The final item of business today is the member's business debate on motion number 15275 in the name of Margaret McCulloch on International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put and I would be grateful if the members who would like to speak in the debate could please press the request to speak buttons now. I call on Margaret McCulloch to open the debate. Seven minutes or so please, Ms McCulloch. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In opening this debate this afternoon, I want to thank all those members who have supported the motion before us and allowed me to bring the issue of female genital mutilation to the chamber. I also want to thank all those organisations and activists who have committed so much of their time to raising awareness of FGM, not just with the wider public and in front-line services but with members, ministers, researchers and staff here in this Parliament. I am pleased that some of those people have joined us from the public gallery. This might be the last opportunity that we have to debate FGM in a plenary session but it is certainly not the first time that the Parliament has addressed the issue. Through members' debates, Government's debates, parliamentary questions and committee sessions, a number of members from across the whole Parliament have taken an interest in this important issue. Kenny Gibson, Christina McKelvie, Jenny Marra and Patricia Ferguson to name but a few. In this session in particular, there has been a renewed focus on the issues surrounding FGM and welcome progress towards the prevention and elimination of this appalling form of discrimination. In the past few days, people throughout the country and around the world observed international day of zero tolerance for FGM. From policy makers and parliaments and assemblies like this, to those working on the front line in countries where there is a practicing population, to activists and agitators worldwide campaigning for change. It was a day for reflection, to think of victims, to commemorate those who have been excluded, injured or even killed due to the ignorance and equality that lies behind FGM. It was a day for education, to raise awareness so that the world can know what this injustice is and why it must be stopped. Most importantly, it was a day for action, to say no more, to put forward solutions and to galvanise the work of charities, activists, NGOs and Governments in a drive to end this form of abuse. FGM is an extreme form of gender-based discrimination, an act of violence against women and girls, a violation of their bodies and a violation of their human rights. UNICEF estimates that there are over 120 million women and girls living with the consequences of FGM worldwide, mainly in 29 African countries where the practicing population is high and also in areas such as Kurdistan, Iraq and Egypt. The World Health Organization placed that figure at around 140 million, and the most recent UN figures suggest that it could be even as high as 200 million. Mass migration and cross-border travel brings opportunities to our society, but it also means that policy makers here must confront unfamiliar challenges from other cultures such as FGM. For clarity, FGM is a form of abuse in which women and girls' genitals are injured and altered for non-medical reasons, and that is an important point. There is no medical justification for female genital mutilation, nor does FGM have any basis in religion. It is a cultural practice, rooted in patriarchy and gender inequality. In some cultures, FGM is seen as a prerequisite for marriage, a way of preserving a girl's chastity before marriage and a woman's faithfulness afterwards. The pressure to undergo FGM in societies in which marriage is a means of finding social acceptance and economic security can be severe. The stigma of not having an undergoing FGM can be overwhelming. In meetings I held my capacity as convener of the Equal Opportunities Committee, I heard about young girls who are resisted being forced into the most extreme and disturbing forms of FGM by those closest to them, and that is another important point. There are different forms of FGM. The World Health Organization recognises four categories. Type 1, mainly, involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris. Type 2, excision, again, involves partial or total removal of the clitoris, as well as a partial or total removal of the labour—or labia, sorry. Type 3, infibrillation, involves narrowing the orifice and creating a seal by cutting and repositioning the labia with or without cutting the clitoris. Type 4 covers all other procedures, including pricking and burning and some of the most extreme and disturbing forms of FGM. Needless to say, there are no health benefits in any of those procedures, only serves to injure and to harm. Victims can experience pain, bleeding, shock, infection and longer-term abscesses, cysts, adhesions and neuromas. Type 3 FGM can cause further complications such as reproductive tract infections and incontinence. Many of the women who are cut experience chronic pain, recurring infections for the rest of their lives, depression and post-traumatic stress. The death rate among babies during and immediately after childbirth are higher for those born to mothers who had undergone some kind of FGM. Three million women and girls are cut every year. It has to stop. The Scottish Government has now launched a national action plan for FGM, setting out the steps that the Government, its agencies and its partners, can take to prevent and, hopefully, eradicate this form of abuse. It comes in the wake of Equally Safe, the joint strategy with COSLA on the prevention and elimination of violence against women. Doing more to raise awareness to support organisations who work with victims and to train health and social work professionals to spot the signs of FGM could be transformative for those who are at risk or have undergone FGM and need support. However, we also need to reach out to those who are suffering and those who are at risk in other countries. The challenge of FGM is a global one. We cannot rise to the challenge as one nation, but it is part of an international community. Nobody should have to endure this abuse. We must do all we can to close the gap between the world that we have, in which millions are cut every year, and the world that we want, in which FGM is a thing of the past. No injustice can last forever. As pernicious as this inequality is, I believe that when words become deeds and ideas lead to action, change will come. This generation can and must end FGM. I would like to congratulate Margaret McCulloch for securing tonight's debate on an issue that Margaret McCulloch pointed out in her opening. It is one that I have long been concerned about. Nearly 15 years ago, I lodged a motion condemning female genital mutilation, and I am shocked and horrified that it continues across the globe on such a vast scale as Margaret McCulloch pointed out. FGM is clearly a fundamental violation of human rights, along with the trauma and pain that it puts young women through. The lasting effects of FGM can include cysts and fertility infections, as well as increased risk of newborn deaths due to complication with childbirth. Additionally, in certain instances, the procedure has been known to cause death, and obviously psychological problems and depression can also follow when one considers that this is often inflicted on women by their closest relatives, people who they have known and trusted all their lives. FGM is a sign of deep-rooted inequality between the sexes and the societies in which it is practised and is an example of great misogyny and discrimination against girls and women. FGM is often done in certain cultures to stop women from having sex outside of marriage and keep them pure for their husbands, a double standard that is of course not practised or expected from the men who belong to such patriarchal societies. As has been said by Police Scotland that I quote, FGM is a social convention and the social pressure to conform to what others do and have been doing is a strong motivation to perpetuate the practice. Since that practice is almost always carried out in girls, this practice is a violation, not only of human rights but also the rights of children. The violation of these girls and women are put through is a horror that we must vigorously oppose and educate against. Since 1985 Scotland has banned the practice of FGM and created policies to stop the fuller spread of abuse among those minority communities in which it is commonplace in their own countries. Such abuse will result in the prosecution of anyone who performs or tries to coerce a young girl into having a procedure performed on them. For example, a father or grandfather can be tried and court for strongly encouraging a young girl to receive the procedure even though he may not have performed the procedure himself. There must be zero tolerance for such practices. We cannot be seen to have any form of a soft stance in this matter. The trauma that millions of girls and women all over the world have to endure is quite simply unimaginable. Having days such as international day of zero tolerance, female genital mutilation, which took place four days ago, allows Scotland and countries from across the globe to unite and show that we will not allow the sub-horrent practice to continue.  As they face pressure from within their cultural group to remain silent and often feel the stigma, they could be attached to them by those who do not share their cultural identity. International day of zero tolerance for female genital mutilation is therefore also time to make clear that the people who have been through such torture can find a safe place here in Scotland. I applaud the efforts of various charities throughout Scotland to provide support and training for victims. For example, Rape Crisis Glasgow, who thanked the Scottish Government for providing assistance to survivors of FGM, and just this past week set up a group that already helps at least 10 women. Isabel Kerr, manager at Rape Crisis Glasgow, said in a quote, "...this is giving women the chance to come together and support each other and has also given us a chance to work with the women on building confidence and self-esteem on their health and wellbeing and on managing the symptoms of their trauma." I echo Margaret McCulloch in hoping that the economy will live to see a world in which it is extreme for discrimination against women and girls as they are educated once and for all. I have a mother, a wife, a daughter and a sister, and I could not possibly imagine such horrors happening to any of them. I hope that we can continue to have a Scotland prevention, protection and services in support that are provided to all victims of FGM within Scotland. I commend Margaret McCulloch on taking this opportunity to mark the international day of zero tolerance for FGM, a practice that infringes the basic human rights and health of women across the world. The screw practice, which is often carried out with crude tools and without anaesthetic, has no basis in medical necessity, but is embedded in a long-standing cultural system that is deeply patriarchal. As such, in seeking to intervene and change attitudes within communities where the practice is present, we must ensure that any Scottish action plan takes a consultative approach, engaging with knowledgeable charities and community leaders as much as possible. Only through working with communities will we be able to identify where this most violent and cruel form of repression is prevalent, raising awareness and punishing perpetrators. All women have a human right to feel safe within their families and safe as part of society as a whole. Safety means equality, security and absolute freedom over their own bodies and wellbeing. The equally safe strategy encapsulates those rights and shows how policies can be put in place to tackle all forms of violence, repression and abuse of women. FGM is included, but in light of reports both here and throughout the United Kingdom, it is only right that we as a Parliament look to develop a more targeted and long-term action plan, and I welcomed the publication of the draft for consultation last week. That will look to prevent future mutilation by protecting young girls who are at risk, while also seeking to provide accessible and anonymous support for women who are trying to survive with physical and mental scars. One such survivor, Nimco Alley, was cut as a seven-year-old while on holiday in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa and set up the Daughters of Eve charity, which works to protect women from FGM. She shared her experience in advance of Zoodah Tolerance Day. FGM, she said, is a brutal practice, but it is also a very simple one to end. If you stop one woman having FGM done to her, then you break that link and prevent it being done to the next generation. I came from a family that was 100 per cent FGM, and that has gone down to zero in a generation. It is something that can be ended. We are finally shaking the taboo of FGM, but we have to be vigilant and cannot be complacent. Ms Alley wants FGM to be discussed as part of mandatory sexual and relationship education classes at schools in England. I do not see why Scotland should be any different, and we welcome the minister's comment on that. Children of all backgrounds have the capacity to break this cycle, and their awareness and support of classmates can help to change that cruel cultural norm. As the draft action plan states, FGM will continue to be a problem in Scotland until communities themselves choose to abandon the practice. We recognise that, in order to find a solution to eradicate FGM, working with potentially affected communities is vital to breaking the cycle of violence. I pay tribute to those organisations that work with those communities in Scotland to achieve eradication. The Scottish Refugee Council report tackling FGM in Scotland towards a Scottish model of intervention looked at existing census data and saw it to provide an albeit limited picture of the extent of risk to communities living here now. The findings are highlighted in the draft action plan. There are approximately 24,000 men, women and children living in Scotland born in a country affected by FGM to some extent. There are communities potentially affected by FGM living in every Scottish local authority area, with the largest being in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dundee respectively. 