Artificial-Intelligence-Generated Fake Photographs

"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable."

Open letter: Artificial Intelligence experts/Industry Executives

"The letter isn't perfect, but the spirit is right; we need to slow down until we better understand the ramifications."

"The big players are becoming increasingly secretive about what they are doing which makes it hard for society to defend against whatever harms may materialize."

Professor Gary Marcus, New York University 

"The meme likely went viral because of the uncertainty about whether it was real or fake."

"It goes without saying that we can never again assume an image is authentic because it looks realistic."

Arvind Narayanan, professor of computer sciences, Princeton University

When the photograph of Pope Francis first appeared, wearing a branded winter puffer coat, people likely wondered where he had been that the Arctic chill required him to dress like that. We're not particularly given to doubting the evidence before our eyes. Anything that appears in public, in print or as photographic evidence is seldom questioned for its authenticity; we're that credulous. Seeing, after all, is believing, isn't it?

So, there was this photograph of Pope Francis appearing just prior to the fifth Sunday of Lent. Pope Francis in a long, white designer puffer coat retailing at $3,000, his pectoral cross and white skullcap completing the picture of the Holy Father. Holy smoke, it's a fake! The coat is huge, gleaming white with an outsized hood: "What the wealthiest 26-year-olds are wearing currently around SoHo."

According to the fact-checking website Snopes, the generative AI program Midjourney created the image which later appeared on the sub-reddit r/Midjourney. But wait: it's not the only fake image doing the rounds of the Internet. There are a few others highlighting another infamous world figure. One recently in the news in a scandalous, as in criminal wrong-doing manner for which he has been charged.

Speculation was going the rounds whether Donald Trump would show up handcuffed, in court.

 

What's blurry here? Look at the faces in the crowd   Elliot Higgins

 

Media experts are doing a second-take with the obviousness of how artificial intelligence might and will be used with ease in the creation of propaganda; weaponized in other words, as a destabilizing tool. Which led Elon Musk and a coterie of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives to call for a six-month break in ongoing development of AI. In an open letter, they cite the risk potential to humanity.

The potential civilizational risks posed by human-competitive AI systems in the form of economic and political disruptions were listed in the group letter of alarmed caution, alerting developers to work with policy makers on governance and regulatory authorities. Over a thousand individuals signed the letter, inclusive of Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.

Donald Trump himself shared an image on his Truth Social sitem depicting a likeness of himself kneeling in prayer under dramatic lighting. Once it began making appearance rounds on social media it was revealed as a "deep fake". 

 

Former US President Trump posted this AI-generated image of himself, but a closer look shows he is missing fingers  Truth Social

 

The photograph of the white-coated Pope was actually created by a 31-year-old construction worker in Chicago. He was floating a little high on magic mushrooms when he thought up the idea. "I just thought it was funny to see the Pope in a funny jacket", he revealed in a later interview. 

“I’m trying to figure out ways to make something funny because that’s what I usually try to do."

“I try to do funny stuff or trippy art — psychedelic stuff. It just dawned on me: I should do the Pope. "

"Then it was just coming like water: ‘The Pope in Balenciaga puffy coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris,’ stuff like that.”

Pablo Xavier, BuzzFeed News

One of Pablo Xavier's other AI-generated images of the Pope   Pablo Xavier

Detained Unto Death

"I was desperate because I saw a dead body, a body, a body, and I didn't see him [her husband, Eduard Caraballo Lopez] anywhere."

"There was smoke everywhere. The ones they let out were the women, and those [employees] with immigration. The men, they never took them out until the firefighters arrived."

"They alone had the key. The responsibility was theirs to open the bar doors and save those lives, regardless of whether there were detainees, regardless of whether they would run away, regardless of everything that happened."

"They had to save those lives."

Viangly Infante Padron, Venezuelan migrant, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Firefighters were at the scene trying to rescue people from the burning building   Reuters

 

 

"What humanity do we have in our lives? What humanity have we built? Death, death, death", officiating Bishop Mons. Jose Guadalupe Torres Campos mourned at a mass to memorialize the unfortunate migrants being held at a detention centre in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Both immigration agents and security guards from a private contractor were at the facility when it went up in flames and where 38 migrants died and 28 were seriously injured. 

 

An investigation that uncovered any misconduct, stated President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, would see the responsible punished.

Immigration agents had carried out a crackdown netting 67 migrants, among them Viangly Infante Padron's husband. Many of the migrants were asking for handouts or washing car windows at stoplights in the Rio Grande River city across from El Paso, Texas. Infante Padros expressed her shock in recounting witnessing immigration agents stream out of the detention centre once fire started in the building on Monday evening.

Following which she saw the bodies of migrants being carried out of the smouldering wreck on stretchers, each wrapped in foil blankets. victims of a blaze that appeared to have been set by detainees themselves, protesting news of their being returned from whence they came. Infante Padros's husband was not among the dead. The father of her three children sustained only slight injuries. It was serendipitous that he was scheduled for release and had been close to a door when the fire pandemonium erupted.

The catastrophe of so many lives lost seared the conscience of Mexicans, becoming a perplexing question of who was responsible. Why, they ask, did not the authorities involved make an effort to release the men -- almost all of whom were from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador -- before it was too late, leaving them to die of smoke inhalation once smoke from the fire filled the building and so many perished. 

