Free Republic

July 16, 2014 (LocalOrg) - Corporate biotechnology monopolies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, and others have met increasing resistance to their attempts to patent and control global agriculture. They have spent untold fortunes attempting to sway the public but to no avail. Local, organic agriculture is growing in popularity and proliferating across all social-strata. The introduction of technology to automate and augment organic farming is making it as competitive and accessible or more so than the capital-intensive models of monopoly employed by big-ag. In response, big-ag has attempted several distasteful public relation stunts, including "super bananas for Africa" and "Golden Rice" to allegedly...

July 18, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - With Kiev's forces being encircled and decimated in eastern Ukraine, western Ukrainians in Kiev protesting the war, and US sanctions receiving global ridicule as feckless - the downing of a Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner with over 280 on board in eastern Ukraine - allegedly shot down over a conflict zone - will undoubtedly be exploited by NATO to vilify Kiev's opponents, particularly fighters in the east and Russia who NATO accuses of "destabilizing eastern Ukraine." Preceding the downing of Malaysian flight MH17, just hours beforehand, Ukraine claimed Russia had shot down...

ETN received information from an air traffic controller in Kiev on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. This Kiev air traffic controller is a citizen of Spain and was working in the Ukraine. He was taken off duty as a civil air-traffic controller along with other foreigners immediately after a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine killing 295 passengers and crew on board. The air traffic controller suggested in a private evaluation and basing it on military sources in Kiev, that the Ukrainian military was behind this shoot down. Radar records were immediately confiscated after it became...

It wasn't that long ago that those who claimed that there was a massive pedophile ring involving officials in the highest levels of government were written off as conspiracy theorists and kooks. That is no longer the case, at least in the U.K. It turns out that this so called conspiracy theory was true, and is finally being officially investigated. The coverup isn't going well at this point. The British government is even coming under heat for the convenient disappearance of key files regarding the allegations. At least forty British MPs are implicated, but this is really just the tip...

New research confirms some of the basic tenets of the Wheat Belly, a book by Dr. William Davis, which argues that wheat avoidance results in healthy weight loss.Published in Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry this month, and titled “Gluten-free diet reduces adiposity, inflammation and insulin resistance associated with the induction of PPAR-alpha and PPAR-gamma expression,” researchers compared the effects of a gluten-based diet to a gluten-free diet in mice.Researchers Noted Gluten exclusion (protein complex present in many cereals) has been proposed as an option for the prevention of diseases other than coeliac disease. However, the effects of gluten-free diets on obesity...

DNA analysis has debunked the longstanding theory that the Minoans, who some 5,000 years ago established Europe's first advanced Bronze Age culture, were from Africa. The Minoan civilisation arose on the Mediterranean island of Crete in approximately the 27th century BC and flourished for 12 centuries until the 15th century BC. But the culture was lost until British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans unearthed its remains on Crete in 1900, where he found vestiges of a civilisation he believed was formed by refugees from northern Egypt. Modern archaeologists have cast doubt on that version of events, and now DNA tests of...

In a cave in northern Spain a team of scientists has retrieved the remains of 28 prehistoric humans, members of an enigmatic species that could be described as a little bit Neanderthal.They had Neanderthal faces, with heavy brows and protruding noses. They had powerful mandibles and mouths that could open extremely wide, indicating they used their teeth as gripping tools. But they didn't have the large skulls or other robust skeletal features seen in the prototypical Neanderthals who, hundreds of millennia later, roamed Ice Age Europe. These were apparently ancestors of Neanderthals, inhabitants of a line that many thousands of...

Want to find the nearest pterosaur? There's an app for that — or a database, at least. A newly developed website catalogs more than 1,300 specimens of extinct flying reptiles called pterosaurs, thus enabling users to map out the ancient creatures on Google Earth. The goal is to help researchers find trends in the evolution and diversity of these ancient winged reptiles. "Having a very specific database like this, which is just for looking at individual fossil specimens of pterosaurs, is very helpful, because you can ask questions that you couldn't have answered with bigger databases [of more animals]," said...

With tear-gas flying in the streets of Turkey, Ukraine's civil-war raging in the south and east, US drones based in Japan to oversee the South China Sea, and Europe's extremist parties gaining significant traction, today we get one more piece of considerably worrisome geopolitical news that global stock markets must ignore. The Sunday Times reports that Israel is to deploy three submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf that are meant to act as a deterrent, gather intelligence and potentially to land Mossad agents. Iran is not happy, warning that "anyone who wishes to do an evil...

Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb by Chris Bryson & Joel GriffithsSome fifty years after the United States began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children’s teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of that still-controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government’s assurances of safety.Since the days of World War II, when this nation prevailed by building the world’s first atomic bomb, U.S. public...

I am so angry writing this that it is hard to know where to begin. So, let’s start with the facts. The Albuquerque Police Department has killed 26 people since 2010 and wounded 40 more. To put this into perspective, this is twice the per capita rate as New York City and eight times the rate of Chicago. Walter White killed as many people as the Albuquerque police have! This news is disturbing and infuriating at the same time. The people in Albuquerque are not safe, but it isn’t because of regular street thugs–it is because of thugs with badges....

Representatives of the international coalition No Patents on Seeds! from France, Germany and Spain have filed an opposition against a European patent held by Monsanto on conventionally bred tomatoes (EP1812575). The patent claims tomatoes with a natural resistance to a fungal disease called botrytis. The original tomatoes used for this patent came from the international gene bank in Gatersleben, Germany. It was already known that these plants had the desired resistance and they were simply crossed with other tomato plants. Monsanto then produced a cleverly worded patent in order to create the impression that genetic engineering had been used to...

"Banks are worried about their exposure," warns one warehousing source, "there is a scramble for people to head down there at the minute and make sure that their metal that they think is covered by a warehouse receipt actually exists." The rehypothecated catastrophe that we discussed in great detail here (copper financing), here (all commodities), and here (global contagion) appears to be gathering speed as the China's northeastern port of Qingdao has halted shipments of aluminum and copper due to an investigation by authorities after they found "there is a discrepancy in metal that should be there and metal that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A local tsunami warning was issued after an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck in the Pacific Ocean west of Alaska's Aleutian Islands on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Tsunami Warning Center said. The warning covered coastal areas of Alaska from Nikolski to Attu, the center said, adding the level of tsunami danger was being evaluated for other U.S. and Canadian Pacific coasts....

Mark your calendars: In 2025, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians may return to Nicaea, the spot in modern-day Turkey where Christianity was literally defined. In 325, early followers of Jesus came together to figure out what it means to be a Christian; the goal was to create theological consensus across all of Christendom. This was way before the faith sub-divided into East vs. West, Catholics vs. Protestants, Southern Baptists vs. Primitive Baptists—these were the early days of the religion, when it still seemed like it could be observed as one, united faith. The council's effect on Christianity was huge;...

A Congressional inquiry into the targeting of Tea Party and Conservative organizations by the IRS has revealed that thousands of emails from IRS head Lois Lerner and at least six of her subordinates have been lost to history after the hard drive which stored them was reportedly thrown away. The loss of the emails makes it nearly impossible to track down and verify what actually took place and whether or not the Obama administration was directly involved in the harassment of independent groups that didn’t agree with the President’s political platform.Without the emails their is no accountability, despite the fact...

An Indian teenager is worshipped as a god because he has a 7ins ‘tail’. Arshid Ali Khan, 13, has become a divine symbol in the state of Punjab. Locals have hailed him a reincarnation of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman - and refer to him as Balaji. However, Arshid has to use a wheelchair and he is considering having the ‘tail’ removed. He said: ‘This tail has been given to me by God. I am worshipped because I pray to god and the wishes of people come true.....

These are the sorts of folks I’m talking about when I say that the “hipster fascists” are the enemy of an open sourced society. Of course it is probably fair to say that not one person in this meeting room would identify themselves as a “fascist.” In fact as this was a gathering of American socialists they would likely jump up and down swearing that they weren’t fascists and that in fact they fought fascism and everything fascism stands for. — Well clearly, just watch their open minds at work in the video. It has been my experience that many...

Greece has launched a multi-billion euro claim against one of Germany’s biggest defence firms who sold the financially-beleaguered country four submarines in a complicated deal which has become symbolic of the country’s economic woes. The controversial deal has threatened Greece’s position in Nato, according to well-placed sources, led to the criminal prosecution of the country’s defence minister and the resignation of a senior Naval figure. The Telegraph today publishes photographs of the four submarines, which are still unfinished in a Greek shipyard almost 15 years after they were first ordered. It can now be disclosed that the Greek Government has...

A strange catastrophe struck Spain's pig farmers in the spring of 2010. On 41 farms across the country—each home to between 800 and 3,000 pigs—many sows suddenly ceased bearing young. On some farms, all the sows stopped reproducing. On others, those that did become pregnant produced smaller litters. When investigators examined the sows and the semen that had been used to artificially inseminate them—it had been collected from different boar studs and refrigerated—they couldn't find anything wrong. The sperm cells weren't misshapen. None of the sows were diseased. No microbes or fungal toxins were detected in their feed or water....