Most modern mod-cons are not mentioned in the Bible, the Koran or any other inscriptions in the caves of wild men. Actually none — apart from vino and bread, Roman legions and a few fishes, extinct bisons and unicorns caught with stone axes...

Stuff like mobile phone ("cell phones" as they say in the US... also the Indians tele-marketeers lingo trying to sell you a new cheap plan that ends up costing you more, since you won't be able to resist the bells and whistles) do not appear until Jules Verne and the science-fiction hot-heads of the 1900s started to imagine a future that did not make more sense but was more technologically driven, following an industrial revolution designed to improve our lot... with a full weekend of relaxation to boot...

The scientific understanding of the construct of life, including genetics, do not rate a rabbit's fart in the "good books"... In there, only moralistic obligations that are exhumed from dusty "grimoires" lining the walls of dark stingy dungeons of people who declare themselves the controller of your brain, your mind and your toilet habits. Christ did not create the churches, whether they are Catholic, Copt, Anglican or Orthodox this and that... Mohammed was not a godson but as a human he had no grip on the future as an evolving construct. No grip on the past either. Just a draconian fleeting understanding of humanity's dark behavior in a difficult to understand world, all designed — if I may slightly agree with Miranda here — to place women at the will of men who got high on coffee.

Thus those who profess to represent God, Allah, Jehovah or Whoever (the god above all gods) should not have any part in the use of modern technology, a technology that often contradicts their arcane teachings. The teachings of Christ, of Mohammed or Buddha, have been interpreted, diluted, fanatiscised, fantasised about, modified and often deliberately misrepresented, in order to achieve control of one on another, rather than understand reality... and selectively tooted in the declaration of wars.

I often harp about science being the only way to grasp the universe we're living in... but not all science is good either. I try to balance the understanding of nature and our modification of nature in this context. For example, the human species is not perfect compared to other animal species' individuals, and the evolution of the human species has had to take a different pathway in order to survive when it fell from its tree.

Surviving, we're doing well despite some big flaws that would eradicate any other species. Due to many factors — from our bad diets, our sedentary life, the chemicals in our soup to the overuse of antiseptics and cleaners, as well as breeding with the weak — as we evolve, we, as a group, physically are actually growing genetically weaker — despite some mighty specimens such as those playing footy. But, mighty as they are, by the time they reach 45, they usually need titanium knee joints and a nose job...

We need more and more medical "intervention" to keep alive.

Thus we allow the weak and the sick to be, that's fine, but we send young men in their maximum prime to be killed in the name of stoopid ideas and lies. Mullet silence from most religious pedlars on this subject... actually some of them go up in their golden pulpit to glorify the killing crusade, despite the commandments that forbids the deed...

Strangely, these weird structured fiddles of our societies survive, albeit elastically. In fact in the greater concept of life on earth, we've only added a changing choice element of "style" in response to environmental impacts on the natural Homo sapiens that we are. These environmental impacts also influence and in part create these choices in a semi-self-feeding loop... like the continuous babble of talk-back radio shock-jocks... They can choose to kill you off the mike if you have a contrary point of view.

Quite amazing really that humanity has managed to get where we're at now, considering that the religious fanaticos used to burn, hang and kill all the intelligent people who understood the world a bit better. Maybe, it's a process we've got to go through... who knows, because at the moment the same fanaticos are still everywhere running the show. Whether it's an Osama who wants to kill everyone who does not think like his own arse, or a George who has no idea about much but lies through his teeth, fundamentalistically, using the biggest army ever created to loose the smallest silly war in a desert somewhere...

There are many dynamics why this is so. And understanding these dynamics might often offend religious sensitivities, thus the Howard, Blair and Bushit will merge the boundaries of moral rectum and greed, to make a soup with no ethical rectitude, but will claim it has. They are very clever at it. No sweat, Their skills only change the price of your life (and mine) towards the cheap sector. No sublimation of happiness and sharing the present journey. It's an unintelligent design in which we're all becoming poorer and poorer scrooges... devised to screw you individually now, so you can enjoy death in the comfort of the whatever. Nothing new here... You (and me) end up toiling, or losing life, for ideas that are false — uninspired humanity when we should be able to do so much better and not muck up our little planet at the same time.

All this to say that things are afoot. They've got to be...

"Prime Minister John Howard says he does not believe the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has interfered improperly with a vote in the New South Wales Parliament to expand stem cell research. A number of MPs have attacked the Archbishop for weighing into the debate and telling Catholic MPs they should vote down the bill." tells a report on the ABC

Yes, here you can see an attack on science from the moralistic pedlars... And this is what the journey with this Prime Minister (John Howard) has been, not on an economic tripallistic, but a long-winded journey on the roads going back to middle-age inquisition and cabalistic warriors. A little bit at a time, instead of liberating the spirit of human greatness, he and his cronies have been tight-arsing around to make sure the plebeian stayed where it should be: eat, sleep, work its butt off and consume as if there were no tomorrow, but for bloody's sake don't ask any questions... All that matters is that you have two bob, most of which are borrowed... thus act like golden shackles.

