Just Another Honour Killing

It is a case of honour killing. The couple were not beheaded, but were killed with the knives and had severe signs of torture on their heads."
Muhammad Pervaiz, Satrah, Punjab police chief

According to the FIR, the couple's family tied them up in public and beheaded them in a village near Sialkot.—File photo

"Their legs and arms were tied while their mouths were gagged with pieces of cloth. The father of the girl announced loudly that he was going to slit the throat of [his] daughter and her husband."
"He said they should learn what would happen to them [children urged to witness the murders] if they married someone of their own choice."
Muhammad Ijaz, neighbour

It was first reported that Sajjad Ahmed, 31 and his bride Muafia Bibi 17, had been beheaded in a grisly 'honour killing' that took place in Satrah, Punjab province in Pakistan. Neighbours have since denied the beheading; they were, they claim, stabbed to death in the presence of family and neighbours, including children whom the young woman's father who led the killing, insisted it would be instructive to the children to watch.

The young couple had their throats slit and onlookers watched as they then bled to death. This is Pakistan, after all, where honour killings are common enough that human rights groups claim 900 were reported in 2013, though it is generally believed that the number is grossly under-reported.

 A Pakistani woman Nargas Bibi shows family pictures of her son Sajjad Ahmed and his wife Muafia Bibi, who were killed by Bibi’s parents, at her house in Hussain Abad village near Sialkot, Pakistan, Sunday, June 29, 2014. AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary

Residents of this town explained that relatives of the young woman had convinced the couple they supported the marriage, inviting them to the town. Once there, they were drugged.They hadn't long to live, after that. It was a particularly gruesome honour killing. Hundreds of which go virtually unnoticed every year, considered by authorities as representative of domestic accidents or suicides.

They were slaughtered to restore family honour. The young woman evidently married without the consent of her father. For that cardinal cultural social sin she paid dearly. Police are said to have arrested five people who were involved in the atrocity, which is to say 'honour' killing.

In an earlier well publicized case of a couple who had married without her father's consent and who had been bludgeoned to death by her relatives outside a courthouse on a busy Lahore street, Pakistan's prime minister demanded that police chiefs explain why they had done nothing to intervene.

Beam It Up!

"We were able to show that you could exert sufficient force on an object around one centimetre in size to hold or move it, by directing twin beams of energy from the ultrasound array towards the back of the object."
Christine Demore, Dundee University Institute for Medical Science and Technology

This is not quite the 'tractor beam' of "Star Trek", "Star Wars" and their ilk, capable of capturing and drawing in hostile space craft in an extraterrestrial drama of unknown encounters. This is legitimate science. Of course, science fiction notoriously and frequently in due time, often heralded the marvels that inventive scientists would eventually produce, in a kind of replication of theoretical devices being brought to reality bearing an accurate resemblance to a science fiction writer's imaginative world of wonders.

Lasers have been around for quite a while, now, used for a myriad of purposes over the last fifty years or so. But current technology linked with the advancement of laser technology has enabled scientists to create a number of variations on a theme. One of the more recent developments being the use of an ultrasound beam to influence/pull small, hollow, triangular objects toward the source of the beam.

 

This accomplishment has been the the brainchild brought to fruition of Scottish scientists and physicists at Dundee University in collaboration with researchers at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, and the Illinois Wesleyan University. It is, needless to say, in its infant stage of development. As such it is capable of moving minuscule objects, definitely not spacecraft.

It is capable, however, of drawing forward objects a million times larger than previous tractor beam designs specializing in pulling or sorting particles. It works with a billion times more physical force. And its practical uses will include medical applications, including the treatment of cancer. The technology can enable a capsule to be moved carefully toward the site of a tumour, then strategically released.

Bessel Beam/Tractor Beam

NASA has been working with tractor beams for a few years. Its Office of the Chief Technologist back in 2011 received a fairly large grant for the study and development of three methods of using lasers for the collection of particles; to trap then deposit them where needed for analytical purposes.

So the tractor beam of science fiction has now become a tractor beam of scientific usefulness, a usefulness that will grow as the technology advances. For the time being, however, while useful, the tractor beams are capable of manipulating small particles only.

As for the future? Who knows.

Dream CatchersA file photo of Malaysian highlands. The way the Senoi people of the Malaysian highlands view dreams has been of great interest to many dreamers worldwide for decades. (Shutterstock)

Sometimes when we dream we are frightfully vulnerable to what we suspect will be a dreadful encounter with an unknown force that means to do us ill, a malicious something that threatens our well-being. Sometimes, when we dream we seem to be aware that what we are experiencing is happening in a dream, and sometimes we can will ourselves to awaken, to rescue ourselves from what we dread and anticipate will be happening in the next frames of that dream.

Are those dreams? Or are they nightmares?

There is a primitive tribe -- perhaps not so primitive in their philosophy, and one we could learn from -- living in Malaysia, an aboriginal population called the Senoi whom anthropologists have visited over a period of a century, to become familiar with the strange but seemingly beneficial culture of dream management that they have successfully manipulated, training their minds to be aware that they are capable of steering their dreams in a direction that will be useful to them.

"Neurosis and psychosis as we know them are reported to be nonexistent among the Senoi. ... Western therapists find this statement hard to believe, yet it is documented by researchers who spent considerable time directly observing the Senoi. The Senoi show remarkable emotional maturity."
Patricia Garfield, psychologist (1970s)

A fast disappearing way of life.

"There may be some benefit to sharing dreams, just as there may be benefit to sharing any intimate thoughts in a supporting group."William Domhoff, author of The Mystique of Dreams

Researchers and writers visiting Malaysia to research its isolated aboriginal population in the 1930s and 1970s brought back knowledge they had gleaned of the Senoi dream system which they believed represented the culture's key to peace and clarity of vision. Most reports that were published as a result of parsing the social interplay and reliance on dream manipulation to forge calm and serenity agree that dream management provided a means to confront daytime problems.

Most were agreed that the Senoi represented emotionally mature, reserved people, ascribing their self-control and propensity to swiftly solve pending conflicts, to their culture of dream control. Patricia Garfield, a psychologist who spent time with them found the Senoi to represent a society free of mental illness and violence. In 1934 Kilton Stewart lived among the Senoi for several months and he reported that the Senoi solve many of their daytime problems by first addressing them in dreams.

Both Stewart and Garfield wrote that each morning the Senoi speak to their children about the dreams the children had experienced the night before, for the purpose of training their children in the manner in which the Senoi handle dreaming. Children are taught to be friendly to others in their dreams, including the befriending of perceived hostile forces. Alternately to convince those with whom they do make friends to help them defeat those hostile to them.

Dreams could also provide pleasant sensations such as flying through the air, along with other pleasures that might be involved with lucid dreaming (lucid dreaming occurs when the dreamer is aware of being within a dream). In dreams gifts could be exchanged. Paintings, woodcarvings, bits of music could be given and exchanged, to make the dreams more pleasant, and ensure that friends were made in the process.

