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"And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast"

-- Henley, Frey & Felder

News and Opinion

New Analysis Reveals Why Repealing 2001 AUMF 'Will Not Be Enough to Kill the War on Terror'

A new analysis published Tuesday by the Costs of War Project details how the power of U.S. presidents to greenlight military activities has grown since the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force was first enacted, demonstrating why simply repealing the measure now won't be enough to end so-called "counterterrorism operations" across the globe.

Drawing on Congressional Research Service data updated through August 6, the report documents where and how the 2001 AUMF has been used—and also highlights how counterterrorism operations have taken place in dozens of additional nations without the aid of the law that launched the so-called "War on Terror" just one week after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"In light of our previous research showing how widespread U.S. counterterrorism activities are globally, this analysis shows where the 2001 AUMF has been used and when and where counterterrorism operations have happened outside the umbrella of the AUMF," report author Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute, said in a statement.

"There are several cases of combat and airstrikes since 2001 that various presidents have not reported to Congress," added Savell.

Earlier this year, Savell found that the U.S. engaged in counterterrorism activities—which range from airstrikes to "training" foreign troops to full-blown occupations—in a whopping 85 countries from 2018 to 2020 alone.

Over the course of two decades, however, former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, as well as current President Joe Biden, have collectively cited the 2001 AUMF to justify counterterrorism operations in 22 countries.

Notably, the precise number of military activities that have occurred within those 22 countries is "unknown" because "in many cases the executive branch inadequately described the full scope of U.S. actions," wrote Savell.

Furthermore, "much of the executive branch's reporting lacks geographic specificity," she pointed out. "The 2001 AUMF has often been used to justify operations in regions rather than countries."

The report notes that under the 2001 AUMF, which remains in effect today, "Congress relinquished its constitutionally assigned war powers in the fight against 'terrorism,' ceding to the president its responsibility to decide whether, when, and where the United States chooses war."

Although the president is required by the 1973 War Powers Resolution to inform Congress within 48 hours whenever U.S. troops are involved in "hostilities" or "imminent hostilities," Savell wrote that "the executive branch has consistently used vague language to describe the locations of operations, failed to accurately describe the full scope of activities in many places, and in some cases simply failed to report on counterterrorism hostilities."

The White House has failed to invoke the 2001 AUMF in multiple instances where evidence of hostilities—including U.S. airstrikes and involvement in combat—are evident, the new report shows, revealing the extent to which such nefarious activities are being carried out under other forms of legal authority that have emerged during the War on Terror.

"There are a large number of U.S. counterterrorism operations, occurring under different legal umbrellas, which makes it difficult to track these activities and assure that there is adequate congressional oversight," said Savell.

The report takes a specific look at operations in Mail and Tunisia, where "the U.S. has conducted airstrikes and/or been involved in combat with militants, but the executive branch has not reported on these actions to Congress and failed to cite the 2001 AUMF." Instead, U.S. military involvement there has been authorized under 127(e) programs.

Savell explained:

Mali and Tunisia, along with other countries, are locations of authorized 127(e) programs. The executive branch has consistently failed to report on the introduction of U.S. service members into imminent hostilities in countries with active programs under 127(e), a U.S. legal authority that allows special operations forces to plan and control missions, remaining in charge of rather than at the side of the African counterparts they are ostensibly advising and assisting. In other words, rather than U.S. forces assisting these foreign military units with their own counterterror objectives, U.S. service members use them as surrogates: they lead these units, determine their goals, and participate in their raids against people they suspect of terrorist activity. Unofficially, U.S. officials have admitted that 'If you're deployed under this combating terrorism authority, 127(e), that's probably combat.'"

In addition to Mali and Tunisia, investigative journalists have also documented 127(e) programs in Cameroon, Kenya, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, and Mauritania. Of these, Mauritania, like Mali and Tunisia, has never been cited in reference to the 2001 AUMF. While it is unclear when the 127(e) program began in Mauritania, that country has since ended its partnership in the program, which was "longstanding." According to retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, commander of numerous U.S. special operations forces in Africa through June 2017, "The host country has to understand what they signed up for, and Mauritania was never comfortable with what they signed up for. It just didn't fit how they saw themselves, giving up authority over one of their units."

Even when the executive branch reported on "support for counterterrorism (CT) operations," Savell pointed out, there were several cases in which the president "did not acknowledge that troops were or could be involved in hostilities with militants."