Fifteen women were released -- according to immigration authorities -- when the fire broke out. No explanation was forthcoming to explain why no men were let out of the burning building. Migrants are shown on surveillance video leaked a day later, fearing their deportation, placing foam mattresses against the bars of their detention call, setting the mattresses on fire. Two people dressed in guard uniforms were seen in the video rushing into the camera frame. And while one migrant appeared by the metal gate on the opposite side, the guards failed to move to open the cell doors.

The guards hurried off as billowing clouds of smoke quickly began filling the building within seconds. The facility was operated by Mexico's National Immigration Institute which announced it was prepared to fully cooperate in the investigation. Full identification of the dead and injured is incomplete, although Guatemala stated that many of the victims were its citizens.

 

 

Drug-Resistant , Hospital Acquired Fungal Pathogen

"[They're not] thermo-tolerant. They don't grow well in hot conditions and by hot, I mean body temperatures, like us. Like, 37 degrees [Celsius]."

"Fungi are an entire kingdom of life of their own. They're quite distinct from other organisms."

"[They're microscopic, in many cases] except when they come up as mushrooms." 

"They consist of everything from yeast that raise bread and make beer, to moulds and mildews and all the terrible things that affect our crop plants."

"[But they're also] fantastic chemists. They make such amazing molecules. [Penicillin comes from a fungus; the antibiotic era was launched out of the discovery of penicillin]."

"It probably jumps onto your skin first. You can imagine, especially if you're in a hospital, where there's lots of lines into you, and you're being poked and prodded a lot, it creates an opportunity for the skin to break and the fungus to get in."

Professor Gerry Wright, Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, McMaster University

Also concerning was a tripling in 2021 of drug-resistant cases. Photograph: Shawn Lockhart/AP

 

The name of the fungus that is causing such consternation for its lethality and its future spread considered a new and burgeoning "urgent threat" to humans is candida auris. Unlike most fungi that affect humans this one is able to reproduce in warm-blooded bodies and it is "intrinsically resistant" to multi antifungal drugs. Candida auris has alarmed American hospitals where it has been spreading at an alarming rate. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, candida auris cases tripled between 2020 and 2021,

People who are extremely ill or who are immunocompromised represent those at increased risk of acquiring C. auris; generally it does not represent a health threat to healthy people. Its death rate is 28 to 53 percent, According to the World Health Organization. Canada's Public Health Agency has reported a total of 43 cases. In the U.S. the total is 4,041.

Professor Wright has focused on the study of fungi for the past 40 years, beginning when the HIV crisis was peaking. "Folks were dying", because their collapsing immune systems were unable to fend off "opportunistic" infections such as fungal infections.  Candida Auris is a form of yeast first discovered in 2009 in Japan, when a 70-year-old-woman's ear canal was found to be hosting the fungus. Infections of the blood, heart, central nervous system, eyes, bones and internal organs can be caused by the organism.

Candida auris, CDC

Candida Auris has been found on sinks in hospitals, on bed rails, on curtains and floors "where it can persist for up to a month", according to the University of Minnesota Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. "Right now this is not something that people walking down the street should be frightened of", cautions Professor Wright. Those with weak immune systems and hospital patients with "indwelling" medical devices such as ventilators and catheters are the most vulnerable.

"We really didn't know anything about candida auris until the first report [in 2009]. But almost simultaneously, it was discovered pretty much all around the world, and it sort of emerged all at once", explained Professor Wright. According to one hypothesis, as the world's temperature increased, the fungus adapted to survive in warmer environments "and that provided it with an opportunity to infect humans", stated Dr. Wright. In the mid-1980s once antiretroviral drug cocktails became "groundbreakingly" effective against HIV, invasive fungal infections were reduced in number to a dramatic extent.

And now, Professor Wright believes the time is right to take infectious diseases as seriously as medical science takes chronic diseases like diabetes and cancer. Complacency surrounding infectious diseases because of vaccines and antibiotics has led medical science to neglect the need to focus on research that will prepare the world for ever greater numbers of emerging pathogens and the steps needed to deal with their presence either through cures, new vaccines or therapies that can prolong life, not the pathogens.

dpa picture alliance/Alamy Stock Photo

"This is like the genie out of the bottle. These bugs are here,they're in our hospital systems, they're in our long-term care facilities. They're not going to get any easier to treat."

"We don't know how bad it's going to be, but people are going to die, and we need to be aware of it and find ways to detect it in the first place, but also to treat it."

"...If you're in a long-term care facility it's unlikey that you're going to be able to detect it until there's an outbreak. It's not routinely looked for. It might be in the future, as this starts to grow."

"[The result:] You have this sort of almost perfect storm. You don't have a lot of drugs available to treat a fungal infection in the first place, you've got a pathogen that has evolved the ability to infect us because it's learned how to live at higher temperatures, and that fungus happens to be intrinsically drug-resistant to begin with."

Professor Gerry Wright

The Neurological Abyss of Frontotemporal Dementia

"I was reminded that all of us are at risk for spending our final epoch lost in a neurological swamp."

"What is remarkable about the swamp that we call FTD is that it's a somewhat rare and unusual type of dementia."

"If the disease follows its typical path, that will probably include slowly disconnecting and progressively losing emotional judgment and control as well as losing a reasonable understanding of what or why any of it is happening."

