GMO Bananas Are Coming To A Supermarket Near You, Thanks To Bill Gates

What does the development of genetically modified bananas have to do with the world’s richest man, founder of Microsoft Corp. Bill Gates? Everything.

As noted by CNet News, James Dale, the director for the Center for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, says he’s devoted a number of years to the creation of a better banana (what is currently wrong with the kind that grow naturally? We haven’t a clue, but there it is).

Dale says he’s been working on creating a pro-vitamin A-enriched banana since 2005. “Good science can make a massive difference here by enriching staple crops such as Ugandan bananas with pro-vitamin A and providing poor and subsistence-farming populations with nutritionally rewarding food,” he said in a statement.

‘WE KNOW OUR SCIENCE WILL WORK’ – FAMOUS LAST WORDS

And now, thanks to nearly $10 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dale is close to achieving his goal. As reported by CNet:

There is a big visual clue these bananas are different. They look the same on the outside, but the flesh is more orange than pale as a result of high vitamin A. Unlike the bananas we are used to in the U.S., these plantains are always cooked before being eaten. The banana is a common staple food, but it’s lacking in micronutrients like vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiencies have been linked to weakened immune systems and blindness.

“We know our science will work. We made all the constructs, the genes that went into bananas, and put them into bananas here at QUT. Hundreds of different permutations went into field trials up north and we tested everything to make sure our science worked here in Queensland,” Dale said.

The report noted that prior to human consumption the bananas were safely eaten by Mongolian gerbils (not sure what the connection is to humans but we’re going with it). The strain of bananas destined for human consumption were grown in Queensland and have since been shipped to the United States. A six-week trial is scheduled and the results will be reported by the end of the year.

Dale says he hopes that Ugandan farmers will be growing the new GMO bananas by 2020.

GATES FOUNDATION HAS A HISTORY OF GMO SUPPORT

On his foundation’s blog, Gates trumpeted the research and sounded a hopeful tone for the outcome:

Before our visit, I didn’t know much about bananas. Dale, an agricultural scientist, is one of the world’s leading experts. He has been profiled in The New Yorker, in a fascinating article about the history of bananas as an export crop. As the article explains, a blight has spread among plantations in Asia and Australia in recent years, badly damaging production of the one type of banana that is grown for export, the Cavendish. This disease, a fungus, hasn’t spread to Latin America yet, but if it does, bananas could get a lot scarcer and more expensive in North America and elsewhere. Dale is working to develop new versions of the Cavendish that resist the fungus. He does this by inserting genetic material from other organisms into banana plants.

This work is separate from the research that our foundation supports, although some of the same techniques and scientific principles are involved, including transgenic experiments. Making banana plants less susceptible to diseases is a secondary goal for us. Our primary goal is to help Dale develop new types of banana that are more nutritious – specifically, much richer in Vitamin A and Iron that the body can absorb.

If, somehow, bananas are eradicated from the planet, other non-GMO sources of vitamin A include broccoli, carrots, apricots and sweet potatoes.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you found this information helpful, please share it with your friends and family. Your support in our endeavor of sharing free information would be much appreciated.

Follow us on Facebook to stay updated with what's going Viral in the Alternative News scene. https://www.facebook.com/ViralAlternativeNews

Sources for this article include:
http://truthwiki.org/Bananas
http://www.gatesnotes.com/
http://www.cnet.com/
http://www.naturalnews.com/
Original source of the article

Thanks to getholistichealth for this article.

Featured Image Source – AYAITA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC BY-SA

These 20 Americans Own More Weatlh than Half of All US Citizens Combined – And It’s Getting Worse

A group of people, who could all fit in your living room, own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the United States combined.

An outright jaw-dropping report was released on Monday that draws attention to the staggering wealth of just a small handful of people.

The report, titled Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us, “exposes the extreme wealth concentrated within the fortunes of the 400 wealthiest Americans and compares this wealth to the much more meager assets of several different segments of American society.”

Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, the authors of the report, described a compelling picture about the top 20 of those 400 people.

America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 luxury jet –­ now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined.

Let that sink in. A group of people that could stand in your living room owns more wealth the 160,000,000 other Americans.

So why is that?

Of course, becoming rich is no reason for alarm. Many people work very hard to save money and acquire wealth. However, it is how these few people gain such vast amounts of wealth, that is cause for concern.

The ruling elite in the United States quite literally hand-pick politicians and pay for their campaigns to put them in office. More than half of all donations provided to the 2016 presidential candidates, in both parties, proves this notion as they came from a mere 158 families. 

The 158 families, who’ve donated billions of dollars to these candidates, have entirely different reasons for choosing their politicians versus Joe Sixpack. Consequently, it is for this reason that Joe Sixpack’s requests are completely ignored by the next puppet to be placed in office who claims to represent him.

The United States government is, by design, a machine to redistribute wealth. This wealth redistribution, however, is not what the political blowhards on the TV and radio say it is. Since the inception of the income tax, and the Federal Reserve, the United States government has become excellent at separating you from the product of your labor.

While you’re told by the Sean Hannitys of the world that the government takes from the rich to redistribute to the poor, the reality is actually the opposite. The state fleeces the poor and middle class in America, and that money is, in turn, redistributed to the most wealthy Americans.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, David Cay Johnson, points out, the result of such a government system are,

“policies that take from the many and redistribute to the already rich few through stealth techniques that rarely make the news but can be found in the public record. Among these policies are a failure to enforce the laws of business competition, severe restrictions on unions and subsidies galore for big companies.”

