Monthly Archives: February 2017

4th Circuit Rules Common Rifles not Protected by Second Amendment – AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

Posted: February 26, 2017 at 10:55 pm


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4th Circuit Rules Common Rifles not Protected by Second Amendment
AmmoLand Shooting Sports News
Arizona -(Ammoland.com)-On 21 February, 2017, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that common semi-automatic rifles are not protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution. The ban includes semi-automatic rifles that can take detachable ...

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Trump: Fake love for First Amendment – Orlando Sentinel

Posted: at 10:54 pm

UPDATED: President Trump understands press freedom about as well as he grasps humility.

In other words, not at all.

But that doesnt stop him from sounding off. His rip-roaring speech Friday to the Conservative Political Action Conference contained an unnerving threat and ironic demands.

Trump renewed his complaints about the media or as he calls it the fake media.

I say it doesnt represent the people, it doesnt and never will represent the people, and were going to do something about it because we have to go out and have to speak our minds and we have to be honest, Trump said.

That going to do something sounded ominous, yet if he just keeps talking, he is going to continue to do wonderful things for TVratings and newspaper subscriptions. Thank you, Mr. President.

Trump gave a journalism lecture: I'm against the people that make up stories and make up sources.They shouldn't be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody's name. Let their name be put out there.

That will never work, but the president happily spins the fantasy.

Unnamed sources drive a lot of coverage, inside and outside Washington. Trump made the complaintshortly afterhis own White House aides gave a briefing on the condition of anonymity.

Ah, hypocrisy. It never registers with the president, who just keeps complaining.

If unnamed sources arent used, Trump predicted, you will see stories dry up like you've never seen before.

He followed that by announcing: I love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who uses itmore than I do?

But theres a difference between reportingand shooting your mouth off.

If you want to see stories dry up, you cant really love the First Amendment. Dogged reporting can get at major issues facing the country. Perhaps Trump loves parts of the First Amendment, but the love in this case needs to be all the way.

President Trump has a tendency to make everything personal. He comes at the issues not as a politician but as a TV star who was treated to largely favorable press when he was a performeron The Apprentice.

He made that approach pay offfor him during the unpredictable 2016 campaign, but he cant seem to shift gears as president.

Thin-skinned and self-absorbed, he is not prepared for the rough-and-tumble of Washington.

And were all paying for it because hes easily distracted and offended. He says his achievements arent saluted, but he and his White House keep tripping themselves up.

Maybe he was serving distractions Friday from CNN and New York Times reporting about contacts between Trump associates and Russian intelligence officials. He finds ways to divert attention frombad press.

He can bean aggrieved star, and his White House can take revenge on reporters he doesnt like. Reporters from CNN, The New York Times, Politico, the BBC, the Huffington Post and The Los Angeles Times were kept out of a White House briefing on Friday.

Even so, the administration is probably helping those news organizations gainrespect. The digging about Russia wont end; Trump gives the press more reason to keep looking. Thank you, Mr. President.

The president has announced he wont attend the White House correspondents dinner in April. Thats for the best. Why try to fake that youre having a good time in front of the fake media?

For now, Trump is sending more than enough head-scratching messages. His media bashing on Friday was especially confused. But thats because when Trump talks about the First Amendment, hes just giving lip service.

hboedeker@orlandosentinel.com

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Trump’s Unprecedented War on the First Amendment Has Gone … – Huffington Post

Posted: at 10:54 pm

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Donald Trumps attacks on our nations news media and his attempts to position his Twitter account as the only official news outlet of the administrationeffectively a state-run media outlet built upon a social media platform. Unfortunately, since I wrote that piece, Trump and his entire administration have effectively tripled-down on their war against the American news media and have taken unprecedented actions to counter it.

If youve had a chance to watch any of Sean Spicers White House press briefings over the last month (I usually see them on CBSN), you have probably seen at least a couple of instances of Spicer directly arguing with and attacking individual reporters, much the way that Trump did with Katy Tur during the campaign. Spicer has already shown himself to be combative with the news media, and Trump himself continues to decry established media outlets, such as CNN and The New York Times as fake news and now, very fake news (emphasis mine).