How events taking place in a dream can transform into reality was made manifest to the researchers convinced they had correctly interpreted what the Senoi were doing, in training themselves to be optimistic and positive, with the same attributes overlapping into real life. But then, the very idea of a real life experience and a dream experience seemed to be part of the social culture that held the view that the body is possessed of more than one soul.

The main soul lives inside the forehead, the other in the pupil of the eye. The soul that resides in the eye is capable of leaving the body during a trance or sleeping hours. It is this soul that takes part in the dream scenarios. If an individual experienced a dream where a conflict occurred with another community member, the dreamer might tell that person what had happened and offer reparation if he had caused offence; the dream event shaping the real-life event.

As a kind of knock-off transferal of the dreamwork of the Malaysian aboriginals to the present time and Western culture, some therapists in the 1990s thought to aid their patients who had recurring nightmares by persuading them to imagine different, more palatable endings to the dreams that haunted them. Their patients could reinforce those happy endings by imagining them continually during their waking hours.

At the present time, the Senoi appear to deny having or ever imagining a culture with a dream system, as written of by Stewart and Garfield. Anthropologists seem to be in general agreement that the Senoi have become cautious about speaking of their cultural heritage to outsiders; they have chosen not to reveal their ancient cultural-social heritage of dream management leading to social harmony.

Fending Off Second Strokes

"These are often tragic strokes that can impair memory, language and other cognitive functions and result in permanent disability."
"We want to do the utmost to improve stroke prevention and one way to do that is by early detection and treatment of atrial fibrillation."
"We regularly see patients with warning strokes of transient ischemic attacks -- mini strokes -- for which there is no obvious cause found."
"[In 'cryptogentic' strokes] patients undergo all the standard diagnostic tests and they all come back 'normal'. The underlying cause of the stroke remains a mystery."
Dr. David Gladstone, director, Regional Stroke Prevention Clinic, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto

Dr. David Gladstone led the EMBRACE trial (photo by Doug Nicholson/Media Source)

The world's largest heart monitoring study of stroke patients, undertaken by Canadian researchers and led by Dr. Gladstone, an associate professor in the department of medicine at University of Toronto, has led to a discovery of a novel way to detect abnormal and erratic heart rhythms in stroke survivors. Those abnormalities increase risk for a second and potentially lethal brain attack.

The findings are expected to alter standards of care for the thousands of Canadians who suffer unexplained strokes annually.

The study took in 15 medical centre practices and patient out come statistics and concluded with a new strategy to use a continuous, 30-day heart monitoring protocol, one which found five times as many cases of atrial fibrillation than did the standard 24-hour test. The results were published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Atrial fibrillation
In atrial fibrillation, arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat or heart rhythm) occurs because the electrical signal controlling the heartbeat becomes confused, and the atria quiver rapidly and unevenly, changing the constant rhythm of the heart.
The atria and ventricles no longer work in a coordinated way to contract and pump blood, the heart may not pump blood efficiently, and the heart rhythm becomes abnormal. In AF, the heart beats about 100 to 175 times per minute.

Atrial fibrillation, also termed AF, is a condition where the heart quivers, beating chaotically. The result of which can be blood pooling in the upper left chamber of the heart, a venue where clots may form, then travel through the circulation system into the brain. Those suffering from AF have a three- to-five-times higher stroke risk than people without the condition.

Resulting strokes are more devastating and deadly than strokes emanating from other causes. People who suffer an AF-related stroke are 70% to 80 percent more likely to die or become disabled. While some of these events can result in "instantaneous dementia", according to researchers, where permanent disability results from disruption of cognitive functioning.

AF is considered a silent killer; whose symptoms are difficult to detect. And unless people experience recognizable symptoms like flutterings of the heart, skipped heartbeats, or shortness of breath, the condition can be easily missed. Standard treatment for "cryptogenic" strokes is generally the prescription of low-dose Aspirin in hopes of preventing a second stroke from occurring.

"But if the person has AF that might not be strong enough", stated Dr. Gladstone, in which case more effective anti-clotting drugs can be prescribed to lessen the risk of a second stroke occurring, by 50% or even greater. The study involved 572 patients aged 55 and older without a history of AF. All patients were given the conventional protocol of 24-hour monitoring where AF wasn't revealed to be present.

Following that, patients were selected for two randomized groups. One group received an additional 24 hours of the standard monitoring which uses a small device that clips on a belt with wires taped to the torso, while the second group received prolonged monitoring with the use of an electrode belt worn around the chest. Patients were requested to wear the monitor for 30 consecutive days.

The result was that AF was detected in 16 percent of the patients in the 30-day group as opposed to three percent detected in the 24-hour group. This has led to an obvious conclusion, that twice as many patients as formerly could be prescribed stronger medications to deal with their detected greater potential to suffer a second, dangerous stroke.

When In Doubt Sit It Out

"We are all aware that there is no such thing as a minor concussion. A head injury is a head injury."
"[Parents need a reasonable guideline on what to look for and] the path for return to play."
"Everyone wants to do right by their child, but they don't want to be overly cautious."
Michael Barton, Ottawa

Michael Barton's son, Sam, took part in a study that has led to the world's first guidelines for kids with concussions.    Chris Mikula / Ottawa Citizen

"It was fascinating to see how recommendations have changed over time. Years ago children were told to rest after concussion, which means something entirely different today with the onset of technology -- now, rest also includes a break from screen time."
"Think of your brain as a battery. If normal is being full, after a concussion it is down at 50 percent strength. The brain needs time to get fully charged."
Dr. Roger Zemek, scientist at CHEO, and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation

Hundreds of children in the Ottawa area suffer from concussions annually, some 900 of whom show up at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario emergency room alone in the space of a year. Concussions are more common an occurrence in children and youths than they are in adults. One in 70 children taken to the emergency room has suffered a concussion. An estimated ten to twenty percent of hockey players between the ages of 9 and 17 suffer at least one head injury a year.

Sixty percent of children coming in to CHEO with concussions are boys. It's estimated that fully one hundred thousand children experience concussions each year in Canada. And now, the first comprehensive guideline for pediatric concussions has been published, meant to help doctors, nurses, parents, teachers, coaches and community workers become familiar with the signs of concussion presenting in children and youth. Instructions relating to how to react when a concussion is identified and proper treatment is also included, including how to judge when a child may return to school and sports.

The guidelines include assessment tools listing signs and symptoms of concussion; everything related from loss of consciousness to fatigue, headache, sensitivity to light, and concentration difficulties. The lists are printable, and accessed at www.onf.org/documents/guidelines-for-pediatric-concussion, and www.concussionsontario.org/guidelines-for-pediatric-concussion. Red flags calling for urgent medical assessment include vomiting, seizure and severe or increasing headache.

Dr. Zemek cautions that one of the key pieces of advice is to take children away from play once a concussion is suspected to have occurred. "If in doubt, sit them out." This is a critical piece of advice, since a second concussion following on the first before the brain has recovered can result in "devastating consequences". Second impact syndrome, as it is termed, led to the death of an Ottawa high school rugby player after a game in May 2013.

