London Grenfell Tower disaster commemorated

By Lamiat Sabin in England:

Friday, June 15, 2018

Grenfell Tower memorials and marches held to mark anniversary

Firefighters‘ union says authorities who failed to keep residents safe should be prosecuted

A MINUTE’S silence was observed up and down the country today on the first anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire that cut short the lives of 72 people.

Survivors, the bereaved and local residents held a private memorial at the tower’s base that the public watched from a screen outside.

Decorations in green – the colour for Grenfell – covered the streets.

The Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir opened and closed the memorial with renditions of Lean On Me and Bridge Over Troubled Water.

A community mosaic was unveiled and a poem and a passage from the Koran were read out.

The names of the 72 victims — including stillborn baby Logan Gomes and Maria del Pilar Burton, who died in hospital in January — were read out before the silence.

A memorial service for bereaved families and local community members also took place at the nearby St Helen’s Church.

Bishop of Kensington Dr Graham Tomlin said: “We could identify who was responsible, we can make building regulation changes, but unless we ask some more fundamental questions about the way we relate to each other in society and how we care for one another, then we will just go back to the way we normally are.

“I think Grenfell is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ask some really deep questions about the way we live together, the way we care for each other in society.”

Benches at the front were reserved for families of those who died, including relatives of Ali Yawar Jafari, Gary Maunders, Steve Power, Jessica Urbano-Ramirez, Ligaya Moore and the Choucair family.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) insisted that authorities and business owners who failed to keep Grenfell Tower safe should be prosecuted.

“A year after the devastation nobody has been arrested despite the obvious fact that Grenfell was a deathtrap“, said FBU general secretary Matt Wrack.

Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy, who was friends with victim Khadija Saye, condemned the “little support” the government and council have provided in the wake of the tragedy.

He added: “It needs to be much, much better, we need to get those people housed, and we need to continue to support those in the north Kensington area that are deeply traumatised.”

Thousands of people — including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — are expected to attend the silent march this evening, which has been held every month since the fire.

Dinosaur age and modern frog discoveries

This 14 June 2018 video says about itself:

Frogs trapped in amber for 99 million years are giving a glimpse of a lost world. The tiny creatures have been preserved in sticky tree resin from the later part of the Age of the Dinosaurs.

From the Florida Museum of Natural History in the USA:

Amber fossils provide oldest evidence of frogs in wet, tropical forests

June 14, 2018

Summary: 99-million-year-old amber fossils from Myanmar provide the earliest evidence of frogs in wet, tropical forests.

About 99 million years ago, a tiny juvenile frog in present-day Myanmar was suddenly trapped in sap with a beetle, perhaps its intended next meal.

Unlucky for the frog, but lucky for science.

An extinct species now named Electrorana limoae, it’s one of four fossils that provide the earliest direct evidence of frogs living in wet, tropical forests and are the oldest-known examples of frogs preserved in amber.

“It’s almost unheard of to get a fossil frog from this time period that is small, has preservation of small bones and is mostly three-dimensional. This is pretty special,” said David Blackburn, study co-author and the associate curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “But what’s most exciting about this animal is its context. These frogs were part of a tropical ecosystem that, in some ways, might not have been that different to what we find today — minus the dinosaurs.”

The findings and species description were published today in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

Frogs have been around for at least 200 million years, but glimpsing their early heyday is tough. Often small and lightly built, frogs don’t tend to preserve well. The frog fossil record skews toward more robust species from arid, seasonal environments, although the bulk of frog diversity today lives in tropical forests.

“Ask any kid what lives in a rainforest, and frogs are on the list”, Blackburn said. “But surprisingly, we have almost nothing from the fossil record to say that’s a longstanding association.”

The amber deposits of northern Myanmar in Southeast Asia provide a unique record of ancient forest ecosystems, with fossil evidence of mosses, bamboo-like plants, aquatic spiders and velvet worms. The discovery of Electrorana and the other fossils, the first frogs to be recovered from these deposits, help add to our understanding of frogs in the Cretaceous period, showing they have inhabited wet, tropical forests for at least 99 million years.