This, of course, is just a small sampling of his tweets directed at delegitimizing the entire media apparatus of this nation. But that last one may be the most alarming: Trump has officially declared the news media the enemy of the American People. Let that one sink in just for a minute.

The American news media is effectively our liaison into the workings of our state and federal governments. Whenever reporters include quotes in newspaper or on-line reports, or sit down with officials in one-on-one interviews, they are giving the American people a brief glimpse into that representatives policy positions, personality, and method of governing. Reporters can communicate with inside sourcesoften anonymously for fear of reprisalsand find out more of what is going on behind the scenes, which is often how questionable policies and even outright corruption are revealed to the populace. The media also brings crucial information, such as product recalls, threats to public safety, and foreign policy, to the attention of the populace. Their ability to communicate effectively has only grown in the technological age, with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook serving to provide additional ways for people to receive their news and stay informed.

It is perhaps this latter outlet which Trump is trying to monopolize and control. By labeling many media organizations as fake news through his Twitter account, Trump seeks not only to control his own narrative, but also the medias ability to effectively communicate with the American people. Every time Trump mentions a specific organization or reporter in a speech or in a tweet, he is singling that person or entity out for public ridicule, knowing that if they have a public Twitter account (the vast majority do), his supporters and followers will assail them with harassment. This is a way to not only undermine their credibility with the nation, but also an attempt to silence them completely. Individual journalists especially may feel pressured to disconnect from social media due to constant harassment and threats made against them. Donald Trump is both enabling and encouraging such behavior.

So maybe it should come as no surprise that, just a few days ago, the Trump Administration literally blocked a number of news media outlets from participating in a press briefing. Reporters from CNN, The New York Times, Politico, and The Los Angeles Times were all barred from entry. In fact, according to the report, Sean Spicer was literally hand-picking the news outlets he wanted in attendancea form of journalistic discrimination. This is potentially the beginning of a total media blackout of journalistic outlets the administration seeks to impugn. If Trump and his team can ultimately position the American news media as something to be shunned and discredited, his supportersand potentially a large chunk of the American populacewill be less likely to trust their reporting as the full gamut of their offenses comes to light. This in itself will make it much harder to eliminate the threats his administrations policies present to America.

The administration has also taken the media to task as of late for its very use of anonymous sources. On CBS Face the Nation recently, Reince Priebus declared:

This is disingenuous at best, given the administrations use of its own anonymous sources in an attempt to confuse the public. Furthermore, there is little question that, for certain types of stories, anonymity is the only way to get the story out there. Sources may be, depending on the story, risking their careers and potentially even their lives by simply speaking to a reporter. Outing the identities of these sources simply puts a target on their backswhich, given how vindictive this entire presidency has become, may be exactly what Trump and Priebus are hoping for, to squelch as much public criticism as possible.

And then earlier tonight, this story popped up on my Twitter feed. Sebastian Gorka, an Islamophobe who was also hired by Steve Bannon to serve as a terrorism advisor to Trump, personally phoned one of his critics with threats of a lawsuit for tweeting his criticism of Gorka. Michael S. Smith II, a regular contributor to discussions on terrorism and how groups like ISIS are using social media to leverage support, has tweeted criticisms of both Trumps and Gorkas handling of radical Islam. Gorka apparently expressed hurt feelings at being criticized by someone hes never met and threatened the lawsuit at the beginning of the conversation:

Which begs the question: Is the Trump Administration now seeking to pursue lawsuits against individual Twitter users who denounce and criticize their policies on the platform? If Gorka does indeed press for charges against Smith, it would certainly set that precedent. It would also send a clear and direct message to every citizen in the United States: Donald Trump is not to be questioned. In fact, Stephen Miller, Trumps senior advisor, recently said in so many words:

This should make every American tremble in fear. Welcome to the new reality under Donald Trump.

