2 relatively strong earthquakes in the border area in between Tanzania and Kenya
Last update: June 3, 2013 at 10:44 am by By Ashish Khanal
Update 10:48 UTC : The video below gives a good impression of the strange crater of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano.
Update 10:26 UTC : We invite Tanzanian and/or Kenyan people with a view on Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano, to tell us that the volcano did not show sgns of additional activity as we see both earthquakes very close to the volcano. The second one has an epicenter on the slopes o the volcano !
Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano – Image courtesy and copyright SteveAxford
Only 1 reported earthquake by the seismological agencies, but in fact people are reporting 2 quakes being felt in Nairobi.
The earthquake struck in the Lake Natron area.
As depth is given 10 km which corresponds internationally as “we are not sure at all”.
Please keep also in mind that there is always an error margin in pointing the location of the epicenter. All this to tell that this earthquake will be probably tectonic but there is always a chance that the quake can be linked to the nearby volcano.
Seismogram image courtesy Geofon, Germany
174 km SW of Nairobi, Kenya / pop: 2,750,547 / local time: 06:24:45.4 2013-06-03
107 km NW of Arusha, Tanzania / pop: 341,136 / local time: 06:24:45.4 2013-06-03
73 km W of Longido, Tanzania / pop: 9,403 / local time: 06:24:45.4 2013-06-03
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 4.6
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2013-06-03 06:24:45
Internet monitoring system to stalk social media users who question safety of vaccines
(NaturalNews) If you post articles to your Facebook wall that warn others about the dangers of vaccines, or Tweet links to the latest studies tying vaccines to autism through Twitter, the vaccine pushers of the world could soon know about it in real time. According to new reports, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed scientists in both the United States and Great Britain have jointly developed a computerized global monitoring system capable of tracking all social media activity around the world that defies mainstream vaccine dogma, and reporting it directly to authorities.
This brave new exercise in multinational, Big Brother spying is being hailed as a solution to the rapid spread of so-called “rumors” and “lies” about vaccines via the internet, which basically constitute any online free speech that questions the safety or effectiveness of vaccines. According to mainstream authorities, vaccines are completely safe and effective in every way, and anything that defies this unsubstantiated proclamation is now officially considered to be misinformation by the global police state.
According to Heidi Larson from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the U.K., and author of the new tracking system, free speech on the internet has “speeded up the global spread” of what she and others consider to be “unchecked rumors and misinformation about vaccines.” People thinking for themselves, in other words, and discussing legitimate vaccine safety concerns with others online is a threat to the establishment, thus the need for a virtual all-seeing eye, of sorts, to monitor all this chatter and report it directly to health officials.
Bill Gates, vaccine industry desperately trying to maintain vaccine myth through intimidation
The real motivation behind the development of this new tracking tool, of course, is to increase vaccine compliance by intimidating people into silence. Since the Gates Foundation-backed vaccine pushers do not have the capacity to completely prohibit online free speech as it pertains to vaccines (at least not yet), they are instead resorting to underhanded intimidation and manipulation tactics that they hope will give them a new platform to spread their propaganda more quickly and thwart efforts that defy the vaccine status quo.
This is all openly admitted by those who developed the new tracking platform using Gates Foundation funds, and it speaks for itself as to the true intentions of this sadistic cohort. An increasing number of people, for good reason, are avoiding vaccines, as study after study shows them to be toxic and largely ineffective. In fact, vaccines have been shown to be the cause of disease outbreaks, not the solution to them as claimed by Larson and others. So to stem this massive departure, the vaccine industry is seeking new ways to embed itself in the global discussion on vaccines in order to convince more people to get them.
Just in case you were wondering, virtually all of the disease outbreaks in recent years that authorities claim were caused by unvaccinated individuals were actually most prominent among the vaccinated. In other words, the data shows that vaccinated individuals are actually more likely to contract diseases like mumps, measles, and polio than are children who have not been vaccinated, which completely debunks the myths that vaccines “save lives,” and that not getting vaccinated puts one’s health at serious risk.
Student science experiment finds plants won’t grow near Wi-Fi router
Ninth-graders design science experiment to test the effect of cellphone radiation on plants. The results may surprise you.
Thu, May 23 2013 at 12:40 PM
Photo courtesy of Kim Horsevad, teacher at Hjallerup Skole in Denmark.
Five ninth-grade young women from Denmark recently created a science experiment that is causing a stir in the scientific community.
It started with an observation and a question. The girls noticed that if they slept with their mobile phones near their heads at night, they often had difficulty concentrating at school the next day. They wanted to test the effect of a cellphone’s radiation on humans, but their school, Hjallerup School in Denmark, did not have the equipment to handle such an experiment. So the girls designed an experiment that would test the effect of cellphone radiation on a plant instead.