Frogs in amber are quite rare, with previous examples found in the Dominican Republic and Mexico and dating back only about 40 million and 25 million years, respectively.

Less than an inch long, Electrorana is the most well-preserved of the group. Clearly visible in the amber are the frog’s skull, its forelimbs, part of its backbone, a partial hind limb and the unidentified beetle. The other amber fossils contain two hands and an imprint of a frog that likely decayed inside the resin.

But Electrorana raises more questions than it answers, Blackburn said.

Many characteristics herpetologists use to discern details of a frog’s life history and determine how it’s related to other frogs — wrist bones, the pelvis, hip bones, the inner ear, the top of the backbone — are either missing or were not yet fully developed in the juvenile frog.

The existing bones provide clues about Electrorana’s possible living relatives, Blackburn said, but the results are puzzling: Species that have similar features include fire-bellied toads and midwife toads — Eurasian species that live in temperate, not tropical, ecosystems.

Gathering CT skeletal data for both living and extinct frogs, one of Blackburn’s long-term projects, could help illuminate ancient evolutionary relationships, possibly clarifying how Electrorana fits into the frog tree of life.

In the meantime, Blackburn nurtures the hope that other frogs in amber will be discovered, making Electrorana more than a one-hit wonder.

“We don’t have a lot of single-species frog communities in forests. It seems extremely unlikely that there’s only one. There could be a lot more fossils coming.”

In a new study, researchers have investigated how the endocrine-disrupting substance linuron affects reproduction in the West African clawed frog, Xenopus tropicalis. The scientists found that linuron, which is used as a pesticicide, impaired the males’ fertility, and that tadpoles developed ovaries instead of testicles to a greater extent, which caused a female-biased sex ratio: here.

‘Psychic’ pig predicts World Cup four best teams

This 18 June 2018 video from Britain is called Can Marcus the Mystic Pig Predict the Football Results?

From the Daily Trust in Nigeria, 13 June 2018:

Russia 2018: Psychic pig who predicted Trump’s victory picks Nigeria, Argentina for semi-final

The psychic pig Mystic Marcus that predicted President Donald Trump’s victory has picked Nigeria, Argentina as semi-finalists for the 2018 World Cup.

Mystic Marcus has a 100 per cent track record of predicting sports results according to his owner Juliette Stevens.

The black micro pig had previously guessed the winner of the 2014 World Cup and the Wimbledon tennis finals by picking apples.

And the eight-year-old prophesier even predicted Brexit and that Donald Trump would win the US presidential election.

Now Mystic Marcus is putting his skills to the test once more by forecasting the semi-finalists for this summer’s World Cup in Russia.

With bad news for England fans, Mystic Marcus expects Belgium, Argentina, Nigeria and Uruguay to make it through.

Farmer and micro pig breeder Juliette from Heage, Derbyshire, said: ‘Marcus is the seventh child of a seventh child and apparently they’re gifted with special powers so maybe that’s where it comes from.

‘A few years ago I was invited on a radio show because of Paul the octopus predicting results and they wanted to see if I had any animals that had the ability.

‘I hadn’t tried the seventh child theory out so thought I’d give it a go.

‘They used apples and oranges and Marcus predicted the football results, it was amazing.’

Juliette, 50, said after that first result they changed the method to make it more scientific.

Now Mystic Marcus, who has about 30 children and grandchildren, will pick from apples of a similar size and colour to make it as fair as possible.

The apples will include markers – such as pictures or flags – and Marcus will gobble down the winner.

Psychic Pig Predicts Nigeria Will Get to World Cup Semi-Final https://t.co/hB4LvMRAdh #Nigeria #SuperEagles #WorldCup2018 pic.twitter.com/VtpWLen30Q

— allAfrica.com (@allafrica) June 14, 2018

Predictions by ‘psychic’ animals deserve as much skepticism as ‘psychic’ humans, on football or on other issues.

Though they can be fun, like the toucan predicting the 2014 World Cup matches.

The ‘prophetic’ British pig does not expect World Cup host country Russia to make it to the semi-finals.

Nevertheless, today in the opening game, they beat Saudi Arabia five to zero. The biggest score ever in a World Cup opening game.

