Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

Oh, but much worse for whales and anything else that lives in/off of the sea, I can assure you. We're all that really matters though.

Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

Whoops. Wonder what new technology they will invent to attempt to clean up what the old technology left behind.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.

The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.

"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. "What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.

We've been doing a good job, these last few hundred years. Look at how quickly we can devastate millions of years of slow, beautiful development.

I guess this is the article's main point:

"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on," he said.

As if we deserve any less than a slow death of new, untreatable diseases from new forms of pollution.

Finally, down at the bottom, the author gets to what really matters in the overall non-anthropocentric picture:

The consequences of the metals could be horrific for both whale and man, he said.

"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction," Payne said. "This is not on anybody's radar, no government's radar anywhere, and I think it should be."

Cause no government cares. Those of Japan, Norway and Iceland are trying to empty the oceans of whales and there are lots of other piece of shit governments lining up behind them, awaiting the chance to engage in "scientific" whaling or whatever they try to call it. Filthy murder pirates. Fuck them all.

104,000 gallons an hour

That's how much oil is once again blowing out of BP's broken pipe five thousand feet under the ocean. And it looks like this:

BP's oil catastrophe is now back IN FULL MUTHAFUCKIN EFFIZZECT

Alright! We have now finally returned to blowing out several million gallons of crude oil a day!

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says an underwater robot bumped into the venting system. That sent gas rising through vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming in the cap.

Allen says the cap has been removed and crews are checking to see if crystals have formed before putting it back on. In the meantime, a different system is still burning oil on the surface.

Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in the previous 24 hours. Another 438,000 gallons was burned.

The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day.

I knew BP could make good things happen.

New official estimates for oil hemorrhage are 60 times what they were

Yes, now the federal government says that BP's hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is blowing out up to 2.52 million (2,520,000) gallons of oil per day. That is now sixty thousand (60,000) barrels, compared to the initial figure of one thousand (1,000) barrels.

BP is well on its way to claiming the world's largest oil catastrophe (with the exception of the daily annihilation that is human industrial existence), already easily claiming number three, and perhaps number two.

Way to go. People are awesome.

Impending increase in oil flow from BP's hole in the ocean floor

BP's newest sure-to-fail attempt to stop the oil from blowing out of that broken pipe a mile under the Gulf of Mexico will bring a 20% increase in the amount of oil flowing from it:

Even as the White House sought to demonstrate that it was taking a more direct hand in trying to solve the problem, senior officials acknowledged that the new technique BP will use to try to cap the leak — severing the riser pipe and placing a containment dome over the cut riser — could temporarily result in as much as 20 percent more oil flowing into the water during the three days to a week before the new device could be in place.

Nice. If we've got, on the low end, one million gallons of oil pouring out per day, we will now have one million and two hundred thousand. If we have four million, on the higher end, we will now have four million and eight hundred thousand. Until August, when they manage to finish drilling their new well.

Oil industry threatens the president and you

They are relentless as well as remorseless. Such is the march of capital.

"An extended moratorium on safely producing our oil and natural gas resources from the Gulf of Mexico would create a moratorium on economic growth and job creation," said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the main U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry...

The ban, Gerard said, will hurt growth "by undercutting our nation's access to affordable, reliable, domestic sources of oil and natural gas..."

Gerard said he understands the frustration many feel toward the industry, but he said lawmakers should reconsider any decisions that would limit access to domestic sources of oil.

"This issue is much larger than the oil industry since access to affordable energy impacts every sector of our economy, every state in our nation and every American family," he said...

The ban could also mean layoffs in the energy industry, particularly in the Gulf Coast region, according to API. The group said 150,000 jobs are at risk if deep water production is significantly reduced over a period of five years.

"Deepwater is where the new action is in the Gulf," said API spokesman Bill Bush. "If that's shut down, there could be serious jobs impacts."

First, the US imports around 70% of its oil. So it only produces about 30% domestically. And of that, 30% it is only 30% that comes from offshore drilling. So the US only gets 10% of its oil from domestic offshore drilling. Not very much. At all. Fuck it.

Capitalists throw around the word "jobs" like Zionists with "anti-Semite." As soon as you make a point with them, they threaten and smear you so that you fuck off real quick.