The students placed six trays filled with Lepidium sativum, a type of garden cress, into a room without radiation, and six trays of the seeds into another room next to two routers that according to the girls’ calculations, emitted about the same type of radiation as an ordinary cellphone.
Over the next 12 days, the girls observed, measured, weighed and photographed their results. By the end of the experiment the results were blatantly obvious — the cress seeds placed near the router had not grown. Many of them were completely dead. Meanwhile, the cress seeds planted in the other room, away from the routers, thrived.
The experiment earned the girls (pictured below) top honors in a regional science competition and the interest of scientists around the world.
According to Kim Horsevad, a teacher at Hjallerup Skole in Denmark where the cress experiment took place, a neuroscience professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is interested in repeating the experiment in a controlled professional scientific environment.
For a Future that Won’t Destroy Life on Earth, Look to the Global Indigenous Uprising
Idle No More is the latest incarnation of an age-old movement for life that doesn’t depend on infinite extraction and growth. Now, armed with Twitter and Facebook, once-isolated groups from Canada to South America are exchanging resources and support like never before.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo stands next to logs from clearcuts at a proposed tar sands site north of Fort McMurray, northern Alberta, Canada. Photo by Jiri Rezac.
There’s a remote part of northern Alberta where the Lubicon Cree have lived, it is said, since time immemorial. The Cree called the vast, pine-covered region niyanan askiy, “our land.” When white settlers first carved up this country, they made treaties with most of its original inhabitants—but for reasons unclear, the Lubicon Cree were left out. Two hundred years later, the Lubicon’s right to their traditional territory is still unrecognized. In the last four decades, industry has tapped the vast resource wealth that lies deep beneath the pines; today, 2,600 oil and gas wells stretch to the horizon. This is tar sands country.
In 2012 testimony before the U.S. Congress, Lubicon Cree organizer Melina Laboucan-Massimo, then 30, described witnessing the devastation of her family’s ancestral land caused by one of the largest oil spills in Alberta’s history. “What I saw was a landscape forever changed by oil that had consumed a vast stretch of the traditional territory where my family had hunted, trapped, and picked berries and medicines for generations.”
“When we’re at home, we feel really isolated,” says Laboucan-Massimo, who has spent her adult life defending her people’s land from an industry that has rendered it increasingly polluted and impoverished. The Lubicon are fighting a hard battle, but their story—of resource extraction, of poverty and isolation, and of enduring resistance—is one that echoes in indigenous communities around the world. Today, Laboucan-Massimo and others like her are vanguards of a network of indigenous movements that is increasingly global, relevant—and powerful.
This power manifests in movements like Idle No More, which swept Canada last December and ignited a wave of solidarity on nearly every continent. Laboucan-Massimo was amazed—and hopeful. Triggered initially by legislation that eroded treaty rights and removed protection for almost all of Canada’s rivers—clearing the way for unprecedented fossil fuel extraction—Idle No More drew thousands into the streets. In a curious blend of ancient and high-tech, images of indigenous protesters in traditional regalia popped up on news feeds all over the world.
A history of resistance
To outsiders, it might seem that Idle No More materialized spontaneously, that it sprang into being fully formed. It builds, however, on a long history of resistance to colonialism that began when Europeans first washed up on these shores. Now, armed with Twitter and Facebook, once-isolated movements from Canada to South America are exchanging knowledge, resources, and support like never before.
“When you destroy the earth, you destroy yourself,” says Melina Laboucan-Massimo. This is “the common thread in indigenous people all over the world.”
Idle No More is one of what Subcomandante Marcos, the masked prophet of the Mexican Zapatistas, called “pockets of resistance,” which are “as numerous as the forms of resistance themselves.” The Zapatistas are part of a wave of indigenous organizing that crested in South America in the 1990s, coinciding with the 500th anniversary of European conquest—most effectively in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Certain threads connect what might otherwise be isolated uprisings: They’re largely nonviolent, structurally decentralized, they seek common cause with non-natives, and they are deeply, spiritually rooted in the land.
The connections among indigenous organizers have strengthened through both a shared colonial history and a shared threat—namely, the neoliberal economic policies of deregulation, privatization, and social spending cuts exemplified by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization. Indigenous organizers see these agreements as nothing more than the old colonial scramble for wealth at the expense of the natives. In a 1997 piece in Le Monde Diplomatique, Marcos called neoliberalism “the totalitarian extension of the logic of the finance markets to all aspects of life,” resulting in “the exclusion of all persons who are of no use to the new economy.” Many indigenous leaders charge that the policies implemented through organizations like the World Bank and the IMF prioritize corporations over communities and further concentrate power in the hands of a few.
