlined “money taken from the poorest”.


thetelegraph--2019-01-13--Villagers facing financial ruin after handing over 500000 to failed church musical

Villagers facing financial ruin after handing over £500,000 to failed church musical

Villagers have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in savings after a musical organised by their church and set for star-studded arena tour collapsed.  Members of the congregation of the International Church said that they were told that by donating they were "giving to God" but some now face losing their homes after the Christian musical's arena tour was cancelled.  Heaven on Earth, based on the story of Adam and Eve, grew from the "dream" of a local church into a glitzy  production starring Kerry Ellis and Hugh Maynard and featuring tenor Russell Watson as the voice of God.  But just three weeks before the start of a six-month nationwide tour which included shows at Manchester and Wembley arenas the show went bust with debts of £2.6million.  It is believed to be one of the largest ever debts in relation to a collapsed theatre production.  Among those who have lost out are around 30 people in the Nottinghamshire village of Mansfield Woodhouse, who are owed roughly £500,000 between them.  Some are said to have remortgaged their homes to help the independent church fund the production.  Yessika Oakley, 34,  told the BBC that her family donated thousands towards the project as the church were asking for large sums of money to fund the production.


themanchestereveningnews--2019-01-19--How do Google Maps and Waze calculate your journey times so accurately

How do Google Maps and Waze calculate your journey times so accurately?

Gone are the days of picking up a map to help navigate your journeys. Even the traditional sat nav is becoming somewhat dated.  Instead many of us reach straight for our phones thanks to the likes of Google Maps and navigation platform Waze.  But it isn't just about navigation anymore, it's about using technology to work out the fastest route.  But just how do they figure it all out?  Let's start with Google Maps. Since 2011, the American technology company has used its routing algorithms which have knowledge of current and historical traffic to select the fastest route and avoid traffic.  Google collects data from users of its free Google Maps app to calculate accurate traffic speeds.  If you're wondering how they are able to do this, it's because all iPhones with Google Maps open - and Android phones that have location services turned on - send anonymous data back to Google.  This is then pieced together and sent back. Of course, the more built up the area, the more accurate the results will be as there are likely to be more drivers regularly using that road.  Waze essentially does the same but adds this to crowdsourced feedback from its users .  As with Google Maps, the app is able to provide drivers with the best route by analyzing real-time information.  This includes speeds other Wazers are driving, reports made on traffic, construction and potholes that will affect the flow of traffic, as well as information on road closures.  Again, like Google, the more Waze users drive through a certain stretch of road the more accurate the average speed becomes.  When Waze calculates a drive, it too takes into account historic and current average speeds for all sections of the route options for a given journey.  But additionally, users can share information on road conditions with the community by reporting on traffic, accidents, police traps, blocked roads and weather conditions.  Waze says it collects this information and immediately analyzes it in order to further optimise the route.


humansarefree--2019-01-24--What Is The Matrix And How Do We Exit From It

What Is The Matrix And How Do We Exit From It?

Who are we?  What is the matrix?  Tools and tactics of the matrix overlay  Some of their tactics to drive consciousness into a lower frequency where societies can be controlled are:      “They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist. You have been controlled like sheep in a pen by those who think they own you — from the government to the World Management Team to those in space. You have been deprived of knowledge by frequency control.” ~ Barbara Marciniak, “The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison.“They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist. You have been controlled like sheep in a pen by those who think they own you — from the government to the World Management Team to those in space. You have been deprived of knowledge by frequency control.” ~ Barbara Marciniak, Bringers of the Dawn  How To Exit The Matrix  Things you can do to accelerate personal and planetary ascension to exit the matrix  Life shows you what is inside


bbc--2019-01-07--India scientists dismiss Einstein theories

Scientists in India have hit out at speakers at a major conference for making irrational claims, including that ancient Hindus invented stem cell research.  Some academics at the annual Indian Science Congress dismissed the findings of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.  Hindu mythology and religion-based theories have increasingly become part of the Indian Science Congress agenda.  But experts said remarks at this year's summit were especially ludicrous.  The 106th Indian Science Congress, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, runs from 3-7 January.  The head of a southern Indian university cited an old Hindu text as proof that stem cell research was discovered in India thousands of years ago.  G Nageshwar Rao, vice chancellor of Andhra University, also said a demon king from the Hindu religious epic, Ramayana, had 24 types of aircraft and a network of landing strips in modern day Sri Lanka.  Another scientist from a university in the southern state of Tamil Nadu told conference attendees that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were both wrong and that gravitational waves should be renamed "Narendra Modi Waves".  Dr KJ Krishnan reportedly said Newton failed to "understand gravitational repulsive forces" and Einstein's theories were "misleading".  Critics said that while ancient texts should be read and enjoyed - it was nonsense to suggest they represented science.  The Indian Scientific Congress Association expressed "serious concern" at the remarks.  "We don't subscribe to their views and distance ourselves from their comments. This is unfortunate," Premendu P Mathur, general secretary of Indian Scientific Congress Association, told the AFP news agency.  "There is a serious concern about such kind of utterances by responsible people."  On the one hand, it has a rich tradition of outstanding scientists - the Higgs boson particle, for example, is named partly after an Indian physicist and Einstein's contemporary, Satyendra Nath Bose. Particle physicist Ashoke Sen, meanwhile, is the recipient of Fundamental Physics Prize, the world's most lucrative academic award.  But it also has a long tradition of replacing science with myths, leading to a fringe culture of pseudoscience.  Many believe under Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist BJP party, pseudoscience has moved from the fringe to the mainstream.  Mr Modi himself set the tone in 2014 with his outlandish claim that cosmetic surgery was practised in India thousands of years ago.  Many of his ministers followed suit with similar claims. India's top science summit also started inviting academics with Hindu nationalist leanings who have made equally bizarre claims.  Such claims usually hark back to an imagined glorious Hindu past to bolster religious nationalism. The BJP and its hard line allies have for a long time mixed mythology and religion to bolster political Hinduism and nationalism. Adding science to the mix, say critics, will only help propagate quack science and erode scientific temper.  Also, as economist Kaushik Basu says: "For a nation to progress it is important for people to spend time on science, mathematics and literature instead of spending time showing that 5,000 years ago their ancestors did science, mathematics and literature."  Other claims made by Indian politicians and scientists:


bbc--2019-04-15--Israeli scientists print 3D heart using human tissue

Israeli scientists ‘print 3D heart using human tissue’

Israeli scientists say they have created the world’s first 3D-printed heart using human tissue.  Professor Tal Dvir, who led the project, says the miniature organ was made with a patient's own cells, describing it as a "major medical breakthrough".  His team at Israel's Tel Aviv University plans to transplant the hearts into animals in a move they hope will advance possibilities for human transplants.  He claims that larger human hearts could be produced using the same technology.  Parts of this video contain no commentary


bbc--2019-10-09--Nobel chemistry prize: Lithium-ion battery scientists honoured

Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of lithium-ion batteries.  John B Goodenough, M Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino share the prize for their work on these rechargeable devices, which are used for portable electronics.  At the age of 97, Prof Goodenough is the oldest ever Nobel laureate.  Professor of chemistry Olof Ramström said lithium-ion batteries had "enabled the mobile world".  The trio will share the prize money of nine million kronor (£738,000).  The lithium-ion battery is a lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery that is used in everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric cars.  The Nobel Committee said: "Lithium-ion batteries are used globally to power the portable electronics that we use to communicate, work, study, listen to music and search for knowledge."  Committee member Sara Snogerup Linse, from Lund University, said: "We have gained access to a technical revolution. The laureates developed lightweight batteries of high enough [electrical] potential to be useful in many applications.  Göran K Hansson, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, where this year's awards were announced, said their development enabled "a more sustainable world".  In addition to their use in electric vehicles, the rechargeable devices could also store significant amounts of energy from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power.  The foundation of the lithium-ion battery was laid during the oil crisis of the 1970s. M Stanley Whittingham, 77, who was born in Nottingham, UK, worked to develop energy technologies that did not rely on fossil fuels.  He discovered an energy-rich material called titanium disulphide, which he used to make a cathode - the positive terminal - in a lithium battery.  Whittingham, who is now based at Binghampton University in Vestal, US, made the anode, the battery's negative terminal, from metallic lithium. This has a strong preference for releasing electrons, making it very suitable for use in batteries.  This resulting device was able to release just over two volts, but the metallic lithium made it explosive.  John B Goodenough, who is American but was born in Germany, predicted that the cathode could be improved if it was made from a metal oxide, rather than a sulphide.  In 1980, after searching for the ideal material, Goodenough, who is a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, used cobalt oxide to boost the lithium battery's potential to four volts.  With Goodenough's cathode as a basis, Akira Yoshino, 71, created the first commercially-viable lithium-ion battery in 1985.  Yoshino, who was born in Osaka, Japan, works for the Asahi Kasei Corporation and Meijo University.  Prof Ramström, a Nobel committee member from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell in the US, commented: "This battery is such a very, very good battery. It's high-powered with high energy efficiency, so it has found applications almost everywhere."  Bonnie Charpentier, president of the American Chemical Society (ACS) commented: "In the face of increasing threats from extreme climate change, today's announcement shines a welcome bright light on the portability of energy that has enabled unprecedented advances in communication, transportation and other tools to support critical aspects of life around the world."  Previous winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry  2018 - Discoveries about enzymes earned Frances Arnold, George P Smith and Gregory Winter the prize  2017 - Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson were awarded the prize for improving images of biological molecules  2016 - Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa shared the prize for the making machines on a molecular scale.  2015 - Discoveries in DNA repair earned Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar the award.  2014 - Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner were awarded the prize for improving the resolution of optical microscopes.  2013 - Michael Levitt, Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel shared the prize, for devising computer simulations of chemical processes.  2012 - Work that revealed how protein receptors pass signals between living cells and the environment won the prize for Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka.


