Let's begin to introduce the public policy issues surrounding MORALS AND ETHICS by  looking broadly through history and global cultures.

CODE OF ETHICS FOR FAMILY -----WANGO

Code of ethics for family---harmonious and successful families are built on moral and spiritual foundations and care about other families in the community.

COPYRIGHT 2010 by WORLD ASSOCIATION OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS------WANGO.

We spent last week discussing the attack on what it means to be male or female, family able to have children, and that pathway to having employment allowing citizens to support those children ---and CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA MOVING FORWARD works hard to DISMANTLE all of the above.  So, there IS NO INTENT OF CREATING AND MAKING STRONG families in US or around the world ---the OPPOSITE IS THE GOAL.

Above we see a global NGO---WANGO pretending to have a goal of educating as to what a GOOD FAMILY LOOKS LIKE.  WANGO is global 1% banking killing thousands of years of policies towards FAMILY------they are those OLD WORLD CATHOLIC AND JEWISH FREEMASON 1% MERCHANTS OF VENICE ---not religious, only using religion to gain power and wealth.

What we saw in China during GREAT LEAP FORWARD----then ONE CHILD POLICY ---is that gradual destruction of societal policies around what family, community, right and wrong had been for thousands of years.  ORGANIZED RELIGION CREATED THOSE CONCEPTS ----evolution installed biological imperatives of SURVIVAL OF FITTEST------NATURAL SELECTION-----  we KNOW what family and community are in public policy-----what CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA global 1% pols and players are now doing is CONVINCING 99% WE THE PEOPLE that all that is wrong and there is something BETTER.

If we KNOW one child created all kinds of chaos, hardship, death, suffering for hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens----is it MORAL OR ETHICAL for the US MOVING FORWARD to do the same ---AND WORSE as with sterility?

Bridal paths

Demand for wives in China endangers women who live on its borders


Local residents often turn a blind eye to trafficking

Nov 4th 2017 | BEIJING AND LAO CAI


HUONG was only 15 when she went out to meet a friend in Lao Cai, a city in northern Vietnam on the Chinese border (see map). She thought she would be gone a few hours, but it was three years before she managed to return home. Her friend had brought with her two acquaintances—young men with motorcycles. They squired the girls around town and took them to a karaoke bar, where their drinks were spiked.



When the girls grew drowsy they were hoisted back onto the bikes, each sandwiched between two male riders. They were driven into the hills and across the Chinese border to a remote house in the countryside. There they were told they would be sold. The girls screamed and cried but were subdued by two men, one of them wielding a stick. The traffickers told Huong that by crossing the border she had sullied her reputation, but that if she behaved well they would find her a Chinese husband. After marrying she might find a way home, they said. If she refused she would stay stranded in the hills.


Huong—a pseudonym, to protect her identity—is now 20 years old. She lives in a large bungalow in Lao Cai, which she shares with a dozen women aged between 15 and 24 (an occupant is pictured). They are all survivors of trafficking networks that smuggle girls across the Vietnam-China border, sometimes to be sold as prostitutes but more often as brides. Their house, with its enormous teddy bears and fleet of fuchsia-pink bicycles, is a shelter run by Pacific Links Foundation, an American charity, which helps victims finish their education and cope with their trauma.


Around the world some 15m people are living in marriages into which they were forced, including some who were abducted, according to a recent study by the International Labour Organisation, a UN body, and human-rights groups. In China the trafficking of women is particularly acute, in part because a preference for sons has left the country with a severely skewed sex ratio. Between 1979 and 2015 the imbalance was aggravated by a one-child-per-couple policy, which prompted many to abort females before they were born. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has estimated that by 2020 there will be 30m-40m Chinese men who will be unable to find wives in their own country.


One consequence of this is booming business for matchmakers who offer to import women from China’s poorer neighbours, particularly Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Mongolia and North Korea. Some of these women, seeking a route out of poverty at home, freely choose a Chinese marriage and gain the necessary approvals. But along China’s borders, kidnapping is rife.


The stories told by trafficking survivors and Vietnamese officials in Lao Cai shed light on this grim trade. Each year between 100 and 150 trafficked Vietnamese women return to their country through the town’s border gate, says an official there—probably only a small proportion of the total who are lured or abducted the other way. Some of the victims’ ordeals begin when, like Huong, they are drugged or kidnapped. Others are duped into thinking they are going to a party or to meet a potential boyfriend. Sometimes members of their own families are complicit.



Groomed online

Diep Vuong of Pacific Links thinks victims are getting younger (in China, women have to be at least 20 to get married, but marriages to abducted foreigners are often unregistered). The spread of cheap smartphones and improvements in mobile networks are making it easier for traffickers to use social media to befriend schoolgirls in Vietnam’s hills. These criminals earn as little as $50 for each woman they bring into China, where they are often resold far inland by middlemen. Chinese police report that at their final destination Vietnamese women fetch prices of between around 60,000 and 100,000 yuan ($9,000-15,000).


Some snatched women and girls return home swiftly. A 17-year-old who lives at the bungalow with Huong says she was gone for only two days before a woman on the Chinese side of the border helped her to escape. A fellow resident, who returned from China a month ago, walks with a limp. She says she broke her leg leaping from the house in which her traffickers were holding her. Chinese police later found her lying in the street.


Huong’s story is longer. She was kept at her traffickers’ house and threatened for two months. When she finally agreed to be married she was driven for two days to a city in Anhui, a province north-west of Shanghai. She was warned not to let her new family find out that she was Vietnamese. She was to pretend to be a Chinese citizen belonging to an ethnic minority with cross-border cultural links.


The man to whom she was sold into marriage was in his early 20s. He was from a wealthy family, which had paid 90,000 yuan for her. Her husband explained that he had not really wanted to get married, but that his parents were keen. They had told him that an ethnic-minority bride would be more obedient than someone from the ethnic-Han majority. Such claims are commonly made by matchmakers. One Chinese mail-order marriage site says Vietnamese women are cheap, obedient and unlikely to run away: they are “so gentle and loving they will make you melt”.


The greatest demand for foreign wives is in the countryside, particularly among men who are poor or disabled, says Jiang Quanbao of Xi’an Jiaotong University. In rural areas not only is the sex ratio an impediment to finding a bride, so too is the migration of women to the cities in search of work and higher-status males. Impoverished villages sometimes end up with dozens of foreign wives, as word spreads of their availability.


Villagers often have sympathy for the buyers—they may even help to prevent trafficked women from fleeing. Escape is not at all simple for women without money of their own and with limited Chinese-language skills. North Koreans who contact the authorities risk being repatriated and then sent to concentration camps. That makes them particularly vulnerable to traffickers. Amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula caused by North Korea’s nuclear tests, police in nearby Chinese provinces are becoming more watchful for unauthorised migrants from across the border, including North Korean women who have been sold into marriage.


Once victims become mothers, their decisions about whether and how to leave China become even more difficult. So it was for Huong. She had been taken to Anhui with another Vietnamese girl who was being sold into the same district. The pair agreed that they would find a way home together. But their plan had to be postponed soon after arrival, because Huong’s friend became pregnant. By the time the baby was delivered Huong was expecting a child, too. Less than a month after she gave birth, Huong’s in-laws sent her to live and work at a textile factory nearly four hours away, leaving her baby behind. Her husband would turn up on payday to collect most of her wages—about 6,000 yuan a month. Eventually Huong concluded that the family meant to keep her estranged from her daughter. She resolved to escape back to Vietnam.


Huong scraped together enough money to travel independently. Her own parents, whom she had managed to contact a few months after reaching Anhui, helped her work out where best to present herself to the authorities. The Chinese police kept her for three months while they investigated her story, after which they arrested some of the people involved in trafficking her. Then they sent her back to Vietnam, though her baby remained in China.


In June the American government reported that China was “not making significant efforts” to tackle human trafficking. It relegated China to the ranks of countries, such as Venezuela, Turkmenistan and South Sudan, which it rates as the worst for their record in dealing with the problem. But Chinese police say they are not sitting on their hands. They report that between 2009 and the middle of last year, they “rescued several thousand women of foreign nationality” in anti-trafficking operations that involved co-operation with their counterparts in Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos (pictured are victims being sent back to Vietnam by Chinese police in 2015). More than 1,000 people were arrested for related crimes.


In some provinces government registrars are trying to spot unwilling foreign brides by hiring staff with knowledge of regional languages. The government says that stricter policing last year in the borderlands reduced trafficking from Vietnam.


It is difficult, however, to prosecute people for buying abducted women. In 2015 the law was revised to make legal action easier. But the law says that, in cases where the woman wants to return and the buyer does not try to prevent it, punishment can be lighter or the sentence can be commuted. Cross-border operations remain hostage to China’s relations with its neighbours. Ties with Vietnam, an age-old rival, are often frosty.


Huong is now finishing high school, and hopes to study medicine. She says she “will not regret” having to leave her daughter in China. A baby would have been a burden on her family in Vietnam, and she worried that having no father would thrust the child into a legal limbo. Her in-laws were wealthy, at least, and seemed devoted to her daughter, she says. They were “good people.”

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Our Asian societies for thousands of years were built on FAMILY HONOR, duty, shame, with a hierarchy of which people in society are those who receive that HONOR, DUTY, SHAME. Why is there no crime in Japan while US is filled with criminal activity from top of income ladder to bottom?

Japan and other Asian societies are very XENOPHOBIC----meaning they think their culture is best----they want to keep every other culture out----and this lays the foundation for keeping families tied to helping one another to make community. Communal living no matter what form it takes depends on long-term economic building and stability. Our native American tribes, African tribes, Asian tribes, European tribes all developed cultures that did just that----the success of that tribe is only as good as THE LEAST OF ITS MEMBERSHIP. If 90-99% of a tribe is brought to enslavement or instability with no hope of survival---that tribe is GOING, GOING, GONE.

Left social progressives have always stood with the following in promoting equality, opportunity, and justice for all------CULTURAL IDENTITY IS NOT RACISM-----CULTURAL/TRIBAL IDENTITY IS NOT DETRIMENTAL TO A FREE SOCIETY-----every immigrant group coming to US gathers together to create economic advantage and to assure survival of other members of that culture.

WHEN GLOBAL 1% HAVE GOALS OF BREAKING DOWN ALL CULTURAL/ETHIC TIES EDUCATING ALL THIS IS RACIST AND IMMORAL----WHILE ADVANCING THE POWER AND WEALTH OF A GLOBAL 1%-----THEY ARE NOT CREATING ANYTHING 99% OF US OR GLOBAL CITIZENS WANT.

INSIDER OR OUTSIDER ----has as many definitions as freemason/Greeks/secret society groups do-------when our groups tighten and become more exclusive leaving out more and more of our own cultural members----it becomes EASY PEASY for global 1% to KILL these groups....DIVIDE AND CONQUER-----


Why is There No Crime in Japan?- Insider vs. Outsider: Culture Lesson

# 12Posted on March 18, 2011 by Emily Cannell- Hey From Japan



Have you noticed that throughout all the turmoil in Japan, where after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant debacles, the media stories bombard us with news of black outs, curtailed train schedules and empty grocery store shelves but fail to mention riots, looting or increases in crime? Have the confined incidences stopped or has it not started? The Japanese I observed stoically waited for late trains and stood politely in lines at virtually empty grocery stores.  Where is the tremendous crime wave to accompany the reduced store hours and electricity black outs? Where are the bad guys?

On a normal day crime is virtually non-existent. As an example, through out Japan vending machines sell everything from books to drinks, operate 24 hours a day, are well-lit, always clean, electronic, and consistently in working order. Never does one find oneself beating the machine senseless for the drink now balanced precariously- but not dropping- at the top of the shelf. In fact, so pristine are they that both cold and hot drinks are available from the same machine. Never tampered with or covered in graffiti, they are located on every street corner. Truly, given their illumination and sheer number, each marking regular intervals down the sidewalk, street lights aren’t needed at night.

Another example: children as young as 6 routinely ride the subway unaccompanied. Nary a clutchy parent in site. Every time I see one I get nervous- apparently for no reason for as I snuck this picture, everyone on the train started to watch me suspiciously for fear I might be the bad guy on it.


Just one more- I’ve had my eye on two metal chairs that someone thoughtfully placed at the bus stop for the comfort of the waiting neighbors. I’ve watched these chairs with greed in my heart for 8 months, as they sit, unmolested, unchained, for all passers-by to grab and yet still they remain. Obviously this isn’t my old neighborhood where any unclaimed item within 10 feet of the curb was fair game for anyone with a means to transport it.



My Japanese friends explain the lack of crime, and maybe the reason behind the lack of  a massive crime wave post earthquake, has to do with the Japanese concept of the Insider vs. the Outsider and putting the group well-being above that of the individual. In the old days, Japanese lived in villages where all were taken care of regardless of ability. Everyone contributed to the management of the village in some way and in return, the poorer members were fed and housed. The village was the Inside. As long as one was a member of the village, an Insider, all needs would be met. If a person did something criminal, that person was cast out of the village- and would become an Outsider. The Outsider no longer had the advantages associated with having all needs met and became completely self sustaining- probably to their detriment. For that reason, people did not want to become Outsiders as it became both a survival and a social issue.


Committing a crime, which negatively impacts the overall group, causes the criminal to become an Outsider. This desire to remain part of the Inside group, and/or not to appear different, is the crux which keeps the criminal activity to a minimum. Additionally, the laws when caught are harsh and swift.  I like to remind the Offspring should they get any ideas about illicit substances, that if caught, they can be put in jail for 30 days. During that time, the police are not required to call the Embassy or the parents. At the end of the 30 days, both they and the family are deported. Activity such as fighting, drunken public behavior are also not tolerated therefore the repercussions of having a negative engagement with a policeman carry catastrophic consequences.



The stores and businesses are running on 5-8 hour days in order to save power which leaves one of the largest cities in the world in complete darkness. Hopefully, this strong cultural influence which focuses the people on taking care of those in need and douses the desires of would be offenders, will continue as Japan struggles with this horrible crisis.

______________________________________________

'Committing a crime, which negatively impacts the overall group, causes the criminal to become an Outsider'


 Being an insider vs outsider does not have to be race/creed/culture specific-----the DEFINITIONS of what a population group deems INSIDER/OUTSIDER define community and family. In US we struggled with these issues as what is WHITE vs BLACK, or BROWN. The solution was EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS to economic stability. Global banking 1% in US being OLD WORLD EUROPE-----did not allow that to happen.

In fact, global banking 1% during ROBBER BARON few decades worked hard to make 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens forced to move away from creating family and community based ON HONOR, ETHICS, MORALS----breaking down all that was US RULE OF LAW, legal standings as citizens----

LAISSEZ FAIRE IS GLOBAL EMPIRE-BUILDING AND DOES NOT WANT STABLE SOCIETIES, FAMILIES, MORALS AND ETHICS.......LAISSEZ FAIRE IS REAGAN/CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM WITH BUSH NEO-CONSERVATIVISM AS THE MILITARY COMPONENT.

Nation-states were created to allow TRIBAL/CULTURAL GROUPS to grow their own economies----our American US Constitution and founding fathers installed immediately the STANCE OF NOT BEING EMPIRE-BUILDING----NOT BEING EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POWER ----just so America could be that melting pot for cultures/tribes able to achieve economic opportunity and stability. 

AMERICA WORKED AS THAT MELTING POT AS LONG AS IT HAD REAL POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS.  FLASH FORWARD 300 YEARS TOWARDS MORE POPULATION GROUPS HAVING OPPORTUNITY----

It is NOT a failure of AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS,LIBERTY, JUSTICE AND PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS FOR ALL....it is the fact 99% of US citizens black, white, and brown citizens allowed those global 1% bring back domination of US economy by a global 1% tied to EUGENICS in a narrow definition of what is SUPREME.  Don't be fooled by a global 1% of European, working with a global 1% of Asian, working with a global 1% of Arabic as multi-cultural---they simply have shared goals of keeping 99% of their citizens enslaved and DEPLETED.........MOVING FORWARD


Below we see an article by a global 1% media outlet SLATE----telling us our US melting pot is broken---and indeed it is-----GLOBAL BANKING 1% INTERJECT INSTABILITY -----our US Constitution and Federal court precedence strengthened opportunity and access.


The Melting Pot Is Broken
How slowing down immigration could help us build a more cohesive and humane society.

By Reihan Salam

Who's winning, who's losing, and why.
Oct. 31 2014 5:41 PM   SLATE


I’m obsessed with the idea of America as a melting pot. We owe the term to Israel Zangwill, who wrote a mostly forgotten play of the same name in 1908. (I remember it like it was yesterday …) The play was forgettable, but the snazzy metaphor was not. “Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross—how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame!” How indeed!

Much to my chagrin, the melting pot metaphor has been out of style for decades. Way back in 1963, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously lamented that in New York City, at least, we were already “beyond the melting pot,” as various ethnic groups maintained their distinctiveness generation after generation. In 1972, Michael Novak wrote Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, a quirky defense of ethnic particularity and lower-middle-class cultural conservatism against the (alleged) homogenizing influence of academic liberalism. Then, of course, there was the rise of multiculturalism, which held that diversity ought to be celebrated, and that there was something both tragic and unjust about the expectation that members of ethnic minority groups ought to surrender what separates them from the cultural mainstream. America is no longer a melting pot, we’re told. It’s more like a salad bowl, full of ingredients that retain their unique flavors.



As delicious as this multiethnic salad sounds—more croutons, please—I continue to be the melting pot’s biggest fan. As a consequence, I’ve gone from being a rah-rah enthusiast for mass immigration to one who is more skeptical of its virtues. That’s because I think the melting and fusing of different ethnic groups is essential to building a more cohesive and humane society, and that slowing down immigration would help this process along.

The biggest challenge we face in the United States, in my view, is a lack of togetherness. I realize that this sounds like a line from a cheesy love ballad, but bear with me. There is a vast gulf separating those who belong to networks of family members, friends, and acquaintances that grant access to valuable social goods and those who don’t belong to these networks. What kind of social goods do I have in mind? Money is the obvious one, but so is know-how. Most people learn to make their way in the world from parents or peers. Think about every job opportunity you’ve ever had, or how you learned to navigate any big, impersonal bureaucracy. The insider knowledge that was imparted to you was not available to just anyone—you, and those close to you, had privileged access to it, and whether you like it or not, this privileged access has played a central role in your successes.



This isn’t simply a racial inequality. There are plenty of ultra-connected people from minority backgrounds and there are plenty of whites who are outsiders in every socially relevant respect. But race is often used as a rough proxy for this kind of inequality because it is generally true that an American who can trace her roots back to the Mayflower will have a bigger, richer, and let’s say more privileged network than a descendant of slaves, or a recent immigrant with little in the way of formal education.


Race also allows us to identify this phenomenon in the data. Last summer, for example, Elizabeth Ananat, Shihe Fu, and Stephen L. Ross released an important working paper, which found that the gap in average wages between whites and blacks gets bigger as the size of the city in which they live gets bigger. Their (fascinating) explanation for this finding is that while workers benefit from the knowledge spillovers that come from living and working in a place where there is a higher concentration of people doing a certain kind of job, these spillovers tend to be bounded by race. That is, blacks have fewer same-race peers than whites from whom they can learn new skills and suss out new opportunities, and so whites gain more insider knowledge with each passing year, which in turn allows them to earn more money. There are, of course, some blacks (and Asians and Latinos) who are plugged into “white” networks, which aren’t always lily-white, especially in places like Silicon Valley and Wall Street. As a general rule, however, race makes a big difference.



Instead of calling this racial inequality, you could call it roots inequality. Who among us has the firmest, deepest roots in American life, which can allow us to stumble and make mistakes while still being able to depend on loved ones who can lend a hand? This isn’t so much about how long one’s ancestors have been in the country. Rather, it is about the solidity of your connections to other people who themselves stand on solid ground, and who can afford to offer help of all kinds, monetary and otherwise, when you need it.



Earlier this week, Richard V. Reeves and Joanna Venator of the Brookings Institution observed that educated people tend to have educated parents. This news will probably not shock you. What is interesting is that the transmission of education advantage from one generation to the next seems to be even stronger than the transmission of economic advantage, at least for the children of the most educated parents.



Reeves and Venator suggest that a big part of the story is the rise of positive assortative mating, the phenomenon in which people with similar levels of education marry each other. This contributes to household income inequality, predictably enough. Yet it has another, subtler effect. When a college-educated adult has a child with a non-college-educated adult, she can pass along her tacit knowledge about what it takes to make it through the educational system even if her partner isn’t in the same boat. When two non-college-educated adults have a child, that young person is going to have a much tougher time working the system. It’s no coincidence that the high-achieving, low-income students who never make it to selective schools are disproportionately drawn from the children of non-college-educated parents, and from rural areas and small cities. These kids might have high grades and test scores, but they don’t belong to the networks that grease the wheels of upward mobility.


What does any of this have to do with immigration? Americans are, for obvious historical reasons, deeply romantic about the immigrant experience. More than one-tenth of Americans, like me, are the children of immigrants, and there are many more third- and fourth- and fifth-generation Americans raised with heady stories about flinty ancestors. The truth is that some immigrants are poised for great success in a society like ours, and others will have a tough time making their way into the middle class. If we accept that we have a collective responsibility for the well-being of every member of our society, as I think we should, it makes sense to select immigrants who have at least a fighting chance of making it.


When thinking about which immigrants do have that fighting chance, it’s important to recognize that the economic realities of the first decades of the last century are profoundly different from those of the first decades of this one. That earlier era was one of labor scarcity, when people with limited skills could climb the economic ladder by doing dangerous, strenuous work. In today’s economy, people with limited skills are finding that market wages are stagnant or even falling.



The educational gap between immigrants and natives in the 1900s was modest when compared to the yawning gap that separates them today. Earlier this year, the OECD, the consortium of the world’s rich democracies, released its latest assessment of adult skills. The survey divvies up people from age of 16 to 65 into several levels of proficiency in literacy, numeracy, and, my personal favorite, “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.” A disturbingly high 18 percent of Americans fell in Level 1 or below (the lowest proficiency levels) in literacy, 30 percent in numeracy, and 61 percent in problem solving. The numbers were far worse for U.S. immigrants, 40 percent of whom fell in Level 1 or below on literacy, 48 percent on numeracy, and 76 percent in problem solving. Given the transmission of educational advantage from one generation to the next, it is a safe bet that second-generation Americans like me are overrepresented among the lowest native-born performers.



The fact that our immigration policy has in recent decades tended to lower the average skill level of our workforce isn’t news, or at least it shouldn’t be. What we often fail to appreciate is how the fact that so many immigrants have such limited skills interacts with the rise of positive assortative mating and opportunity hoarding. College-educated people tend to marry other college-educated people, and we are all more likely to share opportunities with people in our networks than with random strangers. Those realities mean that newcomers to our society with below-average skill levels, as well as their children and even their grandchildren, are going to have a hard time getting past the bottom rungs of American society. If you believe Gregory Clark, an iconoclastic economist at UC–Davis, it might take even more than three generations for the descendants of less-skilled immigrants to reach an average level of social status.


Legalizing large numbers of unauthorized immigrants will definitely help them attain that social status. Yet it won’t change the fact that even under the best circumstances, the wages commanded by people with less than a high school diploma tend to be very low, and the social connections they can draw upon are usually limited to other people facing similar challenges. Moreover, while the best evidence we have finds that less-skilled immigration doesn't have a negative effect on the wages of less-skilled natives, it does have a substantial negative effect on the wages of less-skilled immigrants already living in the U.S. These are precisely the people who have the weakest social connections to other Americans, and who need all the help they can get to put down roots in this country.



Which brings me back to the melting pot. There is an alternative to allowing today’s less-skilled immigrants and their descendants to form the bedrock of an ever-expanding underclass. There is a way to help poor members of our foreign-born population form the social connections they will need to move from the margins of American society to the mainstream. What we need to do is limit the future influx of less-skilled immigrants.

OH, REALLY?????  THIS IS BROOKINGS INSTITUTE TELLING US THE GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2% ARE BEST SUITED BUT THAT IS NOT THE GOAL OF MOVING FORWARD.



Zangwill wrote The Melting Pot in the 1900s, but the true heyday of cultural amalgamation, among whites at least, started in the 1920s, when the United States shut off the spigot of European immigration for three generations. Mary C. Waters, the Harvard sociologist best known for her work on Caribbean immigrant identity, has written that “in the absence of appreciable numbers of new arrivals successive generations of acculturated Americans, not unassimilated greenhorns, became the majority among the new ethnics.” This in turn meant that for second-, third-, and fourth-generation Italian and Polish Americans, “ethnicity became less intense and increasingly intermittent, voluntary, even recreational.” Ethnic enclaves slowly faded away and the descendants of European immigrants intermarried their way into the mainstream.

Now, in contrast, ethnic enclaves in our biggest cities are flourishing, and expanding their footprints—the booming Chinatowns of Brooklyn and Queens stand in stark contrast to Manhattan’s fading Little Italy. Those Chinese Americans who, in effect, “exit” their ethnic groups by assimilating and intermarrying and leaving Chinatown behind are, Waters explains, replaced by new arrivals who are content to lead a Chinese life on American soil. Distinct ethnic cultures are continually being replenished through immigration. For Waters, this means that the story of assimilation—the third-generation Chinese American who gets an MFA at Yale, marries an Anglo investment banker, and who hardly ever sets foot in Chinatown—is obscured by this parallel story of ethnic replenishment. It is also true, however, that ethnic replenishment will tend to limit assimilation and intermarriage, as most people prefer to marry and socialize with members of their own group.



So if we want the Mexican and Bangladeshi immigrants of our time to fare as well as the Italian and Polish immigrants of yesteryear, we need to do two things. First, we need to spend a considerable amount of money to upgrade their skills and those of their children, as the world has grown less kind to those who make a living by the sweat of their brow. Because public money is scarce, this is a good reason to limit the influx of people who will need this kind of expensive, extensive support to become full participants in American society. Second, we need to recognize that a continual stream of immigration tends to keep minority ethnic groups culturally isolated, which is yet another reason to slow things down. No, this won't suddenly mean that poor immigrants will become rich, and that well-heeled insiders will stop hoarding opportunities. But it will give us the time we need to knit America's newcomers into our national community. 

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Just staying for now with our Japanese societal structures which look much like other Asian nations before being taken by MOVING FORWARD GLOBAL NEO-LIBERALISM and Foreign Economic Zone industrialization after WW 2.


The US grew on the moral and ethical stance of EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS to growing economic wealth and family/community stability.......we only weaken as a nation when each population group is pushed to desperation and families break----which always happens when GLOBAL BANKING 1% ARE ALLOWED TO TAKE HOLD. If the goals of MOVING FORWARD SMART CITIES is eliminating jobs and categories of employment----the goals are eliminating our ideas of family, duty, honor-----then we are not moving in the right direction for our US citizens OR our new IMMIGRANT citizens and global labor pool wanting to come to an America----filled with freedom, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Global banking 1% are Asian, European, and Jewish----our Jewish identifying as WORLD CITIZENS----some as ZIONIST in Israel.  Our Asian and European global 1% would like global 99% to think the OTHERS ARE OUTSIDERS making WE THE PEOPLE feel we need to be INSIDERS in economic wealth----in comes those GREEKS AND FREEMASON GROUPS controlled by the above global 1% banking.

Should I join a European global 1% because I am white----even though they are MOVING FORWARD breaking down our US sovereign nations having a goal of ending all my rights, freedoms, wealth-----just to stay clear of the global 1% Asian corporate owners filling our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones---our to stay away from those global 1% banking Jewish citizens killing our US sovereignty as well?

THESE ARE NOT GOOD CHOICES---IF 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN ALLOW THESE KINDS OF FEAR CONTROL OUR ALLIANCE---WE LOSE AND RETURN TO DARK AGES ---AND FROM THERE COMES GLOBAL 1% UTOPIA---MINUS 99% OF PEOPLE.


As we started this conversation----the ideals of HONOR---DUTY-----FAMILY-----COMMUNITY differ in each culture and US 99% of  WE THE PEOPLE must understand our new immigrant stances on these very important policy stances AND educate our history as Americans building a strong MELTING POT that worked as long as global banking stayed at bay.......5% TO THE 1% GREEKS AND FREEMASONS----not working for family, community, morals or ethics----and certainly not HONOR AND DUTY beyond that of working for a global 1%.



Honour and Loyalty in Japan
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Honour and Loyalty in Japan
On November 30, 2016, Posted by javon ,



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Honour and Loyalty


Part 6
Japanese Culture Series


Perhaps more than any other term, Bushido is most commonly recognized by Americans when it comes to Japanese culture. Bushido or ‘way of the warrior’ has been dramatized by anime, manga, samurai movies, and war history. But what exactly is Bushido characterized as in modern Japan? First, some background:

From Japanese history, during the Edo period, a combination of Zen Buddhism and Confucianism created a moral and ethical system to govern the samurai class. Much like the feudal chivalry system known to the Western world, Bushido was a code that really dictated all aspects of life to its adherents. Among the concepts involved were those dictating interactions between people, property management, and governmental relations. For instance, great loyalty to one’s local ruler or overall government was essential in this teaching. Also, a system of honor to manage everyday interactions was essential to the degree that it became more important than life itself. So then, when something deemed dishonorable occurred, rather than to dishonor oneself or family it was seen as noble to take one’s own life through ritual suicide than to live through the great shame of being dishonored. How have these concepts passed into modern times?

In modern Japan, Bushido has greatly contributed to the overall unique Japanese national character. This has both positive and negative connotations. Unquestioning loyalty to one’s leaders, honorable interactions with others, and avoiding shame at all costs have become essential elements of Japanese culture where it is said that a system needs to be maintained to ensure cooperation on a small island with a dense population. This has led to a mindset that values maintaining the system above the individual need which is seen as a lesser priority. Even in modern times, suicide can still be glorified as an acceptable way to escape pain! Perhaps this is part of the reason why suicide rates in Japan are still highest in the modern world.

How can Bushido impact missionary work? Not only the issues from obviously romanticized views of suicide in culture but also extreme unquestioning loyalty can be a hindrance to spiritual growth as it tends to close down clear communication in favor of maintaining harmony. Also, Bushido elements may sound good from a non-spiritual aspect, however, they promote self-reliance upon the flesh to produce outward character change rather than inward reliance upon the spirit to produce outward change by yielding to God. Is a person trained by society to act a certain way genuine or acting to avoid feeling shame from others? As in our own culture self-reliance must be countered with Christ-centered spirit reliance! Please pray for spiritual breakthroughs to occur as the Gospel reaches Japan!
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MADAME BUTTERFLY the modern opera looks at just these societal structures operating under a Japanese during WW 2 occupation ------a Japanese woman drawn into a marriage to US military man by a MARRIAGE BROKER breaking Japanese moral, ethical, honor, family, duty structures and in doing so has made herself AN OUTSIDER who, when that US military man goes home and leaves her----has only choice being SUICIDE.  We saw that last week as China's ONE CHILD leaving 99% of Chinese citizens with no family or ability to marry and have children being made OUTSIDERS------


We want to take this coming week to discuss how ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% has broken down these vital societal structures overseas as FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES were installed to understand what MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES will do to our US societal structures.  It is vital for 99% of US WE THE PEOPLE to stop MOVING FORWARD corruption of what ethics, morals, family, community, and duty are------and it is vital that our 99% of Asian immigrant citizens coming to America for American freedoms know how AMERICA AS A SUCCESSFUL MELTING POT came about.  REAL left social progressives love our 99% of global immigrants-----we do not want those global 1% of foreign rich bringing OLD WORLD DARK AGES FEUDALISM to replace our thriving first world, developed nation, land of freedom and opportunity for ALL 99% of black, white, and brown citizens.

Madame Butterfly - Maria Callas

 
Emil A. Zafirov
Published on Feb 19, 2010
Puccini's Opera ''madame butterfly'' by Maria Callas


MADAME BUTTERFLY is a perfect example of the return of OLD WORLD EMPIRE-BUILDING ------where a global banking 1% come into any and all nations to subject them to the worst of societal capture.

Oh good say CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ---there is JAPAN dressing like US business people being global market neo-liberals-----killing morals, ethics, Rule of Law, God's Natural Law to advance the wealth of OLD WORLD GLOBAL 1% RICH.

We look at international media to see articles suggesting that JAPAN is only now moving to neo-liberalism when in fact it was the earliest of Asian nations taken to global neo-liberalism after WW 2.  ABE is a great big global 1% banking puppet-----we are to believe he is a US ALLY-----ABE works for global 1% banking Europe vs Asian -------China being that Asian gorilla.

It seems very clear that JAPAN as a sovereign nation has disappeared-----there are indeed global banking players being installed as politicians-----there is nothing happening in Japan for 99% of Japanese citizens----so don't bring to US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones those global neo-liberal societal structures------WE DON'T WANT THEM EITHER!


September 30, 2013


Neoliberalism, Japanese-Style


by Mike Whitney  Counterpunch


Abenomics is largely a bunko-scam wrapped in public relations gibberish. It has no chance of producing a strong, sustainable economic recovery. The real aim of the policy is to temporarily juice GDP with a sizable blast of fiscal stimulus ($100 billion) so the Bank of Japan can stealthily transfer more money to its chiseling investor friends via its bond buying program called QE. In other words, the program works the same way it does in the US, the only difference is the scale of the operation and a number of anti-worker provisions touted as “critical reforms”. Sound familiar?


Naturally, Abenomics–which is named after right-wing loony, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe–has attracted worldwide attention for its bold “shock and awe” approach to monetary policy. Liberal economists in the US –notably Stiglitz and Krugman—are absolutely gaga over the program and just about wet themselves every time they talk about it. They seem to think that the BoJ’s bond buying blitz will fare better in the Land of the Rising Sun then it has in America where the sputtering economy is still on life support five years after the market crashed.

KRUGMAN AND STIGLITZ ARE FAR-RIGHT WING NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMISTS SAME AS ABE------THAT IS WHY THEY ARE GA GA OVER ABENOMICS



Why are they so optimistic?


Probably because BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda has taken a “damn the torpedoes” approach and pledged to double the money supply in two years in an effort to pull the economy out of 15 years of deflation. Kuroda figures that raising prices will boost spending and corporate investment laying the groundwork for more activity and hiring, greater demand and stronger growth. The only bugaboo is how to get all that newly-minted money into the economy. As Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has discovered, the liquidity that flows into bond purchases stays locked in the financial system making stocks bubbly, but leaving the real economy largely unaffected. That’s why unemployment in the US is still above 7 percent and GDP is in the 2 percent-range even while the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned by $3 trillion. It’s because trickle down doesn’t work for shit.



