Human genes engineered into experimental GMO rice being grown in Kansas
by Ethan A. Huff
Natural News
May 2, 2012
(NaturalNews) Unless the rice you buy is certified organic, or comes specifically from a farm that tests its rice crops for genetically modified (GM) traits, you could be eating rice tainted with actual human genes. The only known GMO with inbred human traits in cultivation today, a GM rice product made by biotechnology company Ventria Bioscience is currently being grown on 3,200 acres in Junction City, Kansas — and possibly elsewhere — and most people have no idea about it.
Since about 2006, Ventria has been quietly cultivating rice that has been genetically modified (GM) with genes from the human liver for the purpose of taking the artificial proteins produced by this “Frankenrice” and using them in pharmaceuticals. With approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Ventria has taken one of the most widely cultivated grain crops in the world today, and essentially turned it into a catalyst for producing new drugs.
Originally, the cultivation of this GM rice, which comes in three approved varieties (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/biotech_ea_permits.html), was limited to the laboratory setting. But in 2007, Ventria decided to bring the rice outdoors. The company initially tried to plant the crops in Missouri, but met resistance from Anheuser-Busch and others, which threatened to boycott all rice from the state in the event that Ventria began planting its rice within state borders (http://todayyesterdayandtomorrow.wordpress.com).
So Ventria‘s GM rice eventually ended up in Kansas, where it is presumably still being grown for the purpose of manufacturing drugs on 3,200 acres in Junction City. And while this GM rice with added human traits has never been approved for human consumption, it is now being cultivated in open fields where the potential for unrestrained contamination and spread of its unwanted, dangerous GM traits is virtually a given.
“This is not a product that everyone would want to consume,” said Jane Rissler from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to the Washington Post back in 2007. “It is unwise to produce drugs in plants outdoors.”
Though receiving tens of thousands of public comments of opposition, many rightly concerned about the spread of GM traits, the USDA approved open cultivation of Ventria‘s GM rice anyway. This, of course, occurred after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had refused approval for Ventria‘s GM rice back in 2003 (http://www.kansasruralcenter.org/publications/PharmaRice.pdf).
GM ‘pharmaceutical’ rice could cause more disease, suggests report
Besides the threat of contamination and wild spread, Ventria‘s GM rice, which is purportedly being grown to help third-world children overcome chronic diarrhea, may conversely cause other chronic diseases.
“These genetically engineered drugs could exacerbate certain infections, or cause dangerous allergic or immune system reactions,” said Bill Freese, Science Policy Analyst at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), who published a report back in 2007 about the dangers of Ventria‘s GM rice.
You can view that report here:
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org
Sources for this article include:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/humangene042505.cfm
Russia warns of pre-emptive strike on AMD if NATO goes ahead [video]
Russia Today
May 3, 2012
Russia warns it could make a pre-emptive strike against NATO’s anti-missile defense shield planned for Europe – if the US persists in going ahead, ignoring the Kremlin’s opposition. Moscow says the system threatens its national security – and is detailing its concerns at an international conference in the Russian capital – with representatives from over 50 nations. RT’s Anissa Naouai has more.
[hat tip: Friends of Syria]
Chicago Summit: NATO To Announce Activation Of European Missile Shield
by Rick Rozoff
Stop NATO
May 2, 3012
On April 30 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen informed the Associated Press that the military bloc he leads will announce initial operational capability for the joint U.S.-NATO interceptor missile system in Europe at the NATO summit in Chicago on May 20-21.
Identifying the progression from European theater interceptor missile systems like NATO’s Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) and the U.S. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 battery deployed to Poland two years ago to current continent-wide territorial coverage with the integration of those systems with Washington’s European Phased Adaptive Approach, the alliance chief said, “As far as NATO is concerned, we have tested the systems and they work.”
The U.S.-controlled military organization recently announced that simulated tests on April 4-5 established the integrated system’s viability and prepared the groundwork for successive, qualitatively more advanced, stages of development and deployment.
On the day Rasmussen addressed the issue, the Obama administration’s National Security Council senior director for European affairs, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, gave a presentation titled “Revitalizing NATO: From Lisbon to Chicago” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. in which she confirmed the NATO chief’s assertion by stating, “At Chicago, it is our intent to declare an interim capability for NATO missile defense based on the ability to employ U.S. assets under NATO command…”
Sherwood-Randall, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia during the middle 1990s and a veteran of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, highlighted the fact that “the best example of the President’s commitment to NATO’s capabilities of the future is our work on missile defense.”