Evidence continues to mount about long-term damage resulting from sports-related head injuries. Dr. Zemek and his team surveyed countless health providers, reviewed four thousand papers focusing on the latest evidence relating to children's concussions, which led them to their guidelines. Which reflect the most up-to-date science reflecting the fact that concussions don't just occur in hockey rinks or sport fields, but can occur in a backyard, a playground, recreation centres, and at schoolyards.

Many doctors are improving their abilities to recognize and accurately diagnose signs of concussion, but only a small number realize that children require a "thinking rest" along with a physical rest to recover, which means eliminating or severely limiting computer time until symptoms improve. That includes stopping or limiting homework until concussion symptoms are completely eliminated. Dr. Zemek points out that a patient can experience a brief loss of consciousness with symptoms resolved in a few weeks.

Alternately, there may be no loss of consciousness, yet it might take a longer period of time for symptoms to be resolved and recuperation takes that much longer. A wide range of symptoms exist, including irritability, sadness and fatigue which can signal that the brain has not yet healed. Once symptoms have dissipated entirely the child or adolescent should return gradually to school, sports and other activities.

Should symptoms return, physical and mental rest must be resumed. Where parents were once concerned over concussions resulting from sport activities or accidents in a playground, there was much less awareness of lingering and perhaps dangerous damage that might result. Most doctors simply advised parents years ago, to have the child rest, and during the night wake the child up every few hours to ensure they responded normally.

Knowing more now, we're much more vigilant and careful to ensure that there are no lingering effects. When ten-year-old Sam Barton was playing in his school gym class one day "somebody fell on somebody", with Sam banging his head on the floor. No visible bumps or bruises. But the resulting concussion affected his ability to concentrate, affected his muscular strength, and required intervention to return him to health.

Her Unending Nightmare

The best-laid plans of those anxious to escape a nightmare are all too often dreams more difficult to realize than reality instructs us to expect. Meriam Ibrahim of Sudan aroused the outraged conscience of the world in a roar of condemnation for Sudanese justice when her plight became known. She was a 27-year-old Sudanese woman, raised by her mother, a Christian, to worship Christianity. In Sudan as elsewhere in the Muslim world, Christians are under deadly attack.

In Sudan, apostasy, turning away from Islam, is considered a capital offence. Muslims are not free to disown Islam, and all the more so if they turn in their defiance to another religion. In Meriam Ibrahim's instance, this was never an issue in reality, for she had never been a Muslim, had not been raised in Islamic tradition, and had lived all her life as a Christian. Which didn't stop the authorities from persecuting her, incited by her distant Muslim relatives.

Meriam Ibrahim stood accused by her father's family of abandoning Islam for Christianity. Even her half-brother called for the death penalty for her. She had married a Sudanese Christian who has dual Sudanese-American citizenship. She was herself Christian. When her father abandoned her mother when Meriam Ibrahim was a young child, her Ethiopian-Christian mother raised Meriam in the belief of Christianity, and that was the only religion she had ever known.

She is a physician by profession, and she has a two-year-old son with her husband. She was arrested while very pregnant with her second child, and charged with apostasy as well as "adultery", because a court in the capital Khartoum did not recognize her Christian marriage to American citizen Daniel Wani. She was to be hanged for refusing to "return" to Islam. A few weeks after she was sentenced and imprisoned with her infant son, she gave birth to a little girl.

Authorities had mandated that during the birth of her daughter Maya, Meriam Ibrahim's legs must remain shackled. Under these mercilessly tortuous conditions, international outrage fueled condemnation of the Sudanese government and its justice system. The justice who had passed judgement on this woman ruled her execution would be held off for two years, until baby Maya was weaned; this is what passes for compassion in a Sharia court of law.

Meriam Ibrahim steadfastly refused to recant her Christianity. "She is not going to renounce her religion, though. She told me that", her husband said. Her husband lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and had been trying to move heaven and earth to enable his wife and their then-only child to move to the United States, before her imprisonment. And then, suddenly she was released from prison on Monday.

The family planned to leave Sudan as swiftly as possible. Two senators from New Hampshire had introduced legislation to grant Meriam Ibrahim and her children permanent legal status in the United States. With her release, she was moved to an undisclosed safe house. A day later, at Khartoum airport as the family of two adults and two children attempted to fly out of the country, the mother of the two children was re-arrested.

Meriam Ibrahim holding her baby daughter Maya, with her legal team and, left, husband Daniel Wani and son Martin -- Photo, The Telegraph

No reason for their detention was given, according to their lawyer, Elshareef Ali Mohammed, with them at the time, seeing them off, as they attempted to leave the country through South Sudan and then on to America. Reports began circulating that she was accused of travelling with false paperwork, the very documents provided by South Sudan with U.S. assistance.

She was released again on bail conditions; the unnamed individual who provided the surety for her bail would be charged with the same offences as Meriam Ibrahim, should she once again attempt to leave the country of her birth and her judicial agony before the 'case' was fully resolved.

Public Accountability

"If I was going to have surgery I would be keen to know the key outcome rates for the hospital and surgeon I would be going to."
"I think it's almost inevitable that we're going to be reporting this more and more."
 Andreas Laupacis, physician, health-policy analyst

"It drives a culture where you act with the patient's best interest first and foremost, which hasn't always happened in British medicine. It's made people, everybody, focus on tidying up on every little thing, making sure you go the extra mile on everything."
"At first, people didn't like it, people felt it wasn't right, being under that kind of scrutiny. [Now] it's kind of tolerated, if not widely embraced."
Ben Bridgewater, University of Manchester surgeon

Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press/Files    Dr. Teodor Grantcharov, a surgeon with Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, with a mock patient in an operating room. 

 

When thoughtful and concerned people decide to shop for something in particular, many of them do some diligent research. To determine the best product available at the very least cost; quality for a reasonable financial expenditure. Armed with that knowledge, they set out to acquire the object, be it a refrigerator, a car, a house. These purchases are important to our quality of life. They are regarded as necessary, and their acquisition complements the kind of lifestyle we imagine for ourselves.

That being so, why is the far more vital, certainly incomparably more important life-issue of finding a competent, experienced surgeon, through a research tool available, for example, on line, to ascertain the surgical success rate of that surgeon's professional accomplishments not available? If the surgical specialist has to his credit, as an example, successful outcomes for the patients he/she undertakes to operate on, as opposed to others whose outcomes are more on the iffy side, who wouldn't want to make that selection, forearmed?

In Canada, at the present time, even on those occasions when a medical regulator imposes on a surgeon's license restrictions reflecting complaints and poor outcomes, that information is not accessible to the public; the public being those people who might find themselves wondering about the level of expertise and operating success of a surgeon they may have been referred to by their family doctor or a specialist in internal medicine.

It would be immensely helpful if basic performance statistics for surgeons' success rates were publicly available. Recently in Canada a federal agency began providing a list of basic statistics in performance reflecting success of individual hospitals; rates of patients re-admitted following heart surgery, or complications following joint replacement. If this can be done with hospitals, to alert patients, and in the process encourage hospitals to mount better practises, why not with doctors?

