http://www.nytimes.com/…

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to pay a million dollars for fake meat - even if it has caused a “near civil war” within the organization.The organization said it would announce plans on Monday for a $1 million prize to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”

The idea of getting the next Chicken McNugget out of a test tube is not new. For several years, scientists have worked to develop technologies to grow tissue cultures that could be consumed like meat without the expense of land or feed and the disease potential of real meat. An international symposium on the topic was held this month in Norway. The tissue, once grown, could be shaped and given texture with the kinds of additives and structural agents that are now used to give products like soy burgers a more meaty texture.

New Harvest, a nonprofit organization formed to promote the field, says on its Web site, “Because meat substitutes are produced under controlled conditions impossible to maintain in traditional animal farms, they can be safer, more nutritious, less polluting and more humane than conventional meat.”

A founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, said she had been hoping to get the organization involved in advancing in vitro meat technology for at least a decade.

But, Ms. Newkirk said, the decision to sponsor a prize caused “a near civil war in our office,” since so many PETA members are repulsed by the thought of eating animal tissue, even if no animals are killed.

Lisa Lange, a vice president of the organization, said she was part of the heated exchange. “My main concern is, as the largest animal rights organization in the world, it’s our job to introduce the philosophy and hammer it home that animals are not ours to eat.” Ms. Lange added, “I remember saying I would be much more comfortable promoting eating roadkill.”

Have to say I’m impressed. They may fund terrorists and put down hundreds of animals a year without a peep from their supporters but the fact they want to make a practical step in complete “animal liberation” they get a ton of shit for it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

The US Federal Reserve is examining the Nordic bank nationalisations of the 1990s as a possible interim solution to the US financial crisis.

The Fed has been criticised for its rescue of Bear Stearns, which critics say has degenerated into a taxpayer gift to rich bankers.

A senior official at one of the Scandinavian central banks told The Daily Telegraph that Fed strategists had stepped up contacts to learn how Norway, Sweden and Finland managed their traumatic crisis from 1991 to 1993, which brought the region’s economy to its knees.

It is understood that Fed vice-chairman Don Kohn remains very concerned by the depth of the US crisis and is eyeing the Nordic approach for contingency options.

Scandinavia’s bank rescue proved successful and is now a model for central bankers, unlike Japan’s drawn-out response, where ailing banks were propped up in a half-public limbo for years.

I’m not able to find the clip he used but Gardner Goldsmith on his radio show yesterday but not only did the administration admit it and the Fed is looking into how the Nordic banking nationalization went it admitted to planning to open the floodgates on the money supply as long ago as last spring.

Ron Paul was on the Glenn Beck show tonight (see below) and Beck was in a daze of sorts. If you noticed, this morning some fairly bad news came out about UBS and some other banks. An additional $19b writedown for UBS and their director stepped down. Auto sales dropped. Oil was at new highs. Metals are all down. Etc. And yet the Dow was up almost 400 points. 3.19%. Nasdaq and the S&P 500 even more. And that’s after this news about the Nordic nationalization. Beck says he was never a conspiracy theorist, thought the John Birch Society people were crazy, but as he reads about the Fed, about the 1907 crash, he’s getting very uncomfortable with what finds in the past and the continuation of it in the present. Beck is hardly a real libertarian or gold bug but it’s really great to see someone on in the MSM helping get this info out there.