[Biofuel] Please circulate widely - Proposed release of transgenic safflower shrouded in secrecy
reposting Please circulate widely Proposed release of transgenic safflower shrouded in secrecy USDA-APHIS conducted an Environmental Assessment (EA) [1] in response to an application (06-363-103r), received from SemBioSys, Inc to field test a transgenic safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) line 4438-5A that produces human pro-insulin. The transgenic safflower was engineered to express an oleosin-human pro-insulin protein exclusively in its seed. The field site (<1 acre) is located on private property in Lincoln County, WA, and will be surrounded on all sides by a 50 ft fallow strip. The exact location of the site is withheld from the public; but the application and risk assessment are open for public comment at http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main until 23 July 2007. Pro-insulin is the precursor to insulin, normally made in the beta cell of the islets of Langerhans of the human pancreas. The protein is synthesized in the endoplasmic reticulum (membrane stacks within the cell), where it is folded and two sulphydryl (-SH) groups are oxidized into a disulphide bond (-S-S-). It is then transported to the Golgi apparatus (a special organelle) where it is packaged into secretory vesicles, and processed by a series of proteases into mature insulin. Mature insulin has 39 less amino acids; 4 are removed altogether, and the remaining 35 amino acids - the C-peptide - are cut out from the middle of the pro-insulin molecule; the two ends segments - the B chain and A chain - remain connected by the disulphide bond formed earlier [2, 3]. A patent application [4] describes the genetic modifications for high expression of human insulin in plants, including shortening the C-peptide by four amino acids. The APHIS report [1] notes further that the human pro-insulin has two amino acids removed for stability in plants plus 11 C terminal amino acids added to ensure retention of the protein in the endoplasmic reticulum of the plant seed cell. The pro-insulin sequence was fused to the Arabidopsis oleosin gene, to be exclusively expressed in seeds. Expression of the fused gene was controlled by the phaseolin promoter and terminator sequences from common bean. The bean promoter drives seed-specific transcription of the synthetic pro-insulin. A selectable marker is regulated by the parsley ubquitin promoter and terminator, and was deemed confidential business information even though it is said to be the most commonly used selectable marker in plants, and had been used in many previous field trials [1]. Animal feeding tests evaluating the toxicity of the neither the synthetic pro-insulin nor the marker gene and its proteins were included with the EA. Site of release in area with threatened species The area selected for the transgenic safflower field test releases - âsagebrush steppeâ - is dry and dominated by sagebrush. Resident animals include the sage grouse, sage sparrows, loggerhead shrikes, and even the once ubiquitous black-tailed hare or âjackrabbitâ. According to USAD/APHIS [1], the threatened species in the test area also include bald eagle, pygmy rabbits, Columbian white tailed deer and grey wolf, and the plant species Spaldingâs catchfly and Ladiesâ tresses. Pygmy rabbits are the most threatened species, the Columbia pygmy rabbit feeds mainly on sagebrush and its number may be as low as 30 or less. There has been limited success in breeding the rabbits in captivity [5, 6]. The pygmy rabbit is likely to feed on the transgenic safflower seeds with potentially detrimental (even fatal) consequences. The USDA/APHIS report claims there will be no toxicity from ingesting seeds from the transgenic safflower, from contact or from inhaling dust and debris [1]. Even if that were true - and there is evidence ignored by APHIS suggesting that the ingested pro-insulin from transgenic safflower is active (see below) - the disruption of the habitat of the pygmy rabbit by human activities and transportation is likely to drive the threatened animals to extinction. APHIS displays a cavalier disregard for the threatened species, ignoring studies that do not support their conclusions. Evidence of potential harm to threatened species ignored There is at least one report showing that transgenic pro-insulin can effectively reduce blood glucose in rats. Feeding a bracken fungus, Ganoderma lucium, modified with a gene for human pro-insulin to diabetic rats reduced their blood glucose [7]; presumably the modified fungus cell wall and endoplasmic reticulum prevent rapid degradation of pro-insulin, allowing the transgenic organism to deliver insulin to the diabetic animal. Cholera toxin pro-insulin fusion proteins were produced in lettuce and tobacco plants; and when powdered transgenic plant preparations were fed to diabetic mice, oral tolerance to insulin was produced, preventing the autoimmune degradation of insulin-producing beta cells in the
[Biofuel] Ike on war......................Bush on war.............
Ike on war..Bush on war. President Eisenhower speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1958 "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, A theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense under the cloud of threatening war, It is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." ~George W. Bush __._,_.___ - Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us.___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Fwd: about composting and a container.