It's being done in the United Kingdom, where hospitals now expect surgeons to report on their vital statistics, how patients fare after operations. A program exists making publicly accessible success rates for thousands of surgeons available for anyone to examine, and in the process compare one surgeon's success rate against another's, as an aid to helping them determine who they would prefer to operate on them in what could very well be a life-and-death situation.

It's been almost a decade since Britain has pioneered this public service. And since that time, they've seen their overall mortality rates drop significantly. Some doctors are suspicious about the process, claiming that to protect themselves, unintended consequences could surface where surgeons deliberately avoid taking on the most difficult patients with a seeming guarantee of a questionable surgical outcome.

"If you came in with a really high-risk condition, I'd hate to think a surgeon would run for the hills because they didn't want to take a thump to their numbers", explained Dr. Dave Ross of Edmonton, president of the Canadian Society of Cardiac Surgeons. Doctors are people like any other in any other professions, some with excellent skills, others just getting by; their competency levels nothing to write home about.

Interestingly, a University of Michigan study published last year  highlighted the performances of bariatric (weight-loss) surgeons whose surgeries were videotaped and then screened and rated by colleagues. Those with the least expertise had higher rates of complications and patient deaths, was the general consensus. Other similar studies over the years have confirmed that patients whose doctors have performed a specific procedure frequently tend to suffer fewer complications. Experience matters.

"In surgery, once you graduate, you can do whatever you want, and nobody monitors you", commented Teodor Grantcharov, who operates out of Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital. His interest in patient safety spurred him to develop an operating-room "black box" recording system. And there is the instance where patients who were suing an Ontario obstetrician-gynaecologist for serious complications they suffered under his care, had no knowledge that the College of Physicians and Surgeons had previously red-flagged him resulting from earlier complaints.

In the 1990s, New York State took the initiative to pioneer public reporting of individual surgeons' performance by publishing mortality rates for cardiologists specializing in artery-unclogging angioplasties. A spate of heart-surgery deaths of babies at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in Britain led to an inquiry, and then a British newspaper obtained and published the numbers of such deaths in 2005. They've been routinely posted on the Internet through the specialists' society by cardiac surgeons themselves since then.

Canada has started to publish some hospital-level data. The Canadian Institute for Health Information began making a range of statistics publicly available in 2012, including the rate of C-sections, the uptake speed of hip fracture surgery and the percentage of patients returning to hospital following treatment of a variety of conditions, and rates of medical error. That list is set to be expanded soon with the addition of statistics for hospital-acquired sepsis and outcomes in nursing homes.

Sweeten Your Tea?

"Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with elevated cardiovascular disease mortality."
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), February 2014

"The available evidence did not support a single quantitative sugar guideline covering all health issues."
Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition British journal

"People fed sweet white sugar diets were not shown to have any greater likelihood of any real heart disease than people fed 'healthy' brown grains and fibre."
Dr. John Sloan, clinical professor, Department of Family Practise, University of British Columbia, author of Delusion for Dinner: Unmasking the Myth of Healthy Eating

"No association between weight change and consumption of sweets or cake was seen."
"No associations were seen between long-term consumption of sugar-sweetened soda beverages and overweight or obese status."
2013 meta-analysis WHO-funded British Medical Journal

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When researchers published their sugar-blaming findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association claiming that sugar is linked to the onset of heart disease, the Heart & Stroke Foundation, the Canadian Medical Association and Childhood Obesity Foundation stridently demanded that the federal government must regulate sugar additions to processed food and drink to halt the wholesale destruction of Canadian human lifeforms.

Government could have responded, by recognizing an opportunity to pose as public-health-conscious while imposing taxes on sugar-heavy products to persuade Canadians that the better course of safety is to avoid excess sugar consumption. That hasn't happened, and likely it will not. The media had a ball with it, though. It was an attention-grabber, it did make people who use copious amounts of sugar at the table -- sweetener for hot beverages, fruit, baked goods come to mind -- feel exceedingly guilty.

cupcakemojo.com

Sugar use as a furtive, societal-unapproved activity?

The World Health Organization responded by urging consumers to radically change their sugar-addiction habits for the good of their short- and long-term health and that of their families. The U.S. Institute of Medicine's recommendation for sugar use puts it at a maximum of 25% of daily calories derived from sugar consumption. Canada's food guide simply recommends balanced moderation. Which may mean many things to many people, sensible awareness among them.

At an informed guess Canadian consumption of added sugars (setting aside naturally occurring fructose in fruit and juices) reasonably would rate at between 11% to 13%. Moreover, a recent study out of Canada found "added sugar intakes have been stable or modestly declining ... over the past three decades." Soft drinks are singled out comprising the largest source of sugar in the American diet, emphasized the JAMA article. But in Canada soft drinks like soda and pop are less popular than in the U.S.

In Canada the top three beverages of choice are water, coffee and milk. Canadians tend to consume less than half of their sugar from soft drinks as compared to Americans. While the JAMA article followed diet diaries of thousands of Americans to conclude that people who took over 25% of their daily calories from sugar tripled their risk of dying of heart disease. However, the JAMA article's insistence of a connection between heart disease and soda seems to be contradicted by their own raw data.

The almost twelve thousand participants in the study over 18 years had been divided into distinct groups based on weekly soda consumption; ranging from less than one can of pop daily to more than one a day. Among the less-than-once-a-day groups 468 deaths occurred from heart disease, while a similar sized group of once-a-day pop consumption came out with 183 deaths. Does that make sense? If the more sugar one ingests, the more dangerous to health it becomes?

British researchers examining countless randomized controlled tests searching allegations made disfavouring sugar -- that it leads to a metabolic syndrome resulting in obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, diabetes and stroke -- came up with no impact related to sugar consumption even when patients consumed almost half their total calories in sugar. Studies searching to relate sugar and cancer, depression and dementia similarly turned up no connection.

The reality appears to be that in Canada both sugar consumption and health disease are in decline mode.

The Slavery Issue of Thai Shrimp

"Ethical businesses ... will be undercut by unethical businesses. It's the curse of all volunteeristic approaches to this [unless governments regulate and enforce stricter regulations]."
Aidan McQuade, director, Anti-Slavery International

Thai 'trash fish' workers unload the catch at Songkhla port. Chris Kelly/Guardian 

"One day I was stopped by the police and asked if I had a work permit. They wanted a 10,000 baht ($250) bribe to release me. I didn't have it, and I didn't know anyone else who would, so they took me to a secluded area, handed me over to a broker, and sent me to work on a trawler."
Ei Ei Lwin, 29, a Burmese migrant detained on the docks at Songkhla port

The British newspaper the Guardian has published the results of a months-long investigation. Their conclusion: about 500,000 people are working in Thailand as slaves, many of them on shipping boats employed catching the fish that produces fish meal that feeds mostly shrimp. That half-million enslaved workers is part of the estimated 30 million other poor and vulnerable people who have been caught up in corporate interests that blink at slave labour.