Uprising in Ecuador
The mid-1990s saw a massive expansion of such policies—and with it, an expansion of resistance, particularly in countries with significant indigenous populations. In 1990, CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, staged a massive, nonviolent levantamiento—an uprising—flooding the streets of Quito, blocking roads and effectively shutting down the country. Entire families walked for days to reach the capital to demand land rights, fair prices for agrarian goods, and recognition of Ecuador as a plurinational state, made up of multiple, equally legitimate nations. In the end it forced renegotiation of policy and created unprecedented indigenous representation in government; many hailed CONAIE’s success as a model for organizing everywhere.
CONAIE’s slogan, “Nothing just for Indians,” invited participation from non-indigenous allies around larger questions of inequality and political representation, creating a political space that was big and inclusive enough for everyone. Dr. Maria Elena Garcia, who studies these movements at the University of Washington, says that non-indigenous support has been “crucial” for success across the board. In the case of CONAIE, she says, there came a tipping point when “most Ecuadorians … said, ‘Enough. This organization is speaking for us.’”
Idle No More clearly exists in the Zapatista tradition, but it goes further in incorporating the language of climate justice. In December as many as 50,000 masked Mayan Zapatistas marched into cities across Chiapas. Differing from the 1994 armed indigenous uprising, this one was done in complete silence.
The Zapatista Army
Meanwhile, in Mexico, the Zapatista movement was busy building a different kind of revolution. On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army took its place on the international stage. It was day one of NAFTA, which Subcomandante Marcos called “a death sentence to the indigenous ethnicities of Mexico.” More than any other movement, they linked local issues of cultural marginalization, racism, and inequality to global economic systems and prophesied a new movement of resistance. The media-savvy revolutionaries used their most potent weapon—words—and the still-new Internet to advocate a new world built on diversity as the basis for ecological and political survival. Transnational from the beginning, the Zapatistas made common cause with “pockets of resistance” everywhere.
Then, a curious change occurred: for nearly 10 years following their initial insurgency, the Zapatistas maintained a self-imposed silence. The world heard little from Marcos, but the autonomous communities in Chiapas were very much alive. They had turned inward, building independent governments, schools, and clinics. As journalist and author Naomi Klein observed, “These free spaces, born of reclaimed land, communal agriculture, resistance to privatization, will eventually create counter-powers to the state simply by existing as alternatives.” Embodying, here and now, the society they seek to create is a powerful manifesto; for those who cared to listen, their silence spoke volumes.
Victory in Bolivia
Most of these movements have used nonviolent tactics, including blockades, occupations of public space, and mass marches—combined with traditional political work—to varying degrees of success. In Bolivia these tactics yielded an extraordinary outcome: the election of Evo Morales, in 2005, as Bolivia’s first indigenous head of state.
Five years later, Morales convened 30,000 international delegates for the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. A response to the repeated failure of international climate negotiations, the gathering was rooted in an indigenous worldview that recognized Mother Earth as a living being, entitled to her own inalienable rights.
The resulting declaration placed blame unequivocally on the capitalist system that has “imposed on us a logic of competition, progress, and limitless growth.” This unrestrained growth, the declaration says, transforms “everything into commodities: water, earth, the human genome, ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, the rights of peoples, and life itself.” Significantly, the declaration also extended the analysis of colonialism to include climate change—calling for “decolonization of the atmosphere”—but it rejected market-based solutions like carbon trading. It’s a holistic analysis that links colonialism, climate change, and capital, a manifesto for what has come to be called “climate justice.”
Idle No More
Fast forward to December 2012, and two things happened: The Zapatistas staged simultaneous marches in five cities, marking a resurgence of their public activism. Anywhere from 10,000–50,000 masked marchers filled the streets in complete silence. The march was timed to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar—and the beginning of a new, more hopeful era—and demonstrated the Zapatistas’ commitment to the indigenous cosmology of their ancestors.
That same month, a continent away, Idle No More emerged on the scene. While it began as a reaction to two specific bills in Parliament, it has gained strength and momentum in opposition to the network of proposed pipelines that will crisscross North America, pumping tar sands oil from Alberta to refineries and ports in Canada and the U.S. These pipelines will cross national, tribal, state, and ethnic boundaries and raise a multitude of issues—including water quality, land rights, and climate change. The campaign to stop their construction is already unifying natives and non-natives in unprecedented ways.
Dr. Garcia, whose own ancestors are indigenous, believes that indigenous movements offer something vital: hope, and what she calls “the importance of the imaginary. Of imagining a different world—imagining a different way of being in the world.”