For example, in Niger in 2017, four U.S. service members were killed in an ambush as they attempted to carry out a raid on a militant compound, but President Trump cited the AUMF only after this incident came to light. Another example is the citation of "support" for CT operations in Kenya but failure to acknowledge a combat incident in January 2020, when Al Shabaab militants attacked a U.S. military base in Manda Bay and killed three Americans, including one Army soldier and two Pentagon contractors. U.S. forces engaged in counterfire and killed five Al Shabaab attackers

"Some experts have argued that the executive branch's failure to adequately warn Congress that the U.S. could be 'sliding towards conflict in a number of African countries' is a failure of the executive branch to comply with the War Powers Resolution," Savell added.

Journalist Spencer Ackerman, who first reported on the new Costs of War analysis, wrote Tuesday that "one of the legacies of the ongoing War on Terror is it that it provided the U.S. military with its first enduring footprint on the African continent."

"As an aside," he added, drawing attention to countries in and beyond Africa, "look at the commencement dates of those operations in Chad, Kenya, Lebanon, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Philippines and remember the bullshit that MAGA is trying to sell you about Donald Trump not starting any new wars."

Praising the new report, Ackerman wrote that critical "observers have long understood the AUMF as an open-ended grant of lethal, carceral, surveillance, and other military authorities stemming from 9/11. It functions as an Emergency Law, and the U.S. immediately understands such things when, say, Egypt undertakes them."

"But the AUMF, Savell’s research underscores, is the beginning of the story, not the end," Ackerman stressed. "For the War on Terror has lasted sufficiently long for the AUMF to have bastard children."

According to Savell, other authorities that presidents have cited to justify military operations include Joint Combined Exchange Trainings, 127(e), Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the 2002 AUMF, and Section 1202.

In the words of Ackerman, "Savell's research reminds us how little we will know about what unfolds after the AUMF blesses a conflict, when it blesses a conflict at all."

Furthermore, he added, the new analysis "underscores that repealing the 2001 AUMF, as arduous and necessary a political task as that is, will not be enough to kill the War on Terror."

Worth a click and a full read:

The Maestro of Messes

How fitting that Joe Biden’s first year in the White House ends with his long-touted Summit for Democracy, a two-day affair that ended last Friday. I can’t decide whether the occasion was more farce than embarrassment or if it was the other way around. Either way, it stands as just the right signature for an administration that, not quite 12 months in, proves farcical and embarrassing all at once. ...

It was a virtual affair, 111 heads of state sitting before screens in 111 capital cities around the world ostensibly to raise high the banner of democratic “values” and practice and fight the good fight against the great authoritarian Other. Straight out of the box, a problem: The U.S. supports more authoritarian regimes than you’ve had hot dinners. It has done so for many decades, and the Biden administration has changed this not one jot. Atop this there is the liberal authoritarianism that besets us at home. ...

What happened and what didn’t last Thursday and Friday is an excellent punctuation mark at the end of Biden’s first year because it is so emblematic of this president’s most fundamental characteristic: We now have to count Biden an ineffectual bumbler in the same file as, say, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, or (regrettably, given his better qualities) Jimmy Carter. It is Biden’s ill fortune to assume the presidency at precisely the point of inflection when the American empire enters a phase of steep, irreversible decline. Joe “America is back” Biden had two alternatives as he took office. He could pretend history had not merely stopped — it would reverse, and it was his job to restore the empire to the tarnished glory of the post–1945 decades. Or he could, as Jack Kennedy intended before the Deep State murdered him, get America out of the business of empire and advance it according to a new, more humane ethos.

The man from Scranton has chosen wrongly out of a deficit of courage. And now he emerges as the maestro of many messes.

Relations with China, relations with Russia, the Iran accord, Syria, the various covert ops south of the border: A year’s worth of foreign policy draws to a close in a directionless shambles. After all the talk of diplomacy first, the generals and the national security apparatus have never been more safely in charge. The Oval Office remains a prime source of the abominable violence we live amid. On the domestic side, Biden has done nothing to draw the nation together to fight a common threat — no inspiring leadership, FDR–style, no focus. A second year with the Covid–19 virus finds us in the depths of cynicism: Corporations indulge in price-gouging on a grand scale, Big Pharma — Pfizer now urges a fourth injection, a second booster — reaping obscene profits while suffering and inequality rise right along with inflation.

