Scientists create human stem cells through cloning

singularitarian:

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After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world and one outright fraud, biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996: They transplanted genetic material from an adult cell into an egg whose own DNA had been removed.

thepeoplesrecord:

Mexico: Ground Zero in the fight against Monsanto for the future of maizeMay 13, 2013
In the 2011 action-thriller “Unknown”, scientists are persecuted by the biotech industry because they plan the open release of a drought- and pest-resistant strain of maize that could help eradicate world hunger.
There are certain parallels with the situation today in Mexico, the birthplace of maize, which is at the centre of the global fight to protect the crop’s diversity from the onslaught of genetically modified varieties.
“It’s the first time in history that one of the most important harvests in the world is threatened in its centre of diversity,” Pat Mooney, the head of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), an international NGO, told IPS.
“If we let the companies win, there will be no chance to defend them in other parts. What is happening here is of key importance for the rest of the world.”
Civil society organisations are raising their guard against the possibility that the government of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) may approve commercial cultivation of transgenic maize, a move widely condemned by environmentalists and other activists, academics, and small and medium producers due to the risks it poses.
In September, the U.S. corporations Monsanto, Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences presented six applications for commercial plantations of transgenic maize on more than two million hectares in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.
Moreover, in January these companies and Syngenta presented 11 applications for pilot and experimental plots to grow transgenic corn on 622 hectares in the northern states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa and Baja California. And Monsanto has applied for an additional plantation in an unspecified area in the north of the country.
Since 2009, the Mexican government has issued 177 permits for experimental plots of transgenic maize covering an area of 2,664 hectares, according to the latest figures provided by the authorities.
But large-scale commercial release of GM maize has not yet been authorised.
“They are going to serve up transgenic maize on every table in spite of the fact that food sovereignty depends on growing native corn,” said Evangelina Robles, a member of Red en Defensa del Maíz (Maize Defence Network) which campaigns against GM corn. “As a result, we have to demand its prohibition by the state,” she told IPS.
Mexico produces 22 million tonnes of maize a year, and imports 10 million tonnes, according to the agriculture ministry. The country purchased about two million tonnes of GM maize from South Africa over the last two years, and is set to import another 150,000 tonnes.
Three million maize farmers cultivate about eight million hectares in Mexico, two million of which are devoted to family farming. White maize is the main crop for human consumption, while yellow maize, for animal feed, is largely imported.
The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy (CONEVAL) estimates the country’s annual consumption of maize at 123 kg per person, compared to a world average of 16.8 kg.
The historical link with pre-Columbian indigenous cultures gives maize a strong symbolic and cultural significance throughout Mesoamerica, the area comprising southern Mexico and Central America, where it was domesticated, producing 59 landraces or native strains and 209 varieties.
In the state of Mexico, adjacent to the capital city’s Federal District, small farmers have found their native maize to be contaminated with GM maize, according to tests carried out by students at the state Autonomous Metropolitan University.
“We swapped seeds and decided to do some tests. Now we are more careful when exchanging, and over who participates in the fair, although we still have to carry out confirmation tests,” activist Sara López, of the Red Origen Volcanes (Volcanoes Origins Network), an association of small farmers that has been organising producers’ fairs since 2010, told IPS.
Environmental, scientific and small farmers’ organisations have discovered GM contamination of native maize in Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Puebla and Oaxaca.
Contamination is “a carefully and perversely planned strategy,” according to Camila Montecinos, from the Chile office of GRAIN, an international NGO that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.
Transnational food companies “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination (by wind-pollination),” said Montecinos, one of the experts participating in the preliminary hearing on transgenic contamination of native maize at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, an international opinion tribunal which opened its Mexican chapter in 2012 and will conclude with a non-binding ruling in 2014.
“When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognised and legalised,” in order to pave the way for marketing the GM seeds, to which they own the patents, she said.
Mexico’s environment minister, Juan Guerra, has said that all available scientific information will be examined before a decision is made.
But that will not be easy. The National Confederation of Campesinos (Small Farmers), one of the main internal movements in the ruling PRI, has had an agreement with Monsanto since 2007 under which the company is to “conserve” native varieties.
Meanwhile, the Peña Nieto government still has not approved regulations for the format and contents of reports on the results of releasing GM organisms, and the possible threats to the environment, biodiversity, and the health of animals, plants and fish.
“For 18 years, corporations have been unsuccessful in convincing the people that their products are good. Maize is being used as a means of political and economic control. People need maize to be alive,” the ETC Group’s Mooney said.
The transgenic seeds on the market are herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready and Bt (for the Bacillus thuringiensis gene they carry for pest resistance) versions of cotton, maize, soy and canola. While they are legally grown in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Spain, they are banned for example in China, Russia and the majority of the EU countries.
Recent studies published in the United States show that transgenic crops do not significantly increase yield per hectare, do not reduce herbicide use, and do not increase resistance to pests, in contrast to biotech industry claims.
“We are analysing what legal action to take against the new applications (to plant GM maize),” said Robles, of the Maize Defence Network.
SourcePhoto
 