Really though, if jobs are truly lost from stopping offshore oil production, too bad. Has to happen sooner or later - that oil ain't gonna be there forever. And that's what oil companies are ultimately in the business of - running themselves out of business, although they don't tell anyone that. Or themselves, really. But anyway, sometimes you just have to find something else to do, especially when you are a cog in the most profoundly destructive industry/line of work/business the world has ever known. Slave traders had to do it, much of the German military had to do it after World War II, even people selling Yugos had to do it. It sucks for the politically-celebrated "little guy," but such is life. Hopefully, one day, slaughterhouse workers will have to do the same.

New plans for offshore oil drilling

Ok. So there's quite a bit to say about this. Here is a brief summation of what the president has handed down:

The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

Concerns abound from virtually every conceivable method of analysis - environmental, political, social, financial. Mine are chiefly about the environmental impact of this and people's perceived right to do as they wish with land simply because they can, but I am not going to go into that. Instead, I will offer a bit of unsolicited advice on how to achieve one of the goals that this new petroleum extraction is supposed to secure.

Mr. Obama said several times during his presidential campaign that he supported expanded offshore drilling. He noted in his State of the Union address in January that weaning the country from imported oil would require “tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.”

Mind you, I have no belief in the sustainability of industry, nor do I wish for it to be so, but if one were of that mindset (and all capitalists are), there is a crucial first step that they must take and push for:

Get off the oil industry's dick.

Everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?

Don't question the need for it, just sate demand.

China is building a shitload of nuclear reactors, planning on about ten a year in the coming years.

The last country to carry out such a rapid nuclear expansion was the United States in the 1970s, in a binge of reactor construction that ended with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. And China is placing many of its nuclear plants near large cities, potentially exposing tens of millions of people to radiation in the event of an accident.

Good, good, they are in great company. Three Mile Island. That worked out so well. Isolated incident though, don't worry.

Westinghouse is helping out, and I would imagine General Electric is as well. I know they have built reactors for China in the past. They bring good things to life, (they manufacture the guns that fire the depleted uranium rounds) you know?

Do they have Indian reservations in China? If not, I guess they'll have to ship the spent fuel rods here.

Soon, the beach will be closer than ever!

Yet another great development brought to you by humanity:

New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014, Al Gore said Monday at the U.N. climate conference. This new projection, following several years of dramatic retreat by polar sea ice, suggests that the ice cap may nearly vanish in the summer much sooner than the year 2030, as was forecast by a U.S. government agency eight months ago.

Soaking up the rays in Philadelphia? Sunning in Cleveland? Bodyboarding in St. Louis? I hope so. Think of the convenience! And we can be greener than grass, with all those people who survive living on an ever-shrinking land mass, making for increasingly shorter distances to the fun sun beach.

Another One Bites the Dust

"The northern bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), or giant bluefin tuna, is a species of tuna native to both the western and eastern Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. Although not native to the Pacific Ocean, the species is now commercially cultivated off the Japanese coast. Bluefin tuna are caught by sports fishermen using heavy-duty rod and reels and by commercial fishermen using purse seine gear. The northern bluefin is an important commercial species, especially for sushi. This commercial importance has led to severe overfishing.
On October 16th 2009 Monaco formally recommended Endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna for an Appendix I CITES listing and international trade ban. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) affirmed that Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks are declining dramatically, by 72% in the Eastern Atlantic, and by 82% in the Western Atlantic"

We will once again wipe anther life off this planet FOREVER! all for some fucking sushi! Is this a joke? We know better and we do nothing!!!! FUCK!

On refusing to act

Here we see poor countries pressuring, trying to convince and finally begging the rich ones to cut their carbon emissions in serious numbers. As anyone would expect, the rich countries told them to suck it. The poor ones want rich industrial countries to reduce their carbon output by forty percent in the next ten years. Most of the latter are planning to cut by up to fifteen percent by then. America, of course, lags behind even such a basic measure, debating a seven percent cut. Fuck.

What's the excuse? Why won't they just do it? Money.

"I think to get to minus 40 [percent reduction in carbon emissions] is too heavy a lift," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters. Such a shift would require "going back to the drawing board" and would economically "come at a huge cost," he said.

Yes, the U.N. is also telling them to fuck off. Looks like the end of the road for all those poor client/host countries, huh? At least they can point the finger when the floods come and come. What satisfaction.