Good for Sue, but I think it'll fail unless someone's prepared to step in and get it working properly for them, or perhaps refer them to a local organic growing organisation or something that's willing to help them. Eg, if the "bad produce" means vegetables the water content will be too high and it'll turn into a smelly anaerobic mess, which will be the end of it. Not a job for us, too far and no time. Anyone in the US willing to help please contact Sue direct. Best Keith >Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 07:44:20 -0700 (PDT) >From: Sue Galloway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: about composting and a container. >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >I am would like to know to whom i could get a composting container >and maybe you would know who i could call about this. I work for >Walmart in Stillwater, Okla and at our store we are wanting to turn >bad produce into compost and we need a container and how we go from >there to make the compost and have someone to bag it up and resell >it. >Thanks, >Sue Galloway ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] What Comes After The U.S. Empire?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18047.htm What Comes After The U.S. Empire? Introductory Speech at the TRANSCEND International Meeting - 6-12 June 2007, Vienna, Austria By Johan Galtung 07/20/07 "ICH" -- - I first want to say a few words about the current G8 meeting, and then talk about major conflicts in the world. This will cover much of the world situation, a reflection on global capitalism, and the US Empire and its imminent demise and what will happen after that. The G8 meeting is actually an act of sabotage, and in my view a deliberate one. It sabotages and undermines the UN. In 1975, the meeting was established as a small forum for intimate meetings between 3 leaders from each participating country. However, from a purely economic agenda it has become much more, incorporating a lot of UN agenda items (security issues and global warming etc.) and thereby actually hijacking the subjects of global importance to about 8 countries only. Russia, which was invited under Yeltsin, is the black sheep in the community. Also, not inviting Chindia is a guarantee for sabotage, as is talking about Africa without having even one African representative present. The good news is that there were 100,000 demonstrators, and the bad news is that there were some violent idiots. If the nonviolent majority could practice the technique of 20 nonviolent encircling every violent one in a nonviolent way, incapacitating their capacity for violence, it would be an enormous feat. There is, however another piece of what I would call bad news; the 100,000 without constructive, positive ideas. I've gone through the whole rigmarole of the slogans. Personally, I don't like the slogans against globalization; there is no way in the world to stop globalization because it is driven by things we all love: communication and transportation. We are not going to turn that backwards. A good slogan would be "another globalization is possible" and spelling out that better globalization as opposed to the economically exploitative process we know. So, having said that, we have dark days in front of us. We have impending climate and economic disaster and on top of that a political military issue, the so-called Shield. There isn't hardly a person in the world who believes it is against Iran. It is a part of a policy started in 1996, counter-posing against each other, on the one hand NATO and AMPO (the US-JAPAN arrangement), and on the other hand the SCO countries, the biggest alliance in human history: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with 6 full members and 3 observers. The 6 members are China, Russia and four of the former Central Asian republics, excluding Turkmenistan. The three observers are India, Pakistan and Iran. Together, it's about 50% of humanity, confronting a relatively small country called the United States of America, with only 300,000,000, not a very impressive size these days. I have said this, knowing that of the 10 points of the Project for the New American Century--written by people who are still in power, although there is an erosion among them--point number 7 is to change regime in China. I am of the opinion that whatever be the method, that the Chinese will rather do the change of regime themselves, and are not enthusiastic about being encircled. It is the major conflict confrontation of the world today, between NATO/AMPO and SCO, and since it is the major one, it is also the one least talked about. The Shield has to neutralize missiles from Russia and China. I think Putin understood it correctly in Munich, and sees it in the light of the cancellation of the ABM treaty, which was a cornerstone of the peaceful development during the Cold War. It was canceled unilaterally by the United States. The anti-missile capacities in the Czech Republic and Poland come on top of the US and NATO breaking the promises made to Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War: that the Soviet Union would withdraw from Eastern Europe, including Eastern Germany, and the United States would not follow suit, whereupon the United States had filled almost every base opportunity, and enrolled practically speaking all the countries in NATO. That has heightened the tension immensely. Whether it will dominate the Heiligendamm [G8 meeting] meeting, I don't know, but I would imagine that it could be quite important. The guess is that the US would do anything they can in order to bribe the citizens of the villages selected in Poland and the Czech Republic with high amounts of money in order not to demonstrate against. So, G8 spells only bad news, as introduction to the six conflicts: 1. Economic Contradiction: Global Capitalism Let me just say a word about global capitalism. The two antidotes to the market mechanism that have been effective have been, on the one hand, a welfare state, and on the o
[Biofuel] The Invisible Government
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18046.htm The Invisible Government In a speech in Chicago, John Pilger describes how propaganda has become such a potent force in our lives and, in the words of one of its founders, represents 'an invisible government'. By John Pilger 07/20/07 "ICH" -- - -The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalists talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called "professional journalism" was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment - objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, "entirely bogus". For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories - domestic and foreign - you'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies. Yet, Miller's parroting of official sources and vested interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945. "No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin," was the headline on his report, and it was false. Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In 1983 the principle global media were owned by 50 corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just 9 corporations. Today it is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them. This concentration of power is not exclusive of course to the United States. The BBC has announced it is expanding its broadcasts to the United States, because it believes Americans want principled, objective, neutral journalism for which the BBC is famous. They have launched BBC America. You may have seen the advertising. The BBC began in 1922, just before the corporate press began in America. Its founder was Lord John Reith, who believed that impartiality and objectivity were the essence of professionalism. In the same year the British establishment was under siege. The unions had called a general strike and the Tories were terrified that a revolution was on the way. The new BBC came to their rescue. In high secrecy, Lord Reith wrote anti-union speeches for the Tory Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and broadcast them to the nation, while refusing to allow the labor leaders to put their side until the strike was over. So, a pattern was set. Impartiality was a principle certainly: a principle to be suspended whenever the establishment was under threat. And that principle has been upheld ever since. Take the invasion of Iraq. There are two studies of the BBC's reporting. One shows that the BBC gave just 2 percent of its coverage of Iraq to antiwar dissent - 2 percent. That is less than the antiwar coverage of ABC, NBC, and CBS. A second study by the University of Wales shows that in the buildup to the invasion, 90 percent of the BBC's references to weapons of mass destruction suggested that Saddam Hussein actually possessed them, and that by clear implication Bush and Blair were right. We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers.