2,750 girls were born in Scotland to mothers born in an FGM practicing country between 2001 and 2012. That is the scale of the potential problem, but we can eradicate FGM in Scotland by taking a consultative approach that is mindful of the many cultural factors that I have mentioned. No woman should feel at risk and no child should feel that they are powerless over their own body. Such abuse can never be tolerated and should never be the norm for any community. The equality and human rights of all women kind demand that all nations stand as one. Against that, cruel practice on zero tolerance and every other day. Many thanks. I now call Annabelle Goldie to be followed by John Mason. Deputy Presiding Officer, I am very pleased to contribute to this debate marking the international day of zero tolerance for female genital mutilation. I, too, pay tribute to Margaret McCulloch for securing the parliamentary time for both this important and deeply disturbing issue. Originally, an African-led movement awareness of FGM is greatly increased in recent years thanks to the tireless efforts of campaigners such as those to whom Malcolm Chisholm referred. They have brought this hidden horror out of the shadows because the horrific experience that is FGM with all the psychological and physical aftershocks will reverberate from many girls from adolescence through to adulthood. Understandably, girls and women shamed by the stigma and traumatised into silence by what has happened to them are often reluctant to speak out about their ordeals, but some survivors have shared their experiences and these experiences shake you to the very core. Girls in their infancy, trusting, unknowing and unable to defend themselves are typically circumcised with a range of implements without anaesthesia in anonstelral environment and with no appropriate aftercare. Some girls bleed to death, others are left with debilitating pain and complications that will afflict them for the rest of their lives. Their parents can be complicit in the so-called right of passage, but others have no idea what their daughters have been subjected to. The perpetrator is often summoned in a position of trust within the family or local community. Summon a child would not instinctively fear and victims are reassured with meaningless platitudes of favourable prospects and promises of good husbands. However, this practice is not a right of passage in the country. It is a gross violation of human rights and of the very essence of womanhood. A woman in the UK is barbarically cut every 96 minutes, but the real situation is feared to be much worse. This is a silent and often unreported crime, so we must assume that the figure is considerably higher. I applaud both the UK and the Scottish Governments for their efforts and initiatives to eliminate this horrendous practice in our home nations. It is my sincere hope that we can build on this momentum in the months and years to come. Figures from UNICEF show that the scale of FGM across the globe is much worse than international organisations first thought. Previously, it was estimated that 125 million girls worldwide had been cut, but UNICEF has disclosed in just the past few days that the figure is shockingly higher—closer to 200 million. UNICEF warns that, with increasing population growth, the number of girls and women undergoing FGM will rise significantly over the next 15 years, and that is an appalling prospect. Mali musician and FGM survivor Inna Moudja bravely shared her experience of cutting in its aftermath with the United Nations last Saturday, and she said, and I'm quoting, I felt that I would never become a woman because I had something missing and I wasn't worth it. It took a lot away from what I could achieve as a teenager and what I could realise as a teenager, so I lost my identity when I went through FGM. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know how strong I could be because cutting me was telling me that I'm not good enough. FGM dates back to antiquity. Millions upon millions of women have been subjected to it, suffered from it and have been devalued by it. We now have an opportunity to empower and protect not just a new generation of women but their children and their children's children. This is our call to action, so let's unite to end a barbaric anachronism and, in doing so, let us give hope to women, to their daughters and to the unborn girls of the future. The Equal Opportunities Committee was very keen that we should have a debate, although there was not normal committee time. I think that most of us are speaking in this debate. I know that Sandra White apologises for not being here, she had another commitment that she couldn't get out of. I confess that this is not the easiest topic to speak on, however I do believe that we have a duty to speak about it and specifically I think that those of us who are men have a duty to speak about it and not claim that we have no responsibility. One of the main facts that we have learned on the committee is that it's very difficult to find out the facts of what is actually happening in Scotland today. In the past, we would have assumed that FGM was mainly restricted to the 29 or so countries where it is most commonly practised and perhaps on top of that to the additional countries where a significant minority had migrated. In the past, that would not have included Scotland to any real extent but things have changed. Here in Scotland we have a much more diverse population than we used to do and I very much welcome that. We gain from a whole variety of new Scots, including in my experience African Christians being involved in churches and bringing a real enthusiasm. Alongside all that positive input from other cultures, there can be more negative practices appearing and FGM is certainly one of those. In Scotland's national action plan, the wording on pages 11 and 12 is couched very carefully and wisely under FGM in the Scottish context. There are no clear and robust figures for the prevalence of FGM in Scotland because of the hidden nature of the crime in its report. Tackling FGM in Scotland towards a Scottish model of intervention, the Scottish Refugee Council analysed data. As some of the words, the report did not seek to determine prevalence of FGM but rather found that there were 23,979 men, women and children born in one of the 29 countries identified by UNICEF 2013 as an FGM practicing country now living in Scotland in 2011. It also says that 2,750 girls were born in Scotland to mothers born in an FGM practicing country between 2001 and 2012. That was very much the line from witnesses that the committee heard from in our evidence sessions. However, we did also hear from some working in the sector that they are virtually certain that cutting is being carried out in Glasgow and Edinburgh at least. Perhaps more common is the tendency for girls to be taken back by their families to the country of their roots for the procedure to be carried out there, with the parents often being under considerable family pressure. Clearly, legislation is part of the answer in tackling this, but we also heard of innovative ways of approaching it. For example, by attempting to get the parents to sign a certificate, we are promising not to allow FGM to be carried out on their daughters. That might have no legal weight, but it can make a difference to the parents' own attitude and can strengthen their resolve when under pressure from extended family. Last Tuesday, when a very useful event hosted by the committee at which Margaret McCulloch, Alec Neill and representatives of some of those tackling the issue spoke, as always it was particularly moving to hear from survivors of FGM speaking about some of their personal experiences. I found it helpful to hear from a young guy from an African background who perhaps unusually had it discussed with him by his mother and has since become passionate on educating his peers who come from a similar background. I think that it is useful to emphasise at this point too, which Margaret McCulloch also referenced, that FGM is quote, a cultural practice that does not have any basis in religion. From that point it is clear that there is a huge difference between FGM and male circumcision. The two are not comparable and there are both health and religious arguments for male circumcision that are not replicated for FGM. I am very grateful to the opportunities that speak in this debate. The committee unanimously felt that we would like to raise it in the chamber and my hope is that going forward both the Parliament and the Government will continue to treat FGM with the seriousness that it deserves. I join with others in congratulating Margaret McCulloch for holding the debate here and recognising our commitment to the issue. Indeed, many others, Kenny Gibson, others who have been mentioned and also the Scottish Refugee Council who contributed to the debate that we have had. I think that there is a great importance in international days. It is a good way of highlighting issues. As Annabelle Goldie said, with 200 million women affected across the world, then this is certainly needed in highlighting. What we do know is that many problems can be resolved by a gradualist approach. That is not the case with this issue. Zero tolerance is the only way that we can deal with this.  