"[Some sufferers lose] verbal fluency [They experience problems speaking properly and speech can become slurred]."

Michael Merzenich, neuroscientist, professor emeritus, University of California, San Francisco

"The vast majority of patients have no insights into the changes that are happening with their behaviour or their personality."

"And in sporadic FTD. the only sort of environmental or life history risk factor that's been identified so far is concussion or traumatic brain injury."

"We see pretty relentless progression of the loss of connections in the brain, the loss of synapses, the loss of neurons."

"There's a fair bit of variability between people and their rates of decline. But over time, judgement, decision-making, memory even, and certainly language deficits get worse"

"FTD, in any of its forms, is devastating for patients and just as devastating for partners and caregivers."

Dr/ Elizabeth Finger, neurologist, St.Joseph's Health Care London / associate professor in clinical neurological sciences, Western University

FTD is the short form for frontotemporal dementia, a condition which is mostly related to losing control of emotions, not so much about a declining memory. Depending on which part of the brain is affected, symptoms vary, but include frequently a profound loss of inhibition and empathy, and its symptoms become more serious as time wears on. 

Of the various types of dementia that generally arise with old age, FTD is different from Alzheimer's. The condition is, in fact, a collection of disorders, considered the second-most common -- early onset neurodegenerative dementia -- tending to strike people a decade earlier than Alzheimer's, "So, people in their 50s to early 60s", says Dr. Finger. And unlike Alzheimer's whose early signs are often memory-linked, with FTD classically, the first changes affect behaviour, personality, judgment and decision-making, while some variants of FTD affect language.

MedPage Today

 

This condition was suddenly highlighted when it was revealed several years ago ago that the actor Bruce Willis is suffering from FTD, arousing the interest of the public. It puts a familiar face out of films, action films that fascinated people when he portrayed an intelligent, muscular action-oriented hero-role bad boy. The message some people may have received from the news was that if this athletic figure could suffer a neurological injury to his brain, anyone could. And they could, in fact.

There is a genetic, inheritable component, but there is also a much larger component that represents haphazard selection. Some 40 percent of cases are felt to be of hereditary extraction in susceptibility to the disease; at least one family member with another neurodegenerative disease, not necessarily FTD. The balance, 60 percent on the other hand, are considered to be not of genetic origin, but arising sporadically.

A concussion could conceivably explain the origin of some cases, but most of those with FTD have never had the experience of a concussion "and the majority of people with a concusion don't get FTD", says Dr. Finger. FTD is most often most severe in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain; a condition that can begin on one side or the other but over time both sides of the brain tend to become affected. In the sense that parts of the brain shrink, or atrophy.

How a person's symptoms or decline will manifest is unpredictable. just as what the symptoms will become like six months on, a year later, are unknowable. Generally social norms and social graces become affected; people are seen to make comments to family, friends or strangers that are inappropriate, rude or overtly personal. "Verbal fluency" becomes a loss for some patients, experiencing problems in speech. "In terms of apathy, patients lose interest in work, in hobbies they used to spend a lot of time on", Dr. Finger added.

 

In time disinterest in the family becomes obvious or in friends whose welfare at one time the patient was deeply engrossed in. The patient gravitates emotionally to an inward cycle, concerned solely for their own welfare "and not really able to consider other people's perspectives anymore or consider their emotional needs". With no awareness of what is occurring, patients become insistent that nothing has changed. "They can't understand why anyone is concerned."

No cure has been found for the condition, nor a therapeutic path to slowing its progression. Behavioural changes and language problems with the use of some strategies may help. Oxytocin, a hormone that operates on a signalling molecule in the brain of men and women is being tested by  Dr. Finger and her colleagues in the hope it might influence social behaviour.

"It kind of got a reputation as being pro-social, even a maternal kind of hormone", improving pair bonding and grooming and nesting behaviours when tested in both sexes of laboratory animal models. Whether it might be capable of offering help in the restoration of some empathy deficits with FTD in humans is the experimental goal. A randomized, placebo-controlled trial involving under a hundred patients is in the wrap-up stages.

Bruce Willis in London at the 2013 premiere of A Good Day to Die Hard - the fifth film of the Die Hard franchise   Getty Images

The Perspectives of Science and Common Sense

"Calories don't take into account the energy it takes our cells to metabolize food in order to use it. A calorie of protein makes you feel fuller than a calorie of fat, because protein is more complex to metabolize."

"You could be aiming to eat 2,000 calories a day, but how much energy your body actually absorbs will depend on whether you're eating sugar, celery or steak."

Giles Yeo, professor of molecular neuroendocrinology, University of Cambridge

 

It's all explained in Dr. Yeo's book: 'Why Calories Don't Count', which lays out the explanations of how and why it is biologically that the human body absorbs very differently calories present in various types of foods. Leading dietary experts to question the relevance of the fixation of calories in the human diet since not all calories are equal.

 

Yet people focus on the simplest of formulae, depending on the recommended daily intake of calories popularly acknowledged at 2,000 calories daily for women and 2,500 for men.We fail to consider the realities of our individualized needs that are dependent on some relevant specifics such as age, gender, height, weight and the level of our physical activity. For some there is a need to reduce, or alternately increase caloric intake purposing to maintain a moderate weight. 