The world can now boast more slaves forced to work against their will presently than at any other time in history. This, at a time when we complacently prefer to believe that slavery of any kind is a scourge that has long passed into history. Slavery, needless to say, is internationally outlawed. It was, in any event, only backward countries of antiquity and more modern countries of racist inclination who practised what we now feel is the immoral shackling of human beings to someone's will.

Not only are slaves employed in hard, back-breaking, never-ending labour on fishing boats and agricultural lands, mines, factories, but regarded as less than human they have few human rights, and are often savagely beaten. There are other slaves as well, women from Asia, Africa and eastern Europe who are trafficked throughout the world, including North America, as prostitutes who rarely see the profitable results of their labour.

Despite the dread that the world itself conjures up of inhumane conditions and misery incarnate, we are all somehow complicit, it would appear. While Western democracies would have nothing to do with such inhuman practises as owning another human being and working that individual to death, we are all involved. Our governments, though aware that slavery is rampant, do little to battle it through the enactment of laws with teeth to outlaw the practise.

So we eat food, wear clothing, and walk on rugs that have been produced by slave labour; indentured children, families living on the edge of existence, reliant on labour that barely earns them food and shelter. CP Foods is a multinational which the Guardian centred its attention on, where slave boats are involved in the products that they market and sell.

This issue is one that merits governments tackling -- from poor rule of law, human development, economic development and access to credit. And to criminalize slavery in a manner that the unscrupulous cannot undermine. So that supply chains are closely examined, existing laws are enforced, investigations take place, and companies that support slavery in their supply chains are boycotted.

CP Foods, when probed for information refused to confirm whether its shrimp are sold in Canada. Walmart refused to confirm whether it sells Thai shrimp, and Costco was fairly shy about responding to queries about its shrimp, but evidently it comes from Thailand.

Trapped in the Bowels of the Earth

"For years our solidarity has grown. We have worked together and gotten to know each other. Today we have the proof that this is the right way to work. We overcame language and technical barriers and succeeded in completing a difficult operation."
Roberto Corti, Italian National Society of Alpine Speleology

"They really worked hard; they brought their best. A difficult rescue effort like this can always fail. It is essential that we work together."
Klemens Reindl, rescue leader

There are those people who are so curious about the world that they will go to any extraordinary measures to explore and discover the mysteries of nature and our existence within it. From the depths of the oceans deep to the closely cloistered bowels of the Earth -- from deep space exploration to ascending the most remote, forbidding peaks on various Continents, and exploring the most frigid, inhospitable areas of Earth where ice and snow and impossibly thick glaciers and icebergs are king -- those intrepid souls set out to satisfy their avid curiosity.

There is an alpine cavern near Berchtesgaden in southern Germany, known as the Riesending (Big Thing). That cavern can be reached below the surface of Untersberg Mountain by expert spelunkers. The Riesending cave north of Berchtaesgaden stretches over 20 kilometres vertically and horizontally into the mountain which hosts it. A team of experts discovered its presence in the mid 1990s, and mapped it in 2002.

Source: Arge Bad Cannstatt

One of those experienced spelunkers was Johann Westhauser, now 52, who works in the physics Department of the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, and he is acknowledged as one of the country's most experienced cave researchers. Since its discovery Mr. Westhauser has explored the Riesending cave several times. The most recent occasion when Mr. Westhauser explored the cavern was this very month. Unfortunately, on June 8 while underground with a companion a rock struck him on the head about 1,000 metres underground.

His colleague made his way back to the surface in twelve hours, to alert authorities, who then undertook a complex international rescue. And after 22 days, ten hours and 40 minutes trapped underground in parlous conditions, Mr. Westhauser emerged from his dark prison. He was strapped to a stretcher, handled by dozens of volunteer rescuers representing the international community of scientists, explorers and spelunkers. The surface of the 2,000 metre mountain where the narrow mouth of the cavern opens in a vertical drop is shrub-covered, impossible to land a helicopter. So equipment was lowered by cable and then a landing pad cleared.



Hundreds of rescue workers arrived from Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Croatia, representing professionally expert climbers accustomed to descending into the inner depths of mountains. Two hundred and two descended into the cave to eventually manage to carry the wounded man strapped into a padded fibreglass stretcher, winching him with a pulley through the darkness deep in the mountain. Before they had reached him, five bivouacs equipped with food and sleeping bags had been set up at intervals. They painstakingly handled their burden with great care, going from bivouac to bivouac. At the final bivouac, they rested.



Finally they lifted the rescued man to safety through the narrow shaft leading to the surface where he was treated by teams of doctors at an emergency medical station set up near the mouth of the cave. From there he was flown by helicopter to hospital. "We have achieved our goal. We have also made rescue history, which was only possible through international co-operation", said Norbert Heiland, head of Bavaria's Mountain Rescue Service.  The entire effort, from start to successful completion, involved no fewer than 728 people.

Gone To Pot

"We are afraid that if we enter [the village] and respond to the shooting, we may cause casualties."
"Moreover, [they] have all the weapons and equipment we have."
Special Police officer, Lazarat, Albania

"Time is ogver for the links of the world of crime in Lazarat with parliament, with politics, with those they exploited until yesterday."
"What you are seeing today is the best example of our determination to install the rule of law in every corner of Albania."
Albanian Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri

Albania has a new socialist government. And it continues to seek membership in the 28-country European Union. Its application for candidate member status has been turned down so far, on three occasions. The stumbling block? Organized crime and corruption. There are plenty of illegal weapons in the country. An uprising in 1997 led to looting of military installations. Most of the weapons have never been found.

The sprawling settlement surrounded by high hills of the town of Lazarat with its population of five thousand, has had beneficial links to top leaders in the Democratic party of Albania. It had been in power until last year when elections led it to defeat. But in the time that politicians and criminals had found a common purpose, the town was transformed from a farming community to become Europe's largest illegal marijuana producer.

Plants were being openly cultivated in fields and gardens, and have been, for the last ten years. The town is said to have produced about 900 tonnes of cannabis annually with a value of over $6.1-billion, representing just under half of the country's gross domestic product. But it's a product that isn't taxed because it takes place beyond the eye of the law.

Expensive homes have been built throughout the village 230 kilometres distant from the capital Tirana. Where many of the residents who once worked for government lost their jobs after politically-motivated purges with a change in government in the late 1990s. Many of those government positions had been in the customs service which policed nearby border crossings with Greece.

A strong demand in neighbouring Greece and Italy furnished the impetus for marijuana farming to grow exponentially in Lazarat. Other drugs moving from Asia and Latin America to Europe find their way transiting Albania as well. Earlier governing authorities had left drug gangs out of their purview and for a fairly sound reason, since police attempting to enter would be hailed with gunfire.

The new Socialist government has determined a change is in order. They're intent on stamping out the marijuana economy. A main motivator is the wish to join the European Union. In the latest attempt to settle the issue, 500 police officers were deployed in an effort to impose law and order in the town, part of a sweeping nationwide anti-drug purge. Their welcome to Lazarat was punctuated  by rocket-propelled grenades, mortar shells and heavy machine gun fire at the outskirts of the village.