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Top 4 Cryptocurrencies Suffering From Slow Block Times – The Merkle

Posted: at 10:53 pm

If there is one thing a lot of people would like to change about bitcoin, it is the rather long time in between blocks being generated on the network. This is also why various outcomes are so popular, as they process transactions a lot quicker. Interestingly enough, Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency to suffer from very long block times. In fact, there are at least four other well-known currencies, which suffer from this problem.

Similarly to bitcoin, NameCoin is another SHA-256 cryptocurrency using the same proof-of-work algorithm. It also has a total coin supply of 21 million coins, and a difficulty retarget mimicking the one of bitcoin. The similarities dont end there, though, as Namecoins block time is 10 minutes as well. Unfortunately Namecoin never become a mainstream success, even though it is still popular among the early cryptocurrency adopters.

There seems to be a trend among older SHA-256 coins, as quite a few of them have a 10-minute block time. PeerCoin is a bit different than NameCoin, though, as it combines both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. Moreover, PeerCoin has no fixed coin supply and a much lower mining difficulty compared to other popular SHA-256 coins.

It is worth noting Peercoin offers a one-block mining difficulty retarget, which is rather unusual. Then again, this block reward of over 65 coins per network block is rather high, which may be part of the reason why Peercoin never became much of a success either. Without scarcity and clear use cases, there is not much use for Peercoin, even though it still holds a value of roughly US$0.31 per coin.

BitBar is the odd one on this list, as this altcoin never amounted to much. Whether that is due to the developer abandoning the project, or just a project that failed to capitalize on bitcoins hype, is a discussion for a different day. We do know Bitbar has a 10 minute block time, which makes it one of the slowest cryptocurrencies to date. Ten minutes is rather long for a Scrypt-based cryptocurrency, though, as those coins usually generate new blocks within three minutes or less.

Contrary to what most people would like to believe, bitcoin is not the slowest cryptocurrency in the world right now. That title goes to Quatloo, a rather obscure altcoin targeting the sci-fi enthusiasts around the world Although this currency has a specific appeal to this group of users, it never became a big success by any stretch of the imagination.

With a block time of 22.25 minutes, Quatloo transactions take ages to confirm. For a Scrypt-based proof-of-work cryptocurrency, that block time was the undoing from day one. Although Quatloo is still being mined as we speak, its community remains rather small and it appears that will not change anytime soon.

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Danish Police Surveil the Blockchain to … – news.bitcoin.com

Posted: at 10:52 pm

Danish law enforcement have arrested drug traffickers after an investigation that included surveilling the blockchain, according to the regional publication Berlingske. The Danish polices cyber crime unit NC3 claim they have made arrests based on criminal activity tracked via bitcoin transactions.

Law enforcement officials are indeed working with blockchain surveillance software globally, and even warning against the use of digital currency mixers.

Also read:Basel Institute: Take Action Against Digital Currency Mixers/Tumblers

The chief of the Danish cyber crime unit, Kim Aarenstrup, has revealed authorities in the region created a tracking system that analyzes bitcoin transactions. Aarenstrup details the tool has helped police with two narcotics convictions. One arrest took place in January when Danish police arrested a young man for purchasing ketamine, cocaine, and amphetamines on darknet marketplaces. (DNM)

Bitcoin and virtual currency in general is used a lot for trafficking in weapons and drugs, ransom cases and extortion cases, Aarenstrup said. It has become a heavily used tool for criminals. We are pretty much unique in the world at this point because theyre not really any others who have managed to use these trails as evidence.

The Danish prosecutor who worked on the convictions, Jesper Klyve, explained their blockchain analysis worked because the drug traffickers had correlatedbitcoin transactions. Many services that offer bitcoin purchasing platforms follow strict KYC policies and buyers typically have to verify their identification.

Aarenstrup told the press the new blockchain surveillance system was ground-breaking.

The Danish cyber crime unit is not the only agency utilizing blockchain surveillance software to capture criminals. There are four known startups using bitcoin transaction analysis tools and collaborating with law enforcement worldwide. Companies utilizing blockchain surveillance software include Elliptic, Chainalysis, Numisight, and Skry. Both Elliptic and Chainalysis have been working with law enforcement agencies like the FBI, Interpol, Europol and KYC/AML platform providers.