bbcuk--2019-01-04--Edinburgh scientists discover mammoth secret in ivory DNA

Scientists based at Edinburgh Zoo are cooperating to create a genetics laboratory in Cambodia to fight the illegal ivory trade.  While trying to save elephants, they have found ivory from another animal that is now extinct.  In the WildGenes laboratory of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Dr Alex Ball is drilling what sounds like a giant tooth.  Which is in effect what it is: an ornately carved elephant tusk.  The lab is working with three partners in a project funded by the UK government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.  Together they are building Cambodia's scientific capacity to preserve its wildlife and combat the ivory trade which passes through it.  Dr Ball's team has helped establish the first conservation genetics laboratory in Cambodia.  The country lies on an important route for smuggling ivory from Africa and Asia. Which continent the tusks have been stolen from can have legal implications.  "Elephants are being decimated in their thousands across Africa," Dr Ball says.  "One of the key things about Cambodia is that we have hardly any information about the ivory trade."  DNA from tusks is unlocking those secrets.  "We can basically break down that dentine and calcium and get those cells out the ivory - and then identify the individual that grew that tusk," he added.  The WildGenes laboratory is the only zoo-based animal genetics lab in the UK and one of only a handful in Europe.  The head of conservation and science at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Dr Helen Senn, says it plays an important role.  She continued: "Often endangered species are quite genetically unusual and unique and they haven't been worked on before.  "They're not interesting to medicine or agricultural science.  "So we have to develop novel methods to - for example - study pygmy hippos or scimitar-horned oryx."  But in the work on Cambodian ivory samples the researchers have uncovered something even more exotic: DNA from woolly mammoths.  Mammoths are not covered by international agreements on endangered species for the unfortunate but unavoidable reason that they have already been extinct for around 10,000 years.  It is relatively easy to spot the difference between elephant and mammoth tusks.  But once the ivory has been carved into trinkets it is far harder.  "To our surprise, within a tropical country like Cambodia, we found mammoth samples within the ivory trinkets that are being sold," says Dr Ball.  "So this has basically come from the Arctic tundra, dug out the ground.  "And the shop owners are calling it elephant ivory but we've found out it's actually mammoth."  Cambodia has between 250 and 500 wild Asian elephants of its own. It is difficult to assess how well or otherwise they are is faring - or even how big the population is - as they tend to stay deep within the jungle.  DNA sampling can provide an insight here too, although drilling tusks is not an option on live elephants.  Instead the conservationists have to seek out faecal samples - DNA from elephant dung identifies individual elephants and so builds a picture of the total population.  African elephants are classed as vulnerable, the Asian species is endangered.  The trade in their ivory goes hand in hand with smuggling other illegal products like rhino horn and pangolin scales.  That is why the partners are developing more genetic tools to help Cambodia identify other kinds of contraband before it is too late.


bbcuk--2019-03-19--UK scientists join race for lab-grown meat

British scientists have joined the race to produce meat grown in the lab rather than reared on the hoof.  Scientists at the University of Bath have grown animal cells on blades of grass, in a step towards cultured meat.  If the process can be reproduced on an industrial scale, meat lovers might one day be tucking into a slaughter-free supply of "bacon".  The researchers say the UK can move the field forward through its expertise in medicine and engineering.  Lab-based meat products are not yet on sale, though a US company, Just, has said its chicken nuggets, grown from cells taken from the feather of chicken that is still alive, will soon be in a few restaurants.  Chemical engineer Dr Marianne Ellis, of the University of Bath, sees cultured meat as "an alternative protein source to feed the world". Cultured pig cells are being grown in her laboratory, which could one day lead to bacon raised entirely off the hoof.  In the future, you would take a biopsy from a pig, isolate stem (master) cells, grow more cells, then put them into a bioreactor to massively expand them, says postgraduate student Nick Shorten of Aberystwyth University.  "And the pig's still alive and happy and you get lots of bacon at the end."  To replicate the taste and texture of bacon will take years of research. For structure, the cells must be grown on a scaffold.  At Bath, they're experimenting with something that's entirely natural - grass. They're growing rodent cells, which are cheap and easy to use, on scaffolds of grass, as a proof of principle.  "The idea was to essentially, rather than feeding a cow grass and then us eating the meat - why don't we, in quotation marks, 'feed our cells grass'," says Scott Allan, a postgraduate student in chemical engineering.  "We use it as a scaffold for them to grow on - and we then have an edible scaffold that can be incorporated into the final product."  The end product would be pure muscle tissue - basically, lean mince, rather than something with the taste and texture of a chop or steak, which means adding fat cells and connective cells to give it "a bit more taste".  For cultured meat to be available widely in the future, cells will need to be grown on a very large scale in a commercial facility.  "What we're doing here is looking to design bioreactors, and the bioprocess around the bioreactors, to grow muscle cells on a large scale that is economical and safe and high quality, so we can supply the muscle cells as cultured meats to as many people as want it," says Dr Ellis.  She envisages taking "primary cells" from a living or recently slaughtered animal, or using a population of "immortalised" cells, that will keep on dividing. "Which means that you don't kill any animals; you have this immortal cell that can be used forever."  Slaughter-free meat is clearly a big selling point. Cultured meat might also be of interest to meat lovers who are concerned about the environmental problems that come with livestock production.  Richard Parr is managing director for Europe of The Good Food Institute, a non-profit group that promotes alternatives to the products of conventional agriculture.  He says cell-based meat has the potential to use much less land and water, produce less carbon dioxide, spare billions of animals from immense pain and suffering, and help fight anti-microbial resistance and food contamination.  "It's also a massive commercial opportunity, which companies, universities and governments should seize the opportunity to support and invest in," he argues.  According to Marianne Ellis, most analysis seems to suggest a significant reduction in greenhouse gases, land use and water use for cultured meat, while the implications for energy use are less clear.  One recent study found lab-grown meat could actually be worse for the climate than conventional meat - although the research did not look at water and land use.  "Cultured meat might be one of these promising alternatives to reduce agricultural emissions but until we get more production data we can't automatically assume that for the time being," says the author of the paper, John Lynch of the University of Oxford.  The researchers at Bath see a future where cultured meat exists alongside traditional agriculture.  Illtud Dunsford, co-founder with Marianne Ellis of the biotech start-up Cellular Agriculture, comes from a long line of farmers in Wales and is an advocate of traditional agriculture, but says there will be a need in the future to manage farmland for nature, with cattle playing a role, albeit in much smaller numbers.  "In my little farm in West Wales, ideally what I'd like to see is that we kept a range of very, very traditional native breeds of livestock on a very, very small scale to an exceptionally high welfare standard.  "The by-product from their use as a land management tool - whether that's in clearing land or restoring grasslands - would be the harvesting of cells for the culturing of cell-based meats."  Lab-grown meat is not expected to be available widely for at least five years. It remains to be seen whether people will want to eat it, but surveys in the UK suggest 20% would eat it, 40% wouldn't and the rest are undecided, with younger generations, urbanites and wealthier people more open to the idea.  Chris Bryant, a psychologist at the University of Bath, says the three major concerns are to do with price, taste, and naturalness and the related issue of safety.  The third is most difficult to address, he says, based on "the naturalistic fallacy", where people reason that natural things are good and unnatural things are bad.  Ultimately, then, it will be consumers who will be the judge of the success or failure of lab-grown meat.


chicagotribune--2019-12-11--The world’s coral reefs are dying. Shedd scientists in the Bahamas are searching for a chance for th

The world’s coral reefs are dying. Shedd scientists in the Bahamas are searching for a chance for their survival.

