Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features The Empress of the Blues
Bessie Smith. Enjoy!

“The American Society of Civil Engineers said in 2007 that the U.S. had fallen so far behind in maintaining its public infrastructure -- roads, bridges, schools, dams -- that it would take more than a trillion and half dollars over five years to bring it back up to standard. Instead, these types of expenditures are being cut back. At the same time, public infrastructure around the world is facing unprecedented stress, with hurricanes, cyclones, floods and forest fires all increasing in frequency and intensity. It's easy to imagine a future in which growing numbers of cities have their frail and long-neglected infrastructures knocked out by disasters and then are left to rot, their core services never repaired or rehabilitated. The well-off, meanwhile, will withdraw into gated communities, their needs met by privatized providers.”

-- Naomi Klein

News and Opinion

America Has an Infrastructure Crisis: Gas Pipes Exploding; Concrete Basements Collapsing; Lead in Water; the 100-Year Flood that Comes Annually

As thousands of residents of North and South Carolina remain in shelters in the aftermath of catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Florence, zoning and planning boards across America are signing off on the plans of developers to build new communities in areas with inadequate water drainage and runoff facilities. At the same time, large expanses of lush native vegetation with the ability to absorb heavy rains are being replaced with concrete sidewalks and driveways, exacerbating the flooding problem. Government safeguards against over-development are being rolled back or simply ignored in towns and cities across the country by officials too cozy with moneyed developers who finance the government officials’ political campaigns.

Last Thursday, 8600 customers of Columbia Gas in the towns of Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover, Massachusetts were ordered from their homes as more than 60 area homes erupted in flames and at least three exploded as a result of what authorities presently believe was over-pressurization of a gas line. Columbia Gas had acknowledged in a video announcing its modernization plans for the towns that the gas pipes in the area were heavily corroded. One death occurred and at least 25 people were injured. ... Over the past decade, the parent of Columbia Gas, NiSource Inc., has spent more than $6 million lobbying in Washington, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. ...

America is in the midst of multiple crises: an infrastructure crisis; a climate-change crisis; a crisis of confidence in government leaders; a crisis of trust in the institutions that are supposed to protect Americans. And all of this leads straight to the biggest crisis of all — a crisis of corruption in the financing of political campaigns which has resulted in self-serving plutocrats replacing public servants in government offices across America.

Hey, I wonder... if we gave away naming rights perhaps we could get some deep-pocketed foreign governments that aren't allowing their military-industrial sector to hollow out their economies to adopt some American cities and replace our infrastructure.

Poland wants a U.S. military base so badly they’re offering $2 billion for “Fort Trump”

Manhattan’s got Trump Tower. Miami’s got the Trump International Beach Resort. And soon Poland could have Fort Trump. That was Polish President Andrzej Duda’s pitch when he used a joint press conference with the U.S. president in Washington Tuesday to directly campaign for a permanent U.S. military base on Polish soil, cannily appealing to Trump’s desire to stamp his name on large institutions.

After Duda reiterated his government’s desire to contribute $2 billion towards the cost of establishing the base – and even proposed calling the facility “Fort Trump” – the U.S. president said he was seriously considering the request. “We're looking at it very seriously,” Trump told reporters. “Poland is willing to make a very major contribution to the United States to come in and have a presence in Poland.” ...

Analysts say such a move will only fuel the rising tensions between NATO and Russia, which is spooked by the alliance’s growing footprint in its former sphere of influence in eastern Europe. When Poland’s request became public in May, the Kremlin warned that warned that any such eastward expansion by NATO would undermine stability in Europe. ...

Duda's visit to Washington came as Poland is under increasing pressure in Europe over controversial judicial reforms pushed through by its populist, euroskeptic government. The European Union is proceeding with disciplinary procedures against Poland, which could hypothetically lead to the country being stripped of its EU voting rights – over the changes to the judiciary that saw Supreme Court judges forced into early retirement and replaced with government nominees.