Once again, people have demonstrated that they will commit any act of violence and destruction in the name of money. Essentially, the rich countries tell the rest of the world that the western lifestyles they live are more important than anything, even some too-late attempt to "save" the planet. People up at the top know that they and their businesses are trashing every reach of the world, but they won't do anything meaningful about it, just sell you a canvas bag.

As for the climate change deniers, go for it. Give it your all. I can guarantee it won't make a fuck of a difference what you felt or said when your children live in a state of constant hunger and struggle, their houses long having been swallowed by the oceans.

The Danger of Livestock Waste?

"The Danger of Livestock" is more appropriate. Can't have livestock without livestock waste. And of course, you can't have livestock without people. The animals perceived as the economic/food units "livestock" wouldn't exist in nearly such numbers, certainly not in such thick concentrations, and in some (many?) cases, wouldn't exist at all, as people have bred and altered them into new versions of their ancestors.

So here we are, a few decades down the line from having invented the atrocity of industrial agriculture, and like everything else that we've "improved," it has come back to bite us in the ass in a whole lot of ways. In this instance, it's the massive contamination of drinking water in rural areas around these farms.

Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.

As usual, it's nobody's fault and just kind of happened. Nothing like a complete lack of foresight matched with an obstinate reluctance to admit wrongdoing on anyone's part. As though this is how it is, how it's got to be, and we have to figure out ways to deal with it. Like it's some immutable force of nature. Well, here's a video report of what dealing with it means.

Aside from the unconscionable abuse, torture and degradation that goes on in these prison hell rape factories, the people running them also don't give a fuck about people who aren't them. They don't care about the people who live around them. If they did, they would not keep "waste lagoons," they would not dump the chemical filled shit back onto the ground and they would own up to the environmental devastation they force upon the communities around them in the name of profit. If they cared about the people who bought the dairy products they sell, well, they wouldn't sell them.

They do whatever they want because the farm lobby is so strong. The farm lobby is so strong because people have appallingly low standards for what they eat as food. One more thing we could do something about but won't. "Isn't that a shame..."

Don't worry though, these farmers do soil tests and "follow strict regulations." It's working out really well. I'm just making a big noise about nothing.

Fucking kill me

Jay-z needs to make a second version of "D.O.A." which would involve him killing America. Fuck this place, holy shit. It is so full up of thoughtless idiots who will believe anything they hear on the radio, see on TV or "read" on the internet on whatever stupid fucking message boards or blogs they frequent. They are hateful, bigoted, racist, anti-intellectual and are fraught with anxiety that big guvmint is always around the corner coming to get them and take away all their "rights." What these jackasses systematically fail to see, much to the delight of those who use them for political gain, is that THEY ARE ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE PEOPLE RUNNING THE COUNTRY. They all want the same fucking things - God, money, black people in jail, women in the back. Just fools in the game of division.

Anyway, here's what's going on. A bunch of assholes are running around the country stirring up this week's blind, pointless jingoistic hatred in the name of the "Tea Party Express." Remember that old woman at a McCain campaign rally last year who said she couldn't trust Obama because he's an Arab? I bet she's around. Here are some choice quotes:

• Under a setting sun on the steps of the state capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas, Johns says: "Our men and women took an oath when they put on the uniform to defend and protect this country from enemies both foreign and domestic. I think we've got some domestic enemies in the White House."
• "The men and women in our military didn't fight and die for this country for a communist in the White House," she says, and the crowd erupts in a chant of "U-S-A, U-S-A!"
• Williams is the showman of the bunch. His signature line when he gets the mic goes like this: "You can have our country when you pry it from our ... cold ... dead ... fingers!" Again the crowd erupts.
• As the tour moves on, Nazi imagery becomes more prominent -- and sometimes confused. One sign at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, has Obama's portrait sandwiched between pictures of Adolf Hitler and communist philosopher Karl Marx. In Canton,Ohio, Obama and Hitler adorn a sign reading "Hitler made great speeches, too."
• No one on the tea party express seems concerned with the vocal fringe of the crowds that come with offensive signs -- besides Nazi imagery, a poster of Obama as an African witch doctor has become popular -- or the numerous conspiracy theories that float around most tea parties.
• In Battle Creek, Michigan, a woman in her 60s says, "I really don't want to be a guinea pig for the experiment they have with the population control." In Canton, Ohio, a woman argues with an Obama supporter: "He's going after our kids to try to indoctrinate them into a national defense army."