“Almost every year we’re reporting coral bleaching whereas before it would have been once every five years, every 10 years,” she says. “More and more after each bleaching event, you are seeing areas where the majority of the coral cover has gone. Then it gets dominated by algae. Reefs where you had towers of elkhorn coral and staghorn coral, where you used to have these mushroom forests, have basically become rubble. Once they die, there’s nothing really continuing to grow. When hurricanes come they flatten it out a bit. It becomes this downward spiral.”


eveningstandard--2019-01-04--Galaxy to slam into Milky Way and could cause black hole scientists say

Galaxy to slam into Milky Way and could cause black hole, scientists say

A nearby galaxy is set to slam into the Milky Way creating a huge black hole, scientists have said.  Astronomers have warned this may knock our solar system into a cosmic void.  The Durham University scientists said the knock would hurl our solar system into a space that would make it either too hot or too cold for life to survive.  Researchers said the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) could hit the Milky Way and directly trigger a secondary chain of events, dislodging other stars from their galaxy.  The grim discovery means life on Earth could end – but it is not set to happen for another 2.5 billion years.  Scientists came upon the discovery by running computer simulations on the movement of the LMC.  Rather than circling at a safe distance, or breaking free of the Milky Way’s gravitational pull, it was found the LMC is set to hit.  Currently, the LMC is estimated to be about 163,000 light years from the Milky Way and speeding away at about 250 miles per second.  However simulations suggest the LMC will eventually slow down and turn back towards us.  This galactic collision would happen much sooner than the predicted impact between the Milky Way and another neighbour, Andromeda, which scientists say will hit our galaxy in eight billion years.  Lead researcher Dr Marius Cautun, a postdoctoral fellow in our Institute for Computational Cosmology, said: “There is a small chance that we might not escape unscathed from the collision between the two galaxies, which could knock us out of the Milky Way and into space.”


eveningstandard--2019-01-25--Near-record rise in carbon dioxide levels predicted in 2019 Met Office scientists warn

Near-record rise in carbon dioxide levels predicted in 2019, Met Office scientists warn

Met Office scientists predict 2019 will see one of the largest rises on record of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.  Each year natural “sinks” such as forests or grasslands absorb excess carbon produced by human activities.  But when there is hotter weather in the Pacific, like this year, they cannot absorb as much as plants grow less, experts said.  The Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii has collected data on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1958.  Since recordings began, there has been a 30 per cent increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2.  Professor Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre said: "This year we expect these carbon sinks to be relatively weak, so the impact of record high human-caused emissions will be larger than last year."  Average concentrations of carbon dioxide are forecast to be 411 parts per million (ppm) in 2019, reaching a peak of 414 ppm in May before dropping back to 408 ppm in September and rising again at the end of the year.  This compares to around 315 ppm when measurements began at Mauna Loa in 1958, and around 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution based on ice core samples.


eveningstandard--2019-02-05--Magnetic north pole moving so fast it could disrupt phone and military maps scientists say

Magnetic north pole moving so fast it could disrupt phone and military maps, scientists say

Scientists have intervened to stop smartphone maps and military navigation systems being disrupted by “erratic” movement of the earth’s magnetic north pole.  The area, which is where a compass’ north point is guided to, moves around unlike the geographic North Pole.  In recent years it has been shifting at a rate of around 34 miles per year.  Its location is used as part of the World Magnetic Model to help both civilian and more sophisticated mapping systems and its movement can therefore potentially throw users off course.  The World Magnetic Model is usually updated every five years, having last been changed in 2015, but experts behind it have stated it has needed to be changed earlier to keep travel plans accurate.  The new version should have come in 2020 but instead one has been issued this year.  A statement said: “Due to unplanned variations in the Arctic region, scientists have released a new model to more accurately represent the change of the magnetic field between 2015 and now.  "This out-of-cycle update before next year’s official release of WMM2020 will ensure safe navigation for military applications, commercial airlines, search and rescue operations, and others operating around the North Pole."  It added the north polar region is experiencing “erratic changes”.  The World Magnetic Model is developed by the United States’ National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s Defence Geographic Centre.  It is used by the US Department of Defence, the UK Ministry of Defence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), for referencing systems using the geomagnetic field.


eveningstandard--2019-02-13--Kew Gardens scientists test DNA of wood in fight against illegal logging

Scientists at Kew Gardens are leading the fight against the illegal logging industry by helping to create wood DNA tests.  The Royal Botanic Gardens, which has one of the largest collections of wood samples in the world, has teamed up with the Forest Stewardship Council and US Forest Service for the project.  They are building a DNA database of trees that could help authorities determine if wood being sold on the market was taken from protected areas.  Interpol estimates that illegal logging is worth between £23 billion and £76 billion annually, with up to 30 per cent of all internationally traded timber thought to be illegally sourced.  Kew Gardens and the FSC, which runs the global forest certification system, will pioneer new identification technologies, including DNA and isotope testing. These allow scientists to determine the species of timber using only a small piece of the wood — and also to “geolocate” where it has come from.  The FSC’s Chief Information Officer & Director of IT, Michael Marus, said Kew’s input was “crucial” in developing the techniques, and that its expertise in testing, storing and maintaining wood samples would be vital as the project expands.  He said: “Their scientific expertise is quite incredible. It is a unique opportunity to develop a library of georeferenced wood samples that will be made available to qualified labs across the world.”  A pilot scheme launched by the FSC in the US in 2017 is being expanded after evidence from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) showed that in Latin America illegally logged wood was being shipped alongside FSC-certified timber.  The new project aims to collect over 200 samples from up to five commonly traded wood species in FSC-certified forests of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Peru in the next year. Ultimately, it is hoped the work will expand to all 1,500 FSC-certified forests.  Dr Peter Gasson, Kew’s research leader on wood and timber, said it has about 42,000 named wood samples, but: “There are plenty of gaps in our collection, and the FSC is well-placed to help us fill some of them with georeferenced samples from their worldwide concessions.”


france24--2019-05-01--Australian scientists find antidote for deadly box jellyfish sting

Australian researchers believe they have found an antidote to a sting from the world's most venomous creature, the much-feared box jellyfish.  Researchers at the University of Sydney had been investigating how the venom is so deadly that one box jellyfish can kill 60 people.  The team noticed the venom needs cholesterol to kill human cells and decided to test whether existing drugs could stop it.  "Since there are lots of drugs available that target cholesterol" the team tried one out, said lead author Raymond Lau.  "It worked," he said. "It's a molecular antidote."  Running tests using human cells and mice, the team found it could stop tissue scarring and pain associated with the sting as long as the medicine was injected within 15 minutes.  Stings from box jellyfish -- which can be smaller than a fingernail or up to three metres long depending on the species -- can cause acute muscular pain, violent vomiting, feelings of "impending doom", hair that stands on end, strokes, heart failure and death within minutes.  So far they have only tested the sting from the larger, more deadly species.  "We know the drug will stop the necrosis, skin scarring and the pain completely when applied to the skin," said Associate Professor Neely.  "We don't know yet if it will stop a heart attack. That will need more research, and we are applying for funding to continue this work."  The team hopes that eventually a topical cream or spray can be developed to prevent stings that are thought to kill dozens of people each year and hospitalise thousands more.


humansarefree--2019-11-08--Google in Court Documents: Free Speech is “Disastrous” for Society

U.S. should appoint third-party judicial commission to review censorship cases


activistpost--2019-01-16--Does Society Realize It Is Being Initiated

Does Society Realize It Is Being Initiated?

Melissa and Aaron Dykes cover the progression of previously occult ideas now being openly normalized throughout all forms of media.  What is being summoned? And what are we being initiated to en masse?  Aaron & Melissa Dykes are the founders of TruthstreamMedia.com, Subscribe to them on YouTube, like on Facebook, follow on Twitter, support on Patreon.  Watch their mini-documentary Obsolete here and their full-length documentary THE MINDS OF MEN here.


activistpost--2019-06-04--32 Tips For Navigating A Society That Is Full Of Propaganda And Manipulation