“We’re a land-based people, but it goes further than that. It’s a worldview. When you destroy the earth, you destroy yourself,” says Melina Laboucan-Massimo. This is “the common thread in indigenous people all over the world.”
The climate crisis is spinning out of control, and the gap between the rich and poor continues grow unabated. It’s time to let the radical uncertainty of this moment enlarge our sense of possibility.
It is this thread that goes to the heart of our global ecological crisis. While indigenous cultures differ widely from one another, what they collectively present is an alternative relationship—to the earth, to its resources, and to each other—a relationship based not on domination but on reciprocity. Any movement that seeks to create deep, lasting social change—to address not only climate change but endemic racism and social inequality—must confront our colonial identity and, by extension, this broken relationship.
Laboucan-Massimo has spent a great deal of time abroad, studying indigenous movements from Latin America to New Zealand and Australia, feeling the full weight of their shared history under colonialism. These days, though, she’s more likely to be on the road, educating, organizing, and building solidarity among natives and non-natives. It was understanding the connections between movements, she says, that gave her “all the more fervor to come back and continue to do the work here.”
Recently, she traveled from Alberta to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where she and her elders stood at the forefront of the largest climate change rally in history. And she’ll keep organizing, armed with a smartphone, supported by a growing network of allies from Idle No More and beyond, connected in every possible way to the rest of the world.
NaturalNews) News about the GMO contamination of U.S. wheat crops seems to be spreading faster than the GMOs themselves. On Friday, South Korea joined Japan in announcing a halt on imports of U.S. wheat due to the USDA’s recent announcement that commercial wheat grown in the USA is contaminated with Monsanto’s genetically engineered wheat.
Some Americans may still not realize this, but GMOs are outlawed or shunned nearly everywhere around the world. Only in the USA have GMOs managed to avoid being labeled or outlawed — and that’s primarily due to Monsanto’s financial influence over lawmakers.
Monsanto shares plummeted 4 percent on Friday following the announcement by South Korea. This is completely in line with predictions made here at Natural News, where I said earlier in the week, before Japan and South Korea announced their wheat boycotts:
All wheat produced in the United States will now be heavily scrutinized — and possibly even rejected — by other nations that traditionally import U.S. wheat. This obviously has enormous economic implications for U.S. farmers and agriculture.
How much of the U.S. wheat supply is now contaminated with GMOs?
“…the mysterious appearance of the Monsanto wheat has raised questions about how the strain traveled there and whether it is lurking in the commercial wheat crop,” reports the Washington Post.
WashPo goes on to report that Monsanto, “is still testing strains of gene-altered wheat in Hawaii and North Dakota.”
In truth, nobody knows how much of the wheat is contaminated. Every more shockingly, food companies don’t bother testing wheat for GMOs, either!
Until now, that is. All of a sudden, food importers all around the world are wondering whether they are inadvertently buying U.S. wheat that’s contaminated with GMOs. Consumers, too, are asking the question, “Have I been eating GMO wheat without even knowing it?” These Monsanto wheat experiments, after all, have been taking place since 1998.
Is Monsanto lurking in your Wheaties?
U.S. farmers suddenly seeing the economic damage that Monsanto can do
The real issue in all this, however, is an economic issue. Suddenly U.S. farmers are seeing the kind of economic destruction that can be caused by Monsanto’s genetic engineering experiments.
Thanks to Monsanto and the USDA — which approved the open-field experiments — every U.S. farmer who grows wheat is now at high risk of losing enormous sums of money on a food crop that’s increasingly being rejected around the world. This means Monsanto is pushing U.S. farmers toward bankruptcy while harming America’s exports and GDP. Monsanto has become a force of economic destruction in America.
Will Monsanto reimburse all these farmers who suffer an economic loss? Not without being sued, of course. Perhaps it’s time for a nationwide class-action lawsuit against Monsanto, supported by all commercial farmers who hope to be able to protect their crops from market-crushing GMO contamination.
Nobody wants GMOs except Monsanto!
Consumers don’t want GMOs, farmers don’t want GMOs, foreign nations don’t want GMOs and food companies don’t want to deal with the hassle of GMOs either. The only entity that still wants GMO in America is the very company making money off GMO: Monsanto.
Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in the new field of vacuum physics now show that this Akashic field is real and has its equivalent in the zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness. This zero-point Akashic-field–or “A-field”– is not only the original source of all things that arise in time and space; it is also the constant and enduring memory of the universe. It holds the record of all that ever happened in life, on Earth, and in the cosmos and relates it to all that is yet to happen.