Last summer, Chainalysis detailed that the company was working with global authorities to combat ransomware. Michael Gronager, CEO and co-founder of Chainalysis,said at the time, Expect to see some arrests soon as law enforcement agencies wrap up their investigations into several ransomware operations.

In January, the Basel Institute on Governance, Europol, Interpol, and officialsfrom Qatar warned against the use of bitcoin transaction mixers.

All countries are advised to take action against digital currency mixers/tumblers, theyexplained.

Alongside the rise of startups and law enforcement deploying blockchain surveillance, software developers are also creating privacy-centric transaction tools and concepts for Bitcoin. Ideas like Tumblebit, Schnorr signatures, confidential transactions, and other protocols are being developed. There are also in-production mixing services like Joinmarket, and anonymizing wallets like Samourai.

The privacy activists behind the Samourai wallet recently introduced features like Ricochet, and reusable payment codes. Samourai rebukes warnings made by bureaucrats and law enforcement against privacy-enhancing tools. In a recent blog post called The Bureaucrats Are Coming, the privacy-centric wallet developers explain they are ready to fight the state.

Samourai will not cower to these ivory tower elites We will actively work to destroy the effectiveness of any legislation or policy that is produced.

What do you think about law enforcement officials tracking bitcoin transactions? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Danish Cyber Crime Unit, and Chainalysis.

Have you seen our new widget service? It allows anyone to embed informative Bitcoin.com widgets on their website. Theyre pretty cool and you can customize by size and color. The widgets include price-only, price and graph, price and news, forum threads. Theres also a widget dedicated to our mining pool, displaying our hash power.

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Beyond Bitcoin: Blockchain R&D Firm Investing $1M+ In Scottish University Tech Lab – Forbes

Posted: at 10:52 pm


Forbes
Beyond Bitcoin: Blockchain R&D Firm Investing $1M+ In Scottish University Tech Lab
Forbes
With cascading disruption and decentralization in the blockchain space the order of the day, IOHK, a leading blockchain research and development company, and the University of Edinburgh are to invest between $500,000 and $1 million (m) a year in the ...

and more »

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CloudBleed Data Leak Is A Big Threat To Bitcoin Platforms – The Merkle

Posted: at 10:52 pm

Bitcoin users need to be well aware of the recent CloudFlare issue, as it affects quite a few different cryptocurrency-related services. Several companies issued warnings regarding CloudBleed, all of whom advise users to change their passwords. With so many exchanges relying on CloudFlare, this is another example of why centralization needs to be avoided.

To put the CloudBleed security issue into perspective, the scope of services affected by this data leak extends well beyond the bitcoin space. It is believed the data leak exposes thousands of passwords and other personal information for several months until it was discovered. Cloudflare managed nearly 10% of all web traffic, which makes it one of the backbones of the internet, so to speak. Unfortunately, this also means virtually every popular service is affected by this data leak.

Among the information being leaked to anyone who requested it are passwords, cookies, messages, and any other type of personal information one can think of. The bug was discovered in September of 2016, yet no further specific details were provided to us at this time. We do know the list of clients affected by CloudBleed is a lot larger than most people would think possible.

Security analysts at Googles Project Zero noticed an overflow error that could leak sensitive information to search engines and other platforms scraping data from the internet. This opens up a treasure trove of financial information to hackers and other criminals looking to take advantage of it. It is unclear if any of this information was obtained by hackers, but it seems very plausible that is the case.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince is confident the issue was fixed before someone could even take advantage of the flaw. That is a rather bold and positive statement, although it wont necessarily put peoples minds at ease. Various bitcoin companies issued warnings to their users to change their password immediately, as that remains the best course of action. Moreover, any platform where the same password was used will need to have the credentials updated as well.

The list of affected bitcoin companies is rather long and includes virtually every platform most users ever come in contact with. Popular exchanges, such as Coinbase, BTC-E, QuadrigaCX, Kraken, Bitstamp, and Bitfinex, for example, are all using Cloudflare for their Anti-DDOS protection. All of these companies advised users to update their password sooner rather than later. LocalBitcoins is also affected, even though the platform does not act as a custodian for funds. Then again, having someone steal your account and scamming users is still a real threat.