And what of the widely held belief that the most important meal of the day is one that breaks the long fast between the dinner of the night before and a good night's sleep, a longer period of time between meals than any that take place during the day. There are those that call into question just how important breakfast is to the human body, but the human brain is also highly dependent on an infusion of energy to function after that long fast.

 

High Fibre Cereals

 

There are those who trace our belief in the importance of a good start to the day dependent on breakfast. In the 1920s marketing campaigns launched by cereal companies placed an emphasis on the importance of breakfast, as a marketing gambit. That, however, does not diminish the importance of breakfast in preparing the body and the mind for the coming day. More important is the observation that it is the quality of the food taken at breakfast that reflects its nutritional importance.

As for the public clasping as gospel that eight glasses of water or two litres daily represents a standard irrigation necessity, that too comes under question. Fluid requirements vary, depending on details such as the weather, climate, age, and energy expended. Those who work in hot weather may require far more water. "A lot of your water comes from the food you eat", notes Dale Schoeller, emeritus professor of nutritional sciences at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He avers that science has never supported the two-litres-a-day rule as an appropriate guideline.

 

Getty

 

Then there's the standard prescription of having eight hours of sleep nightly. During the Industrial Revolution a daily regimen was established of eight hours of labour, eight hours devoted to recreation and the third eight hour block set aside for rest. How much sleep is required for anyone is  highly individualized, dictated b a complex number of issues; genetics, age, medical condition and lifestyle. While some individuals function well on fewer than six hours, others require over ten hours of sleep.

"I think that the myth of the eight hours has actually caused quite a bit of anxiety", points out Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience, University of Oxford, who compares individual sleep patterns to shoe size; fitted to the individual foot shape and size.

Healthline

Consider the advice from public health on dietary fibre, plant-based carbohydrates found in fruit, vegetables, cereals, nuts and seeds. In the late 1980s, the U.K. government encouraged people to consume more dietary fibre and they put the daily figure at five, daily. Whereas studies indicate that five a day is not likely to be a sufficient amount to render full protection against various chronic illnesses. Imperial College London produced a study finding at least seven or ten whole foods; fruits, vegetables or nuts/seeds would be required to provide the nutrients and fibre needed for optimum health.

 

 

"When the dietary recommendations were originally set, it was designed as the optimal to prevent weight gain in the first place. But now we're in a situation where two thirds of the population are already overweight", noted Charlotte Evans, researcher in nutrition and public health at University of Leeds who recommends that people make fibre the majority of their daily diet intake.

 

Then there is the thorny matter of exercise and the popular health mantra of ten thousand steps a day, adopted by the World Health Organization, the American Heart Association and many other health groups. Ten thousand steps a day is a purely arbitrary figure that originated in a Japanese boardroom in the 1950s when the company Yamasa thought up the figure to promote the world's first step counter prior to theTokyo 1964 Olympics.

 

In fact, research actually recommends between 6,000 and 8,000 steps daily could be more accurate to avoid chronic illness. Scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health found if you live a fairly sedentary life, simply adding an extra 500 steps a day would yield significant health benefits.

"People obsess over how many steps are enough, but we should be asking how many steps are too few."

"We should get people to stop taking less than 5,000 steps a day, but there seems to be an obsession with the higher number, while it's more important from a public health point of view to just get people off the couch and out the door." 

Catrine Tudor-Locke, professor and physical activity researcher University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Food Security as a Geopolitical Weapon

"They've just become so common. Every week, I would say, we are getting contacted by farmers or food companies. It's one of the soft bellies of our critical infrastructure."

"I think we are all waiting for disaster."

Ali Dahghantanha, Cyber Science Lab, University of Guelph, Ontario

"These are all systems that we explicitly depend on every single day, and they have become extremely vulnerable to manipulation of all sorts."

"They're vulnerable because we haven't thought carefully about the security of how we set these systems up."

"I mean, it's truly terrifying, to be honest."

Even Fraser, director, Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph

"The interruption of the global food supply is not collateral damage from the war in Ukraine."

"It is a planned hybrid weapon to further massively destabilize the global economy and political order."

Yulia Klymenko, Ukrainian MP, first deputy chair, Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Ukraine

"There is a lot of innovation happening in agriculture in Canada."

"So we are at risk from foreign-backed espionage."

Mohamad Yaghi, Agriculture and Climate policy lead, Royal Bank of Canada

Hackers could be waiting to cause disruption, or simply just monitoring and collecting data on foreign agricultural methods. Photo by Chung Sun-Jun/Getty Images

 

Last year Ali Dehghantanha's squad of engineers and computer scientists responded to dozens of reports from southwestern Ontario of hacks within farming and food production operations. Sometimes the incidents represent a bad link in an email with hackers demanding money to unlock a system or to return the farmer's data. In other instances hackers break into a farm system and threaten to kill livestock; chickens, cattle. 

In a third of the cases, investigators found evidence of state-sponsored hackers originating in
Russia, China, North Korea and Iran who have quietly gained access to control systems inside a farming operation. The University of Guelph is located close to Toronto in one of the province's most vital farming hubs. A group of specialists work out of the Cyber Science Lab, visiting banks, defence contractors, hospitals and farms. The lab received fifty calls from the food industry last year.