That doesn’t mean that Abenomics hasn’t had an impact. It has. It’s slashed the value of the yen and sent equities into the stratosphere. It’s also increased exports by many orders of magnitude. Too bad import prices have been rising at the same time or it might have made a difference. Check out this recent update from the Testosterone Pit:



“Exports did jump 14.7% in August year over year, the Ministry of Finance reported. But the rest was ugly. Exports were valued in yen, and the yen had lost 20% of its value over the year. So in most categories, export volume actually declined. But Imports jumped 16%, from a higher base, and the trade deficit soared 25% …Analysts were shocked. It was the worst August trade deficit ever. …. 27% higher than the trade deficit of August 2012….


Japan’s trade fiasco is on a steep downward slope. August was the worst August ever, July the worst July ever, June the worst June ever…. There’s no discernible turning point on the horizon.” (“Trade Is Supposed To Save Japan, According To The Gospel Of Abenomics, But In Reality… “, Testosterone Pit)


Hurrah, we shot ourselves in the foot! Our economic plan must be working!


So what was gained by cutting the yen? A big, fat nothing, that’s what. The situation for the average working stiff is worse than ever. Why? Because everything’s gone up except his lousy wages. How does a cheap yen help if gas just jumped from $4 to $6 bucks a gallon but you haven’t gotten a raise in 5 years? Explain that to me? The only way inflation can have a positive effect is if wages rise at the same time as other prices and generate more spending, otherwise it’s a bust. Here’s how Satyajit Das explains it over at Minyanville:


“Japan needs demand-driven inflation, reflecting the effect of increasing wages, higher consumption, and increased purchasing power….Higher costs may, in fact, reduce consumption unless incomes rise commensurately. But wages reached their lowest level since 1992 in January 2013…


The conventional analysis that suggests the current initiatives will increase consumption may prove incorrect. Rising costs may reduce purchasing power, unless matched by rising wages and real incomes.” (“Satyajit Das: In Japan, Neither the 2020 Olympics Nor Abenomics Will Be Magic Bullet”, Minyanville)


That’s simple enough, but the problem is that wages aren’t going anywhere in Japan. Abe has appealed to big business to raise salaries, but it’s a joke. The corporations have workers right where they want them, under their bootheel. That’s not going to change without serious tax reform and progressive legislation aimed at redistributing more of the nation’s wealth. Don’t hold your breath on that one. Here’s more from Das:


“Stagnant incomes are not offset by the wealth effect of higher stock prices. The bulk of Japanese savings are held as low-yielding bank deposits. Over 80% of Japanese households have never invested in any security; 88% have never invested in a mutual fund. …. Rising stock prices affect a very small portion of the population, boosting consumption of luxury items rather than driving broad-based increases in consumption.”


See? Abenomics is just like QE. All the money goes to rich a**holes who play the stock market. All working people get bupkis. There’s nothing here for here for workers or the economy. It’s all just smoke. Here’s a little more background on Japan’s gloomy wage situation from Bloomberg:


“Japan salaries extended the longest slide since 2010 in July, raising the stakes for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s decision on whether to increase a sales tax. Regular wages excluding overtime and bonuses dropped 0.4 percent from a year earlier, marking a 14th straight month of decline, according to data released today by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. …


Boosting workers’ incomes is key to the success of Abe’s efforts to resuscitate the economy after doses of fiscal and monetary stimulus helped weaken the yen and start a recovery, boosting corporate profits. …
“Companies aren’t confident enough on the sustainability of the economic recovery,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief economist at Itochu Corp. (8001) in Tokyo.” (Japan Salaries Extend Longest Fall Since ’10 in Threat to Abe”, Bloomberg)



“Confident”? When did confidence ever have anything to do with raising wages? The way you get a raise in the real world is by having your union rep put a gun to managements’ head. That’s the only way your going to squeeze a fair wage out of these yahoos. But since we’ve done away with unions, labor’s share of revenues is going to continue to plunge. And it has.



Okay, so wages are in the toilet, we know that, but what about growth? At least GDP is improving, right?



Sure, it is, in fact, second quarter GDP was just revised upwards to an impressive 3.8 percent. But that’s mainly because the wily Abe frontloaded his program with $100 billion in old fashioned fiscal stimulus. Unfortunately, the fiscal component is a one-shot deal scheduled to run out next year, so the wheels of activity should slow considerably in the months ahead.
None of the knucklehead analysts talk about the Keynesian part of Abenomics because it detracts attention from Kuroda’s QE-fireworks. We can’t have that! The media wants everyone to believe that it’s actually possible to grow the economy by pumping up bank reserves and stuffing the pockets of shady speculators with more boodle. Isn’t that what QE amounts to; a big freaking giveaway to silk stocking plutocrats and their fatcat buddies?


Abe doesn’t give a hoot about the real economy which is why he’s just about to initiate a sales-tax increase that will reduce consumption even more. According to CNBC, the presumed “consumption tax is due to rise from 5 percent to 8 percent next April and Abe is widely tipped to approve the hike on October 1, when his decision on the matter is due.” The absurdly regressive tax is another hammerblow to working people who are being asked shoulder the entire burden of Japan’s soaring national debt which ballooned to gargantuan proportions because of fiscal mismanagement, “old boy” cronyism, and lavish bailouts for zombie financial institutions. Here’s more from CNBC:


“A rise in the sales tax is a done deal,” said Bank of Singapore Chief Economist Richard Jerram. “[Policymakers] have more or less said they will go ahead with the rise and a stimulus package to buffer the impact.”


According to recent media reports, the government could unveil an economic stimulus package worth about 5 trillion yen ($50 billion) next week with possible corporate tax cuts to offset any negative impact on the economy from a sales-tax hike.” (“Japan’s Abe to rule on sales tax rise: Will he, won’t he?” CNBC)


Can you believe the nerve of these guys? They freeze wages, force working people to pay for their gambling debts (via the consumption tax), and then–just for hell of it–cut themselves another fat check in the form of corporate perks and more money printing. It’s infuriating.


One last thing: Abenomics was supposed to boost Japan’s economic vitality by increasing capital investment. At least on that score, the strategy has succeeded. Here’s the scoop from Reuters:


“Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe got an early sign of how his blueprint to revive Japan’s industrial vim and economic vigor was working when two of his country’s biggest car makers unveiled $900 million worth of investments to boost production.


There was one drawback: the new assembly plants and expanded factories announced by Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T) and Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T) are not in Japan, but more than 2,000 miles away, in Thailand.”

HA! Thailand! How do you like that? Great program you got there, Shinzo.


The sad fact is that no one is investing in Japan anymore. According to Reuters: “capital expenditures in Japan fell 4 percent in the first six months of this year” “manufacturing investment is still contracting” and “companies are investing abroad.” Also “Japanese companies socked away roughly $144 billion in cash” in the last year “bringing their total cash pile to $2.24 trillion.” (“Abenomics speeds corporate investment, but not in Japan”, Reuters)



Can you see how sick and ridiculous this is? Abe has basically launched a program that creates incentives for the outsourcers, the offshorers, the big money banks and the other corporate cutthroat vermin to continue their inexorable search for cheap labor, cheap resources, and higher profits ABROAD!


Abenomics has nothing to do with rebuilding Japan’s economy, that’s just public relations fluff. The real objective is to suck as much lucre as possible out of the public purse before moving on to the next victim. And that, my friend, is just the way this stinking system works.

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MADAME BUTTERFLY was symbolic of the shame and loss of honor brought to JAPAN during WW 2 loss of war and occupation. Now, left social progressives have no love of Japanese hierarchy emperor rule ----but thousands of years of culture, art, religion creates a version of HONOR, ETHICS, MORALS, FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND DUTY----which are very much like our US societal structures.

If 99% of US WE THE PEOPLE do not know our understand SHINTOISM or BUDDHISM-----we cannot understand our new Japanese citizens.  It allows us to understand their vision of MORALS, ETHICS, HONOR, FAMILY, DUTY.


'Shinto is deeply rooted in the Japanese people and their traditions, so practices like conversion don't exactly go along with what Shinto is'.

What we will see is much like our Christian or Jewish ideals of good and evil-----knowing that each human is capable of both-----and has a goal of striving for good over evil.  Keep in mind---these religions are thousands of years old-----humanity evolved knowing the need for MORALS, ETHICS, GOD'S NATURAL LAW-----no matter how one sees that GOD/god.

Do I as a US citizen living in a largely Christian/Judah nation tied to ONE GOD worry about our new citizens having religions tied to different views of higher being?

NO, THAT IS WHY THE US IS FREEDOM OF RELIGION----THAT IS WHY OUR US GOVERNMENT WAS BUILT ON SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

The only people in US and around the global worried about how others practice their religions trying to keep people tied to a FUNDAMENTALISM strict interpretation of religion are those FREEMASON/GREEK PLAYERS trying to use religion to gain power and wealth for THEMSELVES.......if our US Congress did not have that FAKE RIGHT WING MORAL MAJORITY that were all OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% FREEMASONs not tied to religion---we would not have had division between our 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.


Shinto: Japan's Native Religion The foundation of Japanese culture itself
March 25, 2013 • 914 words written by John • Art by Aya Francisco


Shinto is the indigenous faith of the Japanese people and it is as old as Japan itself. Today it remains Japan's major religion alongside Buddhism and Christianity. Most people who have any interest in Japanese culture are aware of this, but how many people actually know the intricacies that make up Shinto and its beliefs? In this post I hope to convey a bit more on what Shinto is all about and where the beliefs came from and what makes it what it is today. But don't worry, this won't be too terribly boring – we'll try and make things fun.


What is Shinto?The customs and values of Shinto are inseparable from those of Japanese culture. Many Japanese activities have their roots in Shinto. Elements of Shinto can be found in ikebana, traditional architecture, and even sumo wrestling. Also, a lot of Japanese pop culture, especially anime and manga, draws from Shinto for inspiration.


Shinto doesn't really have a founder or sacred scriptures or anything like that though. Religious propaganda and preaching are not common here either. This is one of the things that sets Shinto apart from most of the popular religions today. Shinto is deeply rooted in the Japanese people and their traditions, so practices like conversion don't exactly go along with what Shinto is.

Since Shinto is very Japanese by nature and does not try to press others to join them, the percentage of Shinto followers living in this world is very small, with pretty much all of them residing in Japan. I think that's nice though. Shinto is inherently Japanese, and its just another one of those things that you can really only get the full experience and understand while in Japan.



Instead of sacred texts, Shinto bases most of its beliefs on four ancient books. These books are the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) which is the foundation to written Shinto history, the Shoku Nihongi and its Nihon Shoki (Continuing Chronicles of Japan), the Rikkokushi (Six National Histories), and the Jinnō Shōtōki (a study of Shinto and Japanese politics and history).



Shinto Beliefs

Shinto is all about the kami. Kami (sacred spirits) are the "gods" in Shinto. They take the form of many things such as animals, plants, lakes, and rivers. As such, Shinto is a form of animism. Humans become kami after they die and are honored as ancestral kami with some families actually having little shrines in their homes. The Goddess Amaterasu is widely considered to be Shinto's most famous kami and she was even the star of her very own video game, Ōkami (see above).


There are no real absolutes in Shinto – everything is kind of grey. They don't believe in absolute right or wrong and they acknowledge that nobody is perfect. They view humans as fundamentally good, with the evils in the world being caused by troublesome and devilish kami. As such, the purpose of most Shinto rituals is to keep away evil spirits. This is achieved by purification, prayers, and offerings. It sounds like a pretty laid back religion to me. I like that.

Since Shinto is very Japanese by nature and does not try to press others to join them, the percentage of Shinto followers living in this world is very small, with pretty much all of them residing in Japan. I think that's nice though. Shinto is inherently Japanese, and its just another one of those things that you can really only get the full experience and understand while in Japan.


Instead of sacred texts, Shinto bases most of its beliefs on four ancient books. These books are the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) which is the foundation to written Shinto history, the Shoku Nihongi and its Nihon Shoki (Continuing Chronicles of Japan), the Rikkokushi (Six National Histories), and the Jinnō Shōtōki (a study of Shinto and Japanese politics and history).




Shinto Rituals


Purification rituals are an essential part of Shinto. New buildings constructed in Japan are frequently blessed by a Shinto priest during the groundbreaking ceremony, and many Japanese cars are blessed at some point in their assembly. I wonder if they get a little sticker or certificate saying they were blessed. Hmm… Anyway, many Japanese businesses built outside Japan often get Shinto rites performed on them as well.



Both men and women can become Shinto priests, and they're even allowed to marry and have children. Some even live on site with the shrine they're in charge of. Priests are aided by young women known as miko during Shinto rituals and performances. Miko wear white kimono, must be unmarried, and are often daughters of the Shinto priests.

Followers of Shinto can seek support from kami in many different ways. They can pray at the shrines in their homes or visit a local public shrine. There are also millions upon millions of little charms and talismans available to give people good health, good grades, good business, and more.


A large number of Japanese wedding ceremonies today Shinto ceremonies. I think Christian weddings are up there too though. Death on the other hand is considered a source of impurity, so Japan lets the Buddhists deal with all that. If you want to learn more about it, you can check out my post on What Happens After You Die in Japan. Because of this there really aren't any Shinto cemeteries, just shrines.


While I don't really ascribe to the beliefs of Shinto myself, I still think it's pretty cool and a unique aspect of Japanese culture. While we were over there, we got to see a lot of Shinto shrines and they were really cool. They felt very calm and usually had a lot of nature going on around them. Shinto's okay in my book.

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An UNOFFICIAL poll of Greater Baltimore new citizens from Asia as to whether they want the US to operate as Foreign Economic Zones overseas has 100% OF ASIAN 99% IMMIGRANTS AGAINST THIS----they came to America for American values of freedom, liberty, justice, pursuit of happiness, and EQUALITY FOR ALL 99% OF CITIZENS black, white, and brown citizens.

So, have our 99% of Asian citizens been able to thrive in our US melting pot?  We see Asian citizens creating those same cultural/tribal communities as Europeans created and they have indeed built local economies keeping families strong, employed, integrated to US standards of governance these 300 years.  What has changed for our Asian 99% of US citizens is the same as all other US population groups.  MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% Clinton/Bush/Obama has brought those global 1% and their 2% of Asian rich into America wanting to kill our 99% of Asian citizens and their wealth and stability.

OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% COME TO US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AND ENSLAVE OUR SUCCESSFUL US ASIAN 99%.

It is vital that US 99% understand this corruption in MOVING FORWARD.  Most US citizens simply want to have opportunity and access to support their own families and communities not caring if other population groups do the same.  The race and class issues seen in media today are created by global 1% PLAYERS------

DO WE WANT IMMIGRANTS TO ASSIMILATE?

  What does that mean?  This is key to our basic US freedoms, liberty, and justice.  The idea of speaking English only occurred in early US because US was a EUROPEAN COLONY-----we fought a revolution to be free of EUROPEAN AND UK RULE and created a societal structure allowing all citizens to determine what those structures would be as long as US Rule of Law and structures of governance were followed-----THAT IS WHAT ASSIMILATION MEANS IN AMERICA.

Who is running around shouting Americans must speak English? Those 5% to the 1% global banking pols and players wanting to create tensions between 99% of US WE THE PEOPLE.

The US has never had a period that our new immigrants lived a few generations NOT SPEAKING ENGLISH.


Article


Do We Really Want Immigrants to Assimilate?

Peter Skerry Wednesday, March 1, 2000


A few years ago Nathan Glazer posed the question: “Is Assimilation Dead?” His answer was yes, more or less—certainly as a national ideal or policy objective, though he stressed that assimilation remains an ongoing social process. While I certainly agree with Glazer that assimilation persists as a social reality, I strongly disagree that it is dead as a national ideal or policy objective. To be sure, assimilation is moribund among many of our elites, especially ethnic, racial, and minority group leaders. But as an animating force in our communities and in our national life, assimilation is alive and well.


I base this judgment not only on the available social science evidence (some of which I will review here), but also on the views and opinions of ordinary Americans whom I encounter as I travel about the country. I would also point to Peter D. Salins’s widely noted Assimilation, American Style (1997). That Salins, an academic economist, wrote this book under the auspices of the Manhattan Institute and The New Republic attests to the persistence of the assimilation idea even among some of our elites.


Yet if assimilation endures as an idea, it is a very confused and muddled one. “Assimilation” has become part of the liturgy of our civil religion, and like any liturgy, we repeat it without often pausing to consider what we mean by it. I will argue here that when Americans say they want immigrants to assimilate, they may think they know what they want, but in fact they don’t understand the concept or its place in our history. Indeed, if Americans better understood the process of assimilation, they might well ask for something else.


This confusion is highlighted by the contradictory assertions we hear about the assimilation of newcomers. Immigrant leaders and advocates claim that America is a racist society that will not allow “people of color” to become part of the mainstream of American life. Alternatively, it is argued that the assimilation of such individuals into that mainstream is an insidious process that robs them of their history and self-esteem. No one ever bothers to explain how both claims can be true.


Echoing immigrant leaders, nativists and restrictionists also argue that today’s newcomers are not assimilating. Yet as I will argue here, there is abundant evidence that they are. How can so many Americans be mistaken about such a relatively easily verified and fundamental aspect of our national life?


What I propose is to scrutinize what is typically understood by the term assimilation and then contrast it with a more adequate conceptualization of the process. I will be particularly concerned to highlight how assimilation has been bowdlerized such that we conceive of it as a benign step toward social peace and harmony, when in fact it generates new social problems and strains.


If you were to ask the average person on the street what is meant by “assimilation,” he or she would say something about immigrants fitting into American society without creating undue problems for themselves or for those already here. In Assimilation, American Style Peter Salins presents a considerably more thoughtful, though in my opinion incorrect, version of this common sense view of assimilation. Salins argues that an implicit contract has historically defined assimilation in America. As he puts it: “Immigrants would be welcome as full members in the American family if they agreed to abide by three simple precepts”:


First, they had to accept English as the national language.
Second, they were expected to live by what is commonly referred to as the Protestant work ethic (to be self-reliant, hardworking, and morally upright).


Third, they were expected to take pride in their American identity and believe in America’s liberal democratic and egalitarian principles.


Though hardly exhaustive, these three criteria certainly get at what most Americans consider essential to successful assimilation. But let me examine these more closely.


English as the National Language

It is not at all clear what Salins means when he insists that immigrants should “accept English as the national language.” He apparently opposes designating English our official language. Yet Salins seems to have much more in mind than immigrants just learning to speak English, which is what most Americans focus on. Unfortunately, he never really elaborates.

Perhaps Salins understands that one can speak English but nevertheless remain emotionally attached to a second language—even, or perhaps especially—when one does not speak it. For example, the evidence is that immigrants and especially their children learn to speak English (even if they don’t necessarily learn to write it). Yet battles over English acquisition persist. Why?


One reason is that English typically replaces the language of one’s immigrant parents and grandparents. As a result, linguistic assimilation sometimes fuels efforts to regain the language and heritage that has been lost. I am reminded of a young Mexican American I met in Corpus Christi, Texas. Having just completed his first semester at Yale, this young man was pleased to be at home for the Christmas holidays and eager to tell an Anglo visitor from back East about his Mexican heritage. Since he had grown up 150 miles from the Mexican border, I assumed this fellow was more or less fluent in Spanish. So, when I happened to inquire, I was surprised to hear him suddenly lower his voice. No, he replied, he did not speak Spanish, but he considered the language a critical part of the Mexican culture he fervently wanted to hold onto. For this reason, I was assured, he would see to it that his future children would learn Spanish before English. Shortly thereafter, we parted. So I never had the chance to ask him how he intended to teach his children a language he himself did not speak.


It’s easy to poke fun at this fellow, but efforts to recapture parts of a heritage that have been lost do not reflect mere adolescent confusion. Many Latino politicians and public figures grew up speaking only English, but have subsequently learned Spanish in order to maintain their leadership of a growing immigrant community.


A more subtle and intriguing example is the career of Selena, the Tejano singer who has emerged as a cultural icon among Mexican Americans since being murdered by a fan in 1995. The tragedy of Selena is that having conquered the Spanish-language Tejano music world, she died just as she was about to cross over to the English-language market. The irony of Selena is that she was raised (in Corpus Christi, it so happens) speaking English and had to learn Spanish in order to become a Tejano star.


Further evidence that English acquisition does not necessarily lead to the positive outcomes we expect, emerges from recent ethnographic research on the school performance of Latino adolescents. Several such studies report that although newly arrived students experience significant adjustment problems attributable to their rural backgrounds, inadequate schooling, and poor English-language skills, their typically positive attitudes contribute to relative academic success. Yet among Latino students born in the United States, the opposite is often the case. Despite fluency in English and familiarity with American schools, many such students are prone to adopt an adversarial stance toward school and a cynical anti-achievement ethic.


My point is obviously not that learning English is to be avoided. But insofar as it reflects assimilation into contemporary minority youth culture, English acquisition is not an unmixed blessing. In the words of a veteran high school teacher, “As the Latino students become more American, they lose interest in their school work…. They become like the others, their attitudes change.”


As for the Protestant work ethic of self-reliance, hard work, and moral rectitude, there is certainly evidence that some immigrants have been adopting it. A recent study by the RAND Corporation reveals that Japanese, Korean, and Chinese immigrants enter with wages much lower than those of native-born workers, but within 10 to 15 years these newcomers have reached parity with the native-born. On the other hand, Mexican immigrants enter with very low wages and experience a persistent wage gap relative to the native-born, even after differences in education are taken into account.


Now it is not at all clear why Mexican immigrants experience this persistent gap. The RAND researchers who identified it cite several possible causes: the Mexicans’ quality of education, their English language skills, wage penalties experienced by illegal aliens, and discrimination. The RAND researchers also cite “cultural differences in attitudes toward work,” which of course speaks directly to Salins’s concern with the Protestant ethic. Yet the fact is that we just don’t know why Mexican immigrants are faring much worse than others are.


Among immigrants generally, there are other trouble signs. For example, welfare participation rates among immigrants have been climbing in recent years, though overall those rates are currently about the same as among non-immigrants. Some immigrants are clearly involved in criminal activities, though to what degree is subject to dispute. Such indicators are indeed troubling. But along with the ethnographic findings about Latino adolescents cited above, they do indicate that immigrants and their children are assimilating-but not always to the best aspects of American society.


Salins’s third assimilation criterion-taking pride in American identity and believing in our liberal democratic and egalitarian values-has typically been a difficult one for immigrants to satisfy. But the problem has for the most part been not with immigrants, but with native-born Americans’ perceptions of them.


The assimilation of newcomers has long been characterized by the emergence of new ethnic group identities in response to conditions in America. The classic example, of course, is how earlier this century European peasants left their villages thinking of themselves as Sicilians, Neapolitans, and the like, but after arriving here gradually came to regard themselves as they were regarded by Americans-as Italians. Later, they, or more likely their children and grandchildren, came to see themselves as Italian-Americans. Yet the fact that such group identities were one stage in the assin-tilation process was lost on most native-born Americans, who condemned “hyphenated Americans” and considered such group identities as a fundamental affront to America’s regime of individual rights.


Similarly today, immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and other Spanish-speaking countries do not come to the United States thinking of themselves as “Hispanics” or “Latinos.” That is a category and a label that has come into existence here in the United States. Andjust as with European-origin groups earlier this century, Americans are troubled by this assertion of group identity and fail to understand it as one step in the assimilation process.


Still, there is one important difference between group categories like Italians earlier this century and Hispanics today. For the latter designates a racial minority group (as when we refer to “whites, blacks, and Hispanics”) that is entitled to the same controversial benefits-affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act—that black Americans have been granted. These are group-based claims of an extraordinary and unprecedented nature about which Americans have reason to be anxious.


But, once again, such group claims are in response to conditions here in the United States, specifically the incentives presented by our post-civil rights political institutions. To focus on one immigrant group-Mexican Americans-I would note that Mexicans in Mexico do not agitate for the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action. Mexicans engage in such efforts only here in the United States, and they do so because our institutions encourage them to. Perhaps even more to the point, such institutions and programs, originally established in response to the demands of black Americans, have been crafted by our political elites in the name of the very same liberal democratic and egalitarian values that Salins invokes.


Assimilation Is Multidimensional

This commentary on Salins’s three criteria leads to three overarching points about assimilation. The first is that assimilation is multidimensional. This point was made more than thirty years ago by sociologist Milton Gordon in his classic study, Assimilation in American Life. Yet academic and popular commentators alike continue to talk about whether this or that group will “assimilate,” as if assimilation were a single, coherent process when, in fact, it has several different dimensions—economic, social, cultural, and political. Even when these different facets of assimilation are acknowledged, they are typically depicted as parts of a smoothly synchronized process that operates in lock-step fashion. In particular, it is typically assumed that the social, economic, or cultural assimilation of immigrants leads directly to their political assimilation, by which is invariably meant traditional ethnic politics as practiced by European immigrants at the beginning of this century.


But as Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed many years ago in Beyond the Melting Pot, what makes sociological or economic sense for a group does not necessarily make political sense. Certainly today, what makes political sense for immigrants is often at odds with their cultural, social, and economic circumstances. Take the situation of Mexican Americans, which term I use loosely to include all Mexican-origin individuals living in the United States. As I have indicated above, there is evidence that Mexican Americans are having problems advancing economically. Nevertheless, there are other indicators—of Englishacquisition, of residential mobility, of intermarriage—demonstrating that Mexican Americans are assimilating socially, culturally, and to some extent even economically. In other words, the evidence on Mexican-American progress is mixed and, as I have already suggested, our understanding of the underlying dynamics is limited.


In order to advance politically, however, MexicanAmerican leaders downplay or even deny signs of progress and emphasize their group’s problems. More specifically, these leaders define their group as a racial minority that has suffered the same kind of systematic discrimination as have black Americans. However regrettable and divisive, this political stance is hardly irrational. Indeed, it is a response to the incentives of our post-civil rights institutions, which have brought us to the point where our political vocabulary has only one way of talking about disadvantage—in terms of race. The resulting irony is that even though Mexican Americans are assimilating along various dimensions much as other immigrants have, their political assimilation is following a very different and highly divisive path.


Assimilation Is Not Irreversible


The second point to be made about assimilation is that it is not necessarily an irreversible process. To be “assimilated” is not to have arrived at some sociological steady state. Or to borrow from historian Russell Kazal, assimilation is not “a one-way ticket to modernity.” The assimilated can and frequently do “deassimilate,” if you will. I have already offered the example of language, of how linguistically assimilated Mexican Americans who speak only English may reassert the importance of Spanish in their own and in their children’s lives.


As sociologist John Stone has noted: “There is a dialectic of fission and fusion that marks the ethnic history of most eras.” Indeed, assimilation is not a simple linear progression, but one that moves back and forth across the generations. As historian Marcus Lee Hansen put it succinctly: “what the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” However flawed as a precise predictor of generational differences within specific ethnic groups, Hansen’s basic insight remains valid: the process of assimilation is a dialectical one.


A case in point is intermarriage. Social scientists and laymen alike point to intermarriage as one of the most-if not the most-telling indices of social assimilation. (I myself did so above, when highlighting evidence of Mexican-American assimilation.) Yet when we cite these data for such purposes, we make large and not always justified assumptions about how the offspring of such unions will identify themselves, or be identified by others. For example, we point to blackwhite intermarriage as an indicator of a desirable amalgamation of the races. And to be sure, in this spirit the children of some such marriages now refer to themselves not as black or white, but as multiracial. Yet their numbers are small, and the fact remains that most such individuals tend to see themselves, and are seen by others, as black.


Another example of the dialectic of assimilation can be seen in the findings of the Diversity Project, a research effort at the University of California at Berkeley. Project interviewers were particularly concerned to delve into how minority undergraduates identify themselves ethnically and racially before and after arriving at Berkeley. Despite evident differences across groups, it is striking how many such students describe themselves in high school as having so assimilated into majority Anglo environments that they did not think of themselves as minority group members. It is at Berkeley where such individuals begin to see themselves differently.


The situation of Mexican-American students at Berkeley is particularly instructive. Though predominantly from working-class backgrounds, they typically speak no Spanish and are described as products of “sheltered secondary education.” One undergraduate, who did not think of herself as “a minority” or “a Mexican” before Berkeley, recounts her surprise when she got introduced as a classmate’s “Mexican friend.” Another such student reports that she was not familiar with the word “Chicano” when growing up in a predominantly Anglo community in San Luis Obispo. Another student complains to the Berkeley researchers that the student body at his Jesuit high school in Los Angeles was “pretty white washed,” that most of the Chicano students there spoke “perfect English,” and that he and they were “pretty much assimilated.” One other undergraduate, referring to his identity as a Mexican American, describes himself as being “born again here at Berkeley.”


I am struck that the rapid assimilation experienced by these students parallels what I have found in my field research throughout the Southwest. In the impoverished Rio Grande Valley, right next to the Mexican border, a prominent Mexican-American physician and Democratic Party activist expressed dismay that his grown children “think like Dallas Republicans.” In the barrios of Los Angeles, a persistent complaint is that Mexican grandmothers who speak little English have a hard time communicating with their grandchildren, who speak no Spanish. I have heard young Mexican Americans repeatedly criticize their parents for raising them to be ignorant of their Mexican heritage. Contrary to much of what we hear today, for many, though hardly all, Mexican Americans social and cultural assimilation are so thoroughgoing and rapid that the result is often a backlash, especially among the young and well educated who, like the Yale student from Corpus Christi, want desperately to recapture what they have lost-or perhaps never even had.


Assimilation Is Conflictual


The third and final point I wish to make about assimilation is that it is fraught with tension, competition, and conflict. I offered a glimpse of this when I earlier focused on the emergence of ethnic groups as part of the assimilation process. Whether we’re talking about Italians yesterday or Hispanics today, such group identities in part signal the efforts of immigrants and their offspring to secure their place in America. Such efforts have in our history almost always been contentious. It is difficult to imagine that they could be otherwise.


Stanford sociologist Susan Olzak provides systematic evidence for this assertion. Based on her study of 77 immigrant-impacted American cities from 1877 to 1914, Olzak rejects the conventional view that intergroup conflict is caused by segregation. Instead, she argues that intergroup competition and conflict resulted from occupational desegregation. In other words, tensions are caused not by the isolation of ethnic groups but by the weakening of boundaries and barriers between groups. Olzak’s perspective is consistent with the findings of Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab in The Politics of Unreason. In that study of right-wing extremism, Lipset and Raab report that anti-immigrant nativism in the United States has had as much to do with the social strains of urbanization and industrialization as with anxieties associated with economic contraction. For example, both the Know-Nothings of the 1850s and the immigration restrictionists of the 1920s flourished during periods of prosperity.


Thus, it is during periods of growth when individuals have greater opportunities to break beyond previously established group boundaries. But opportunities for more interaction also lead to opportunities for more conflict. The sociologist Kurt Lewin made this point many years ago about the consequences of advances made by Jews. The historian John Higham has similarly noted that the remarkable economic advances made by Jews in post-Civil War America resulted in the harsh social discrimination they then encountered. More recently, political scientists Bruce Cam and Roderick Kiewiet point out that while claims of economic discrimination decline steadily from first- to second- to third-generation Latinos, claims of social discrimination increase. Apparently, Latino economic advances lead to increased social contacts with non-Latinos and hence more occasions for friction. Once again, we are reminded that assimilation is a multidimensional process in which gains along one dimension may not be neatly paralleled by progress along others.


Cain and Kiewiet’s cross-generational finding should remind us that much of what drives the tension and conflict associated with assimilation concems the varying expectations of first, second, and third generation immigrants. A virtual truism of the immigration literature is that the real challenges to the receiving society arise not with the relatively content first generation, who compare their situation with what was left behind, but with the second and third generations, whose much higher expectations reflect their upbringing in their parents’ adopted home.


Thus, economist Michael Piore, a longtime student of migration, traces the labor unrest of the 1930’s to the aspirations and discontents of second-generation European immigrants to America. And this dynamic is hardly limited to foreign migrants. For Piore also points out that it was not black migrants from the South who rioted in Northern U.S. cities during the 1960s, but their childrenthat is, the second generation. In light of the foregoing, Peter Salins is profoundly wrong when he asserts: ‘@The greatest danger looming for the United States is interethnic conflict, the scourge of almost all other nations with ethnically diverse populations. Assimilation has been our country’s secret weapon in diffusing such conflict before it occurs …… To be sure, in the long term Salim is correct. But in the short and medium term he is wrong. As should be evident by now, the assimilation of newcomers and their families into American society has typically resulted in group competition and conflict. Moreover, today’s post-civil rights political institutions transform the inevitable discontents generated by assimilation into divisive racial minority grievances.


Assimilation or Racialization?


We Americans seem to have a very difficult time grasping the contentious nature of assimilation. There are several reasons for our collective obtuseness on this point. On the one hand, immigration restrictionists focus exclusively on the strife occasioned by mass immigration throughout our history. Indeed, restrictionists are so obsessed with this aspect of immigration that they overlook that immigrants did assimilate and the nation survived and even prospered.


On the other hand, immigration enthusiasts go to the opposite extreme. They focus exclusively on the successful outcome of mass immigration and totally ignore the discord and dissension along the way. For example, reading Salins one would never know that our history has been marked by nots both by and against immigrants. For that matter one would never know that Catholic schools, which Salins correctly argues promote assimilation today, were nevertheless originally established in the nineteenth century by churchmen eager to thwart the assimilation of Catholics.


My point is that both sides of this debate ignore precisely what I am arguing—that assimilation and conflict go hand in hand. But there is another reason why we Americans have such difficulty confronting these conflicts. As I have already indicated, in today’s post-civil rights environment the problems and obstacles experienced by immigrants are now routinely attributed to racial discrimination. This racialization of immigration has fundamentally altered the contours of public discourse. On the one hand, because the accepted explanation for any negative response to immigrants is “racism,” many reasonable and fair-minded individuals who might otherwise be tempted to disagree with immigration enthusiasts have been scared away from the topic. On the other hand, because racialization posits a community of interest between black Americans and immigrants who are “people of color,” obvious competition and conflict between black Americans and immigrants (especially the sizable Hispanic population) have been downplayed, ignored, or simply denied. In other words, today’s post-civil rights ideology allows us to high-mindedly rule such group competition and conflict out of bounds—such that they are not topics suitable for serious inquiry.


What can be done about this situation? To begin, we need to get beyond the romance of immigration enthusiasts as well as the melodrama of immigration alarmists. We need to introduce a sense of realism about how we think about these issues and to face up to the turmoil and strains that mass immigration imposes on our society, particularly in this postcivil rights era.


I am reminded of Robert Park, whose research on ethnic and race relations pioneered the field of sociology at the University of Chicago earlier this century. Writing to a former associate in the wake of the 1943 Detroit race riot, Park commented: “I am not quite clear in my mind that I am opposed to race riots. The thing that I am opposed to is that the Negro should always lose.”