This event goes to show multiple companies relying on one and the same anti-DDoS provider is a big problem. Especially in the world of bitcoin and decentralization, a more distributed solution is direly needed. CloudFlare has built a strong reputation over the past few years, but this data leak highlights the problem of centralization. All bitcoin users relying on a service affected by this leak need to update their login credentials as soon as possible, that much is certain.

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Bitcoin charity platform Helperbit completes first case study – Brave New Coin

Posted: at 10:52 pm

In the last few months devastating earthquakes have hit central Italy, devastating many mountain villages, killing nearly 300 people and displacing 22 thousand inhabitants. The environmentalist association Legambiente, and several partners, have since been collaborating on a crowdfunding campaign for those affected.

Legambiente (League for the Environment) is the most widespread environmental organization in Italy, with 20 Regional branches and more than 115,000 members. It is acknowledged as association of environmental interest by the Ministry of the Environment; it represents the UNEP National Committee for Italy, it is one of the leading member of the European Environmental Bureau, and of IUCN - the World Conservation Union.

The bitcoin based campaign was Legambientes first foray into bitcoin donations, thanks to Helperbit. 59 percent of the campaigns goal, over eight bitcoins, have already been raised. Five of those bitcoins were donated by insurance giant Swiss Re.

- Helperbit

Helpbit is an Italian startup that uses Blockchain technology to allow people to donate digital and local currencies to charities and people in need all over the world, while tracking the donations and the manner in which they are used.

The company co-founders Guido Baroncini Turricchia, Davide Gessa, Davide Menegaldo, Roberto Tudini, Vincenzo Agu and Gianluca Carbone, initially came up with the idea for their platform in 2009, after reading news about the ineffective management of charitable funds following the 2009 LAquila earthquake in Italy.

In 2012, the Italian il Fatto Quotidiano reported that the five million euros donated by Italians to help with building reconstruction were transferred to a guarantee fund, which locked up the funds for nine years.

The lack of transparency that characterizes the traditional systems allows donative streams to be drained along their way to those who need it, Helperbit states. The lack of transparency puts people off donating and we want to unlock this unexpressed donative potential.

Having officially launched in 2015, Helperbit now offers a bitcoin platform that allows people to donate digital and local currencies to charities and people in need all over the world. Donors can trace the funds and the manner in which they are used, offering true transparency.

- Helperbit

The recent fundraising campaign provided a specific case study for the Helperbit platform. The campaign funds are being offered to local entrepreneurs. We want to support and promote their economic activities and finance projects presented by those that, in front of the tragedy of the earthquake, want to react, investing on new corporate initiatives in those areas, Helperbit explains.

Among the many affected locals, the earthquake in central Italy has taken away everything Ilaria and Lorenzo have. The owners of Societ Agricola Etiche Terre S.S., moved to the region less than a year ago to start the production of saffron, garlic and black truffle.

The farmers recently uploaded the first invoice on the Helperbit platform, activating a refund request from Legambiente. Much of the process is visible in the public Bitcoin Blockchain, including the proof of expenditure with a cryptographic reference to the invoice.

The document certifying the request and the transaction are now inextricably linked in the immutable and decentralized public register, giving the opportunity to verify the sender, the recipient and the justification. The process provides a higher level of transparency and increases donor participation. They know precisely how the funds are spent.

Donors should be able to decide how their donation is used. Organizations that act properly should not be affected by few bad behaviors, states Helpbit. Our aim is to offer tools that allow the system to work with a complete audit of economic flows.

Each campaign Helperbit runs uses multisignature technology. Recipients get as many multisignature keys as is appropriate for their organization. This reduces drastically the risk of theft and misuse of the donations, Helperbit explains. Donors also receive a key. Helperbit Donors can fund their accounts by either sending bitcoin or simply use their own debit cards. Organization can accept bitcoin or local currency.