This 14 June 2018 video is called Russia vs Saudi Arabia 5-0.

https://twitter.com/FIFAWorldCup/status/1007331031194750976

After fraudulent cars, fraudulent cigarettes

This 2017 video says about itself:

How Smoking 1 pack Wrecks Your Lungs ● You Must See This !

I decided to do my own small test with cotton balls to determine the real effects of smoking a pack a day and what it does to your mouth, throat and lungs not to mention how it compromises every system in your body in order to try to tell you to stop smoking and stop slowly killing yourself. The effects of smoking on your body are no secret and if you don’t know by now, here is another reason why you need to quit smoking. It’s never to late to quit and once you see what a pack a day does to your lungs it will give you the fuel you need to fire up the will power and quit! Good luck on your journey to quit smoking. Remember, waiting another day could be too late.

HOW THE TEST WAS DONE

The machine was set to smoke each cigarette at the same pace each time. Each cigarette that was smoked, was drawn through and past the cotton balls into the pump and exhausted into the air. The smoke was not held. None of the cigarettes were smoked into the cigarette filter. I used Du Maurier cigarettes. The filters on Du Maurier cigarettes are hollowed out and come like that. The smoke was filtered through the cotton, catching some, not all, of the junk. (evident by the accumulation in the hoses) Actual smoking is twice as bad since you also blow the smoke out past all of the same organs twice. Whether the machine smoked the cigarette all at once, or bit by bit, it’s close to the same since the smoke was not blown back through the cotton again which would have made the cotton look even worse.

Remember the posts on this blog on fraudulent software in cars of Volkswagen and many other car corporations? Fraud, with connivance of national and European Union authorities? With as results killing of bees, killing of humans, etc.?

Well, it is not just cars. There is the European Union project REACH. Its original intention was to replace the 2000 most dangerous substances in the chemical industry wherever possible. However, then the chemical corporations lobbied at the EU.

They won: only 15 substances were registered. The other cancer causing or otherwise dangerous substances were left alone.

And now, after the cars which seemed to be not so polluting at tests, but proved to be very polluting during driving, cigarettes which claim to cause not that much cancer on their packages, but which in practice …

Translated from Dutch Trouw daily, 12 June 2018:

Forget the marketing stories: there is a lot more tar and nicotine in cigarettes

Joop Bouma

The RIVM [Dutch public health and environment watchdog] analyzed 100 brands of cigarettes that are on the market in the Netherlands, according to a strict Canadian method. The tar and nicotine values ​​are much higher than shown by the EU measurement method.

Forget the marketing stories about low tar and nicotine levels. Every cigarette is about as bad in terms of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide. And some cigarettes are extra bad. This applies especially to cigarettes whose makers suggest that they contain less tar and nicotine. Exactly those brands are chock full of the carcinogenic substances.

The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) put a hundred Dutch cigarette brands in a smoke machine and measured them, according to a measuring method used in Canada. In this Canadian Intense (CI) method, the tiny ventilation holes that the manufacturers have made in the filters and sleeves of their cigarettes are completely covered. The results are remarkable: in one case up to 26 times as much tar was measured as specified [on the package]. With nicotine it was not much better: up to 17 times as much and carbon monoxide up to 20 times as much.

Diluted

In the European measurement method prescribed in the EU directive for tobacco products, the ventilation holes are open. As a result, clean air is sucked in during machine smoking. The measured tobacco smoke is therefore strongly diluted during the measurement. For example, the cigarettes stay within the limits of the Tobacco Act (maximum 10 mg tar, 1 mg nicotine and 10 mg carbon monoxide). But in practice smokers cover the holes with their fingers, so they get much higher doses.

Of the 100 cigarettes examined, there is only one brand that remains under the legal limits for the Canadian smoking method. That is the originally Greek product Karelia I. But even with this extremely thin cigarette with little tobacco, the tar content is ten times higher than specified.