Here are the basic elements of Park’s “race relations cycle,” which took competition and conflict (and then accommodation and finally assimilation) as the inevitable outcomes of group contact. For all the criticisms that have been justifiably directed against Park’s perspective, it did have the singular virtue of realism.


By contrast, today we recoil in hand-wringing dismay when legal immigrants are deprived of welfare benefits. Or we cry racism when law enforcement officers ferociously beat illegal aliens. Such responses may be humane and generous-minded, but they are utterly lacking in the realism of which I speak. Do we honestly believe that millions of poor, disenfranchised immigrants can be introduced into a dynamic, competitive social and political system without their interests being put at risk? If so, we bear an uncomfortable resemblance to an enthusiastic but imprudent football coach who allows inexperienced players with poor training and equipment onto the field and then reacts with surprise and shock when they get injured.


More than just realism, Park affords us a sense of the tragic dimensions of immigration. William James, one of Park’s teachers, once wrote that “progress is a terrible thing.” In that same spirit, Park likened migration to war in its potential for simultaneously fostering individual tragedy and societal progress.


As in war, the outcome of the immigration we are now experiencing is difficult to discern. And this is precisely what is most lacking in the continuing debate over immigration—a realistic appreciation of the powerful forces with which we are dealing. We have heard much in recent years about the daunting experiment we have embarked upon with welfare reform. Yet our immigration policy is arguably a social experiment of even greater import—with enormous potential benefits, but also enormous risks. None of us knows for sure how these millions of newcomers will affect the United States. Easy answers about computer scientists and welfare cheats don’t begin to help us address the enormity of this issue. And neither do ill-informed notions about assimilation.

_______________________________________________



'The important role played by the yakuza in Japan’s postwar economic rise is well documented.7 But in the late 1980s, when it became clear that the gangs had progressed far beyond their traditional rackets into real estate development, stock market speculation and full-fledged corporate management, the tide turned against them. For the past two decades the yakuza have faced stricter anti-organized crime laws, more aggressive law enforcement, and rising intolerance toward their presence from the Japanese public'.



Here we see Japan's societal structures tied to honor, ethics, morals, family, duty disintegrate at the same time our US values were attacked---1980s----REAGAN/CLINTON neo-liberalism tied to expanding Foreign Economic Zones bringing back OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% -------they have been doing inside Japan what our CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and the 5% to the 1% have been doing in US---


This is NOT JAPANESE culture----it is global laissez faire neo-liberalism bringing DARK AGES GLOBAL WEALTH ECONOMICS to our modern nations. Who drives these attacks on morals and ethics?


OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASONRY AND GREEKS.........Japan's ties to freemasonry soared after WW 2-----ABE is that puppet just as are CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA -----ergo widespread organized crime in a nation known for strong ethics, morals, and attention to rule of law.

This is why we KNOW Chinese global 1% today are tied to this same ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% taking all our developed nations including JAPAN, WESTERN EUROPE, NORTH AMERICA----


The Secret History Of The
Freemasons In Japan
By Benjamin Fulford
Exclusive to Rense.com
7-2-7
 
Japanese Freemasons claim their links with Western Freemasons go back to ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian times but, I have not been able to verify this.
 
The earliest verifiable links go back to when the Khazar empire was destroyed by the Mongols and the Russians about 1,000 years ago. At the time their elite class fled with their treasure into Europe and China. The group that fled to China then fled to Japan as Kublai Khan's armies conquered China. That is why the Star of David can be seen in 1,000 year-old shrines in Japan. The original Khazars were fully assimilated by the Japanese elite over the ensuing centuries but certain Freemason/Khazar influences became a permanent part of Japanese culture.

************************************************************
Remember we discussed how ITALO CALVINO'S INVISIBLE CITIES-----back in 1960s was MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES all looking alike........

it is KUBLAI KHAN MEETS MARCO POLO during those OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% 1000 AD-------

The Life Story of Marco Polo in Under 3 Minutes
ZeroMotion
Published on Mar 2, 2015

Marco Polo is a famous historic figure who even has a TV show dedicated to his adventures! But what did he do to become this famous? Find out in this short video about his life!




We start our discussion on public policy surrounding morals and ethics with this introductions so we can see what is happening in US during ROBBER BARON few decades is indeed an organized fleecing of wealth done by a global banking 1% ------to stop MOVING FORWARD we simply need to get rid of global banking 5% to the 1% -----without those pols and players the global 1% has NO POWER INSIDE ANY SOVEREIGN NATION---especially a strong democratic republic like United States of America.


This is what makes all of what we are hearing in US media FAKE NEWS-----as global 1% Asian are working with global 1% European to create MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD for only the global 1%-----this is why we see these periods of ROBBER BARON FRAUDS----break down all ethics, morals, rule of law as is now happening during Clinton/Bush/Obama. Our 99% of Asian immigrants want as much as our US citizens to GET RID OF GLOBAL 1% POLS AND PLAYERS.



Organised crime
Opinion


Pushing the yakuza underground may make Japan less peaceful
Jake Adelstein


Laws that crack down on organised crime may encourage more ruthless groups without any concern for public order

Members of Yamaguchi-gumi attend a memorial service in 1988. Photograph: Associated PressSun 8 Jan ‘12 15.15 EST


It was a very lonely New Year's Day for many Japanese mafia members, aka the yakuza. In 2011, the top bosses would have opened their mailboxes to find them full of new year's greetings cards from other yakuza bosses, both their own and rival organisations. There would have been cards from businessmen, politicians, actors, celebrities, and possibly even envelopes stuffed with wads of yen. But alas, not this year.

The Yamaguchi-gumi (39,000 members) did not hold the traditional rice cake-making ceremony with the neighbours in front of their headquarters in Kobe; the godfather, Shinobu Tsukasa, did not hand the neighbourhood children traditional otoshidama (new year's gifts) – envelopes with the Yamaguchi-gumi symbol on them with 30,000 yen inside. The much feared and respected Yamaguchi-gumi emblem is vanishing from the business cards of the gangsters as well. New laws are pushing Japan's very public organised crime groups underground. Whether that will result in a more orderly and peaceful Japan, no one really knows.


Japan


has taken an interesting approach to dealing with organised crime since the second world war. They have not banned the yakuza, who claim to be humanitarian organisations with ancient roots in Japanese culture; instead the government has recognised their right to exist and regulated them with increasingly stringent laws. Thus, you still have yakuza fan magazines, comic books about their lives, and office buildings. A year ago it was still not unusual for yakuza members to wear their organisation badges on their Italian-made suits and to carry business cards with the group logo and their job title printed on them. The 22 officially designated organised crime groups (numbering roughly 79,000) continue to operate as usual and being a member is not a crime.

However, on 1 October in Tokyo and Okinawa the organised crime exclusionary ordinances went into effect, thus making every single local government have on the books new laws that criminalise paying off the yakuza or using them to conduct business. This may seem surprising but it was not a crime to do so in the past. As late as 2008, Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed companies like Suruga Corporation were able to hire yakuza thugs to evict tenants from buildings they wished to purchase and only the yakuza were arrested. Suruga Corporation executives who had authorised the payouts were untouched.


The new ordinances make using the yakuza very expensive. The police will only warn companies involved with the yakuza to cease relations once. After that the police can release the name of the company, shaming them publicly. However, what is at stake for the business isn't just loss of face – it's tremendous financial loss as well. Standard contracts in Japan now include organised crime exclusionary clauses that allow banks and other institutions to unilaterally nullify any agreement if the signer turns out to be yakuza affiliated.


Companies exposed by law enforcement will lose their bank accounts and financing; they will be evicted from their offices and delisted from the stock market.



It's a lie that crime doesn't pay but when the cost of doing business with criminals is financial ruin, most businesses would rather not pay the criminals. That is what the government of Japan is banking on. The national police agency last week proposed new legislation that gives the police greater power to arrest and target members of designated "dangerous organised crime groups". These new powers will be used to stifle yakuza retaliation towards businesses that decide to cut ties with them. This is unlikely to drive the yakuza out of business but it will damage their power base. After all, "the war on the yakuza" in Japan dates back to 1965, making it longer and perhaps less fruitful than the war on terror.


However, there are concerns among the cops and the yakuza themselves that the new laws will simply turn the yakuza from thugs with a bare minimum code of honour and conduct into ruthless outlaws akin to terrorists in many ways.


The yakuza have been allowed to exist in Japan for decades because each organisation has a code of ethics that keeps them from disrupting the public order or sense of public security. The codes, usually written on the wall on a scroll in Japanese cursive, prohibit armed or unarmed robbery, theft, rape, the use or selling of drugs, or any other act in disharmony with "the chivalrous way". Violations usually result in immediate banishment. One high-ranking yakuza boss puts it this way: "We have taken in the dregs of society, taught them discipline, and kept them in check – at least we don't engage in street crime. We are ninkyo dantai – humanitarian groups."


Many police acknowledge that the yakuza do play a role in keeping street crime low and that after major disasters they contribute to the relief effort.


However, when there is no longer any advantage to keeping up the pretence of being a "humanitarian organisation", there is a risk that Japan's large organised crime groups will be replaced by disorganised crime – groups of criminals that care little about currying public favour or civilian casualties.


Already, groups like Kanto Rengo, which are not "designated organised crime groups" nor traditional yakuza, have begun to seize power in Tokyo – engaging in mugging, drug dealing, purse-snatching and other crimes traditional yakuza would shun. There would be a terrible irony if the victory against the yakuza turns into a defeat in the war on crime.

Here is HYPER-GLOBAL NAKED CAPITALISM 'The Economist' telling 99% of WE THE PEOPLE and especially our 99% of women we are CHOOSING TO STAY AT HOME.  Again, there has always been a percentage of women WANTING to stay at home with duties of caring for home and family.  The US laws surrounding women in the workforce included not only the rights of women to leave home to go to work other than DOMESTIC work-----but it included the rights of women to EARN MONEY AND CONTROL THAT MONEY EARNED.  It as well legally opened the rights of women to BUY AND OWN REAL ESTATE.  The right to be willed at time of death FAMILY INHERITANCE.  So, these issues of women in workplace and whether women want to stay at home ARE FAR MORE BROADER THAN NATIONAL MEDIA is telling us.  So too, the far-right wing 1%  of men pushing these policies are selling this policy stance as DUTY OF WOMEN TO CHILDREN AND FAMILY when these global 1% of men are simply killing all employment categories wanting to push 99% of men and women out of workforce.

Even those percentage of women wanting to be STAY AT HOME MOMS ----have many who still want the right to work if they DECIDE TO DO SO.  There is almost NO SUPPORT from right wing or left wing 99% of women for public policy deeming women stay at home.  Now, those 99% of men thinking this is a win for men better think what MOVING FORWARD GOALS have regarding employment for those 99% of men----we need to protect the rights of ALL US AND IMMIGRANT CITIZENS, black, brown, and white to EQUAL PROTECTION EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS to employment---------AN INDIVIDUAL CANNOT GET MARRIED----HAVE CHILDREN---SUPPORT A FAMILY WITHOUT ACCESS TO EMPLOYMENT and these days both wife and husband want to work.

US and global women in the US having a husband with the stance of STAY AT HOME MOM need to remember-------men in hard times often lose their connection of responsibility to wife and children---it is the mother always tied to protecting that child----and access to work and earning money MUST REMAIN A RIGHT FOR WOMEN.


Women, work and children

The return of the stay-at-home mother


After falling for years, the proportion of mums who stay at home is rising


Apr 19th 2014 | WASHINGTON, DC  The Economist

EACH suburban housewife, wrote Betty Friedan in 1963, struggles with a single question as she makes the beds, shops for groceries, chauffeurs children about and lies beside her husband at night: “Is this all?” A few years after her ground-breaking book “The Feminine Mystique” was published, the Census Bureau began collecting data on the proportion of mothers who opt to stay at home. Over the subsequent decades the statistics answered Friedan’s question with a heartfelt no.


In 1967 the share of mothers who did not work outside the home stood at 49%; by the turn of the millennium it had dropped to just 23% (see chart 1). Many thought this number would continue to fall as women sought to “have it all”. Instead, the proportion of stay-at-home mothers has been rising steadily for the past 15 years, according to new data crunched by the Pew Research Centre.

WHO WERE THE BIGGEST VICTIMS OF JOB LAYOFFS AND LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT DURING 1990S AND 2008 ECONOMIC CRASHES?  US WOMEN.....


This partly reflects demographic change. Immigrants, a rising share of the relevant generation, are more likely to be stay-at-home mums than women born in America. There is an economic component to the change, too: at the end of the 1990s, when mothers staying at home were at their rarest, the economy was creating so many jobs that most people who wanted work could find it. Now more report that they are unable to do so, or are studying in the hope of finding work later. But there is also an element of choice: a quarter of stay-at-home mothers have college degrees.

WHO ARE BEING PUSHED INTO LOWER WAGE JOBS MORE OFTEN? WOMEN COLLEGE GRADS.


Taken as a whole, the group includes mothers at both ends of the social scale (see chart 2). Some are highly educated bankers’ wives who choose not to work because they don’t need the money and would rather spend their time hot-housing their toddlers so that they may one day get into Harvard. Others are poorer but calculate that, after paying for child care, the money they make sweeping floors or serving burgers does not justify the time away from their little ones.



The first group is fairly small. Pew estimates that there are 370,000 highly educated and affluent stay-at-home mothers (defined as married mothers with children under 18 who have at least a master’s degree and family income in excess of $75,000). That is 5% of all stay-at-home mothers with working husbands. One-third of stay-at-home mothers are single or cohabiting, and on average they are poorer than the rest.

The increase in stay-at-home mothering sits oddly with a second big trend affecting women’s lives: their relative success in the labour market. Women now hold half of the jobs in America, up from 32% in 1964. Women lost just one job during the recession for every 2.6 jobs lost by men, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics (though men have since staged a recovery). At the highly skilled end of the jobs market, women are in a strong position: they earn 57% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded by universities. The same is true in the low-skilled bit. The industries where the government expects the most employment growth between now and 2022, such as health care and hospitality, are mostly dominated by women. Unless men become more like women, the argument goes, changes in the structure of the economy will consign many of them to futures as indolent sperm donors.


How can women be taking over the workplace while simultaneously opting out of it? The answer is that men have been quitting the labour force even faster.

MEN 'QUITTING WORKFORCE FASTER' MEANS MEN HAVE SOARING LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT TOO.

Overall labour-force participation (for both sexes) has been declining since 2000, but for men it has fallen faster (from 75% to 69%) than for women (60% to 57%). In 40% of households with children a woman is now the primary breadwinner, though in most of those cases (26% of the total) that is because she is the only one.

Where women continue to lag is in their earnings relative to men. “The average full-time working woman earns just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns,” said Barack Obama on April 8th, adding: “That’s an embarrassment. It is wrong.” As he signed a pair of executive orders that would compel federal contractors to provide data on the pay and sex of their workforce, he tut-tutted: “Equal pay for equal work. It’s not that complicated.”


Actually, it is a bit more complicated than Mr Obama pretends. If employers could really get the same work done for 77 cents on the dollar by hiring women, they would do so, and their shareholders would gleefully pocket the extra profits. The 77 cents statistic, which Mr Obama cites often, compares apples with oranges.

The nonsense of “77 cents”


Men in “full-time” work do indeed make more than women, but this is partly because they work longer hours (full-time here means 35 or more hours a week). Men also cluster in some of the better-paid professions: they are 87% of engineers but only 16% of teachers. They do more dangerous jobs: 92% of work-related deaths are of men. Most important, men are far less likely than women to take hefty career breaks when children arrive. Single, childless women earn 95 cents for every dollar a single, childless man makes, which is hardly the stuff of campaign slogans.


However, as the mid-terms loom, Democrats are anxious to turn out female voters, 55% of whom voted for Mr Obama in 2012. Waxing indignant about sexism may help rally support for Democratic candidates. But will it help women struggling to juggle the demands of work and family?


Policies that make it easier for women to stay in work after having children, should they choose to do so, would probably be more constructive. America is unusual in not granting statutory paid maternity (or paternity) leave or providing much affordable child care. Both policies were recommended by a commission headed by Eleanor Roosevelt shortly before “The Feminine Mystique” was published, but have been largely ignored.


___________________________________________
We shout over and over and will continue that MADE IN AMERICA is NOT AMERICAN----the goal of global 1% is to fill US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES with foreign corporations bringing global labor pool workers to work as they do overseas----we have shouted this these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA because we KNEW the goals of MASTER PLANS created by REAGAN/CLINTON era for our US cities.

Who pushes hardest this privatization of K-12 killing our strong public freedom, liberty, and justice schools replacing them with vocational tracking K-career apprenticeship corporate schools? MEN AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR UNIONS-----those 5% FAKE LABOR leaders----those 5% black, white, and brown men and women PLAYERS.

No matter what national news or CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA or those FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT morphing into far-right global 1% LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS tell us------the goal of US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES has never been bringing jobs back for US WE THE PEOPLE---it has never been tied to any of last centuries labor and justice US Constitutional rights -----

There will be an initial hiring of US citizens----they will be paid a decade or two US wage levels----then as we have always shouted those global corporate campuses and global factories foreign corporations tied to global corporations will morph into operating as they do overseas especially in wage, workplace, and environmental devastation.

Our US and global 99% of men thinking they will be WINNERS in MOVING FORWARD these few decades of building global corporate campuses BETTER WAKE UP =====stop living for today and think of what future you and children and grandchildren will have.

This article by global media corporation USA TODAY talks of our CHESAPEAKE BAY Virginia/Md region------we shouted Richmond would see DC/MD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE coming down------we need US citizens to understand the EXTENT OF SUPER-INDUSTRIALIZED ZONES----it is not our last century's industrial plants


'Prince George’s County is included in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. Due to its proximity to Washington, D.C. the county also hosts many U.S. governmental facilities, such as Joint Base Andrews, a U.S. military airbase, as well as the headquarters of the United States Census Bureau   .Prince George County is in Tri-Cities area of the Greater Richmond Region. When settled during the colonial era, this area was known as Southside, believed to attract entrepreneurial men who were not from families as established as those who first settled along the James River'.


Foreign manufacturers bringing jobs to U.S.

Paul Davidson, USA TODAY Published 4:33 p.m. ET May 15, 2013 | Updated 4:40 p.m. ET May 15, 2013



The U.S. is no longer on the losing end of the offshoring trend in global manufacturing. In the past three years, dozens of foreign firms have created about 5,000 U.S. jobs in the USA.(Photo: Rols-Royce)

• Falling energy costs, productivity gains seen making U.S. more competitive
• Rolls-Royce: U.S. is 'a very good place to build stuff'
• 'Onshoring' trend could bring U.S. hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2020

PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY, Va. — For decades, U.S. manufacturers fled the country for China to drive down labor costs, then shipped products halfway around the world to sell to Americans, costing the U.S. millions of jobs.



Now, some foreign manufacturers are turning that offshoring trend on its head. In 2011, British-based Rolls-Royce began making engine parts here in Virginia and shipping them to Europe and Asia to be assembled in jet engine factories. That same year, Siemens, a German company, started making power-plant turbines in Charlotte, N.C., most of which it's shipping to Saudi Arabia and Mexico.


Remarkably, the long-jilted USA is becoming a manufacturing hotbed for dozens of foreign companies in aerospace, energy, chemicals and other industries. Many want to be closer to customers in the world's largest market. Others are taking advantage of U.S. assets that have grown more valued in the past few years, including low energy costs, a relatively healthy economy, highly productive workers and a cheap dollar.


"The global economics have shifted dramatically," says Hal Sirkin, a senior partner for Boston Consulting Group. "The wind was in our face, and now we're starting to see a tailwind."


From 2007 through 2012, foreign investment in U.S. manufacturing totaled $493 billion, vs. $270 billion the previous six years, according to the Organization for International Investment (OFII).


Foreign manufacturers aren't the only ones waking up to the benefits of making things in the U.S. Since 2010, more than 200 companies, mostly U.S.-based, have brought back production they had sent out of the country. That phenomenon, known as onshoring, has created about 50,000 new U.S. factory jobs, according to the Reshoring Initiative, an industry coalition.


By 2020, onshoring could generate a few million U.S. manufacturing jobs, including hundreds of thousands at foreign companies, Sirkin says. That could be a boon for U.S. workers. Foreign manufacturers pay U.S. employees 14% more than the industry average, OFII figures show.

OH, REALLY????  AND WHY WOULD THAT BE?  WHY WOULD FOREIGN CORPORATIONS COME TO US TO PAY WORKERS MORE?

Faced with rising demand from airlines worldwide, Rolls-Royce decided to build a new factory in Virginia to make jet engine discs and ship them across the Atlantic rather than expand similar plants in the U.K. A big reason was to be closer to its customers in the Southeast. Boeing began making 787 Dreamliners in Charleston, S.C., in 2011 and Airbus is building its first U.S. assembly plant in Mobile, Ala.


CEOs of those companies "can see that you're making quality parts in super-modern facilities with the best working practices," says William Powers, chief financial officer of Rolls-Royce North America.


The company's gleaming, $170 million factory in rural Prince George employs 100 and looks nothing like the labor-intensive textile, tobacco or furniture plants that were the region's economic lifeblood decades ago. On a sprawling, spotless white factory floor, rows of hulking computerized machines cut and shape discs that cost $25,000 to $75,000 apiece. Workers are scarce. Two can operate eight machines at a time and 12 make up a shift.


Rolls-Royce is planning two more factories on the Prince George County site.


While automation is part of the story, the Southeast also offered Rolls-Royce a flexible work environment. In Virginia and other southern right-to-work states where union representation is low, factory employees typically can both set up and operate a machine, as well as run multiple machines.


By contrast, in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, collective bargaining agreements often limit workers at Rolls-Royce and other companies to single, repetitive tasks, increasing labor costs, Powers and Sirkin say. Partly as a result, from 2005 to 2010, worker productivity increased much faster in the U.S. than in western Europe.


Also contributing to faster U.S. productivity gains: The country was hit harder by low-cost competition from Asia, forcing manufacturers here to cut waste and do more with fewer employees.


Add in the fact that U.S. wages have largely stabilized the past few years while China's have risen sharply — narrowing the gap between the countries — and U.S. workers are now a better bargain for multinational companies such as Rolls-Royce.

CHINA'S WAGES HAVE NO RISEN SHARPLY OR AT ALL---THIS IS JUKED WAGE DATA


The British company is also benefiting from a growing aerospace ecosystem in Virginia and the Southeast.
Rolls-Royce is working with local community colleges to establish a steady pipeline of manufacturing workers. The University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, meanwhile, are among area institutions that are researching product improvements and turning out engineers to design parts. Less than a mile from Rolls-Royce's plant, the recently opened Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing, a public-private partnership, is developing new manufacturing processes for Rolls-Royce and other area companies.
"The U.S. is just a larger network of research-based universities" than the U.K., Powers says.



Other reasons foreign manufacturers are converging on the U.S. are:



• Made-in-America appeal


Some foreign makers are looking to exploit the growing cachet of the "Made in the USA" label. Two years ago, Siemens began cranking out gas turbines at a plant in Charlotte and added 800 employees, largely to serve U.S. utilities that are converting coal-based power plants to natural gas.


It exports most of the turbines to Saudi Arabia and Mexico, which use the same power-grid technology as the U.S. But there's another reason it's making the turbines in Charlotte: Saudi Arabian companies often prefer to buy American-made technology products because they perceive them to be of higher quality, says Siemens USA chief Eric Spiegel.


Politics plays a role, too. Saudi Arabia, the second-biggest oil supplier to the U.S., "wants to buy (U.S.) products sort of as an offset program," Spiegel says.
Such set-ups can smooth potential tensions caused by unbalanced trade between two countries, says Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University.


Similarly, Europe's Airbus is building a $600 million assembly plant in Mobile, in part because North American airlines find the Made-in-the-USA label "particularly attractive," says Alan Allan McArtor, chairman of Airbus Americas. Airlines, he says, also "can come see the airplane and take delivery" in the U.S. That can help the company better compete with U.S.-based rival Boeing, McArtor says.


Politics are also at work for Airbus as it builds a $600 million facility that will open in 2015 and employ up to 1,000 workers to assemble the company's popular A-320 family of passenger airliners. "Until you actually create jobs," McArtor says, "that's where the real leverage comes with people on Capitol Hill and the public."





That kind of clout can be invaluable as Airbus battles Boeing in trade disputes before the World Trade Organization.


Airbus, as do other foreign manufacturers, also wanted to take advantage of a dollar that began weakening against the euro in 2010. When the company makes planes in France, it pays employees and buys material in euros, then sells the aircraft in cheaper U.S. dollars. As a result, a 10-cent drop in the dollar vs. the euro means 1 billion euros less in profits, McArtor says.


• Low energy costs



A natural gas boom in the U.S. is luring dozens of foreign chemical makers that use the gas as an energy source and feedstock. The price of U.S. natural gas is now a quarter to a third the price in Europe. That advantage attracted German chemical company BASF, which has invested about $5.7 billion in North America since 2009. It's building a plant in Geismar, La., that will convert natural gas to make formic acid, used in pharmaceuticals, leather and cleaning products.


BASF Chief Financial Officer Fried-Walter Münstermann says the company will likely continue to locate plants in the U.S. because BASF customers that make finished products are also moving here to exploit cheap natural gas. Europe and other regions "with high energy prices are at a disadvantage," he says.


• Fewer hassles
For many months, the 2011 tsunami and earthquake in Japan upended the supply chains of manufacturers dependent on Japanese parts makers. That helped persuade Bridgestone, a Japanese tire maker, to choose Aiken, S.C., that year as the place to build new manufacturing capacity for tires sold in North America. The new and expanded plants in Aiken will cost $1.2 billion and employ 850 workers. The crisis also helped lead Nissan and Toyota to shift more production from Japan to the U.S.


"It was kind of an awakening," says Steve Brooks, chief project officer for Bridgestone America.


For many foreign manufacturers, the U.S. is an oasis of stability — political, economic and infrastructural — in an uncertain world. Michelin recently expanded an Earthmover tire plant in Lexington, S.C., and is building a similar facility in Anderson, S.C., spending $750 million and adding 500 workers. About 80% of the 12-foot-tall industrial tires are exported.

______________________________________________
'Zackie Achmat, a former ANC member and renowned activist, explains why he's marching against Jacob Zuma'.


We will end this week's discussion of public policy tied to women and men, families, and supporting families with employment by this activity in Africa-----MIRRORING the MOVING FORWARD in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones. Now, expanding Foreign Economic Zones from Asia to these few decades of installing them in AFRICA AND US----is the final stage of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE. If our US 99% of white citizens think what is happening in Africa will only happen to our US black and brown 99% of citizens----WAKE UP-------99% of white US citizens will be made global labor pool enslaved labor.


As well, look at this article stating why protests against ZUMA are needed----they speak of LABOR BROKERS in South Africa---those are the same people from 1500s buying and selling slaves ---whether white slaves from Europe or black slaves from Africa........we already see our US 5% to the 1% black, white, and brown citizens fighting to be those LABOR BROKERS....especially here in Baltimore.


'Slave ownership is a practice that has been passed down through generations among the light-skinned Berber and Arab Moor ethnic groups, commonly referred to as Beydanes, in Mauritania'.


'Representatives of African countries in South Africa, under the auspices of African Diaspora Forum (ADF), on Tuesday staged a peaceful protest against slavery and human trafficking in Libya'.


'A man shouts out, center, with a poster reading 'Labour brokering=slavery' as he and others take part in a nationwide protest against so called labor brokers and planned new toll roads in Cape Town, South Africa, Wednesday, March 7, 2012'.



Notice as well OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION SOROS-----being that billionaire installing societal changes as the other billionaires install economic and corporate changes for ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1%.


Our US 99% of black men and women want to keep thinking OBAMA AND MICHELLE are BLACK LEADERS----when they are only 5% black followers. What did Obama and his foreign affairs JARRETT and his SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY do those several years? They created wars, civil unrest, created that 1% of African leaders like ZUMA AND MUGABE----with the grossest of brutality and injustice for 99% of African citizens.


South Africa looks just like US with that 1% South African extreme wealth working for global 1% keeping 99% of South Africans down -----global factory workers in South Africa lowest paid in developing world---$1-2 a day. Here we see that 5% to the 1% US black pols and players working for US 1% BOULE black citizens. What changes in US as South Africans already face MOVING FORWARD?



THAT 5% US BLACK PLAYER men and women DISAPPEARS-----

Do we think 'Zackie Achmat' is a REAL 99% activist? NO----as in US he is likely that 5% player morphing to farm team ACTORVIST FOLLOWER.......


'Patrick Gaspard to Become Acting OSF President

September 13, 2017
Patrick Gaspard to Become Acting OSF President


Christopher Stone will step down as president of the Open Society Foundations at the end of the year, and Patrick Gaspard, a former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and currently a vice president at the organization, will take over as acting president, the Wall Street Journal reports'.

We think ACHMAT is simply moving the ANC morphing to FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM from these few decades of global banking neo-liberalism----another player.

Six reasons why I am marching against Jacob Zuma on 7 August

Zackie Achmat, a former ANC member and renowned activist, explains why he's marching against Jacob Zuma.


By Ground Up -
2017-08-02
Image Credits:
By Zackie Achmat for GroundUp


On Monday 7 August, the day before the no-confidence vote, thousands will gather at Keizersgracht Street at 3pm and march to Parliament demanding that the ANC recall President Jacob Zuma. I intend to be there. Two questions immediately arise: Why the focus on Zuma when racism, sexism, inequality and unemployment are largely structural? Why the clamour about “state capture” now if capitalist interests have administered the South African state from its inception?


Our state is not an innocent experiencing the first blush of capitalist capture. The Dutch East India Company enslaved people of the East and committed genocide in the process of establishing a colonial state. The Jameson Raid at the behest of Rhodes, the bombing of Fordsburg during the Rand Revolt, the Broederbond and the Marikana Massacre amount to a consistent pattern of the state serving naked moneymaking. Almost a century before apartheid, hut and poll taxes were imposed as a means of coercing at least some Black Africans into the wage labour system needed to build mining dynasties like the Oppenheimers’. Old wealth remains concentrated in a few historically privileged hands. In the best of times these can exercise outsized influence on our democracy through the funding of political parties which is secret.


But I hope to convince you to join us on 7 August. Here are six reasons why:



1. Billions are being stolen
In her final report our courageous former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, described state capture as the “power to influence the appointment of Cabinet Ministers and Directors in Boards of SOEs [state owned entities] and leveraging those relationships to get preferential treatment in state contracts, access to state provided business finance and in the award of business licenses.” She found that the Gupta family had this power and was being assisted in exercising it by President Zuma and others. Few honest people now doubt this.


The essence of state capture is the theft of billions of rands through SOEs like Transnet and Eskom. The recent tsunami of stealing began when Zuma removed Barbara Hogan as Minister of Public Enterprises, making way for Malusi Gigaba and later Lynne Brown who facilitated theft of the state itself. The board composition of the SOEs was changed, bringing in people like Dudu Myeni and Ben Ngubane. Executives like Siyabonga Gama, Brian Molefe and Anoj Singh arrived. All of these people have relationships with Zuma, his son Duduzane or the Guptas. They awarded gigantic contracts to companies like Trillian, Tegeta, Oakbay and Tequesta, all Gupta-linked companies, often run through their “fourth brother” Salim Essa. Very little work is done, but billions are paid, ending up in Dubai, India or elsewhere.


If the R1.8 trillion Russian nuclear deal goes through the theft will reach new heights, affecting generations to come.



2. Ending corruption is a prerequisite for equality and social justice


Mcebisi Jonas, who was fired as Deputy Minister of Finance after refusing a R600m bribe from the Guptas, delivered a bold speech in May in which he admitted, “There is scope for using our core economic institutions more boldly to drive fundamental economic change”. He acknowledged that “the South African economy is in dire need of a major overhaul” and that there is “no denying that the economy needs to be radically transformed”.


But citing international precedents, he explained how radical transformation projects have repeatedly failed because of corruption and social division. “Any programme of radical economic transformation must be anchored in a much stronger democratic consensus among people and institutions,” he argued.
Jonas continued: “Nationalisation in a context of entrenched corruption, weak corporate governance, patronage rather than meritocratic appointments, and disdain for the bottom-line (if our existing state companies are anything to go by), will not deliver improved outcomes with respect to employment, poverty reduction and reduced inequality.”



If there isn’t a “zero-tolerance corruption environment” then “indigenisation programmes often serve as little more than thinly veiled attempts of politically-connected elites to capture rents”.


So “dealing with corruption and the integrity of the state becomes a prerequisite for effective black empowerment and racial transformation of the economy.”


This is the critical point. Jonas is right that tackling corruption is not an alternative to fundamental economic transformation: he is saying it is a key to unlocking it. The two must go hand in hand. And that is why #UniteBehind’s People’s March will be addressed by Mcebisi Jonas.



3. We can fight apartheid corruption while we fight today’s corruption


Hennie van Vuuren and Open Secrets are bringing to light the mountains of corruption of the apartheid era. As Geoff Budlender noted in his report into the Gupta-linked Trillian Capital, there is “also a need for full exposure and accountability in respect of wrongs committed in the past … during the apartheid era or in the democratic era.”


But, he correctly advised, “The need to put a stop to abuse which is taking place now cannot be held hostage to the need for investigations of our past. Those who propose this will fairly be suspected of attempting to prevent or delay the ending of the abuse of public power and public resources which is currently taking place.”


I would add that those who sit on the fence are enabling the stealing. It’s time to get off the fence.



4. The future of our democracy depends on stopping this


We now live in a constitutional democracy in which government is ostensibly accountable to the people. Millions of ordinary people rightly believe that the standards of a democratic government with the declared aim and constitutional duty to serve the public good should be more honest than those of colonial and apartheid degenerates. Madonsela warned “the people of South Africa … would lose faith in open, democratic and accountable government if President Zuma’s denials are proven to be false.”


In my view the loss of faith in democracy will take place if nobody is held accountable. We cannot let corruption enjoy the same impunity as it did during apartheid.


5. The criminal justice system is being destroyed



It is the unfortunate norm for governments to put the interests of elites before working class and poor people. This is something we have to continuously struggle against. But the Zuma coup is even worse than this. It only serves the interests of the narrowest gang. Therefore even the modicum of internal fairness amongst capitalists – the traditional “honour among thieves” – is done away with. Instead of a legal system skewed towards the rich which we resist, we are left with lawlessness. This can only lead to a rise in crime and violence, which will mostly affect poor people. There is nothing more anti-Black and anti-poor than that.



6. Zuma is unleashing authoritarianism, tribalism and violence



To protect their looting, Zuma and the Guptas pretend to defend “radical economic transformation”. Concocted in London, the heart of global finance capital, their use of the term discredits the genuinely revolutionary changes needed to transform our society from structural racism to equality.