The platform won second place in the iBank Challenge 2016 competition in December, taking home 11,000 after beating out all but one of the 83 contestants. The contest was promoted by the Italian Banking Association and organized by its own R&D laboratory, ABI Lab.

- Helperbit

Vaious Charities including the Red Cross and Greenpeace hace accepted bitcoins for individual fundraisers in the past, but typically they do not explore accepting bitcoin permanently as the size of the market is still too small. Unfortunately, few if any of these attempts have exposed the major charities to the technological benefits of using a blockchain.

Bitgives GiveTrack is one of very few similar attempts at tracking charity funding from donor to recipient. The platform has many of the same features as Helperbit, and has successfully run several campaigns. The Water Project raised $11,000, more than their $10,000 goal.

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Would You Want a Dog That Was Genetically Engineered to Be Healthier? – Singularity Hub

Posted: at 10:50 pm

Dogs have more genetic diseases than any other species on the planet. David Ishee told me this early in our conversation. His claim makes sense: theres no other animal that humans have purposefully bred with an emphasis on form over functionaesthetics over healthfor so long.

Centuries of inbreeding have left many dog breeds with a severely limited gene pool, and this lack of genetic diversity is to blame for disorders like brachycephaly in bulldogs, hyperuricemia in dalmations, and cardiomyopathy in boxers.

Ishee is a breeder from rural Mississippi whos on a mission to change all this.

Up until now, hes been using selective breeding to do so. His first big project involved mastiffs, which were once considered a warrior breed, but devolved into the docile, lazy pets we see today. They lost their health, their drive and their athleticism, Ishee said. My project as a breeder is to bring all that back to them.

He envisioned an ideal mastiff: 150-170 pounds, 30+ inches at the shoulders, tight-skinned, dry-mouthed, and free of inherited health problems. Eight years later, this super-mastiff (which is really just a return to what nature intended a mastiff to be) has become a reality.

Ishee has plans to expand his health-focused breeding to other dogs, but he wants a better tool to do so.

Enter gene editing.

Youd think that to tweak the genome of an animal, some serious training and education would be necessarymaybe a post-graduate biology degree or several years working in the lab of a large genetics company.

But in a prime example of both the democratization and demonetization of technology, Ishee taught himself to do genetic engineering right in his own backyard shed, using a kit and some DNA he ordered online.

I think every dog breeder wants better tools than just breeding. But everybody assumes its impossible, or crazy expensive, so I never considered actually trying, Ishee said. That changed after he saw a TED talk about genetic engineering, namely because of the ease and low cost of ordering custom synthesized DNA.

He continued, The biggest thing here is the collapsing price of DNA sequencing and synthesis. You can order synthetic DNA for about nine cents a base pair. When I ordered my construct a year and a half ago, I paid 23 cents a base pair. Six years before that it wouldve been $1.30 a base pair. When it gets down to pennies, people will be able to do much more complex things.

Its this very idea, thoughof anyone being able to do complex gene editing at home with supplies ordered onlinethats caused a tightening of regulations, most recently from the FDA.

As of mid-January, the FDA updated its guidance for animals produced using genome editing to classify the edited portion of the animals genome as a veterinary drug. This means the animals themselves are subject to the same regulations as new animal drugs.

While acknowledging that genome editing technology could have potentially profound beneficial effects on human and animal health, the FDA statement also mentions possible unwanted impacts on the environment and ecosystem, as well as on individual genomes.

The new guidelines threw a wrench into Ishees next project: to use gene editing to rid dalmations of hyperuricemia. A mutation on the dogs' SLC2A9 gene leads to excess uric acid in the blood, which causes painful bladder stones to form and can even cause the bladder to burst.

To breed out this mutation, a breeder would have to wait for a positive mutation to randomly appearand since its a closed and inbred population, that could take decades. CRISPR gene editing could do it in months.

Besides a series of complex approvals and permissions, though, the FDA regulations also involve hefty fees, reaching into six figures per animal. Its a sum thats feasible for a large corporation, but not so much for a breeder. No large corporation is likely to take on projects similar to Ishees, though, because theres not much money to be made. If pet owners are happyor unawareas is, why invest in creating healthier dogs?