'Trumpwashing': the danger of turning the Republican resistance into liberal heroes

According to Dan Kovalik, a human rights and labour lawyer and adjunct law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, the liberal left was already in ideological confusion when Trump turbo-charged the process. “In short, liberals have decided that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, especially when ‘my enemy’ is Donald J Trump,” he wrote via email. “And so, bizarrely, liberals have decided that the CIA and FBI – despite their well-known history of suppressing civil liberties and civil rights in this country and abroad – are now noble institutions which should be believed and respected. This is because the CIA and FBI have largely taken an oppositional stance towards Trump.”

Kovalik, author of The Plot to Scapegoat Russia and The Plot to Attack Iran, added: “Even George W Bush, who was hated by liberals especially because of the Iraq war (which the CIA helped lie us into, by the way), is now considered a sweet, old grandpa figure who liberals coo over, especially when he is bantering with Michelle Obama. Part of this is that people like Bush or McCain or even [the vice-president Mike] Pence, who at least appear to be standard, reasonable politicians, seem wonderful now when compared to Mad King Trump. And because Trump talks about ‘making America great again’, liberals have decided that, somehow, even under presidents like W or many more like him, we have always been great. Of course, this is nothing but a childish contrariness totally lacking in political sophistication and historical understanding.” ...

Liberals’ default scepticism about the FBI, CIA and NSA [National Security Agency] has also taken a hit. John Brennan, the director of the CIA under Obama – who approved 542 drone strikes that killed 3,797 people in non-battlefield areas where US forces were not directly engaged including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia – is now an unlikely hero of the resistance. When Brennan was recently interviewed on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the otherwise caustic, iconoclastic comedian hailed him as “a true American patriot”, adding: “I know how hard professionals here in the intelligence community work to try keeping this country strong and safe.”

Brennan is an ardent critic of Trump, who sought revenge by revoking his security clearance. In response, Sam Husseini, a senior analyst for the Institute for Public Accuracy, wrote on the Counterpunch website: “NPR tells me this is an attempt to ‘silence a critic’. But Brennan has an op-ed in today’s New York Times and is frequently on major media. He oversaw criminal policies during the Obama administration, including drone assassinations. If anything, this has elevated Brennan’s major media status. Those who have been truly silenced in the ‘Trump era’ are those who were critical of the seemingly perpetual US government war machine since the invasion of Iraq.”

In an email, Husseini commented: “What we have seen is a massive Trumpwashing that has effectively rebranded much of the establishment, including Bush administration officials whose opinions should be less than worthless. Trump attacks Sessions and self-described liberals defend him even as he pushes increasingly brutal immigration policies.”

Shrapnel found in Yemen ties US bombs to string of civilian deaths over course of bloody civil war

Last month, a CNN investigation found remnants of a US-made bomb at the scene of an airstrike that left dozens of schoolboys dead. Now, an independent Yemen-based human rights group called Mwatana has given CNN exclusive access to a trove of documents that show fragments of US-manufactured bombs at the scene of a string of other incidents since 2015, when the civil war began. In each of those cases, civilians were either killed or put at risk.

Mwatana, which documents violations by all parties in Yemen’s conflict, used its network of trained field researchers to photograph evidence at the scene of strikes. The group consulted weapons experts to identify the weapons used from serial numbers found on the fragments. Mwatana was recognized last month with an award by US body Human Rights First. ...

Mwatana’s chairwoman, Radhya al-Mutawakel, told CNN that the US bore a “legal and moral responsibility for selling weapons to the Saudi-led coalition” that are worsening the conflict in Yemen. “In more than one way and during more than one incident, remnants of American weapons have been found at the site of airstrikes that killed civilians,” she told CNN from Geneva, Switzerland. “Yemeni civilians are dying every day because of this war and you (America) are fueling this war, so stop fueling this war. It is a shame that financial interests are worth more than the blood of innocent people.” ...

US defense contractor Raytheon has not yet responded to a CNN request for comment.