In my read Biden is simply the wrong man for the job, setting aside his obvious mental decline. This is a pol who spent half a century wheeling and dealing on Capitol Hill, where any kind of larger vision counts for little next to one’s ability to keep the logs rolling and the barrels filled with pork. An ability to mislead the public goes far toward success. As long as Biden served among fellow dumbheads with the same lowly priorities, the one-eyed jack could pass as king — Biden was the seasoned foreign policy expert, the statesman. Forget it. The pose doesn’t work now that he has to understand the world and act sensibly in it instead of merely pretending to understand it and acting in it without great consequence. Unlike on Capitol Hill, there are serious, paying-attention people in Berlin, Beijing, Moscow, Paris, and elsewhere.

Iran Nuclear Talks Falter as Biden Admin Threatens "Alternatives" After Missing Window for Diplomacy

Israel warns diplomacy proving fruitless in Iran nuclear talks

Tehran’s approach to talks on its nuclear programme in Vienna has become so uncompromising according to Israel’s lead diplomat on Iran, Joshua Zarka, that they “have reached the last stretch of diplomacy”.

Israeli officials said they were hopeful that the US and European nations would agree to put an emergency motion to the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stating that Iran was in breach of its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and the 2015 nuclear deal.

Such a motion, planned for this month, would be the start of a wider process to try to force Iran to change its behaviour on the nuclear question.

Israel has long sought to push its allies away from negotiations with its arch-enemy, saying such talks could be fruitless and that Iran would still seek to covertly advance its weapons programme unless forced to abandon it.

Gantz: I told the US I’ve ordered the IDF to prepare a strike against Iran

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Friday that he notified US officials during meetings this week in Washington that he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for a strike against Iran.

In a briefing with reporters on the sidelines of the Israeli American Council’s national summit in Florida, Gantz said the order he gave was to “prepare for the Iranian challenge at the operational level.”

A senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that Gantz had presented a timeline for when such an attack might take place during his meetings with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but the source did not specify further.

Chile's Future at Stake: Runoff Election Pits Leftist Student Leader Against Far-Right Pinochet Fan

Sailor charged over fire that destroyed US warship ‘disgruntled’, prosecutors say

Navy prosecutors have alleged that a sailor charged with setting the fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard last year was “disgruntled” after dropping out of Navy Seal training.

Prosecutor Commander Richard Federico alleged in court on Monday that text messages show Seaman Apprentice Ryan Sawyer Mays lied to family, friends and investigators about why he left Seal training and that he was angry about being reassigned to the Bonhomme Richard. They also alleged he used foul language with a superior days before the blaze.

Mays has denied igniting the amphibious assault ship that burned for nearly five days and injured dozens aboard. His defence lawyers say there is no physical evidence connecting him to the blaze. ...

The hearing will determine whether there is enough evidence to proceed with a military trial. Scheduled to testify on Tuesday is a key witness for the government, a crew member who reported seeing Mays go down to the ship’s lower storage area where investigators say cardboard boxes were ignited. ...

More than 60 sailors and civilians were treated for minor injuries, heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation. Left with extensive structural, electrical and mechanical damage, the billion-dollar ship was scrapped.

This tax loophole costs $180bn a decade. Why won’t Democrats close it?

Anyone remember the “carried interest” loophole that lets hedge fund executives and private equity managers – among the wealthiest people in America – pay a tax rate no higher than most Americans? It’s a pure scam. They get the tax break even though they invest other peoples’ money rather than risk their own.

Barack Obama promised to get rid of the loophole. He failed. So, remarkably, did Donald Trump. Guess what happened? Nothing. ... Now that Democrats are trying to find ways to finance President Biden’s Build Back Better package, you might think that the carried interest loophole would be high on their list. After all, closing it could raise $180bn over 10 years. That’s $180bn that could go toward supporting vulnerable Americans and investing in America’s future.

Think again. The loophole – which treats the earnings of private equity managers and venture capitalists as capital gains, taxed at a top rate of just 20%, instead of income, whose top tax rate is 37% – remains as big as ever. Bigger.

Influential Democrats, such as House ways and means committee chair Richard Neal, argue that closing the loophole would hobble the private equity industry, and, by extension, the US economy. Neal’s ways and means committee wants only to require private equity firms to hold assets for slightly longer than they do now in order for their managers to qualify for the loophole. ...