She verified that the first phase of the missile system endorsed by NATO at its last summit in Portugal in November 2010 had been achieved with the deployment of an Aegis class warship, the USS Monterey guided missile cruiser, equipped with Standard Missile-3 interceptors in the Mediterranean Sea and the deployment of an American X-band radar system in Turkey, adding that “now additional work is underway on the next phase.”
The next three stages of the Phased Adaptive Approach will consist of progressively more advanced versions of the Standard Missile-3 interceptors hitherto deployed on ships for both sea and land use. (The second is known as Aegis Ashore.) The current ship-based interceptor missile is the Standard Missile-3 Block IA. Its successors will be Block IB, Block IIA and Block IIB models to be stationed in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea regions, in Poland and Romania on land (24 Block IBs in Romania, as many Block IIAs in Poland), and in the Mediterranean on U.S. guided missile destroyers and cruisers, including four U.S. Aegis class destroyers to be based at the Naval Station Rota in Spain. The naval component could later be deployed in the Black, Baltic, Barents and Norwegian Seas as well.
Each more advanced model will extend the velocity of the missile and the range of the intercept, from short- to medium- and intermediate-range, with the Block IIB expected to be capable of intercepting long-range – intercontinental – ballistic missiles. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon were awarded first phase competition contracts for the Block IIB last year.
After the comments of NATO’s Rasmussen and the White House’s Sherwood-Randall on April 30, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov spoke to one of his nation’s newspapers and warned, “When the Americans begin constructing the third stage of their missile defense plans in Europe and the effectiveness of our strategic nuclear forces is jeopardized, serious issues will arise regarding Russia’s appropriate reaction.”
While emphasizing the third phase of the U.S.-NATO European missile system as posing a particular threat, he also said that the first and second phases were causes for serious concern, adding: “This is the time the foundation for the modernization of the US missile defense system will be laid. Furthermore, no one is saying there will be no fifth, sixth, and seventh stages.”
Retired Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky was recently quoted by Voice of Russia as stating: “We’ve been told about a defense system against an Iranian threat, as well as against so-called ‘rogue states.’ All this is quite doubtful. Why spend hundreds of billions of dollars just to intercept 3-4 Iranian missiles? And why would Iran attack Europe when 70% of its foreign trade is with the EU?”
The source cited the same official mentioning that the Russian Defense Ministry has conducted computer-simulated tests that demonstrated once U.S. interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe reach a velocity of 5 kilometers per second they will pose a threat to Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces.
In January Russian Information Agency Novosti cited Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin warning that U.S. interceptor missiles now cover all of European Russia to the Ural Mountains and are capable of not only shooting down short- and medium-range missiles from so-called rogue states but of destroying Russian intercontinental missiles.
The Russian official was quoted stating: “Along with allies, whom the U.S. now persuades to buy ships equipped with the Aegis Combat System, the overall potential can be estimated at about 1,000 interceptor missiles…The fact that the missile defense system can hit strategic missiles and the fact that those bases and fleets are deployed in northern seas demonstrate the evident…anti-Russian nature of the missile defense.”
The U.S. has 61 Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers, each capable of firing 90 missiles, and 22 Ticonderoga class guided missile cruisers that are built for the Aegis Combat System and are already equipped for or can be upgraded to accommodate Standard Missile-3 interceptors. Combined. the 83 warships could be equipped to fire thousands of Standard Missile-3 interceptors.
Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin also warned, as his nation’s deputy defense minister did this week: “There are no guarantees that after the first, second, third phases are completed, there will be no fourth, fifth and sixth. Do you really think they will halt all their technologies after 2020? That’s nonsense! They will go ahead with developing and boosting the technical parameters of their interceptor missiles and performance capabilities of their warning (missile defense) systems.”
The last NATO summit committed all 28 member states to participation in the most ambitious interceptor missile system ever envisioned. The upcoming summit will mark the official announcement of its initial activation, fraught as the system is with the threats of attempted blackmail, fatal miscalculation and the West contemplating first strike options.