John Howard should be remembered for who or what he is. Mister 23 per cent. The failed treasurer of the early 1980s that gave this country interest rates of 23 per cent... Boom!  Of course he got booted out, and I believe his Prime Minister of the time, Malcolm Fraser, is now dismayed at the horror of the nation placing Johnnee at the top of the tree. Because despite an economy that's "booming" (due to other factors than Costello's fancy pants), Johnnee has taken this country on a road of human regression. A road of intellectual midgetry. A road of pettiness and division in a intellectual desert in which a psychopath can rule easy. Piece of piss, as they say in the pub up the road, where how-to-pot-the-black is the summit of human scratching one's brain, with one hand on the left buttock, before pointing the cue. If I shoot, the black always goes haywire...

With no scientific facts at hand, the Pells and Howards will morally condemn whatever because it does not fit their dusty fundamentalist sticks and stones... A George Pell has no right, except as a private citizen to express his views on the matter of therapeutic cloning. His religious claptrap on the subject, expressed vehemently with threats, is not the word of god but words of fear that the result might put another reality nail in the coffin of his religious mysteries. I'd say to him and Johnnee, go back to the ages where candle light, horse and carts were the optimum stuff on the flat earth, since that's where your moralizationing is taken us back to.

But then Johnnee Midget will try to force a most advance nuclear technology upon us, which itself, as a science, represent a fantastic understanding of the natural albeit adulterated processes. As a technology, it is fraught with massive ugly pay-backs beyond times during which global warming can go up and down ten fold. Nuclear technology is expensive in protective cost, in CO2 emission for its supplies and in residue. Not the least of them being the production of plutonium in large quantities — an element that does not exist on earth in a natural state. An element prized by the early promoters of nuclear energy so they could manufacture smaller and more deadly bombs out of it. And let's mention depleted uranium bombs... Advanced soldiering for the Christians... But we do not hear much opposing religious claptrap on the subject. There is far more dangers out of the nuclear cycle than there is out of finding a genetic cure to some human diseases, using cloning...

Genetic cloning can and should have beneficial results for humankind if used wisely unlike, for example, genetically modified crops. The science of human cell cloning can control its results without interference on the environment, except on the next, if generational procreativity is involved, but this under proper management can have no interference on the environment itself. Cloning is not new. When we cut a branch of a tree and stick it in the ground to make a new tree, that's basic cloning... This does happen in nature too... Cloning at cellular level is a bit more tricky, but is still restricted to an individual's body.

On the other hand, the new science of genetically modified crops is different. Its uses cross-species meshing, a process that is a full no-no in nature. The spread of its seeds is uncontrollable, except when they are terminated. The science of genetic modification of crops cannot control the sub-effects of its technology in most cases. This is one of a very very large bag of grave problems with GM crops. All the analysis done on this subject have to give, early in the piece, a one per cent "contamination" of normal crops in the best of conditions. After a few years this contamination can be as high as ten to twenty per cent, if not more. Thus crops that are deemed natural could be more and more cross-bred or infiltrated with GM.

As well, some scientific studies have exposed unwanted animalistic mutations resulting from ingestion of genetically modified foods. On the liver and pancreas specifically. And all this only in a few short year of experimentation. No long term studies there... I mean we need at least 50 years of thorough research. There are times when interfering with natural processes within individuals cannot be done without a cascade of further troubles. Even with "normal" foods, I know some people who take countless pills to counteract the bad effect of the crap-food they eat...

But in the beginning and in the end, the technology of genetically modified food has nothing to do with improvement of diet, but as a means to control supply. By controlling supply, via copyrights of seeds and use of termination genes in some cases, to the targeting of brand herbicides and insecticides, a MASSIVE load of cash can be made, on a planetary scale... Greed is at the source of GM crops, not necessity. And should you see more GM crops around, you shall see less and less wildlife, such as birds and insects, around. Bees are disappearing in Europe and in the USA, all due to some intensive farming practices, which under new GM crops practices could wipe them all.

I do not oppose GM crops on religious beliefs, but anyone with a religious soul should... Where is Pell on this subject? Because he would have to believe that by peddling GM crops we are adulterating the food of god... I oppose GM crops because it's rogue science used as a bad technology, for the profit of a few at the expense of nature and of humanity's future...