This action taking place with local live television broadcasting of the event. The danger inherent in the volatile situation led police to warn residents to remain protected indoors. On the second day of the assault police numbers had swelled to 800 when control of a quarter of the village was achieved. Officers seized "considerable quantities" of marijuana, ammunition and drug-processing machinery. A day later police advanced into gang-defensive areas, seizing and burning ten tonnes of marijuana.

Smoke plumes rose above the village purportedly from fires set by locals themselves, burning plants as the police came closer. Casualties were slight; one policeman and three villages suffered light gunshot wounds. The situation came to a head when the gang leader surrendered to police after negotiations, and seven others were arrested on suspicion of taking part in the shooting, of attacking and robbing a television new crew.

AP Photo Hektor Pustina -- Albanian police search houses in Lazarat village, 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of capital Tirana, Wednesday, June 18, 2014, looking for cannabis and also suspects who shot against them. Near-continuous gunfire rang out from the lawless village as hundreds police have arrived to battle well-armed marijuana growers who were trying to thwart a government crackdown.

AP Photo Hektor Pustina -- Smoke rises from Lazarat village, 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of capital Tirana, Tuesday, June 17, 2014, allegedly from villagers burning their cannabis ahead of the police raid. Hundreds of Albanian police, backed by armored vehicles, stormed a lawless southern village Monday after suspected marijuana growers allegedly fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns at officers during a drug raid.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/06/18/5908489/albania-seeks-to-bring-law-to.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/06/18/5908489/albania-seeks-to-bring-law-to.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Driving Under The Influence

"All of this verdict will never change anything that happened. My loved ones will not come back."
"It's hard because all the pictures that are in my head are coming back."
"It's not me that's bringing her to court. I have no expectations concerning this trial."
"Future and present drivers should know that we don't stop on highways, and it's very dangerous. Even if it's a small animal that we like or that we want to preserve we should not stop on the highways. It's not a place to stop."
Pauline Volikakis, Montreal, bereaved wife and mother

"I just wanted to pick all those ducklings up and put them in my car. I know it was a mistake."
Emma Czornobaj, 25, Laval, Quebec

Emma Czornobaj, left, leaves the Montreal Court room with a supporter Monday, June 2, 2014. Czornobaj has been charged with criminal negligence and dangerous driving causing two deaths when she stopped her car on a highway to avoid hitting a family of ducks.   Photograph by: Peter McCabe , The Gazette

Most people, women in particular, but not necessarily just women, would catch their breath and hope for the best, seeing a wild animal, small or large run out on a highway where cars are passing. Snakes, turtles, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, ducks -- any number of unaware, frightened animals seeking to pass from one wooded area to another, instinctively aware that to do so is dangerous, but risking the passage because of some irresistible natural draw -- all come to grief on highways.

When the animals that are crossing represent larger wildlife like deer or moose or bears, then the risk to the driver who cannot evade their presence, is multiplied, as well. Drivers, for the most part, make an effort to swerve slightly if it can help them to avoid hitting an animal or a bird, though it is also a fact that there are some who deliberately go out of their way to strike such targets, taking some kind of morbid pleasure in meting out death.

Emma Czornobaj wasn't one of the latter. On June 27, 2010, she was driving on Highway 30 on the South Shore of Montreal when she noticed seven ducks in a row, waddling in the left lane. It really is surprising how often that kind of thing happens, and when it does, there are occasions when people are alerted, perhaps not on a highway but on a rural lane, and the ducks are able to pass in safety. Emma Czornobaj parked her Honda Civic, started her flashers and walked on the highway back to where she had seen the birds.

At trial in Montreal, where Ms. Czornobaj is charged with criminal negligence causing death, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment on conviction, along with two charges of dangerous driving causing death, with a maximum sentence of 14 years, Martine Tessier informed the court she had narrowly avoided smashing into Ms. Czornobaj's car, seconds before a fatal crash occurred with others on the road nor managing to avoid a collision with the parked car.

Then it was the turn of witness Pauline Volikakis, driving her orange Yamaha motorcycle which she managed to skid to a stop, sustaining slight injuries. She had seen her husband gesture at a woman who had been walking on the narrow shoulder of the highway. "I wondered what she was doing there. It was not the place to be", she commented. She watched as her husband's Harley Davidson smashed into the parked car. And as her 16-year-old daughter Jessie, riding pillion, was thrown onto the car's back window, over the car, onto the hood and then the road.

She witnessed her daughter, pinned underneath the car as the force of the crash shoved the car forward. Her husband had been driving his motorcycle at an estimated 113 to 129 kmh. She suffered the agony of seeing her husband and her daughter, whom they had just picked up from her workplace, with the family heading out for home but with the intention of stopping on the way for ice cream, involved in a cataclysmic collision. That was at 7:20 p.m., daylight on a lovely summer's day.

Ms. Czornobaj's lawyer's argument was that the deaths were the result of "an unfortunate accident", not to be confused with a deliberate criminal act. She had stopped close to the barrier separating the highway, and put on her hazard lights, unaware she could be the cause of a dangerous life-threat to other motorists. The Crown attorney stated that Ms. Czornobaj had stopped on the road and emerged "for the purpose of catching ducks", her actions indicating "wanton and reckless disregard for the safety of others".

Superior Court Justice Eliane Perrault informed jurors they could find the accused guilty of simple dangerous driving, with a maximum sentence of five years. And she patiently responded to a number of queries posed by the jury, explaining that "Criminal negligence requires more than carelessness on Emma Czornobaj's part. It must be a marked and substantial difference from what a reasonable and prudent person would do in the same circumstances."

The Crown, pointed out Judge Perrault, must prove this; either by proving the accused was aware of the danger or the risk of safety to others and acted nonetheless; or to prove that the accused "gave no thought to the possibility that any such risk existed." As for charges of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death, the Judge remarked: "The Crown must satisfy, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Emma Czornobaj acted in a way that is a marked departure from what a reasonable and prudent driver would do in the same circumstances."

"You must be satisfied that a reasonable person in similar circumstances should have been aware of the risk and the danger involved in Emma Czornobaj's conduct."  Pauline Volikakis hadn't looked to charge the young woman whose oblivion to the danger her action in driving under the influence of kindness might impose on the travelling public. And the jury is now left with the perplexing and troubling judgement they must pronounce upon; requiring the Solomonic judgement.

Flouting Safety - Darwinian Selection

"He was literally using it just to fly himself to the cottage, fly himself to his friends' houses. My main concern is that, if you lose your driver's license, you can still fly around in a personal aircraft."
"I live on a lake; I don't know how many people are flying up to the cottage on the weekend, landing their helicopter, landing their plane. ...I don't know how many commercial pilots there are who have lost their driver's license."
Brad Harris, York Region concerned citizen

Handout   On April 23 of this year, an R44 II helicopter registered to a numbered company owned by Bruce Lakie was involved in a serious crash near Queensville, Ont.