The sole reason the loophole survives even during Democratic Congresses, is fierce lobbying by the private equity industry – and the dependence of too many Democrats on campaign funding from the partners of private equity and hedge funds.

California ex-sheriff’s deputy charged with pouring scalding water on mentally ill inmate

A former sheriff’s deputy in Orange county, California, is accused of throwing scalding water on a mentally ill inmate who didn’t receive medical treatment for his burns for more than six hours.

The county district attorney’s office announced Monday it had charged Guadalupe Ortiz, 47, with felony counts of assault or battery by a public officer and battery with serious bodily injury. Ortiz could face up to four years in prison if convicted, the DA’s office said in a statement.

On 1 April, Ortiz allegedly filled a cup from a hot water dispenser and poured it on the hands of a man who had refused to take his hands out of a hatch door in his cell at the sheriff’s Intake Release Center in Santa Ana, prosecutors said.

The DA’s statement described the inmate as mentally ill.

Chicago expected to pay $3m to woman handcuffed naked during mistaken raid

The city of Chicago is expected to pay $2.9m to Anjanette Young, a Black woman whom police officers handcuffed while she was naked when they mistakenly executed a search warrant in the wrong home in 2019. The finance committee of Chicago’s city council unanimously approved the settlement for Young on Monday. The full city council will go on to consider the decision on Wednesday.

During the botched raid in February 2019, Young waited naked, handcuffed and terrified, insisting at least 42 times that the police had targeted the wrong apartment.

“I was afraid if I did anything wrong, or made any moves, that they would shoot me,” the social worker told Good Morning America last December. “They had guns pointed at me. I feared for my life that night.”

Young was inside her apartment, changing out of her work clothes, when police broke through her door with a battering ram. Body camera footage shows a group of screaming male officers crowding into the apartment where Young stood naked. ... Police officers draped a coat and a blanket over Young after 10 minutes had passed, but because she was handcuffed, she was unable to hold any of the makeshift covering together. The officers were in Young’s home for more than an hour.

“They viewed Ms Young as less than human,” Keenan Saulter, Young’s attorney, said last year.

Kentucky candle factory bosses threatened to fire those who fled tornado, say workers

Workers at a Kentucky candle factory have said they pleaded with managers to be allowed to leave as a deadly tornado barreled towards them last weekend – but say they were told they would be fired if they left their posts.

The barrage of tornadoes that tore through Kentucky and surrounding states killed a dozen children, including a two-month-old infant, Governor Andy Beshear said on Tuesday. A total of 74 people died in Kentucky, with the oldest victim at 98 years old. Eight people have yet to be identified. More than 18,000 homes remained without power on Tuesday.

Beshear said the storms produced “the strongest set of tornadoes that we have ever seen in Kentucky and what we believe will probably be one of the most devastating tornado events in US history”.

The fatalities included eight at a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, that was reduced to rubble. Deaths at the candle factory were initially feared to be much higher, but a company spokesman said on Monday that the remaining 102 workers on duty at the time are alive and have been accounted for. ...

Multiple employees of the Mayfield Consumer Products factory told NBC News that they took shelter in bathrooms and hallways when they first heard tornado warning sirens, then supervisors ordered them back to work when they mistakenly assumed the danger had passed.

Andrew Cuomo ordered to give up $5.1m in pandemic book earnings

Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo has been ordered to give up about $5.1m in earnings from a book deal about his response to the coronavirus pandemic, after he was found to have contravened ethics laws by using state resources to write the book.

Cuomo was directed to turn over proceeds earned from American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic within 30 days under a resolution approved 12-1 by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), according to multiple media reports.

An attorney for Cuomo immediately called the action unconstitutional and promised a fight.

The order came a month after the commission voted to rescind the ethics approval it had given Cuomo before he entered into the $5.1m book deal. ...

The staff of the commission granted approval of the deal in July 2020, when his counsel told the commission that Cuomo agreed to not use any state personnel or resources to produce his book and that he would write it “entirely on his own time”. But complaints later surfaced that state property, resources and personnel were used to prepare, write, edit and publish the book.

Mark Meadows Held in Contempt of Congress as Jan. 6 Probe Expands. How Long Can Trump Hold Out?

Protesting voting rights activists arrested as Biden meets with Manchin

During a crucial week for Joe Biden’s agenda that will likely feature a political showdown on his Build Back Better legislation in the Senate, voting rights activists are turning up the pressure in Washington. As the US president met with a centrist Democrat who has acted as a roadblock to his plans – West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin - more than 60 demonstrators were arrested as they protested, singing songs and blocking traffic near the US Capitol.