‘A senior Vatican cardinal said yesterday that Catholics should stop donating to human rights group Amnesty International because of its new policy advocating abortion rights for women if they had been raped, were a victim of incest or faced health risks.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, accused Amnesty of turning its back on its mission to defend human rights.

"The inevitable consequence of this decision, according to the cardinal, will be the suspension of any financing to Amnesty on the part of Catholic organisations and also individual Catholics," said a statement from Cardinal Martino's office yesterday.

"AI has betrayed its mission," Cardinal Martino told the US National Catholic Register in an interview.

Amnesty changed its neutral stance on abortion in April, but its Italy chairman Paolo Pobbiati insisted its new position had been misinterpreted by the cardinal.

"This has nothing to do with legitimising abortion as part of a campaign for human rights, it is to do with combating violence against women," he said.’

Vatican Cardinal Calls On Catholics To Stop Funding Amnesty

Bush Vetoes Stem Cell Bill

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By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: June 20, 2007

WASHINGTON, June 20 — President Bush vetoed a measure promoting embryonic stem cell research today, as he had promised to do, declaring that the bill would have disregarded the sanctity of human life.

“I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line,” Mr. Bush said, exercising the third veto of his presidency.

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Gus: The hypocrite Bushit is at it again. In one mouthwash he tells us of the sanctity of "human" life, forgetting his concocted lies about Saddam's WMDs that killed more real people than terminated non-born two-bits embryos in a zillion test tubes. But his "moral" liner in his underpants is preserved by Veto jam... On the other hand he flunks the dangerous issue of GM crops crossing the boundaries of nature a thousand fold. But in his book, nature is not sanctified, only humans, aren't they? And some humans are less sanctified than others and they deserve to be bombed...

"And the priest blessed the gun of corporal Smith..." 

White House 'muzzled top doc' on stem cell research

The first US surgeon-general appointed by President George W Bush has accused the administration of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalised or simply buried," Dr Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalising the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds," Dr Carmona added.

"The job of surgeon-general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party."

Surgeon General Sees 4-year Term as Compromised
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: July 11, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

Organic farming yields 'as good or better'

Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food as conventional farming in developing countries, and holds its own against standard methods in rich countries, US researchers say.

They said their findings contradict arguments that organic farming, which excludes the use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, is not as efficient as conventional techniques.

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can't produce enough food through organic agriculture," Ivette Perfecto, a professor at the University of Michigan's school of Natural Resources and Environment, said in a statement.

She and colleagues analysed published studies on yields from organic farming. They looked at 293 different examples.

"Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.

"We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Professor Perfecto said.

"Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertiliser companies, all have been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these inputs to produce food," she added.

Food Politics, Half-Baked

By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
Published: February 5, 2008

LAST month the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to food made from cloned cows, pigs and goats, with the agency’s top food-safety expert, Dr. Stephen Sundlof, declaring, “It is beyond our imagination to even have a theory for why the food is unsafe.” Opponents of biotechnology immediately let out a collective groan of disapproval — among them Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (who has called cloning “just weird”). Cloning, after all, will now join genetically modified crops as yet another threat to organic agriculture. I, too, let out a groan, but for a different reason.

It was because of the tone. “It is beyond our imagination to even find a theory ....” The hubris here highlights the saddest aspect of our perennial food wars. Like abortion and capital punishment, biotechnology inspires knee-jerk rhetorical passion rather than rational debate. Dr. Sundlof’s remark was the equivalent of an uppercut to the anti-biotech camp, one offering an open invitation to fight back.

One need look no further than the battle over genetically modified crops starting in the 1990s to understand how this language undermines the qualified benefits of biotech innovation. Without a hint of doubt, pro-biotech forces insisted that genetically modified crops would end hunger and eliminate the need for pesticides. Genetic modification was supposedly a harmless panacea that would save the planet. Industry not only promoted this fiction, but it scoffed at the prospects of product labeling, insisting that it was the product, not the process, that mattered.

This arrogant attitude spurred the anti-biotech forces to promote their own distortions. “Frankenfoods” became the term of choice for genetically modified crops. Chemical companies engaged in “biopiracy”; they were killers of monarch butterflies, engineers of future “superweeds,” and according to Jeremy Rifkin, the prominent biotech opponent, monopolizers of an insidious technology that posed “as serious a threat to the existence of life on the planet as the bomb itself.”

Lost in this rhetorical battle was a quiet middle ground...

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Gus: as mentioned before, the middle of the road is where most accidents can happen... A quiet middle ground is like sitting on a picket fence where the full pointedness of the hardwood penetrates our fundament. "Frankeinfood" is the correct word, as the technique of genetic modification — unlike that of selected breeding — crosses the STRONG boundary of nature, in which genes, or element of genes of one species do not cross to another species EVER.