For as long as there has been human language, humans have been using it to manipulate one another. The fact that it is possible to skillfully weave a collection of symbolic mouth noises together in such a way as to extract favors, concessions, votes and consent from other humans has made manipulation so common that it now pervades our society from top to bottom, from personal relationships between two people to international relationships between government agencies and the public.  This has made it very difficult to figure out what’s going on, both in our lives and in the world. Here are thirty-two suggestions for navigating this complex manipulation-laden landscape, whether it be for navigating the manipulations you may encounter in your small-scale personal interactions, or the large-scale manipulations which impact the entire world:  1 – Understand the fact that humans are storytelling animals, and that whoever controls the stories controls the humans. Mental narrative dominates human consciousness; thought is essentially one continuous, churning monologue about the self and what it reckons is going on in its world, and that monologue is composed entirely of mental stories. These stories can and will be manipulated, on an individual scale by people we encounter and on a mass scale by skillful propagandists. We base our actions on our mental assessments of what’s going on in the world, and those mental assessments can be manipulated by narrative control.  2 – Be humble and open enough to know that you can be fooled. Your cognitive wiring is susceptible to the same hacks as everyone else, and manipulators of all sorts are always looking to exploit those vulnerabilities. It’s not shameful to be deceived, it’s shameful to deceive people. Don’t let shame and cognitive dissonance keep you compartmentalized away from considering the possibility that you’ve been duped in some way.  3 – Watch people’s behavior and ignore the stories they tell about their behavior. This applies to people in your life, to politicians, and to governments. Narratives can be easily manipulated and distorted in many different ways, while behavior itself, when examined with as much objectivity as possible, cannot be. Pay attention to behavior in this way and eventually you’ll start noticing a large gap between what some people’s actions say and what their words say. Those people are the manipulators. Distrust them.  4 – Be suspicious of people who keep telling you what they are and how they are, because they’re trying to manipulate your narrative about them. Be doubly suspicious of people who keep telling you what you are and how you are, because they’re trying to manipulate your narrative about you.  5 – Learn to see how trust and sympathy are used by manipulators to trick people into subscribing to their narratives about what’s going on. Every manipulator uses trust and/or sympathy as a primer for their manipulations, because if you don’t have trust or sympathy for them, you’re not going to mentally subscribe to their stories. This is true of mass media outlets, it’s true of State Department press releases which implore you to have sympathy for the people of Nation X, and it’s true of family members and coworkers. Once you’ve spotted a manipulator, your task is to kill off all of your sympathy for them and your trust in them, no matter how hard they start playing the victim to suck you back in.  6 – Be suspicious of anyone who refuses to articulate themselves clearly. Word salading is a tactic notoriously used by abusive narcissists, because it keeps the victim confused and unable to figure out what’s going on. If they can’t get a clear handle on what the manipulative abuser is saying, they can’t form their own solid position in relation to it, and the abuser knows this. Insist on lucid communication, and if it’s refused to you, remove trust and sympathy. Apply this to people in your life, to government officials, and to 8chan propaganda constructs.  7 – Familiarize yourself with cognitive biases, the glitches in human cognition which cause us to perceive things in a way that is not rational. Pay special attention to confirmation bias, the backfire effect, and the illusory truth effect. Humans have an annoying tendency to seek out cognitive ease in their information-gathering and avoid cognitive dissonance, rather than seeking out what’s true regardless of whether it brings us cognitive ease or dissonance. This means we tend to choose what we believe based on whether believing it is psychologically comfortable, rather than whether it’s solidly backed by facts and evidence. This is a weakness in our cognitive wiring, and manipulators can and do exploit it constantly. And, again, be humble enough to know that this means you.  8 – Trust your own understanding above anyone else’s. It might not be perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than letting your understanding be controlled by narrative managers and dopey partisan groupthink, or by literally anyone else in a narrative landscape that is saturated with propaganda and manipulation. You won’t get everything right, but betting on your own understanding is the very safest bet on the table. It can be intimidating to stand alone and sort out the true from the false by yourself on an instance-by-instance basis, but the alternative is giving someone else authority over your understanding of the world. Abdicating your responsibility to come to a clear understanding of what’s going on in your world is a shameful, cowardly thing to do. Be brave enough to insist that you are right until such time as you yourself come to your own understanding that you were wrong.  9 – Understand that propaganda is the single most overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of our society. Everyone’s constantly talking about what’s wrong with the world, but hardly any of those discussions are centered around the fact that the public been manipulated into supporting the creation and continuation of those problems by mass media propaganda. The fact that powerful people are constantly manipulating the way we think, act and vote should be at the forefront of everyone’s awareness, not relegated to occasional discussions in fringe circles.  10 – Respect the fact that the science of modern propaganda has been in research and development for over a century. Think of all the military advancements that have been made in the last century to get an idea of how sophisticated this science must now be. They are far, far ahead of us in terms of research and understanding of the methods of manipulating the human psyche toward ends which benefit the powerful. If you ever doubt that the narrative managers could be advanced and cunning enough to pull off a given manipulation, you can lay that particular doubt to rest. Don’t underestimate them.  11 – Understand that Western mass media propaganda rarely consists of full, outright lies. At most, such outlets will credulously publish the things that are told to them by government agencies which lie all the time. More often, the deception comes in the form of distortions, half-truths, and omissions. Pay more attention to discrepancies in things that are covered versus things that aren’t, and to what they’re not saying.  12 – Put effort into developing a good news-sense, a sense for what’s newsworthy and what’s not. This takes time and practice, but it lets you see which newsworthy stories are going unreported by the mass media and which non-stories are being overblown to shape an establishment-friendly narrative. When you’ve got that nailed down, you’ll notice “Why are they acting like this is a news story?” and “Why is nobody reporting this??” stories all the time.  13 – Be patient and compassionate with yourself when it comes to developing your narrative navigating skills. Like literally any skill set, you’ll suck at it for a while. If you learn you’ve been wrong about something, just take in the new information, adjust appropriately, and keep plugging away. Don’t expect to have mastered this thing before you’ve had time to master it. Like anything else, if you put in the hours you’ll get good at it.  14 – Find reliable news reporters who have a good sense for navigating the narrative matrix, and keep track of them to orient yourself and stay on top of what’s going on. Use individual reporters, not outlets; no outlet is 100 percent solid, but some reporters are pretty close on some specific subjects. Click this hyperlink for an article on one way to do build a customized and reliable news stream. Click this hyperlink for a list of all my favorite news reporters on Twitter right now.  15 – Don’t let paranoia be your primary or only tool for navigating the narrative matrix. Some people’s only means of understanding the world is to become intensely suspicious of everything and everyone, which is about as useful as a compass which tells you that every direction is north. Spend time in conspiracy and media criticism circles and you’ll run into many such people. Rejecting everything as false leaves you with nothing as true. Find positive tools for learning what’s true.  16 – Hold your worldview loosely enough that you can change it at any time in the light of new information, but not so loosely that it can be slapped out of your head by someone telling you what to think in a confident, authoritative tone. As Carl Sagan once said, “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”  17 – Speaking of confident, authoritative tones, be suspicious of confident, authoritative tones. It’s amazing how much traction people can get with a narrative just by posturing as though they know that what they’re saying is true, whether they’re an MSNBC pundit or a popular conspiracy YouTuber. So many people are just plain faking it, because it works. You run into this all the time in debates on online political forums; people come at you with a supremely confident posture, but if you push them to present their knowledge on the subject and the strength of their arguments, there’s not actually anything there. They’re just accustomed to people assuming they know what they’re talking about and leaving their claims unchallenged, and it completely throws them off when someone doesn’t buy their feigned confidence shtick.  18 – Be aware that sociopaths exist. There are people who, to varying degrees, do not care what happens to others, and these are the types of people who will use manipulation to get their way whenever it serves them. If you don’t care about truth or other people beyond the extent to which you can use them, then there’s no disincentive to manipulating.  19 – Be aware of projection, and be aware of the fact that it cuts both ways: unhealthy people tend to project their wickedness onto others, while healthy people tend to project their goodness. Don’t let your goodness trick you into thinking there aren’t monsters who will deceive and manipulate you, and don’t let sociopaths project their own sinister motives onto you by telling you how rotten you are. This mixes a lot of good people up, especially in their personal lives. Not everyone is good, and not everyone is truthful. See this clearly.  20 – Be suspicious of those who excessively advocate civility, rules and politeness. Manipulators thrive on rules and civility, because they know how to manipulate them. Someone who’s willing to color outside the lines and get angry at someone noxious even when they’re acting within the rules makes a manipulator very uncomfortable. Often times those telling you to calm down and behave yourself when you are rightfully upset are manipulators who have a vested interest in getting you to adhere to the rules set they’ve learned to operate within.  21 – Meditation, mindfulness, self-inquiry and other practices are powerful tools which can help you understand your own inner processes, which in turn helps you understand how manipulators can manipulate you, and how they manipulate others. Just be sure that you are using them for this purpose, not for escapism as most “spiritual” types do. You’re trying to become fully aware of what makes you tick mentally, emotionally and energetically; you’re not trying to become some vapid spiritual bliss bunny. The goal isn’t to feel better, the goal is to get better at feeling. Better at consciously experiencing your own inner world.  22 – Be relentlessly honest with yourself about your own inner narratives and the various ways you engage in manipulation. You can’t navigate your way through the narrative control matrix if you aren’t clear on your own role in it. Look inside and consciously take an inventory.  23 – Understand that truth doesn’t generally move in a way that is pleasing to the ego, i.e. in a way Hollywood scripts are written to appeal to. Any narrative that points to a Hollywood ending where the bad guy gets karate kicked into lava and the hero gets the girl is manufactured. Russiagate and QAnon are both perfect examples of an egoically pleasing narrative with the promise of a Hollywood ending, either by Trump and his cohorts being dragged off in chains or by the “white hats” overcoming the Deep State and throwing all the Democrats and Never-Trumpers in prison for pedophilia. Ain’t gonna happen, folks.  24 – Try to view the world with fresh eyes rather than with your tired old grown-up eyes which have taught you to see all this as normal. Hold an image in your mind of what a perfectly healthy and harmonious world would look like; the sharp contrast between this image and the world we have now allows you see through the campaign of the propagandists to normalize things like war, poverty, ecocide, and impotent electoral systems which keep seeing the same government behavior regardless of who people vote for. None of this is normal.  25 – Know that the truth has no political party, and neither do the social engineers. All political parties are used to manipulate the masses in various ways, and nuggets of truth can and do emerge from any of them. Thinking along partisan lines is guaranteed to give you a distorted view. Ignore the imaginary lines between the parties. You may be certain that your rulers do.  26 – Remain always aware of this simple dynamic: the people who become billionaires are generally the ones who are sociopathic enough to do whatever it takes to get ahead. This class has been able to buy up near-total narrative control via media ownership/influence, corporate lobbying, think tank funding, and campaign finance, and are thus able to manipulate the public into consenting to agendas which benefit nobody but plutocrats and their lackeys. This explains pretty much every major problem that we are facing right now. The Legal Narrative Funnel That’s Being Used To Extradite Assange How warped interpretations of technicalities in Ecuadorian, British and American law allow for a journalist to be imprisoned for telling the truth while keeping the illusion of democracy.https://t.co/OaBVDeuyax 27 – Understand that nations are pure narrative constructs; they only exist to the extent that people agree to pretend that they do. The narrative managers know this, and they exploit the fact that most of us don’t. Take Julian Assange, perfect example: he was pried out of the embassy and imprisoned by an extremely obvious collaboration between the US, UK, Sweden, Ecuador, and Australia, yet they each pretended that they were acting as separate, sovereign nations completely independently of one another. Sweden pretended it was deeply concerned about rape allegations, the UK pretended it was deeply concerned about a bail violation, Ecuador pretended it was deeply concerned about skateboarding and embassy cat hygiene, the US pretended it was deeply concerned about the particulars of the way Assange helped Chelsea Manning cover her tracks, Australia pretended it was too deeply concerned about honoring the sovereign affairs of these other countries to intervene on behalf of its citizen, and it all converged in a way that just so happened to look exactly the same as imprisoning a journalist for publishing facts. You see this same dynamic constantly, whether it’s with military interventions, trade deals, or narrative-shaping campaigns against non-aligned governments. 28 – Understand that war is the glue which holds the US-centralized empire together. Without the carrot of military/economic alliance and the stick of military/economic violence, the US-centralized empire would cease to exist. This is why war propaganda is constant and sometimes so forced that glaring plot holes become exposed; it’s so important that they need to force it through, even if they can’t get the narrative matrix around it constructed just right. If they ceased manufacturing consent for the empire’s relentless warmongering, people would lose all trust in government and media institutions, and those institutions would lose the ability to propagandize the public effectively. Without the ability to propagandize the public effectively, our rulers cannot rule. 29 – Remember that when it comes to foreign policy, the neocons are always wrong. They’ve been so remarkably consistent in this for so long that whenever there’s a question about any narrative involving hostilities between the US-centralized power alliance and any other nation, you can just look at what Bill Kristol, Max Boot and John Bolton are saying about it and believe the exact opposite. They’re actually a very helpful navigation tool in this way. 30 – Notice how the manipulators like to split the population in two and then get them arguing over how they should serve the establishment. Arguing over whether it’s better to vote Democrat or Republican, arguing over whether it’s better to increase hostilities with Iran and Venezuela or with Syria and Russia, over whether you should support the US president or the FBI, arguing over how internet censorship should happen and whom should be censored rather than if censorship should happen in the first place. The longer they can keep us arguing over the best way to lick the imperial boot, the longer they keep us from talking about whether we want to lick it at all. 31 – Watch out for appeals to emotion. It’s much easier to manipulate someone by appealing to their feely bits rather than their capacity for rational analysis, which is why any time they want to manufacture support for military interventionism you see pictures of dead children on news screens everywhere rather than a logical argument for the advantages of using military violence based on a thorough presentation of facts and evidence. You see the same strategy used in the guilt trips they lay on third-party voters; it’s all emotional hyperbole that crumbles under any fact-based analysis, but they use it because it works. They go after your heart strings to circumvent your head. 32 – Pay attention to how much propaganda goes into maintaining the propaganda machine itself. This is done this because propaganda is just that central to the maintenance of dominant power structures. Much effort is spent building trust in establishment narrative management outlets while sowing distrust in sources of dissent. You’ll see entire propaganda campaigns built around accomplishing solely this. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone has my unconditional permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on Minds and Twitter. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today.