This is the kind of shit that makes me wish I were dead. That's it.

A perfect illustration of the fundamental problem with humanity

I was reading this story, and I really don't even know why, about the newest Taser. The story itself really doesn't fucking matter; what's important is what one of the pieces of shit who runs the company said with regards to how people use the products this company makes. And it's not really a reflection on him that concerns me. Sure, fuck the dude, he's garbage, he's helping pigs and troops to fuck up people (750,000 in fifteen years) all over the world, but that doesn't really matter here. That's fucking petty in terms of what his words say about the human species. I feel his remarks cut to the core of what is wrong with us: we simply won't stop.

What I keep wondering is: Who would inflict that kind of pain? And under what circumstances? We all know that our tools change our behavior. Give us cars, and we’ll go new places; give us iPhones, and we’ll check our e-mail way more often. So when we hear stories about grandmothers and kids and handcuffed prisoners and even runaway sheep getting tased, I asked Smith, what does that say about the stun gun’s impact?

He and his colleagues gently ducked the question, saying it was up to individual police forces and military units to teach their troops how and when to use the electroshock weapons. “All we can do is build in as many features as we can think of,” said Brian Beckwith, vice president of product development.

And that's it, right the fuck there: "All we can do is build as many features as we can think of." No concern for what comes after. Not a bit. That's something that's been demonstrated time and again throughout human history, particularly in relatively modern times - guns, gasoline engines, chainsaws, pesticides, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, on and on, ad nauseam. These things have positive uses? I don't care if that's true, cause the reality is that that doesn't happen and every one of these things runs away from us and we stand around like it's some big fucking mystery how it got that way. Again and again, every fucking time.

People are truly, on a biological level, complete idiots. We've got these big brains that let us build whatever we come up with, rarely questioning if we even should. That's where the idiocy lies - doing without thinking of the consequences. That happens large (oil extraction), that happens small (heroin use). We are so, so stupid. We will not learn. Individuals may, but the species will not.

People love to think of themselves as this brilliant, exceptional and mighty species. All those animals that are so "low," they don't incorporate slow, all-encompassing death and destruction into their daily lives.

Draw a deep breath, look around and take in the incredible wreckage we've laid to the planet with our creativity and intelligence.

"Modern man, pathetic example of earth's organic heritage."

We suffer so that you may acquire "knowledge"

which you then immediately discard, thinking "That's interesting."

Research/torture/confinement/starvation for its own sake. Science. Progress.

One monkey is on a calorie restricted diet, the other is not. Both look profoundly sad and forlorn.

Sick, sadistic fucks pursuing useless information. Wanna see what their conclusions are and what they may mean?

Few people can keep to a diet with 30 percent fewer calories than usual. So
biologists have been looking for drugs that might mimic the effects of caloric
restriction, conferring the gain without the pain.

Dietary restriction seems to set off an ancient strategy written into all
animal genomes, that when food is scarce resources should be switched to tissue
maintenance from breeding. In recent years biologists have had considerable
success in identifying the mechanisms by which cells detect the level of
nutrients available to the body. The goal is to find drugs that trick these
mechanisms into thinking that famine is at hand. People could then literally
have their cake and eat it, too, enjoying the health benefits of caloric
restriction without the pain of forgoing rich foods.

Brilliant, simply fucking brilliant. Let's do this "experiment" with premises that are virtually untenable in real life, and then maybe we can make some drugs to fuck with biology a little more. The outcomes are fantastic - drug companies get rich, people (really just Americans and those who have enough money and resources to emulate them) can still be the fat, undiscerning fucks that they are and be able to do so much longer, world population will increase as life spans do the same, and we will burn out the planet at ever greater speeds.

Thanks science. Thanks for continually pressing on, undeterred, to find the maximum fucking velocity at which to hurtle towards hell.

Congratulations to humanity

We've done it again, managing to globalize and homogenize ants through another one of our magnificently ignorant, witless stumbles towards destruction.

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

A resounding chorus of applause is in order here.

The most plausible explanation is that ants from these three super-colonies are indeed family, and are all genetically related, say the researchers. When they come into contact, they recognise each other by the chemical composition of their cuticles.