To see that Zuma’s project has nothing to do with ideas we only have to look at the intolerance to reasoned discussion and debate shown by the bands of thugs known as the ANC Youth League, Black First Land First and MK Veterans Association. They want a country where media, art, science and literature are purged of innovation and dissent.


There is no shortcut to a truly liberated South Africa. After Zuma goes we will have to redouble the social justice struggle that he has set back so dearly. That is why I ask you to march with the #UniteBehind coalition. We are committed to uniting struggles post-Zuma, and setting the path towards a just and equal South Africa.


WE BELIEVE #UNITE BEHIND IN SOUTH AFRICA MIRRORS THE #RESIST WE KNOW ARE SIMPLY ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 5% GROUPS.

We discussed last week public policy surrounding women rights especially in workplace====this week we are discussing both men and women tied to public policy and marriage having/supporting children as family as that affects employment and workplace.  We absolutely want our artificially manipulated sex chromosome gender blended citizens to have all rights and freedoms as citizens---we are shouting against the PROCEDURE AND PATENTING OF HUMAN DESIGNER BLENDED GENDER.  We are speaking this week ONLY on genetic engineered sex chromosomes and gender blending and not the GMO of designer children tied to parents wanting genetic manipulations around hair or skin color----genetics around making a child athletic, creative, or intelligent----although REAL left social progressives are against  THOSE MANIPULATIONS AS WELL----even if parents request this---it may be legal but it creates a slippery slope to having NO CONTROL OVER HUMAN MANIPULATION.

THE SEX CHROMOSOME MANIPULATIONS CREATING GENDER BLENDING ARE BEING DONE WITH NO CITIZEN CONSENT---THE CHILDREN AND/OR PARENTS ALMOST NEVER KNOW THESE MANIPULATIONS HAVE OCCURRED.

Remember, we are discussing public policy goals of global 1% in MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1%.   Thinking gender blending is liberalization is not the issue in these discussions ---simply supporting equal protection under US Constitution for GBLT already in place does this.

The goal of global 1% in GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY is creating a workforce which is MOST COST EFFECTIVE.  No matter how much global 1% pols and players PRETEND to be creating family-friendly ---women and children-friendly environments --they are doing the OPPOSITE.  It is cost effective to have workers not wanting or having children or families-----focused on work only throughout adulthood is the goal.  When we think of planetary mining slaves and colonies they don't want workers thinking about needing sex----having children so global 1% are actively BREEDING ALL THIS OUT OF HUMAN NATURE.


'The Worker Bee

Worker bees are all female, but they do not have the same abilities as the queen. They are born sterile and their purpose is to work for their entire lifespan. Worker bees are essentially the lifeblood of the hive. Without worker bees, there would be no one to care for the ever-important queen, produce honey or pollinate plants and flowers. Worker bees are also afforded the privilege of ejecting the unusable drones from the hive.


Worker bees have many jobs throughout their life. The jobs for the worker bee change through their life-span. There are jobs like cell cleaning and capping that are generally handled by younger bees. Guarding and foraging is for the older bees. Worker bees live for about 5 weeks then die - they quite literally work themselves to death to help the survival of the hive.
Bees are neat freaks and because it is the workers bee's job to clean the hive they will remove themselves from the hive before they die so the other bees can get on with their job'.


As we showed earlier, genetic changes especially regarding sex chromosomes often if not always leave that citizens STERILE.   Think STERILE WORKER BEES in beehives.  This gender blending is affecting both female and male identity------the blending is bring females closer to feeling male-----bringing males closer to feeling female.  Both are sterile and we don't know yet but we can think these cases mean they are not sexually attracted to either sex.  Do gender blended artificially manipulated sex chromosome citizens not identifying male or female even want to have sex?  We do know the goal of global 1% banking is to create the conditions in which these citizens would NOT want to be sexual.  So, this threatens not only natural reproduction, it effects the desire to marry and have children.  Our GBLT citizens often want marriage---they want to adopt children often using their own sex gametes. 

THIS IS TWO VERY DIFFERENT PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES-----

We are being CLINICAL RIGHT NOW in explaining GOALS of artificial manipulation of sex chromosomes in humans.  Here we see the same manipulations on lower animals ----in this case controlling mosquito population by genetically sterilizing in this case MALE mosquitoes.  The goal was of course having a fertile female mosquito mating with that sterile male and left unable to reproduce.....lowering the population of mosquitoes.


Using male mosquitoes to effectively sterilize females through a naturally occurring bacterium

Date:
July 15, 2014
Source:
University of Kentucky



Summary:
A new company, created by scientists, uses a very unique approach to control a common pest that can carry dangerous diseases: using male mosquitoes to effectively sterilize females through a naturally occurring bacterium. "Most mosquito control companies use chemical pesticides which are sprayed out of trucks and planes, or maybe out of a backpack sprayer," one of the scientists said. "By using a natural bacterium called Wolbachia and the mosquitoes' innate ability to find mates, we are applying an approach which does not require chemicals."


Who would have thought of mosquitoes being put to work to help decrease and control the mosquito population? University of Kentucky professor and researcher Stephen Dobson and his former graduate student, Jimmy Mains, that's who.


Dobson, professor of medical and veterinary entomology in the Department of Entomology, College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, and Mains have developed a technology that uses male mosquitoes to effectively sterilize females through a naturally occurring bacterium.


"Most mosquito control companies use chemical pesticides which are sprayed out of trucks and planes, or maybe out of a backpack sprayer," Dobson said. "Ours is a very different approach. By using a natural bacterium called Wolbachia and the mosquitoes' innate ability to find mates, we are applying an approach which does not require chemicals."


Mains is a medical entomologist with the company recently formed by Dobson, MosquitoMate. The principal investigator on the project, Mains earned his Ph.D. from UK in 2012 while working in Dobson's lab. Mains just received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to begin field trials that both men hope will demonstrate that this technique can be effective across the nation and beyond.


"A big advantage to our method is that the male mosquitoes are 'self-delivering.' We don't need to devote hours in finding and treating all the mosquitoes in your yard. The male mosquitoes find the females for us," Mains said.


Mains and Dobson credit Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship, housed within the Gatton College of Business and Economics, with helping them to take their research from the lab to the field. The center assists UK faculty and others in commercializing their research so they can transfer the technologies they have originated to the outside world for eventual far-reaching application.


"MosquitoMate has obtained an experimental use permit for open field releases," said Dobson. "We're now able to apply the bacterium in small defined areas. The idea is to develop data which we can give to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to demonstrate that it works and hopefully, MosquitoMate can move into actual sales and commercial use of the product."
The primary target for MosquitoMate is the Asian tiger mosquito and as the name suggests, it is an introduced pest.


"It came to the U.S. in the mid-1980s and spread throughout the country," Dobson said. "By eliminating this mosquito, we will be going back to a more natural state."


Mosquitoes such as the Asian tiger historically have been much more than a nuisance, transmitting diseases to humans.


"Now we are getting new reports of a new pathogen called the Chikungunya virus, in which there is an epidemic in the Caribbean and we're starting to get cases to show up in the U.S.," said Dobson.


"Recently cases have popped up in the United States, including right here in Kentucky," Mains said.
The researchers believe that at this point, the cases are thought to be from tourists who leave the country, become infected and then return to the U.S. "But there is the concern that we could start having local transmissions where mosquitoes are picking it up and transmitting it here within the U.S.," Dobson said.


Female mosquitoes bite and can transmit pathogens like the Chikungunya virus. Male mosquitoes, though, do not bite, instead they are pollinators. They spend their lives hunting for females and drinking nectar.
"The Asian tiger mosquito is a container breeder," said Mains. "One homeowner's yard can contain hundreds of sites, such as gutters, flower pots, other receptacles and essentially anything that contains water."


Dobson said the MosquitoMate team is rearing large numbers of mosquitoes in the laboratory and removing the females before going to the field.
"We gather the males into cages and then transport the mosquitoes to the targeted site," Dobson said.


"Our employees basically walk around the perimeter of the house releasing the mosquitoes from the cage," said Mains. "This distributes the mosquitoes within the area pretty evenly."


An important advantage of this methodology over the traditional mechanical spraying of pesticides is that chemicals have the potential to affect non-targets, such as bees, butterflies and other insects that are beneficial to the ecosystem. The MosquitoMate approach only impacts female mosquitoes.


In addition to testing in Kentucky, MosquitoMate has collaborators in California, Florida and New York who are carrying out trials to prove that this method can be effective at multiple sites.


Dobson and Mains intend to take the evidence they gather back to the EPA and apply for a full registration, which would enable them to market their technology throughout the U.S. and in time, to other countries around the world that are trying to stop the spread of mosquito-borne diseases to their citizens.


"To play a key role in helping to reduce or eliminate a significant health threat to our population while building a company which potentially will create a large number of new jobs is a thrilling proposition," said Mains. "We believe MosquitoMate can do just that."

_______________________________________


Whenever we see discussion of DESIGNER BABIES in national media or by global medical corporate media they always tout goals of curing disease-----marching towards healthier humans------of course we have the EUGENICS in designer babies.  That has always been the reason we as a society REJECTED DESIGNER BABIES-----but as important is FOR what are those babies being designed.   We see happy faces of happy parents and happy healthy children=====indeed, as all ethics and moral debates are made, citizens having the wealth to build their own baby with traits they think will benefit the parents and child WILL OCCUR.....the cost of this if affordable today to affluent citizens will become very quickly geared to only global 1%----it is only the richest who have ability to bear children with the best traits.

The R and D around all these genetic engineering of babies was of course early on filled with trial and error ---lots of deaths, lots of abnormalities, lots of bad character traits surfacing with what were supposed to be good traits.  Genetic manipulation is known to not only create sterility but has also cause learning disabilities, anger and violence management issues, socialization issues------this is what these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have allowed in fetus experimentation and today we have living, breathing, results of those experiments.

Our concern today is not EUGENICS goals---which MOVING FORWARD indeed has------we are shouting for the rights and injustices incurred in these experimental biogenetic programs and procedures with fetuses born and maturing as adults simply seen as medical cases to follow for research ======

THIS IS WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING THESE FEW DECADES AND OUR ARTIFICIALLY MANIPULATED GENDER BLENDED CITIZENS ARE VICTIMS NEEDING JUSTICE.


As we stated, most of these biogenetic experiments were done by global 1% CARLYLE GROUP MEETS GLOBAL HEDGE FUND IVY LEAGUE STANFORD AND JOHNS HOPKINS and their global biogenetics corporations created overseas.  We don't know the history of failures -----fetuses never born-----fetuses born but not living-----or the history of modified fetuses as children aging now to young adults.....what kinds of medical treatments did these young children need as they aged ----what kinds of psychiatric treatments were they exposed to--------our concern today is the goal of ramping up PRODUCTION OF HUMANS AS PRODUCTS.

• Live Science
• Health

Children to Order: The Ethics of 'Designer Babies'

By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | March 13, 2014 02:00pm ET


Creating designer babies who are free from disease and super athletic or smart may finally be around the corner.



But American society hasn't fully thought out the ethical implications for the future of baby making or policies to regulate these techniques, an ethicist argues in an article published today (March 13) in the journal Science.


"We're on the cusp of having much more information, and the appearance of having much greater discretion, in choosing the traits of our children," said article author Thomas H. Murray, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center, a nonprofit research center in Garrison, N.Y. People also need to think about what parents and doctors will do with the technology, he said. "What use will they make of it, and should there be limits?"


In fact, in February, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met to consider conducting clinical trials to test out genetic manipulation techniques to prevent mitochondrial disease from occurring in offspring.


New technologies


Since the 1990s, the prospect of futuristic technologies such as human cloning or selecting for superhuman traits have stoked public fears about "designer babies."



Back then, most of these techniques were purely speculative, but now several methods for genetic selection are either already possible or will soon become so.


For instance, parents can choose to screen embryos created via in vitro fertilization (IVF) for sex or diseases, a process known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Scientists have also recently reported a method of extracting defective mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of cells, from a woman's egg and replacing them with healthy mitochondria from a donor egg.


And new tests can detect fetal DNA circulating in a woman's blood stream early on in pregnancy, determining sex or catching errors in the number of chromosomes, Murray told Live Science. Abnormal chromosome numbers cause disorders as Down syndrome. [5 Myths About Fertility Treatments]



And though parents may not be able to screen their future babies for genes that confer intelligence, hair color or athletic aptitude just yet, the company 23andme recently applied for a patent on such tests, the article notes. (Traits such as intelligence and height are governed by a complicated interplay of dozens of genes and the environment, so such tests are still a ways away, Murray said.)


Soon it may be possible to screen the entire genome of a fetus, or to select a child based on its odds of long-term diseases such as Alzheimer's or diabetes, Murray said.



No consensus


Yet most of the major medical societies, such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), have wildly different attitudes about when and where these techniques should be allowed, the study noted. The ASRM typically defers to a client's wishes on issues such as sex selection, for instance, whereas the ACOG advocates prohibiting sex selection because of its potential to lead to sex discrimination against women in society.


The FDA, meanwhile, only regulates the potential safety and efficacy of these techniques, not their ethical implications.



But when bringing a new child into the world, society has an obligation to determine whether the technologies used to do so actually benefit or harm the infant. On a larger scale, it's possible that giving parents the ability to select the genetic traits of their offspring could subtly worsen the relationship between parents and children.


"One of my concerns is if we let parents think they are actually choosing and controlling [their child's outcome], then we set up all that dynamic of potentially tyrannical expectations over what the child will do or be," Murray said.


But the idea that parents can determine children's eventual identities has always been somewhat illusory.
"You could clone Michael Jordan, but Michael Two might want to be an accountant," Murray said.


Fears overblown


Not everyone thinks these ethical issues are so worrisome.
While safety, prospective benefits and medical claims need to be evaluated, designer babies may not present such a new ethical arena, after all. It's not clear that there's anything unique, from an ethical perspective, in parents trying to foster certain traits through genetics as compared to using tutors, music lessons or instilling discipline, said Bonnie Steinbock, a philosopher at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY), who was not involved in the work.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with the attempt to make our children smarter or kinder," Steinbock told Live Science. "If we did think that was wrong, we should give up parenting, and put them out on the street."


And even if there were some potential harms of "designer babies," those drawbacks may not be worth regulating, said John Robertson, a law and bioethics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the work.



If there were a family that really valued musicality, for instance, and "if they have four embryos and one has the perfect pitch trait, then why should they not be able to choose that embryo?" Robertson said.


The potential harms, such as parents forcing a child to study trombone when the kid would rather play soccer, don't seem big enough to interfere with parental choice, he added.
_______________________________________________
ALL of the ethical and moral discussions seen in national media always focus only on goals of making children BETTER in the eyes of parents.  These discussions almost always come from FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES---as this comment below in TEXAS.

Almost NONE of what is rolling out has to do with building the perfect baby for parents-----almost all of this genetic manipulation is about building the perfect workers for each type of employment.

THERE IS NO DISCUSSION ON ETHICS AND MORALS OF THIS GOAL BECAUSE GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 5% PLAYERS WILL NOT ALLOW THIS GOAL TO BE KNOWN....NO DISCUSSION ON DELIBERATELY ARTIFICIALLY MANIPULATING SEX CHROMOSOMES TO CREATE BLENDED GENDERS WITH STERILITY AND DISCONNECTIONS TO SEX.


"I don't think there's anything wrong with the attempt to make our children smarter or kinder," Steinbock told Live Science. "If we did think that was wrong, we should give up parenting, and put them out on the street."
And even if there were some potential harms of "designer babies," those drawbacks may not be worth regulating, said John Robertson, a law and bioethics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the work'.

THOSE DRAWBACKS MAY NOT BE WORTH REGULATING-----WHAT AN IDIOT.

We will speak badly of the dead today as MR ROBERTSON is recently deceased.  What 99% of WE THE PEOPLE and our global 99% need to understand is this------the very small percentage of people MOVING FORWARD these DESIGNER BABY agendas are all tied to FAR-RIGHT WING AUTHORITARIAN BUSH/CHENEY MEETS CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM ----doing anything to earn profits.  No doubt Texas is tied to bringing back those global biogenetics corporations created these few decades to US and now are pushing data of opinions of

COMPLETELY DEREGULATED CREATION OF ANY KIND OF MANIPULATED TRANS HUMAN WE WANT.


These are the SHIP OF FOOLS----being allowed control of all public policy surrounding what are CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY----FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BUSH NEO-CONSERVATIVE INSTITUTIONS ARE BEHIND NOT ONLY CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY ON THE BATTLEFIELD---BUT IN MEDICAL PROCEDURES.

John A. Robertson


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named John Robertson, see John Robertson (disambiguation).John A. Robertson (June 15, 1943 – July 5, 2017)[1] held the Vinson and Elkins Chair at The University of Texas School of Law. He wrote and lectured widely on law and bioethical issues.[2]
Robertson was the author of two books on bioethics, The Rights of the Critically Ill and Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies, and numerous articles on reproductive rights, genetics, organ transplantation, and human experimentation.
He served on, or had been a consultant to, many national bioethics advisory bodies, and was Chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Robertson was a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.[3]

***********************************



YES, WE KNOW and we have known and been shouting these few decades of MOVING FORWARD to only artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificially manipulated especially sex chromosome gender blended citizens will be the ones EMPLOYED.


Gender Selection
World Leading Center for Virtually 100% Guaranteed Gender Selection using PGD


Select the Gender of Your Next Baby


Lowest base price of any U.S. PGD gender selection program

Selection Methods Scientific Understanding Scenarios Fees FAQ

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Recognized by ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox and Reuters as among "THE" worldwide leaders in gender selection technology. If you want to be certain your next child will be the gender you are hoping for then no other method comes close to PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis). While traditional sperm-screening techniques have a success rates of 60-70%, only PGD offers virtually 100% accuracy.


Our Gender Selection Program in the Media


Good Morning America
Would You Choose the Gender of Your Next Baby?
Family Balancing with Dr. Steinberg founder of The Fertility Institutes



60 Minutes
Designer Babies
Gender Selection, Family Balancing and the advances in fertility science with Dr. Steinberg founder of The Fertility Institutes



VICE on HBO
Couple Chooses the Sex of their Baby
Fertility science now allows parents to select the gender of their children. Featuring Dr. Steinberg founder of The Fertility Institutes



Full Article
Denver ABC: Boy or Girl?
More and more Colorado parents are choosing their baby's gender and more doctors are allowing parents to make the choice.


Boy or Girl?
More videos and articles

World Leading Gender Selection Program

• World leading 100%* Gender Selection with PGD
• Affiliate clinics in over 42 countries
• Lowest base price of any U.S. PGD program
• Screening for over 400 hereditary diseases
• Now combinable with Microsort sperm sorting
• Critical procedures performed by MDs and PhDs
• Full assistance with travel discounts and visas
• Financing available

Free Information Packet! International Programs Available!We are pleased to announce that all medical services offered by The Fertility Institutes are available internationally. We work with affiliate clinics in over 42 countries.
Learn more


Gender Selection Methods

The selection of gender has been a quest of couples for as far back as recorded history allows. Early drawings from prehistoric times suggest that gender selection efforts were being investigated by our earliest ancestors. Later history shows intense interest in gender selection by early Asian (Chinese), Egyptian and Greek cultures. This is followed by documented scientific efforts beginning in the 1600's to sway the chances of achieving a pregnancy by a variety of methods.


Research and work carried out in the 1980's and 90's have finally provided methods offering the chance of obtaining a desired pregnancy gender outcome that ranges from excellent to virtually guaranteed* with PGD.


The steps and procedures for gender selection are as follows:

1. Several eggs are extracted from the mother by our doctors, sperm is supplied by the father.
2. The father's sperm is used to fertilize the mother's eggs in our lab.
3. After 3 days, several 8-cell embryos will have developed (see figure).
4. Our doctor-scientist specialists examine the genetic makeup of the embryos, screening for both genetic diseases and desired gender.
5. Healthy embryos of the gender you desire are implanted in the mother.
6. Any additional healthy embryos may be cryo-frozen for future use.
7. Gestation and birth take place as normal.

The Scientific Understanding of Gender Selection


It has been known for many years that the gender of a pregnancy is determined by the sex chromosome carried by the sperm. Sperm bearing an "X" chromosome, when united with the "X" from the female (females only produce "X") will result in an "XX" pregnancy that produces a female. If a sperm bearing a "Y" chromosome (men have both "X" and "Y" bearing sperm) unites with the "X" chromosome from the female, an "XY" pregnancy will result that gives rise to a male offspring.



Armed with this knowledge, science initially worked to allow for an accurate method of safely separating sperm to allow the majority of those sperm capable of producing the desired gender ("X" sperm or "Y" sperm) to be exposed to the female egg (oocyte). While a variety of methods of purifying the sperm separation process have been reported and studied, in reality, very few of these methods have withstood scientific scrutiny that "checks" the validity of claims made by those employing the procedure.


Because no sperm separation method thus far developed has produced the high level of sperm separation "X" (for female) and "Y" (for male) needed to provide gender outcome success levels greater than 90%, further work to perfect the gender selection process is being studied.



"PGD" (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) has taken gender selection to the next and most successful level ever (greater than 99.9%). Results from our PGD process far exceed reported results from any and all other processes:



1. A 7 cell embryo prepared for biopsy on culture day 3
2. A gentle acid solution is applied to the zona "shell" of the embryo, allowing access to the blastomeres contained within
3. The zona "shell" has been penetrated and opened. A single cell is selected for biopsy
4. The selected cell is gently separated from it's neighbor cells and drawn into the biopsy instrument
5. The blastomere is removed. Gender information is contained within the small dimple seen within each cell
6. Separation from the cell is complete and the biopsy probe with the contained cell is drawn away from the embryo




Sperm that have been filtered by our standard sperm preparation process are allowed to fertilize the eggs obtained from the female "in vitro" (in our highly specialized fertility laboratory). The embryos resulting from this specialized fertilization process are then screened by our genetics team to determine both their gender and that selected chromosome pairs have resulted in an expected normal genetic pairing outcome (this process is called "aneuploidy" screening). This gender determination process at the very early development level as made famous by our Center, has resulted in the ability to provide gender selection results for the chosen gender far in excess of 99.9%.


The aneuploidy (abnormal chromosome count) screening process also employed at the time of PGD gender determination also allows for the detection of limited genetic count abnormalities as a routine or for the optional screening of the embryos for a wide variety of additional genetic abnormalities. Upon request, we can screen for genetic abnormalities such as Down's syndrome (one "extra" chromosome 21), Turner's syndrome (the absence of one of the two "X" chromosomes normally found in a female), and Kleinfelter's syndrome (a male with one "Y" chromosome and 2 "X" chromosomes instead of the normally found single "X" chromosome).


New DNA microarray technology also provides us the option of screening embryos for a full (46 chromosome) genetic count. We are also able to provide those patients known to carry specific personal or family genetic diseases the ability to screen the embryos for many specific disorders. All couples meeting our standard, liberal entrance criteria will qualify for the PGD process.


Aneuploidy screening as described above detects abnormal chromosome numbers and the diseases associated with those conditions. "Single gene disorders" include a wide variety of hereditary diseases found on a specific chromosome that can also be screened for with PGD.



Among the diseases detectable with PGD and screened for at our centers:

• Adrenoleukodystrophy
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
• Becker Muscular Dystrophy
• Beta Thalassemia
• BREAST CANCER
• Central Core Disease
• Centronuclear (Myotubular) Myopathy
• Cerebellar Ataxia
• Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease
• Chondrodysplasia Punctata
• Congenital Aganglionic Megacolon
• Conradi-Hunnerman Syndrome
• Cystic Fibrosis
• Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
• Factor VIII Deficiency
• Factor IX Deficiency
• Familial Spastic Paraparesis
• Fragile X Syndrome
• Friedrich's Ataxia
• Gardener Syndrome
• Glycogen Storage Disease
• Happle Syndrome
• Hemophilia
• Huntington's Disease
• Retinitis Pigmentosa
• Prostate Cancer
• Sickle Cell Anemia
• Tay-Sachs Disease
• Von Willebrand Disease
• Over 400 hereditary diseases

Unlike many programs offering gender selection only to very limited couples with known genetic disorders in the family we make gender selection available to all patients. Parents have come to us from from nearly every nation on the planet (we have assisted patients from 147 different nations) seeking to balance their families or assure themselves that a pregnancy will result in ONLY the gender outcome they desire. REMEMBER: Nearly all couples qualify for gender selection using the PGD method, which provides near 100% (99.99%) success regardless of sperm counts or gender percentages!



Family Balancing ScenariosCouple 1



Mr. & Mrs. Adams (names are fictitious) present to our offices with a request for gender selection. The couple reports having successfully conceived and delivered three healthy females. The last birth was three years ago. Mr. Adams has a strong family history of girls being born, with his only brother having produced two girls, and three cousins also having had a total of seven female and one male offspring.



Mr. Adams underwent genetic analysis of the "sex ratio" (percentage of "X" and "Y" sperm) of his total sperm production. His ejaculate was found to contain 51% of the viable sperm seen carrying a "Y" (male producing) chromosome. His total sperm count was 38 million per ml. So, of the 38 million sperm, 51% had the correct sex chromosome needed to produce a male. After separating his sperm for the desired gender, we would be left with a sperm count of at best, 15-16 million. This would not be enough to allow for a reasonable chance of the couple conceiving with simple sperm selection and insemination.



Advised of the situation concerning their sperm sex ratio, the couple wisely elected to proceed with the IVF-PGD option. They were rewarded with a twin pregnancy that resulted in the birth of two healthy, male infants. While we exist to provide high quality medical services, we very strictly adhere to guidelines that have a history of providing excellent outcome results. While we cannot "guarantee" a desired outcome to anyone, we can now come as close to a guarantee as science allows. With the IVF-PGD option, success rates approach 100%. Couples in our program can feel comfortable that once treatment begins, they do have a nearly 100% excellent chance of achieving the desired outcome when pregnancy occurs. Consider the next scenario:


Couple 2
This British couple presented to us with a history of having produced three boys over the past seven years. With very few female offspring in either of their families, they were interested in sex selection aimed at the production of a female.



They undertook an initial telephone consultation with me, Dr. Steinberg, that indicated their suitability for our program so long as some initial blood tests the Doctor requested were in order. The blood testing was ordered from a hospital laboratory near their home in London. One week later, the initial blood screening results showed them to be excellent candidates for the gender selection procedure. Total sperm count on the male was 88 million per ml. Sex ratio demonstrated only 38% of his sperm to be "X" (female) producing.


The couple were directed to one of the several fertility centers in London that we work with who assisted us in the preparation of the patients for the procedure. They began their procedure under the co-direction of our program working with the medical team in London. Two weeks later, they arrived in Los Angeles. Their travel and lodging arrangements had been coordinated with our travel desk who had a car meet them at the airport in Los Angeles. They were transported to the hotel they had chosen and the next morning undertook the egg harvest at our facility.


After our modified sperm preparation separation, we obtained 34 million sex selected sperm per ml. from the husband. The PGD analysis of the embryos produced after insemination of the eggs demonstrated 3 healthy female embryos and 7 healthy male embryos, along with 2 abnormal embryos. Two normal female embryos were transferred to the uterus. The couple returned home after two "extra" days of tourism in Los Angeles and two weeks later a pregnancy test was positive. A single healthy female birth resulted.


Couple 3
Lisa and David were referred to us by a local fertility program near their home in Toronto, Canada. They presented to their local program with a request to assist them in their desire to become pregnant with a boy.


Lisa underwent a tubal ligation 3 years earlier after the birth of their third daughter. Lisa and David explained that they felt that they had "reached their limit" after having 3 children and undertook the tubal ligation. They indicated that with their oldest daughters now growing older and able to help with the youngest one, their thoughts had changed and they now felt that they could care for an additional child.


While totally content with their daughters, David indicated that he was very interested in seeing if the couple could use "new science" to help them achieve the birth of a son. Lisa was very supportive and indicated that she too was ready for another child. She indicated that gender was not a concern for her but that she was ready to support David's decision to inquire about our gender selection program.



They were told by their local fertility physician that gender selection was illegal in Canada. He did advise them that he had seen and assisted in the care of several Canadian patients that were being treated for sex selection at our Center in Los Angeles. He suggested to Lisa and David that they come see us. The couple had an initial telephone based consultation with us. This was followed by the performance of blood tests and a semen analysis that was carried out by a laboratory near their home.

We performed a sex ratio on David's sperm that provides us with very valuable information about David's capacity to produce male embryos. After we learned that the couple seemed to be suitable candidates for the procedure, they underwent their initial start-up examinations at the local center. We are able to interface with physicians near the homes of patients in nearly all cases.



Because Lisa was going to be 39 years old at the time of her delivery, the couple opted to also check their embryos genetically to make sure that a pregnancy with Down's syndrome did not result.



Lisa and David achieved a successful male pregnancy that resulted in a healthy baby boy born at Toronto General Hospital. Their referring physician has sent us several additional patients and two of David's friends have now been seen with a request for gender selection.



Written by
Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg
Founder of The Fertility Institutes

_______________________________________________

We will end discussion on effects of transhumanism on all we ordinary human beings-----99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown ---men and women citizens------by bringing this back to who are going to be EMPLOYED as 21st century MOVES FORWARD?  

We already shout against SMART CITIES with goals of handing most employment categories over to artificial intelligence----to robotics----we have mega-computers designing every move we make inside our schools, on roads and highways, inside corporate campuses, and even inside our homes.....so no need for upper management employees----

What has not been even mentioned is how TRANHUMANS---as in designer workers ----will be a REQUIRED TRAIT for employment left to people still being HUMAN CAPITAL.


This is what will kill the societal structure of marriage, children, family, community, and what we must do to be qualified for a simple JOB.

Please, do not allow artificially manipulated gender blending creating tensions between GBLT VS heterosexual ------our GBLT are citizens some wanting marriage, children, and employment without being ARTIFICIALLY MODIFIED-----especially in regards to sex chromosome gender blending for sterility.


This does not even have anything to do with citizens having wealth to be able to design their children----this is about a global 1% building a world with ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% and everything else genetically or technologically built.


Where these biogenetic goals in transhumanism are now being openly spread to all US global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE biotechnology campuses----it was STANFORD/JOHNS HOPKINS/HOUSTON/AUSTIN TEXAS ground zero for the worst of genetically manipulated humans.......we see here in Baltimore a number of our artificially manipulated sex chromosome blended gender citizens.



Whose Children Will Get the Best Jobs in the 21st Century?

The best jobs will go to applicants who can think.
Posted Apr 12, 2011


With available information in all fields doubling every five years and the access to that information available globally, the best jobs will not go to the person who knows the most facts. Computers will always have the edge on that and when your children enter the workforce in the 21st century, if a computer can do the job, it will.

The best jobs will go to applicants who have the skillsets to analyze information as it becomes available, the flexibility to adapt when what were believed to be facts are revised, and to collaborate with other experts on a global playing field requiring tolerance, willingness to consider alternative perspectives, and articulately communicate one's ideas successfully.


The factory model of education still in place was designed for producing assembly line workers to do assigned tasks correctly. These workers did not need to analyze, create, or question. Automation and computerization are exceeding human ability for doing repetitive tasks and calculations, but the educational model has not changed. In response to more information, students are given bigger books and more to memorize. To provide more time for this additional rote memorization, creative opportunities- the arts, debate, and general P.E. are sacrificed to the alter of more predigested facts to be passively memorized without opportunities for students to discover the connections between isolated facts and build networks of concepts nor opportunities to apply what they learn in other contexts.


This assembly line, test prep system doesn't prepare today's children to what the best job employers are already seeking—the ability to transfer knowledge to new contexts and apply that knowledge along with critical analysis of new information, judgment, creative problem solving, and the ability to evaluate and select which new data and tools can be applied in new ways to solve new problems and create new outcomes. 



Without these higher order, cognitive skillsets, today's students will only be prepared for assembly line work, slightly more technological, or service industries. They won't be able to compete on the global employment market with students currently developing the executive functions to succeed at the best, most creative, and personally rewarding jobs. This is not to say that the other types of jobs are not important or that the people who do them are less deserving of respect and appreciation. What is important is that today's students have the education they need to choose the career path that will give them the most satisfaction.


What Are the Skillsets and How Do Your Children Get Them?



What my field of neurology has called "Executive Functions" for over 100 years are these highest cognitive processes. These are skillsets beyond those computers can do because they require flexible, interpretive, creative, and multidimensional thinking—suitable for current and future challenges and opportunities. The executive functions include judgment, prioritizing, planning ahead, interpretation, critical analysis, deduction, induction, pattern recognition and expansion, self-monitoring, self-correcting, abstraction, concept development, flexibility, tolerance, risk assessment, resisting immediate gratification to plan and achieve long-term goals, and creative problem solving.


The control center that directs the brain's executive function is in the prefrontal cortex. Cognitive processing of information that takes place in areas in the prefrontal cortex is also what allows humans to exercise conscious control over our emotions and thoughts. These executive functions are exactly what employers for the top jobs of our children's future will be seeking, because these are what computers can't do.


Where The Human Brain Has the Greatest Advantage


The prime real estate of the prefrontal cortex comprises the highest percentage of brain volume in humans, compared to all other animals, which is roughly 20% of our brains. The executive function control centers in the PFC give us the potential to consider and voluntarily control our thinking, emotional responses, and behavior. It is the reflective "higher brain" compared to the reactive "lower brain".


Animals, compared to humans, are more dependent on their reactive brains to survive in their unpredictable environments that require automatic responses not delayed by complex analysis. As man developed more control of his environment, the luxury of a bigger reflective brain evolved to its current proportions.


The prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to mature (the neuroplasticity process of pruning of unused cells to better provide for the metabolic needs of neurons and strengthen the connections in the circuits that are most used). This pruning and strengthening that is highly defining of the type of adults we become continues into the twenties, with the most rapid changes in the age range of 8-16. Until the executive function stimulation comes from schoolwork, parents can intervene and promote the activation and strengthening of these developing brain circuits during these years of most rapid change. The stimulation of these networks during the ages of their rapid development can strongly influence the social-emotional control and the highest thinking skillsets that will determine today's children's opportunities in the global job market they'll enter.


Preparing Your Children for the Challenges and Opportunities of the 21st Century



Help your child develop personal responsibility: Because executive functions, such as organization, prioritizing, resisting immediate gratification, and goal planning are not being developed in the over-stuffed curriculum of predigeted facts that are the focus of current instruction, many students enter college inadequately prepared to succeed in or get the most from those years. We are seeing an increased drop out rate among college students and more students who require five or more years to obtain their college degrees.



During the primary and secondary school years, students often rely on their teachers and parents to keep them on track. Through high school, most teachers take attendance, call on students, hold students accountable for homework, and give assessments with enough frequency for students and parents to know how they are doing. In large college classes students can be anonymous. Once in college, tthere is no more hand-holding, parent-teacher conferences, often no attendance taken, and frequently only a midterm and final exam to show students what they didn't know - usually when it is too late. 