The RIVM resigned early last month from a Dutch standards committee that advises on the international level on the measurement of carcinogens in tobacco. That committee is dominated by industry, eight of the ten members are from the tobacco business. …

Chock full of tar

The leader is the Marlboro Prime brand of Philip Morris. According to online tobacco vendor Rob Rijkers in Maassluis, this is a cigarette with ‘the softest taste of Marlboro, with less smell on and around the smoker’, but the product is actually full of tar. The cigarette falls in terms of marketing in the category ‘low tar and nicotine levels’. According to Philip Morris’s own specification, this Marlboro product only has 1 mg of tar, one tenth mg of nicotine and 2 mg of carbon monoxide. After masking all the holes that suck in misleading air, it appears that this cigarette delivers more than 26 mg of tar, 1.7 mg of nicotine and no less than 40 mg of carbon monoxide to the smoker.

And why are the European Union and the Dutch government not stopping this fraud at tests, and why are they not having the more realistic Canadian tests? One cause: the revolving door between government and Big Tobacco. CDA party politician Hillen used to be the Dutch minister of war ‘defence‘. Now, he is a Big Tobacco lobbyist. VVD party politician Schippers used to be the Dutch minister of health. Now, she is a Big Tobacco lobbyist.

Young barn swallows fed, video

This 13 June 2018 video is about young barn swallows preening, and being fed by a fast flying parent.

Jos Ketelaar made this video near the Naardermeer nature reserve in the Netherlands.

Grenfell disaster, poor people killed in London’s richest borough

This video from London, England says about itself:

London Grenfell Tower Fire Exposes Social Divide Of Wealthiest Borough

15 June 2017

The tale of Grenfell Tower is a tale of two Kensingtons. It is the story of how scores of people were left to perish in what is being described as a block riddled with fire and safety problems and disrepair, just metres away from some of the wealthiest streets in the country.

Hyenas save baby from lions

This video from Kenya says about itself:

Lions mess with the wrong hyena clan

11 June 2018

Because lions and hyenas both consume the same prey, they are each others’ most common competitors. Lions are three to four times larger than hyenas and hunt larger animals. A group of hyenas, however, can often use teamwork to intimidate a lion away from its meal. Both lions and hyenas frequently steal from each other. Lions have learned to recognize the feeding calls of hyenas after a recent hunt. They follow the calls to the source and chase the hyenas from their prey. Although it would seem abundant prey would lessen the hostility, the opposite has been observed.

In this sighting the lioness was trying to catch a young hyena and the hyena clan would have none of it, this lioness was very lucky to survive this ordeal.

Filmed in Masai Mara.

London Grenfell disaster, a year later

This video from London, England says about itself:

Tube driver halts journey and waves to people holding Grenfell vigil

14 June 2018

A London Underground driver has stopped his train on a bridge near Latimer Road station and waved a green banner in support of people holding a vigil for victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. The moment was caught live on TV by a Sky News reporter. Seventy-two people died as a result of the blaze on the 14 June 2017.

From the Socialist Equality Party in Britain:

One year since the Grenfell inferno

14 June 2018

One year ago, the worst high-rise fire in British history in Grenfell Tower cost the lives of 72 people.

What took place in the early hours of June 14, 2017 was social murder. This was the term first coined by Frederick Engels in his famous study, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Writing in 1845, at the beginning of industrial capitalism, he explained, “When society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death…” and “yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual.”

Engels’ indictment of an entire social system—capitalism—resonates more than 150 years later.

This is because it speaks to the common experience of working people the world over. From poisoned water in the American city of Flint, Michigan to collapsing garbage dumps and mudslides in Colombo and Sierra Leone that have killed many, to an entirely preventable tower block inferno in London—one of the richest cities in the world—the lives of working people are considered expendable by a parasitic financial oligarchy that subordinates every aspect of social and economic life to its enrichment.

Grenfell was the direct result of the deregulatory policies carried out by successive Labour and Conservative-led governments.

From Margaret Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as society”, through the Blair government’s insistence on being “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” to David Cameron’s pledge to “kill off” the “excessive health and safety… albatross around the neck of British businesses”, workers’ living standards and conditions have been gutted to fill the bank accounts of the major corporations and the super-rich.

This offensive against the working class found malignant expression in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), in London’s richest constituency.