The FDA guidance points out that gene editing has raised fundamental ethical questions about human and animal life. Its these questions that are at the root of the knee-jerk negative reaction many have when it comes to these topics. If we allow gene editing to cure diseases in dogs, will a slippery slope ensue? Will I be able to custom-design my pet in the future, and if yes, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Perhaps most significantly, if breeders like Ishee can prove that CRISPR is an easy way to rid dogs of health issues, will that pave the way for the technology to be more widely used on humans? Scientists in China produced gene-edited beagles in 2015, with one scientist saying their research had biomedical ends, as Dogs are very close to humans in terms of metabolic, physiological, and anatomical characteristics.

In Ishees opinion, genetic engineering and selective breeding arent all that different. CRISPR doesnt allow us to do anything we couldnt do before. Its just a bit easier, cheaper and faster, he said. Breeding gives you a lot less control and fewer degrees of freedom. But as far as the ethics is concerned, youre doing the exact same thing.

Speaking of ethicsif humans caused dogs to have all these health problems in the first place, and now we have the technology to fix those problems, dont we have a moral obligation to do so?

English bulldogs are riddled with serious health problems, from breathing difficulties to hip dysplasia to skin allergies. A study on the breed published in Canine Genetics and Epidemiology stated, The loss of genetic diversity and extreme changes in various regions of the genome will make it very difficult to improve breed health from within the existing gene pool.

The studys co-author told BBC News: "If you want to rebuild the breed, these are the building blocks you have, but they're very few. So if you're using the same old bricks, you're not going to be able to build a new house."

Ishee could be the first breeder to make brand-new bricksif the FDA lets himand other breeders would likely follow close behind.

As CRISPRs costs continue to go down, interest in the technology will go up, hatching hundreds of new backyard biohackers with ideas and projects of their own. Regulatory bodies will have to walk a fine line between protecting against misuse of the technology and allowing experimentation that could benefit both animals and humans.

That experimentation could just as easily be done by our next-door neighbor as by a government agency. Its an idea that will take some getting used to. As Ishee put it:

When you think about genetic engineering, you think of PhDs in white coats working in multi-million-dollar labs. The idea of a dog breeder in rural Mississippi doing genetic engineering in his shed is insane. But thats how you know youre in the future, right?

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Genetics Are the New Eugenics: How GMO’s Reduce the Human Population – Center for Research on Globalization

Posted: at 10:50 pm

The following is from an interview transcript

Last year, we had a series of mergers in the agribusiness GMO-corporations worldwide. This has created an alarming concentration of corporate power in the hands of basically three corporate groups.

The first one is Bayer AG of Germany, which made a friendly takeover of Monsanto. The reason for this was that Monsanto became identified in the public mind as pure evil and everything bad about GMOs, which was accurate. This became a burden on the whole GMO project. So, Bayer stepped in, which has a friendly image of an aspirin, harmless, nice company, but in fact is the company that invented heroin in the 1880s and made gas for the ovens of Auschwitz during WWII. Its one of the dirtiest agribusiness companies in the world with a series of homicides and pesticides that killed off bee colonies and many other things that are essential to life and to nature.

Flickr.com/Miran Rijavec (public domain)

ChemChina China State Chemical giant for some reason took over Swiss Syngenta, which makes weed-killers.

Then, Dow Chemicals and DuPont merged their GMO businesses together.

So, we have three gigantic corporate groups worldwide controlling the genetically-modified part of the human food chain. As dangerous as the GMO crops are and the more they sell, it is becoming more and more obvious that they are the chemicals that by contract must be applied to those GMO seeds by the corporations. They demand that if you buy roundup ready soybeans or corn, you must use Monsanto (now Bayer) roundup.

Therefore, this is giving more corporate power to the GMO industry than ever before and thats an alarming trend. They are putting pressure on the bureaucracy in Brussels. One example: there was a massive public campaign against the renewal of the license of the European Commission for Glyphosate. Glyphosate is the most widely used weed-killer in the world. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsantos roundup. The other ingredients are Monsantos corporate secret, but the combination of them is one of the most deadly weed-killers.