bbc--2019-01-18--Spain domestic violence Trail of death shocks society

Spain domestic violence: Trail of death shocks society

A man convicted of killing his wife is now believed to have murdered his defence lawyer, with whom he had been having an affair, before taking his own life on Friday.  Jose Javier Salvador Calvo, 50, jumped from a bridge in the eastern town of Teruel when police confronted him.  The case has shocked Spain, prompting debate about domestic violence laws.  Reacting to the deaths, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez vowed to continue tackling violence against women.  His tweet is seen as a retort to Vox, a far-right party influential in the southern region of Andalusia that wants to halt legal aid for women beaten by men, saying it unfairly favours the woman.  Jose Javier Salvador Calvo shot dead his wife, Patricia Maurel Conte, 29, in May 2003 in Spain's north-eastern region of Aragon.  Released under licence in 2017, the killer began an affair with Rebeca Santamalia Cáncer, 47, the lawyer who had defended him at his trial, Spanish media report.  Police found the lawyer stabbed to death at Salvador Calvo's home in Aragon's regional capital, Zaragoza, just after 04:00 (03:00 GMT) on Friday after her husband reported her missing.  A few hours earlier, around midnight, the suspected murderer had jumped from a bridge in Teruel, a town 150km (93 miles) to the south, after being spotted by a police patrol.  Local government representative Carmen Sánchez told reporters that the lawyer had been a victim of "gender violence".  On Twitter, Prime Minister Sánchez said that four women had been murdered in Spain in recent days and there must be no retreat in addressing the "horror".  Last year in Spain, 47 women were murdered, four of them in Aragon, in crimes of gender violence.  The killing of teacher Laura Luelmo, 26, last month in Andalusia caused a wave of revulsion in the country. Her partially-naked body had been found near a village after five days of searching.  A man living locally later confessed to murdering her after attempting to rape her, Spanish newspaper El País reports. The self-confessed killer, 50-year-old Bernardo Montoya, had previously served time in prison for murdering a woman in 1995.


bbc--2019-10-08--Polish election: Leader targets gay rights as threat to society

"We consider two communities fundamental, the family as one man, one woman and the children," said the leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) at a recent convention.  LGBT+ rights have become the single biggest cultural issue in Poland's election campaign ahead of Sunday's vote. In the eyes of Jaroslaw Kaczynski's national-conservative party and the Catholic Church, those rights are a threat to traditional Polish families and values.  Mr Kaczynski likes to identify threats to Polish society - during the election campaign four years ago, he said Middle Eastern migrants might bring "parasites and protozoa" to Poland.  This time around, according to Mr Kaczynski, the threat comes from LGBT+ people and from Europe, where families can have "two mummies or two daddies", he said.  Poland's 1993 constitution states that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Civil partnerships, be they between heterosexual or same-sex couples, are not legally recognised.  "Christianity is part of our national identity, the [Catholic] Church was and is the preacher and holder of the only commonly held system of values in Poland," he said. "Outside of it… we have only nihilism."  Senior Catholic Church figures have gone further, most notably the Archbishop of Krakow, Marek Jedraszewski, who on numerous occasions has identified the "LGBT lobby" and "gender ideology" as the new threat to Polish freedom following the end of communism in 1989, calling it "totalitarian" and a "great threat to our freedom". • Law and Justice (PiS): Opposes civil partnerships, same sex marriage and adoption of children by same sex couples • Konfederation: Opposes marriage equality and adoption of children by same sex couples  The couple who came back to fight for change  In the beautiful, medieval city of Torun, birthplace of the astronomer Copernicus, chef Mariusz Godlejewski rejected the notion that he was a threat. During more than a decade living in Ireland, Mariusz married his long-term partner Bartosz before the couple returned to their homeland last year.  "My husband and I have been together for 14 years. Who are we, two strangers living together? We are family as well," he said. "Coming back here I knew what I was getting in to. I knew that I will lose all the rights with my husband we gained in Ireland but we wanted to come and help our friends to make the change."  Mariusz believes it is only a matter of time before things do change but finds the tone of political debate depressing.  Last month, a professor from Torun's Copernicus University, Aleksander Nalaskowski, was suspended after he likened homosexuality to "the plague" and complained that gay men and women were demanding not only tolerance, but acceptance. • The gay mayor shaking up politics in Catholic Poland  Government-supporting circles argued his suspension was an abuse of free speech and he was subsequently reinstated.  Mariusz was organising the third equality march in Torun, in which more than a thousand people walked through the city guarded on both sides by helmeted riot police carrying shields.  A police water cannon I saw parked in the road was not required but violence has broken out during equality marches in the cities of Bialystok, where gangs of angry young men attacked parade participants, and in Lublin, where counter demonstrators clashed with police and two protesters were arrested after they reportedly brought homemade explosive devices.  Poland remains more socially conservative than many countries in Western Europe but attitudes to LGBT+ issues are changing.  There are more and more equality marches, 32 this year compared to 13 last year. Most, like the one in Torun, are joyful, peaceful events.  'They have to be aware they are sinners'  Underneath a statue of Copernicus in the city centre, a small counter demonstration gathered before the equality march. There were several members of the far-right National Radical Camp, holding their green and white flags emblazoned with a falanga sword, which is associated with fascism.  There were also banners warning about how the "LGBT lobby" wants to teach pre-schoolers how to masturbate, above the slogan "Stop paedophilia".  There was also a photo of an equality parade showing two male marchers holding a rainbow flag from behind, their bare buttocks pixellated. Some people held crosses and handed out white, plastic rosary beads before prayers were said for the souls of the equality march participants.  "Everyone has the same rights. For example, they have the same right to marry. I can marry my girlfriend, they can also marry their girlfriends, but they want to marry the same sex," organiser and teacher Radoslaw Duch said.  "We don't want to arrest them, we don't want to get rid of them. They have to be aware they are sinners. Me as a Catholic person, I want to show them a better path of their life," he added.  If opinion polls are correct, PiS should win the October 13 election comfortably.  Attitudes in Poland may be changing, but if Mr Kaczynski's party does win a second term, there seems little chance that homosexual couples will enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual neighbours any time soon.