"The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society," the researchers write in the journal Insect Sociaux, in which they report their findings.

Cool. Hopefully they'll help take us out.

Trashing the planet to trash the planet

Thankfully, and with a great deal of foresight, Russia is constructing five floating and submersible nuclear power plants in the Arctic, so that they may drill for petroleum. There are no problems that could arise from this decision. Russia has an excellent history of nuclear safety and consideration for the natural world. The world needs the gas and oil deposits they may find, so that we may continue hemorraghing safe, non-toxic fumes and chemicals into the air, water and land. These deposits must be extracted at any cost, and Russia is the country for the job.

Here are some asinine things environmentalists have to say about this glorious achievement:

"It is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle," said Igor Kudrik, a spokesman.

Environmentalists also fear that if additional radioactive waste is produced, it will be dumped into the sea. Russia has a long record of polluting the Arctic with radioactive waste. Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.

They are crazy people who hate progress and worship at the altar of Howard Dean.

Bye bye Arctic

Who cares. It's just a bunch of ice anyway. Ice sucks. You can't drive on it. And I get all the ice I need from my freezer. Plus the beach will get a lot closer to my house.

Some 80 percent of Arctic ice may disappear in 30 years, not 90 as scientists had previously estimated, according to a new study on the impact of global warming.

"The amount of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice at the end of summer by then could be only about 1 million square kilometers, or about 620,000 square miles," said researchers who authored the study published Thursday.

"That's compared to today's ice extent of 4.6 million square kilometers, or 2.8 million square miles," they added, warning the development "raises the question of ecosystem upheaval."

The scientists made their projections based on models that took accounted for changes in Arctic ice, which saw "dramatic declines" at the end of summer in 2007 and 2008, when the ice surface dropped to 4.3 and 4.6 million square kilometers (1.7 and 1.8 million square miles), respectively.

The models pointed to a "nearly ice-free" Arctic in just 32 years, with some of the models making the same prediction for 11 years from now.

Property destruction aimed at the state is not violence

I wanted to point that out because so often, in corporate news accounts of events like yesterday's G20 protests in London, the trashing of banks, government offices, multinational corporate locations or other capitalist redoubts is referred to as "violence." It is not. Breaking a window at a bank, spraypainting a police station or smashing up a McDonald's is not violence. Rather, violence emanates from these places.

Banks are the current hotspots of violence. How many people are unemployed, how many people have lost their houses or are on the verge of doing so because of investment bankers gone wild? You know about some of the debacles here, but the economy is global. Nothing that happens in America stays in America. Example:

RBS [The Royal Bank of Scotland] has been the focus of particular anger because it was bailed out by the British government after a series of disastrous deals brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. Still, its former chief executive Fred Goodwin — age 50 — managed to walk off with an annual pension of 703,000 pounds ($1.2 million) even as unemployment in Britain rises from some 2 million.

It has been often reported that the arm of AIG [American International Group] most responsible for their unpleasant financial state is based out of London. Those people are thumbing their noses and waving their pounds at America, refusing to return their bonuses.

When you cannot pay your rent, when your house has been foreclosed upon, when you try to find a job but there are none to be had, that is a direct result of violence.

"Every job I apply for there's already 150 people who have also applied," said protester Nathan Dean, 35, who lost his information technology job three weeks ago. "I have had to sign on to the dole (welfare) for the first time in my life. You end up having to pay your mortgage on your credit card and you fall into debt twice over."

Someone, or rather, a group of people, have done violence to you. How can I say that? Think about it. One of the definitions of violence is "an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws." Being unwillingly thrown into this economy, the least they can do is guarantee us a right to a job. And we certainly have a right to housing. It's enough that we work for you. The least you can do is give us a place to go at night. But these things are being taken away through deliberate means. They are being taken away because these capitalists are using their power to do so. The people running these institutions don't give a FUCK about those below them or how their actions affect the world. Money money money.

And the police, come on. They are violence incarnate. The only way they have any power is due to their monopoly on legal violence. When a cop tells you to move, you do it. Why? If not, you'll get shoved, hit, pepper sprayed or tasered. Violence. I do not believe that most people obey police out of respect. It's fear. Fear of violence.