With the still immature prefrontal cortex, many college students, who have not had opportunities to develop their executive function circuits, lack the judgment and long-term goal development neural networks to resist the immediate gratification of hiding behind their laptops, surfing the web or checking Facebook instead of staying focused, taking notes, participating in discussions, or asking questions in class...if they go to class at all.



If children aren't prepared early to resist the immediate gratifications that abound during their college years, they miss out on what may be the first opportunity they have to really develop higher-level thinking. If their precollege years in school were overloaded with rote memorization, college could be the opportunity to develop the higher thinking skills—if there is some groundwork laid. The temptations are high and the PFC still immature—a setup for kids to miss out on the knowledge and skillsets that will be sought after for the best jobs.


Your intervention during your children's early development can build the responsibility, goal-planning, and self-directed motivation needed to get the most from their higher education. The children who have opportunities to use and strengthen their developing executive functions early will have greatest likelihood to get the most from lectures, reading, and developing relationships with their teachers. These are the students who will recognize the value of learning opportunities, make the effort to sustain mental focus and participate in discussions in class, and plan ahead for long-term assignments and tests.


Build a Better Brain Now to Get What is Needed for the Best Jobs Later



Here's the challenge for parents. We know that left to its own rate of maturation, the brain's circuits of judgment, prioritizing, and resisting immediate gratification, don't set up until the mid to late 20s, when it is too late to take advantage of the opportunities missed while texting their way through classes. Yet, you can't just tell your children that good work habits, best effort on homework, class participation, building relationships with teachers and professors are critical to future success. Even if you do, the words don't mentally "compute" since their brains are designed to seek pleasure, risks, and peer approval.



Those latter behaviors were important in our animal ancestors who needed to be the standouts in the herd to get a mate, gain status, be assured of their access to the best food, and even herd leadership. But, risk taking and pleasure seeking no longer are the criteria that will standout from the herd of job applicants after graduation.


Some suggestions to work on early



• Children, throughout their educational journey, should be taught how to succeed in school: This includes being explicitly taught how to focus attention, study, organize, prioritize, review and actively participate in class. They should also be provided with motivating, relevant experiences that make evident the reasons for learning the facts or procedures they are given to memorize.



• Making the switch from memorization to mental manipulation: Memorization that was adequate in high school is not the way students are graded in college. In college, and in many jobs, it is more about applying, communicating, and supporting what one knows. Students are asked to demonstrate executive function skills and conceptual knowledge by comparing and contrasting concepts, giving new examples of concepts, and transferring knowledge by applying big ideas to solve new types of problems. When parents provide children with opportunities to apply what they learn in school, they recognize the value of the facts and procedures the are required to memorize so that information becomes activated and incorporated into a larger memory bank instead of pruned away from disuse...and rememorized next year.




Intervention Now


As your children will become the citizens, employers, employees, professionals, educators, and caretakers of our planet in 21st century what can you do to help prepare them? What can you promote in their schools to be sure they are equipped with the skillsets they'll need to take on challenges and opportunities we can't yet even imagine?


Judgment builds through predicting, planning, revising, and accountability: Encouraging your children to prioritize and plan can begin by make a game out of having them estimate things such as the amount of time it might take to drive to a location after looking at a map, or how much time they predict it will take to shop for their soccer uniform.


The powerful lessons that follow predictions and estimations take place because the brain is programmed to find out if its predictions are correct. This means that when the actual time is compared to the time a child estimates, her brain will be attentive. This gives you a teachable moment to encourage your child to consider why her estimation was longer or shorter than the final result.



These activities foster the development of accurate prediction and time-use planning that become critical for children's later success with long-term school projects and reports. Helping your child develop the judgment and prediction skills, about time needed for long-term school assignments, avoids the stress, and often, lower quality work, that comes from waiting until the last minute.



The development of the executive function of judgment can grow to include opportunities you give your children for self-checking. You can start with responsibilities that have real, but not critical outcomes, such as having your child pack her own bag for a sleepover, after you've done it together "thinking out loud" as you predicted what she'd need. She'll enjoy the pride of your trust in ultimately letting her pack her own bag. If she forgets her teddy bear or beach towel, she'll experience the consequences of her planning haste and she will be the one motivated to focus on the details with more attention to avoid similar mistakes the next time. You can be supportive, even sympathetic, but not a rescuer. Having her experience the consequences of her inadequate planning shifts responsibility and promotes the construction of those neural networks for judgment and organization in your child's developing brain. These experiences will serve her well in the years to come.



Prioritizing: In school and later on the job, this executive function is what takes place when the brain can distinguish low relevance details from the main ideas, evaluate the order in which to take on tasks and predict which parts of a larger task should get the most time and planning attention. Building this cognitive skill early yields children who grow to make the most efficient use of their time and are equipped to juggle sports, clubs, friends, and homework with foresight.



Start by encouraging younger children to consider which items on a shopping list should be purchased first or last. A lesson about using critical thinking when prioritizing is learned by if you let your child plan the order of errands. If he decides grocery shopping should be done before going to the dry cleaners and stationary store, a lesson in prioritizing takes place when he discovers the ice cream is melted as he unpacks the groceries at home.


These teachable moments apply later when he needs to prioritize his activities and analyze choices before acting—something that can save his life because you provided the opportunities for him to build executive functions that help his reflective brain resist his adolescent, lower brain inclination to choose immediate gratification and succumb to peer pressures without considering consequences or planning for long-term goals.



Setting goals and making considered choices for goal achievement: Unless children develop this executive function, they are limited in their capacity develop realistic and manageable goals. While still under parental watch, children need opportunities to set goals for things they want and to make decisions and deal with choices and uncertainty, rather than be given the answers or told what is right. Starting when children are young and receptive to taking on challenges, but still knowing you have their backs, you can promote the development of their future goal development skills.


Once your child sets a goal within the realm of possibility for his age and skills, if you have provided experiences for him to build up this type of thinking, it can be a powerful brain circuit builder for him to follow through with the plans he makes (or ignore them). He then needs to experience the authentic consequences of his choices, a lower grade or not getting selected for the team, because he chose the immediate gratification of video game playing instead of planning, practicing, or preparing for his larger goal.


This is one of the greatest challenges of parenting as it is far from easy for you to foresee the consequences of choices your children make knowing they could be closing some doors for their future—such as not taking the challenging courses that the most selective colleges expect to see in applications of suitable candidates for admission. Yet, this is when parents looking at the bigger life picture, find the fortitude to withhold pressure and criticism, These are times to resist trying to "fix it" or critique the mistakes made, but rather to encourage your child that there will be larger and more desirable goals coming soon and encouraging him to evaluate what he did right and consider what he could do differently next time.  


You may now recognize that some of the judgment, prioritizing, and resisting of immediate gratification strength you now have developed because your parents or a particular teacher gave you opportunities to make your own choices, and experience the consequences, as they gave you the opportunities to build your executive functions.


Communication and Information Analysis: New information is being discovered and disseminated at a phenomenal rate. It is predicted that 50% of facts children are memorizing today will no longer be fully accurate or complete in the near future. Children need to know how to evaluate sources of accurate information and then to use critical analysis to assess the veracity/bias and current/potential uses of new information. These are executive functions children can build with parental guidance from a young age.



One size does not fit all, nor should all children think alike if we are to remain a democratic and progressing society. The current testing system and the curriculum that it has spawned leaves behind the majority of students who do not do their best with the linear, sequential instruction.


Promote deeper thinking and build communication skills by finding out the topics your child will study in the coming school months. Then help promote her interest in the topics by introducing things at home that will help her relateto the topic when it comes up. She will then have the background knowledge and interest that promotes her higher level thinking and participation in class discussions.



Sustain that development by continuing class discussions at home, through current and local events related to your child's interest. These discussions increase the relevance of new learning so it is incorporated into long-term memory. Even more critical, through your encouraging her to make comparisons and express and support her opinions, she is processing new learning through her executive function networks as she forms and defends her opinions, analyzes source reliability, and questions things she hears or reads using her developing critical analysis.



Collaboration: Children of today need opportunities to work in groups, if not is school then in play groups as youngsters, and later in clubs, sports teams, or volunteer organizations to be ready to collaborate and communicate with tolerance and flexibility with others on a global level.



Experiences of Tolerance: In a global world of collaboration communication and openness to unfamiliar cultures and ideas will be a critical skill sought in job applicants in the future. Children benefit from family discussions and experiences that appreciate other cultures. You can start with discussing contributions made throughout the ages to things tyour children enjoy now, such as where and when the sports or foods they like originated... to cultural and language differences. For example, if you try to use even your limited knowledge of their language when speaking with a non-English speaking individual, you are modeling the value of these communication skills for your children.



Turn Learning into Knowledge: Transfer is Using Learning Beyond the Classroom. New "learning" does not become permanent memory unless there is repeated stimulation of the new memory circuits in the brain pathways. This is the "practice makes permanent" aspect of neuroplasticity where neural networks most stimulated develop more dendrites, synapses, and thicker myelin for more efficient information transmission. These stronger networks are less susceptible to pruning and become long-term memory holders.




Children need to use what they learn repeatedly and transfer classroom learning by using it in ways different than the rote drills in which it was practiced. Promoting use of the executive functions stimulates neural networks to communicate and form connections that become concept networks of related information. You know your child's interests and can help him build those networks and stable long-term memories his brain can retain by providing opportunities for him to apply learning in meaningful ways. These "transfers" that relate school learning to real life situations and will protect the isolated rote memories from being pruned because they become incorporated into useful, retrievable, and long-term  memory.




Your Voice

You've probably seen the bumper sticker, "If you can read this, thank a teacher." Since you are reading this article, you can clearly do more than basic reading. It is likely you recall at least one teacher who influenced how you learned to think and become the person you are today.


During the past twelve year, after leaving my neurology practice to become a teacher, I first taught elementary, then secondary, and for the past two years have been teaching other educators about how they too can apply neuroscience research to strategies that provide successful, joyful learning experiences for students even with the impossible curriculum demands. During these past several years I've spent time with some of the most extraordinary people I've ever met. These are our children's teachers and they deserve our appreciation and help regaining the opportunity to give their best to all children.

This means making your voice heard locally or to the state and national departments of education regarding more appropriate curriculum for students and professional development opportunities for teachers. Linda Darling-Hammond wrote that in our current educational system accountability is unidirectional and, "Although the child and the school are accountable to the state for test performance, the state is not accountable to the child or school for providing adequate educational resources."



Until the changes are made, you remain the caretaker of your child's development of his or her greatest resources—that of the cognitive development of strong executive functions. As the caretaker of your child's brain, during the years of rapid brain development, it falls to parents to consider the ehighest brain attributes most important to build, and provide the opportunities your children need to achieve their highest potentials as the inherit the challenges and opportunities of their 21st century.

________________________________________
Not all biogenetics corporations are looking at artificial genetic manipulation of sex chromosomes to create gender blended sterile designer humans-----but most of them are tied to trying to be that PATENT towards our human bodies being one big medical technology-tied TELEMEDICINE GUINEA PIG.
What we see on today's stock market are those corporations created overseas when BUSH pretended to be BORN AGAIN TOO CHRISTIAN to manipulate GOD'S CREATION.
Our 5% to the 1% of course have through insider trading invested in these biogenetics corporations been earning a few dollars in dividends---MAKING ALL THIS WORTH IT---READY TO DO ANYTHING GLOBAL 1% TELLS THEM----THEY PLEDGED TO YOU KNOW.
So, too are our 99% WE THE PEOPLE retirement 401Ks----pensions-----our government assets-----Social Security trusts---all invested in these biogenetic corporations manufacturing artificially manipulated humans as better workers.

'M&A in DNAAgainst this backdrop, the race to acquire genetics technologies is heating up.
The recent bid for Life Technologies was an interesting race between Thermo Fisher and private equity (speculation about interested bidders focused on Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Blackstone, Carlyle and Singapore’s state investor, Temasek)'.


WE CANNOT STOP THIS! OH, REALLY?????

Each nation globally has the power to keep these biogenetics corporations out of their nation including the US------LET'S JUST DO IT!


Genomics companies ripe for flurry of mergers
Published: Apr 16, 2013 1:16 p.m. ET


Commentary: Race to map genome sparking investing interest


TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) — Exactly a decade and a day after the Human Genome Project was completed, the world’s largest maker of DNA testing and analysis tools, Life Technologies Corp. LIFE, +5.63%   said that it is set to be acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific TMO, -1.11%  for a record $13.6 billion.


With this deal, a race that kicked into high gear more than 26 years ago is heating up, with foreign governments and corporates joining the U.S. in funding the quest to map all the human genomes. And even as the recent flurry of M&A in the genomics space has spurred returns, investors still have opportunities to profit from this multibillion-dollar industry.


Disease prevention and treatment


In 1987, the Reagan administration launched the $3 billion Human Genome Project to identify and map as many as 25,000 genes of the human genome and thus understand the genetic makeup of the human species. If researchers and drugmakers better understood viruses, diseases and the genetic mutations, the thinking went, they could create more personalized and effective treatments. The project spawned wide international interest and collaborations and was completed on April 14, 2003.



Valuation Analysis
CompanyMarket valuePRICE/
EARNINGSPrice/
Sales
DNA SEQUENCING
Life Technologies (LIFE)$11.6 bln14.92.8
Illumina  (ILMN)$6.9 bln34.15.1
Pacific Biosciences (PACB)$121 mlnNM4.6
BIOMEDICAL TESTING
Agilent Technologies (A)$14.94 bln14.32.0
Quest Diagnostics (DGX)$9.22 bln12.91.2
Laboratory Corp of America (LH)$8.69 bln13.31.5
Qiagen (QGEN)$4.94 bln18.63.8
Myriad Genetics (MYGN)$2.15 bln15.93.5
Luminex (LMNX)$677 mln38.63.0
Affymetrix$256 mln81.00.8


Source: Reuters


Fast forward to 2013, and the opportunities created by genetic testing have stoked both excitement and fear.


If tools become available for physicians to analyze each person’s genome, a patient’s susceptibility to a certain disease could be predicted and preventive measures could be taken. And in fact there is a real market for the technology, with a 2010 Health Economics report suggesting that nearly 90% of patients would consider genetic testing to uncover their risks of contracting certain diseases.


While this is a potential boon for patients and pharmaceutical companies, insurers are less than thrilled. UnitedHealth Group UNH, +0.69%   estimates that if genetic testing were made available to mass-market consumers, the costs of these tests could quintuple to $25 billion by 2021. And while cost savings from more tailored drug treatments can be expected, they argue that the technology is new and unproven, and they warn that disclosure of a patient’s genetic susceptibility to disease might make taking out certain types of insurance more difficult.



Costs decline, market grows


Notwithstanding these concerns, the DNA sequencing market has been growing 18% a year and is expected to reach nearly $7 billion in 2016, according to BCC Research. Fueling this growth have been the rapidly falling costs of whole-genome sequencing, which until recently ran as high as $10,000 and are now reaching a point more broadly accessible to consumers.


This has attracted the likes of IBM IBM, -0.13% which is reportedly working on a DNA transistor that could bring sequencing costs down to as little as $100, and Panasonic 6752, -0.15% which confirmed last week it is developing a lab-on-a-chip to enable doctors to conduct rapid DNA analysis.


There’s a lot of money to be made in DNA.

In March 2012, Amazon AMZN, -0.66% the online retail and tech giant, said it was making available for public use the entire contents of the National Institutes of Health’s 1000 Genomes Project, a survey of genetic information from 1,700 individuals. Amazon is giving away free access to this 200 terabytes of data but hopes to make money from researchers by providing large-scale processing and storage of the analyzed data.


Even Google GOOG, -0.80%  is positioning itself to get into the space, having invested in several genetics start-ups, including 23andMe, DNAnexus and Navigenics (later sold to Life Technologies in July 2012).
At the government level, it is no different. David Cameron’s U.K. government recently said it has set aside £100 million of funding to cover the sequencing costs of 100,000 cancer patients, to help find better treatments.



High-Speed Wi-Fi? Not So Fast


However, the country to watch is China, which is home to BGI (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute), the world’s premier genome-sequencing center. Having successfully sequenced the SARS virus, BGI has embarked on its own ambitious plan to sequence the genomes of one million people and to establish its own reference baselines for specific populations.


M&A in DNA


Against this backdrop, the race to acquire genetics technologies is heating up.


The recent bid for Life Technologies was an interesting race between Thermo Fisher and private equity (speculation about interested bidders focused on Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Blackstone, Carlyle and Singapore’s state investor, Temasek). This followed by a few short months BGI’s $118 million acquisition of Complete Genomics Inc., a U.S. provider of whole genome sequencing services. With this acquisition extending BGI’s reach in the U.S., it can now scale and penetrate the US clinical market.


So with Life Technologies being acquired and Complete Genomics going private and others such as Oxford Nanopores and Nabsys closely held, a handful of publicly traded opportunities in the genetics space remain. The largest of these is gene-sequencing company Illumina ILMN, +0.20% which has been fending off advances from Switzerland’s Roche RHHBY, +0.10%   [ RO, +0.30%  for 18 months. After Illumina thwarted three separate bids of as much as $8 billion, Roche’s chairman said in January that the company was walking away.

But for how long, it is anyone’s guess. Pharmaceutical companies such as Roche, Abbott Laboratories ABT, +0.59%   and Amgen AMGN, +1.23%   need gene-testing technologies to help in their molecular testing for drug discovery.



Others to watch include Myriad Genetics MYGN, +2.85% a genetic-testing company focused on ovarian and breast cancer, and the clinical lab testing companies Quest Diagnostics DGX, -0.45%  and Lab Corp. LH, +0.02% both of which have been the subject of buyout speculation.

We want to be clear about that recent pretense of needing to pass law to secure rights for our 99% of transexual citizens.  This is why again we KNEW far-right wing global 1% were up to something that had nothing to do with left social justice.  GBLT have always been covered in US CONSTITUTION---EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE especially these few decades where SEXUAL ORIENTATION has been emphasized in Federal courts.  What we noticed with any state pretending to be protecting TRANSEXUAL CITIZENS----the wording is the global banking 1% TALKING POINT-----GENDER IDENTITY.

  NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS-----THIS GENDER IDENTITY MOVEMENT IS DRIVEN BY GLOBAL BANKING 1%.


'The Lawrence Court could have struck down the law under the Equal Protection Clause but chose instead to rely on the Due Process Clause, which protects the fundamental right of privacy. The Court wrote that it did not want to rely on equal protection because if it did, “some might question whether a prohibition would be valid if drawn differently, say, to prohibit the conduct both between same-sex and different sex participants.” Lawrence was also important because, while it protected everyone’s privacy, not just LGBT’s, it explicitly discussed LGBT’s capacity for love, intimacy, and dignity. Although the Court noted that same-sex marriage was not at issue in the case, the implications for marriage equality were obvious'.

When we listen to any media outlet tied to the GENDER IDENTITY NON-BINARY crowd they always make clear-----our GBLT as a population group have mostly identified with being male or female----even our trans citizens feel they want to be man changing to woman----woman changing to man.  Bringing the discussion of BODY PARTS into what sex someone is defined is specific to GENDER BLENDING and yes, it does to a large extent tie to the brain and perception.

We acknowledge that for thousands of years there has been a spectrum of gender identity------of a 10% of GBLT population identifying as one sex or the other there no doubt has been a few percentage of citizens finding NO IDENTITY TO EITHER SEX----due to natural biochemistry. 

Our discussion focuses on what we KNOW TO BE ARTIFICIALLY MANIPULATED SEX CHROMOSOMES in fetus meant to deliberately create a blending of gender with NO PERMISSION to do so.

So, as CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA MOVE FORWARD human capital as hybrids to be designed according to order-------we have known through hybridization of lower animals and mammals----like our DONKEY/MULE----manipulation of sex chromosomes leaves that hybrid sterile----unable to reproduce.

• Eric Niiler
• science
• 08.05.16
• 08:00 am

You Can Soon Grow Human-Animal Hybrids, But You Can't Breed ‘Em


The mighty Chimera—a single body sprouting lion, goat and snake heads—is one of the most recognizable mythological beasts. The modern chimera is not so physically striking, being a hybrid organism with organs or tissues from multiple species. But it could become an important tool for medical research. Scientists have mixed-and-matched human and animal cells for years, hoping to one day grow replacement human organs or discover genetic pathways of human diseases.



Last year, though, the National Institutes of Health banned funding of animal-human chimeras until it could figure out whether any of this work would bump against ethical boundaries. Like: Could brain scientists endow research animals with human cognitive abilities, or even consciousness, while transplanting human stem cells into the brain of a developing animal embryo? Would it be morally wrong to create animals with human feet, hands, or a face in order to study human morphology? Modern medicine thinks before it acts.

OH, REALLY?????




After a nearly year-long ban, on August 4 the NIH said it would soon lift its moratorium and again start accepting grant applications from research labs that want to develop human-animal chimeras. “We thought it was good time to take a deep breath, pause and make sure the ethical frameworks that we have in place allows us to move forward and conduct this research responsibly,” says Carrie Wolinetz, associate director for science policy at NIH.



The boundary between human and animal is not just a philosophical debate. Human subjects in medical research have greater legal protections than laboratory animals, according to Rob Streiffer, assistant professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “What it takes to cross a line is a contentious issue,” says Streiffer. For example, some people believe that a lot of animal testing is wrong, because many animals can feel pain and suffering. Others argue that any organism that displays uniquely human traits—things like autonomy, moral reasoning, and controlling one's own behavior—ought to be excluded from research.


Under the new rules, a panel will review any projects that introduce human cells in early vertebrate embryos or introduce human cells in later stage mammals that could change an animal’s brain functions. The new guidelines keep existing restrictions against putting human cells into early-stage primate embryos like monkeys, and prohibit breeding animals that have human cells inside—so any pigoons would have to be sterile.1



Chimera research will be made easier by new gene-editing technologies like Crispr, in combination with human stem cell manipulations that let scientists form any kind of tissue. “The intersection of those two [gene-editing and stem cell technologies] allow us to create animal-human chimeras for research that are little more advanced than the past, triggering questions about animal welfare,” says Wolinetz. While animal-human chimeras have been around for several decades, the ability to transplant human brain tissue into developing animal embryos—potentially endowing animals with more human-like consciousness—drives the debate that led to the NIH’s initial ban.



NIH officials say there are fewer than a dozen US academic labs researching with animal-human chimeras. One is at Stanford University, where Sean Wu is working to understand how to repair human heart tissue. He’s pleased that his work can continue, even if there may be an extra layer of bureaucracy.


Still, Wu says some ethical concerns about human behavior or functions being transplanted into animals are in the realm of science fiction. “There’s a lot of concern and speculation and no data that anyone can offer,” he says. “We think there should be a way to carefully move forward so we can know what are the limits.” The NIH wants to hear from the public and scientists over the next 30 days before coming up with final guidelines, and it expects to fund a new batch of human-animal chimera grants by January 2017.



One way to avoid the consciousness-raising quandary is by deleting bits of DNA that are responsible for the development of certain parts of the human brain before implanting into a lab animal. That way, you could still study the origins of Alzheimer’s or other brain diseases without worrying about creating a human-like animal. “The science is moving very fast,” says Wu. The NIH just wants to make sure its standards can keep up.
___________________________________________


Global banking 1% CLINTON, BUSH., OBAMA and their 5% to the 1% pols and players are MOVING FORWARD designer human genetics.  As we stated----when George Bush PRETENDED to speak for a FAKE 5% RELIGIOUS RIGHT in stopping embryonic stem cell research in US------Bush and CARLYLE GROUP along with those FAKE 5% RELIGIOUS RIGHT players expanded far-right wing global hedge fund IVY LEAGUES STANFORD AND JOHNS HOPKINS overseas to get the first crack at patenting human genome biogenetics creating those global medical corporations to do so.  Because they were overseas---they did anything they wanted to humans, fetus, and DNA--genetic code.  These global biogenetic corporations came back to US during OBAMA with total deregulation of US medical and public health with AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.  So, the creation of manipulated sex chromosomes blending gender a few decades ago is followed by our GENDER IDENTITY BLENDED CITIZENS now reaching the age of 15-20 years coming back to US ------and these are the global banking 1% GENDER IDENTITY MOVEMENT.

REAL LEFT social progressives want to assure our gender blended citizens do receive all rights and opportunities of EQUAL PROTECTION-----we simply know that these citizens have be VICTIMIZED IN THE WORST OF WAYS having had no say in manipulations in labs with SCIENCE FOR SCIENCE SAKE SOCIOPATHS deliberately harming these citizens for life.


'The term “epigenetics” is defined literally as “in addition to genetics” but in reality refers to changes in the DNA or surrounding chromatin that influence gene expression but do not change genetic composition'.

There are two biochemical techniques that had to combine to advance the current gender blending in fetus-----first is direct INSERTION OF MULTIPLE X AND Y CHROMOSOMES----in various combinations to study changes in gender behavior and association.  Second, there had to have been hormone and other biochemical manipulation tied to BRAIN IDENTIFICATION of gender.  This could have been done by AGAIN GENETIC manipulation of genes tied to release of these biochemicals----or it could have been done through MICROCHIP or direct application of those biochemicals tied to gender identity.

When our gender blended citizens say GENDER IS IN THE BRAIN------this is what they mean-------epigenetics of sex differences in the brain until CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA kept humans tied to male female gender boundaries------this current MANIPULATION of sex chromosomes take humans outside these boundaries. 


The article below is complicated in STEM issues----we share one less complicated after this.

J Neurosci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 Apr 14.
Published in final edited form as:
J Neurosci. 2009 Oct 14; 29(41): 12815–12823.
doi:  10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3331-09.2009
PMCID: PMC2788155
NIHMSID: NIHMS158059


The Epigenetics of Sex Differences in the Brain


Margaret M. McCarthy,1 Anthony P. Auger,2 Tracy L. Bale,3 Geert J. De Vries,4 Gregory A. Dunn,3 Nancy G. Forger,4 Elaine K. Murray,4 Bridget M. Nugent,1 Jaclyn M. Schwarz,5 and Melinda E. Wilson6
Author information ► Copyright and License information ►


The publisher's final edited version of this article is available free at J Neurosci

See other articles in PMC that cite the published article.
Go to:Abstract




Epigenetic changes in the nervous system are emerging as a critical component of enduring effects induced by early life experience, hormonal exposure, trauma and injury or learning and memory. Sex differences in the brain are largely determined by steroid hormone exposure during a perinatal sensitive period that alters subsequent hormonal and non-hormonal responses throughout the life span. Steroid receptors are members of a nuclear receptor transcription factor superfamily and recruit multiple proteins that possess enzymatic activity relevant to epigenetic changes such as acetylation and methylation. Thus steroid hormones are uniquely poised to exert epigenetic effects on the developing nervous system to dictate adult sex differences in brain and behavior. Sex differences in the methylation pattern in the promoter of estrogen and progesterone receptor genes are evident in newborns and persist in adults but with a different pattern. Changes in response to injury and in methyl binding proteins and steroid receptor coregulatory proteins are also reported. Many steroid-induced epigenetic changes are opportunistic and restricted to a single lifespan but new evidence suggests endocrine disrupting compounds can exert multigenerational effects. Similarly, maternal diet also induces transgenerational effects but the impact is sex specific. The study of epigenetics of sex differences is in its earliest stages, with needed advances in understanding of the hormonal regulation of enzymes controlling acetylation and methylation, coregulatory proteins, transient versus stable DNA methylation patterns and sex differences across the epigenome in order to fully understand sex differences in brain and behavior.


Now, global banking 1% want global 99% of citizens to believe that in 1998 -------with all the literature and movies around BRAVE NEW WORLD-----1970s short stories UTOPIA tied to manufacturing infants to order-----that we happened upon in this same time period all these global citizens struggling in remote places of the world with gender blending issues.

GENDER REVOLUTION IS MONSANTO'S GREEN REVOLUTION------PRESENTED BY THE SAME FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA-----GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM COMES TO HUMANS.


Gender Revolution
How Science Is Helping Us Understand Gender


Freed from the binary of boy and girl, gender identity is a shifting landscape. Can science help us navigate?


When Massachusetts twins Caleb (left) and Emmie (right) Smith were born in 1998, it was hard to tell them apart. Today Emmie says, “When we were 12, I didn’t feel like a boy, but I didn’t know it was possible to be a girl.” At 17 Emmie came out as transgender, and recently she underwent gender-confirmation surgery. She plays down its significance: “I was no less of a woman before it, and I’m no more of one today.”

Wearing a suit to the eighth-grade prom was an early step on Ray Craig’s journey toward being a “trans guy,” although he decided to wait until after graduating from his middle school in New York State to go public. Now everyone calls him by male pronouns. Ray’s father wasn’t surprised to learn Ray identified as a boy, but “I wasn’t sure if it would be a six-week phase or a four-year phase or a permanent thing.” Next step: thinking about hormone blockers that suppress puberty.


Oti, nine, was assigned male at birth but never felt that way. When she learned to speak, she didn’t say, “I feel like a girl,” but rather “I am a girl.” Oti brought her parents and three older siblings into the transgender activist community. “It’s been so great,” her father, David, says. “We’ve met incredible people who’ve gone through an incredible amount. She opened me. I’m her dad, but she is a leader for me.”


She has always felt more boyish than girlish.



From an early age, E, as she prefers to be called for this story, hated wearing dresses, liked basketball, skateboarding, video games. When we met in May in New York City at an end-of-the-year show for her high school speech team, E was wearing a tailored Brooks Brothers suit and a bow tie from her vast collection. With supershort red hair, a creamy complexion, and delicate features, the 14-year-old looked like a formally dressed, earthbound Peter Pan.



Later that evening E searched for the right label for her gender identity. “Transgender” didn’t quite fit, she told me. For one thing she was still using her birth name and still preferred being referred to as “she.” And while other trans kids often talk about how they’ve always known they were born in the “wrong” body, she said, “I just think I need to make alterations in the body I have, to make it feel like the body I need it to be.” By which she meant a body that doesn’t menstruate and has no breasts, with more defined facial contours and “a ginger beard.” Does that make E a trans guy? A girl who is, as she put it, “insanely androgynous”? Or just someone who rejects the trappings of traditional gender roles altogether?



You’ve probably heard a lot of stories like E’s recently. But that’s the whole point: She’s questioning her gender identity, rather than just accepting her hobbies and wardrobe choices as those of a tomboy, because we’re talking so much about transgender issues these days. These conversations have led to better head counts of transgender Americans, with a doubling, in just a decade, of adults officially tallied as transgender in national surveys; an increase in the number of people who are gender nonconforming, a broad category that didn’t even have a name a generation ago; a rise in the number of elementary school–age children questioning what gender they are; and a growing awareness of the extremely high risk for all of these people to be bullied, to be sexually assaulted, or to attempt suicide.

Carlos, 12, holds a photo of himself as a girl. He is one of a small group of children born in the Dominican Republic with an enzyme deficiency. Their genitalia appear female at birth—then, with a surge of testosterone at puberty, they develop male genitals and mature into men. His uncle simply says Carlos “found his own rhythm.”

Born with an intersex chromosomal condition, Emma, 17, had incomplete male and female anatomy. She was raised as a girl, always aware of her special situation. “I’m comfortable with my differences,” she says. Shy and inventive, she spends hours among the clouds in her bedroom in Florida creating intricate adventures and videos using My Little Pony dolls.


Jonathan, eight, has identified as both a boy and a girl at the same time since age two and a half. At California’s Bay Area Rainbow Day Camp, where children can safely express their gender identities, Jonathan tries on life as a unicorn.



The conversation continues, with evolving notions about what it means to be a woman or a man and the meanings of transgender, cisgender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, agender, or any of the more than 50 terms Facebook offers users for their profiles. At the same time, scientists are uncovering new complexities in the biological understanding of sex.

Many of us learned in high school biology that sex chromosomes determine a baby’s sex, full stop: XX means it’s a girl; XY means it’s a boy. But on occasion, XX and XY don’t tell the whole story.



Today we know that the various elements of what we consider “male” and “female” don’t always line up neatly, with all the XXs—complete with ovaries, vagina, estrogen, female gender identity, and feminine behavior—on one side and all the XYs—testes, penis, testosterone, male gender identity, and masculine behavior—on the other. It’s possible to be XX and mostly male in terms of anatomy, physiology, and psychology, just as it’s possible to be XY and mostly female.


Each embryo starts out with a pair of primitive organs, the proto-gonads, that develop into male or female gonads at about six to eight weeks. Sex differentiation is usually set in motion by a gene on the Y chromosome, the SRY gene, that makes the proto-gonads turn into testes. The testes then secrete testosterone and other male hormones (collectively called androgens), and the fetus develops a prostate, scrotum, and penis. Without the SRY gene, the proto-gonads become ovaries that secrete estrogen, and the fetus develops female anatomy (uterus, vagina, and clitoris).



But the SRY gene’s function isn’t always straightforward. The gene might be missing or dysfunctional, leading to an XY embryo that fails to develop male anatomy and is identified at birth as a girl. Or it might show up on the X chromosome, leading to an XX embryo that does develop male anatomy and is identified at birth as a boy.

A recent survey of a thousand millennials found that half of them think gender is a spectrum.  Genetic variations can occur that are unrelated to the SRY gene, such as complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), in which an XY embryo’s cells respond minimally, if at all, to the signals of male hormones. Even though the proto-gonads become testes and the fetus produces androgens, male genitals don’t develop. The baby looks female, with a clitoris and vagina, and in most cases will grow up feeling herself to be a girl.


Which is this baby, then? Is she the girl she believes herself to be? Or, because of her XY chromosomes—not to mention the testes in her abdomen—is she “really” male?



Georgiann Davis, 35, was born with CAIS but didn’t know about it until she stumbled upon that information in her medical records when she was nearly 20. No one had ever mentioned her XY status, even when doctors identified it when she was 13 and sent her for surgery at 17 to remove her undescended testes. Rather than reveal what the operation really was for, her parents agreed that the doctors would invent imaginary ovaries that were precancerous and had to be removed.


In other words, they chose to tell their daughter a lie about being at risk for cancer rather than the truth about being intersex—with reproductive anatomy and genetics that didn’t fit the strict definitions of female and male.


“Was having an intersex trait that horrible?” wrote Davis, now a sociologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. “I remember thinking I must be a real freak if even my parents hadn’t been able to tell me the truth.”





A Third Gender in Polynesia
1 / 5

In Samoa, best friends 12-year-old Sandy (at left) and 10-year-old Mandy (in white T-shirt) do an impromptu dance with their friends and cousins. They identify as fa‘afafine, a gender other than boy or girl. Fa‘afafine children generally take on girls’ roles in play and family. As adults they remain anatomically male with feminine appearance and mannerisms. They help with household chores and childcare and choose men for sexual partners.



