Missing From Science Class

- By The New York Times Editorial Board - December 10, 2013

The main and big reason America is falling behind other countries in science and math is the deliberate dumbing down of the public, using all aspects of our lives, from education to entertainment, by the fascist bankers and Wall Street goons. Obviously in such vast and sinister social efforts by the criminal elites, women and minorities, huge chunks of our population have been written off effectively as uninterested in those fields, or incapable of succeeding in science and math.

Women make up nearly half the work force but have just 26 percent of science, technology, engineering or math jobs, according to the Census Bureau. Blacks make up 11 percent of the workforce but just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make up nearly 15 percent of the work force but hold 7 percent of those positions. There is no question that women and minorities have made progress in science and math in the last several decades, but their gains have been slow and halting. And in the fast-growing field of computer science, women’s representation has actually declined in the last 20 years, while minorities have made relatively small gains.

These jobs come with above-average pay and offer workers a wide choice of professions. Opening them to women and minorities would help reduce corrosive income inequality between whites and other groups, and would narrow the gender gap in wages. Improving the representation of women and minorities would also enrich American scientific research and development, because they will add a different perspective to workplaces currently dominated by white and Asian men.

Moreover, the people who do well in these professions will be much more likely to lead the industry in the future and make decisions that affect thousands of workers and customers. Many technology companies, including Twitter until recently, have no women on their board of directors, and few blacks and Hispanics in senior management roles, in part because too few girls and minorities are becoming programmers and engineers.

What’s Holding Them Back

The biggest career disadvantage faced by many lower-income blacks and Hispanics is their limited access to a good education. Compared with upper-income Americans, a greater percentage are raised by parents who have not gone to college or graduated from high school, and more grow up with single parents who do not have the time or resources to enrich their children’s education. Moreover, a smaller percentage of minority children attend enriching prekindergarten programs, which studies have shown aids the development of cognitive and analytical skills that are needed to do well in science and math. A recent study showed that nearly half of Hispanic 4-year-olds are not enrolled in any preschool classes. While more than 60 percent of black 4-year-olds are enrolled, most of them are in programs of low or mediocre quality.

Schools that serve minority and lower-income neighborhoods tend to employ teachers with fewer years of experience and less specialized training in math and science than schools in white and upper-income neighborhoods, according to a 2012 National Science Foundation report. By contrast, developed nations like Germany, South Korea and Belgium tend to devote more resources like teachers to schools that serve their most disadvantaged students than on schools that serve advantaged children, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Lower Expectations

Entrenched stereotypes about who does well in science and math also work against minorities in classrooms. Too many teachers give up easily on them simply because they are not expected to do as well as white students. Despite those challenges, many minorities still enroll in science and math programs in college but fewer of them earn a degree in those programs in five years — 22.1 percent for Hispanics and 18.4 percent for blacks — than whites (33 percent) and Asians (42 percent), according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. Many of those who leave are simply ill-prepared for the rigors of college-level math and science. Others feel socially unwelcome because they make up a tiny minority in largely white and Asian science and engineering departments. They also have far fewer role models to look up to.

Unlike minority children, girls as a whole do about as well as or better than boys as measured by their high school grade point averages in science and math. And in the last several decades, women have made great gains in fields like biology, chemistry, psychology and sociology; they now earn a majority of undergraduate degrees and a growing proportion of advanced degrees in life sciences.

But women have made far fewer gains in physical sciences and more math-intensive fields. When making choices about their majors and careers, many young women rule out engineering and computer science partly because they are uninterested, feel ill-prepared for them or because society identifies these domains as male. Women who do earn degrees in these fields leave those professions at much higher rates than men. And the women who graduate with degrees in engineering and computer science are less likely to be employed than men.

In many cases, women seem to have internalized society’s belief that they are incapable of mastering these fields as well as men. Carol Dweck, a professor at Stanford, and other psychologists have found that female students who are made to believe that math ability is innate have lower scores and are less likely to study math than girls who believe that math skills can be acquired through hard work. Another study showed that female college students got more questions right on math tests when they were told beforehand that “college students are good at math” than when they were told “women are bad at math,” which suggests stereotypes undermine women’s performance.

Insufficient Resources

These gaps could be reduced if every child had access to free public preschools. Earlier this year, President Obama proposed making high-quality preschools available to 4-year-old children of families with incomes of up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line, at a 10-year cost of $75 billion. Studies have shown that every $1 invested in preschools saves society $7 in the future through lower spending on remedial education, higher productivity and less crime.