In the meantime, what we are dealing with is a violation of human rights, and I am always keen that we take a rights-based approach. That is certainly the case and this has been said many times. There are often very difficult things to talk about when you are talking about injuring genitals, as Margaret McCulloch said, extremely disturbing behaviour. This is violence against women and girls. This is gender and equality. I am delighted that Scotland's national action plan is in place, and I think that it is important that the Scottish Government works with cause law on that. That is because the public service workers are often at the front line of how we can address this issue, not exclusively, but of course significantly, among those who are medical staff. It is about prevention, protection, providing services and support the action plan. Malcolm Chishol is entirely right to say that it is not an issue for Scotland, it is not an issue for the UK, it is not an issue for the EU, it is an issue for the world to deal with. Something that jumped out at me in relation to the action plan was the proposal that there would be access to informed mental health services, because there is a veil of secrecy around this whole issue, there is mystery around it. As my late mother would say, you only know what you know, and it is very challenging for people to understand all the different aspects of this. As someone said, living with the consequences of this, the mental health impact is important. The practitioner who is dealing with that absolutely understands what is involved. We must deal with that significant breach of trust. We have heard terms such as euphemisms such as children being taken on holiday. That is a significant thing in a family relationship if people feel that there is a breach of trust there in the years ahead. As has been said, I think that there is a great deal of discomfort reading and listening about this, let alone discussing it, but we must. I would also say that it would not surprise anyone to hear me say this in relation to a number of issues. It is not exclusively an urban issue either. I know no one is saying that. There is the density of population that can mean that services are there, but support must be provided around the country, not least because we know there are challenges for ethnic minority individuals living in rural communities. We know that the overall aim of the strategy is to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls. That is at the key. That is about power and abusive relationships. We know, as has been said, that that would not be happening to men. That is gender-based violence. There is an important role, as has been said, for males. I applaud as an MSP like many others here. We have the great privilege to meet people. It has been a real privilege to meet the survivors and hear their courage in the manner in which they have spoken. I have to say that I found it very humbling. I think that we must first and foremost ensure that respect for every individual. We must have a rights-abates-based approach to everything. This abuse must end, so let us all fight together for the eradication of SGM. As a member of the Equal Opportunity Committee, I would like to repeat the words of John Finnie. It has been very much a privilege to be involved in the debate and in the progress of the Scottish Government is doing and all the third sector organisations are doing to tackle this problem. I thank again Margaret McHeath for bringing that debate to Parliament. It is so important that we got it here. Of course, we had a debate last year. In February last year, we debated the motion from the Scottish Government about the International Day of Zero Tourism to Female Genital Mutilation. The Cabinet Secretary then, Alex Neil, talked about the Scottish Government's commitment to fund the programme of work to tackle female genital mutilation in Scotland and protect those women and girls of risk, at risk of harm from this human rights abuse. I am delighted that the Cabinet Secretary launched the action plan last week. In my contribution to the debate last year, I did say that this is an acceptable and illegal practice, should not be called by its abbreviation FGM. I did encourage at the time everyone to use this full name, Female Genital Mutilation, because it's what it says and it's so important, and I would like maybe some minister to reflect into this on what we write and what we say. Another point I developed last year was the role of men in communities where female genital mutilation is a rarity. I said then that men must not be excluded from this issue, but be seen as part of the solution to when this is an acceptable and illegal practice, and I'm delighted that, one year on, as I found this work of the project, My Voice, has really understood the role of men. Let me read the flyers, inviting people to participate to the project. Are you a man who is from a community ethnic group potentially affected by female genital mutilation, or cutting or by female circumscription? Are you living in Scotland? We would love you to get involved in a new project. We are starting called My Voice, and that project is so, so important. It's been with the support of the Scottish Government in collaboration with the Indian Territory Research Forum, Rosni, and the Institute for International Health and Development at Queen Margaret University. I would encourage the minister to look at the research. I know we are a bit late, but I would love the research to be published after the election, but not in a period of period, just to make sure you get all the coverage that you should get. And we understood from the outset it's crucial to work with men to develop services and support for communities affected by female genital mutilation. John Mason talked about the event which was organised by the committee, by the equal opportunities committee, a fantastic event last week, and the young guy, as he called it, Oye Debo Ola Lekhan, was really, really inspirational. He really told us how important is the role of fathers, the role of son, and husband who have no idea at all of what is happening, that culture, which maybe, like Kenny Gibson said earlier, was maybe a patriarchal kind of idea at the start. And now very much, the men are very much isolated from it. And we don't realise in the modern day what's happening to women. So this action plan talks about including men, women and young people, but I will again encourage the minister to make sure that men are maybe seen as a key solution to that problem. And that young man, Oye Debo, was really fantastic and very inspirational. To conclude, I would like to talk about a point, a historic point about some of the contributions said about a program from other cultures and other countries. Let me read from the medical times and Gazette, that the performance of clitoridectomy on a woman without a knowledge and consent is an offense against medical ethics need not to be said. We suspect it is amenable to the criminal law of the land. This article was written in London in April 1867, denouncing a practice that was wrongly claimed to treat many conditions, menstrual pains, bladder problems, epilepsy, insanity, spinal irritation, masturbation and even lesbianism. I did not end there in the American Journal of Clinical Medicine half a century later, in June 1915, we can read that circumcision in the female is necessary with guidance how to perform it in 1915. We know that the practice in the U.S. survived over 50 years and stopped only in the 1960s. Why Christian women in America are alive today have been mutilated that way. So, you know, when Cain Geiston talked about, I would not want my mother or my wife to be involved with that. Maybe your grandmother was. Maybe your great grandmother was. And it's something we have to understand. If you want to understand, we have to understand the past before we pass judgment on other cultures, of other cultures today because in Scotland only since 1985 is female genital mutilation a criminal offence. We should know about our history of female genital mutilation to better understand what is happening today. Let boy and girls, men and women, let them know about the rarity and the horror of female genital mutilation and let's eradicate it together. There are some battles that constantly have to be re-fought. They seem to re-emerge each generation. I was going to begin by remarking about the illegality in 1985 and the closing loophole in 2015, separated by 30 years, and the need to still have this debate, to still have this action, to produce this action plan. Here is Christian Allard suggesting and indeed quoting about this issue having been raised and having been dealt with, having been argued over going back such a longer period. We are here that we have got quite as far as we have in exposing the issue that we have. An international day is a testimony to everybody who is working out there in communities around Scotland internationally and in here in the chamber to continue to highlight it. Margaret McCulloch paid tribute to many members who have done this over some time. Margaret McCulloch was right to place this in the context of gender violence. That is a form of structural gender violence through the way that expectations are placed in those societies and cultures and the things that are demanded. It is not tied to religion, although sadly there are those who do seek to quote religion falsely to justify it. It is not tied to a particular continent or even a region and even within the countries—yes 29 that John Mason quotes—there are localised differences. It is simply a practice that is the manifestation of gender violence in particular societies and cultures and gender violence wherever it takes place is not acceptable. It is also often carried out by close friends, people even who gain status as a result of their activity. The accounts that I have read on this tell of the pressure that is involved to not just to undergo female genital mutilation but to perpetrate it to support your relatives to undergo the experience. You can say that that is complicit but those people too are coming under great threat, great forms of oppression and are being forced to do things by cultural practice that should have been banned a long time ago. Those who are not are stigmatised, they are seen as unclean. Words like that are common in accounts and those who reject FGM, female genital mutilation, are often treated less favourably as a result. Those who do suffer it undergo health problems that are often lifelong. However, what is terrifying is that in some cases it is not even recognised as a practice. The phrase FGM is unfamiliar to many. It has become in those communities where it still continues so normalised that it seems to be just a natural part of the growing up process. That is a really deep challenge for anybody to try and deal with that in an ingrained way. If you look back to those efforts and the exposition of the issue 100 years ago, we can be sure that that fell far away from anything that could be described as culturally sensitive. It is an ever-present danger that those who are most at risk are pushed further away by our good intentioned attempts to help them. Malcolm Chisholm identified the importance of partnership and sensitivity and I absolutely totally agree. That has been the approach that we have been taking on the national action plan to reflect the need to involve everybody. When you are potentially asking people to criminalise their families, that is going to be difficult and sensitive. The societal standards and attitudes can be best challenged often by people who are already inside those societies that are expressing that concern and who are showing leadership by supporting them to be champions for progress and reform. Last year, in one of the debates that we have had here, I remember the issue—indeed, the Equal Opportunities Committee—of which I am also an alum, I remember the issue of the passport being raised that could be shown by family members who had come under pressure to put their children forward, often abroad, for the procedure, for the mutilation. It would be a card that would say, if you take me back, if you do this, you will cause severe consequences for me. That sort of scheme is now operating from England and Scotland and some of the early response from England has been quite positive. Even though we are doing quite a lot on the issue, we have to keep going forward. We have to keep refighting these battles and continue to support people in the on-going challenge. That is why we have the national action plan. That is why we have identified further things that we want to do. We need to redouble our efforts with front-line staff. The action plan identifies that we will have our multi-agency national guidance soon, early 2016, but there is also a further stage beyond that to provide even further information so that people working at the front-line can identify the signs. A new ICD code to clarify reporting to make that whole awareness issue, to try and get that understanding of how many instances are happening clearly into the system. A recommendation all statutory agencies should have at least one named professional with expertise on FGM. To answer the point that Malcolm Chisholm had raised earlier to consider legislation, we are looking at the provisions relating to female genital mutilation that have come into force in England and Wales and have commissioned a community-based organisation—again, partnership being the key—to consult with a cross-section of the communities to ascertain their views and to see what we can do. However, even though we have not taken the approach of the mandatory duty that is in legislation here, that is a child protection issue very clearly. It is covered by that legislation, it is covered by that work. We want to continue supporting the organisations and the agencies across Scotland to deal with that, to support the champions for change in their own society. We can look around not just the work that has happened here to continually draw that issue into the limelight but also around the world, where there are examples of great societal change, with Kenya having taken great action in particular. Our resolve is clear in this Government, our resolve is clear in this Parliament, our resolve is clear in this society and indeed around the world is growing. That is a good place to be in and we will continue to work in partnership with everyone around this chamber and around the country to tackle the scourge of female genital mutilation. Thank you very much minister. That concludes Margaret McCulloch's debate on international day of zero tolerance for female genital mutilation and I now close this meeting of Parliament.