The Akashic Records
The akashic records (akasha is a Sanskrit word meaning “sky”, “space” or “aether”) is a term used in theosophy (and Anthroposophy) to describe a compendium of (mystical) knowledge encoded in a non-physical plane of existence. These records contain all knowledge of human experience and the history of the cosmos. They are metaphorically described as a library; other analogies commonly found in discourse on the subject include a “universal supercomputer” and the “Mind of God“. People who describe the records assert that they are constantly updated automatically and that they can be accessed through astral projection or when someone is placed under deep hypnosis. The concept was popularized in the theosophical movements of the 19th century and is derived from Hindu philosophy of Samkhya. It is promulgated in the Samkhya philosophy that the Akashic records are automatically recorded in the atoms of akasha (“air” or “aether”), one of the five types of atoms visualized as existing in the atomic theory of Ancient India.
History of Akashic Records
Those who champion the truth of the Akashic Records assert that they were accessed by ancient people of various cultures, including the Indians, Moors, Tibetans, Bonpo and other peoples of the Himalaya, Egyptians, Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Chinese, Hebrews, Christians, Druids and Mayans. It is held that the ancient Indian sages of the Himalayas knew that each soul, jiva, atma, or entity recorded every moment of its existence in a “book”, and that if one attuned oneself properly then one could access that book (refer mindstream for example).
Nostradamus claimed to have gained access to the Akasha, using methods derived from the Greek oracles, Christian and Sufi mysticism, and the Kabbalah. Other individuals who claim to have consciously used the Akashic Records include: Charles Webster Leadbeater, Annie Besant, Alice Bailey, Samael Aun Weor, William Lilly, Manly P. Hall, Lilian Treemont, Dion Fortune, George Hunt Williamson, Rudolf Steiner, Max Heindel and Edgar Cayce amongst others.
A Chinese man named Sujujin was reported to need only the first name of anyone to access the Akasha and describe their life history. Another Chinese seer, named Tajao, explored a variety of topics in the Records which span over two thousand years.
In Surat Shabda Yoga cosmology, the Akashic Records would be located within the causal plane of Trikuti.
Description and Explanation of the Akashic records
The Akasha is said to be the library of all events and responses concerning consciousness in all realities. Every lifeform therefore contributes and has access to the Akashic Records. It is asserted that to gain access into the Akashic Records, every individual human can become the physical medium, and various techniques and spiritual disciplines (e.g., yogic, pranayama, meditation, prayer, visualization) can be employed to quiet the mind, become a “witness”, and achieve the focused, preconscious state necessary to access the Records.
While accessing the Akashic Records, both the events and responses are said to be perceived. This is analogous to having a meta-enhanced cinematic experience. When accessing the future, the events are known, but the responses are only probable. Based on an individual’s responses in the past, the Akashic seer/reader can investigate probable future responses and give the highest future probability. A simple illustration of this might be witnessing several alternate endings to the main characters in a movie (e.g., Run, Lola, Run). At some point in the evolution of the Akashic reader, however, a state of unification and awareness can be achieved whereby even the future responses are known with absolute clarity instead of only as a probability.
Former Pro-GMO Scientist Speaks Out on the Real Dangers of Genetically Engineered Food
By Dr. Mercola
Who better to speak the truth about the risks posed by genetically modified (GM) foods than Thierry Vrain, a former research scientist for Agriculture Canada? It was Vrain’s job to address public groups and reassure them that GM crops and food were safe, a task he did with considerable knowledge and passion.
But Vrain, who once touted GM crops as a technological advancement indicative of sound science and progress, has since started to acknowledge the steady flow of research coming from prestigious labs and published in high-impact journals – research showing that there is significant reason for concern about GM crops – and he has now changed his position.
Former Pro-GMO Scientist Cites GM Food Safety Concerns
Vrain cites the concerning fact that it is studies done by Monsanto and other biotech companies that claim GM crops have no impact on the environment and are safe to eat. But federal departments in charge of food safety in the US and Canada have not conducted tests to affirm this alleged “safety.”
“There are no long-term feeding studies performed in these countries [US and Canada] to demonstrate the claims that engineered corn and soya are safe. All we have are scientific studies out of Europe and Russia, showing that rats fed engineered food die prematurely.
These studies show that proteins produced by engineered plants are different than what they should be. Inserting a gene in a genome using this technology can and does result in damaged proteins. The scientific literature is full of studies showing that engineered corn and soya contain toxic or allergenic proteins.
… I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat.”
“The Whole Paradigm of Genetic Engineering Technology is Based on a Misunderstanding”
This misunderstanding is the “one gene, one protein” hypothesis from 70 years ago, which stated that each gene codes for a single protein. However, the Human Genome project completed in 2002 failed dramatically to identify one gene for every one protein in the human body, forcing researchers to look to epigenetic factors — namely, “factors beyond the control of the gene” – to explain how organisms are formed, and how they work.