To save money while gentrifying its external appearance, Grenfell Tower was wrapped in highly flammable insulation and cladding, turning it into a death trap. The inside of the building was no safer, with no central fire alarm system, no sprinklers and a single narrow stairwell the only means of escape. As a result, a small fire in a single flat on the fourth floor spread in a matter of minutes to engulf the entire 24-storey structure. Firefighters battled against the odds to contain the blaze.

The surviving residents of Grenfell Tower and its environs were abandoned by the authorities, with many only able to eat, sleep and clothe themselves thanks to the selfless efforts of the local community. The government admits that 69 households remain in temporary accommodation, while RBKC has reportedly threatened 74 households that they must now return to the estate they fled or face indefinite homelessness and a loss of their rights as council tenants.

In the fire’s aftermath, survivors, their relatives and others demanded the politicians and corporations responsible be brought to justice, forcing Prime Minister Theresa May to announce the holding of a “full, independent public inquiry” that would “produce an interim report by the end of this summer at the latest” and “ensure that this tragedy is fully investigated.”

As the SEP warned at the time, “Nothing of the sort will ever happen. As with every public inquiry called by the ruling elite it will end in a whitewash.”

Almost one year on, the public inquiry–led by a pillar of the establishment, Sir Martin Moore-Bick—has produced nothing. Its aim is not to reveal but to conceal the truth; not to hold the guilty to account but to protect the criminals in central and local government and the corporate entities who signed off on the “refurbishment” of Grenfell.

This is made clear by the 2005 Inquiries Act, which states, “An inquiry panel is not to rule on, and has no power to determine, any person’s civil or criminal liability.” Moore-Bick himself has recommended, in agreement with May, that issues of a “social, economic and political nature” should not be addressed.

Along with social murder goes class injustice.

While no time has been lost in prosecuting a handful of people making fraudulent claims to do with the Grenfell fire, the Metropolitan Police’s criminal investigation into the inferno has seen not a single person arrested—let alone charged—in connection with the deaths of 72 people!

To add insult to injury, as the inquiry opened it was announced that the Metropolitan Police are to target the London Fire Brigade for possible crimes relating to the “stay put” advice given to tenants. Not a word about the fact that the advice proved so disastrous because of what the counsel for the Fire Brigades Union described as “multiple” safety failings that meant the building was a “highly combustible death trap”, with fire-fighters put in an “impossible situation.”

The refusal of the ruling elite to pursue the real criminals guilty of the Grenfell atrocity is also in stark contrast to their determination to silence anyone fighting to establish the truth about events.

Hysterical witch-hunts have been mounted by the right-wing media against Joe Delaney and Edward Daffarn, both part of the Grenfell Action Group that warned of the danger of a “catastrophic” fire resulting from the policies of RBKC and its tenant management organisation. Delaney, who lived adjacent to Grenfell Tower, has fought for years for the rights of tenants in the area to live in decent, secure housing. Daffarn escaped from his flat on Grenfell’s 16th floor.

Others denounced were filmmaker Daniel Renwick and local resident Ishmael, whose crime was to make a truthful film about Grenfell— Failed by the State.

Nothing is accidental. The high point of this campaign to suppress the truth is the ongoing and cruel attempt to silence Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder and editor has now been trapped for six years in the Ecuadorian Embassy, less than four miles from Grenfell, facing arrest and deportation to the US to face trial for espionage for revealing the war crimes of Washington and London.

Meanwhile things continue as before, with the rich getting richer and the workers milked for every penny. Just as Moore-Bick’s inquiry opened, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were returning to their “cottage” in the grounds of Kensington Palace—just a few miles from Grenfell. Some £30 million in public taxes were squandered on their nuptials, while the bride’s dress alone was reported to have cost as much as the £300,000 saved by using cheaper, flammable cladding on Grenfell Tower.

The money-mad and sociopathic ruling class in every country are incapable of addressing anything, except the further transfer of wealth to the super-rich and commissioning wars that threaten humanity with destruction.

The freeing up of social resources to meet the needs of working people requires breaking the stranglehold of the financial aristocracy and its political representatives, and reorganising society on socialist foundations. This is the perspective of the Socialist Equality Party.