And it's my great pleasure to welcome Scooter Morris today. And Scooter will talk about genetic interactions, networks, and structure. And just before he starts, I'll just give a brief background. So John or Scooter Morris is the executive director of the resource for biocomputing visualization informatics in the University of California, San Francisco. Before finding his home in academia, he was a distinguished systems architect at Genentech, where for 19 years, he participated in the joys and trials of life and industry. And some of us will remember those joys and trials. So before that, he received his PhD in medical information science from UTSF in 1990 and has bachelor's degrees in physics, biology, and computer science from UC Irvine. Irvine, is it? Irvine? Irvine, sorry. So Scooter, importantly, is a member of the site escape core development team. And he is also the author of several site escape plug-ins and core features. And in his spare time, he's also vice president of the conferences of the ACM special interest group for computers and human interaction. That's a bit of a mouthful, but I made my best choice.  So maybe we can ask him a bit more about that later. But also, I want to say that this week, and Scooter's been here with us all week. He's been helping to teach a network analysis course. And it's really been great to have you here. And I'd like to say this opportunity to thank you again for everything you've contributed to do. It was great fun. We all learned a lot, I think. And I think everyone really enjoyed the interactions and your work. Yeah, and so some people are actually here, so that's great. So thank you again. And on behalf of the organizers, thank you for accepting this invitation. Thank you. Thank you very much. But we're going to have some fun. So this is a talk that I developed under a lot of stress over the course of the last several weeks, leading up to our NIH site visit for a grant. So now I get to give it without quite so much stress. Here's the outline of the talk. Basically, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give just a brief introduction. And then I'm going to talk about some experimental and computational techniques to show you how we use those techniques in going through a hypothetical scenario. And finally, I'll talk a little bit about the tools that you've seen and how it all glues together if we have time. So a little bit about the RBVI. I'm not expecting you to read that. So I just highlighted the key phrases. We build interactive software tools. So if you're expecting me to talk about the detailed technology and experimental techniques around genetic interactions, wrong seminar. Hopefully we're going to show you some genetic interaction data and how we're doing it, how we're visualizing it. But I'm not in the position to talk too much about the experimental technique. Couple of the tools that we do, we focus on atomic level interaction, molecular visualization. But we also do networks. So what I'm really here to talk about is this combination of structural biology and systems biology. And the idea is, well, first I should say, this is a note to myself. I'm going to, if you're a structural biologist, I apologize in advance for what I'm about to say.  It's okay. So let's think about structural biology. If you think about structural biology, in general, it's low throughput. It takes a long time to get that crystal. And then once you've got the crystal, it takes a long time to solve the structure. It's generally focused on a single protein, complex or reaction. You really focus on the details. The function, what you're trying to do is you're trying to look at structure and function at the residue level, at the chemical level. Really critical that you understand that very low level interaction. Even if you're looking at high resolution cryoEM, some of the new technologies, you still want to be able to know what's going on at that resolution. It's sort of a bottom-up view of function. Contrast that with systems biology, which is very high throughput. The excitement that we all saw when we saw those publications of those very first interactomes, now that we call hairballs, they're completely meaningless. Nobody could publish one, but we were really excited when those first came out. It's focused on the systems level, entire pathways, entire interactions within the cell, and more recently, cell-cell interactions. And it's got a sort of a top-down view of function. We're looking at the broad brush. Network biology is where we start looking and using networks to understand function. And it can integrate both structural biology and the systems views, as I'm going to show hopefully soon. It enables the use of some great analytical techniques using graph theory, and it provides a lot of new visualization opportunities that allow us to bring some of these views together. Okay. So the first thing that I want to do is I'm going to talk about some experimental techniques. Now, I will probably say, you know more about some of these techniques than I do, but it's important so that we can all be on the same page before I start going into the demo. So protein-protein interactions. All right, before I bore everybody, how many know what protein-protein interactions are used? String or something like that? All right, skip this slide, great. I love it. Fundamental point, a bunch of public repositories, really useful for bringing in data and for mapping on to data. Great. Let's talk about genetic interactions. How many of you have done genetic interactions? Okay, so only four of you can go to sleep. The rest, I expect you to stay awake. If you don't know what genetic interactions are, it's a very simple process conceptually. Ideally what you're going to do is you have some sort of, in this example, we're using yeast, and you have some sort of metric of fitness. In yeast, it's pretty easy, you just use growth, okay? You look at the growth rate of the yeast colony and that gives you a measure of fitness. So what the goal for genetic interactions is I take and I knock out a gene and I measure the growth. Then I knock out another gene and then I measure the growth. And then I knock out two genes and measure the growth. Now, if these genes are independent, you would expect that the growth would be the multiplication of the two growth rates. So if I knock out gene A, it grows half as well. If I knock out gene B, it grows half as well. When I knock out AB, both, I would expect that it's gonna grow a quarter as well, right? But it doesn't, often. And what that is indicating, there's some sort of functional interaction between those two genes. So either, in this example, right here, they're part of the same linear pathway. So if I knock out gene A and I knock out gene B, I've just knocked out the pathway, right? No difference if I knock them both out. The pathway's still knocked out, okay? If, on the other hand, these are two independent paths that trigger a downstream event, and I knock out gene A and I knock out gene B, then with just gene A knocked out, I still can take the alternative path. If I knock out gene B, I can take the alternative path. If I knock them both out, I've now knocked out the pathway. So, very simple, generally what happens when you do these is done on a very, very broad scale, high throughput, which you wind up with is you wind up with a heat map, okay? You cluster this and you come up with a signature of some form. In this case, what I've done is a little highlight right there, and this is the pre-folding complex, and you can see that there's a real strong positive genetic interaction, okay? If I knock out any one of those, I've knocked out pre-folding. So it doesn't matter which one I've knocked out, okay? Makes perfect sense. Great. But we wanna take that a step further. Remember we're talking about structure here. What happens if instead of two genes, I'm looking at a cross between a point mutation and a gene? Same basic idea. I take, usually this is done in fairly large structures. So you have a point mutation, you measure the growth rate, you have a knockout, you measure the growth rate, and then you do a cross. Same thing, you do both point mutation and knockout. And what you get is something that looks like this. In this case, this is all of our knocked out genes up at the top, and then down here, we have all of our point mutations. And you can see there's some strong patterns where we still have strong genetic interactions, okay? Now, as I look at this, and when they first brought this to me, you can look at that and you can see, well, it's kinda hard to tell the structural significance of what we're looking at here, all right? So hold that thought. Okay, next technology. Residue Interaction Networks, okay? Real simple stuff. If you think about a protein or any other macromolecule, you can conceptualize that as a network, where I look at the residues as nodes, and the edges are the interactions between those residues. Now, what is an interaction in this context? We can define what it is depending on what we wanna study. So it can be bonds, either covalent or hydrogen bonds, it can be contacts, it can be clashes. We can look at any kind of interaction that we can plot on a network, right? The nice thing about that is if I have two network representations, I can align those networks and look at the differences pretty easy. Let's see, I'm sure a lot of you have looked and tried to do super alignments of structures. And determine exactly where the spread is, where the differences are. We're gonna see that in just a second, I'm actually in the demo, we're gonna do some alignments. It's really hard to tell when, if you do a, if you turn on all atom view, where your clashes are, where your contacts are.  