USDA Prepares To Greenlight Gnarliest GMO Soy Yet
July 18th, 2012Via: Mother Jones:
In early July, on the sleepy Friday after Independence Day, the USDA quietly signaled its intention to greenlight a new genetically engineered soybean seed from Dow AgroSciences. The product is designed to produce soy plants that withstand 2,4-D, a highly toxic herbicide (and, famously, the less toxic component in the notorious Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange).
Readers may remember that during an even-sleepier period—the week between Christmas and the New Year—the USDA made a similar move on Dow’s 2,4-D-ready corn.
…
What can dousing millions of acres of farmland with 2,4-D mean? The EPA insists that it’s safe, and recently brushed off a petition by environmental groups insisting that it be banned. But it has been shown to get into drinking water, and the environmental group Beyond Pesticides has assembled an impressive dossier of research on its ill health effects, including evidence that it causes non-Hodgkins lymphoma and acts as an endocrine disruptor. Nor is there any research on how 2,4-D and glyphosate affect human and wildlife health in combination.
U.S. Geoengineers to Spray Sun-Reflecting Chemicals from Balloon
July 18th, 2012Mmm hmm.
Via: Guardian:
Two Harvard engineers are to spray sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
The field experiment in solar geoengineering aims to ultimately create a technology to replicate the observed effects of volcanoes that spew sulphates into the stratosphere, using sulphate aerosols to bounce sunlight back to space and decrease the temperature of the Earth.
David Keith, one of the investigators, has argued that solar geoengineering could be an inexpensive method to slow down global warming, but other scientists warn that it could have unpredictable, disastrous consequences for the Earth’s weather systems and food supplies. Environmental groups fear that the push to make geoengineering a “plan B” for climate change will undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Keith, who manages a multimillion dollar geoengineering research fund provided by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, previously commissioned a study by a US aerospace company that made the case for the feasibility of large-scale deployment of solar geoengineering technologies.
Research Credit: ms
NSA Building Dossiers on Every American
July 18th, 2012Are They building electronic dossiers on as many of us as they can? I don’t know, but it sure looks that way.
—NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite (2007)
Via: Network World:
Binney was at HOPE and while his entire keynote is not yet posted, journalist Geoff Shively and Livestreamer Tim Pool had an opportunity to speak with Binney about NSA spying. As you may recall, after covering the NATO protests, Pool and Shively were two of the journalists harassed by Chicago cops. In the short video interview, Binney explained a bit more about the NSA spying on Americans:
“Domestically, they’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you’re doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.” He estimated that one telecom alone was sending the government an “average of 320 million logs every day since 2001.”
Related: Sworn Declaration of Whistleblower William Binney on NSA Domestic Surveillance Capabilities
The Lily-Pad Strategy
July 18th, 2012Via: Tom Dispatch:
Disappearing are the days when Ramstein was the signature US base, an American-town-sized behemoth filled with thousands or tens of thousands of Americans, PXs, Pizza Huts, and other amenities of home. But don’t for a second think that the Pentagon is packing up, downsizing its global mission, and heading home. In fact, based on developments in recent years, the opposite may be true. While the collection of Cold War-era giant bases around the world is shrinking, the global infrastructure of bases overseas has exploded in size and scope.
Unknown to most Americans, Washington’s garrisoning of the planet is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of bases the military calls “lily pads” (as in a frog jumping across a pond toward its prey). These are small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.
Around the world, from Djibouti to the jungles of Honduras, the deserts of Mauritania to Australia’s tiny Cocos Islands, the Pentagon has been pursuing as many lily pads as it can, in as many countries as it can, as fast as it can. Although statistics are hard to assemble, given the often-secretive nature of such bases, the Pentagon has probably built upwards of 50 lily pads and other small bases since around 2000, while exploring the construction of dozens more.
As Mark Gillem, author of America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire, explains, “avoidance” of local populations, publicity, and potential opposition is the new aim. “To project its power,” he says, the United States wants “secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located” around the world. According to some of the strategy’s strongest proponents at the American Enterprise Institute, the goal should be “to create a worldwide network of frontier forts,” with the US military “the ‘global cavalry’ of the twenty-first century.”
Such lily-pad bases have become a critical part of an evolving Washington military strategy aimed at maintaining US global dominance by doing far more with less in an increasingly competitive, ever more multi-polar world. Central as it’s becoming to the long-term US stance, this global-basing reset policy has, remarkably enough, received almost no public attention, nor significant Congressional oversight. Meanwhile, as the arrival of the first casualties from Africa shows, the US military is getting involved in new areas of the world and new conflicts, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Research Credit: minerva
TSA Agents to Staff UK Airports During Olympics
July 18th, 2012Via: Sky News:
US security agents are to be based at Heathrow and some other UK airports for the duration of the Olympic? Games, according to Sky sources.
The Department for Transport has reached an agreement with the US Transportation Security Administration for specialist agents to be working at several UK airports.
They will arrive one week before the Olympics, and leave around a week after the end of the Paralympics.
This is an added security layer that has been done to help boost and aid the American airlines in particular that fly in and out of the likes of Heathrow and other airports.
The move is also aimed at helping UK airlines flying in and out of America.
The agents will not be allowed beyond boarding gates or onto UK aircraft.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
Unknown Mystery Creatures Washing Ashore in Hawaii
July 18th, 2012[???]
Via: Nine MSN:
Biologists have been left mystified by millions of tiny purple creatures washed ashore on beaches in Hawaii.
The pea-sized, crab-like animals are dotting the beaches in Honolulu but scientists are yet to determine what they are, TV station KHON2 reports.
Treasury Officials Cited for Soliciting Prostitutes, Accepting Gifts
July 17th, 2012Hookers and bribes. Just another day at the office.
Via: The Hill:
Treasury Department officials have been cited for soliciting prostitutes, breaking conflict-of-interest rules and accepting gifts from corporate executives, according to the findings of official government investigations.
The revelations of unethical behavior at Treasury are detailed in little-noticed documents posted this month on governmentattic.org, which publishes agency responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
CNN on the Iran Threat
July 16th, 2012Via: Salon:
There’s a perennial debate about whether the propagandistic tripe produced by establishment media outlets is shaped more by evil or by stupidity. Personally, I think it’s both: a healthy dose of each is needed. The system design is malicious, while those who serve as its public face are generally vacant.
‘How Close Are We to New Great Depression?’
July 16th, 2012CNBC? Yes, CNBC.
Via: CNBC:
“We’re in a very unfortunate position to be here,” Richard Duncan, author of The New Depression, warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday.
“When we broke the link between money and gold, this removed all constraints on credit creation. This explosion of credit created the world we live in, but it now seems that credit cannot expand any further because the private sector is incapable of repaying the debt it has already, and if credit begins to contract, there’s a very real danger that we will collapse into a new Great Depression,” he argued.
Verizon Wireless Wants to ‘Edit’ Your Internet Access
July 16th, 2012Via: Cnet:
What if your wireless provider gave you Internet access and search results according to what it decided was a “priority”?
As a Verizon Wireless customer, I’m furious at the idea that it would “pick favorites” over what I was actually looking for — especially if it was an emergency.
But that’s just what Verizon is fighting in court to do right now. Verizon has filed a brief (Verizon vs. FCC) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the “freedom” to edit your Internet, dear customer.