Monsanto KILLS.
motherjones:

Pima County, Arizona, is the only county in the United States that tracks migrant deaths. Here’s every one since 2001.
chupaflor:

yollopixqui:

thefemaletyrant:

nok-ind:

Builders bulldoze one of largest Mayan pyramids in Belize
One of the oldest and most famous Mayan pyramids has been destroyed by a construction company in Belize, while digging for crushed rock for a road they were building.

They actually did.

Ya no hay espacio para nuestra cultura en nuestro mundo. ¿Por qué habrá tanto odio por lo nuestro?
En verdad, ¿es posible que alguien no sienta dolor al destruir algo de semejante magnitud?

I just threw up a little due to my disgust! This is so awful!
sinidentidades:

New York Times Recycles Same ‘Racist Undertones’ It Covers
The New York Times published an A1 story today about the struggles of farm workers of color in the U.S. But rather than explore the ways that our agricultural and immigration laws have degraded the quality of work and systematically pushed workers of color into the margins, Ethan Bronner strings together quotes that largely regurgitate racist tropes about lazy black workers and “efficient” Latinos. What could have been a story about labor conditions and very real problems of exploitation ended up a mess of racial stereotypes that pit black and Latino workers against each other and makes black folks out to hate immigrants.
The story is ostensibly about a set of lawsuits in Georgia and elsewhere in which U.S. citizens, some black, are suing farms for not hiring them. Some of the plaintiffs say they weren’t hired because of their race or nationality, that the farms only hire Latinos.
But here’s a few passages from the story about workers at a Georgia farm called Southern Valley:

Even many of the Americans who feel mistreated acknowledge that the Mexicans who arrive on buses for a limited period are incredibly efficient, often working into the night seven days a week to increase their pay.
“We are not going to run all the time,” said Henry Rhymes, who was fired — unfairly, he says — from Southern Valley after a week on the job. “We are not Mexicans.”
Jon Schwalls, director of operations at Southern Valley, made a similar point.
“When Jose gets on the bus to come here from Mexico he is committed to the work,” he said. “It’s like going into the military. He leaves his family at home. The work is hard, but he’s ready. A domestic wants to know: What’s the pay? What are the conditions? In these communities, I am sorry to say, there are no fathers at home, no role models for hard work. They want rewards without input.”

After putting us through this litany of generalizations and racist undertones, Bronner writes, “Such generalizations lead lawyers — and residents — to say there are racist undertones to the farms’ policies.” Thanks.
Why not frame the story around what the story is about: the way that guest worker programs depress wages and public policies have systematically pushed black and Latino workers into the most vulnerable parts of the labor market? Why not write about the racist undertones in the policies—the one’s that lock guest workers into captive employment relationships that make it possible for employers to force folks to work seven days a week?
It’s not that Bronner doesn’t give these ideas some space, but to frame the story as it’s framed makes a problem of structural racism into another black-brown struggle. There is a story here about the impact of guest worker programs on wages for other low-income workers, including black folks, but it’s hard to find that story through the weeds.
For a more nuanced take on how black and Latino workers often struggle together at the botton of the labor market, read Brentin Mock’s 2010 story on workers in post-Katrina, post-BP spill New Orleans. Mock wrote about…

an ugly underbelly to the new economy that’s being built. It is one in which opportunity is ever-more concentrated in a few hands, and in which profiteering capitalists and scapegoating politicians are pitting struggling workers against one another in starkly racial terms.
thefingerfucker:

weedonweedonweed:

damnnlyssa:

ashinkusher420:

bluntess:

carvexi:

Pure cannabis cigars, consisting of marajuana bud soaked in THC oil, then rolled in broad cannabis topleaf. The best

100000000%



I need these.

a cigar I would love to have 
new-ways-to-complain:

conservativegirlonpolitics:

That was the most informative thing I have ever been told by a duck

And I have been told a lot of things by ducks.
US government secretly obtained Associated Press phone records

socialismartnature:

“Audits of political opponents, illegal bombings, domestic wiretaps, spying on the press—Obama as Nixon?”

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moderndayndnprincess:

Native Actors who could have played Tonto
by Marty Two Bulls
And here we have the-guvnah, another stupid cracker who thinks that white people made all technology.

the-guvnah:

THE EMPIRE OF FEAR!: mousesinger: brainstatic: lightspeedsound: girlwiththelionstail:…

mousesinger:

brainstatic:

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