So there's a number of techniques for looking at that, but it's hard to visualize. If we render these as networks, it becomes much easier to take a look at the differences in two residue interaction networks. And we're gonna do that in just a little bit. Also, we can also use graph theoretical approaches, which is really nice. So I can look for centralities in these networks, I can look for hubs, I can look for other interesting aspects when I'm looking at this from a network perspective. And then finally, this provides opportunities for integration. If I have a network view, then maybe what I could do is bring in other kinds of networks. A network is a network, I can mix networks of proteins, maybe with networks of individual proteins. What might that allow me to do? What kinds of new visualizations? What kinds of new analytical techniques can I come up with? All right, this is what this looks like. In this case, what I've done is I've taken this structure, it's a phosphotriesterase, and I've built a residue interaction network. And the residue interaction network, I colored it to be the same and you can see exactly the pattern, you come up with a nice representation that looks a lot like the protein. And if I could link these two views, then I can sort of travel as it were through the network and see where I am on the protein structure, okay? Does that all make sense? Pretty simple, pretty easy, we can go through and figure all that out. All right, of all the four techniques I'm gonna talk about, this one's the stretch, at least it is for me. If you, let's see, do we have any crystallographers out here? Crystallographer as in make the crystal, throw the X-ray, do the, yeah, okay. So if you look at a density map that comes out, generally what happens is the process of refinement is to go through and find the best fit side chain locations. And that's what becomes the structure. And everybody kind of looks at these crystal structures as the answer, there are gold standard for structures. But as I've now learned working with my collaborators, it turns out that when you do that, you don't explain all of the density. So you kind of have this unexplained areas of density in the crystal structure. So some collaborators at UCSF in Stanford decided to develop this system called Q-Fit, which goes through and looks for alternative side chains that can explain some of that unexplained density. And then what happens is you can imagine you're building a crystal structure and everything's pretty static, but still you can catch that protein with some of these alternative side chain configurations. All right, and that's represented in the density map. All right, so what they do is they go through and they extract that heterogeneity and they add extra side chains, extra locations to the structure. This is what that looks like. If you look in here, what you see is there's several different positions for that side chain proposed, right? And that the PDB has always had the capability of having alternative locations for atoms and they're just taking advantage of that PDB so that you can go through and you can look at the various side chains, all right? Good, so now we have an idea when this is saved, you have an idea of structure that has alternative confirmations. So what do we do with that? And that's where contact networks come in. What it allows you to do with the contact network is if you imagine I have all these side chains, now I'm gonna start at one side chain and I'm gonna look for all of the alternative locations for that side chain. And then I'm gonna see if any of those alternative locations clash with alternative locations of its dambers, right? So I'm moving this around. If it clashes, great, I'm gonna add that to my network. And now I'm gonna start moving this residue, the alternative locations for this residue around and find where it clashes. And this way, I build out a network of these clashes. And it looks something like this. You can see in this example that you've got this whole area in red that's represented by this network that the clashes will walk their way through. Now, if you think about this, it's really useful. You could look at potentially for allosteric interactions, right? It's a big deal figuring out where we have allosteric. I could look at the potential for mutation. If I have a perturbation anywhere in this structure and I disrupt one of these networks, it might have an impact on the flexibility of the protein. All right, so those are the technologies. And what I'm gonna show you now is a scenario. This is where we get to have some fun. We're gonna explore together the nucleosome. Specifically, we're gonna look at histones H3 and H4. And we're gonna do this by using a whole set of tools and the technologies that we've just gone through and show basically a scenario that we could walk through a step at a time to dive in and to put all of these together using both structure and network visualization. Before I do that, I'm gonna hold off just a second and find out if anybody has any questions about any of the technologies before I show them all to you in tools. Questions out there, all make sense. I don't know whether it makes sense yet but show me the tools and let's figure it out. Okay, that's fine too. All right, so the first step is I'm interested in the nucleosome, specifically H3 and H4. What's the first step in this? Well, gee, there's a bunch of known information that we can get using high throughput interactions, right? We have these big repositories of protein-protein interaction databases. Why don't we start there? Let's just figure out if we can probe that. So a little bit about the tricks that I'm playing. If you notice my little slide program here doesn't look like PowerPoint. In fact, this slide program is a molecular visualization program. And if I sort of slide this down and it shrinks, okay, we have some things that let me clean up my screen here. We were having some fun technical time earlier. Great. Okay, so what you can see here is two programs that are running in the background. On the left, we have the structure of the nucleosome. This is the yeast nucleosome running in chimera X. We'll talk a little bit more about chimera X. On the right, those of you who are in the class should recognize side escape, right? Two tools running and then literally this browser that has all of my slides is actually the help viewer for chimera X. But what's interesting is it has links in it that are commands for chimera X. So if I click this command, it's gonna basically tell chimera X to use side escape to go query the string database and find in this case 30 partners that are known to interact with the nucleosome, okay? So if I click that, there we go. So this was a query. We went off to string and we queried based upon, using the PDB ID in this case and went off and pulled them down. Now I spent some time with this network previously to make it a little easier. And what you see here, these are the two genes that encode H3 and these are the two genes that encode H4. I color coded them the same as what we have over here on chimera. And now we can begin doing some homework. We could begin browsing through this. We could potentially look for structural information in string. There's a number of things that we could walk through and begin to investigate what's known about interactions with H3 and H4, all right? Great. So that's the first step. We are not going to take time to dive much deeper into that, we could. But there's a number of proteins in here. There's silencing proteins. All of the ones that you see make total sense if you spend the time to look at it. I took a bunch of these and spent time cozy it up to these genome.org and confirmed it. Yeah, this all makes sense to me. Great. Back to the slides. So that's great. Now we know what the protein level to the, oh, it went bigger. Yeah. There's a little fun here with this that I can show you later. Is that better? Great. Okay, so now with string very quickly, we've gone out. We pulled down some data that's publicly available and we said now we know a bunch of proteins that are known to interact with H3 and H4. Great. But I'm a structural biologist. I want to know what's interacting at the residue level. How do I find out where those interactions are at the residue level? And that's where these genetic interactions come in. So the second step is we're gonna use genetic interaction information. So this is unpublished data. So I'm not going to go into too many details because it's unpublished. But the first thing in this is we're gonna bring up a cluster heat map, okay? So just like the others, just like we saw before, this is a PE map. And you can see this is the data that's loaded into Side Escape. I brought this up from the existing Side Escape data. Great, I can look at this, I can figure out what's interacting with what, but it's still not very satisfying. What I really wanna see is I wanna see these interactions in the context of my structure. So where is this, all right? So let's do that. There's a network running right here. Go ahead and do that. Again, all of these links that I'm clicking are causing commands to happen in here. And what you see is if you remember that heat map that I brought up, here is the dendogram at the top. And if we zoom in, there are the actual genes, okay? The, at the bottom, there was that weird residue interaction network. So we'll zoom back out. This is actually a residue interaction network of the nucleus home. So by doing a residue interaction network and taking advantage of this, this PE map, and the edges here represent the genetic interactions. Great, so what? What, I have this really difficult thing to look at and I still haven't solved my problem. My problem is I wanna see where we are in the structure. Well, let's zoom in. Sort of gonna take a random click. And now what you just saw when I did, when I clicked on the gene is not only did I get my heat map for that specific gene, but over here in Chimera, we actually annotated the structure by changing the side chain confirmation, showing the spheres on the side chain and coloring those spheres by the level of genetic interaction. So this gives us a really unique way to begin pulling both of these pieces of data together. We can use the genetic interaction data to begin probing exactly what the implications are of this particular interaction up or down. In fact, I've taken this one step further and I've gone through and defined all the well-known complexes that are known to interact with this and we can select a complex and you can see the patterns that we get on this structure of both the positive and negative genetic interactions and you can begin to start probing more completely what you might be interested in from the standpoint of both the structural standpoint and its interactions with other proteins, other genes. So it's great. Now I can take this information, I can couple it with my protein-protein interaction information and begin probing in some detail what we have and why it might be happening. So what I'd like to do now is I'm gonna look at one in particular. We just zoomed in on a particular side chain. Yup, I think Adobe Connect is trying to catch up. Okay, so let's take a look at this particular side chain. Now this has a very strong genetic interaction. If we look at this, what you'll see is it interacts with a large number of genes. All right, what's interesting about it is that it's down in the middle of an alpha helix buried inside of the structure. So if we look at this in more detail what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna open a modeled structure and let me zoom back out. Everything's kind of slowing down on me here. So what I did is this particular, if you look over here, you see the heat map for this point mutation. That's a lot of interaction. That's a lot of interaction. This point mutation has a huge impact. In fact, what I'll also tell you is that it makes the cell very sensitive to heat. So, but if we look at this and actually model it, we can, it doesn't have a huge change. The modeled structure really doesn't show much. What I wanna do, I'm gonna go and show you where it is. Adobe Connect and I are not having fun. This is very slowly zooming out, something that usually happens very quickly. While it's zooming out, let me tell you what you're gonna see when it finally zooms out. At the end here, what I've