Yemeni children face triple threat: bombs, hunger and disease

'Killing a generation': one million more children at risk from famine in Yemen

More than five million children are at risk of famine in Yemen as the ongoing war causes food and fuel prices to soar across the country, charity Save the Children has warned.

Disruption to supplies coming through the embattled Red Sea port of Hodeida could “cause starvation on an unprecedented scale”, the British-based NGO said in a new report. Save the Children said an extra one million children now risk falling into famine as prices of food and transportation rise, bringing the total to 5.2 million.

Any type of closure at the port “would put the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in immediate danger while pushing millions more into famine”, it added.

YouTube's 'alternative influence network' breeds rightwing radicalisation, report finds

YouTube provides a breeding ground for far-right radicalisation, where people interested in conservative and libertarian ideas are quickly exposed to white nationalist ones, according to a report from Data & Society. Although YouTube’s recommendation algorithms are partly to blame, the problem is fundamentally linked to the social network of political influencers on the platform and how, like other YouTube influencers, they invite one another on to their shows.

The report describes an “alternative influence network” of about 65 scholars, media pundits and internet celebrities promoting a range of rightwing political positions, from mainstream conservatism to overt white nationalism. They are broadly united by their reactionary position: an opposition to feminism, social justice and leftwing politics and present themselves as an underdog alternative to the mainstream media.

“Discussing images of the ‘alt-right’ or white supremacism often conjures a sense of the ‘dark corners of the internet’,” states the report. “In fact, much extremist content is happening front and centre, easily accessible on platforms like YouTube, publicly endorsed by well-resourced individuals and interfacing directly with mainstream culture.” ...

While the mainstream members of the group typically don’t subscribe to alt-right or white nationalist ideals, they do host those who do under very friendly terms. “They have these conversations where really openly racist ideas are getting thrown around as if they are perfectly normal,” said Rebecca Lewis, the author of the report. “This amplifies these ideas.” ...

One of the challenges for YouTube is how careful the more extreme members of the network are to avoid breaking the platform’s community guidelines. “Even the most open white nationalists know how to stay just within the terms of service. You almost never hear them using racial slurs. They couch the language in a way that obscures its violent overtones,” said Lewis.

10 Years Since Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy – Did the Economy Really Recover? (Pt 1/2)

China hits back at US with $60bn of new tariffs

China is to slap tariffs on an additional $60bn (£46bn) of imports from the US in retaliation against $200bn of new trade sanctions on Chinese goods announced by Donald Trump. The latest moves represent a new step towards a full-scale trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Further escalation is deemed likely because Trump is facing low approval ratings ahead of the US midterm elections in November, while China will not want to be seen to back down. ...

Ahead of China’s latest move, Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba and one of the country’s wealthiest men, warned the conflict could drag on for 20 years and would be a “mess” for all parties.

China faces difficulty in responding on a scale equal to Trump’s new tariffs because its annual imports from the US total only about $130bn, while its exports to the US total more than $500bn. However, analysts said the Chinese government had a comprehensive toolbox of alternative measures it could deploy to disrupt US businesses operating in China – and might even devalue its currency to offset the impact of the tariffs. ...

Economists said this could have a significant impact as many US companies – including Nike, General Electric and Apple – have operations in China. Disruption could range from invasive health and safety checks to tougher labour controls or rules on fire standards. Mergers and acquisitions could be made more difficult, and state contracts could be withheld from US firms. Keith Wade, the chief economist at Schroders, said: “Very zealous enforcement of regulations could make life quite difficult for companies. America is also probably more dependent on China than the official trade figures suggest.”

“A Matter of Life and Death”: Trump Admin Slashes Refugee Cap to Historic Low, Imperiling Thousands

Trump is gutting America’s refugee program even though most Americans support it

A day after announcing that the U.S. plans to accept the fewest number of refugees in modern history next year, the State Department justified the decision by saying many refugees don’t want to come to the U.S. anyway. Heather Nauert, the State Department’s chief spokesperson, defended the Trump administration’s decision to accept a maximum of just 30,000 refugees in 2019 — the lowest cap in the 43-year history of the U.S. refugee program — in part by positing that most refugees would rather remain in their war-torn homelands. "When you talk about refugees,” Nauert said, “those are people who by and large do not want to come to the United States.”