The realization dawned that the domestic food production system may be one of the most obvious cracks in Canada's national defences. Criminals or state-sponsored hackers breaking into systems to disrupt critical infrastructure like transportation or health care or food production only recently become plausible owing in part to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

 

 Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) the country's signals intelligence agency, warned that Russian-backed hackers are "exploring options for potential counterattacks" on critical infrastructure in Canada and other NATO allies supporting Ukraine.

 

A computer monitor is seen inside a GPS-equipped John Deere tractor. As farm use of technology and smart devices grows, experts say more needs to be done to protect against cyberattacks that could threaten food security. (Seth Perlman/The Associated Press)

 

Farms have become complex technical operations using networks of remote monitors measuring soil moisture, or robotic milkers capable of detecting an infection in a single teat, or environmental control systems maintaining the precise indoor temperature and air filtration requirements of a poultry barn. All of which in theory could be commandeered and held for ransom by a hacker. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security identified several "hypothetical threat scenarios" in its 2018 report where hackers could compromise agricultural operations. 

 

One scenario had a terrorist lift data on the health of a large livestock herd. "They modify the data to look like the herds have foot and mouth disease, and dump the data on the internet". In such an instance it could take weeks for lab tests to confirm the outbreak was in fact false -- in the interim causing trade issues and shaking public trust in the food supply. Another scenario had hackers manipulate moisture sensors in a farmer's soil, triggering watering systems to flood the fields and destroy crops.

 

In its invasion of Ukraine an effective part of the Russian playbook has been attacking agricultural infrastructure. EU trade counsellor Maud Labat warned that Moscow strategized how to wield food as a "geopolitical weapon". Its attacks on transportation and grain storage infrastructure, its months-long blockade of ports on the Black Sea choked off access to one of the world's most important bread baskets, driving up global grain prices last spring. Food shortage concerns intensified in developing nations depending on the region for imports. 

 

National Cyber Threat Assessment's latest report stated state-sponsored hackers are not likely to disrupt or destroy critical infrastructure unless Canada enters into direct hostilioties, leaving  hackers more likely to break into Canadian systems to collect information or "pre-position" in the event of a future conflict. Released last fall, the CSE report stated adversaries could use cyberattacks as a form of "power projection and intimidation".

 

 

"In the absence of a significant escalation in international hostilities, we assess it is unlikely that state-sponsored actors will intentionally seek to disrupt Canadian critical infrastructure and cause major damage or loss of life", advised CSE spokesperson Kyla Borden. "This is organized crime. These folks have HR departments. They have employees of the month awards. This is big business", explained John Hewie, a national security officer at Microsoft Inc., referring to sophisticated networks focusing on "big-game hunting" -- attacks where a hacker takes control of a system or data from a major business and asks for a steep ransom.

 

In fact, the Canadian food industry alone experienced a series of high-profile incidents late last year, a "cybersecurity incident" at Maple Leaf Foods Inc., one of Canada's largest meat packers. Empire Co.Ltd., Canada's second-largest grocery chain experienced a "cybersecurity intrusion" that snarled operations, expected to cost the company $25 million. According to Janos Botschner, lead investigator of the Cyber Security Capacity in Canadian Agriculture, approximately four to 11 percent of Canada's farms have had a cyberattack attempt on their operations. "This is very much an estimate, but it's probably also an under-report", he clarified. 

A farmer in a chicken barn in Ontario. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post files

Tuberculosis, the Global Bacterial Killer

"The infectious disease that killed the most people last year is one we've heard almost nothing about: tuberculosis."

"In 2022, it likely claimed 1.4-million lives, more than the total toll of COVID. And yet, in rich countries, where virtually nobody dies from tuberculosis any longer, attention has moved on."

"Even in poor countries, where the wealthier can afford treatment, it is often the poorest, most disconnected and disadvantaged that suffer from this disease."

Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhagen Consensus think tank

 

 

"Tuberculosis, or TB, is a bacterial infection that can spread through the air. It is most often found in the lungs, but can exist in any organ in your body. When a person coughs or sneezes, they can transmit so-called “active” TB. However, many people are also infected with an inactive form of TB, known as latent TB. The bacillus that causes the disease is called Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb). M.tb's unique cell wall, which has a waxy coating primarily composed of mycolic acids, allows the bacillus to lie dormant for many years. The body's immune system may restrain the disease, but it does not destroy it. While some people with this latent infection will never develop active TB, five to 10 percent of carriers will become sick in their lifetime."

TB Alliance

Close to a quarter of all people in the world carry the tuberculosis bacterium. Every tenth person in wealthy Europe and the United States carries the bacteria. Well-nourished people who are financially comfortable will not develop tuberculosis. For those less fortunate it remains a risk that the bacteria they carry will develop into full-blown tuberculosis. This is what defines tuberculosis as a disease linked to hunger and poverty. 

Over ten million people annually develop tuberculosis worldwide. Owing to a lack of resources, about six million only were diagnosed in 2021. Fifty percent of those undiagnosed and untreated will die. Those whom tuberculosis does not kill will go on communicating the infection to others. Five to fifteen people can potentially be infected by one actively infected individual through close contact over the space of a year.

The six million who do become diagnosed and who undergo treatment must take medication for up to six months. Since the medication clears the more immediate symptoms of tuberculosis such as fevers and weight loss in a number of weeks, many undergoing treatment will simply drop out long before the prescribed six months of treatment has elapsed.

