The Brexit endgame begins

The UK parliament has passed the third reading of the bill to ban a no-deal Brexit by a margin of 327-299 and it now goes to the House of Lords for approval before it can be signed into law by the Queen. In response to this second major defeat in the two days he has been in parliament as prime minister, Boris Johnson has called for a new general election to be held on October 15. But under a law that was adopted during David Cameron’s period as prime minister, parliament needs to vote by a two-thirds majority to be dissolved before its scheduled five-year term ends, which means that Johnson needs opposition support for the move. The rules also say that at least 25 days must pass between dissolution and the election. But Johnson’s motion for dissolution only garnered 298 votes, well short of the 434 needed, thus handing him his third consecutive defeat.
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Jeremy Corbyn’s powerful speech in parliament

In yesterday’s debate, in which Boris Johnson lost the vote on the SO24 motion despite his threats to rebel Conservative MPs that they would not be the party’s candidates at the next election if they voted in favor of it, Jeremy Corbyn gave a powerful performance that exposed the reckless behavior of the government. As Corbyn said, “Boris Johnson’s government has no mandate, no morals and, as of today, no majority.”

Here are two short excerpts.


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The puzzling fervor of some anti-gay gays

It has become fairly common to hear that some of the men (and it is usually men) who furiously denounce homosexuality are actually closeted gays. But some, like McKrae Game, go to extreme lengths to deny their sexuality. He created and led Hope for Wholeness, one of the many so-called conversion therapy programs that promise to transform gays into heterosexuals.

He was gay when he received counseling from a therapist who assured him he could overcome his same-sex attractions.

He was gay when he married a woman and founded what would become one of the nation’s most expansive conversion therapy ministries.

He was gay when thousands of people just like him sought his organization’s counsel, all with the goal of erasing the part of themselves Game and his associates preached would send them to hell.

For two decades, he led Hope for Wholeness, a faith-based conversion therapy program in South Carolina’s Upstate. Conversion therapy is a discredited practice intended to suppress or eradicate a person’s LGBTQ identity through counseling or ministry.

But the group’s board of directors abruptly fired Game in November 2017.

In June, Game publicly announced he was gay and severed his ties with the organization.

Now, the man once billed as a leading voice in the conversion therapy movement is trying to come to terms with the harm he inflicted while also learning to embrace a world and community he assailed for most of his adult life.

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Yet another day of drama over Brexit

The UK parliament returned to session today with prime minister Boris Johnson facing sharp questioning over what he is doing with Brexit. One former Conservative cabinet minister has crossed over to the Liberal Democrats, meaning that Johnson has lost his slim one-vote majority, though given the fluidity of the shifting alliances, whether that means anything significant is not clear. Complicating matters is that there are some people in the opposition who are not opposed to a no-deal Brexit while there are other Conservative MPs who say they are opposed to it, making the situation hard to read. Adding to the chaos is that Johnson says he is making progress on Brexit talks while EU leaders say that the talks are going nowhere. There is also confusion on whether Johnson will call for a general election on October 14, before the Brexit deadline of October 31. An election would be a gamble for all sides, since it is hard to read the mood of the electorate on this issue.
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A major success against Ebola

Researchers have made astonishing progress in developing a drug that combats Ebola that has been seen as disease that carried an immediate death sentence. What is amazing is that the drug was put through clinical trials under extremely difficult circumstances because the disease causes widespread panic since it is so highly contagious and lethal.

Two Ebola drugs have proven so effective in a clinical trial that researchers will make the treatments available to anyone infected with the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where Ebola has killed nearly 1,900 people over the past year.

The survival rate for people who received either drug shortly after infection, when levels of the virus in their blood were low, was 90%.

“It’s really good news,” says Sabue Mulangu, an infectious-disease researcher at the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) in Kinshasa in the DRC, and an investigator on the trial. “Now we will be able to stress to people that more than 90% of people survive if they come into the [Ebola treatment unit] early and get this treatment.”
…

“I’m in awe about what seemed to be an impossible clinical trial to run,” says Sumathi Sivapalasingam, a senior director at Regeneron. “The team did this in such a complex emergency and still, the data quality is exceptional.”

The benefits of this drug are enormous, not least because it will also help to protect those health workers who run great risks in treating the infected.

The 1619 Project on the legacy of slavery

When the modern history of the USA is told, it often begins with ships arriving here, such as Christopher Columbus in 1492 or settlers arriving in Jamestown in 1607 or the Pilgrims arriving at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Each of those arrivals is used as a symbolic marker, a portent of future events. But there is one major arrival that has been ignored. It is the arrival in August 1619 of the first enslaved peoples, when 20 to 30 of them (the exact number is unknown) were brought ashore. Thus began the history of slavery in what became the USA. This marked the beginning of events that have had a lasting impact on America down through the ages and its legacy manifests itself everywhere today if one only knows how and where to look.
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How dare he!

This headline from the right-wing site Breitbart was amusing, giving prominence to something that should be taken for granted.

The nerve of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro! Surely he should know that US troops have the right to enter any country at any time and for any (or no) reason and that the only appropriate response is to greet them as liberators and welcome them with flowers? This is why anyone who attacks American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is automatically branded a ‘terrorist’ and thus subject to the harshest treatment.

Now on the other hand, if any foreign troops were to invade the US, …

Why people stick with the status quo and how to change their minds

In their book Merchants of Doubt that I reviewed very favorably here, authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway make the case that those people and business interests that oppose the scientific consensus that goes against their business and ideological interests (like the perils of smoking tobacco, second-hand smoke, acid-rain, the ozone hole, and climate change) base their opposition strategy on exploiting the way people make decisions.
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How to win with grace

Defending US Open champion Naomi Osaka defeated 15-year old Coco Gauff 6-3, 6-0 in the third round of this year’s US Open. But what people are talking about is what happened after the match ended.

After a warm handshake and a hug, the 21 year-old walked over to the 15 year-old and asked if they could do the on-court interview together. Gauff initially refused as tears welled in her eyes, but Osaka insisted and her beaten opponent agreed. After trading forehands and fist-pumps across the net all evening, they walked over to the same side of the court together.

“I saw that she was kind of tearing up a little,” said Osaka. “Then it reminded me how young she was. I was just thinking, like, it would be nice for her to address the people that came and watched her play. They were cheering for her. Yeah, I mean, for me, it was just something that was, I don’t know, instinctive I guess.”
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For Gauff, the match was a learning experience, but the moment the world number one took her under her wing was one to cherish.

“I think she really showed sportsmanship tonight,” said Gauff. “I mean, I wasn’t expecting it. I’m glad that I was able to experience that moment. I’m glad the crowd was kind of helping me and her. She was crying, she won. I was crying. Everybody was crying.”

You can watch the post game interview with both players.

Mass shootings are getting more and more incomprehensible

We have another mass shooting, killing seven and injuring 21 in Texas again, soon after another mass shooting in that state. But while the El Paso shooting was planned and deliberate (the shooter drove 600 miles to get to his targeted group of Hispanic people) this shooting seems to have been triggered by the most inconsequential of acts.

Soon after 3pm on Saturday a man was stopped by state troopers for failing to signal a turn. The man opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle then fled, hijacking a mail truck and shooting people at random.
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The latest suspect, described as a white male in his 30s, was chased and shot dead outside a cinema more than 10 miles from where he was pulled over.

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