The World Health Organizations body responsible for assessing genetic dangers made a ruling the last year that Glyphosate was a probable cancer-causing agent.

The license came up for automatic renewal last year a 15-year license. The EU commission for health was prepared to automatically renew it for 15 years. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which is responsible allegedly for the health and safety of European citizens, recommended approval based on a German study by the German Food Safety Agency that was simply lifted 100% from studies given by the private corporation Monsanto! So, the whole chain was corrupt from the beginning and all the information was rigged. In reality tests have shown that in minuscule concentrations, lower than in recommended levels in Europe and in the US, Glyphosate causes kidney disease, liver disease, and other illnesses that are potentially fatal.

Now, Glyphosate has shown up in urine tests, in urban drinking water, in gardens, in ground water and so forth. And that gets into the system of childbearing women, for example, with embryo. Its all in this!

The EU commission, despite a million petitions this is a record setting and despite recommendations from leading scientists around the world to not renew the license, made a compromise under huge industry pressure and renewed it for 18 months. Why did they renew it for that time? Because at the end of 18 months, they were told by Bayer and Monsanto that the takeover of those two giant corporations will be completed and Bayer is going to replace Glyphosate with another, likely more deadly toxin, but not so well-known as Glyphosate. So, they simply bought time. And that is just one example.

This agenda of GMO is not about the health and safety; its not about increasing crop yields thats a lie that has been proven in repeated tests in North America and all around the world. Crop yields for farmers, using GMO plants, may increase slightly for the first 1-2 harvest years, but ultimately decline after 3-4 years. And not only that! Weve been promised by Monsanto and other GMO giants that the use of chemicals will be less, because of these wonderful traits that GMO plants resist. In fact, the weeds become resistant and you have super weeds, which are 5-6 feet in a height and choke out everything. Its a catastrophe. So, farmers end up using added weed killers to kill the super weeds. This whole mad playing around with the genetic makeup of nature is a disaster from the beginning.

The real agenda of GMO, which I have documented in great detail in my book Seeds of Destruction, comes from the Rockefeller Foundation. It comes out of the 1920s-1930s Eugenics movement. The Rockefeller Foundation during the 1930s, right up to the outbreak of World War II when it became politically embracing too, financed the Nazi Eugenics experiments of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and in Munich. Why did they do this? Their goal was the elimination of what they called undesirable eaters. That is called population reduction.

After the war, the head of the American Eugenic Society, who was a good friend of John D. Rockefeller, at the annual conference of the American Eugenic Society said: From today, the new name of eugenics is genetics. Moreover, if you keep that in mind genetic engineering, the Human Genome Project and so forth they all are scientific frauds. Russian scientists have proven that the entire Genome Project utterly disregarded 98% of the scientifically valuable data in favor of 2% that was completely nonsense and a waste of billions of dollars.

Therefore, they have been obsessed with the idea of how to reduce human population in a way that would not be so obvious as simply going out and carrying out mass-sterilization.

Actually, they have done that in Central America together with the World Health Organization by giving certain vaccines that they cooked-up to have abortive effects. Therefore, the women of child-bearing age in Central America were given these vaccines against tetanus. The organization of the Catholic Church became suspicious because the shots were given only to women, not to men. And they found that there was buried in the vaccine an abortive effect that made it impossible for women to conceive and bear children. This is all covert population reduction.

These are the Western patriarchs who believe they are the gods, sitting on the throne with great dignity, controlling mankind. I think they are a bunch of fools, but they have this agenda of genetic manipulation. Its against nature, its chemically unstable. And I have to congratulate the Russian Federation that they had the courage and the moral concern for their own population to ban GMO cultivation across Russia. That was a step forward for mankind. I would hope that Russia will use its influence to get China to do the similar thing, because their agriculture is in dire need of some healthy Russian input. But this step by Russia to make a GMO-free agriculture is a great step for mankind.

Excerpt from:
Genetics Are the New Eugenics: How GMO's Reduce the Human Population - Center for Research on Globalization

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