The diverse group of activists came to Washington from around the country and were focused primarily on issues around voting rights and poverty. When the focus turned to voting rights, the talk became more focused on Manchin and the White House’s apparent inability to apply its power to pass federal legislation to protect the vote. ...

As news spread that Manchin was signaling he wants more changes to Biden’s already stripped back Build Back Better legislation because of his concerns over inflation, activists at the rally were not impressed.

“That’s his whole game. Slow it down, block it, get things get done for the billionaires, his corporate donors – then to undermine voting rights let all the voting suppression bills get passed that wouldn’t get passed if we had the Voting Rights Act restored and we had federal protection,” said the Rev William Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach.

“He’s a trickster. The president needs to go to West Virginia. Stop meeting with him in his office. Go to his state,” Barber added shortly before leading activists in a street protest.

'We Can Do the Same Thing for Voting Rights': Senate Bypasses Filibuster for Debt Ceiling Vote

Progressives within and beyond Congress on Tuesday pointed to the Senate's vote to raise the country's debt ceiling as proof of what's not only possible but necessary to advance voting rights legislation and other Democratic priorities: working around—or killing—the filibuster.

The Senate's 50-49 vote along party lines—one Republican did not vote—was expected; it came after Democratic and GOP leaders struck a deal last week. The Democrat-controlled House is expected to soon send the legislation to President Joe Biden's desk.

Since the agreement was reached for Democrats to raise the debt ceiling without any GOP support, progressives have reiterated demands for reforming or abolishing the filibuster, which effectively blocks any bill that doesn't have 60 supportive votes in the evenly divided Senate. Fresh calls for Democrats to take on the filibuster stacked up Tuesday.

"If Democrats can carve out the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling to avoid economic collapse for millions of American families, then we can do the same thing for voting rights," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in a statement.

"Our economy was at stake with the debt ceiling, and our democracy is at stake with voting rights," he added. "We should abolish the filibuster to provide electoral integrity at the ballot box and take action now to enshrine the will and voices of the American people."

Activists Say Biden 'Bamboozled' by Big Oil as Crude Export Ban Is Off Table

Climate and environmental campaigners on Tuesday expressed deep disappointment with the Biden administration after Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm assured a major fossil fuel lobby that a ban on crude oil exports is not under consideration.

Bloomberg reports Granholm told a virtual meeting of the National Petroleum Council that the administration is "not a bogeyman."

"I do not want to fight with any of you," Granholm told attendees. "I do think it's much more productive to work together on future-facing solutions."

Speaking to reports that the administration was considering a crude oil export ban, Granholm assured the Big Oil representatives that "we wanted to put that rumor to rest."

"I heard you loud and clear," she said, "and so has the White House."

Climate justice advocates called on President Joe Biden to choose between people and the planet or Big Oil profits.

Love Sanchez, co-founder of Indigenous People of the Coastal Bend in Corpus Christi, Texas, and a Karankawa Kadla Indigenous person, said in a statement that "based on what I have been reading and observing, our federal government does not have our backs."

"One minute Biden says he is going to tackle the climate crisis, the next he tries to illegally auction off our waters in the South," she continued. "The South is where predominantly Black and brown communities live. This is clearly environmental racism."

"I feel for my relatives in Louisiana. If you look at the sale, if it is finalized, these offshores will be built closer to Louisiana," she said, referring to the Biden administration's lease sale last month of 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico—the largest such sale in U.S. history. "Our Corpus Christi Bay area will also be damaged."

"We will continue to stand with those trying to stop this offshore illegal auction," Love added. "It's disrespectful to our Mother Earth. She is barely surviving, and the fossil fuel industry and corrupt politicians don't stop. Since they aren't stopping, neither are we. Expect us!"

John Beard, director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network and a Build Back Fossil Free steering committee member, said that "the story of this administration is 'promises made and promises unkept.' Despite claims to being the environmental president, Biden hasn't made good on his word to the millions of Americans demanding climate action."

"The Biden administration continues to bend to the will of Big Oil and is bamboozled by its false solutions and misrepresentation of facts," he continued. "Exports and more drilling do little to affect domestic prices nor do they reduce dependence on foreign crude. This is nothing more than feeding the beast in pursuit of profit, while Gulf Coastal communities of color continue to suffer the effects of pollution and social and environmental injustice."