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Source – http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/chicago-summit-nato-to-announce-activation-of-european-missile-shield/
Chaos, clashes & religious tension: Fruits of Egypt revolution [video]
Russia Today
May 3, 2012
The worst violence Egypt has seen in months is stoking political tensions in the country, ahead of the Presidential election. At least 11 people were killed and around 100 injured, when a group of unknown assailants attacked protesters early on Wednesday, sparking further fierce clashes. The protesters were staging a sit-in near the country’s Ministry of Defense, voicing their anger at the banning of an Islamist candidate from the election. Various political forces have rushed to blame the ruling military for the bloodshed. While the generals say they’ll hand over power to civilians if the outcome of the Presidential vote is decided in the first round, many fear that it will do little to quell the chaos, or lead to prompt democratic reforms. RT’s Sara Firth reports.
Red Ice Radio – Jay Weidner – Hr 1 – Kubrick’s Odyssey: How Stanley Faked the Moon Landings [audio]
Red Ice Radio
April 27, 2012
Jay Weidner is an author, filmmaker and hermetic scholar, considered to be a “modern-day Indiana Jones” for his ongoing worldwide quests to find clues to mankind’s spiritual destiny. He returns to Red Ice to talk about his film, Kubrick’s Odyssey. Jay presents compelling evidence of how Stanley Kubrick directed the Apollo moon landings. He reveals that the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey was not only a retelling of Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick’s novel, but also a research and development project that assisted Kubrick in the creation of the Apollo moon footage. Weidner also tells how Kubrick’s film, The Shining is the story of Kubrick’s personal travails as he secretly worked on the Apollo footage for NASA.
5/2/2012 — Severe Outbreak = ND SD NE KS MN WI IA OK TX LA AR MS TN AL KY PA NY [video included]
ＤＵＴＣＨＳＩＮＳＥ = ＳＩＮＣＥＤＵＴＣＨ
May 2, 2012
watch the video update here:
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UPDATE 956pm CDT — 5/2/2012:
Updated screenshot of activity nationwide:
UPDATE 950pm CDT — 5/2/2012:
Possible tornado south of Birmingham Alabama heading north.. Damaging winds over South Mississippi, and New Orleans Louisiana…also Hail heading northwest towards Tennessee
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UPDATE 837pm CDT — 5/2/2012:
Possible tornadoes heading towards downtown New York City:
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Here is the website post with the most recent forecast (and confirmations of being hit) ..
Also links you can use to monitor severe weather are here:
Stay AWARE on this ! These cells are popping up rapidly — have a severe weather plan ready — make sure outside animals, property, and items should be also prepared for strong damaging winds, hail, and possible tornadoes to be with these cells.
currently under some form of severe weather or will be shortly:
North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New York…
Future areas to watch will be Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Virginia, and possibly South Carolina/Georgia .
Student Left In DEA Holding Cell Forced To Drink Urine To Survive [video included]
by Johnny Green
The Weed Blog
May 2, 2012
Student Was Detained By The DEA After Attending A 4/20 Party
Daniel Chong is a 23 year old student at UC San Diego. Chong was at a friend’s 4/20 celebration in University City, California when the DEA raided the party. The DEA took Chong to their office in Kearny Mesa. According to NBC, “He said agents questioned him, and then told him he could go home. One agent even offered him a ride, Chong said. No criminal charges were filed against him.”
Seems like a straight forward case right? Far from it. Instead of being sent home, Daniel Chong was placed in a 5 by 10 foot holding cell for five days without food and water. The DEA agents placed him in a holding cell and forgot about him. “They never came back, ignored all my cries and I still don’t know what happened,” Chong told NBC. “I’m not sure how they could forget me.”
In Chong’s desperation, he said he was forced to drink his own urine. “I had to do what I had to do to survive….I hallucinated by the third day,” Chong said. “I was completely insane.” After Chong was finally discovered, the DEA gave him a ride to the hospital and paid for the bill. However, still to this day they have yet to issue an apology.
By the time Chong got to the hospital his kidneys were failing, there were signs that he was completely insane, and signs that he tried to take his own life while in his delusional state. When I first red this story, I thought there was no way this could be true. How is this possible in America? Sadly, it is all true. I hope Mr. Chong sues the pants off of the DEA.
Is this what we want our tax dollars going to? To raiding 4/20 parties and treating the participants like terrorists at a torture center? There should be people protesting outside of the DEA center in Kearny Mesa 24 hours a day. Daniel Chong, I don’t even know what to say brother. I’m sorry that you had to go through that, and I hope that you make those jerks pay out the nose.
PN 