done is I've turned on spheres. Okay, and when we zoom all the way out, what you're gonna see is that this mutation is buried inside the structure. So, you have this change which is buried inside the structure. It cannot, because of its location, have any direct binding. So, this can't be a site that has any PTMs. So, you begin wondering what could be happening. What could be going on here that could be impacting this? And Adobe Connect is not gonna let me do this. So, let's see if I have, I don't know why it's, ugh, ugh, let me zoom back in a little bit, slide this out. All right, so the little green outlines that you can barely see there in this structure we can kinda peek through, that's where the mutation is. This is buried, but yet it has this huge interaction. So, what's going on? How can we begin looking, how can we begin probing this? And what we do is this is where we can take advantage of residue interaction networks. So, what you're looking at here is I've taken and created a residue interaction network of the mutated structure. So, this is modeled using the back rub server. And then I've taken and I took the native residue interaction network and I've compared them. Pretty simple, I can just do a sequence alignment to figure out where the residues are, right? I already know where the structures are. I can get that from my superposition in kinda X. And now I can compare them. So, the purple one is the mutation. You can see right there we've gone from loosing to an alanine, great. If you see a red line, that means that we've modified the contacts such that we now have a contact that is in the second network that isn't in the first network. And if we look at the blue lines, that's a contact that's in the first network that isn't in the second network. And what you'll see if you zoom out is that modifying that alpha helix has the impact of a very far reaching change in terms of the residue-residue contacts. There's no way that we could have spent the time to look through this in detail at the structural level. Well, we could, people do. And there are tools that can help. We can look at the contacts and things like that. But this gives us a really quick tool to begin probing on that. Now, caveats, okay? This was a modeled structure using Backrub. So, uses Rosetta, this is state-of-the-art, good stuff, but who knows, Backrub could have given us a slightly off model, okay? It could be that the genetic interactions really have more to do with just because this adds instability. But as you look at this, even as far as we go, this gives us some pretty compelling evidence to begin looking more. Now, what I can tell you is I went back after looking at this. I looked at that dendrogram, okay? And I found all of the residues, the mutated residues that have the same phenotypic signature, okay? And it turns out that they are all located right up on this alpha helix. So, there's three residues located right up, walking our way up this alpha helix. So, clearly, there's something that's going on that destabilizes or changes that structure enough to have this major interaction. Okay. Whoa, I docked it. One of the unfortunate things about having your browser be also part of your molecular visualization program is occasionally it decides to wanna go home and just docks right in. Okay, so now what we've done is we have these really long range effects, okay? We can see them in the residue interaction network. The immediate next question is, how can we explore these in more detail? And that's where we get to contact networks, okay? So, we can take advantage of our contact networks to build up a contact network and go through that. Now, unfortunately, and I spent the time looking, there aren't any really high resolution H3 and H4 structures. And in order to take advantage of contact networks, you need something around two angstroms. This is a 3.2 angstrom structure. So, what we're gonna do is we're going to cheat and I'm gonna load a different structure and you get to watch the contact network build. That's, I just downloaded the network file and the protein structure. There's the structure popped in, now we're creating the RIN. There's the RIN just like we did before. We're gonna color it. And this time what you see this little sidebar, it's gonna give us the networks that we can choose from. We can adjust the percentage of overlap that we allow. And I'm gonna look at 0.35. I can click on that. And what you quickly see is here is the network that works its way all the way through the structure. And this is what that looks like when we probe those sidechains. And you can see in this example, how encyclopedia and how we're getting that to walk all the way through the structure. So, if we did have H3 and H4 at high resolution, it'd be really interesting to run this and see if there are contact networks that work their way up that helix that might be changed when we mutate that one residue. Okay. So, quickly I wanna mention the tools that you've seen. So, Chimera X is our next generation molecular visualization and analysis program. It's not yet released. You're seeing raw prototype builds. We intend to open it up for users next month in December so people can download these builds. And we're shooting for an alpha release at the first part of 2017. This is what it looks like. You can see that it's got a very different kind of visualization. This is sort of the typical molecular visualization that you would see. And this is what you see in Chimera X. It takes advantage of the amount of data interactive shadowing as well as ambient occlusion to get a better sense of the depths of the structure. So, again, from that to that, and you can see why we're pretty excited about it. Side Escape, those of you who are in the class are already familiar with it. It is a platform for visualizing and analyzing networks. It integrates diverse data types and it has this concept of apps. And there's 302 apps now in the app store. And no, it's not a store. The app repository, but it's still called a store. And we're currently at release 3.4, 3.5 is in release candidate. It will be out in January. How does all this work? So I'm clicking on links. You're seeing things happen in Side Escape. You're seeing things happen in Chimera X. What's going on behind the scenes that has all of this glue together? And what's really happening is both Chimera X and Side Escape support a REST interface. They both have their own little built-in web servers. And we're just sending all of the commands back and forth using those web servers, using REST. So Side Escape has something called SIREST that we can send commands to. And Chimera has something built in called the REST server. And then there's a bundle, that's Chimera X's apps equivalent called Side Escape, which knows how to send commands to Side Escape. And in Side Escape, there's something called StructureVizX, which is sending commands to Chimera X. And so all of these things is I'm clicking on links. Those links in the browser are actually commands that I'm sending to Chimera X, which is in many cases doing nothing more than sending a command to Side Escape or processing itself. All right. So in summary, what I wanna kind of hit on here is that what I've walked through is this idea of using multiple data sources of multiple diverse types and integrating them together in unique visualizations. And we can do that because we've linked the structural view with the network view. Hopefully you kind of get the value of the tools for doing that. I wanna just make sure that everybody, there's one message you take away. It's that network tools and structure tools work well together, and there's a lot of advantages to linking them. And with that, I'll sort of camp on the acknowledgments. The UCSF Chimera team, these are the people that are working hard right now on developing Chimera X. My collaborators at String, Yergyl Jensen, the PEMap work is done at the Krogan Lab at UCSF. All the contact networks work is done in the Frasier Lab and also by Henry Veden-Biedem at Stanford, the SIDEScape team, and my collaborators on residue interaction networks. And of course, we are funded. Man, the NIH grace gratefully gives us money, and there's our grant. And with that, I'll take any questions.


All right, John, I spent some time, far more time than I cared to yesterday, with my disk station. Synology has announced that DSM7, which is the next version of their operating system for their disk stations, is finally out of its long testing cycle and will be released on Tuesday. So, again, depending on when you're listening to this, it might already be out. It might not be. Their release candidate is out, though, and I figured, okay, well, release candidate, I'm good to go. Usually, I install the beta on one of my sort of alternate disk stations here. I've been busy, so I didn't do that this time, but I did install the release candidate on sort of my alternate disk station. That went fairly well, and then I installed it on my main one. And that's when things kind of went sideways. It works. Like, first of all, please listen to this segment, but my advice is, if you are using any third-party packages, wait. Do not install disk station 7 yet, DSM7. It changes a lot of things under the hood with how packages can be installed. Most of this from a security standpoint. I think, John, based on the knowledge that I didn't want to have to glean yesterday, that's where I sort of landed with it is that permissions and things like that. We saw some of that with DSM6 where they limited what packages could do and how packages needed to act. That got a lot stricter, it seems, with DSM7. And if you look at the Plex threads on this, it's pretty obvious that Plex's engineers are frustrated AF by the moving target of this. I had no idea. I just assumed that because it was release candidate, they were ready for it to be released. I understand that there's going to be some things that aren't quite right out of the gate, but as of three weeks ago, things were still changing and there was some indication, according to Plex, from Synology, that things were going to continue to be changing. And that's not good with one of your most popular third- but first-party packages. Plex is one of the default third-party packages that's included. It would not work for me. I had to go through a huge monstrous exercise to get my distations permissions. It uses ACLs in a weird way and some shares can have their ACLs customized, ACLs being access control lists, like Windows server permissions. Some can have their ACLs customized in the interface, like in the GUI. And some cannot. And for whatever reason, my Plex share is not one of the blessed ones. And so, yeah. So I had to learn all about how to use Sino-ACL control and do it all from the command line and try and beat my head against the wall and then try more. And I finally got it running. It helped from the Plex team. And all of this is available publicly. The conversation I had with them was all public on their forums. I'll link to that so that you can, if you run into any of these problems, you can benefit from it. And then most of, I would say most of my other third-party packages didn't work either. So it's been a bit of a chore, my friend. But it, what? It is good. Like the things that, so that's the bad, that's the warning, Danger Will Robinson. What I do see though, so I'm looking at a summary here of the features, or at least one summary. But they mentioned that, I guess the good news is that they claim now that you can see how much data each package is using. So they've enhanced something in the package management. Yeah. So they claim. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. They've enhanced a ton. And that's the thing is, is like, even just the core components of DSM, like the storage manager is so much easier.  They've added a lot of cloud management stuff, John. They've added this thing called active insight, which is you log into your Synology cloud on at Synology.com and it can tell you like what's going, you have to opt into this, of course. But once you do, it shows you all of your distations and it can, you know, report on, on things for you. You can back up your configuration to send to your account on Synology's cloud. So if there's ever a problem, you can come back down. Synology photos, of course, I can't get it to work for whatever reason it won't migrate my data in because the indexing, the media indexer isn't running properly for me yet. So, you know, don't know why trying to dig into that too. But Synology photos looks like perhaps finally the right step in the evolution that was photo station and then moments. And it seems like now they've sort of combined them into photos. Obviously, I haven't tested it yet, but I'm excited about that. Synology office, which has been awesome anyway, is now like, you know, it sees a pretty big upgrade as does Synology Drive, which is sort of the engine underneath Synology office, but also the syncing engine that we use like, you know, like a Dropbox kind of thing. You can see so much more about from the management side, it's a whole lot more flexible. So there's, there's a lot. I'm probably missing stuff, too. You know, it's like they've put a lot into this, but the third party package thing got. But was there anything else on the on the like the pros side, the good side that you noticed, John, I feel like I'm missing something here. No, again, I think you could, you know, so the storage manager gives you a lot more. So, you know, they increase the performance of certain raid and cashing things like that.  Another thing which I think, yeah, they already launched it. Maybe they enhanced it, but, you know, they're also trying to promote this concept of a hybrid cloud and that they enable this or they make it easier for you to split your storage between your Synology and their cloud service, which is nice.  And yeah, and as I, I haven't messed with hybrid cloud yet. You're right. That is, maybe you were able to do it before, but certainly not at this level that DSM seven opens. But what's nice is you can have, you know, all of your data in the cloud and only sink down to your disk station, the things that you locally use regularly, but you have access to it all and you can slip it down. So if you and I, you know, we're in different locations, we each have disk stations, you know, if you're working on one project and I'm working on another, we're both saving it to the, to our share. But I can choose not to download your project locally. If it's going to take up a lot of storage or you're making a lot of changes to it and I don't want to use all that bandwidth or whatever. But then when I want it, I can just go slip it down. It's like, it's, it's like you said, it's the best of both worlds. Like, yeah, I like that. I, as far as third party packages go, John, I am now all in on Docker. I moved, I think four packages from being the Sinnoh community, which is like the unofficial, official repository for third party packages on, on Synology. That's really where you're going to go get those from. Those are what are not up to date yet for most of them. I'll put a link out. They are tracking which are fully capable of running on DSM seven and which are not yet fully capable. And then there's some that they say will never be, but that's very, that's a small number. Most of them are still just being worked on. But, you know, Docker, Synology, Docker has come a long way on Synology and what Docker is for those of you that, that either don't know or haven't used it in a while. Essentially, what Docker lets you do is it's kind of like creating a virtual machine. In fact, it is creating a virtual machine. It's a little, it's like a lightweight virtual machine. You're not going to log into the, like the graphical interface of it or anything like you would if you ran, say, parallels or VMware, you know, Fusion on your Mac or whatever. But it runs inside a virtual machine, inside a container. And what's nice about that is when you change the operating system, like say DSM six to DSM seven, well, the thing inside your container of Docker is still just Docker. And so it all just works. And Synology has made it the user interface for Docker has gotten so much easier. I moved four packages over to Docker last night in less than a half hour, all four total, like probably closer to 20 minutes. It was about five minutes each. It was, you know, download the container and while the container was downloading, the container being sort of the pre-built virtual machine for whatever service you're going to use, I definitely should have done this with Plex. Like that would have saved my afternoon yesterday. I didn't. I wasn't that smart. But I did do it with like ZNC, which is the thing that I used to connect to our IRC server for the chat at live. Mackie.com. That Synology Syno Community package. No, it doesn't work. But I moved, you know, I downloaded the container that has ZNC and all that stuff. And while I was doing that, I moved the data from where the app, the Synology App Store stores it, which is in slash volume one slash app store slash name of the app. So ZNC, I moved that data over to, or copied, I should say, that data over to a folder that I put in slash Docker. So I made slash Docker slash ZNC. I copied that data over. Then once the container was downloaded, I went through and I point, you just, there's basically like three things that you need to do when you're setting up a Docker container. You know, you say launch. It asks you, what folders do you want me to use? And you can find, you can always find some guide online that tells you, OK, well, like for ZNC, the name of the folder needs to be slash config. I'm making that up. I could have that wrong.  And then I say, OK, so inside the container, when it looks for slash config, where is that data actually stored? Well, that data is stored at, you know, slash Docker slash ZNC. That's the file I can touch from the outside of the Docker container, right? So you're pointing inside to outside. Great. Put it there. It's slurped in my configuration. All good. Then you tell it what network ports it's like port forwarding on your router. And I say, OK, you know, if I use port 8251 for ZNC, I want to point 8251 on my disk station to 8251 inside this Docker container. And then sometimes there's an environment variable to set up like if you want to set like time zone or whatever. But that's really it. So it's mostly two things, I think that you, you know, you configure and then the Docker just runs and it's like, OK, great. And now I don't have to worry about it. So highly recommend before you move to DSM seven, move all of your third party packages into Docker containers. And then your migration will be smooth or maybe not fully smooth. I don't know. Do you use Docker a bunch, John? My last experience wasn't very positive because you know, you had to, I couldn't just take a Docker package and run it.  Yeah, you'd point it out. You shouldn't have to use the command line at all now. All the things I just mentioned are doable in the Synology Docker graphical interface and you're right. Excellent. Previously they weren't, especially the networking stuff, if you wanted to do like a bridge network or whatever, which is essentially what you want to do with everything and then just port forward, none of that was doable on the in the graphic interface.  So, but that's all fixed now. And that's been fixed for a little while, not too terribly long, but like maybe DSM-6, maybe later in DSM-6, they fixed that, but it's great now. Like I said, I moved everything in and I'm going to check and make sure that all my Docker containers are running, but yeah, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven up and running. One of them is Watchtower, which keeps my Docker instances up to date. So, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's so much better. And if I'm in the chat room at live.mackykev.com, which it appears I am, then my ZNC Docker is working on DSM-7, so I'm stoked. Anyway, yeah, if you're going to make this leap, be prepared for perhaps like a package to not work for a while, you know, it got to the point. I expected it to be like, okay, you've got to update these packages and okay, fine, you know, whatever. I did not expect it to just say, oh yeah, no, fail, not going to do it.  And I was shocked that Plex was one of those. ZNC, that's sort of a weird thing. How many people connect to an IRC and need to do it through a relay or want to do it through a relay? Like that's a little weird, right? But, but Plex ain't weird, folks, that it, it should not be the problem that it is. The big issue is they had to move where they're storing the Plex metadata library, which used to be in a share called Plex, and that's where it is on DSM-6, it needs to move into the package home because of sandboxing. And being able to move that requires lots of permissions that it might not otherwise have. So anyway, that's the underlying issue. And they've been trying to solve it, but it's been like a cat and mouse game by reading the forum since December. And it's been like, okay, we got it working. It's like, broke again. So anyway. Yeah, let's see. Some enhanced security stuff as well. I think they, I see that listed as a new feature.  Yeah. And I should change that. Yeah. But I see also that they have stuff here as far as like password policy. They make that a little tougher, which is good, I guess. It is good. And you can tweak that stuff, of course, but they've also got a more robust two-factor authentication method that you can use one of their apps with. And so, you know, it's good. I mean, we use it a lot for, you know, business stuff with some of the businesses that I have. So, I mean, it, you know, it's not, like it's a real platform. It's not just, you know, a thing to play with, although it's fun to play with. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, we rely on this for a few of the companies. And so, like, I'm a little bummed that Synology Photos isn't working for me. I think that's a me problem, but you know, the migration should work. Whatever that means. So, I don't know.