Narwhal sounds, new study

This video says about itself:

Listening to the aquatic sounds of narwhals, bowheads and seals in Arctic Canada

27 November 2013

Out of this world sounds while listening to this underwater mic hanging in the cold Arctic Ocean around Baffin Island. See the full story here.

From PLOS:

Narwhals’ acoustic behavior described using audio tagging

Recordings provide new insight into when and where elusive whales click, buzz and call

June 13, 2018

The clicking, buzzing and calling behavioral patterns of elusive East Greenland narwhals have been described thanks to in-depth recordings, in a study published June 13, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Susanna Blackwell from Greeneridge Sciences, Incorporated, United States of America, and colleagues.

Climate change is predicted to increase human activity in the Arctic, including remote areas of Greenland where narwhals live. However, little is known about the whales’ acoustic behavior or their reactions to anthropogenic sounds. Previous studies have mostly relied upon underwater microphones, which are limited in their ability to record spatial and temporal variations.

The author of the present study captured six narwhals in East Greenland and tagged them with acoustic and satellite instruments. The researchers were able to record 533 hours of audio and analyzed their recordings to describe how the whales’ acoustic behavior varied by location and time.

The researchers found that the narwhals produced three types of sounds: clicks, buzzes and calls. Clicks and buzzes were produced during echolocation for feeding, while the authors presume that calls served communication purposes. Calls were typically produced at depths of less than 100 meters, with over half being produced less than 7m from the surface. However, buzzes were produced at much greater depths of between 350 and 650 meters. The authors even used their recordings to identify a likely preferred feeding area: a particular fjord which had especially high buzzing rates. They also noted a possible stress response to capture and tagging: the narwhals were silent afterwards for around a day, reinforcing the need to record over larger timespans.

While much remains unknown about narwhal acoustics, this work provides new insights into where and when these elusive whales produce sound and could establish a baseline to help assess future impacts of climate and anthropogenic changes on narwhals.

Susanna Blackwell says: “Wide-scale changes are taking place in the Arctic, with warmer temperatures leading to shrinking summer ice coverage. More ice-free water means easier access for vessels and industrial operations, such as exploration for oil and gas. The inhospitable pack-ice environment that is narwhals’ home for much of the year has for millennia kept them in relative isolation — even from biologists. Now new amazing tools allow us to take a multi-day, virtual ride on the back of a narwhal!”

See also here.

London Grenfell fire disaster, a year ago

From daily News Line in Britain:

Thursday, 14 June 2018

Grenfell Inferno–one year on

‘We feel tomorrow is about remembering and honouring the 72 that died’, Justice4Grenfell campaign co-ordinator Yvette Williams told News Line yesterday ahead of today’s first anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told Parliament yesterday that he is joining tonight’s Silent March for Grenfell, which assembles at 5.30pm at the Wall of Truth at the Maxilla Centre in the shadow of the tower.

Yvette continued: ‘The community have got a lot of support both nationally and internationally and that is really important at this difficult time. ‘There are about 20 towns and cities across the UK that are either holding silent walks or vigils tomorrow, and the city of Amsterdam are holding a walk as well.

‘It’s really important that they do that because justice can only be served if those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are directly affected. ‘The J4G campaign will be with our community tomorrow. ‘Then the solidarity walk is happening on Saturday, assembling at Downing St at 12 noon and marching to the Home Office and the Department for Housing Communities and Local Government in Marsham Street.

‘It is about the lack of progress generally in addressing the issues related to Grenfell, like no outright ban on [flammable] cladding, that we have had to fight for a diverse inquiry panel and that although that has now been gifted they are only coming on in phase two of the inquiry. ‘The removal of similar cladding on over 300 buildings nationally is proceeding too slowly and is leaving thousands of people sleeping in unsafe buildings every night.’

In Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons yesterday, Labour leader Corbyn said: ‘Tomorrow marks one year of the anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire. I’ll be meeting families again tomorrow at their Silent March. ‘But the sad truth and reality is that many of them are still waiting for the security of a permanent home one year on from that disaster …

‘I pay tribute to the families for all that they’ve been through and all the fortitude they’ve shown. But sadly the reality is that some of them have still not got a permanent home to move into. It’s very important for the mental well-being of everybody they have somewhere they can call home and they know it is their home.’