bbc--2019-12-27--Smoking ban: Austria's cafe society calls time on cigarettes

Austria was once dubbed "the ashtray of Europe" but has finally banned smoking in restaurants, bars and cafes.  The decision came after years of controversy. Austria had been on the verge of bringing in a total ban last year, but the plans were overturned because of pressure from the far-right Freedom Party, which was part of the last government.  But after the fall of the coalition in May, the ban was reintroduced and came into force on 1 November.  Some restaurants and cafes went non-smoking several years ago, but others allowed smoking until the last possible minute.  How are they dealing with the change?  Wratschko is something of a Vienna institution. A pub with venerable wooden panelling and worn, ancient wallpaper, it serves deeply traditional Viennese food.  And until a few weeks ago, it would have been full of cigarette smoke. Customers wishing to eat in the non-smoking area at the back had to walk through the smoky bar to get there.  Its owner, Clemens Wratschko, says the atmosphere has improved and it is better for his staff as well.  "My employees are nearly all smokers and I told them you will be glad because you will have no more passive smoke; you'll smoke much less than before and the next day you will feel fresher than before."  Some bars and nightclubs have complained that fewer customers are coming since the ban and that they have lost between 15% and 25% of turnover. But Clemens Wratschko says he hasn't noticed any drop in numbers.  He thinks people will come back to the night clubs, like they did in France, Italy and other countries which have introduced smoking bans.  "People want to go out and meet their friends, to enjoy a kind of atmosphere. People prefer to meet their friends in a pub or in a bar," he said.  Down the road at Café Rüdigerhof, I met Ricci, who has been a waiter for 25 years. He says that after spending a few days away in protest, all his regular guests have now returned, despite the ban, and they are now smoking less.  "Before they smoked one pack of cigarettes at the cafe house, and now maybe they are happy because they smoke only two or three cigarettes because they have to go outside. I think it is not a problem."  Ricci says he is very pleased about the ban. "Of course it is better for me and my work. We used to have to work in the smoking area. But it's much better. I can breathe much better."  However, Clemens Wratschko, himself a smoker, admits to a certain nostalgia for the smoky old days.  "Maybe I am a bit sentimental. In my pub, you had the very old rooms at the front, with the bar, with the taste of smoke and alcohol. And then you had the Speiseraum or eating room, with a little more of a distinguished atmosphere."  But he says the smoking ban brings in new qualities.  "We have better air. The clothes smell better the next day. And we feel a bit healthier, a bit less of a headache."  What public reaction has there been?  In general the ban seems to be holding in Vienna.  Figures from mid-November say that inspectors carried out more than 2,000 checks of restaurants and reported 27 breaches of the ban.  Shisha bars are currently taking legal steps to try to get an exception for their businesses.  A survey by an Austrian news magazine suggests that most Austrians are in favour of the ban.  But last month, around 700 people protested against it in front of the Federal Chancellery. The demonstration was attended by the disgraced former head of the far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache.  How smoking bans have spread in Europe • How has smoking ban changed the UK?


bbcuk--2019-07-25--Is societys Man up message fuelling a suicide crisis among men

Is society's 'Man up' message fuelling a suicide crisis among men?

Suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 50. What is it about being male in the UK that is fuelling this mental health crisis?  After nearly 20 years suffering recurrent bouts of depression - virtually in silence - at the age of 39, James had reached the end  The sporty, laddish, joke-cracking executive, had devised a suicide escape plan involving a car, a tree, a hill and high speed.  "The clarity I had thinking about it was completely fogged over by what that would do to the people close to me," he says.  "Did I think they would be better without me? Yes.  "But in the end what stopped me was thinking of my children and my wife, about what it would do to them."  Like so many men, James felt unable to reveal how he was feeling. He kept it hidden under a habitual light-hearted facade and did not even tell his wife.  Then, something small happened at work. Now, he cannot even remember what it was - but because of how he was feeling at the time, it was big enough for him to decide he had to kill himself.  As he thought over his plan yet again, James shut himself in the work toilet, crying, but something made him call a friend.  He recalls sobbing into the phone for one and half hours, telling his friend, Claire, how he was "not coping well" - massively minimising how he really felt.  And he recalls how she stayed on the phone listening, while he sobbed. He didn't tell her he was planning to take his own life.  "She talked me down, so to speak. That was the initial opening of the dam," he says.  Reaching out like that for the first time saved his life and he was soon admitted to an intensive treatment centre.  Depression had first hit James during his first year at university, at the age of 20, but he had felt unable to let his friends know what he was going through.  A member of the football team and the cricket team, he went out drinking with his teammates and appeared to others to be having the time of his life.  "I felt I had to be part of it, to fit into the team. To be part of that, I had to have that laddish bravado - I think that's why men can struggle so much," James says.  "Then I got caught in this whirlpool of despair - should I be laddish even if I didn't enjoy being laddish?  "I was trying to fit into how society thinks young men should act."  When he finally sought help from his GP, he was not offered any counselling, just anti-depressants. Prozac had recently arrived in the UK.  Would some sort of talking therapy, the preferred treatment option today, have helped him?  He is not so sure he would have allowed it to.  "Men don't feel comfortable in a situation where they are made to express their feelings," James says.  "With therapy, it's a case of sit down in a room and there's no escape.  "To be honest, therapy is still a dirty word for most men."  And, in a profession vastly dominated by female practitioners, it may be unsurprising that more than two-thirds of people who seek help for a mental-health problem are women.  Mental health champion Lee Cambule recently told a committee of MPs investigating the issue: "There's this perception of men that they should 'man up' and 'just get on with it', that they should be strong in the face of this adversity, and this makes it very difficult for them to then open up and seek help.  "A lot of the things about being a man or boy in this situation makes it very difficult to reach out and get the help that's needed."  Simon Gunning, chief executive of Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm), told MPs masculinity was often equated with having what it took to put food on the table.  "It has been defined as this strange conflation of stoicism and strength, meaning the strong silent type," he said.  But, for many men, it was actually harder to communicate than to stay silent.  Calm has sought to bust these stereotypical messages, with clever campaigning that flips them on their head.  Martin Robinson, who edits the Book of Man website, says men can end up going to deeper depths of despair than women before asking for help.  This is all about the message society gives boys and men about staying tough, he says.  "I do think it's because they've been informed throughout their lives that they are not supposed to have these problems, so many people keep it hidden away until they are at the point of deep distress," he says.  Adam Afghan, who was deeply troubled with obsessive suicidal thoughts several years ago, says: "I kept pushing them to the back of my mind, over and over again.  "And these thoughts gradually got worse and worse to the point that the only way I could think of getting these thoughts away from me was to commit suicide."  Fortunately, he found the courage to break cover and seek help from his mother, who found him a therapist.  Some campaigners feel a different approach is needed - that enables men to open up and talk without their mental health issues being the explicit focus.  Men's health charity Movember organises themed Mo Running events that bring men together to run but allow them to chat over mental health issues while they do so.  James, who as a community champion shares his story during such events, found that running shoulder to shoulder with others made it easier for his fellow runners to open up about their experiences and feelings.  But Adam says it's time for men to stop keeping things bottled up and denying their feelings.  "I feel that manning up is what men do," he says, "we think we should just take it on the chin.  "But it's actually the opposite - that's not a brave thing, to suffer in silence.  "The really courageous thing to do is to face your problems, face the pain that you're suffering.  "Trying to fix it, that's what's really courageous."