Top US Banks and Investors Responsible for Nearly as Much Emissions as Russia

Fueling fresh calls for swift, sweeping action by President Joe Biden and financial regulators, a report published Tuesday reveals that if the planet-heating pollution of the 18 largest U.S. asset managers and banks is compared to that of high-emissions countries, Wall Street is a top-five emitter.

The new report—entitled Wall Street's Carbon Bubble: The global emissions of the U.S. financial sector—was released by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Sierra Club. The analysis was done by South Pole, which replicated an approach it used earlier this year for a U.K.-focused effort commissioned by Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Though likely a "gross underestimate," as Sierra Club put it, because the analysis relies on public disclosures that exclude key data, the researchers found that "just the portions of the portfolios of the eight banks and 10 asset managers studied in this report financed an estimated total of 1.968 billion tons CO2e based on year-end disclosures from 2020."

Putting that CO2e—or carbon dioxide equivalent, which is used to compare emissions from various greenhouse gases—figure into context, the report notes:

• If the financial institutions (FIs) in this study were a country, they would have the fifth largest emissions in the world, falling just short of Russia;
• Financed emissions from the 18 institutions covered in this report are equivalent to 432 million passenger vehicles driven for one year;
• Financed emissions from the eight banks studied in this report are equivalent to 80 million homes' energy use for one year; and
• Financed emissions from the 10 asset managers studied in this report are equivalent to three billion barrels of oil consumed.

The banks analyzed are Bank of America, Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street, and Wells Fargo.

The asset managers included are BNY Mellon Investment Management, BlackRock, Capital Group, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, JPMorgan Asset Management, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, PIMCO, State Street Global Advisors, and the Vanguard Group.

When Wall Street is factored into the list of the world's top 10 countries responsible for the most annual greenhouse gas emissions, it falls after China, the United States, India, and Russia but ranks ahead of Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, Iran, and Germany, according to Climate Watch data.

Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds

Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a study. The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic.

The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations. The results “provide evidence of a measurable effect of plastic pollution on the global microbial ecology”, the scientists said. ...

The explosion of plastic production in the past 70 years, from 2m tonnes to 380m tonnes a year, had given microbes time to evolve to deal with plastic, the researchers said. The study, published in the journal Microbial Ecology, started by compiling a dataset of 95 microbial enzymes already known to degrade plastic, often found in bacteria in rubbish dumps and similar places rife with plastic.

The team then looked for similar enzymes in environmental DNA samples taken by other researchers from 236 different locations around the world. Importantly, the researchers ruled out potential false positives by comparing the enzymes initially identified with enzymes from the human gut, which is not known to have any plastic-degrading enzymes.

About 12,000 of the new enzymes were found in ocean samples, taken at 67 locations and at three different depths. The results showed consistently higher levels of degrading enzymes at deeper levels, matching the higher levels of plastic pollution known to exist at lower depths.

Also of Interest

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

The US Military Budget in the Form of a Mushroom Cloud

‘15 minutes to save the world’: a terrifying VR journey into the nuclear bunker

Israel Pushes Hardline in Iran Nuclear Talks

Ukraine - Russia Makes Serious Demands, Warns Of 'Confrontation'

Craig Murray: What Assange’s Judges Did Not Address

The Assange Issue Is NOT Complicated: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Worker Protection Bill Blocked Before Tornado Disaster

Amazon’s Deathtrap Warehouse in Edwardsville, IL: Will Bessemer, AL Be Next?

“Trump Did More For Me Than Biden Ever Did”

Why do teachers in the US have to beg for supplies like pencils and paper?

Record-High Arctic Temperature of 38°C 'More Befitting the Mediterranean,' UN Warns

How the OPCW’s Syria probe censored science

Julian Assange's Brother: The Way Wikileaks Founder Is Being Treated Is "Slow Motion Murder"

A Little Night Music

Hogman Maxey - Rock Me Mama

Hogman Maxey - Duckin' And Dodgin'

Andy Mosely And Hogman Maxey - I Know I Got Religion

Hogman Maxey - Stagolee

Hogman Maxey - Black Night Is Fallin'

Hogman Maxey - Hard Headed Woman

Hogman Maxey - Brother Mosely Smote the Water

Hogman Maxey - Fast Life Woman

Hogman Maxey - Worried Blues