The country should also make sure that the schools that primarily serve minorities have the resources and support they need to hire qualified teachers so their students are not at a disadvantage relative to children in more affluent areas. States will need to take the lead to make this happen, but the federal government can also assist through grants and other support.

Conventional Teaching Methods

The Knowledge Is Power Program, which operates 141 public charter schools around the country, has effectively used smaller class sizes, longer school days and summer school to help lagging minority students improve test scores in math, reading and science. Teachers at KIPP schools maintain high expectations of all students, working intensively one-on-one with children until they comprehend every important concept. Though the program has been criticized for its dropout rates and admissions policies, one recent independent study of KIPP’s approach showed that middle school students who spent three years in its schools had math scores that on average put them 11 months ahead of where they would have been had they not joined the school; they were 14 months ahead in science achievement.

Teachers also need to make science and math education much more practical and hands-on. Girls have shown much more engagement in subjects when they learn the connection between what they are studying and real-world problems. That may partly explain why so many talented girls prefer to go into life sciences, where that link has generally been more apparent.

Not Enough Role Models

Groups like the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering have been showing minorities and girls that they can imagine themselves as scientists or engineers, providing role models to speak to middle school students and helping high schools set up engineering academies. A five-year program funded by the National Science Foundation at Bowie State University, a historically black university in Maryland, provides training and mentorship to high school science and math teachers and a summer science academy to 10th graders.

For both women and minorities, academic and social support is critical. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County has programs for minorities and women that provide students with scholarships, mentorship, internships and involvement in cutting-edge research. Students enrolled in its programs are much more likely to graduate than other comparable students.

More than half of the American population will be made up of minorities in 2043. And the number of women who are the primary or sole earner in their families is growing. Those trends make it imperative that one of the most dynamic sectors of our economy no longer remain a male and largely white and Asian domain.

Hostage To False Flag Terror: The Link Between The October Surprise And The September Surprise

- By Saman Mohammadi – The Excavator January 16, 2012

Former CIA counter-terrorism specialist Philip Giraldi gives a picture of “What War With Iran Might Look Like,” concluding that, “A minor engagement between American and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf,” will ignite World War III.

We must ask ourselves: how did we get here? Is World War III a product of destiny, or is it by design? Establishing the truth of history is essential if we want to avert World War III that could be triggered at any moment in the Persian Gulf if Iran is attacked.

The history of the U.S.-Iranian crisis seems complicated and challenging, but it is really easy to understand. It is a relationship based on secret power and conspiracy, not truth and transparency. There are treacherous and fascist elements in the American and Iranian governments who desire mass ignorance and war as opposed to friendship and peace.

They do not want America and Iran to restore diplomatic and trade ties because peace and friendship harms a variety of private interests in both countries. Peace is a threat to the military-industrial complexes and the anti-democratic ruling elites in both America and Iran.

In the alternative media community, we all agree with the basic premise that modern wars are politically constructed by a few men and that false flag terrorism are at the heart of them because they generate immediate public support for what otherwise would be unpopular wars.

The war between America and Iran is no different. Two false flag operations have been engineered to bring about this war of Armageddon: the October crisis (November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981) and the September 11 state terror attacks.

Both events created a false narrative of a clash of civilizations – the West vs. Islam – the resolution of which is a world war that will ultimately end with the use of nuclear weapons by the United States against Iran to force it into submission.

The first event was conceived from inside the dark heart of the CIA and shadow U.S. intelligence community in 1976. For the second event the services of the Israeli state were used, as indicated by the numerous eyewitness accounts of dancing Israeli spies on the streets of New York City on 9/11.

II. The False Flag Origins of The U.S.-Iranian Conflict

The false flag operation that is the Iran-U.S. hostage crisis was overseen by the George H. W. Bush faction in the CIA and the Ronald Reagan campaign in collaboration with elements in Iran’s SAVAK and top Iranian Islamic fundamentalists, who were, and still are, CIA assets.

Bush and Reagan, who represented the interests of the private banksters and new world order, and Khomeini, who represented the same interests, propped up each other into the seat of power at the expense of the security, liberty, and prosperity of their countries.

Thus, the Reagan revolution and the Khomeini revolution were revolutions that attacked the basic laws, freedoms, and traditions of their countries. The Bush-Reagan coup and the Khomeini revolution were evil and totalitarian in nature. And these evil twins came into being through the same political birth canal: the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis.