Despite the Trump administration’s position, an overwhelming majority of Americans — 66 percent — support taking in refugees fleeing violence, according to a new poll by Pew Research Center published Wednesday. The latest study does not take into account how this support breaks down between Republicans and Democrats, but support for refugees increasingly falls along party lines.

Nauert didn’t specify whether she’d actually polled the world’s population of more than 25 million refugees, but Nazanin Ash, vice president for global policy and advocacy and the International Rescue Committee, one of nine national organizations working with the State Department to resettle refugees, said returning home simply isn’t an option for most refugees. "Do they want to go home? Many will say yes,” Ash said. “But it’s what comes after that first part that’s important. It’s ‘Yes, if it’s safe to do so. If my children could be safe, if I could return to my land.’ Refugees who are in the resettlement program by definition want to be resettled. They have signed up.” ...

In practice, far fewer refugees will likely be allowed into the country. The Trump administration has weaponized the resettlement programs’ labyrinthine bureaucracy, experts say, using red tape and enhanced security screenings to slow the flow of refugees to a trickle.

White Lies and Blue Codes: Laquan McDonald’s Killer Goes to Trial

Hundreds of Black people, usually young Black males, are killed by white police officers in the U.S. each year. Very few of the cops who carry out these liquidations face murder charges. They are routinely cleared by their own departments, police review boards, and/or grand juries. What sets Van Dyke apart is the palpable and widely-viewed heinousness of his crime and the outrage it elicited in Chicago’s Black community and around the world. The Van Dyke-McDonald shooting tape is certainly the single most inflammatory and broadly observed film evidence of racist police brutality to make its way into the mass media since the video that showed a large group Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King nearly three decades ago.

It was despicable how long -- one year -- it took for serious news and the tape of McDonald’s murder to reach the public. Following the long-standard “blue code” of urban police departments, Van Dyke’s fellow cops did their best to keep his crime secret and its video evidence under wraps.Chicago’s arch-corporatist, white, Zionist, and pro-gentrification Mayor Rahm Emmanuel (a classic elitist sociopath) and Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez tried to squash public release, but an intrepid journalist and citizen-activists forced the video-recording (a smoking gun if ever there was one) into the open and demanded that Van Dyke be tried. ...

Here we are three years after the video’s release and four years after the actual murder. The city’s white corporate media tried to help Van Dyke’s lawyer pollute the jury pool prior to jury selection by printing his prattling about how (in the murderer’s words) “Any loss of life was extremely difficult…You don’t ever want to shoot your gun. It doesn’t matter if it’s to put down a stray animal or something like that. Nobody wants to shoot their gun,” Van Dyke told the Chicago Tribune: “I never would have fired my gun if I didn’t think my life was in jeopardy or another citizen’s life was.” A local television station broadcast a pre-jury-selection interview in which Van Dyke’s wife tearfully told viewers that she is “petrified” over the prospect of tragically losing her husband to prison just because he did “the job for which he was trained.” Van Dyke and his wife have been presented as if they -- a supposedly virtuous white public servant and his family -- are the real victims in the killing of Laquan McDonald.

Van Dyke’s defense attorney failed to get the trial moved out of Chicago, where he feared that too many Black jurors might find his murderous defendant guilty. But not to worry. The killer cop’s lawyer somehow succeeded in securing a twelve-person jury that includes just one Black person! This is an astonishing and disturbing development in a city that is 32.9 percent Black and home to the second largest urban Black population in the nation. The ominous meaning of this egregious and racially inflammatoryBlack under-representation on the jury that will decide Van Dyke’s fate is not lost on Black Chicagoans and civil rights activists. ...