Once treatment is foregone too early, the chance that the disease can be communicated to others increases The surviving tuberculosis bacteria, at the same time, is then more likely to develop drug resistance, leading the next treatment to require 18 to 24 months to succeed and at the same time be much costlier to pursue.

"Common symptoms of active lung TB are cough with sputum and blood at times, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats. WHO recommends the use of rapid molecular diagnostic tests as the initial diagnostic test in all persons with signs and symptoms of TB as they have high diagnostic accuracy and will lead to major improvements in the early detection of TB and drug-resistant TB. Rapid tests recommended by WHO are the Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra and Truenat assays."

World Health Organization (WHO)

"It's possible to diagnose many more people and ensure most TB patients stay on their medication. Our new study shows this can be achieved for an additional $6.2 billion annually, less than what the world has already promised: in 2018, the UN pledged to increase funding by $7.8 billion annually by 2022. Disappointingly, spending since 2018 has actually declined."

"The additional $6.2 billion annually can deliver diagnosis, care and prevention that will achieve the world's tuberculosis promises. It would ensure at least 95 percent of people with tuberculosis will receive a diagnosis. It can provide simple ways to make sure people complete their six months of medication."

"The extra resources will mean that high-risk, vulnerable populations will be able to access periodic screening Over the coming decades, 50-million people will access appropriate treatment and 35-million people will have access to preventive treatment."

Bjorn Lomborg

Incunabula: The Old Testament

"There are three ancient Hebrew Bibles from this period. [Only the Dead Sea Scrolls and a handful of fragmentary early medieval texts are older, and] an entire Hebrew Bible is relatively rare."

"The Aleppo Codex is more precise than the Sassoon Codex, there's no doubt. But because it's missing [a third of its pages], in those parts that are absent, there is great significance in this manuscript."

Yosef Ofer, professor of Bible studies, Bar Ilan University, Israel

"It's like the emergence of the biblical text as we know it today."

"It's so foundational not only for Judaism, but also for world culture."

Sharon Liberman Mintz, Judaica specialist, Sotheby's Auctions

"Any Masoretic scholar in their right mind would take the Aleppo Codex over the Sassoon Codex, without any regret or hesitation."

"[The scribal quality is] surprisingly sloppy [in comparison to its counterpart.]"

Kim Phillips, Bible expert, Cambridge University Library

 

If expectations are met this rare hand-scripted Old Testament leather-bound manuscript that some unknown scribe produced a thousand years ago, preparing to be auctioned by Sotheby's Auction House may eclipse the hitherto-most expensive Jewish document sold in 2021, the Luzzatto Machzor, a 14th-century prayer book, that went for $8.3 million. It could possibly break the record for the most expensive historical document sold at any time at public auction; a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution that went for $43 million in 2021.

The 1,100-year-old Codex Sassoon parchment (animal skin) Hebrew Bible is set to fall under the auctioneer's hammer in May, and it may very well go for a price as  high as $30 million. It contains close to the entirety of the Bible. Sotheby's in New York  is counting on a robust market for art, antiquities and ancient manuscripts worldwide. In that expectation it has tagged the rare manuscript between $30 to $50 million.

The ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv opened a weeklong exhibition of the manuscript, as part of a world-wide tour of the artefact where it will visit the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States before the auction date. There are three Hebrew Bibles of ancient vintage; the Codex Sassoon and the Aleppo Codex both from the 10th century, and the St.Petersburg Codex, dating from the early 11th century.

 

Sotheby's

 

A few centuries before the Codex Sassoon's creation, Jewish scribal scholars known as Masoretes began the laborious work of codifying oral traditions in the manner of properly spelling, pronouncing, punctuating and chanting Judaism's most sacred book. Hebrew letters are devoid of vowels and punctuation in Torah scrolls, but these biblical manuscripts contained extensive annotation instructing its readings how best to recite the words correctly.

Certainty over the precise location and when the Codex Sassoon was produced remains in question; from Sotheby's senior Judaica specialist radiocarbon dating of the parchment rendered an estimated date of 880 to 960. The writing style links its creator to the early 10th-century, a scribe in Egypt or the Levant. Scholars feel the Codex Sassoon is not a match for the quality and pedigree of its contemporary, the Aleppo Codex.The scribal quality deemed to be "sloppy", relatively speaking. 

 

The gold standard of the Masoretic Bibles is ascribed to the Aleppo Codex, dated to around 930, and has been considered so, for a millennia. Such rare and valuable scripts are considered sacred in the Jewish tradition, protected and treasured as venerable manuscripts by Syrian Jewish communities for centuries until the 20th century when Jews were banished by Muslim-ruled nations where they once lived for vast generations.

There is evidence of its centuries-past ownership, beginning with a man named Khalaf ben Abraham, who then gave it to Isaac ben Ezekiel al-Attar, who then handed it down to his sons Ezekiel and Maimon. Later the manuscript migrated to the eastern town of Makisin in today's northeast Syria, dedicated to a 13th century synagogue. When the synagogue was destroyed the codex was entrusted to Salama ibn Abi al-Fakhr until such time the synagogue would be rebuilt, but it never was.

For the following 500 years its ownership was unknown and then it resurfaced in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929, bought by a legendary collector of Jewish manuscripts. David Solomon Sassoon, born in Mumbai, India to an Iraqi Jewish business magnate, filled his home in London with a huge collection of Jewish manuscripts. "His capacity was astounding, both in terms of number but also in terms of what he was able to find", explained Raquel Ukeles, head of collections, at Israel's National Library.