The private cliques who hijacked America and Iran for the past 30+ years have created a nonsensical political and diplomatic separation between the two governments, which benefits their private interests but harms the national security interests of both countries.

According to Iranian researcher Fara Mansoor, the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis was not a spontaneous act by Iranian mobs or a senseless act devised solely by the Khomeini regime. Rather, it was a politically manufactured event by the Bush-led CIA and top Iranian Islamic fundamentalists that was intended to promote the political goals of the Bush-Reagan coalition and Khomeini’s regime simultaneously.

List of the three political goals:

1. Sabotage and destabilize the Carter administration, and get Bush-Reagan into the White House.

2. Prop up the Khomeini regime and destroy all political opposition to the Islamic Republic.

3. Establish Iran as a permanent enemy of the United States and vice versa, in order to bring about a future conflict and justify the existence of anti-democratic political and legal structures within the two nations. There were definitely other motives for keeping Iran and America isolated from each other, but those are two big ones.

Clearly, the plan worked. Carter’s presidency was weakened by the hostage crisis and allowed Bush and Reagan to seize the White House in a dishonest and undemocratic fashion. And Khomeini’s loyalists consolidated power by dominating the narrative in Iran and violently exterminating opposition voices in Iranian society.

The left in Iran and America was basically destroyed by Bush and Khomeini. The Iranian left was impotent in the face of the regime’s propaganda line: “If you are not for the Islamic Republic, then you are for the Great Satan and against Iran.”

In essence, the American Deep State gave birth to the Iranian Deep State by instigating the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis for selfish private interests and domestic political reasons. And the repercussions of this politically manufactured crisis are felt to this day, with the United States and Iran on the verge of war in the Persian Gulf.

The fake U.S.-Iran hostage crisis is one of the best historical examples of what former Canadian diplomat, and professor Peter Dale Scott calls “deep events,” which he says are used by the secret National Security State to “build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy.” (Scott, ‘The Doomsday Project and Deep Events: JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11,‘ Global Research, November 22, 2011).

Mansoor discussed his groundbreaking and penetrating research into this deep event and the secret relationship between the U.S. intelligence community and Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist regime on January 24, 1993, on the radio show of American talk show host Dave Emory. The YouTube channel “johndcqr” has archived Emory’s interview with Mansoor. Type in the search box “An Interview With Fara Mansoor.” Also, you can download the historic interview as a MP3 file on Emory’s website.

Regarding his interview with Mansoor and his research into the connections between the Bush-led CIA and the Khomeini regime, Emory wrote:

“Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the land­mark research of Fara Man­soor, a mem­ber of the Iran­ian resis­tance whose his­toric research on the rise of the Khome­ini regime doc­u­ments the deci­sive role of the United States in devel­op­ing Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist forces in that coun­try as the anti-communist suc­ces­sors to the Shah’s gov­ern­ment. Fara has doc­u­mented that U.S. Ambas­sador to Iran, Richard Helms, learned that the Shah had can­cer in 1974. For­mer Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Helms promptly informed the CIA and Depart­ment of State with the result that, by 1976, George Bush’s CIA was actively sup­port­ing and groom­ing the Khome­ini forces.

The sub­se­quent takeover of the U.S. embassy in Teheran, the with­hold­ing of the U.S. hostages until after Pres­i­dent Carter’s defeat was assured, the Khome­ini gov­ern­ment itself and the Iran-Contra scan­dal proper were all out­growths of this pro­found and long-standing relationship.

It should be noted that parts of this rela­tion­ship have been mis­un­der­stood as what has become known as “the Octo­ber Sur­prise.” Although there was, mas­sive col­lu­sion between the Reagan-Bush cam­paign and the Khome­ini forces dur­ing the 1980 elec­tion cam­paign, there was no “deal” cut dur­ing the cam­paign. Rather, the “deal” was part of a covert oper­a­tion begun years before and the col­lu­sion dur­ing the cam­paign was an out­growth of it.”

Here are the key quotes by Mansoor in his interview with Emory:

“In 1975, Richard Helms learned of the Shah’s cancer, contrary to what generally is believed, that the Carter administration did not know about the Shah’s cancer until very late in 1978, 79′. George Bush, through Richard Helms, learned of the cancer at least by 1976, when he was a Director of the CIA.