Could Van Dyke get off? Sure. The bigger question, perhaps, is what will happen in the city if that occurs. We know the militarized police state champion Rahm Emmanuel and his police chief will have extra riot squadrons on fully equipped duty and a phone line to the right-wing Illinois governor handy (in case the National Guard needs to be deployed) after the verdict is read. Having announced his de facto resignation in 2019, Emmanuel has no fear of losing Black votes by responding with vicious repression. Things could get very ugly in Chicago if Van Dyke is exonerated.

Rev. William Barber: Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court Would Endanger Rights of Women, Workers & Voters

Kavanaugh accuser wants an FBI investigation before she testifies

Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, said in a letter that the FBI should investigate her claims as a “first step” before she testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary committee. The two-page letter from her attorneys to committee chairman Chuck Grassley potentially upends plans for an extraordinary public hearing set for Monday, which could determine the fate of Kavanaugh’s nomination. Though it does not explicitly state whether Ford would appear before the Senate Judiciary committee on Monday, the letter raises concerns that she would face “interrogation by senators who appear to have made up their minds that she is ‘mistaken’ and ‘mixed up’”.

In the letter, which was obtained by the Guardian, Ford’s attorneys argue that only “a full investigation by law enforcement officials will ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a non-partisan manner, and that the committee is fully informed before conducting any hearing or making any decisions”. ...

The letter said Ford had been inundated by “vicious harassment and even death threats” since she shared her story publicly in the Washington Post on Sunday. “As a result of these kind of threats, her family was forced to relocate out of their home,” her lawyers wrote. “Her email has been hacked, and she has been impersonated online.” ...

Republicans have already rejected calls for the FBI to reopen an investigation into Kavanaugh’s background and interrogate the allegations. “The FBI investigation of judge Kavanaugh is closed,” Grassley told conservative commentor Hugh Hewitt on his radio show on Tuesday. “The FBI is not doing any further investigation.”

Joe Biden, whose own party criticized his treatment of Anita Hill, now says women should be believed

Former Vice President Joe Biden seems much more eager to speak out against a Supreme Court nominee now than he was in 1991. Biden has, maybe unsurprisingly, called for the postponement of the confirmation vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh — in light of the accusation that Kavanaugh attempted to rape a peer, Christine Blasey Ford, when they were high schoolers attending a house party.

“Vice President Biden believes Professor Ford deserves a fair and respectful hearing of her allegations, and that the committee should undertake a thorough and nonpartisan effort to get to the truth, wherever it leads,” a Biden spokesperson said in a statement provided to CNN. “He believes the vote should be postponed to allow this to happen appropriately, because this is an appointment for life to the nation’s highest court, and getting the decision right is more important than getting it done on a rushed timeline.”

And Biden would know a thing or two about hearings for sexual misconduct allegations against a Supreme Court nominee: He presided over the hearing for questioning of Anita Hill, who famously accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment while he was going through the confirmation process. Whether Biden’s handling of the hearing was “respectful,” however, remains up for debate.

Brett Kavanaugh in 2015: “What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep”

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who’s been accused of sexually assaulting a woman when he attended Georgetown Preparatory School three decades ago, talked about his alma mater during a speech in 2015. And let’s just say, the optics aren’t good.

MSNBC just aired this footage from a speech by Judge Kavanaugh at the Columbus School of Law from 2015

"What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep. That's been a good thing for all of us" pic.twitter.com/pIOztUx7Zs

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) September 18, 2018

“What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep,” Kavanaugh said of his all-boys high school in a speech to the Columbus School of Law in 2015 that aired on MSNBC Tuesday. “That's been a good thing for all of us, I think.”

Justice Dept Likely to Slow-Walk Declassification

Don’t hold your breath. While the media is breathlessly describing yesterday’s order by President Donald Trump’s “to provide for the immediate (emphasis added) declassification” of Russia-gate materials as a “showdown,” any likely showdown is months away, if it comes at all. The word “immediate” can mean different things to different people. Had the President set a deadline, or had he given the declassification task to his own National Security Council, the word “showdown” might be closer to what to expect.