Trisha Tuiloma (at right) and a cousin (at left) help prepare the Sunday meal at Tuiloma’s mother’s house. Tuiloma is fa‘afafine, and she feels certain that her five-year-old nephew, lounging across her lap, is too.


Mandy, in her beloved high-heeled sandals, turns towels on a clothesline into a costume only she can imagine—off in her own world of daydreams.
Mandy, wearing one of her favorite dresses, adorns her hair with a matching yellow blossom.


Sandy (foreground) and Mandy take a break from the midday sun and heat, resting and whispering on a platform bed in Mandy’s home. The friends are dressed in lavalavas, traditional Samoan clothing worn by both women and men.


Another intersex trait occurs in an isolated region of the Dominican Republic; it is sometimes referred to disparagingly as guevedoce--“penis at 12.” It was first formally studied in the 1970s by Julianne Imperato-McGinley, an endocrinologist from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who had heard about a cohort of these children in the village of Las Salinas. Imperato-McGinley knew that ordinarily, at around eight weeks gestational age, an enzyme in male embryos converts testosterone into the potent hormone DHT. When DHT is present, the embryonic structure called a tubercle grows into a penis; when it’s absent, the tubercle becomes a clitoris. Embryos with this condition, Imperato-McGinley revealed, lack the enzyme that converts testosterone to DHT, so they are born with genitals that appear female. They are raised as girls. Some think of themselves as typical girls; others sense that something is different, though they’re not sure what.


But the second phase of masculinization, which happens at puberty, requires no DHT, only a high level of testosterone, which these children produce at normal levels. They have a surge of it at about age 12, just as most boys do, and experience the changes that will turn them into men (although they’re generally infertile): Their voices deepen, muscles develop, facial and body hair appear. And in their case, what had at first seemed to be a clitoris grows into a penis.


When Imperato-McGinley first went to the Dominican Republic, she told me, newly sprouted males were suspect and had to prove themselves more emphatically than other boys did, with impromptu rituals involving blades, before they were accepted as real men. Today these children are generally identified at birth, since parents have learned to look more carefully at newborns’ genitals. But they are often raised as girls anyway.


Gender is an amalgamation of several elements: chromosomes (those X’s and Y’s), anatomy (internal sex organs and external genitals), hormones (relative levels of testosterone and estrogen), psychology (self-defined gender identity), and culture (socially defined gender behaviors). And sometimes people who are born with the chromosomes and genitals of one sex realize that they are transgender, meaning they have an internal gender identity that aligns with the opposite sex—or even, occasionally, with neither gender or with no gender at all.



Living Under Constant Threat
1 / 4



English (red hair) and Sasha (both street names) live with other transgender women in a storm-water diversion gully in Kingston, Jamaica. Many hide during the day to avoid being attacked and go out to look for sex work at night. Days after these photos were taken, two gangs doused everyone there and all their belongings with gasoline and set them on fire. Both English and Sasha were injured.



For five years Trina (her street name) has been “on the road”—a Jamaican phrase referring to the lifestyle of transgender people forced to leave home and do sex work to survive. Trina has been attacked with acid, knives, a machete, and a gun. She shows the scar from a bullet wound on her right hip.


“Lizzie” demonstrates how easy it is for potential attackers to break into the abandoned house in Kingston that she and other transgender women have taken over, cleaned up, and made somewhat habitable. The cross on the wall, drawn by “Strawberry,” the house leader, represents a hope for protection from those who would do them harm.


While Sasha identifies as a woman, she reserves her feminine expression for the time she spends doing sex work at night. Now 21, Sasha was outed in eighth grade when a schoolmate crawled under a bathroom-stall door to see her body. She was threatened and attacked by family and friends.

As transgender issues become the fare of daily news—Caitlyn Jenner’s announcement that she is a trans woman, legislators across the United States arguing about who gets to use which bathroom—scientists are making their own strides, applying a variety of perspectives to investigate what being transgender is all about.


In terms of biology, some scientists think it might be traced to the syncopated pacing of fetal development. “Sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy,” wrote Dick Swaab, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam, “and sexual differentiation of the brain starts during the second half of pregnancy.” Genitals and brains are thus subjected to different environments of “hormones, nutrients, medication, and other chemical substances,” several weeks apart in the womb, that affect sexual differentiation.


This doesn’t mean there’s such a thing as a “male” or “female” brain, exactly. But at least a few brain characteristics, such as density of the gray matter or size of the hypothalamus, do tend to differ between genders. It turns out transgender people’s brains may more closely resemble brains of their self-identified gender than those of the gender assigned at birth. In one study, for example, Swaab and his colleagues found that in one region of the brain, transgender women, like other women, have fewer cells associated with the regulator hormone somatostatin than men. In another study scientists from Spain conducted brain scans on transgender men and found that their white matter was neither typically male nor typically female, but somewhere in between.


These studies have several problems. They are often small, involving as few as half a dozen transgender individuals. And they sometimes include people who already have started taking hormones to transition to the opposite gender, meaning that observed brain differences might be the result of, rather than the explanation for, a subject’s transgender identity.


Transgender people are at extremely high risk to be bullied, to be sexually assaulted, or to attempt suicide.

Still, one finding in transgender research has been robust: a connection between gender nonconformity and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). According to John Strang, a pediatric neuropsychologist with the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Gender and Sexuality Development Program at Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C., children and adolescents on the autism spectrum are seven times more likely than other young people to be gender nonconforming. And, conversely, children and adolescents at gender clinics are six to 15 times more likely than other young people to have ASD.


Emily Brooks, 27, has autism and labels herself nonbinary, though she has kept her birth name. A slender person with a half-shaved head, turquoise streaks in her blond hair, and cute hipster glasses, Brooks recently finished a master’s degree at the City University of New York in disability studies and hopes eventually to create safer spaces for people who are gender nonconforming (which she defines quite broadly) and also have autism. Such people are battling both “ableism” and “transphobia,” she told me over soft drinks at a bar in midtown Manhattan. “And you can’t assume that a place that’s going to be respectful of one identity will be respectful of the other.”


As I sat with Brooks, talking about gender and autism, the bartender came over. “What else can I get you ladies?” he asked. Brooks bristled at being called a lady—evidence that her own search for a safe space is complicated not only by her autism but also by her rejection of the gender binary altogether.


There’s something to be said for the binary. The vast majority of people—more than 99 percent, it seems safe to say—put themselves at one end of the gender spectrum or the other. Being part of the gender binary simplifies the either-or of daily life: clothes shopping, sports teams, passports, the way a bartender asks for your order.



Identity, Sex, and Expression


GENDER IDENTITY
 


People are almost always designated male or female at birth based on genitalia. Gender includes components such as gender identity and expression, but not sexual orientation. Some cultures recognize genders that are neither man nor woman. Visit our glossary of terms.




Usually established by age three, this is a deeply felt sense of being a man, a woman, or a gender that is both, fluid, or neither. Cisgender peo­ple identify with the sex assigned at birth; transgender people don’t.


NONBINARY


WOMAN


MAN


Woman, man,
nonbinary,
agender
 


Identification
with boys
or men


Identification
with girls
or women


Identification with
both men and women or a gender that is neither


Adam’s apple (male)
 


BIOLOGICAL SEX


Sex determination exists on a spectrum, with genitals, chromosomes, gonads, and
hormones all playing a role. Most fit into the male or female category, but about one in a hundred may fall in between.


Breasts (female),
body hair (male)
 


INTERSEX


FEMALE


MALE


Sex
development
genes
 


XX chromosomes, ovaries, female
genitals, and female secondary sexual characteristics


Any mix of male and
female chromosomes,
testicular and ovarian
tissue, genitals, other
sexual characteristics


XY chromosomes, testes, male
genitals, male secondary sexual characteristics


Internal
and external
genitalia
 


GENDER EXPRESSION


People express gender through clothing, behavior, language, and other outward signs. Whether these attributes are labeled masculine or feminine varies among cultures.


ANDROGYNOUS


FEMININE


MASCULINE


Presentation
in ways a culture
associates with
being a woman


A combination of
masculine and feminine
traits or a nontraditional
gender expression


Presentation
in ways a culture
associates with
being a man



But people today—especially young people—are questioning not just the gender they were assigned at birth but also the gender binary itself. “I don’t relate to what people would say defines a girl or a boy,” Miley Cyrus told Out magazine in 2015, when she was 22, “and I think that’s what I had to understand: Being a girl isn’t what I hate; it’s the box that I get put into.”


Members of Cyrus’s generation are more likely than their parents to think of gender as nonbinary. A recent survey of a thousand millennials ages 18 to 34 found that half of them think “gender is a spectrum, and some people fall outside conventional categories.” And a healthy subset of that half would consider themselves to be nonbinary, according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2012 the advocacy group polled 10,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teens ages 13 to 17 and found that 6 percent categorized themselves as “genderfluid,” “androgynous,” or some other term outside the binary box.


Young people trying to pinpoint their own place on the spectrum often choose a pronoun they’d like others to use when referring to them. Even if they don’t feel precisely like a girl or a boy, they might still use “he” or “she,” as Emily Brooks does. But many opt instead for a gender-neutral pronoun like “they” or an invented one like “zie.”


Charlie Spiegel, 17, tried using “they” for a while, but now prefers “he.” Charlie was assigned female at birth. But when he went through puberty, Charlie told me by phone from his home in Oakland, California, being called a girl started to feel unsettling. “You know how sometimes you get a pair of shoes online,” he explained, “and it arrives and the label says it should be the right size, and you’re trying it on and it’s clearly not the right size?” That’s how gender felt to Charlie: The girl label was supposed to fit, but it didn’t.


One day during freshman year, Charlie wandered into the school library and picked up I Am J by Cris Beam, a novel about a transgender boy. “Yep, that sounds like me,” Charlie thought as he read it. The revelation was terrifying but also clarifying, a way to start making those metaphoric mail-order shoes less uncomfortable.


A better fitting gender identity didn’t come along right away, though. Charlie—a member of the Youth Council at Gender Spectrum, a national support and advocacy group for transgender and nonbinary teens—went through a process of trial and error similar to that described by other gender-questioning teens. First he tried “butch lesbian,” then “genderfluid,” before settling on his current identity, “nonbinary trans guy.” It might sound almost like an oxymoron—aren’t “nonbinary” and “guy” mutually exclusive?—but the combination feels right to Charlie. He was heading off to college a few months after our conversation, getting ready to start taking testosterone.



When she was four, Trinity Xavier Skeye almost completely stopped talking, started chewing on her boy clothes, and said she wanted to cut off her penis. Her alarmed parents took her to a therapist, who asked them: “Do you want a happy little girl or a dead little boy?” Trinity’s mother, DeShanna Neal, is a fierce advocate for her child, who is now, at 12, on puberty blockers. Trinity is the first minor in Delaware to be covered for this treatment by Medicaid.

If more young people are coming out as nonbinary, that’s partly because the new awareness of the nonbinary option offers “a language to name the source of their experience,” therapist Jean Malpas said when we met last spring at the Manhattan offices of the Ackerman Institute for the Family, where he directs the Gender and Family Project.


But as more children say they’re nonbinary—or, as Malpas prefers, “gender expansive”—parents face new challenges. Take E, for example, who was still using female pronouns when we met in May, while struggling over where exactly to place herself on the gender spectrum. Her mother, Jane, was struggling too, trying to make it safe for E to be neither typically feminine nor typically masculine.


The speech team that had performed in New York City the night E and I met was getting ready to travel to a national competition in California, and Jane showed me the email she’d sent the coach to pave the way. E might be seen by others as male, Jane wrote, now that her hair was so short and her clothing so androgynous. She would probably use “both male and female bathrooms depending on what situation feels safest,” Jane informed the coach, and “will need to tell you when she is going to the restroom and what gender she plans on using.” I asked Jane, the night we met, where she’d place her daughter on the gender spectrum. “I think she wants to fall into a neutral space,” she replied.


A “neutral space” is a hard thing for a teenager to carve out: Biology has a habit of declaring itself eventually. Sometimes, though, biology can be put on hold for a while with puberty-blocking drugs that can buy time for gender-questioning children. If the child reaches age 16 and decides he or she is not transgender after all, the effects of puberty suppression are thought to be reversible: The child stops taking the blockers and matures in the birth sex. But for children who do want to transition at 16, having been on blockers might make it easier. They can start taking cross-sex hormones and go through puberty in the preferred gender—without having developed the secondary sex characteristics, such as breasts, body hair, or deep voices, that can be difficult to undo.


The Endocrine Society recommends blockers for adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Nonetheless, the blockers’ long-term impact on psychological development, brain growth, and bone mineral density are unknown—leading to some lively disagreement about using them on physically healthy teens.



Assigned female at birth, Hunter Keith, 17, has felt himself to be a boy since fifth grade. By seventh grade he told his friends; by eighth grade he told his parents. Two weeks before this photo was taken, his breasts were removed. Now he relishes skateboarding shirtless in his Michigan neighborhood.

More fraught than the question about puberty blockers is the one about whether too many young children, at too early an age, are being encouraged to socially transition in the first place.


Eric Vilain, a geneticist and pediatrician who directs the UCLA Center for Gender-Based Biology, says that children express many desires and fantasies in passing. What if saying “I wish I were a girl” is a feeling just as fleeting as wishing to be an astronaut, a monkey, a bird? When we spoke by phone last spring, he told me that most studies investigating young children who express discomfort with their birth gender suggest they are more likely to turn out to be cisgender (aligned with their birth-assigned gender) than trans—and relative to the general population, more of these kids will eventually identify as gay or bisexual.


“If a boy is doing things that are girl-like—he wants long hair, wants to try his mother’s shoes on, wants to wear a dress and play with dolls—then he’s saying to himself, ‘I’m doing girl things; therefore I must be a girl,’ ” Vilain said. But these preferences are gender expression, not gender identity. Vilain said he’d like parents to take a step back and remind the boy that he can do all sorts of things that girls do, but that doesn’t mean he is a girl.


At the Gender and Family Project, Jean Malpas said counselors “look for three things in children who express the wish to be a different gender”: that the wish be “persistent, consistent, and insistent.” And many children who come to his clinic meet the mark, he told me, even some five-year-olds. “They’ve been feeling this way for a long time, and they don’t look back.”


That was certainly the case for the daughter of Seattle writer Marlo Mack (the pseudonym she uses in her podcasts and blogs to protect her child’s identity). Mack’s child was identified at birth as a boy but by age three was already insisting he was a girl. Something went wrong in your tummy, he told his mother, begging to be put back inside for a do-over.


As Vilain might have instructed, Mack tried to broaden her child’s understanding of how a boy could behave. “I told my child over and over again that he could continue to be a boy and play with all the Barbies he wanted and wear whatever he liked: dresses, skirts, all the sparkles money could buy,” Mack said in her podcast, How to Be a Girl. “But my child said no, absolutely not. She was a girl.”


Finally, after a year of making both of them “miserable,” Mack let her four-year-old choose a girl’s name, start using female pronouns, and attend preschool as a girl. Almost instantly the gloom lifted. In a podcast that aired two years after that, Mack reported that her transgender daughter, age six, “loves being a girl probably more than any girl you’ve ever met.”


Young people who may not feel precisely like a boy or a girl might opt to refer to themselves with a gender-neutral pronoun like “they.”

Vilain alienates some transgender activists by saying that not every child’s “I wish I were a girl” needs to be encouraged. But he insists that he’s trying to think beyond gender stereotypes. “I am trying to advocate for a wide variety of gender expressions,” he wrote in a late-night email provoked by our phone conversation, “which can go from boys or men having long hair, loving dance and opera, wearing dresses if they want to, loving men, none of which is ‘making them girls’—or from girls shaving their heads, being pierced, wearing pants, loving physics, loving women, none of which is ‘making them boys.’ ”


This is where things get murky in the world of gender. Young people such as Mack’s daughter, or Charlie Spiegel of California, or E of New York City, must make biological decisions that will affect their health and happiness for the next 50 years. Yet these decisions run headlong into the maelstrom of fluctuating gender norms.


“I guess people would call me gender-questioning,” E said the second time we met, in June. “Is that a thing? It sounds like a thing.” But the “questioning” couldn’t go on forever, she knew, and she was already leaning toward “trans guy.” E had moved a few steps closer to that by September, asking people, including me, to use the pronoun “they” when referring to them. If E does eventually settle on a male identity, they feel it won’t be enough just to live as a man, changing pronouns (either sticking with “they” or switching to “he”) and changing their name (the leading candidate is the name “Hue”). It would mean becoming physically male too, which would involve taking testosterone. It was all a bit much, E told me. As their 15th birthday approached, they were giving themselves another year to figure it all out.


E’s thinking about where they fit on the gender spectrum takes the shape it does because E is a child of the 21st century, when concepts like transgender and gender nonconforming are in the air. But their options are still constrained by being raised in a Western culture, where gender remains, for the vast majority, an either-or. How different it might be if E lived where a formal role existed that was neither man nor woman but something in between—a role that constitutes another gender.


There are such places all over the world: South Asia (where a third gender is called hijra), Nigeria (yan daudu), Mexico (muxe), Samoa (fa‘afafine), Thailand (kathoey), Tonga (fakaleiti), and even the U.S., where third genders are found in Hawaii (mahu) and in some Native American peoples (two-spirit). The degree to which third genders are accepted varies, but the category usually includes anatomical males who behave in a feminine manner and are sexually attracted to men, and almost never to other third-gender individuals. More rarely, some third-gender people, such as the burrnesha of Albania or the fa‘afatama of Samoa, are anatomical females who live in a masculine manner.


I met a dozen or so fa‘afafine last summer, when I traveled to Samoa at the invitation of psychology professor Paul Vasey, who believes the Samoan fa‘afafine are among the most well-accepted third gender on Earth.


Four years ago while watching a TV interview of a transgender girl, both Corey Maison (on trampoline) and mother Erica (seated) realized they are transgender. Corey, now 14, began transitioning from boy to girl soon after, but Erica kept her realization a secret in order to focus on Corey and her other children. Erica is now transitioning to Eric, an inconceivable option for him a generation ago. “The biggest step was coming out to my husband. I wouldn’t have done it without his support.”

Vasey, professor and research chair of psychology at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, returns to Samoa so frequently that he has his own home, car, and social life there. One thing that especially intrigues him about third genders, in Samoa and elsewhere, is their ability to shed light on the “evolutionary paradox” of male same-sex attraction. Since fa‘afafine almost never have children of their own, why are they still able to pass along the genes associated with this trait? Without offspring, shouldn’t natural selection pretty much have wiped them out?


Being fa‘afafine runs in families, the same way being gay does, Vasey said. (He said it also occurs at about the same rate as male homosexuality in many Western countries, in about 3 percent of the population.) He introduced me to Jossie, 29, a tall, slim schoolteacher. Jossie lives in a village about an hour from the capital, Apia. She giggled at my questions, especially when I asked about guys. For Jossie, being fa‘afafine is also a family trait. Several fa‘afafine relatives listened to our conversation: Jossie’s uncle Andrew, a retired nurse who goes by the name Angie; her cousin Trisha Tuiloma, who is also Vasey’s research assistant; and Tuiloma’s five-year-old nephew.


“In this village they don’t really like the ‘fa‘fa’ style,” said Angie, who emerged from the house she shares with Jossie wearing nothing but a long skirt, called a lavalava, tied at the waist. Back in her 20s Angie had thought it might be nice “to have an operation to be a woman.” But now, at 57, she said she’s happy without surgery. She no longer feels discriminated against. Fellow church parishioners might criticize the way she and Jossie dress or behave, but “our families here, they understand.”


Vasey is now investigating two hypotheses that might explain the evolutionary paradox of male same-sex sexuality.


The first, the sexually antagonistic gene hypothesis, posits that genes for sexual attraction to males have different effects depending on the sex of the person carrying them: Instead of coming with a reproductive cost, as happens in males, the genes in females have a reproductive benefit—which means that the females with those genes should be more fertile. Vasey and his colleagues have found that the mothers and maternal grandmothers of fa‘afafine do have more babies than the mothers and grandmothers of straight Samoan men. But they haven’t found comparable evidence among paternal grandmothers—or among the aunts of fa‘afafine, which would come closest to definitive proof.


A second possibility is the kin selection hypothesis—the idea that the time and money that same-sex-attracted males devote to nurturing their nieces and nephews make it more likely that the nieces and nephews will pass some of their DNA down to the next generation. Indeed, among the fa‘afafine Vasey introduced me to, several have taken siblings’ children under their wing. Trisha Tuiloma, who is 42, uses the money she earns as Vasey’s research assistant to pay for food, schooling, treats, even electricity for eight nieces and nephews. And in his formal research Vasey has found that fa‘afafine are more likely to offer money, time, and emotional support to their siblings’ children—especially to their sisters’ youngest daughters—than are straight Samoan men or Samoan women.


One other point about gender identity became clear when I met Vasey’s longtime partner, Alatina Ioelu, a fa‘afafine Vasey met 13 summers ago. When Ioelu first drove up to my hotel, my understanding of what it means to be fa‘afafine started to unravel. Ioelu was much more masculine than the other fa‘afafine I’d met. Tall, broad-shouldered, with an open, handsome face, he favored the same clothing—cargo shorts and T-shirts—that Vasey wore. What did it mean for someone who reads as a man to belong to a third gender that implies heightened femininity?


Gradually it dawned on me, as the three of us chatted through dinner, that Ioelu’s identity as a fa‘afafine shows how deeply bound in culture gender itself is. Vasey and Ioelu plan to marry and retire in Canada someday. (Vasey is 50; Ioelu is 38.) “There we’d be perceived as an ordinary same-sex couple,” Vasey told me.


In other words, the gender classification of Ioelu would change, as if by magic, from fa‘afafine to gay man, just by crossing a border.
_______________________________________________


'A paper from 2004 compared the chicken Z chromosome with platypus X chromosomes and suggested that the two systems are related.[3] The platypus has a ten-chromosome–based system, where the chromosomes form a multivalent chain in male meiosis, segregating into XXXXX-sperm and YYYYY-sperm, with XY-equivalent chromosomes at one end of this chain and the ZW-equivalent chromosomes at the other end'.



We hear in Baltimore-----home of global hedge fund Johns Hopkins and the Bush et al CARLYLE GROUP behind ignoring all ethics, morals, US Rule of Law, and GOD'S NATURAL LAW in MOVING FORWARD human designer chromosome manipulation science-----especially regarding sex chromosome gender blending------THEY ARE FEMINIZING BLACK MEN------INVEST IN PLATYPUS------global banking 1% are actually feminizing not only black men-----not only men---they are blending female towards men deliberately creating ANDROGYNOUS HUMANS.


INVEST IN PLATYPUS------these are the 5% to the 1% global banking pols and players with that insider trading on all these NEW GLOBAL BIOGENETICS CORPORATIONS----these 5% don't care where it all leads---they get a few dollars in the pockets in shareholder dividends so they push all these policies through----


Shhhhhhh, DON'T TELL THIS IS ALL A SECRET.



While genetic insertion of sex chromosomes X and Y have been done these few decades-----what SCIENCE FOR SCIENCE SAKE is doing now---ergo INVEST IN PLATYPUS -------is implanting genetic code from PLATYPUS into human fetuses in an effort to CREATE the multiple gender chromosomes from platypus to humans.


Whereas HUMANS are binary in sex chromosomes ---------platypus is POLY------or NON-BINARY-

'A platypus swimming in a Tasmanian river. It's unclear whether this one is an XXXXXXXXXX or XYXYXYXYXY.
Eddy.H'


Interpreting Shared Characteristics: The Platypus Genome

By: PZ Myers, Ph.D. (University of Minnesota, Morris) © 2008 Nature Education 


Citation: Myers, P. (2008) Interpreting shared characteristics: The platypus genome. Nature Education 1(1):46



The sequencing of the platypus genome has received a high amount of misleading press attention. What does this information really tell us about this strangely unique animal and its genetic past?
Aa Aa Aa

Nature Publishing Group Video: Genome Analysis of the Duck-Billed Platypus



The recent publication of a draft of the platypus genome (Warren et al., 2008) has garnered a great deal of newspaper coverage, much of which has been misleading. Over and over again, the article lead is that the platypus is "weird" or "odd," or even worse, that the animal is a chimera. One author, for instance, describes the platypus as a "genetic potpourri—part bird, part reptile, and part lactating mammal" (AFP, 2008). Unfortunately, such statements are inaccurate. In reality, the platypus is not part bird, as birds are an independent and (directly) unrelated lineage. Moreover, although one could say that the platypus is part reptile, it is so only in the sense that it is a member of the great reptilian clade that also includes prototherians, marsupials, birds, lizards, snakes, dinosaurs, and eutherian mammals (including humans). Using this line of reasoning, we humans could say with equal justification that we, too, are part reptile.

The truth about the platypus—and what makes the animal's recent genomic sequencing particularly interesting—is that it belongs to a lineage that separated from ours approximately 166 million years ago, deep in the Mesozoic era, and since that time, it has independently lost different elements of our last common ancestor. By comparing bits of the platypus genome that were conserved with those that were lost, researchers can develop a clearer picture of what Jurassic mammals were like, and they can also determine what sorts of genetic traits contemporary mammals have gained and lost over the course of evolution.


Are Shared Characteristics a Sign of Relatedness?

Figure 1: Emergence of traits along the mammalian lineage.




Amniotes split into the sauropsids (leading to birds and reptiles) and synapsids (leading to mammal-like reptiles). These small early mammals developed hair, homeothermy, and lactation (red lines). Monotremes diverged from the therian mammal lineage 166 Myr ago and developed a unique suite of characters (dark-red text). Therian mammals with common characters split into marsupials and eutherians around 148 Myr ago (dark-red text). Geological eras and periods with relative times (Myr ago) are indicated on the left. Mammal lineages are in red; diapsid reptiles, shown as archosaurs (birds, crocodilians and dinosaurs), are in blue; and lepidosaurs (snakes, lizards and relatives) are in green.


© 2008 Nature Publishing Group Warren, W. et al.


Genome analysis of the platypus reveals unique signatures of evolution.

Nature 453, 176 (2008). All rights reserved.
Figure Detail

In order to better understand the impact of the platypus study, it is helpful to begin by looking at a cladogram that illustrates the dates when derived traits appeared in the various lineages considered in the study (Figure 1). This diagram reflects a fairly conventional picture of our evolutionary history, and it reinforces the evolutionary explanation for the illustrated relationships.


As you can see, a number of modern animals—including birds—are depicted along the top of the cladogram in Figure 1. Note, however, that the cladogram does not imply that modern monotremes (including the platypus) are part bird. Rather, birds are included in this diagram because they are contemporary representatives of the sauropsid lineage, a group of reptile cousins that split from our family tree roughly 315 million years ago. So, if monotremes aren't part bird, why did the investigators who conducted the platypus study examine genomic data from chickens during the course of their research? The primary reason for inclusion of this data relates to comparison. Specifically, the researchers knew that if they found a feature in birds that was also present in monotremes (or marsupials or eutherians), this would mean that the feature was most likely also present in the animals' common ancestor.


For instance, one of the unusual (for a mammal) features of the platypus is meroblastic cleavage. In fact, there is a famous telegram from 1884 in which researchers who were working in Australia announced a dramatic discovery to their colleagues at the British Association: "Monotremes oviparous, ovum meroblastic." Those four words declare that the platypus lays eggs (i.e., it is oviparous) and that the early stages of platypus embryo formation resemble the stages seen in birds and reptiles, not mammals. As opposed to the platypus, eutherians and marsupials have eggs that go through holoblastic cleavage; this means that the first cell divisions following fertilization cut all the way through the ovum, producing multiple, separable daughter cells. On the other hand, in the meroblastic cleavage of the platypus and chicken, the large yolky egg does not completely subdivide, so early cell divisions are incomplete. These incomplete divisions produce a sheet of cells on top of the yolk that are cytoplasmically continuous with the yolk cytoplasm. Indeed, this sheet is a common feature in yolky eggs and is a consequence of physical constraints on cell division.


Thus, both the platypus and the chicken exhibit meroblastic cleavage—but this does not mean that platypuses are part bird. Rather, what it does suggest is that meroblastic cleavage is likely a primitive character, one that was inherited from the last common ancestor of synapsids and sauropsids over 300 million years ago. Another possibility is that birds and monotremes evolved this feature independently, thereby making this trait an example of convergent evolution. Simple observation of meroblastic cleavage in both monotremes and birds is not enough to determine whether this characteristic arose via convergence or via common descent—in order to discover which is the case, we must look at multiple details of the evolutionary process.


Of course, not just the platypus but every living organism is a mix of both conserved, primitive characters and evolutionary novelties—thus, a mouse is just as "weird" as a platypus from an evolutionary perspective, as each is the product of processes that promoted divergence from a common ancestor, and each is equidistant from that ancestor. It's just that we primates share more derived characters, or synapomorphies, with mice than with platypuses because we are more closely related, and the mix of characters in mice is therefore more familiar to us.


Indeed, all modern animals are products of different evolutionary trajectories, and no one species by itself is representative of the ancestral condition. As a result, we must determine the ancestral state of modern animals through the comparison of multiple lineages—and that is the virtue of the data from the platypus. Information regarding the platypus genome adds yet another lineage to our data set—a lineage that diverged from ours over 160 million years ago. The platypus data is therefore a lens that can help us see what novelties arose during that 160 million year window on both the eutherian and monotreme sides of the split.


So, what are some of the details that we've learned from the platypus? One important message relates to the unity of life. Sequencing of the platypus genome reveals that the platypus has about 18,000 genes; humans, by comparison, have somewhere around 20,000. Moreover, roughly 82% of the platypus's genes are shared between monotremes, marsupials, eutherians, birds, and reptiles. This is not at all surprising, because all of these organisms are made of eukaryotic cells, and the basic eukaryotic machinery is going to be shared among species. Platypuses and humans also share a lot of "selfish" DNA bits—about half of both species' genomes consists of LINE and SINE-like sequences.


Humans and platypuses do differ in the details, however. For instance, an obvious difference is that the platypus lays yolky eggs, whereas humans and other eutherians have yolkless eggs that are retained in the mother's body. Thus, as you might expect, the platypus has a gene that humans lack—one that codes for vitellogenin, a crucial yolk protein.


As opposed to the presence of vitellogenin, a trait that both eutherians and monotremes have in common—but one that is not shared with birds—is lactation. (Although some birds can produce crop milk, this is a different adaptation). In the ancestral state, lactation was probably the secretion of fluids and immune system proteins to keep eggs and newborns hydrated and protected, but in our history, parents who invested more effort in secreting additional nutritive components, like sugars, fats, proteins, and calcium, were more successful. Like humans, the platypus secretes a true milk that is loaded with all of these components, including a protein called casein, which is thought to have originated by way of the duplication of a tooth enamel matrix protein gene, of all things. Today, two genes that code for proteins related to tooth production (enamelin and ameloblastin) are clustered with the casein-producing gene in both the platypus and the mouse, suggesting that the kind of sophisticated lactation abilities shared by monotremes and eutherians arose prior to the Jurassic period.


One particularly interesting specialization in the platypus is the evolution of venoms. The platypus has small, sharp spurs on its hind limbs that it uses to inject defensive poisons into predators, an unusual feature not found in other mammals. Where did these venoms come from? As it turns out, they arose through the duplication of genes that have other functions, with subsequent divergence. Many of these genes are involved in the functioning of the platypus's innate immune system. In particular, there is a set of genes in the platypus that code for the production of proteins called b-defensins. These are small, cysteine-rich peptides that are rather like the "bullets" of the immune system; they can bind to viral coat proteins and punch holes in bacterial membranes. We humans have many epithelial cells that secrete b-defensins onto our skin and the lining of our gut and respiratory tract to kill invaders. The cells of our immune system also spew these proteins onto foreign and phagocytized cells to kill them. The platypus has repurposed the b-defensin genes, making copies that have been selected for more effective toxicity when their product proteins are injected into other animals. One especially interesting observation is that these are the same proteins used in venomous reptiles—for instance, snake venoms also contain novel forms of b-defensins. This means that animals from two distantly related groups—the lepidosaurs and the monotremes—both use b-defensin-derived venoms (Figure 2). But does this imply that the groups' last common ancestor also used these venoms?


No, it does not, and here's why: It turns out that venomous snakes and the platypus have different duplications of the b-defensin genes. So, while co-opting these genes seems to be a common strategy for evolving venoms, the details of the gene duplications reveal that platypus venom and snake venom are independently derived features. The production of venom in these animals is therefore clearly a case of convergent evolution.

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We want to be clear about these uses of the term NON-BINARY-----indeed there have always been cases of human MEIOSIS having that error of binary X AND Y----xxy or xyy -----that third sex chromosome appearing. As we stated yesterday------these errors have never shown any real difference in gender affiliation not tied to GBLT.

We would ask 99% of WE THE PEOPLE to support any citizen feeling the need for gender identity freedom to honor this-----but we are absolutely SURE that much of what we are seeing today is from GENETIC MANIPULATION OF SEX CHROMOSOMES FROM BINARY TO POLY-----NON-BINARY.


We do not want these DELIBERATE, MAN-MADE MANIPULATIONS OF HUMAN SEX CHROMOSOMES.

Why we’re all non-binary…
April 14, 2014

…and that doesn’t stop people from being women and men.


A rewind, and a few words of explanation. I’d just finished writing an article on gender plurality for a feminist website, and was browsing my twitter feed, simultaneously talking to a friend about people labelling their genders ‘binary’ and ‘non-binary’. Twitter was full of people debating the differences between ‘binary’ and ‘non-binary’ and that, and the article, and the personal conversation – left me feeling somewhat sad – and also angry and in fear of misrepresentation.



Increasingly, I’m seeing an oppositional standpoint develop between people who call themselves ‘non-binary’ and people who call themselves’ binary’. Sometimes with an awareness of the problems of dichotomy – sometimes nearly indistinguishable from the ‘women are like this/men are like that’ sophistry. And, as I have said before, and will say again – if my gender, my self, has no name in a binary system – if a binary system does not allow for my existence, and the existence of people like me, then either I cannot exist or that system cannot exist. And, as much as any human can be sure of it, I’m fairly sure that I exist.



That is why I would say that all genders are ‘non-binary’ – not in the slightest because that means that all people should or could describe themselves as ‘NB’ in the way it’s used as a gender marker and identity label – but because, to allow for people with genders other than male or female, we cannot have only two options. In this plural model, all genders are ‘non-binary’ in the same way that a rainbow is ‘non-binary’ – because it is more than red and blue, not because red and blue are not valid colours within it.



A non-binary universe means that there is space for everyone – and that everyone is equally valid within that space. When a binary system is set up with ‘allowances’ for people like me, for ‘exceptions’, then I am denied the universality that comes through our common humanity. My gender is not an optional extra. How my body and my mind and my words travel through this world is not something to be tacked on at the side because it couldn’t be slotted neatly into an available system.