And this knowledge was used by the pro-Bush loyalists at the CIA and intelligence community in the United States to quietly prepare for the Shah’s departure. And Carter actually did not know this and blindly was following his policy of respect for human rights, and while that policy was going on, the pro-Bush faction of the intelligence community were pursuing their own private foreign policy to keep Iran intact and Communist-free. And to that end we have talked that they privately allied themselves with Islamic fundamentalists of Khomeini. And that alliance promoted the Islamic Republic of Iran and engineered the hostage crisis.

The hostage crisis was used as a political management tool to achieve their objectives. So that so-called crisis was a created crisis by them to consolidate Khomeini’s control of Iran and that paved the way for George Bush and Ronald Reagan to get into the White House by destabilizing President Carter.”

The research by Mansoor into the roots of the Iran-U.S. hostage crisis is significant because it helps to discredit the current historical narrative of the U.S.-Iranian conflict which is contributing to massive misunderstanding and resentment on both sides.

It appears that both the American people and the Iranian people are victims of a long political charade that is being coordinated from the very top by treacherous elements in the deep states of America and Iran who care only about money and power.

Mansoor’s research suggests that the death of freedom and democracy in Iran is deeply connected to the death of freedom and democracy in America and the West. What has taken the place of national democratic systems is a global military-industrial complex that has links to the deep states in America, Iran, Israel, England, Pakistan, Turkey, and other nations.

Under the secret reign of the global military-industrial complex, war and profits come before the security of states and the prosperity of the people. Crooked thieves run the show in Tehran, Washington, London, and Tel Aviv, who target political dissent by labeling it treason and terrorism.

There are rats and snakes in charge in Tehran, Washington, and Tel Aviv. They have tried to kill the lion spirit of man and the lion spirit of their nations. The rat-like ruling elites of America, Israel, and Iran hate the noble and compassionate qualities of civilization. Such qualities create peace and friendship between nations, and this is against their interests.

What threatens the universal rights of man and life on earth in this century is not a fake and manufactured clash of civilizations between the West and radical Islam, but a very real destruction of all civilizations by an international banking elite who are fascists at the core.

Through acts of false flag terrorism and manufactured global crises, they are cold-bloodedly murdering humanity and democracy in order to establish a despotic and anti-human world civilization upon the ruins of this demonic and dead age.

Source:

Posted in Hidden and Revisionist History, Iran

Former Pro-GMO Scientist Speaks Out On The Real Dangers of Genetically Engineered Food

- By Thierry Vrain - May 11, 2013

I retired 10 years ago after a long career as a research scientist for Agriculture Canada. When I was on the payroll, I was the designated scientist of my institute to address public groups and reassure them that genetically engineered crops and foods were safe. There is, however, a growing body of scientific research – done mostly in Europe, Russia, and other countries – showing that diets containing engineered corn or soya cause serious health problems in laboratory mice and rats.

I don’t know if I was passionate about it but I was knowledgeable. I defended the side of technological advance, of science and progress.

In the last 10 years I have changed my position. I started paying attention to the flow of published studies coming from Europe, some from prestigious labs and published in prestigious scientific journals, that questioned the impact and safety of engineered food.

I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat.

There are a number of scientific studies that have been done for Monsanto by universities in the U.S., Canada, and abroad. Most of these studies are concerned with the field performance of the engineered crops, and of course they find GMOs safe for the environment and therefore safe to eat.

Individuals should be encouraged to make their decisions on food safety based on scientific evidence and personal choice, not on emotion or the personal opinions of others.

We should all take these studies seriously and demand that government agencies replicate them rather than rely on studies paid for by the biotech companies.

The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.

There are no long-term feeding studies performed in these countries to demonstrate the claims that engineered corn and soya are safe. All we have are scientific studies out of Europe and Russia, showing that rats fed engineered food die prematurely.

These studies show that proteins produced by engineered plants are different than what they should be. Inserting a gene in a genome using this technology can and does result in damaged proteins. The scientific literature is full of studies showing that engineered corn and soya contain toxic or allergenic proteins.

Genetic engineering is 40 years old. It is based on the naive understanding of the genome based on the One Gene – one protein hypothesis of 70 years ago, that each gene codes for a single protein. The Human Genome project completed in 2002 showed that this hypothesis is wrong.

The whole paradigm of the genetic engineering technology is based on a misunderstanding. Every scientist now learns that any gene can give more than one protein and that inserting a gene anywhere in a plant eventually creates rogue proteins. Some of these proteins are obviously allergenic or toxic.