The tragic-comedy now on stage in Washington is beyond bizarre. Can President Trump be unaware that those he “ordered” to do the declassification — top officials of the Justice Department, the FBI, and the intelligence agencies — have zero incentive to comply “immediately.” And they have minus-zero incentive, as the top echelons see it, to throw their former bosses, colleagues, and co-conspirators under the bus by releasing the family jewels.

Most of today’s commentary by anonymous officials on declassification are transparently bogus. To suggest, for example, that “death could occur,” as one MSNBC pundit predicted this afternoon, is beyond ludicrous. Do not expect Establishment media, however, to stop its feeding frenzy at the Deep State trough.

The stakes could hardly be higher not only for the Deep State, but also for the media — including erstwhile “progressive” pundits not yet recovered, after 22 months, from the virulent virus I call “HWHW” (Hillary Would Have Won). Observations by Mark Twain and, more recently, Patrick Lawrence apply in spades to the widely shared predicament of Russia-gate. Twain: “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” ...

[Trump] is likely to let himself be slow-walked on declassification past the mid-term elections, after which the scenery is likely to look very different in Congress.

With Supreme Court Decision on Dark Money "We're About to Know a Lot More About Who Is Funding Our Elections"

In a win for increased transparency and those demanding an end to the so-called "dark money" eating away at U.S. democracy, the Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a previous stay on a lower court ruling by rejecting the argument by right-wing advocacy groups who said they should not have to reveal the identity of big-dollar donors who fund their issue-based campaign ads.

Crucially, the ruling means that groups that in the past have been able to hide the source of their funding before, during, and after campaigns will have now have to make that information available before voters go to the polls—in this case, that means before the upcoming mid-term elections. Effective immediately, any group or individual making more than $250 in express advocacy ads — ads that tell viewers who to vote for or against — must now disclose the identities of all contributors who gave more than $200 in a year.

As the Huffington Post reports:

The decision came about after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, fought for the past six years to get the Federal Election Commission to enforce campaign finance laws against Crossroads GPS, a conservative nonprofit group founded by Karl Rove, a senior adviser to George W. Bush when he was president. CREW finally won its battle on Tuesday.

As of Sept. 18, any group that runs an independent expenditure ― election ads that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate ― in excess of $250 will have to disclose all political donors above $200.

Norm Eisen, the chairperson of CREW, celebrated the decision on Twitter: "We are about to drive a lot of dark money donors into the light—it's gonna look like the climax of a Harry Potter movie where the creatures shrivel in the sun."

Jeremy Corbyn Smeared As Anti Semite For Attacking Bankers

Trump administration rolls back methane pollution rule despite harmful health impacts

The Trump administration is rolling back Obama-era standards to limit planet-warming methane pollution from oil and gas operations on federal lands. Environmental advocates said retracting the regulation would contribute to global warming and cause more smog-forming pollution that can cause heart and lung illnesses. But the interior department deputy secretary, David Bernhardt, called the 2016 Obama-era rule “flawed” and “a radical assertion of legal authority” in a news release.

The rule regulated flaring, leaking and venting natural gas on US federal and Native American tribal lands. The interior department’s Bureau of Land Management argued the standards overlapped with state, tribal and federal rules and that the Obama administration underestimated its costs.

Lena Moffitt, senior director of the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America campaign, called the announcement “a continuation of this administration’s ongoing assault on clean air, public lands, our health and our climate”, and said: “We’ve already successfully defended these protections in court and in Congress, and the fight won’t stop here.”

Microplastics can spread via flying insects, research shows

Microplastic can escape from polluted waters via flying insects, new research has revealed, contaminating new environments and threatening birds and other creatures that eat the insects. Scientists fed microplastics to mosquito larvae, which live in water, but found that the particles remained inside the animals as they transformed into flying adults. Other recent research found that half of the mayfly and caddisfly larvae in rivers in Wales contained microplastics.