And, yet, it is more than this. Because I don’t want to dismantle the binary gender system for my sole benefit, or only for the benefit of those nominally like me – it needs to be dismantled for all of us. I am not more unique in who I am and how I could be described than a woman or a man. I am no more deserving of the freedom to define myself to the world, and back to myself, and explore what I mean. How can a system with only two options capture the infinite variety expressed by the words ‘men’ and ‘women’? Let alone a binary, each of the those words is constantly exploding with new categories, new definitions. I don’t know how to respond when someone calls themselves as ‘binary’ man or woman – because what are they referring to? Which period of human history, which culture, has such a categorical definition of womanhood or manhood – and nothing else – that we could use that term in that way?



My mother is a woman, and I am androgynous – and yet our genders are just as rich and complex, and dynamic, as each others’. We share similarities, we share differences – we are both constantly growing and changing, and the language we use can only ever signpost the richness of who we are. I don’t want to be set in opposition to her, or anyone else I love – I want to exist in a framework that allows us all the space we need for difference and the connections we maintain in sharing, empathy, likeness of spirit.

If we allow for a system in which we are all valid, all equals, then you don’t need to use the word ‘binary’ to defend yourself again me. My refusal of the words ‘men’ and ‘women’ is not an insult directed at your usage of them – but I will not reify your centrality with my supposed outsider status. And I will not take one man’s definition of manhood’s over another’s as ‘more real’, ‘more manly’ – or vice versa.  Each person’s usage is precious to them, as mine is to me – and it can genuinely be as simple as that, if we want it to be.
So, I suppose, more accurately – it’s not so much ‘we’re all non-binary’ as ‘we all exist in a non-binary universe’ – the possibilities are endless, increasing exponentially which each new person in the world. I don’t want to deny or police or suppress anyone within that – I want to dismantle our current enforced binary system until we reach the starting point of everything and nothing. And then the rest is up to us.

Looking towards public policy surrounding male and female and MOVING FORWARD goals of blending gender and population control---we are shouting to our 99% of men and women whether US or global labor pool--please understand the goals of national media and policy installed by global 1% of men is to dismantle all our societal connections to marriage and family and ending the idea of GOING FORWARD TO BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY.  Know as well that we must come together as a 99% vs 1%====we need men and women on team GETTING RID OF ALL GLOBAL WALL STREET 5% TO THE 1% POLS AND PLAYERS.

Anyone trying to create tensions between men and women today are great big 5% players.

As we stated we will begin this week's discussion of public policy surrounding men, women, gender by looking at what brings men and women together ---marriage and family---and what breaks men and women apart---the inability to support families and the disregard of survival of children. 

If you are a BABY BOOMER you no doubt read any number of books about UTOPIA.  We did----it was not a utopia to us =====it was a frightening level of societal control painted with FAKE left social progressive ideals of equal pay no matter the employment---the sanitation worker earns as much as the doctor for example.  One thing recurrent in UTOPIA literature is this policy of BREEDER CONTROL.  Creating CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY through controlled breeding.  This was in the 1960-70s folks----and this is when medical research surrounding reproduction started to become ETHICALLY AND MORALLY QUESTIONING.

Remember, the authors of these kinds of books are all global 1% LITERARY STARS--like my favorite UNBERTO ECO----their job is simply to create a story selling the ideas of MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY


THE GLOBAL 1% OF MEN.


10 of the Best Utopian Books Everyone Should Read
Mar 15
Posted by interestingliterature


The best utopian works
Utopian literature has a long history, so in the following top ten selection we’ve tried to pick a representative sample of what the genre has to offer. Here are ten of the best utopian novels, romances, and philosophical treatise (utopian fiction loves to blur the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, essay and story).


Plato, Republic. In a sense, the utopian genre might be said to begin with Plato’s Republic, in which he sets out his ideal society (famously, no poets were allowed). The Republic sees Socrates debating with a number of other people about the nature of justice and the ideal city-state. The book also discusses various possible forms of government, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each.


Sir Thomas More, Utopia. This 1516 work is the book that gave us the word ‘utopia’ – from the Greek meaning ‘no-place’, though with a pun on eu-topos, ‘good place’, implying that such an ideal society is too good to be true. More’s island utopia has variously been interpreted as a sincere description of the perfect world and as a satirical work poking fun at the world’s excessive idealists. Mind you, given that in Utopia adulterers are taken into slavery, and repeat offenders are executed, it makes you wonder whether More’s Utopia isn’t more dystopian than anything…


Sir Francis Bacon, New Atlantis. Although he never completed it, this utopian novel by one of the great philosophers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras is well worth reading. It was published posthumously in 1627 and outlines a perfect society, Bensalem (its name suggesting Jerusalem) founded on peace, enlightenment, and public spirit. Available in Three Early Modern Utopias Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines (Oxford World’s Classics) along with More’s Utopia and another early utopian novel, Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines.


Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World. Cavendish’s work is frequently interested in the idea of utopia, such as the all-female university she imagines in The Female Academy and The Convent of Pleasure, in which a group of women remove themselves from society in order to devote themselves to a life of pleasure. But The Blazing World, published in 1666 when London was quite literally ablaze with the Great Fire, is her most representative utopian work, a fictional account of a young woman’s fantastic voyage to an alternative world, which she accesses via the North Pole. Cavendish’s looking-glass utopia anticipates the world of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books in a number of startling ways.



Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. In this work of 1726, which was an immediate bestseller, Lemuel Gulliver actually visits four different fantasy worlds, but the one that’s especially interesting here is the world of the Houyhnhnms, horses endowed with reason and speech, and a world in which humans are yobbish Yahoos flinging their muck around. Gulliver interprets the Houyhnhnms’ society as a utopian world, though whether Swift is inviting us to agree, or to distance ourselves from Gulliver, remains a contentious point.
Samuel Butler, Erewhon. This hugely inventive 1872 satire by the author of the anti-Victorian novel The Way of All Flesh is perhaps more accurately described as ‘anti-utopian’, though it follows the utopian narrative structure. The fictional land of Erewhon – almost ‘nowhere’ backwards – is the setting for this novel. Among the things satirised by Butler in this book is the rise of the machines, which Butler argues will evolve at an ever-faster rate – along the lines of Darwinian evolution – until the machines eventually overtake humans.


Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887. Published in 1888, Bellamy’s novel imagining a perfect future society spawned a nationwide movement in America. (It also predicted electronic broadcasting and credit cards.) Bellamy’s plan for a ‘cloud palace for an ideal humanity’ also helped to inspire the garden city movement in the US and the UK. The best edition is Looking Backward 2000-1887 (Oxford World’s Classics).


William Morris, News from Nowhere. Morris was a socialist whose 1890 utopian novel, set in the London of 2035, envisions a future world in which common ownership of the means of production has been achieved and Morris’s socialist dream has come true. Morris wrote News from Nowhere partly in response to Bellamy’s novel above.


H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia. Wells was repeatedly drawn to utopias and dystopias, as is evident right from the beginning of his career and his first novel, The Time Machine (1895). The 1905 novel A Modern Utopia posits the existence of an alternate Earth, very much like our own world and populated with doubles of every human being on our own planet. The rule of law is maintained by the Samurai, a voluntary noble order.


Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed. Published in 1974 when the Cold War had become established as a leading theme of much speculative and science fiction, The Dispossessed is a utopian novel about two worlds: one essentially a 1970s United States replete with capitalism and greed, and the other an anarchist society where the concept of personal property is alien to the people. One of the finest examples of the utopian novel produced in the last fifty years.

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The ideals of marriage evolved from as early as mammals evolving from lower tiers of animals----we study animal groups to identify which groups have males helping females with infants born and which simply supply the seed and go away.  Mammals evolved with few seeds----fewer opportunities for young to be born and survive ====so males were drawn into the role of partners in seeing those young survive. 

DON'T BLAME IT ON THE WOMEN GUYS=======YOUR CAPTURE TO FAMILY IS EVOLUTIONARY.


Before OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% continuous wars over which man gets the most power and real estate the natural societal structure was indeed naturally joining men and women in creating children and seeing they survived.  It was the PRE-CHRISTIAN/MUSLIM/JEWISH/HINDI era of HOMER AND VIRGIL----of VISIGOTHS AND GHENGIS KHANS that killed the ideals of marriage and of going forth being fruitful and multiplying.  It was at the time of PROPHETS we see the HEADS OF ORGANIZED RELIGION take hold---and religious texts placed the focus back to building that partnership of men and women in child-bearing and survival by instituting MARRIAGE.

Our citizens tied to thinking the words in our religious texts as Bible or Koran are word for word ---from GOD-----have always met with citizens saying ----NO, these are edited and compiled writings of historical events tied to these religions-----Jesus is born and dies----Muhammad is born and dies both being devoted to GOD.  women have long known who WRITES THESE STORIES-----as to why women are subject to men---why often women are not allowed to be equal leaders inside major religions.

WHETHER MARRIAGE IS A GIFT OF GOD OR AN EVOLUTIONARY MUST FOR SURVIVAL OF SPECIES-----MEN AND WOMEN HAVE JOINED FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS IN BEING FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLYING.

Men hanging around to help with infants has evolved in SURVIVAL OF THE SPECIES----we being the human species.


2.4 The Origin of Marriage

(OB4)by Dr. Werner Gitt on June 28, 2012


Share: Marriage is a gift of God.


When God brought to Adam the woman who was specially created for him, he cried out joyfully: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”


 Evolution: Marriage has not been established by God, neither did it exist from the beginning, rather, it was socially acquired in the framework of cultural evolution.

Robert Havemann [H3, p. 121] describes the evolution of matrimony as follows: “In primitive societies everybody—men and women—were equal. There were no matrimonial unions, but so-called group marriages existed. These groups had no rules about who could have intercourse with whom.” Similarly, a development from a matriarchy (Latin mater = mother; women ruling) to a patriarchy (Latin pater = father; men ruling) is assumed.



The Bible: Marriage is a gift of God. When God brought to Adam the woman who was specially created for him, he cried out joyfully: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). This joy over a real companion is the explicit will of God: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18). Marriage has been established by the Creator; it is therefore not a humanly devised institution. It existed from the beginning, as Jesus himself defined the origin and essence of marriage in Matthew 19:4-6: “Haven’t you read . . . that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” With the commandment “You shall not commit adultery,” God protects marriage and allows sexual intercourse only inside this close union (Eccles. 9:9). Sexual relations (becoming one flesh) before or outside marriage is branded as fornication and immorality.



The supposed evolutionary development from a matriarchy to a patriarchy is biblically false. The woman was originally given as a “helper” (Gen. 2:18), but not as a ruler of the man. Through Paul, Christ also confirmed this revelation in the New Testament: “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). The role assigned to men neither leads to a slavish submission of women as in Islam, nor to the rivalry aspired to by the women’s liberation movement. The God-given relationship between man and woman is expressed most clearly in the comparison with the relationship between Christ and the Church: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:24–25).

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Thomas Aquinas as EMPEROR CONSTANTINE were tied to the ideals of EMPIRE-BUILDING-----these are the earliest OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% the Catholic Church capturing the early gnostic religions growing independently among the 99% of people----conforming religion to what has been WEALTH AND POWER.

Here is where homosexuality vs heterosexuality identified as NATURALISM became the societal structure even though through animal and mammal species there are those in a species not interested in having children or being tied to opposite sex.  NATURALISM according to evolution includes individuals we called CONFIRMED BACHELORS AND BACHELORETTES.

We love our religious and philosophical intellectuals------we also recognize only the male voices in these fields are heard over thousands of years.  No wanting to get into the argument over IS GOD A WOMAN OR MAN-----we are going with the idea of gender identity in how one feels towards our higher being GOD.

PRE-ORGANIZED RELIGION with pagan and Greek mythology gods were helpful and harmful to humans----they used mankind as toys to be manipulated-----organized religion creates the ideal of GOD as good---as man being mirrored upon GOD-----and of GOD wanting his creation to expand and multiply.

ORGANIZED RELIGION CREATED MAN IN LIKENESS OF GOD AND CREATED GOD AS SALVATION OF MAN.

If your goals are to destroy all societal structures of thousands of years-------global 1%  would kill organized religion and evolutionary partnering of men and women in survival of species.

Remember, there is a big difference between INTELLECTUAL interest in religion and philosophy and their interconnections and between a person feeling the calling of PASTOR, RABBI, OR IMAM. OUR GLOBAL IVY LEAGUES big on intellectual interest and study----not so much being rank and file holy men and women.


Thomas Aquinas, part 6: natural law


Tina Beattie
Modern thinkers who appeal to natural law as a foundation for morality often lose sight of Aquinas's more flexible naturalism

Monday 5 March 2012 05.00 EST First published on Monday 5 March 2012 05.00 EST

Thomas Aquinas's Aristotelian interpretation of natural law has shaped western law and politics, although it is a minor section in the Summa Theologiae (ST II.I.94). It belongs within a comprehensive account of four levels of law (ST II.I.90-104). Eternal law is incomprehensible to us, because it is the order upon which all other order depends. We cannot think outside the laws we think with. Divine law is revealed in scripture and is meaningful only to those who accept scriptural authority. Natural law is what we have in common. It refers to our rational capacity to discern general principles in the order of nature to enable us to flourish as a species in communities, given that by nature we are social animals. Today, we might say that it is in our DNA.

Human law is the interpretation of natural law in different contexts (ST II.I.95-97). Like Aristotle, Aquinas believed that just laws relate to the species, so the collective good comes before the individual good – although in a just society, these are not in conflict. This means that law is not about individual morality, and individual vices should only be legislated against when they threaten harm to others. Unlike Aristotle, Aquinas believed that an informed conscience takes precedence over law. No individual should obey a law that he or she believes to be unjust, because laws that violate reason are not laws. Moreover, laws must have sufficient flexibility to be waived when necessary in the interests of the common good.



Natural law supports different cultures and religions, but unjust societies are those whose laws violate natural law.


Modern thinkers who appeal to natural law as a foundation for morality often lose sight of Aquinas's naturalism, presenting it as a transcendent rational capacity or divine command that overrides our natural instincts and desires. This manifests itself in the rationalist quest to conquer nature (now redounding on us in a looming environmental catastrophe), and in the Catholic church's attempt to use politics and law to impose its views on sexuality over and against changing social customs.
Aquinas argues that laws should change to reflect customs (although custom cannot change natural or divine law). I'll focus on two issues relating to this in terms of a widening gulf between the Catholic hierarchy and modern culture, including many Catholics.


Contraception: Aquinas believed that the sex act must be intended for procreation for the preservation of the species (ST II.II.153.2). He also believed that children need to be raised in a loving environment, and marriage is the proper context for this. But we now know that females are not always fertile, and sexual activity among animals seems to be less functional than he realised. The changing role of women is also a transformation in culture and custom that requires a radical rethinking of law and reproductive ethics. The prohibition of artificial birth control finds little support from this reading of natural law, particularly since it flies in the face of customary practice among many Catholics and non-Catholics.


Homosexuality: once one accepts that non-procreative, loving sex is good, the argument from natural law against homosexuality becomes untenable. What remains central from a Thomist perspective is what it means to live well as a sexual creature whose relationships reflect the love of God and respect the dignity of the human made in the image of God.


Natural law is our rational capacity to interpret the laws of nature in order to use our scientific knowledge well. It is still relevant, even if our science is very different from Aquinas's, as we see from debates about the ethical implications of the laws of evolution. The Darwinian eugenicists of the early 20th century were engaged in one kind of natural law deriving from evolutionary science, and debates on this blog about genetic altruism are another form of natural law. They follow Aquinas insofar as they express a desire to discern order and goodness rather than randomness and futility in what science reveals to us about nature. Evolutionary eugenics may be as rationally defensible as evolutionary altruism, so why do we think one is bad and the other is good? Aquinas would have said because one respects the dignity of the human made in the image of God and the other violates it, but without that perspective, the answer is less clear.

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MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% OF MEN has nothing to do with evolution---nothing to do with survival of fittest-----nothing to do with eugenics. It is totally driven by the fact modern global 1% have KILLED MOTHER EARTH with industrialization and those sociopaths are now trying to create societal structures in the midst of LOST NATURAL RESOURCES and ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION.

DARWIN did not study human behavior or development. His studies were of plant and animal species historically and structurally formulating a hypothesis of SURVIVAL OF FITTEST. It was other scientists tied to human superiority that drew DARWIN'S reference to evolutionary survival tied to those able to evolve to environmental changes.

WHAT DO WE HAVE IN MOVING FORWARD? WE HAVE DEVASTATION AND DECLINE OF ENVIRONMENT DRIVING THE GLOBAL 1% TO SURVIVE BY KILLING OF HUMAN SPECIES.

While the global 1% of men have through history done this through wars and pestilence -----China's ONE CHILD ONLY policy was just that---today's medical technology now allows GENDER MANIPULATION=====microchip implanted birth control----all of which necessitates the breakdown of societal ideals around marriage, having families, being SEXUAL.

And of course whenever there is a push towards controlling population as in China recently-----the female infants are less valued and aborted for male. MOVING FORWARD has a goal that is different ---GENDER BLENDING kills both what it means to be MALE AND what it means to be female.

The same global 1% behind these FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT policies are the ones creating the worst in world history attack on natural human sexuality-------HYBRIDIZATION OF HUMANS because we hybridize plants and animals don't we say global 1% of men?



Why "Survival of the Fittest" Is Wrong

Robbie Gonzalez
3/05/13 4:34pm
Filed to: Daily explainer
133.8K
1603


You've probably heard it a million times in descriptions of evolution and natural selection. Charles Darwin even liked to say it. But the phrase "survival of the fittest" is wrong, and understanding why can help us better understand what it means to be human.


Survival's Origins

Darwin uses the phrase "survival of the fittest" in chapter four of On the Origin of Species to describe the process of natural selection. But he did not coin the phrase. It was borrowed from English philosopher Herbert Spencer, who first talked about survival of the fittest in his Principles of Sociology. "The term 'natural selection,'" wrote Darwin in The Origin, "is in some respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice." Referring to the process as "survival of the fittest," Darwin thought, helped clarify things. But the famed naturalist's appropriated turn of phrase turned out to be rather inappropriate, itself.



11/16/2017Princeton biological anthropologist Alan Mann told io9 that in most cases, "survival of the fittest" has been replaced by the term "reproduction of the fittest," or "differential selection." This holds particularly true in discussions concerning mammals — humans, especially. Mann says there are two main reasons for this.


One: for an organism to reproduce, it is implied that it must first live long enough (i.e. survive) to do so. And two: the phrase "survival of the fittest" paints a mental image of what Mann characterizes as "the tooth and claw of bloody nature" — as though every organism in a particular area is perpetually fighting for the ability to survive. In this context, "fitness" can be misinterpreted as an ideal evolutionary goal. "But Evolution acts to produce function, not perfection" says Mann. Moreover, "fitness" should properly refer not so much to characteristics like strength or speed, but rather an animal's ability to produce viable offspring.


On Fish and Humans

Where a phrase like "survival of the fittest" becomes relevant, says Mann, is in discussions about what is known in ecology as "selection theory," or ideas about the trade-off between the quantity and quality of an organism's offspring.



Fish, for example, can produce and fertilize thousands of eggs during a mating session; but the number of fertilized eggs that are eaten, killed, or die in some other way before reaching sexual maturity is huge. This "make as many as you can" reproductive strategy is called "r-selection." Large numbers of offspring are produced, but the vast majority of them perish. And this strategy, says Mann, does, in some ways, follow the concept of "survival" of the fittest.

Say you have a newborn fish that is a prey species to a larger, predacious fish. In most fish species, there is little-to-no parental care, so that animal has predator-avoidance behaviors built into its neurological system. When a young fish sees the shadow of predator nearby, or feels the water current of a larger fish, it begins to exhibit predator-avoidance behavior. For many fish, says Mann, this means either swimming very fast, or swimming in a zig-zag fashion. But of course, predacious fish have also evolved mechanisms to catch prey. He continues:



So if the prey fish is going zig zag zig zag zig zag, and the predator fish has evolved mechanisms to go zig zag zig zag zig zag, that particular prey becomes lunch. If however there is a biological variation, and instead of the prey fish join zig zag zig zag zig zag, it goes zig zag zig zag zig zig, it lives another day. So, on that level, survival of the fittest has some meaning.


But other animals, and mammals in particular, employ a reproductive strategy dubbed "K-selection." They produce fewer young, so their strategy is based on cultivating behaviors like postnatal protection and nurturing. These learned behaviors ensure their smaller number of offspring will reach reproductive maturity.



Human Behavior and Evolution

"Fitness" refers not to how long an organism lives, but how successful it is at reproducing. And "survival of the fittest" fails to encompass the subtleties of natural selection in mammals, which Mann points out often involve learned behaviors.



"One of the things that's happened in human evolution," he says, "is the time from birth to reproductive maturity and adulthood has been prolonged." This, he continues, probably holds true for most large-bodied mammals (think elephants, for example, or great apes). "When you think about that kind of biological change, it's really pretty difficult to understand, unless there is some adaptive advantage in allowing the young to internalize more behaviors."

In other words, increasing the age of sexual maturity makes little sense in the absence of some other evolutionary adaptation that makes it possible for offspring to develop safely over a longer period of time. This insight is crucial for understanding humans (and, arguably, mammals in general) not just in a biological light, but a cultural one, as well.



Consider, for example, that a typical pregnant human usually gives birth to just one child, occasionally two, and very rarely more than that. As a result, human parental investment in offspring is huge. An infant is raised, often by more than one family member, through a very long childhood development and dependency period. This not only ensures that the offspring will reach reproductive maturity, but that it has time to, as Mann puts it, "learn more appropriate behaviors, become better socialized into their society, and by this way become more successful and therefore capable of producing more offspring of their own."



It's therefore likely that the behavioral repertoires of humans, apes and other mammals have become remarkably complex because of the adaptive advantage they've provided as the time between birth and reproductive maturity has increased. On one hand, this allows for evolutionary fitness to be maintained. At the same time, however, it allows room for the possibility of sexually mature, adult animals (who have very clearly "survived," to reproductive age) who do not actually reproduce — once again highlighting the important distinction between "survival" of the fittest and "reproduction" of the fittest.



Among humans, not having children is often a culturally motivated choice, rather than a biological limitation (though both are often at play). People choose not to have children in order to pursue a career, or to raise only a small number of children. Others forego having children for so long that, when they finally decide to conceive, they encounter complications during childbirth. Despite a prolonged maturation period, these individuals are surviving to maturity without a problem. Evolved social mechanisms have played a large part in making that survival possible. But those same mechanisms can also lead to humans not reproducing, in which case their biological fitness would be considered to be very low.


Ultimately, "survival of the fittest" is necessary, but not always sufficient, for the survival of the species.

____________________________________________
The same global 1% behind these FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT policies are the ones creating the worst in world history attack on natural human sexuality-------HYBRIDIZATION OF HUMANS because we hybridize plants and animals don't we say global 1% of men?

While George Bush----the FAKE religious born again Christian -----was creating all kinds of headlines in national media over science tied to embryonic stem cells------as a FAKE CHRISTIAN tied to FAKE RELIGIOUS RIGHT----they had to pretend to be aghast at this manipulation of GOD'S CREATION.


What Bush did with stem cell research had one goal------take stem cell research overseas to FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES with no US standards of morals, ethics, or quality of life to allow global medical corporations do these research to patent the medical advances to private global corporations. Global Johns Hopkins was the earliest to expand overseas via massive ROBBER BARON FRAUDS-----and indeed leads in these gender blending ending of human species.


Hybridization was done naturally by plant and animal breeders-----selecting for best production and growth cross-mating genes. What we have seen during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA as national media pretended great moral outcry putting an end to such goals---while MOVING FORWARD-----is moving away from natural hybridization to CHEMICAL OR BIOTECHNICAL GENE MANIPULATION.


This is why citizens shouting against MONSANTO----and now against HUMAN GENETIC MANIPULATION are not believing the propaganda over to where BIOTECH BIOLAGE TELEMEDICINE IS GOING.


Genetic manipulation of humans includes our X AND Y CHROMOSOMES.....interrupting natural MEIOSIS.


Well, the global 1% and their 5% are lying, cheating, stealing, no morals or ethics, no US Rule of Law, no GOD'S NATURAL LAW-----so manipulation of individual human being's ability to have natural children---or even worse man-made fetus production with manipulated genes----including OUR X AND Y CHROMOSOME is about what we would expect from FAR-RIGHT WING EXTREME WEALTH SOCIOPATHS

Stem Cell Research and ‘Science vs. Religion’


by Joe Heschmeyer  
Filed under Christianity and Science
587 Comments


A 2005 New York Times article begins:


"When Donald Kennedy, a biologist and editor of the eminent journal Science, was asked what had led so many American scientists to feel that George W. Bush's administration is anti-science, he isolated a familiar pair of culprits: climate change and stem cells. These represent, he said, 'two solid issues in which there is a real difference between a strong consensus in the science community and the response of the administration to that consensus.'"



There's a world of difference between Kennedy's two examples. For climate change, he's alleging that the Bush administration ignored or misrepresented the data in order to advance their political agenda. If true, that's anti-science. But for stem-cell, the Bush administration didn't deny that stem cell had medical promise. The argument wasn't that we couldn't do it, but that we shouldn't. As this editorial from Wired notes:


"President Bush’s stem cell policy may have been restrictive and misguided, but it wasn’t anti-science.
 
In the wake of Obama’s decision to lift Bush’s funding ban, many scientists are celebrating the freedom of science from ideology. Their relief is understandable, but the rhetoric is disturbing.
 
The Bush administration didn’t skew stem cell research like it did environmental science: It simply said it wasn’t right."


That's exactly right. Saying we shouldn't do something isn't "anti-science," since science can't, and doesn't, answer questions of should and shouldn't: those are moral and ethical questions, beyond its scope. But just because the questions are beyond the scope of science doesn't mean that science shouldn't be bound by them:


"There are good reasons why society puts ethical boundaries on science.
 
The Nuremberg code is the best-known example of this. Shocked by the horrors of Nazi science, the civilized world agreed that tests should never again be conducted on people who hadn’t agreed to take part, and that test subjects should not be knowingly harmed.
 
The Nuremberg code was invoked by activists outraged when the Bush administration, at the chemical industry’s urging, proposed tests of pesticides on pregnant mothers and children. They weren’t being anti-scientific. They were being humane."


Exactly. The Tuskegee Experiment certainly advanced science, but it was so brutally cruel and inhumane that we shake our heads at the thought that this could have been done to human beings, here in America. Someday, we'll likely do the same at the thought of destroying the bodies of unborn children for science. The Wired editorial concludes:


"As ideology, Bush’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell funding were legitimate.
They represented a moral objection to the destruction of embryos by people who believe that life begins when sperm meets egg.


OH, REALLY??????
 
It’s not an objection shared by everyone. But characterizing conscientious objectors as anti-scientific is dangerous.
 
'No thinking person should promote a science that claims to be value-free,' said Murray. 'There are plenty of experiments that would be scientifically interesting that we simply won’t do because of legitimate ethical concerns about how we treat the human subjects of research.'
 
Most Americans now support research that Bush stifled and Obama will fund.
 
But there will be plenty of cases in the future when the aims of science — or, to be more precise, certain scientists — conflict with widely held values. And if the legacy of the stem cell debate is to label all conscientious objection as anti-science bias, it will be a toxic legacy indeed."


This is a great point. In fact, the one mistake the editorial makes is in treating the question of when life begins as if it were a moral or ethical question. It's not, or at least, not primarily. It's a scientific question. And science is quite clear on it: life begins at conception. In that scientific understanding is one which informs our policy actions: for example, it's illegal to destroy fertilized bald eagle eggs, because those are baby bald eagles. In fact, it's the proponents of ESCR are the ones who are anti-science, in this sense: they purposes ignore or misrepresent the scientific data that embryos are human beings, unique members of the species homo sapiens, with DNA and epigenetic material distinct from both zygotes and both parents.



In fact, if one familiarizes oneself with the arguments within the Bush and Obama Administrations on the question of ESCR, it's clear which side is the thoughtful and scientific side, and which embraces "progress" at any price. As the Hastings Center notes, Dr. Leon Kass, former head of Bush's President's Council on Bioethics, argued "that bioethics should define societal goals or ends before we decide whether to pursue various types of biotechnology," and understood the need to keep ethical considerations at the forefront in the midst of scientific pursuits:


"As Kass wrote nearly 40 years ago, we must begin 'with a serious deliberation about our ends and purposes' in biomedical technology, because 'it is indeed the height of irrationality triumphantly to pursue rationalized techniques while insisting that ends or purposes lie beyond rational discourse.'
 
As an example, the first sentence of one of the council’s publications asks: 'What is biotechnology for?'"
Now, Dr. Kass and the rest of the Council weren't "anti-science," obviously. Kass has a doctorate in biology from Harvard, and did molecular biology research at the National Institutes of Health before entering the field of bioethics. But for asking these questions, the entire President's Council was disbanded by the Obama Administration, and publicly mocked by his team:


"A White House press officer told The New York Times that the council was being disbanded 'because it was designed by the Bush administration to be 'a philosophically leaning advisory group' that favored discussion over developing a shared consensus.' Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission that “offers practical policy options.”


The article quotes Alta Charo as saying that the Bush council 'seemed more like a public debating society' and that a new commission should focus on helping the government form ethically defensible policy."


Charo's leering is disturbing: she's playing the Parker Selfridge to Kass' Dr. Augustine (that's an Avatar reference, folks), demanding Kass and Co. shut up with their silly "ethical concerns" so we can do what we want to do.



The Irrelevance of Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Now, the entire field of embryonic stem-cell research may prove to be completely extraneous. That is, adult stem cells, with a few modifications, appear to be able to do everything embryonic stem cells can do, and there's no need to kill babies to get them. From the Washington Post:


Scientists have invented an efficient way to produce apparently safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a long-sought step toward bypassing the moral morass surrounding one of the most promising fields in medicine.



A team of researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston published a series of experiments Thursday showing that synthetic biological signals can quickly reprogram ordinary skin cells into entities that appear virtually identical to embryonic stem cells. Moreover, the same strategy can then turn those cells into ones that could be used for transplants.



"This is going to be very exciting to the research community," said Derrick J. Rossi of the Children's Hospital Boston, who led the research published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. "We now have an experimental paradigm for generating patient-specific cells highly efficiently and safely and also taking those cells to clinically useful cell types."


Scientists hope stem cells will lead to cures for diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injuries, heart attacks and many other ailments because they can turn into almost any tissue in the body, potentially providing an invaluable source of cells to replace those damaged by disease or injury. But the cells can be obtained only by destroying days-old embryos.


[This isn't true: the Post writer is confusing stem cell research, generally, with "embryonic stem cell research," specifically, even though the entire article is about how embryonic stem cell research isn't the only kind of stem cell research, and in fact, not even the most promising.]


The cells produced by the Harvard team, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, would avoid that ethical objection and could in some ways be superior to embryonic stem cells. For example, iPS cells could enable scientists to take an easily obtainable skin cell from any patient and use it to create perfectly matched cells, tissue and potentially even entire organs for transplants that would be immune to rejection.

Let this sink in for a moment. One of the arguments opponents of ESCR raised was that it wasn't necessary: that doubling-down on other forms of stem cell research, which don't require destroying embryos, would be able to produce the same results as ESCR. It's increasingly apparent that this argument was correct. And yet, ESCR continues. In fact, even the Harvard team using iPS cells still does ESCR, just to compare the two:


Rossi and other researchers, however, said that embryonic stem cells are still crucial because, among other things, they remain irreplaceable for evaluating alternatives.
 
"The new report provides a substantial advance," said National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins. "But this research in no way reduces the importance of comparing the resulting iPS cells to human embryonic stem cells. Previous research has shown that iPS cells retain some memory of their tissue of origin, which may have important implications for their use in therapeutics. To explore these important potential differences, iPS research must continue to be conducted side by side with human embryonic cell research."

That's amoral science. No longer is the argument that ESCR is needed to save lives: it's increasingly obvious that iPS cells can do so as well. Now, it's just a question of curiosity: if we're going to say iPS is as good as ESCR, shouldn't we keep doing them both to compare? That's disgusting, given that ESCR harvests dead unborn children.


___________________________________________
MOVING FORWARDS towards 1960s-70s UTOPIA of manipulated breeding ---------we have watched as national media and our LEADING MEDICAL ORGANIZATIONS provide a LEFT ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT medical reason for advancements in reproductive science---freezing egg and sperm-----artificial insemination------in vivo vs in vitro conception----we are now heading towards a fetus developing completely outside of a women's uterus.

We have no doubt that providing sterile couples the opportunity to reproduce was ETHICAL----no left social progressive voices were shouting against artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization.  When the left social progressives started sounding and questioning the ethics and morals of reproductive science---when surrogate mothers were increasingly being hired bringing poor women into earning money through reproductive actions has ALWAYS harmed our women.  Whether having children to sell for income or having to offer the womb for earnings----starts to cross ethical and moral boundaries.

AS WE SHOUT WITH FAKE GREEN TECHNOLOGY PRETENDING TO BE ENVIRONMENTAL ----SO TO HAS THIS MARCH TOWARDS REPRODUCTIVE RESEARCH BEEN A PRETENSE TO HELPING 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE WITH OUR DESIRES FOR FAMILY.

We have already discussed how all those frozen eggs and embryo banks are now being used in MOVING FORWARD gender manipulation =====just as our US citizens once able to afford these SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE processes of reproduction are now being PRICED OUT OF THESE REPRODUCTIVE SERVICES.


As a female scientist tied to minoring in EMBRYOLOGY I have watched the progression of these fields closely---including how women scientists used to be those public university research facility leaders when all ethics and moral oversight was in place----and have watched as women scientists have been moved out and replaced by our global 1% MOVING FORWARD PREDATORY AND PROFITEERING HEALTH AND MEDICINE MEN have moved in these few decades.


Differences between In-vivo and In-vitro fertilization

May 20, 2017 Sandesh Adhikari Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) 0

In-vivo and in-vitro fertilization two different methods of fertilization that occurs between the female egg and male sperm in different setting. Simply understanding, in-vitro fertilization refers to the fertilization of egg and sperm within the human body (female) while in-vitro fertilization refers to the fertilization outside the human body i.e. in laboratory.