BY ENFORCING THIS CROSS-OVER VIA "GENETIC MODIFICATION", ONE IS CREATING "FRANKEINFOOD"... Cloning goes against nature as well, as nature uses incremental shifts via adaptation, even if these shifts are few and far in between... Sure, we have been cloning plants for centuries by various means. Some plants do it naturally. But cloning plants from the source codes is only recent...

And the Frankeinfood manufacturer want to patent their product. In decades from now, we'll be mopping up another self-inflicted plague of these GM whatevers...

French GM ban infuriates farmers, delights environmentalists

France has officially banned a strain of genetically modified corn from US agribusiness giant Monsanto, delighting environmentalists but sparking outrage from the company and French farmers.

At least one association planned a legal challenge to the ruling, but leading environmental campaigner Jose Bove has welcomed the decision, saying it is the fruit of a 10-year battle by anti-GM groups.

A spokeswoman for Monsanto says that France's decision to outlaw the use of the MON810 strain of corn, the only GM crop grown in France, "had no scientific basis".

"Monsanto is studying all the legal options to defend the liberty of French farmers to use safe and authorised products," she said.

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Gus: "Use safe and authorised products"? No Mr Monsanto... Authorised in the US, but safe? Who knows... In forty years from now we may rue the day we let this Frankeinkorn our of the fidgets of doktor Monsantuler... But the strong possibility of totally corrupting the "natural" strain of foods — already modified by selected breeding — with patented genetically modified crops that can sustain stronger herbicides, is high beyond doubt. The poisoning of the earth with more "Round-Up" and such other poisons should be of great concern to all.

Side effects have been noted too. such as premature ageing in mice livers when fed on GM modified food.

GM practice goes against natural evolution. GM practice crosses the boundary, nature never crosses: mixing genes, or bits of genes, of one species with that of another... Imagine a forest of different species of trees, but where the leaves are joined, where all the branches and trunks are joined... A bloody mess of "cows with sheep's head". That's what GM is doing — oh sure, in a very minute way — to these new crops.

See "boofhead morality" and the cartoon at top...

The report claims widespread take-up of GM crops resistant to the herbicide glyphosate and the emergence of weeds tolerant of the chemical have caused a 15-fold increase in the use of the herbicide between 1994 and 2005. 

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A couple of years ago I visited a small cooperative in the south of Brazil which was rearing chickens for Sadia, Brazil's largest poultry producer. Pointing to the tens of thousands of chicks crowded together in a battery, one of the co-op members, Oney Zamarchi, said they reared the chickens just as the company decreed, even poking the chicks day and night to keep them awake and eating all the time. When the chickens reached 45 days old, they were big enough to be slaughtered - some were so fat they couldn't stand - and were sent to the slaughterhouse. A colleague visiting a poultry farm in Thailand a few months later described an identical process. But how could this synonymous operation be happening in different parts of the world?

The answer lies in the fact that a handful of poultry breeders now control the chicken industry.

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The carnage of poultry, in which 3.7 million birds were culled, in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal is a striking testament to the failure of the global response to the bird flu crisis. In a flash, one of the world’s most dynamic areas of poultry farming has been practically ruined, a priceless stock of biodiversity wiped out, and the livelihoods of millions of poor families pushed to the brink. This has been caused not so much by bird flu as by the response to it.

The response to bird flu in West Bengal needs to be seen for what it is: a political decision to safeguard the interests of the big poultry producers at the expense of the small-scale sector. 

Man’s destruction of the natural world takes many shocking forms. Poachers gun down elephants for the ivory and leave the carcasses to rot. Illegal foresters slash the trees of the rain forests for a quick buck. And in the Blue Mountains [Jamaica] and John Crow Mountains here, people go fishing by dumping poison in the Rio Grande.

Any toxin will do. Some favor the pesticide used to keep insects off the coffee plants. Others use the potent solution used to rid cows of ticks. When subjected to the poison, the shrimp — large and small — float right to the top. So do the fish. Catching them is as easy as scooping them up before the river washes them and the poison away.

A Melbourne court has sentenced Cardinal George Pell, a former close ally of Pope Francis, to six years behind bars with a possibility of parole. Pell was found guilty of five counts of historic child sex crimes.

As he delivered the hugely-anticipated verdict, Chief Judge Peter Kidd said that he decided to "impose a shorter non-parole period" than he would have done otherwise while taking into account Pell's age of 77.

He also mandated that Pell register as a sex offender, which the latter did in a courtroom bustling with reporters awaiting the sentencing of the most senior prelate of the Catholic Church to be ever found guilty of child sex crimes. Pell will have to serve at least three years and eight months in jail before he is eligible for parole.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/453672-cardinal-pell-jail-abuse/

 

 

 

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