Their physical violence, that's only the first step. Then they haul you off to jail, coerce you into paying bail money, extort court fees and fines and forcibly retain you in a prison. That's violence. If someone who were not a representative of the government ran you through a similar process, it would be felony kidnapping.

Property destruction can be violent though, but really only the other way around. When the police come in and trash your house, when they bust up your means to earn a living, that is violence. Most people don't have a way to easily replace those things. When banks that make billions a year and throw their executives seven figure bonuses take your house from you and leave you with nothing, that is violent. They send the police in to make sure you leave.

A window in Starbucks though, fuck. I do not have a way to quantify the financial insignificance of that. That company pulled in $10.4 billion last year. A broken window is far, far less than the equivalent of a penny to me. For fuck's sake, their insurance covers it anyway. And McDonald's? It drips with violence - against the planet, animals, and workers forced to take their shitty fucking jobs for no money out of desperation.

Animal-human clones don't work, U.S. company finds

Once again, I give to you sick fucks trying to play god.

The best quote:

We got beautiful little hybrid embryos, but it didn't work no matter how hard we tried.

With the most dedicated sense of devotion to progress for its own sake, these scientists would not allow repeated failures to give way to questioning their actions. No, they relentlessly pursued their goals because they had imagined them.

Also, I could have told them before they spent all their money, time, and inflicted unnecessary pain on the animals who once held these eggs that their efforts would most likely be in vain.

They act like this is some kind of fucking revelation. As though, every indication showed otherwise, but for some unknowable reason, human/non-human hybrid clones just don't work.


Animal-human clones don't work, U.S. company finds

Mon Feb 2, 2009 2:47pm EST

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who tried to use mouse, cow and rabbit eggs to make human clones said on Monday the effort failed to produce workable embryos but added that they showed human cloning should work in principle.

Mixing human and animal cells does not appear to program the egg properly, said Dr. Robert Lanza of Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology.

But using human cells did reprogram the egg cell or oocyte and activate the genes needed to make a viable embryo, Lanza and colleagues reported in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells.

Several teams have tried to make animal-human hybrids as a source of embryonic stem cells, the master cells of the body. Because human eggs are scarce -- it requires a surgical procedure to get them from a woman -- some scientists came up with the idea of using animal egg cells.

The cloning technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. The nucleus is removed from an egg cell and replaced with the nucleus from another type of cell from the donor animal or person who is to be cloned.

Done right, the process starts the egg growing and dividing as if it had been fertilized by a sperm, but the resulting embryo carries mostly the DNA of the donor.

"The idea was to simply to plunk a patient's DNA into an empty cow or rabbit egg -- and presto -- you reprogram the DNA back into a stem cell," Lanza said in a telephone interview.

But teams that have tried to do this have always ended up with what looks like a cell dividing over and over to become an embryo, but which eventually fizzles out.

"For the last decade, we've carried out literally hundreds of experiments trying to create patient-specific stem cells using animal eggs," Lanza said.

BEAUTIFUL HYBRIDS

"We got beautiful little hybrid embryos, but it didn't work no matter how hard we tried."

A mouse-human hybrid petered out after just one division. The cow and rabbit human hybrids went further, but stopped at the point when maternal DNA is supposed to kick in and turn the ball of cells into a proper embryo, Lanza said.

Lanza's team used a new method called global gene expression analysis to see which genes were turned on and off as the eggs grew.

"We never had the tools before to actually look inside the cell and see what's going on," Lanza said. It appears that using the egg of another species turns off the genes needed to make an embryo instead of turning them on, he said.

But the human-human clone did turn on the right genes, although it, too stopped dividing before it could produce stem cells, Lanza said.

"We see exactly the same genes turned on in a normal embryo are actually turned on in a human clone," he said.

Ian Wilmut of the University of Edinburgh, one of the scientists who cloned the first mammal, Dolly the sheep, and editor of the journal, called the results disappointing.

"This very important paper suggests that livestock oocytes are extremely unlikely to be suitable as recipients for use in human nuclear transfer," Wilmut said in a statement.

But Lanza said it might be possible to use other methods to create "banks" of stem cells that match the several hundred tissue types found among humans.

This could include cloning humans, using a single cell from growing embryos used for fertility treatment, or a new method called induced pluripotent stem cells, made by taking a sample of skin and reprogramming the cells to act like embryonic stem cells, Lanza said.