According to Vrain:
“Genetic engineering is 40 years old. It is based on the naive understanding of the genome based on the One Gene – one protein hypothesis of 70 years ago, that each gene codes for a single protein. The Human Genome project completed in 2002 showed that this hypothesis is wrong.
The whole paradigm of the genetic engineering technology is based on a misunderstanding. Every scientist now learns that any gene can give more than one protein and that inserting a gene anywhere in a plant eventually creates rogue proteins. Some of these proteins are obviously allergenic or toxic.”
In other words, genetic engineering is based on an extremely oversimplified model that suggests that by taking out or adding one or several genes, you can create a particular effect or result. But this premise, which GMO expert Dr. Philip Bereano calls “the Lego model,” is not correct. You cannot simply take out a yellow piece and put in a green piece and call the structure identical because there are complex interactions that are still going to take place and be altered, even if the initial structure still stands.
Serious Problems May Arise From Horizontal Gene Transfer
GE plants and animals are created using horizontal gene transfer (also called horizontal inheritance), as contrasted with vertical gene transfer, which is the mechanism in natural reproduction. Vertical gene transfer, or vertical inheritance, is the transmission of genes from the parent generation to offspring via sexual or asexual reproduction, i.e., breeding a male and female from one species.
By contrast, horizontal gene transfer involves injecting a gene from one species into a completely different species, which yields unexpected and often unpredictable results. Proponents of GM crops assume they can apply the principles of vertical inheritance to horizontal inheritance, but according to Dr. David Suzuki, an award-winning geneticist, this assumption is flawed in just about every possible way and is “just lousy science.”
Genes don’t function in a vacuum — they act in the context of the entire genome. Whole sets of genes are turned on and off in order to arrive at a particular organism, and the entire orchestration is an activated genome. It’s a dangerous mistake to assume a gene’s traits are expressed properly, regardless of where they’re inserted. The safety of GM food is based only on a hypothesis, and this hypothesis is already being proven wrong.
Leading Scientists Disprove GMO Safety
Vrain cites the compelling report “GMO Myths and Truths”2 as just one of many scientific examples disputing the claims of the biotech industry that GM crops yield better and more nutritious food, save on the use of pesticides, have no environmental impact whatsoever and are perfectly safe to eat. The authors took a science-based approach to evaluating the available research, arriving at the conclusion that most of the scientific evidence regarding safety and increased yield potential do not at all support the claims. In fact, the evidence demonstrates the claims for genetically engineered foods are not just wildly overblown – they simply aren’t true.
The authors of this critical report include Michael Antoniou, PhD, who heads the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College at London School of Medicine in the UK. He’s a 28-year veteran of genetic engineering technology who has himself invented a number of gene expression biotechnologies; and John Fagan, PhD, a leading authority on food sustainability, biosafety, and GE testing. If you want to get a comprehensive understanding of genetically engineered foods, I strongly recommend reading this report.
Not only are GM foods less nutritious than non-GM foods, they pose distinct health risks, are inadequately regulated, harm the environment and farmers, and are a poor solution to world hunger. Worse still, these questionable GM crops are now polluting non-GM crops, leading to contamination that cannot ever be “recalled” the way you can take a bad drug off the market … once traditional foods are contaminated with GM genes, there is no going back! Vrain expanded:3
“Genetic pollution is so prevalent in North and South America where GM crops are grown that the fields of conventional and organic grower are regularly contaminated with engineered pollen and losing certification. The canola and flax export market from Canada to Europe (a few hundreds of millions of dollars) were recently lost because of genetic pollution.”
American Academy of Environmental Medicine Called for Moratorium on GM Foods FOUR Years Ago
In 2009, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine called for a moratorium on GM foods, and said that long-term independent studies must be conducted, stating:
“Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food, including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. …There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation…”
Despite this sound warning, GM foods continue to be added to the US food supply with no warning to the Americans buying and eating this food. Genetic manipulation of crops, and more recently food animals, is a dangerous game that has repeatedly revealed that assumptions about how genetic alterations work and the effects they have on animals and humans who consume such foods are deeply flawed and incomplete. Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant claims genetically engineered crops are “the most-tested food product that the world has ever seen.” What he doesn’t tell you is that:
Industry-funded research predictably affects the outcome of the trial. This has been verified by dozens of scientific reviews comparing funding with the findings of the study. When industry funds the research, it’s virtually guaranteed to be positive. Therefore, independent studies must be done to replicate and thus verify results.
The longest industry-funded animal feeding study was 90 days, which recent research has confirmed is FAR too short. In the world’s first independently funded lifetime feeding study, massive health problems set in during and after the 13th month, including organ damage and cancer.