Mr. Harris is concerned. He is familiar with the man in question, Bruce Lakie, a man who lost his driver's license because of an impaired driving conviction, but still went on to pilot his personal private helicopter. Mr. Lakie was in fact, not afoul of the law in this matter. His driving license taken away, he no longer drove his truck. But evidently there is nothing in Canadian law that would interfere with piloting a personal aircraft; nothing to link his flying license with his driving license.

Who knew? You can be arrested for the criminal act of drunk driving, but nothing will associate that act with piloting a plane? Would a mature adult, cognizant of his obligations to society as well as to himself and his family, restrain himself from flying an aircraft while under the influence, but not while driving a motor vehicle? The mind boggles.

"Currently there are no formal mechanisms in place linking a provincial/territorial driver's license to the pilot license as a driver's license is not a prerequisite for a Canadian pilot license", according to Transport Canada spokesperson Brooke Williams. The issue simply appears to be one that hasn't previously been of any concern and thus, it hasn't been addressed, as it might have been, and most certainly should have been.

If a substance abuse problem compromises a motorist's ability to be aware and drive competently, it most certainly would do the same to a pilot's competency in manoeuvring and flying an aircraft. He would constitute a potential threat in many ways. Unless there arises a suspicion that a pilot would not pass a medical fitness assessment and an airport security clearance would be denied him, it's doubtful the matter would even come up, unless an accident occurred directly linking the pilot to alcohol abuse.

It's a different story in the United States, where pilots convicted of "alcohol-related or administrative action" are required by law to contact the Federal Aviation Administration within 60 days, to inform them of the situation. Mr. Lakie's conviction of impaired driving and dangerous driving should have served to restrict him from driving any vehicle, including aircraft and for very obvious reasons. "Mr. Lakie's manner of driving was a significant departure from the standard of a reasonably prudent person", wrote the trial judge who convicted him.

During the period of time when this man's driving license was suspended he continued to pilot his Robinson R44 II helicopter. On April 23 of this year an R44 II helicopter registered to a numbered company owned by Mr. Lakie happened to be involved in a serious crash near Queensville, Ontario. The Transport Canada incident report indicated that the aircraft had taken off from a private residence in Queensville, and "during a landing in a marshy area ... a skid cut in the soft earth and the helicopter dynamically rolled over."

Fortunately there were no injuries. This time around. What if the helicopter had landed on a highway where it 'dynamically rolled over' a few cars innocently driving their occupants to a destination other than a cemetery?

No Bread, Just Circuses

The Federation Internationale de Football Association arrives for a month or so every four years on a mission: to plunder the financial resources of any country unfortunate/fortunate enough to be hosting FIFA's passionate extravaganza beloved of nations from Serbia to Russia, Brazil to South Africa in the game its admirers dub 'the beautiful game'.



In South Africa in 2010 FIFA compelled the construction of stadia which will never again be filled to anything approximating capacity as the huge structures settle into insolvency and disuse, crumbling with time, a reproach to yet another country whose majority population lives with inadequate housing, health care and security. This year, Brazilians have been protesting for quite a while at the waste their government has foisted upon them, even though Brazilians' passion for soccer has few parallels.

Stadium construction has taken $3.6-billion of taxpayer funding, despite that in real terms the country cannot really 'afford' such an expenditure other than in social infrastructure that is badly needed in a country representing some of the highest income inequality globally. Futebol expresses the national identity, deeply engrained into the souls of Brazilian boys and men. This year's FIFA event in Brazil will come out on the north side of $11-billion.

Members of the Brazilian army, navy and air force riding horses attend presentation of defence and security personnel and equipment that will be used during the 2014 Fifa World Cup. (Reuters photo)

That is $11-billion expressing a system looted by crooked politicians and giant corporate interests prepared to ravish any economy that doesn't respect itself and its civic obligations. In South Africa FIFA insisted its parliament pass legislation ensuring few inconveniences would interfere with FIFA's business model. In Brazil the host country at the specific request of FIFA, ignores its law prohibiting alcohol sales in stadiums enabling World Cup sponsor Budweiser to anticipate a return in suds sales.

And then there's another clever feint taken from experience in South Africa where the sport venues also have stadium exclusion zones wherein only FIFA-approved products are sold. Big Macs and Adidas apparel will do exceedingly well with their captive clientele. Brazilians who took exception to all of this were impolitely corrected by their government dispatching police geared for riots, masked, and expressing rubber bullets and tear gas in their direction.

Brazilian police wearing body armour, clad in black, with faces covered in black balaclavas protect the outer perimeter of the venues. Seems like a strange kind of war being waged by government against its civilians who dare dissent.

Brazilian army sharpshooters participate in a training session ahead of the 2014 Fifa World Cup. (AFP photo)
But Rio de Janeiro can handle the inconvenience of dissenters with the dispatch of over 150,000 members of the police and armed forces. Brazilians went about their business, not the least bit dismayed that a Brazilian Navy ship patrolled Ipanema Beach in front of hotels. The military contemplating the possibility of shelling the humanity that might descend in a mass dissent?

Brazilian army soldiers salute during the presentation of the troops and equipment that will be involved in the World Cup security operation, at the army headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil. (AFP photo)

The strange lack of proud Brazilians wearing the nation's colours of green and yellow seems peculiar; where's the celebration? The Christ the Redeemer statue fabled for its presence world-wide, looks pensively critical. Perhaps it is pondering the Japan World Cup, the Beijing Olympics with their scarcely used, horribly expensive infrastructure....  Concrete poured for the Sochi Winter Olympics appears to be cracking. East London's post-Olympic regeneration remains a wistful wish.

Recently, German, Swiss, Swedish and Polish bids to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics have been quietly withdrawn; cost concerns do matter in some jurisdictions. Munich and Davos-St.Mortiz withdrew their bids post-message from voters rejecting their Olympic bids. Krakow too held a referendum on the issue with over 70% voting against.

But that's all right, there's still Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan bidding for the 2022 Games. And the next two World Cups will be hosted in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. Qatar should have no trouble ponying up the billions it takes to present a perfect venue to the waiting world. Over 400 Nepali construction workers have died in Qatar on World Cup construction sites.

 Creation

"It would have been a very, very bad day for the Earth. One potential outcome could have been complete destruction."
"Subsequent to that bad day, it was a good thing."
"It's quite possible that by probing material from the deep Earth we may learn something more about the different formation stages of the Earth, how it was put together... We don't quite know what fraction melted, what vaporized, what stayed solid."
Sujoy Mukhopadhyay, associate professor, Earth and Planetary sciences, Harvard University

NASA   Apollo 8 astronauts took this photo of the Earth while on the Moon. Scientists say the Moon was created when the Earth collided with another planet 4.5 billion years ago.