Some other difference between in-vivo and in-vitro fertilization are:



       In-vivo fertilization                   In-vitro fertilization


In-vivo fertilization refers to the normal method of fertilization between female egg and male sperm within a human body. In-vitro fertilization refers to the artificial method of fertilization between female egg and male sperm outside a human body The term in-vivo came from the Latin word “within the living” The term in-vitro came from the Latin word “within the glass” It is a natural/normal method of reproduction that occurs in uterus/womb of female body It is an artificial method of reproduction done in laboratory using different humanized techniques This method of fertilization is normal and natural among couples This method of fertilization is chosen to cure infertility in human, either male or female It is a non-surgical method of fertilization It is a surgical method of fertilization Babies born through this method are considered as normal babies Babies born through this method are called ‘test-tube-baby’ From chemical perspective, during in-vivo fertilization all chemical reactions between the egg and sperm occur within the human body From chemical perspective, during in-vitro fertilization all chemical reactions between egg and sperm is conducted in laboratory None of the chemical changes and reactions are in human control as everything occurs within human body All the chemical changes and reactions are in human control/in a controlled environment as this fertilization is conducted outside human body It is a simpler technique of fertilization It is relatively a more complex technique as it involves surgical procedure to retrieve the eggs The cost per treatment is lower Cost per treatment is higher and causes higher financial burden This method provides limited information during check up and treatment This method provides valuable information during treatment as the reactions between egg and sperms are evaluated initially in the lab setting It can be also considered as an experiment done using a whole living organism It can be also considered as an experiment done outside while living organism This method of fertilization is suitable for fertile couple who don’t have any reproductive health complications This method of fertilization is suitable for infertile couple/s that has some complication related to reproductive organs. It is a not an assisted method of fertilization It is a physician assisted method of fertilization This method does not have risk of multiple pregnancy The risk associated with this method is the possibility of multiple pregnancy

_______________________________________
 These are the public policy issues we will discuss in more detail these week-------including looking to where that race to GENETIC DNA MAPPING and now patenting research tied to X AND Y CHROMOSOME manipulations are going.


We will say this to our 5% to the 1% women in medical research-----we see in our medical research articles in SCIENCE OR NATURE a long list of doctoral contributors assigned to these research almost all male---with what is about the only female on these teams named on the articles.   Now, our 99% of women in science need to WAKE UP to where MOVING FORWARD in genetics and especially gender blending is going------having a women titled as lead author does not reflect the LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE BENEFIT of these research.

Below we refresh our basic high school science on X AND Y SEX GAMETES----back in the 1970s we were researching that MEIOSIS spindle being assured that it was impossible to insert more sex chromosomes into that natural process -----identifying the anomaly of one extra chromosome and its effects on gender identity.....extra X extra Y------what we saw was little effect on gender identity====


THIS IS A LONG BORING ARTICLE BUT PLEASE GLANCE THROUGH TO REMEMBER TERMINOLOGY.


Science & Tech
23 February 2015


Sex isn’t chromosomes: the story of a century of misconceptions about X & Y

The influence of the XX/XY model of chromosomal sex has been profound over the last century, but it’s founded on faulty premises and responsible for encouraging reductive, essentialist thinking. While the scientific world has moved on, its popular appeal remains.


By Ian Steadman
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When the International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified Pluto from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, it did nothing to change the fact of the existence of Pluto. Its status, however, is an innocuous example of how science is not always an objective descriptor of reality, but an interpreter, loaded with the context of previous generations – how the Greek “planetai” and the post-Copernican “planets” were both labels to describe things that moved in the heavens, even if we realised those things weren’t actually that similar to each other on closer inspection over time.


The scientific process often involves tweaking taxonomies. Humanity saw distant objects above, and the taxonomy we built was simple: two entries, one labelled “planets”, the other “stars”. Over time we added extra things, like asteroids (rocky) and comets (icy), to cover new discoveries – and, then, even further research (and pictures like those returned by the Rosetta probe) meant that some of the things we thought made asteroids and comets very different were really only a reflection of our perspective. (And, for what it’s worth, at the same meeting in 2006 where the IAU created the new term “dwarf planet” for objects like Pluto and “planet” for, y’know, planets, it also voted to use “small Solar System body” for everything else. This too will pass, probably.) 



We all believe in the existence of comets and asteroids, even though the colloquial distinction between them makes less and less formal sense – would we bother with two different names if we’d only discovered them today? What purpose would drawing the dividing line between them that way serve?



Famously, when the first taxidermied duck-billed platypus was sent back to London by naturalists working in Australia, it was believed to be a hoax, as it refused to cohere to the then-accepted definitions of mammals and birds by insisting on being a hairy warm-blooded creature that laid eggs. The taxonomical status of the platypus (and the few other egg-laying monotremes that have yet to become extinct) is still a subject of debate to this day - biologists have found it has genes usually only present in fish and amphibians. A male platypus even has ten sex chromosomes (XYXYXYXYXY), instead of the normal two for a mammal.



Ah, but there’s a weasel word there: “normal”. And with sex chromosomes, perceptions of “normal” play a huge role – not only in what we think that they are and do, but in the very existence of the term “sex chromosomes”. This is the subject of Sarah Richardson’s revelatory book Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, a history of the science of sex and the invention of the sex chromosome concept – one that Richardson argues we should reject entirely as a mistake that has led to bad science, societal prejudice and widespread misunderstanding of what sex really is.



This is the point in talking about this issue where, so to speak, things can fall apart. Just as mammals not only don’t lay eggs, but shouldn’t, it can come across as a bizarre postmodern self-indulgence to say that humanity isn’t split neatly in two on the basis of whether they’re chromosomally male (XY) or female (XX). This is a framework that makes intuitive sense to almost everyone because it correlates exactly with sexual dimorphism – there are those with penises, and those with vaginas, and with a bit of luck combining the two means we end up with even more humans that each have their own penises or vaginas. But like the platypus, it’s crucial not to think the taxonomy more important than the reality it’s meant to describe.



As Claire Ainsworth writes for Nature, the science of sex has, for some years now, recognised that sexual characteristics exist on a spectrum – not as a binary:



Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary – their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions – known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs) – often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD.
...
Since the 1990s, researchers have identified more than 25 genes involved in DSDs, and next-generation DNA sequencing in the past few years has uncovered a wide range of variations in these genes that have mild effects on individuals, rather than causing DSDs.



Ainsworth’s article is an excellent overview of the current state of the science of sex; Richardson, as a historian and philosopher of science, excels at telling of the people whose work (and whose mistaken assumptions) has misled popular thinking on sex over the years. She describes how existing sex and gender stereotypes were projected onto chromosomes by early researchers, in turn creating and reinforcing the misunderstanding among the wider public that the strict XX/XY binary is a true synecdoche for sexual dimorphism. In reality, there are extremely few sexual characteristics solely controlled by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome – and just as there are plenty of characteristics controlled by genes found on other chromosomes, the “sex” chromosomes also carry genes that determine traits that have nothing to do with sex.



Y is not the essence of masculinity, nor is X that of femininity. As Richardson writes:



Gender has helped to shape the questions that are asked, the theories and models proposed, the research practices employed, and the descriptive language used in the field of sex chromosome research... Today, scientific and popular literature on the sex chromosomes is rich with examples of the gendering of the X and Y. Humorous maps of the X and Y chromosome – pinned up on laboratory walls and always good for a laugh in an otherwise dry scientific talk – assign stereotypical female and male traits to the X and Y, from the ‘Jane Austen appreciation locus’ to ‘channel flipping’.



The X is dubbed the ‘female chromosome’, takes the feminine pronoun ‘she’, and has been described as the ‘big sister’ to ‘her derelict brother that is the Y’ and as the ‘sexy’ chromosome. The X is frequently associated with the mysteriousness and variability of the feminine, as in a 2005 Science article headlined ‘She Moves in Mysterious Ways’ and beginning, ‘The human X chromosome is a study in contradictions’. The X is also described in traditionally gendered terms as the more ‘sociable’, ‘controlling’, ‘conservative’, ‘monotonous’, and ‘motherly’ of the two sex chromosomes. Similarly, the Y is a ‘he’ and ascribed traditional masculine qualities – ‘macho’, ‘active’, ‘clever’, ‘wily’, ‘dominant’, and also ‘degenerate’, ‘lazy’, and ‘hyperactive’.”



We treat the X and Y chromosomes in a way we’d never think of treating other physical characteristics – many people who would think it absurd or rude to tell a stranger that “really you’re male, though” because they have short hair, or a penis, or excess body hair, nevertheless think nothing of doing so when it comes to having XY chromosomes. Sex Itself is the story of how some scientists became convinced that there was something in the body, and then the cell, and then the genome, that would literally be “sex itself” – the only thing that truly mattered for sex, the thing that was its true source and the thing that finally allowed for a simple, causational definition of sex. It’s also the story of how the premise of that entire argument was wrong from the start.



Surprisingly, though, the emergence of the “sex chromosome” concept didn’t happen immediately – while the term itself was first coined by Edmund Wilson of Columbia University in 1906, and not generally accepted by the rest of the science world until the 1920s due to its incompatibility with what was already understood about inheritability.


During the 19th century, biologists were “fascinated by the diversity of forms of sexual dimorphism and intersexuality in nature”, Richardson writes. Sex was seen as something that began before conception and which could change before and after birth – experiments with castrated chickens, and male guinea pigs given ovaries through transplants, gave rise to what was known as the “metabolic model”. A combination of environmental factors – like the health of the parents, or the temperature of an egg – determined the sex development of the offspring.



By the end of the century, though, microscopes had improved enough to allow biologists to see inside the nuclei of cells, and researchers “raced” each other to try and identify the cellular evidence that would confirm the theories put forward by Darwin in On The Origin of Species in 1859. It didn’t take long for chromosomes to be found - but German cytologist Hermann Henking found a weird, unpaired chromosome in the sperm of a fire wasp in 1891. He called it the “X element”, and others speculated that it might be a “degenerate” or “accessory” chromosome that no longer serves a purpose, like the appendix in the human gut.



Between 1903 and 1906, Nettie Stevens (left) at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania investigated this “X element”, and found that it wasn’t alone – there was a tiny Y chromosome hidden right next to it. Elsewhere, Wilson (he who first used the phrase “sex chromosomes”) also found the Y, and agreed with her that its presence seemed to influence the development of male sex characteristics. (Richardson takes some time to sardonically note the extraordinary achievements Stevens, who was never offered a full faculty post, made “in the face of few opportunities for women” – when she applied for post-doctoral funding from the Carnegie Institution in 1903, she “assembled stunning letters of recommendation” from America’s most prestigious cytologists, and “none failed to note her brilliance – for a woman”.)



Stevens and Wilson both agreed that the X and the Y had something to do with sex – but they disagreed as to what. Stevens thought that sex must be one of the traits carried on the X, in the same way other chromosomes seemed to carry multiple traits; Wilson, instead, saw them as solely sex-determing. There was “a whole-chromosome effect – one X kept things titled towards maleness, while two Xs pushed the balance in favour of femaleness”.



The two worked to refute each other until Stevens died in 1912, aged 50. By 1920, Wilson’s version of the chromosomal theory of sex won out, as the term “sex chromosomes” became almost ubiquitous in the scientific literature, displacing “accessory chromosomes”, “hetero-chromosomes” and “idiochromosomes” as popular alternative labels. This came after a strong fight from those who disagreed. Richardson writes of Thomas Montgomery at the University of Philadelphia, who called the sex chromosome theory “an absurd and simplistic overextension of the chromosome theory of heredity”; and of Thomas Hunt Morgan, one of the leading figures in the young field of embryology, who blasted it for inventing “a special element that has the power of turning maleness into femaleness”.



Calling them “sex chromosomes” ran against the accepted convention of naming other chromosomes after their size and structure within a cell, not their function. And there were still unanswered questions: what the hell was going on with species that reproduce with more than two X accessory chromosomes at a time? What about odd numbers of sex chromosomes? A significant number of species didn’t reproduce in line with the neat sex chromosome theory. Wilson was one of those who tried to integrate the sex chromosomes into the metabolic theory – with sex chromosomes, hormones and environmental pressures each influencing how offspring move through different parts of the sex development spectrum – but the damage, Richardson argues, was done.


One of the main reasons the name had such appeal, she argues, is that the 1920s and 30s was when oestrogen and testosterone were first isolated, and the idea of binary “sex hormones” captured the popular imagination:



By the mid-1920s, hormones had become, like genes today, the most prominent object of biomedical, pharmaceutical, and popular interest to emerge from modern biology. Sex hormones seized the public imagination and became a node through which ideas were exchanged between scientific theory and cultural norms, ideologies, and expectations. Scientists promoted the view that the sex glands were the ‘master glands’ of the endocrine system... Pharmaceutical hormone therapies promised new fertility aids and offered the prospect of a simple, highly effective means of birth control. Many also believed hormones would permit the correction of modernity’s gender deviants – feminist spinsters, homosexuals, impotent males, and frigid wives. The endocrinology pioneer Eugen Steinach promoted testicular transplantation as a medical cure for homosexuality and a 'rejuvenation' therapy for low virility and listlessness in elderly men.”



(It was around this time, by the way, that Frank Buckley, the then-manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers, started a rumour that he was injecting his players with a serum taken from monkey glands to improve their performance. The sex hormone fad was weird.)



In this context, sex chromosomes made perfect sense – a matching pair to go with the hormones that determine maleness and femaleness. By the end of the 1930s, the metabolic theory had been discarded in favour of this new model, where the genetic sex (XX/XY) causes the developments of either testes or ovaries, which in turn create the sex hormones that take care of the rest. This two-stage process was “a powerful mutually self-reinforcing framework for the biology of sex”, and the foundation upon which later work – like the idea that sex is biological and fixed, and gender social and malleable - was built.



This can been seen in how the sex chromosomes began to influence debates on gender and sexuality. There was speculation that the Y chromosome “represses” the feminine X, or that femaleness is the “absence” of maleness; or, that the “greater intellectual variability among males” (ie, why male researchers thought men were smarter than women) was down to the lottery of having a single X chromosome. With two Xs, unusual recessive traits would be more commonly repressed, but with one, rare genes presumed responsible for genius must be allowed through. And, similarly, early women's rights activists and feminists, as well as male writers like the anthropologist Ashley Montagu, seized on the idea of having twice as much X as men as the scientific justification for what was really women's “biological superiority” over the male. The idea of the X and Y carrying “sex itself” was entrenched, helped by the fashionable eugenics of the time that saw biology as the justification for a range of racist, sexist and classist prejudices.



This only became worse after the Second World War, with the discoveries of DNA and the first specific chromosomal causes for certain illnesses (like Down’s Syndrome, caused by an extra chromosome 21). The fashion was to think of genetics as the reductive answer to everything – it felt like every physical characteristic, from eye colour to height to intelligence to sex, was caused by the presence or absence of a single gene or set of genes. The sex chromosomes of the 1930s hormonal model – “the genetic homunculi underlying sexual dimorphism”, as Richardson calls them – fit perfectly into this new paradigm.



Karyotypes (pictures of chromosomes against a stark white background) became widely known, giving people perhaps the first real iconic image of the human genome. The sex chromosomes were shoved to the margin or to the end of the last row, accentuating their perceived difference – the format still used today:


A human male karyotype.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
Sex Itself has plenty of stories about the general public not understanding that X and Y are not all there is to sex, but it has even more when it comes to scientists leaning on theoretical models built on sand not realising until too late. (Though that isn't to say this was true of everyone – Richardson finds plenty of evidence of geneticists struggling to figure out how much influence they should really ascribe to the X and the Y.)


One particularly damning example is that of the so-called “super male” – the discovery by a researcher that an unusually high number of men incarcerated in an Edinburgh prison had an extra Y chromosome (making them “XYY males”), leading to speculation that “it predisposes its carriers to unusually aggressive behaviour”. The amount of time spent investigating this hypothesis, and its influence on pop culture, is astounding:



The so-called XYY syndrome was a mainstream target of investigation in the most prestigious journals of biology, genetics, and cytogenetics... by 1970, nearly two hundred papers on the link between XYY and aggression had appeared in the scientific literature. Between 1960 and 1970, XYY research comprised 82 per cent of all published scientific studies on the human Y chromosome. It accounts for 28 per cent of the entire body of Y chromosome research generated in the quarter-century between 1960 and 1985.
...
As Jeremy Green records, ‘by the early 1970s, there had been at least two thriller films in which the main character is a violent criminal driven by a chromosome abnormality, a series of crime novels with an XYY hero (who constantly wrestles with his inner compulsion to commit crimes), and as a spin-off from the novels, a TV series called The XYY Man’. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Peter Cave’s 1974 Dirtiest Picture Postcard as the earliest English-language usage of the Y chromosome in a nonscientific text: ‘You’ve buttonholed me to give me long and boring lectures upon Germaine Greer, the faulty Y chromosome and the drudgeries of housework and child-bearing’.


But of course there was no link between having an extra Y chromosome and extra “maleness”, because maleness is not defined by the Y chromosome. Stereotypically male traits (like aggression, even though not every XYY male in a prison was there because of violent crime) are a result of a complex interplay of nature and nurture, and the projection of the western concept of maleness onto the Y chromosome led to untold hours of research into a dead-end.



And this type of thinking was common with the X chromosome as well - Richardson describes how Klinefelter (XXY) males were seen as more “mother-dependent”, and tested to see if they were more like men or women in their verbal and social skills. XXY males look like men, and most men with the extra chromosome never realise they have it – yet researchers often interpreted their deviations from normal maleness (like larger breasts or smaller testes) not on objective terms, but as “feminised” male traits, in turn creating a stigma.


The last gasp of the sex chromosome theory came in the 1990s, with the discovery of the SRY gene on the Y chromosome – without it, the development of male gonads is impossible. It’s the only genetic tag found only in those who present as male, and is the best candidate to underpin the classic sex chromosome theory. But, as Richardson writes: “Today the SRY gene is understood as one among the many essential mammalian sex-determining factors that are involved in the genetic pathways of both testicular and ovarian determination. Mammals require cascades of gene product in proper dosages and at precise times to produce functioning male and female gonads, and researchers recognize a variety of healthy sexual phenotypes and sex determination pathways in humans.”


Ascribing biological sex based on the presence or absence of the SRY gene makes no sense when it’s only part of a massively complex network of other biological and environmental factors, especially when it’s not even necessary in every species of mammal. (And perhaps we owe our Victorian ancestors some belated recognition here for their more nuanced appreciation of sex development.) Many scientists strenuously argue that research into the genetics of race shouldn’t begin by cataloguing genomes by what we perceive to be different racial groups, to avoid projecting racial bias onto results – shouldn’t we do the same for sex?



Richardson points to several different groups as responsible for digging genetics out of its chromosome-determining rut: criminal psychologists, clinical physicians and, above all, feminists, whose interrogations of gender and sexuality (often from outside the scientific academy) created an important body of empirical evidence. Anne Fausto-Sterling and Jennifer Graves, in particular, as well as feminist science pressure groups like the Society for Women’s Health Research, are cited as important critics of the binary representation of biological or genetic sex - and critical to the post-2000 “conceptual shift” towards the complex model we know today, where the interplay of different genetic and environmental factors gives rise both to physical sex characteristics and aspects of the psychological feeling of gender identity.



Sex Itself is a comprehensive demolition of the very term “sex chromosomes” – a taxonomy from nearly a century ago, stumbling along half-alive in the public’s imagination but long overdue a visit to the glue factory:
Gender ideology is dynamic, persistent, and ever-present in genetic and genomic research on sex and gender; it cannot be surgically or permanently excised from the science. Rather than seeking to somehow eliminate gender in science, we are better advised to focus on modeling the many roles of gender assumptions in particular areas of the sciences to develop gender-critical methods for and approaches to science.



The question is not ‘how can we get all of this gender politics out of genetics?’ but rather ‘how can we enlarge and critically hone our ideas about gender, which are central to our scientific theories of sex?’



In the time between the discovery of Pluto in 1930 and its reclassification as a dwarf planet in 2006, it had only completed a third of a full orbit around the Sun; about the same amount of time sex chromosomes had to enjoy being mystical arbiters of all things sex. Worrying about the hurt feelings of a downgraded planet is as sensible as worrying about those for some clumps of genetic material in a cell – what matters is how we make sure that we interpret our world, and build our taxonomies, in such a way that improves our understanding of the world, not limit it.
______________________________________

It is not an ethical horror waiting to happen as UK Guardian knows----these have been the goals of MOVING FORWARD CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA these few decades of deregulated no oversight and accountability medical research much of which was done overseas in Foreign Economic Zones now simply coming back to a US with AFFORDABLE CARE ACT DEREGULATED, PREDATORY, AND PROFIT-DRIVEN global health and medical systems.
Please stop allowing FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT social progressive national media and global corporate health organizations sell this march towards SOCIAL BENEFIT FOR 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE----our access to all of what used to be helpful to our families facing reproductive difficulties are slowly being made too expensive to access soon for 99% of citizens. This is not a WOMAN issue only ----this is the ability of 99% of men towards SURVIVAL OF HUMAN SPECIES.

REAL left social progressives were shouting this a few decades ago---------

THIS IS WHERE SCIENCE FOR SCIENCE SAKE IS BECOMING ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY MALE and GLOBAL 1% MALE!

Designer babies: an ethical horror waiting to happen?


Nearly 40 years since the first ‘test-tube baby’, how close are we to editing out all of our genetic imperfections – and should we even try to do so?


Philip Ball
Sunday 8 January 2017 03.30 EST Last modified on Saturday 2 December 2017 10.35 EST



Comfortably seated in the fertility clinic with Vivaldi playing softly in the background, you and your partner are brought coffee and a folder. Inside the folder is an embryo menu. Each embryo has a description, something like this:



Embryo 78 – male
• No serious early onset diseases, but a carrier for phenylketonuria (a metabolic malfunction that can cause behavioural and mental disorders. Carriers just have one copy of the gene, so don’t get the condition themselves).



• Higher than average risk of type 2 diabetes and colon cancer.
• Lower than average risk of asthma and autism.
• Dark eyes, light brown hair, male pattern baldness.
• 40% chance of coming in the top half in SAT tests.




There are 200 of these embryos to choose from, all made by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) from you and your partner’s eggs and sperm. So, over to you. Which will you choose?



If there’s any kind of future for “designer babies”, it might look something like this. It’s a long way from the image conjured up when artificial conception, and perhaps even artificial gestation, were first mooted as a serious scientific possibility. Inspired by predictions about the future of reproductive technology by the biologists JBS Haldane and Julian Huxley in the 1920s, Huxley’s brother Aldous wrote a satirical novel about it.


That book was, of course, Brave New World, published in 1932. Set in the year 2540, it describes a society whose population is grown in vats in an impersonal central hatchery, graded into five tiers of different intelligence by chemical treatment of the embryos. There are no parents as such – families are considered obscene. Instead, the gestating fetuses and babies are tended by workers in white overalls, “their hands gloved with a pale corpse‑coloured rubber”, under white, dead lights.


Brave New World has become the inevitable reference point for all media discussion of new advances in reproductive technology. Whether it’s Newsweek reporting in 1978 on the birth of Louise Brown, the first “test-tube baby” (the inaccurate phrase speaks volumes) as a “cry round the brave new world”, or the New York Times announcing “The brave new world of three-parent IVF” in 2014, the message is that we are heading towards Huxley’s hatchery with its racks of tailor-made babies in their “numbered test tubes”.




The spectre of a harsh, impersonal and authoritarian dystopia always looms in these discussions of reproductive control and selection. Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, whose 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go, described children produced and reared as organ donors, last month warned that thanks to advances in gene editing, “we’re coming close to the point where we can, objectively in some sense, create people who are superior to others”.




But the prospect of genetic portraits of IVF embryos paints a rather different picture. If it happens at all, the aim will be not to engineer societies but to attract consumers. Should we allow that? Even if we do, would a list of dozens or even hundreds of embryos with diverse yet sketchy genetic endowments be of any use to anyone?

I don’t think we are going to see superman or a split in the species any time soon, because we just don't know enough


Henry Greely, bioethicist



The shadow of Frankenstein’s monster haunted the fraught discussion of IVF in the 1970s and 80s, and the misleading term “three-parent baby” to refer to embryos made by the technique of mitochondrial transfer – moving healthy versions of the energy-generating cell compartments called mitochondria from a donor cell to an egg with faulty, potentially fatal versions – insinuates that there must be something “unnatural” about the procedure.



Every new advance puts a fresh spark of life into Huxley’s monstrous vision. Ishiguro’s dire forecast was spurred by the gene-editing method called Crispr-Cas9, developed in 2012, which uses natural enzymes to target and snip genes with pinpoint accuracy. Thanks to Crispr-Cas9, it seems likely that gene therapies – eliminating mutant genes that cause some severe, mostly very rare diseases – might finally bear fruit, if they can be shown to be safe for human use. Clinical trials are now under way.



But modified babies?

Crispr-Cas9 has already been used to genetically modify (nonviable) human embryos in China, to see if it is possible in principle – the results were mixed. And Kathy Niakan of the Francis Crick Institute in the UK has been granted a licence by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to use Crispr-Cas9 on embryos a few days old to find out more about problems in these early stages of development that can lead to miscarriage and other reproductive problems.

Most countries have not yet legislated on genetic modification in human reproduction, but of those that have, all have banned it. The idea of using Crispr-Cas9 for human reproduction is largely rejected in principle by the medical research community. A team of scientists warned in Nature less than two years ago that genetic manipulation of the germ line (sperm and egg cells) by methods like Crispr-Cas9, even if focused initially on improving health, “could start us down a path towards non-therapeutic genetic enhancement”.


Besides, there seems to be little need for gene editing in reproduction. It would be a difficult, expensive and uncertain way to achieve what can mostly be achieved already in other ways, particularly by just selecting an embryo that has or lacks the gene in question. “Almost everything you can accomplish by gene editing, you can accomplish by embryo selection,” says bioethicist Henry Greely of Stanford University in California.



Because of unknown health risks and widespread public distrust of gene editing, bioethicist Ronald Green of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire says he does not foresee widespread use of Crispr-Cas9 in the next two decades, even for the prevention of genetic disease, let alone for designer babies. However, Green does see gene editing appearing on the menu eventually, and perhaps not just for medical therapies. “It is unavoidably in our future,” he says, “and I believe that it will become one of the central foci of our social debates later in this century and in the century beyond.” He warns that this might be accompanied by “serious errors and health problems as unknown genetic side effects in ‘edited’ children and populations begin to manifest themselves”.



For now, though, if there’s going to be anything even vaguely resembling the popular designer-baby fantasy, Greely says it will come from embryo selection, not genetic manipulation. Embryos produced by IVF will be genetically screened – parts or all of their DNA will be read to deduce which gene variants they carry – and the prospective parents will be able to choose which embryos to implant in the hope of achieving a pregnancy. Greely foresees that new methods of harvesting or producing human eggs, along with advances in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) of IVF embryos, will make selection much more viable and appealing, and thus more common, in 20 years’ time.



PGD is already used by couples who know that they carry genes for specific inherited diseases so that they can identify embryos that do not have those genes. The testing, generally on three- to five-day-old embryos, is conducted in around 5% of IVF cycles in the US. In the UK it is performed under licence from the HFEA, which permits screening for around 250 diseases including thalassemia, early-onset Alzheimer’s and cystic fibrosis.



As a way of “designing” your baby, PGD is currently unattractive. “Egg harvesting is unpleasant and risky and doesn’t give you that many eggs,” says Greely, and the success rate for implanted embryos is still typically about one in three. But that will change, he says, thanks to developments that will make human eggs much more abundant and conveniently available, coupled to the possibility of screening their genomes quickly and cheaply.

Advances in methods for reading the genetic code recorded in our chromosomes are going to make it a routine possibility for every one of us – certainly, every newborn child – to have our genes sequenced. “In the next 10 years or so, the chances are that many people in rich countries will have large chunks of their genetic information in their electronic medical records,” says Greely.



But using genetic data to predict what kind of person an embryo would become is far more complicated than is often implied. Seeking to justify unquestionably important research on the genetic basis of human health, researchers haven’t done much to dispel simplistic ideas about how genes make us. Talk of “IQ genes”, “gay genes” and “musical genes” has led to a widespread perception that there is a straightforward one-to-one relationship between our genes and our traits. In general, it’s anything but.



There are thousands of mostly rare and nasty genetic diseases that can be pinpointed to a specific gene mutation. Most more common diseases or medical predispositions – for example, diabetes, heart disease or certain types of cancer – are linked to several or even many genes, can’t be predicted with any certainty, and depend also on environmental factors such as diet.


When it comes to more complex things like personality and intelligence, we know very little. Even if they are strongly inheritable – it’s estimated that up to 80% of intelligence, as measured by IQ, is inherited – we don’t know much at all about which genes are involved, and not for want of looking.


At best, Greely says, PGD might tell a prospective parent things like “there’s a 60% chance of this child getting in the top half at school, or a 13% chance of being in the top 10%”. That’s not much use.


We might do better for “cosmetic” traits such as hair or eye colour. Even these “turn out to be more complicated than a lot of people thought,” Greely says, but as the number of people whose genomes have been sequenced increases, the predictive ability will improve substantially.



Ewan Birney, director of the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge, points out that, even if other countries don’t choose to constrain and regulate PGD in the way the HFEA does in the UK, it will be very far from a crystal ball.


Nearly anything you can measure for humans, he says, can be studied through genetics, and analysing the statistics for huge numbers of people often reveals some genetic component. But that information “is not very predictive on an individual basis,” says Birney. “I’ve had my genome sequenced on the cheap, and it doesn’t tell me very much. We’ve got to get away from the idea that your DNA is your destiny.”


If the genetic basis of attributes like intelligence and musicality is too thinly spread and unclear to make selection practical, then tweaking by genetic manipulation certainly seems off the menu too. “I don’t think we are going to see superman or a split in the species any time soon,” says Greely, “because we just don’t know enough and are unlikely to for a long time – or maybe for ever.”



If this is all “designer babies” could mean even in principle – freedom from some specific but rare diseases, knowledge of rather trivial aspects of appearance, but only vague, probabilistic information about more general traits like health, attractiveness and intelligence – will people go for it in large enough numbers to sustain an industry?



Greely suspects, even if it is used at first only to avoid serious genetic diseases, we need to start thinking hard about the options we might be faced with. “Choices will be made,” he says, “and if informed people do not participate in making those choices, ignorant people will make them.”

Green thinks that technological advances could make “design” increasingly versatile. In the next 40-50 years, he says, “we’ll start seeing the use of gene editing and reproductive technologies for enhancement: blond hair and blue eyes, improved athletic abilities, enhanced reading skills or numeracy, and so on.”



He’s less optimistic about the consequences, saying that we will then see social tensions “as the well-to-do exploit technologies that make them even better off”, increasing the relatively worsened health status of the world’s poor. As Greely points out, a perfectly feasible 10-20% improvement in health via PGD, added to the comparable advantage that wealth already brings, could lead to a widening of the health gap between rich and poor, both within a society and between nations.



Others doubt that there will be any great demand for embryo selection, especially if genetic forecasts remain sketchy about the most desirable traits. “Where there is a serious problem, such as a deadly condition, or an existing obstacle, such as infertility, I would not be surprised to see people take advantage of technologies such as embryo selection,” says law professor and bioethicist R Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin. “But we already have evidence that people do not flock to technologies when they can conceive without assistance.”


The poor take-up of sperm banks offering “superior” sperm, she says, already shows that. For most women, “the emotional significance of reproduction outweighs any notion of ‘optimisation’”. Charo feels that “our ability to love one another with all our imperfections and foibles outweighs any notion of ‘improving’ our children through genetics”.


All the same, societies are going to face tough choices about how to regulate an industry that offers PGD with an ever-widening scope. “Technologies are very amoral,” says Birney. “Societies have to decide how to use them” – and different societies will make different choices.


One of the easiest things to screen for is sex. Gender-specific abortion is formally forbidden in most countries, although it still happens in places such as China and India where there has been a strong cultural preference for boys. But prohibiting selection by gender is another matter. How could it even be implemented and policed? By creating some kind of quota system?


And what would selection against genetic disabilities do to those people who have them? “They have a lot to be worried about here,” says Greely. “In terms of whether society thinks I should have been born, but also in terms of how much medical research there is into diseases, how well understood it is for practitioners and how much social support there is.”
Once selection beyond avoidance of genetic disease becomes an option – and it does seem likely – the ethical and legal aspects are a minefield. When is it proper for governments to coerce people into, or prohibit them from, particular choices, such as not selecting for a disability? How can one balance individual freedoms and social consequences?


“The most important consideration for me,” says Charo, “is to be clear about the distinct roles of personal morality, by which individuals decide whether to seek out technological assistance, versus the role of government, which can prohibit, regulate or promote technology.”



She adds: “Too often we discuss these technologies as if personal morality or particular religious views are a sufficient basis for governmental action. But one must ground government action in a stronger set of concerns about promoting the wellbeing of all individuals while permitting the widest range of personal liberty of conscience and choice.”


“For better or worse, human beings will not forgo the opportunity to take their evolution into their own hands,” says Green. “Will that make our lives happier and better? I’m far from sure.”

The simplest and surest way to “design” a baby is not to construct its genome by pick’n’mix gene editing but to produce a huge number of embryos and read their genomes to find the one that most closely matches your desires.


Two technological advances are needed for this to happen, says bioethicist Henry Greely of Stanford University in California. The production of embryos for IVF must become easier, more abundant and less unpleasant. And gene sequencing must be fast and cheap enough to reveal the traits an embryo will have. Put them together and you have “Easy PGD” (preimplantation genetic diagnosis): a cheap and painless way of generating large numbers of human embryos and then screening their entire genomes for desired characteristics.



“To get much broader use of PGD, you need a better way to get eggs,” Greely says. “The more eggs you can get, the more attractive PGD becomes.” One possibility is a one-off medical intervention that extracts a slice of a woman’s ovary and freezes it for future ripening and harvesting of eggs. It sounds drastic, but would not be much worse than current egg-extraction and embryo-implantation methods. And it could give access to thousands of eggs for future use.


An even more dramatic approach would be to grow eggs from stem cells – the cells from which all other tissue types can be derived. Some stem cells are present in umbilical blood, which could be harvested at a person’s birth and frozen for later use to grow organs – or eggs.



Even mature cells that have advanced beyond the stem-cell stage and become specific tissue types can be returned to a stem-cell-like state by treating them with biological molecules called growth factors. Last October, a team in Japan reported that they had made mouse eggs this way from skin cells, and fertilised them to create apparently healthy and fertile mouse pups.


Thanks to technological advances, the cost of human whole-genome sequencing has plummeted. In 2009 it cost around $50,000; today it is most like $1,500, which is why several private companies can now offer this service. In a few decades it could cost just a few dollars per genome. Then it becomes feasible to think of PGD for hundreds of embryos at a time.


“The science for safe and effective Easy PGD is likely to exist some time in the next 20 to 40 years,” says Greely. He thinks it will then become common for children to be conceived through IVF using selected genomes. He forecasts that this will lead to “the coming obsolescence of sex” for procreation.