Companies like Monsanto and Syngenta rarely if ever allow independent researchers access to their patented seeds, citing the legal protection these seeds have under patent laws. Hence independent research is extremely difficult to conduct.
There is no safety monitoring. Meaning, once the GM item in question has been approved, not a single country on earth is actively monitoring and tracking reports of potential health effects.
It Might Take More Than One Bite to Kill You …
“One argument I hear repeatedly is that nobody has been sick or died after a meal (or a trillion meals since 1996) of GM food,” Vrain said. “Nobody gets ill from smoking a pack of cigarettes either. But it sure adds up, and we did not know that in the 1950s before we started our wave of epidemics of cancer. Except this time it is not about a bit of smoke, it’s the whole food system that is of concern. The corporate interest must be subordinated to the public interest, and the policy of substantial equivalence must be scrapped as it is clearly untrue.”
Remember, Vrain used to give talks about the benefits of GM foods, but he simply couldn’t ignore the research any longer … and why, then, should you? All in all, if GM foods have something wrong with them that potentially could cause widespread illness or environmental devastation, Monsanto would rather NOT have you find out about it. Not through independent research, nor through a simple little label that would allow you to opt out of the experiment, should you choose not to take them on their word. As Vrain continued:
“The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.
… We should all take these studies seriously and demand that government agencies replicate them rather than rely on studies paid for by the biotech companies … Individuals should be encouraged to make their decisions on food safety based on scientific evidence and personal choice, not on emotion or the personal opinions of others.”
At present, the only way to avoid GM foods is to ditch processed foods from your grocery list, and revert back to whole foods grown according to organic standards.
Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods
While California Prop. 37 failed to pass last November, by a very narrow margin, the fight for GMO labeling is far from over. The field-of-play has now moved to the state of Washington, where the people’s initiative 522, “The People’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act,” will require food sold in retail outlets to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients. As stated on LabelitWA.org:
“Calorie and nutritional information were not always required on food labels. But since 1990 it has been required and most consumers use this information every day. Country-of-origin labeling wasn’t required until 2002. The trans fat content of foods didn’t have to be labeled until 2006. Now, all of these labeling requirements are accepted as important for consumers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also says we must know with labeling if our orange juice is from fresh oranges or frozen concentrate.
Doesn’t it make sense that genetically engineered foods containing experimental viral, bacterial, insect, plant or animal genes should be labeled, too? Genetically engineered foods do not have to be tested for safety before entering the market. No long-term human feeding studies have been done. The research we have is raising serious questions about the impact to human health and the environment.
I-522 provides the transparency people deserve. I-522 will not raise costs to consumers or food producers. It simply would add more information to food labels, which manufacturers change routinely anyway, all the time. I-522 does not impose any significant cost on our state. It does not require the state to conduct label surveillance, or to initiate or pursue enforcement. The state may choose to do so, as a policy choice, but I-522 was written to avoid raising costs to the state or consumers.”
Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, they need support of people like YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply because we didn’t have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food companies. Let’s not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can, regardless of what state you live in.
No matter where you live in the United States, please donate money to these labeling efforts through the Organic Consumers Fund.
If you live in Washington State, please sign the I-522 petition. You can also volunteer to help gather signatures across the state.
Kerinci volcano, Sumatra, Indonesia (AV – June 2 – 14:41 UTC)
2 great twitter sites to follow up activity and images of Gunung Kerinci : @Infoseismic and @padangekspres
The image below is a twitter image of the ash cloud earlier today :
Twitter Image courtesy @ Padangekspres
Kerinci volcano, Sumatra, Indonesia (AV – June 2 – 12:15 UTC)
The Indonesian press reports that some villagers living on the slopes and at the base of the Kerinci volcano (alert level Waspada or 2 on a scale of 4) have fled their houses due to a number of “atomic bomb” black smoke eruptions. The atomic bomb description has to be regarded as a mushroom kind of smoke column. This kind of explosions are very similar than those happening in September 9/2007.
Villagers are fearing that their crops will be lost as soon after the eruption black ash was falling out of the sky. To make it even worse, it started to rain shortly thereafter making the ash even more dangerous for crops. Villagers also told the reporters that they felt strong vibrations.
We expect that CVGHM will increase the alert level from Waspada to Siaga (3 on a scale of 4) very soon.
The volcano was in Waspada status since 2007!
Mount Kerinci is the highest volcano in Indonesia.The summit towers 3805 m above sea level.
Moderate earthquake off the coast of Northern Honduras (near Sandy Bay)
Last update: June 2, 2013 at 8:56 am by By Ashish Khanal
Moderate earthquake off the coast of Northern Honduras, close to Sandy Bay
Today’s earthquake is at the borrom of the page – The big balloon on this map is a 2009 M7.3 earthquake !