bbcuk--2019-10-11--Cyber-criminals are threat to society, warns forensics boss

A senior manager at Eurofins, the UK's biggest forensic services provider which was hit by a cyber-attack in June, has warned the country to "ready itself" for further attacks.  A ransomware virus infected the firm's computer systems, laboratory work was suspended for seven weeks and police investigations and trials were delayed.  In his first interview since the incident, Mark Pearse told BBC News it could happen to any organisation.  "It's a threat to society," he said.  "There is no sector that's immune to this," said Mr Pearse, commercial director of Eurofins in four countries, including Britain.  "We've got the transport sector, the energy sector, the health sector, other public organisations, the criminal justice system.  "We're all vulnerable," he said. • More than half of British firms report cyber-attacks  The cyber-attack affected Eurofins' IT systems in the 47 countries where it operates.  Mr Pearse said he was first told about it in a call at 05:00, as he was about to catch a flight from Manchester Airport, and spent the day on the phone dealing with the fallout.  "The labs are quite dependent on IT and everything these days is either controlled by IT, all the data is stored on servers, and so the processes quickly came to a grinding halt," he explained.  Eurofins' forensic science division in the UK, where it has seven sites and 60% of the market, was especially badly hit, so after consulting police chiefs and senior prosecutors, the company decided to stop accepting samples of blood, DNA and other scientific evidence from suspects, victims and crime scenes.  "It has huge implications," said Mr Pearse, a molecular cell biologist who used to work for the Metropolitan Police and the state-run Forensic Science Service.  "We're the biggest private provider so that was quite a decision to make," he said.  "We do many hundreds, many thousands of cases and samples...  "So very quickly the job in hand was partly to investigate the cyber-incident, and the consequences from an IT perspective... and to provide continuity of service."  The National Police Chiefs' Council co-ordinated emergency measures to manage the flow of specimens submitted for analysis so that the most serious cases were given priority by other providers.  "Inevitably, if you take 60% or so of the capacity out of the forensic science sector you can't carry on as 'business as usual'," said Mr Pearse.  "The other suppliers can't cope with all the work so backlogs, to a limited degree, did build up in police forces."  Towards the end of July a backlog of 20,000 samples had developed but that has now been cut to around 10,000 as services have returned to normal.  BBC News was told that Eurofins had paid the cyber-criminals a ransom to restore its IT systems but Mr Pearse refused to comment.  "The National Crime Agency is now taking an international lead in the criminal investigation into this crime on Eurofins group and that investigation is ongoing and will probably be ongoing for some months and therefore it's subject to those usual constraints," he said.


cnsnews--2019-04-03--Kamala Harris We Can Judge a Society I Think Always By The Way It Treats Its Children

Kamala Harris: ‘We Can Judge a Society, I Think Always, By The Way It Treats Its Children’

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Kamala Harris said on CBS’s “This Morning” on March 26, that you can always judge a society by the way it treats children.  “We can judge a society I think always by the way it treats its children,” Harris said.  “And one of the greatest expressions of love of our children is that we invest in their education,” she said.  Harris made these remarks while discussing her plan to give teachers an average salary increase of $13,500.  “The people who are going to educate our children are our teachers,” she said. “And for too long, they have been paid substandard wages and certainly not being paid their value to us as a society and to our children.”  “So, I am proud of our initiative that has been described as the largest federal investment in closing the teacher pay gap in history,” Harris said. “I think that there is no question that we all know there are two groups of people who are raising our children, it’s our parents which can be grandparents, aunties and uncles and it`s our teachers. So let’s pay them their value.”  In a March 31 Tweet that she now has pinned to top of her Twitter feed, Harris talked about her plan for a teacher pay raise.  “Nearly one of every five teachers in America is leaving teaching within five years of entering the classroom,” Harris said in the Tweet. “That impacts our children, it impacts our school district, and it’s time teachers got the support they deserve. My plan would raise teacher’s pay an average of $13,500.”


conservativehome--2019-07-22--Alan Mak End child hunger in Britain to help build a fairer society

Alan Mak: End child hunger in Britain to help build a fairer society

Alan Mak is MP for Havant and former President & Trustee of Magic Breakfast, which provides healthy school breakfasts to hungry and malnourished children in disadvantaged areas of the UK.  Renewing the National School Breakfast Programme must be a key priority for a One Nation Conservative Government.  When our next Party leader and Prime Minister is announced tomorrow morning, delivering a successful Brexit will rightly be his top priority. The debate around what success looks like is currently dominated by economic yardsticks – will our GDP rise? Can we sign a trade deal with America? Is our growth rate sustainable?  An expanding economy is certainly a vital driver and indicator of Britain’s post-Brexit future, and I have previously written extensively on this site about why leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution is key to our prosperity in the years ahead.  However, our next Government must also tackle some of the engrained social challenges that affect communities across the country, especially in inner-city and post-industrial areas. Britain after Brexit must feel different on the ground for families, rather than just look different on economists’ spreadsheets.  Our approach to ending child hunger and tackling child poverty are prime examples of what needs to change – and must be at the very top of the next Prime Minister’s to do list.  The child hunger challenge is stark. Around 1.8 million school age children in the UK are at risk of hunger – five pupils in every class of 30, or 17 per cent of all schoolchildren across the country. Hunger affects children’s concentration and behaviour in the classroom, attainment in exams and ultimately their life chances, employability and wider social mobility. Hungry children miss out on success at school, which in turn holds them back for the rest of their lives, often leading to unemployment and poverty.  Magic Breakfast is a leading charity working hard to tackle this issue head on, and currently feeds over 40,000 children every school day in 481 schools. In the last school year, the charity provided over 7.8 million breakfasts.  Their work delivers results: independent research carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that pupils in primary schools offering a free, nutritious breakfast boosted their reading, writing and maths results by an average of two months’ progress over the course of a year compared to children in schools with no such breakfast provision.  The improvements at a primary school in Barnsley, South Yorkshire show the transformative impact of breakfast clubs on the ground. The school launched a breakfast club in September 2014, with Magic Breakfast’s support. 170 out of 220 children attended breakfast in the first week. The headteacher says the breakfast provision had a major impact on the school across a range of areas including lateness, behavioural incidents and improved relationships between staff and children and staff and parents.  The school also saw a clear improvement in educational attainment with exam results improving dramatically in just one year, with 83 per cent of Key Stage 2 pupils reaching the expected standard compared to 33 per cent the year before, and 85 per cent of Year 1 pupils achieving a pass in phonics compared to 40% the year before. Similar progress has been achieved in other schools across the country.  When I first started working with Magic Breakfast over a decade ago, the charity relied entirely on donations, received no Government funding, and operated with a full-time staff of just three people. Nonetheless, it delivered inspirational results and impact, yet we knew even then that child hunger could only be ended if we had both sustained funding and political will from the top for our social mission. After years of lobbying both local government (including Boris Johnson as Mayor of London) and the Department for Education, the Government launched the National School Breakfast Programme (NSBP) to ensure children in the most disadvantaged areas of England have access to a healthy breakfast at school, based on the Magic Breakfast model.  The NSBP has proved to be a big success. It provides a free nutritious breakfast in over 1,775 schools every school day, feeding more than 280,000 children daily including 115,000 pupil premium pupils. In a typical week, the Programme delivers 624,000 bagels, 7,224 boxes of cereal and 260kg of porridge oats. A school supported by NSBP that had a level of pupil lateness at double the national average has seen a significant improvement in attendance now that breakfast bagels are now served in the hall, playground and at the three school entrances, ensuring that 95 per cent of children pass a bagel station on the way into school.  Funding for the Programme is currently scheduled to end in March 2020, and the incoming Prime Minster should make an early decision to renew it to maintain the momentum of this very successful initiative. Renewal will cost around £12 million a year, reassure schools, and prevent hundreds of thousands of children from falling hungry in the morning and failing in the classroom. It will also mean our Party’s social mission to improve the education and life chances of our young people continues.  Delivering Brexit and firing up our economy are all vital to the success of our next Prime Minister and our Party. But we need a powerful domestic agenda too, which signals our Government’s One Nation values and our determination that after Brexit the fruits of economic success will be felt in every community and region of the country. By investing in school breakfast clubs, we give our children fuel for learning at school and send the strongest possible signal that we are committed to building a fairer society by ending child hunger and poverty.


drudgereport--2019-05-29--Crackdown on internet will put free Press at risk warns Society of Editors

Crackdown on internet 'will put free Press at risk', warns Society of Editors...