Concern over microplastic pollution is rising rapidly as it is discovered in ever more places, and very little research has been done on how it may harm wildlife or humans. The particles can harbour bacteria or leach toxic chemicals. Microplastics have been found in tapwater around the world, in vast numbers in the oceans and sea creatures and even in remote Swiss mountains.

“It is a shocking reality that plastic is contaminating almost every corner of the environment and its ecosystems,” said Prof Amanda Callaghan, at the University of Reading, UK, who led the new research on mosquitoes. “Much recent attention has been given to the plastics polluting our oceans, but this research reveals it is also in our skies.”

The new study, published in the journal Biology Letters, used Culex pipiens mosquitoes, as they are found across the world in many habitats. The researchers found the larvae readily consumed fluorescent microplastic particles that were 0.0002cm in size. “Larvae are filter feeders that waft little combs towards their mouths, so they can’t actually distinguish between a bit of plastic and a bit of food,” Callaghan said. “They eat algae, which are more or less the same size as these microplastics.”

The larvae matured into a non-feeding pupa stage and then emerged as adult mosquitoes, which still had significant microplastic within them. The researchers are now studying if this damages the mosquitoes. Callaghan said it is “highly likely” that other flying insects that begin as water larvae will also eat and retain microplastics. Birds, bats and spiders are among the species that eat large numbers of insects, suggesting these are also consuming microplastics. “You can get swarms of insects,” she said. “You could have a lot of plastic going up. It’s totally depressing. These plastics are going to be around forever.”

Rev. Barber: North Carolina Has Two Storms—Florence & the Policies That Keep People in Poverty

Florence sparks pollution fears after excrement-filled 'hog lagoons' overflow

As residents in the Carolinas continued to deal with the fallout from Hurricane Florence, fears have grown over the storm’s longer-term pollution risks – from pig excrement and toxic coal ash potentially seeping into rivers and into people’s homes. Officials said 13 “hog lagoons” – pits filled with pig waste – had overflowed in North Carolina due to the storm, with dozens more likely to follow. In South Carolina, 200,000 tons of coal ash lie in the path of the deluged Waccamaw river, which is expected to reach a record flood stage this week.

Another hog lagoon had breached in Duplin county, about 60 miles north of Wilmington, the North Carolina department of environmental quality (NCDEQ) said on Tuesday. “An on-site inspection showed that solids remained in the lagoon,” the pork council said of the overtopped hog waste pit. The council did not mention the fate of any associated liquids. The NCDEQ said another 13 lagoons had “overtopped” – meaning they were leaking excrement – and overtopping was likely in another 30.

There are 3,300 such lagoons in North Carolina, which is the second largest hog-farming state in the US. But the lagoons, many of which are close to rivers and low-lying land currently swamped by Florence, are now posing a threat to residents and the environment. During Hurricane Floyd, in 1999, tons of hog excrement seeped into rivers in the state, wiping out fish.

A three-hour drive south, in Conway, South Carolina, there are fears for 200,000 tons of coal ash – the waste left over from burning coal at power plants, which contains toxins including mercury and arsenic – located at a decommissioned power station. ... Santee Cooper, South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility, is scrambling to prevent a breach ahead of the Waccamaw’s expected peak of 19.9ft – almost 9ft above flood level – on Sunday.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Intercepted Podcast: Hurricane Colonialism: The Economic, Political, and Environmental War on Puerto Rico

Justifying landgrab, Israel says it is ‘allowed to ignore international law’ anywhere it wants

America 'One Of 45 Countries' Infected By Uber-Powerful Israeli Smartphone Spyware

Storm Flooding Kills 3.4 Million Chickens and Turkeys

Want to cut air pollution? Get rid of your car

A Little Night Music

Bessie Smith - Do Your Duty

Bessie Smith - Beale Street Mamma

Bessie Smith - Back Water Blues

Bessie Smith - Cake Walkin' Babies

Bessie Smith - I Ain't Got Nobody

Bessie Smith - Me And My Gin

Bessie Smith - I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl

Bessie Smith - Muddy Water

Bessie Smith - Devil's Gonna Get You