235 km N of Tegucigalpa, Honduras / pop: 850,848 / local time: 02:33:15.0 2013-06-02
27 km SW of Roatán, Honduras / pop: 7,514 / local time: 02:33:15.0 2013-06-02
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 4.6
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2013-06-02 02:33:15
Update 06:06 UTC : USGS has also changed the depth to 14 km, still very shallow. The Maximum shaking now reported by USGS is V or moderate shaking. This means that according to USGS no important damage or injuries can be expected. They are maintaining however there Magnitude at Mw 6.5
Update 06:03 UTC : USGS has changed the location of his epicenter which looks a lot better now than before but we call it still dangerous for damage and injuries. USGS gives also a higher Magnitude than the other agencies : M6.5
25km (16mi) SE of Buli, Taiwan
39km (24mi) E of Lugu, Taiwan
49km (30mi) ESE of Nantou, Taiwan
49km (30mi) ESE of Zhongxing New Village, Taiwan
734km (456mi) ENE of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Update 06:02 UTC : The earthquake occurred in the central mountains area but was very shallow and close to a number of villages at the western side of the mountains.
Very shallow dangerous earthquake close to Buli, Taiwan
4km (2mi) NE of Buli, Taiwan
32km (20mi) E of Zhongxing New Village, Taiwan
35km (22mi) ENE of Nantou, Taiwan
36km (22mi) ESE of Taichung, Taiwan
725km (450mi) ENE of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 6.2
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2013-06-02 13:43:04
GMT/UTC Time : 2013-06-02 05:43:04
Depth (Hypocenter) : 20 km
Update 15:12 UTC : A second killed person is confirmed by the authorities. One more is still missing. Number of injuries rises 21, still only 3 of them were seriously injured. Most of this persons were wounded by the rockfalls and landslides which were triggered by the quake. Also the two killed person died by rockfalls. 3 persons suffered minor injuries by broken glass.
Update 10:58 UTC : Number of injuries rises to 19. 3 of them are seriously injured.
Update 10:12 UTC : 1 killed, 2 seriously injured and 16 slightly injured persons are reported now.
Update 08:48 UTC : And yet another video recorded in Nantou (not so close to the epicenter we think), but nevertheless showing the shaking.
Update 08:43 UTC : The well informed Chinanews reports that at least 17 people have been slightly injured, 1 seriously injured and 1 killed during this earthquake.
Update 08:39 UTC : Another private video showing the damage at a house in Nantou county. Most of the houses in Taiwan have been build according to strict seismic building rules and we see in almost every important earthquake that the damage is after all limited. The house/building structure has a lot of resistance. The damage part is at the end of the video.
Update 08:20 UTC : Some of the stranded tourists are being injured
Update 08:08 UTC : We are searching for more details but most of the reports are to vague to be printed here
Update 07:59 UTC : 3 aftershocks so far respectively M3.1, M3.6 and M3.8
Update 07:58 UTC : Luckily no more fatalities at this point (lets hope it remains like this). At least 7 climbers injured by rockfall. A woman was hit by a landslide while driving with her car, she was severely injured.
Update 07:54 UTC : We talk a lot about reported rockfall. Hard to imagine what it looks like? Check the image below from one of the scenes
Update 07:44 UTC : Taiwan’s “Defense Ministry” has requested to complete the first five combat zone troops preparedness, disaster relief initiative to help the public. We have various reports of collapsed walls in houses.
Update 07:42 UTC : more than 1000 tourists are trapped on a mountain platform, because the cable railway was destroyed by landslide
Update 07:40 UTC : Taiwanese police reports that many people have been slightly injured by debris from ceilings.
Sunday afternoon in Taiwan means that many people enjoyed the mountain scene, which is in part the reason that so many people are trapped in these areas.
Update 07:30 UTC : Euronews reports that at least 1 person has been killed in Taiwan due to the earthquake. The killed person was a mountain climber who was killed by rockfall.
Update 07:24 UTC : these are the landslides which happened in many places in Taiwan. Hopefully you are not on the path of the slide
Image courtesy and copyright weibo.com
Image courtesy and copyright weibo.com
Update 07:24 UTC : USGS revised shaking map (now increased to VII MMI = very strong shaking)
Update 07:20 UTC : More than 1000 tourists are trapped in Nantou county due to many landslides. Power is off in some areas. Cable car service is suspended.
Update 07:17 UTC : We get reports of many injuries in the Central Part of Taiwan due to rockfall. Rescue teams are being send to these locations.
for more information, go to: http://earthquake-report.com/2013/06/02/very-strong-earthquake-taiwan-on-june-2-2013/