When the topic of the ultra-rich controlling elite is brought up, most of the time the free market gets the blame. But most of these opinions fail to take the role of the state into consideration.

“Such massive inequality reflects not market economics but political influence that tilts the economic playing field,” explains Johnson. “And because of their political influence, those at the very top get tax favors, especially the deferral of taxes into the distant future, which transforms the burden of taxes into a bonanza of increased profits.”

The reason that nothing ever seems to get accomplished in Washington D.C. is because your elected officials have no loyalty to you.

As we’ve seen from nearly every political candidate in the last century, the “promises” made on their campaign trails are but fleeting memories once they get into office. After all, how can a politician keep true to their campaign promises when they are busy creating and passing into law, loopholes and subsidies for the very small group of people who put them in power?

The only solutions proposed by those within the system to offset the ruling elite and their fleecing of the citizens is, ironically, more legislation — because it’s worked so well in the past right?

Attempting to change the system by using the criminals within the system is akin to asking a mugger to stop mugging you.

The good news is that people are beginning to understand this exercise in futility and they are creating and operating systems that exist outside of the state-controlled monopoly. Bitcoin is an excellent example.

On the other hand, many people are so infatuated with the perceived benefits of taxation, i.e., roads, police, military, schools, that they conveniently ignore the fact that they have become slaves on the tax farm which is America.

Statism has become so prevalent that many Americans have become enthralled with the idea of being ruled and they develop a religious-like worship of politicians. They never end up realizing that the man or woman in the suit is merely an actor whose job is to serve their financiers.

As they stand there in their star-struck daze, staring up at their almighty oligarchs, the political class is robbing them blind. 

The fleecing is actually getting worse too. Politicians have become so addicted to stealing the product of your labor, that they have created a virtual black hole of debt that is impossible to ever pay back. It is a mathematical certainty that this unsustainable system of fascism and theft will come crashing to the ground.

The US government has become a snake – eating its own tail.

Johnson lays out this situation quite clearly as he expands on the analogy put forward by Collins and Hoxie,

So think about that image — a top-of-the-line Gulfstream G650 jet and 160 million Americans, each with the same net worth. Now imagine a much smaller jet, with 12 or so oligarchs, and ask yourself just why you are paying taxes to enhance their fortunes instead of your nest egg.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you found this information helpful, please share it with your friends and family. Your support in our endeavor of sharing free information would be much appreciated.

Follow us on Facebook to stay updated with what's going Viral in the Alternative News scene. https://www.facebook.com/ViralAlternativeNews


By Matt Agorist by Free Thought Project

Meet the 80 Billionaires Who Own as Much as Half of Humanity

“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.” -Voltaire

Much is currently being made over widening income disparity and wealth inequality as the middle-class continues to shrink. But with all the concern for flat wages and surging home prices, we should take a moment and mourn the fastest shrinking demographic in the world today…the one percent.

According to a report earlier this year by Oxfam, the richest one percent has shrunk from 388 people to just 80, leaving more than 300 billionaires on the outside looking in. By cross referencing research from Credit Suisse and the Forbes annual billionaires list, Oxfam was able to calculate the total wealth of the poorest 50 percent of the world, and how many of the richest people would need to combine their wealth to equal the total of the 3.55 billion people who have the least.

And while wages and wealth have remained relatively stagnant for decades, those eighty individuals have seen their wealth double since 2009. Meanwhile, Oxfam has also determined that the bottom 80 percent of the world’s people currently hold just 5.5 percent of the world’s wealth.
Oxfam said it was calling on governments to adopt a seven-point plan:

• Clamp down on tax dodging by corporations and rich individuals.
• Invest in universal, free public services such as health and education.
• Shift taxation from labor and consumption towards capital and wealth.
• Introduce minimum wages and move towards a living wage for all workers.
• Introduce equal pay legislation and promote economic policies to give women a fair deal.
• Ensure adequate safety-nets for the poorest, including a minimum-income guarantee.
• Agree a global goal to tackle inequality.

Since the release of the Oxfam report in January, Credit Suisse released a new report validating the concern for the acceleration of global income disparity as the richest ten percent of people now hold 87.7 percent of all wealth. Mark Goldring, CEO of Oxfam UK was quick to point out just how quickly wealth continues to collect at the very top.

“Eyebrows were raised when earlier this year Oxfam predicted that the richest one per cent would own more than the rest of us by 2016. The fact it has happened a year early – just weeks after world leaders agreed a global goal to reduce inequality – shows just how urgently world leaders need to tackle this problem.”

Here is a list of the 80 people whose wealth now equals the poorest fifty percent of the world:

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you found this information helpful, please share it with your friends and family. Your support in our endeavor of sharing free information would be much appreciated.

Follow us on Facebook to stay updated with what's going Viral in the Alternative News scene. https://www.facebook.com/ViralAlternativeNews


By James Woods via U.S. Uncut

James Woods ( AKA – JamesFromTheInternet) is an independent journalist based in New York City who can be reached on twitter @JamesFTInternet or via email: jamesftinternet@gmail.com