David Solomon Sassoon travelled about Europe, the Middle East and North Africa accessing old books. When he died in 1942, his collection burst with over 1,200 manuscripts. After his death his estate was de-acquisitioned, the codex sold in Zurich by Sotheby's in 1978 for around $320,000 to the British Rail Pension Fund, which later flipped the Codex Sassoon 11 years on for ten times its hammer price when a banker and art collector, Jacqui Safra, bought it in 1989 for $3.19 million.

Canadian Armed Forces Culture Change

The Minister’s Advisory Panel was created in December 2020 with a clear mandate to seek out the policies, processes and practices that enable systemic racism and discrimination in the Department of National Defence (DND) and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and provide advice on how to eliminate them from our institution. Their work has focused on Anti-Indigenous and Anti-Black Racism, LGBTQ2+ Prejudice, Gender Bias, White Supremacy, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and discrimination against people with disabilities.

News Release: Government of Canada -- April 25, 2022 – Ottawa – National Defence / Canadian Armed Forces

"[Allyship is defined as an] active, consistent and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person in a position of privilege and power seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginal group."

"[Colour-blindness, or refusing to see race, according to the lexicon, can] foster the systematic denial of racial subordination."

"[White is a] social colour [that comes with] unearned power, benefits, advantages."

"White fragility [is ] a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable [for white people] , triggering a range of defensive moves ... such as anger, fear and guilt, and behaviours such as argumentation, silence and leaving the stress-inducing situation."

Department of National Defence, Canada, Anti-Racism Toolkit

Defence Minister Anita Anand speaks to military personnel after getting a tour of a CC 177 Globemaster aircraft at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, in Trenton, Ont., April 14, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov

 

Under the Minister of National Defence, Anita Anand, in the Liberal-progressive government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- he of women's liberation and LGBTQ-2, post-national credentials -- a radical "culture change" is shaking up the Department of National Defence. In December the department hosted a talk by a social justice studies professor claiming Canada is "completely infected" by white supremacy. In January a grant was awarded to a political science professor and fellow in Black excellency to study white supremacy in the Canadian military. 

Under the astute guardianship of Minister Anand the Canadian service members are to be taught all about diversity, equity and inclusion. National Defence's director of anti-racism implementation is the proud producer of the new culture toolkit. The current interim director's interests includes promotion of an "e-binder" containing profiles of Black public servants as a guide in hiring managers, and to find people to promote (diversity targets mandated in the federal government). 

Positive discrimination that imposes constraints on one group held to be privileged and 'entitled', is the essence of anti-racism while awarding and rewarding another group to level out the playing field, enabling the formerly unprivileged and unentitled to occupy positions now denied to the former. The post of the anti-racism director is to support "organizational cultural evolution by elevating the defence team members' awareness and understanding of racial equity issues through strategic communication tactics, resources, training and tools".

The lexicon guide of the Department's anti-racism toolkit lists 122 terms relating to gender, race and DEI -- all burdened with a heavy social justice perspective. "Equality" is defined as treatment of people that "brings about an equality of results". Believing in equality but not equity is racist. Decolonization "requires non-Indignous individuals, governments, institutions and organizations to assist Indigenous peoples to reclaim all that was taken from them".

A series of instructions is presented for military servicepeople to preach to one another about DEI and anti-racism in the toolkit's "Guide to courageous conversations on racism and discrimination". Such as the practice of discrimination against groups considered "privileged" in the opinion of critical race theorists. Service members are instructed to make use of the "Brave Framework", essentially a formula for holding racial struggle sessions.

 

At every opportunity, the Trudeau Liberals are enabling the woke to further divide Canadians and create an unbridgeable chasm between progressive and conservative-minded people. Pictured: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes a knee for George Floyd during a rally in Ottawa, June 5, 2020. Photo credit: The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

 

"Anti-racism" tips and tools in the toolkit includes a section interpreting the Employment Equity Act that requires every federal department and any company wishing to bid on big federal contracts to honour diversity targets (quotas) for the workplace. This leads inevitably to de-prioritizing white or male applicants to the military for hiring. Race- and gender-specific job postings in other federal departments undergo similar treatment. Valid criticism of the law is dismissed in the toolkit as a "myth".

An anti-racism learning hub has been launched as well by the Defence Department, linked to a number of resources that stress ideology, and direct defence staff to DEI training materials. Which include the Harvard Implicit Association Test, a test of a type that supposedly measures subconscious bias. What is now a set-piece in the Department of Defence is commonplace in the federal public service. The Canada School of Public Service provides a "standardized curriculum" for public servants. The top-down New Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits Canadian troops at the Adazi military base in Latvia, March 8, 2022.(Ints Kalnins/Reuters

The Miraculous Outer-Worldly Emergence of Life

Japan's Hayabusa2 capsule containing samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu returned to Earth in December 2020.   JAXA

"Our key finding is that uracil and niacin, both of which are of biological significance, are indeed present in extraterrestrial environments and they may have been provided to the early Earth as a component  of asteroids and meteorites."

"We suspect they had a role in prebiotic evolution on Earth and possibly for the emergence of first life."