Draconian new rules designed to make the web safer for children will wreak 'untold harm' on newspapers and websites, the Society of Editors has warned.  The proposed code will limit online advertising so severely it will drive regional newspapers to the point of collapse and 'severely damage' national newspapers and broadcasters, the influential industry group said.  Under the rules, drawn up by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), internet firms will be forced to introduce strict new age checks on their websites – or treat all of their users as if they are children.  The code is so stringent that critics fear people could end up being forced to demonstrate their age for virtually every website they visit, or have the services they can access limited as if they are under 18.  They may have to log in every time they visit commercial news websites, browse holidays online or access internet shopping sites.  Companies that do not stick to the new rule will face fines of up to 4 per cent of their global turnover. In the case of Facebook, this would cost them £1.67billion.  The radical proposals, published last month, were supposed to protect children online, according to Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. Critics have already accused the ICO of 'infantilising' web users.  Yesterday, in a strongly-worded letter to Miss Denham, Society of Editors executive director Ian Murray warned that it could also force news providers to water content down to the point that it becomes 'irrelevant'.  He added that if they do not do so, they could risk losing readers and advertising because people are 'unable or unwilling' to sign in.  Mr Murray said the demands of the ICO code 'would prove virtually impossible to apply without either losing the vast majority of visitors unable or unwilling to provide proof of age, or damaging content to the point where it becomes irrelevant'.  He insisted: 'If publishers decide age verification is untenable and stop collecting data as a result, then they would face huge loss of advertising revenue when it becomes no longer possible to provide potential advertisers with essential audience measurement.  'The whole regime, if enacted, would mean a watering-down of editorial content.'  He added: 'The effect would be to severely damage the media industry, making many news and media online offerings simply untenable.'  The society, whose nearly 400 members include editors, lawyers and other senior figures, also warned the proposed measures could have a negative impact on the children they were designed to protect.  It stressed: 'There has always been an encouragement that young adults and teenagers engage with the world through reading newspapers and following news broadcasts. The proposed age-appropriate codes would seem to go against that body of thought.'  The final version of the code could come into force as early as the autumn. It applies to virtually every website that makes money online.  The ICO said: 'We're aware of media industry concerns.  'We'll be considering all responses we've had, as well as engaging further where necessary once the consultation has finished.'


eveningstandard--2019-01-03--Jen Brister review Meaningless is an entertaining rage about societyaposs ills and the patriarchy

Jen Brister review: Meaningless is an entertaining rage about society's ills and the patriarchy

Jen Brister is not happy. If it isn’t the fact that her judgmental Spanish mother has moved into her house, it is the fact that the comic and her female partner haven’t had much sleep since they became parents of twin boys. And that’s just for starters.  Luckily, she is well aware that her assured show, entitled Meaningless, is a comedy and channels her anger into some gloriously entertaining raging riffs about society’s ills and the patriarchy.  We may be living in a post-feminist era but she has seen how gender clichés live on when she is walking down the street with her sons and other mothers dote on them.  As if Brister did not have enough gripes to get her goat, she has recently discovered that at 43 she is peri-menopausal, which at least goes some way to explaining her temper. Though I suspect she would be in a venomous mood even if she was in the first flush of youth.  A number of topics here did feel familiar. The observation that women become invisible in middle age is regularly addressed and she is hardly the first to skewer smug mums.  Her “if men had periods” routine has been delivered countless times, albeit often by men, from Ben Elton to Daniel Sloss. Though you certainly can’t fault Brister’s memorable image of blokes over-fussing about menstruation.  Her brutal impression of neanderthals who can’t get their head around lesbians having children was priceless, as was her explanation that she and her partner are bio and non-bio mums “like boxes of detergents”.  This is not a show that will make you see the world anew, but it will touch a nerve. And hopefully this good review will lower Brister’s blood pressure for a few minutes.


eveningstandard--2019-01-15--Approaching Empty review Comes into its own as an exploration of loyalty in a go-it-alone society

Approaching Empty review: Comes into its own as an exploration of loyalty in a go-it-alone society

The fact that Ishy Din’s drama about a struggling minicab firm in Middlesbrough is set at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s death is no coincidence.  This very particular period is a cue for reflection on the type of society Mrs T inherited and the one she created, via two long-time friends who used to have jobs in the local steelworks until it closed down.  This pair, 55-year-olds of Pakistani origin, are Raf (Nicholas Khan), who owns the cab firm, and its manager Mansha (Kammy Darweish), who wants to buy it from Raf and revive its ailing fortunes. “You don’t have to be ruthless,” says good-natured Mansha who, we suspect, is about to be proven sorely wrong.  The first half, flat and static, is essentially at empty, but there’s a welcome top-up of fuel after the interval of Pooja Ghai’s production, which is a collaboration between the Kiln, Tamasha and Live Theatre, Newcastle.  It is here that Din gets stuck into an examination of whether good, old-fashioned ethics and loyalty have a time or a place anywhere in our increasingly cut-throat, go-it-alone society.  Click here to buy London theatre tickets with GO London Tickets


eveningstandard--2019-01-30--No-deal worries me but Iaposm much more fearful about no-heal our society is more polarised than

No-deal worries me but I'm much more fearful about no-heal — our society is more polarised than ever

I like to see myself as a sunny soul. I have a slightly naive belief that everyone can find a way to get on. I believe the children are our future — teach them well and let them lead the way… I have friends old and new from across the political and social divide and even a few who live south of the river.  The morning after the EU referendum in 2016 I felt calm and even oddly positive, even though I voted Remain. I tweeted a photo of London in the dazzling morning sunshine with the cheery caption “A new dawn, in so many ways…” I told my hysterical Remainer friends to calm down.  I promised them that everything would be OK, that perhaps this could even be an opportunity to change Britain for the better, that there was no way our politicians would be stupid enough to plunge this great country into some weapons-grade crisis and that we could all come together as one nation eventually and hug it out.  Well, I regret to declare that I was completely wrong. Two-and-a-half years later we are in a bigger mess than anyone could have imagined. We face a political, constitutional and looming economic crisis. But the greatest tragedy is how divided we still are. We don’t just have differing views on dry technical concepts or phrases which no one really understands, such as the customs union, the Irish backstop or regulatory alignment (which sounds like a Hoxton osteopath), we have big, raging rows on social media or in real life which reveal fundamental differences about how we see life.  And you can’t just dismiss them or shake them off after a Twitter spat or an explosive screaming match on a television panel. They go to the heart of who you are, your vision of society and your core values — and it’s hard to compromise on those things. I’ve had major run-ins on LBC and CNN this week with Brexiteers, and as much I want to be friends with everyone, I cannot change my beliefs. I think it’s wicked to create a man-made economic shock.  We are better for having people from all over the world living here in the UK. And I think it’s a thoroughly good thing to strive for greater equality and opportunity. But I also understand that as many people hold the exact equal and opposite view to me and think that all this “Leftie nonsense” has sent this country to rack and ruin. And that’s their right (even though they’re wrong, obviously). But how do you reconcile those views? I’m not sure you can. We need to be honest about it. Brexit didn’t cause all these divisions but it drew them out and we can’t just paper over the cracks.  We may well end up with some second-rate deal to patch up the political crisis but these deep, profound social contradictions which have been unleashed will sadly mean there will be a no-heal Brexit for the foreseeable future.  I pride myself on being unfashionably late, so months after literally the entire world gushed over Hamilton , I finally took my seat in the theatre on Monday night. I liked it but I had questions. There. Said it. Don’t @ me.  Sure, the set, songs, performers and production are all incredible. I loved the diversity and whooped away at all the right messages about immigration — but it was still a tale about a man in politics who found fame, fortune and power, and couldn’t keep it in his pants.  Plus ça change. But it’s a fascinating hidden story of a key figure in America’s fight for independence. A Founding Father — “father” being the operative word.  It got me thinking about American politics today.  While I despair of Trump, I look ahead to what may emerge from the wreckage after he departs and it could be this exciting new era which will need Founding Mothers, Daughters and Sisters.  We saw from the mid-terms that a number of brilliant women, many of colour, are stepping up, getting elected and running to be the Democratic presidential candidate, including Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand.  But the one to watch is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the firebrand young Congresswoman from New York. She’s our modern feminist Hamilton — from a humble background, cocky, brave, smart and talks too much. And she’s not throwing away her shot.  *We’re bored of Brexit but more fed up with January. It’s cruel because of all the irritating people tweeting how “shamazing” it is to be booze-free. I applaud you but I don’t need your abstinence trolling me while I nurse a hangover, which I spent good money on. Lots of people are posting boozy before and sober after selfies but I can’t tell the difference. Maybe I’m still slightly drunk.