I have drafted a reply to Paul Horgen’s letter to the Comox Valley Environmental Council. It is my wish that it goes viral as to educate as many people as possible rapidly. Any and all social media is fine by me. This can also be used as a briefing note for the councilors of AVICC or anywhere else. Thank you for your help. - Click here for original source with replies from Dr. Paul Horgen

-- Thierry Vrain, Innisfree Farm

 

I am turning you towards a recent compilation (June 2012) of over 500 government reports and scientific articles published in peer reviewed Journals, some of them with the highest recognition in the world. Like The Lancet in the medical field, or Advances in Food and Nutrition Research, or Biotechnology, or Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, European Journal of Histochemistry, Journal of Proteome Research, etc … This compilation was made by a genetic engineer in London, and an investigative journalist who summarized the gist of the publications for the lay public.

GMO Myths and Truths – an evidence based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops. A report of 120 pages, it can be downloaded for free from Earth Open Source. “GMO Myths and Truths” disputes the claims of the Biotech industry that GM crops yield better and more nutritious food, that they save on the use of pesticides, have no environmental impact whatsoever and are perfectly safe to eat. Genetic pollution is so prevalent in North and South America where GM crops are grown that the fields of conventional and organic grower are regularly contaminated with engineered pollen and losing certification. The canola and flax export market from Canada to Europe (a few hundreds of millions of dollars) were recently lost because of genetic pollution.

Did I mention superweeds, when RoundUp crops pass their genes on to RoundUp Resistant weeds. Apparently over 50% of fields in the USA are now infested and the growers have to go back to use other toxic herbicides such as 2-4 D. Many areas of Ontario and Alberta are also infested. The transgenes are also transferred to soil bacteria. A chinese study published last year shows that an ampicillin resistance transgene was transferred from local engineered crops to soil bacteria, that eventually found their way into the rivers. The transgenes are also transferred to humans. Volunteers who ate engineered soybeans had undigested DNA in their intestine and their bacterial flora was expressing the soybean transgenes in the form of antibiotic resistance. This is genetic pollution to the extreme, particularly when antibiotic resistance is fast becoming a serious global health risk. I can only assume the American Medical Association will soon recognize its poorly informed judgement.

In 2009 the American Academy of Environmental Medicine called for a moratorium of GM foods, safety testing and labeling. Their review of the available literature at the time noted that animals show serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system. Monsanto writes “There is no need to test the safety of GM foods”. So long as the engineered protein is safe, foods from GM crops are substantially equivalent and they cannot pose any health risks.”

The US Food and Drug Administration waived all levels of safety testing in 1996 before approving the commercialization of these crops. Nothing more than voluntary research is necessary, and the FDA does not even want to see the results. And there is certainly no need to publish any of it. If you remember 1996, the year that the first crops were commercialized, the research scientists of the US FDA all predicted that transgenic crops would have unpredictable hard to detect side effects, allergens, toxins, nutritional effects, new diseases. That was published in 2004 in Biotechnology if you recall seeing it.

I know well that Canada does not perform long term feeding studies as they do in Europe. The only study I am aware of from Canada is from the Sherbrooke Hospital in 2011, when doctors found that 93% of pregnant women and 82% of the fetuses tested had the protein pesticide in their blood. This is a protein recognized in its many forms as mildly to severely allergenic. There is no information on the role played by rogue proteins created by the process of inserting transgenes in the middle of a genome. But there is a lot of long term feeding studies reporting serious health problems in mice and rats.

The results of the first long term feeding studies of lab rats reported last year in Food and Chemical Toxicology show that they developed breast cancer in mid life and showed kidney and liver damage. The current statistic I read is that North Americans are eating 193 lbs of GMO food on average annually. That includes the children I assume, not that I would use that as a scare tactic. But obviously I wrote at length because I think there is cause for alarm and it is my duty to educate the public.

One argument I hear repeatedly is that nobody has been sick or died after a meal (or a trillion meals since 1996) of GM food. Nobody gets ill from smoking a pack of cigarette either. But it sure adds up, and we did not know that in the 1950s before we started our wave of epidemics of cancer. Except this time it is not about a bit of smoke, it’s the whole food system that is of concern. The corporate interest must be subordinated to the public interest, and the policy of substantial equivalence must be scrapped as it is clearly untrue.

Thierry Vrain is a former research scientist for Agriculture Canada. He now promotes awareness of the dangers of genetically modified foods.

Originally published in: Prevent Disease