Good morning friends! Today is EC Insider launch day! Oh yeah! I just placed my order and I'm very very excited about it. I know a lot of you have already placed your orders too, so anyway yeah I'm actually really excited about a lot of the bundles that they have too. So if you don't know the bundles are just you know like your planner or some of the planners not all the planners but some of the planners then the bunch of other accessories too and they give it a little bit of discount. So that's pretty awesome.  I have not eaten one yet. This is from Life's Organized Chaos Jody. I'm gonna link her below and she made these beautiful little layer cookies for launch day.  All right.  Thanks Jody. Um yeah. So layers cookies on EC Insider day? I mean why the heck not? So anyway that's what's going on here. I placed my order really quick and now I have to work. So I'll see you guys a little while later and I'm gonna finish my cookie. Talk to you then. Bye. Well good evening my friends. It is like 5.30 now and I'm still upstairs. I've been done working for like a while maybe about an hour. Bless them that. I don't know. Anyway Doyle's down there doing his Doyle things and um I've actually been organizing my little planner cart here. I decided to consolidate my sticker binder from, well this is just my own binder that I got on Amazon. It's an Avery, I think it's a 3 inch, 4 inch binder, something like that. It's like a little mini binder and I made my own binder a long time ago. It's all sorts of worn out. It just needs to go in the trash. It's like broken and I mean clearly it's well loved but um I, my main items that I use from Coffee Break Planner are these two items right here which I decided to make pouches for. So these are the scalloped half boxes which I love and then I, it's hard to see but I like clip them together with like a little paper clip all the different colors so they don't go all over the place and then I know how much inventory I have of everything and then these ones are the scalloped event stickers.  I just put them in the appropriate category um that I already had like listed out so yeah and then I'm not really sure where to put my script stickers if I should make a new little pouch for them or if I should just put them in the category that they go in. I haven't fully decided about that yet so I'm putting those off to the side and I'll make that decision a later time. I still do have my Chrissy and Designs binder right here but her stickers are actually pre-punched like you can get them pre-punched you can order them that way and that's how I order all of my stickers so I don't, this one isn't even though they're both well loved this one isn't like all coming apart like the other binder was so I'm like you know what it's just time for this binder to go away and for myself to use just a little bit of a different sticker organization sometimes gotta mix that up a little bit so but if you're interested in anything um coffee break planner I do have a coupon code and a link down below for 20% off so um feel free to check that out because I got some good stuff um I actually just placed an order not too long ago so that should be coming either this week or next week I'm not really sure anyways um yeah so I got my launch day order in I saw all y'all on Instagram already got your launch day orders in so everyone seems to be pretty darn pumped about that which is great I did eat one of the cookies from Jodi I'm gonna try and not eat the other cookie until Wednesday when it's like the public launch for erin congan so we'll see we'll see if I can because I have no self-control you guys um so yeah that's kind of what's going on work was um actually a little bit busy for me today which was good just kept my mind off of things and um yeah yeah I did get a little bit of happy mail which I will share later I'm actually gonna be doing a like planner sticker and washi haul um at some point and so I will share that a little later but I have I did a bunch of um etsy orders was it last week last week I did so I should have a bunch of stuff coming probably this week and into next week um as well so that's very exciting anyway but just been hanging out here dog's been the dog I don't know he's so weird he loves that little bed so much people ask a lot what that bed is and it's actually from Casper um he really likes it I don't necessarily recommend spending that much money on a dog bed but if you're interested in spending a lot of money on a dog bed you should check out Casper they're the ones that sell like the um mattresses as well but they sell dog beds and that's Doyle's dog bed he did have a couple like I think he had like one other dog bed from when he was a puppy maybe two I can't remember um he's ruined several dog beds but he's never ever ruined that one and the way that that one is is um it's all memory film and you can take the cover off super easily and it's really easy to machine wash so um I've machine washed that thing several times and it comes out really nice so I mean I don't know maybe that's why all the other ones I've ever gotten from like the pet store or target or Walmart or wherever I've gotten them before um but they've never had like a either an interchangeable cover or cover you could take off and wash um so like when it just gets gross enough you just kind of have to toss it which seems like a total waste um but yeah whatever so anyway I'm gonna run downstairs and figure out something for dinner since it's like 5 30 and it's time to do that because I don't really want to eat dinner at like 8 30 but you know I've been known to do that before too so anyway that's it from here sorry I'm not more interesting but you guys heard him do that so whatever oh goodness anyway oh and do you see all the oils uh little sticks back there yeah he currently has four there you go well we can't see him very well but there are four bones just ready for him right buddy you know I'm talking about you your eyeballs are open well I know I don't yeah so he's got four bones there just just waiting just waiting for him to eat or not or whatever I don't know anyway but I'm gonna talk to you guys when things get way more interesting bye my friends it's time to call it quits for the day yay um it's a little past 8 and I'm tired so I'm gonna go to bed I already got Doyle ready to go he's stalking me over there and I already did all my nighttime things last thing I gotta do take my thumbs yay yay I start with three that's uh that's the key to it's a life right there you start with three if I wake up in the middle of the night depending on how I'm feeling I take anywhere from one to two sometimes even three again I know that's horrible for you but this is where I am y'all anyways I'm gonna take these I'm gonna go goodbye say Sayonara's and uh yeah Doyle and I are gonna head off to head off to bed what do you think bud yeah you ready he's always ready for a good nap so anyways don't really ask him twice so yeah I'm in a jet I think he has so much for hanging out with me today and those is probably a little bit of a shorter vlog for you guys um but I'll be back tomorrow tomorrow is Tuesday and um clearly nothing planned because I can't really have anything planned right now so yeah well I'm gonna jet eat my thumbs and I'm gonna see you guys tomorrow bye guys well folks it's time to kick it old school


Wendell Phillips once said that you can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned 70 or given up all hope of the presidency. Well, today I welcome you President Mubarak as a friend. Coming from a 76-year-old constitutionally prohibited from seeking another term, you can rest assured those sentiments are genuine and come from the heart. This visit is a particularly happy occasion as it provides the opportunity to congratulate you personally on your reelection to a second term as President of Egypt. As a second term veteran myself, however, let me suggest, Mr. President, it doesn't get any easier. The referendum that approved your second term reflects the strong confidence that the Egyptian people have in your leadership. We share that same confidence. Nevertheless, Mr. President, we both know that governing a country in which there are divergent political views and a lively opposition is a tough job. We respect your work to broaden participation in the political process and are confident it will help create the stable political environment needed for Egypt to move forward. Egypt today under your guidance is resuming its rightful place in the forefront of world leadership. This is particularly important at a time when the forces of fanaticism and blind hatred threaten the security and stability of the Middle East. Egypt by again exerting its wise and calming influence provides the world hope that the serious challenges facing the Middle East can and will be overcome and that the region will be restored to a happier and more tranquil course. Likewise, President Mubarak, you have wisely and effectively led Egypt onto a course of economic reform and development. The difficult obstacles you and the Egyptian people face are well understood here too. We too learned in our own efforts to strip away years of government intervention in our marketplace, how monumental this task can be, how ingrained is the dependence on intervention and how powerful are the interest groups that resist change. We're convinced that such vigorous reform is the surest path to economic progress. And Mr. President, Americans will stand with and work with Egyptians in the cause of growing prosperity, just as we do in the cause of peace. Mr. President, our meetings today were enjoyable and enlightening. And so, you are most welcome. And in saying that, I propose a toast to you, Mr. President, Mrs. Mubarak, the people of Egypt, and the close and amicable ties that will continue between our peoples and our governments. President Reagan, Mrs. Reagan, dear friends, thank you for your kind words and the gracious hospitality. The elegant and warm reception you have accorded us reflects the best tradition of American friendship and genuine openness. It is a tradition that has deep roots in our culture too. We value friendship and loyalty to France as usual. President Reagan and his graceful spouse have made us feel welcome and quite at home the minute we arrived at the White House this morning. They symbolize the American spirit at its best. My meeting with the President today was another confirmation of my belief that he's a man of wisdom and vision. He is an American in the true sense of the word. I expressed to him my admiration of the rentness efforts he exerted for years to make the world more safe and secure for future generations. His recent achievement in this area will certainly have a lasting effect on worldly peace and stability. I have no doubt that other steps will follow in the same direction during the months ahead. I am certain that regional conflicts will figure high on the agenda throughout the year. Of these conflicts, the Middle East problems deserve special attention and a priority. Strenuous efforts are needed to stop the war which is still raging in the Gulf and set the peace process in motion again. We have to demonstrate to all the parts concerned that peace is the only meaningful and effective way to settle disputes and solve problems. No other formula would work. No other alternative is acceptable. There is no justification at all for the continuation of bloodshed and destruction. As Benjamin Franklin once said, there never was a good war or a bad peace. With this in mind, Egypt has not hesitated at any point to take pioneering steps in order to make peace. It is for the reason too that I have proposed a few days ago a moratorium on all forms of violence and repression. I am quite convinced that this proposal, which is conceived as a preparatory step towards comprehensive peace, reflects the real sentiment of people of goodwill and human principles everywhere. No one who looks ahead and thinks of the future can accept the continuation of occupation and oppression. No one can, in good conscience, condone a policy of shooting and beating in a land that is holy to all of us. What I am proposing here is a policy of hope and positivity to replace despair and fear. I am sure that I am not alone in that, for I am backed by millions of men and women of courage and conviction everywhere. Let me see this opportunity, thank all those Americans, Israelis and others who raise their voices in support of peace and in defense of liberty. Their stand will never go unnoticed or unrewarded. Dear friends, American leaders have worked with Egyptian leaders over the years in order to construct a model for friendship and cooperation among nations. In particular, President Reagan has made a great contribution to the development of friendly relations between Egypt and the United States. We are proud of this friendship, which has been mature enough to overcome all obstacles we have encountered and deep enough to look to the future with hope and promise. The talks we had in the morning added to the reservoir of goodwill and mutual understanding that exists today between our peoples. As ever, the President was both receptive and responsive. I highly value his opinions and ideas. We shall continue to work together, as we did in the past, in order to serve our common goal of reinforcing peace and promoting progress and stability. In conclusion, permit me to ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to rise in a tribute to President and Mrs. Reagan, to all our friends who are present this evening and each and every American. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. David Benoit and Ms. Patty Austin. As I gaze at my, at the moon in its fly, in the still of the night, while the world is in slumber, all the times without the chill, so easy to love, so easy to others above, to keep all the home fires burning for, and don't you know them so, carefree together, carefree together, that it does. See, Michelle, very strong. Like to thank the Academy? Oh, well. A little more Cole Porter. Think of yourself on a rowboat with the one you love. I give to you. I'd like to dedicate this to all the greats that we unfortunately lost in the last few years. They'll never be replaced for any of us.  No, no, they can't take that away from me. Well, I think you now all know the critics were right about Patty Austin. Classy and elegant, authority and flair, a way of blending uptown sophistication with street corner grit, that's just a small sampling of what the critics have been saying about Patty Austin. At age four, she was already performing on radio or stage, I should say, on TV. She's been knocking them dead for ever since then. She was nominated for a Grammy in 1981. This is the second opportunity that Nancy and I have had to enjoy the grace and melodious charm of Patty Austin. There is one thing that happened this afternoon. I understand she was down here sort of vocalizing a little bit and getting ready and just proving that acorns aren't nuts. The seating is decorated with them, and one came down to see her closer. You've heard her bring in the house down, well, she did. And Patty, I just think that after he made all that effort to get here, you've got to have it. So to pianist, pianist David Benoit and to Patty Austin, I think I'm speaking for everyone here when I say we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you. Thank you very much.