---

---

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: The Olympics + Lemme B. Good

---

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features vocal group The Olympics and r&b singer Lemme B. Good. Enjoy!

^{The Olympics - Good Lovin'}

"A sane society would chase off anyone who advocated nuclear brinkmanship and drive them out of human civilization. In our society we give them punditry gigs on mainstream media platforms and lucrative jobs at influential think tanks."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

---

News and Opinion

Russia, Ukraine and Preventing Nuclear Holocaust with Jeffrey Sachs

The Profoundly Stupid Narrative That Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Safety And De-Escalation Is Danger

Of all the face-meltingly stupid narratives that have been circulated about the US proxy war in Ukraine, the dumbest so far has got to be the increasingly common claim that aggressively escalating nuclear brinkmanship is safety and de-escalation is danger.

We see a prime example of this self-evidently idiotic narrative in a new Business Insider article titled “Putin’s nuclear threats are pushing people like Trump and Elon Musk to press for a Ukraine peace deal. A nuclear expert warns that’s ‘dangerous.’”

“An understandable desire to avoid a nuclear war could actually make the world more dangerous if it means rushing to implement a ‘peace’ in Ukraine that serves Russian interests,” writes reliable empire apologist Charles Davis. “Such a move, which some influential figures have called for, risks setting a precedent that atomic blackmail is the way to win wars and take territory troops can’t otherwise hold, a model that could be copycatted by even the weakest nuclear-armed states, and may only succeed at delaying another war.”

Not every day that a headline can fully capture the depravity of US media and political culture: pic.twitter.com/oMRhBmWFfU

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 16, 2022

Davis’ sole source for his article is the UN Institute for Disarmament Research’s Pavel Podvig, who is very openly biased against Russia.

“The West supports Ukraine with weapons and financial and moral and political support. Giving that up and saying that, ‘Well, you know, we are too afraid of nuclear threats and so we just want to make a deal’ — that would certainly set a precedent that would not be very positive,” says Podvig. “If you yield to this nuclear threat once, then what would prevent Russia in the future — or others — to do the same thing again?”

Like other empire apologists currently pushing the ridiculous “de-escalation actually causes escalation” line, Davis and Podvig argue as though nuclear weapons just showed up on the scene a few days ago, as if there haven’t been generations of western policies toward Moscow which have indeed involved backing down and making compromises at times because doing so was seen as preferable to risking a nuclear attack. We survived the Cuban Missile Crisis because Kennedy secretly acquiesced to Khrushchev’s demands that the US remove the Jupiter missiles it had placed in Turkey and Italy, which was what provoked Moscow to move nukes to Cuba in the first place.

Throughout the cold war the Soviet Union insisted on a sphere of influence that US strategists granted a wide berth to, exactly because it was a nuclear superpower. Even as recently as the Obama administration the US president maintained that “Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

Nevertheless we’re seeing this new “escalation is safety and de-escalation is danger” narrative pushed with increasing forcefulness by imperial spinmeisters, because it would take a lot of force indeed to get people to accept something so self-evidently backwards and nonsensical.

“All of you who are saying that we have to give in to nuclear blackmail are making nuclear war more likely. Please stop,” tweeted Yale University’s Timothy Snyder recently. “When you give in to it, you empower dictators to do it again, encourage worldwide nuclear proliferation, and make nuclear war much, much more likely.”

Snyder, who has been photographed grinning happily with Ukraine’s President Zelensky, does not actually believe that people tweeting in support of de-escalation and detente will cause a nuclear war. He uses the newfangled buzzword “nuclear blackmail” to discredit calls for de-escalation and detente because he wants those who support de-escalation and detente to be silent. He says “please stop” solely because he wants peace advocacy to stop.

“Nuclear war comes because we’ve done too little not too much,” tweeted Alexander Vindman, a key player in advancing the Trump-Ukraine scandal, further pushing the narrative that greater escalation is where the safety is.

In response to a tweet by France’s President Macron saying “We do not want a World War,” a senior policy advisor for the US government’s Helsinki Commission named Paul Massaro tweeted, “Precisely this sort of weak, terrified language leads Russia to escalate.”

Imagine being so warped and twisted that you see that as a sane response to the most normal statement anyone can possibly make.

Meanwhile you’ve got idiots like Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger acting like they’re being brave tough guys by welcoming continual nuclear escalation while calling anyone who advocates de-escalation cowards:

Must be a tough existence being so afraid. The #Ukrainians started as the underdog but still fought and now will win. Ole snowflake @DavidSacks is trembling as he blames America for the invasion. #nafo https://t.co/1LN15hNzeJ

— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) October 16, 2022

The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel somehow pulled off the heroic feat of getting an article advocating de-escalation published in the Washington Post with a piece titled “The Cuban missile crisis was 60 years ago, but it’s urgently relevant today.” Reminding us how close we came to total annihilation and how we only survived getting so recklessly close to nuclear war by “plain dumb luck,” she argues that humanity cannot risk going to the brink like that again.