"These molecules on Ryugu were recovered in a pristine extraterrestrial setting. It was directly sampled on the asterioid Ryugu and returned to Earth, and finally to laboratories without any contact with terrestrial contaminants."

"We found uracil in the samples in small amounts, in the range of 6-32 parts per billion (ppb), while vitamin B₃ was more abundant, in the range of 49-99 ppb."

"Other biological molecules were found in the sample as well, including a selection of amino acids, amines and carboxylic acids, which are found in proteins and metabolism, respectively." 

Astrochemist Yasuhiro Oba, Hokkaido University, Japan

A graphic shows some of the molecules found in samples taken from the asteroid Ryugu by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 mission  NASA/JAXA/Dan Gallaghe

 

In the past, scientists had detected key organic molecules in carbon-rich meteorites discovered on Earth. The question always lingered whether these rocks that littered Earth from outer space had on arrival been contaminated by exposure to the environment of Earth itself. The presence of the organic compounds were understood to be the building blocks of biological life, but whether they were natural to Earth's environment or had been introduced from outer space via the arrival of meteorites and other random space objects hitting Earth was long a matter of speculation. 

That puzzle appears now to have been solved. Samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu have been proven to carry two organic compounds essential for the emergence of living organisms. The notion that some ingredients critical for the advent of life arrived integrated into rocks from space billions of years ago, arriving to 'fertilize' Earth's gradual process of primeval lifeforms was finally supported by the discovery brought to laboratories revealing the presence of the compounds.

Scientists announced the detection of uracil and niacin in the rocks that the Japanese Space Agency Hyabusa2 spacecraft obtained from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. One of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms is uracil, while niacin (Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid), is vital for their metabolism. 

 

Carbonaceous rock samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu that were subjected to chemical analysis by Hayabusa2 soluble organic matter (SOM) team members | COURTESY OF JAXA / VIA REUTERS

 

In appearance the Ryugu samples resemble dark-grey rubble. They were transported 250 million kilometres back to Earth, returning to the surface of our planet in a sealed capsule that landed in 2020 in the remote outback of Australia, prior to eventual analysis in Japan. The origins and conditions required for the appearance of life after Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago has long been a matter of speculation for scientists. 

 

The hypothesis that bodies like comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded early Earth seeded the planet with compounds leading to the emergence of the first microbes has thus been validated.Without uracil, RNA, short for ribonucleic acid would not be possible. A molecule, RNA is present in all living cells, vital in coding, regulation and activity of genes. RNA shares structural similarities with DNA, a molecule which carries the genetic blueprint of an organism.

Niacin is vital in underpinning metabolism, aiding in the production of "energy" that powers living organisms. Uracil, niacin and some other organic compounds in the Ryugu samples were extracted by the researchers through immersing the material in hot water.

The "clean room" at Kyushu University in Fukuoka where scientists analyze rock samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu | KYUSHU UNIVERSITY/HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITY / JAMSTEC / VIA REUTERS

On Thin Ice -- Climate Change

"Humanity is on thin ice -- and that ice is melting fast."

"Our world needs climate action on all fronts -- everything, everywhere, all at once."

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

"The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts for thousands of years. [Climate change is] a threat to human well-being and planetary health."

"We are not on the right track but it's not too late."

"Our intention is really a message of hope, and not that of doomsday."

UN science report co-author, water scientist Aditi Mukherji

"We are pretty much locked into 1.5."

"There's very little way we will be able to avoid crossing 1.5C sometime in the 2030s [the big issue is whether the temperature keeps rising or stabilizes]."

Report co-author Malte Meinshausen, climate scientist, University of Melbourne

We are those for whom the bell tolls. Once again being informed that the future harms of climate change are upon us. But, the message continues, there remains yet the opportunity -- a slight one which may be the ultimate turning point -- to prevent the most egregious of those future damages to Earth's environment. To do so would require swift action in eliminating close to two-thirds of carbon pollution by 2035,

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is adamant and their interpretation of our climate changes is not open to argument. An end to new fossil fuel exploration must be agreed upon. And it is the wealthy countries of the world that must stop the use of coal for energy, along with oil and gas by the year 2040. Action to put an end to the use of fossil fuels has a finite timeline.

Rich countries, stresses Mr. Guterres, must accelerate their target to achieve net zero emissions as early as 2040 as the most urgent of issues. Developing nations have been given slightly more leeway, by a decade. The use of coal must come to an end by 2030 and 2040 respectively. Carbon-free electricity generation must be achieved at the earliest possible date as well as the elimination of gas-fired power plants. The developed world is given to 2035 for this signal goal.

 

 

Nations are expected to arrive at goals for pollution reduction by 2035, in accordance with the Paris climate agreement under which 60 percent of greenhouse gas must be cut by 2035 -- representing a new time-target not previously mentioned in the panel's previous six such reports -- reflecting the urgency of the new declarations. 

Only a few tenths of a degree distant from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5C since pre-industrial times, scientists now stress a sense of urgency, alerting the world community. Adopted as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the world has reached the warming point of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

"Tipping points" surrounding that temperature linked to species extinction, includes coral reefs, irreversible melting of ice sheets, and sea level rises of several metres. Reaching the dread 1.5 degrees of warming is inevitable, according to many scientists, in particular at least three co-authors of this latest climate report.