"This hypothesis [the Big Splash] can explain a lot of features of the moon, but there is one problem, that if you model this process [by computer], these computer models predict that most of the debris [that forms the moon] is coming from the impacting body [Theia], and because every body in the solar system has its own unique fingerprint, you would expect to have different isotopic compositions of the Earth and the Moon."
"Until now, this difference has not been found, and we've now found it."
"We really don't know if we could find this material anywhere on Earth ... We don't know if it's anywhere. It might have been all mixed away."
"If I find this, if you can give me like 10 milligrams of proto-Earth, I could tell you how large the impactor was and what its composition was. This would be very exciting, but currently we have no idea where that might be in the Earth."
Daniel Herwartz, University of Cologne, Germany

A new creation story, or at the very least, a theory of the Earth's final creation was presented at a geophysics conference that took place in California recently, of a violent collision in primordial space between what is called proto-Earth and a much smaller object named Theia. The result of which was a melding of the two through a force so powerful both were reduced to molten rock and silicate vapour.

This collision has been named the Big Splash. An event that spun the earth, and tilted its axis by 23 C, creating the moon from the resulting debris blasted into orbit. This might-have-been cataclysmic collision resulted in the Earth that presents itself today, and the moon that shines overhead. It resulted in the protective atmosphere of the Earth, seasonal cycles, polar ice caps, moon-driven tides and the eventual emergence of life.

Mr. Mukhopadhyay has analyzed material derived from deep within the Earth, from places like Iceland and Hawaii where "mantle plumes" forcefully dredge up materials through volcanoes. He posits that though the initial impact reduced both planets  to melting stage through the force of the impact, the side opposite the collision on proto-Earth was shielded, remaining partially solid, settling into a layer deeply close to the Earth's molten iron core.

When the planetary crash occurred, gravity held all the succeeding exploded bits together, and they gradually settled into a slightly flattened sphere we call Earth and upon whose crust we all live and thrive. The occurrence represented what scientists name a "giant impactor".  As for the moon, it formed from the spinning detritus of the Big Splash, in less than a millennium: "Geologically that is incredibly fast", explained Mr. Mukhopadhyay.

And the date when that is intelligently hypothesized to have occurred? How does 4.5-billion years ago sound? A French team felt that the collision occurred 60 million years earlier than had been thought. In other words scientists believe Earth was formed about 40 million years after the solar system itself began its formation, the product of perhaps ten billion years of cosmic evolution.

The beginning, of course, was the Big Bang; an expansion with space and time flooding from a single point, creating a universe where matter and antimatter were created in almost equal measure, each contesting the other in existence to create the flash of light that telescopes of today are still capable of detecting, called the Cosmic Microwave Background. Because there was slightly more matter than antimatter, even though each set out to annihilate the other, when antimatter was exhausted, matter was left.

The gravitational pull of dark matter gathered the basic elements into strands that eventually came together to form stars, where hydrogen and helium fused to create heavier atoms. When the stars died and exploded they seeded the universe with stardust, over time forming into spinning discs of diffuse matter that eventually became asteroids, comets and planets orbiting newer stars distributed within spiral galaxies.

One of those stars was our very own Sun which back then had perhaps 20 planets orbiting it, including proto-Earth and Mars-sized Theia. How's that for a creation story?

 India's Ongoing Shame

"Because of lack of toilets, [women] go outside for defecation and they fall prey to the unsocial elements or the bad elements."
"It takes ten to twenty years for a trial and this also is causing some problems."
"India can provide [a] toilet in each and every house and that can prevent this type of rapes (happening) because of no toilets."
"They are so slow in their implementation of the schemes. If a scheme started today, it'll take ten years, twenty years -- that's the problem." Bindeshwar Pathak, founder, NGO Sulabh International

"Such attempts [rape of young girls in the act of relieving themselves] happen. Sometimes boys are there and do catch girls, particularly if a girl goes alone. They try to do bad things."
"I made a toilet after facing lots of trouble. Forests get filled with water (when it rains). If we go on the road, people pelt stone at us, some do other things."
Imarti Devi, Haryana state

Imarti Devi had a toilet installed in her home three years back, and worked as well to have toilets built in 104 other homes in her village. NGO Silabh International has installed 1.2-million individual toilets, and eight thousand public toilets across India in an attempt to help solve two issues; one of personal hygiene requirements, the other of stemming the violent attacks against women and young girls.

Epoch Times ... Venus Upadhayaya, Imarti Devi from Himithia village in India's Haryana state sits with other women of her village in the office of NGO Sulabh International on June 10. The NGO recently helped these women install toilets in their homes, reducing their vulnerability to sexual abuse.

Mr. Pathak, the founder of Silabh International and the crusading mind of its extremely vital stemming of the tide of sexual abuse and worse, speaks of national laws whose punitive effect are insufficient to persuade men and boys that they will be severely punished for such psychotic violence aimed at the weak and the vulnerable among them.

In a vast country with more than its share of social, religious, legal, political, international and potential conflict problems, the newly elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who appears a man dedicated to the common weal and good, common sense, may make a difference. Hope is high that this is a matter in general -- the lack of respect and commitment to respect for women, safeguarding their health and safety -- which will receive his firm attention.

During the recent election campaign, Mr. Modi spoke of "toilets before temples", acknowledging his understanding of the vastness and scope of the problem within Indian society. The hope is that his concern may be translated to direct and meaningful action, that the phrase will not turn out to be merely a handy campaign throwaway issue, and that measures will be found to turn society around to its obligation to protect its women and children.


Almost half of the country's 1.2-billion population are left to their own inventive devices and desperation to protect themselves while performing the most elementary of human needs; the evacuation of bodily waste. With no toilet in over a half-billion homes people must resort to relieving themselves in the out-of-doors. With increasingly fewer options because rapid urbanization has reduced the cover of trees and bushes, women in many areas of the country find themselves with few options other than to wait until dark falls to venture out, in relative privacy.

That privacy comes with a dreadful cost; incessant fear of being sexually abused under the same cover of darkness that gives opportunity to sexual predators. There seems to be no lack of such deviant psychopathic minds, to take advantage of women and girls when nature insists that the vulnerable take steps to relieve the body of its wastes. There is also no lack of horrific sexual assaults against Indian girls and women under other conditions as well, in a culture where a collective shrug responds to their plight.

In late May in a village in Uttar Pradesh state, two teenage girls from the Dalit caste who are viewed as subservient to the more high-caste Hindus in the country which makes them even more vulnerable to assault, were apprehended as they relieved themselves in a field. And though others were present, including an uncle of one of the girls, their abductors felt sufficiently protected by their caste, that they threatened him with a gun, and made off with the girls.

Protesters took to the streets of Uttar Pradesh in fury after last month's case

 

The two girls were later found, after a futile, desperate effort by the father of one of the girls, to enlist the help of local police who evidenced no interest whatever in pursuing their duty. Though the father knew where the girls had been taken, he was turned away with contempt at the door of the house that held them. There the girls were subjected to gang rape, throttled to death, and hung by their throats under a tree, where the villagers found them.

Every time a horrible event such as this takes place in India, it inspires dread and fear in women. Each time something like this takes place, women form protest groups and go out in their numbers to campaign against society's laxity in giving them the protection they deserve, and they are joined by men who believe as they do, that this basic responsibility is lacking. And each and every time such atrocities are reported, they seem to inspire other deviant men to repeat the horrors, time and again.