“Humanity cannot afford to spin the cylinder again in this game of Russian roulette; we must unload the gun. Our only path forward is de-escalation,” vanden Heuvel writes.

Indeed it is. It’s absolutely insane that humanity is risking its own extinction over these games of empire-building and planetary domination when we’ve got so many other existential hurdles we need to focus on clearing.

This is all completely unnecessary. There’s nothing inscribed upon the fabric of reality saying states need to be waving armageddon weapons at each other. There’s no valid reason not to lay aside these games of global conquest and collaborate together toward a healthy coexistence on this planet.

Big Kherson battle. Surovikin interview. Deindustrialization ramps up. Elensky book deal.

House Republicans divided over aid to Ukraine ahead of midterms

The Republican leader in the House of Representatives has said that Congress would not “write a blank cheque to Ukraine” if his party wins next month’s midterm elections, stoking fears in Kyiv that the flow of military equipment could be cut off.

However, another senior Republican said that he thought that the Ukrainians should “get what they need”, including longer-range missiles than those the Biden administration has so far been prepared to supply. Analysts say the mixed messages reflect an internal debate between traditional national security conservatives and the Trumpist wing of the party, where pro-Russian sentiment is much stronger.

Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, told the Punchbowl News website on Tuesday: “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank cheque to Ukraine.”

“They just won’t do it,” McCarthy added. “It’s not a free blank cheque. And then there’s the things [the Biden administration] is not doing domestically: not doing the border and people begin to weigh that. Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do, and it can’t be a blank cheque.”

A few hours later, however, the ranking Republican on the House foreign affairs committee, Michael McCaul, who is likely to run the committee in the event of a Republican win in November, argued that arms supplies to Ukraine should be stepped up. ... McCaul did add a caveat on US spending on Ukrainian aid, however. “I think you’ll see if we get the majority, more oversight and accountability in terms of funding and where the money’s going, and I think the American taxpayer deserves that,” he said.

Nord Stream 1: first underwater images reveal devastating damage

The first underwater images taken of the ruptured Nord Stream 1 pipeline reveal the devastating damage caused by what Danish police have described as “powerful explosions” under the Baltic Sea.

Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday published photographs and film footage taken by an underwater drone at the site near the island of Bornholm where the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany ruptured on 26 September.

They appear to show long tears in the seabed near the concrete-reinforced steel pipe that was not merely cracked but torn apart in an act of suspected sabotage. At least 50 metres of the gas pipeline appeared to be missing, Expressen said.

Blinken Claims China Wants to Take Taiwan On a ‘Much Faster Timeline’

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday claimed that China is looking to take Taiwan “on a much faster timeline” and accused Beijing of wanting to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. Blinken didn’t provide evidence for the claim but insisted that there’s “been a change in the approach from Beijing toward Taiwan in recent years.” ...

While Blinken accused China of changing its approach to Taiwan, it’s clear that the US has changed its policy toward the island in recent years and now views Taipei as an opportunity to counter Beijing. Last year, Raymond Greene, who was serving as the deputy director of the US de facto embassy in Taiwan at the time, explained how the US approach had changed.

“The United States no longer sees Taiwan as a ‘problem’ in our relations with China, we see it as an opportunity to advance our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Greene said.

Russia warns Israel against supplying arms to Ukraine

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev warned Israel on 17 October of the repercussions of supplying Ukraine with weapons, saying that any step in support of Ukrainian forces would seriously harm bilateral relations.

“It seems Israel is preparing to supply the Kiev regime with weapons. It is a very reckless move. It will destroy all bilateral relations between our two countries,” Medvedev, who served as president and prime minister in the past, said in a statement on Telegram.

Medvedev’s comments came following a tweet by Israeli Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai on 16 October, saying, “The time has come for Ukraine to receive military aid as well, just as the USA and NATO countries provide.” ...

According to The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli official revealed to the New York Times that Israel provided security and intelligence information to Ukraine about Iranian drones used by Russia in its military operation.

The official said that “a private Israeli company also provided Ukraine with satellite images of the locations of the Russian forces,” according to the Israeli newspaper.

Push for Liz Truss to resign. Economic crisis in France deepens

Senate bill gives Pentagon wartime procurement powers

Amid the escalating war with Russia in Ukraine and US plans for war with China, the United States is rapidly moving toward a wartime mobilization of its economy. It is doing so as the war provoked by the US and NATO and triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine rapidly metastasizes into a global conflict. Last week, the two highest-ranking Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee introduced a bill granting the Pentagon emergency wartime procurement powers, removing major peacetime limitations on arms purchases by the Pentagon and procuring missiles in wartime quantities.

In an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Democratic chairman, Jack Reed, and the ranking Republican committee member, Jim Inhofe, proposed to increase US procurement of long-range missiles such as the HIMARS by 10 times or more. The bill comes as the United States intensifies its involvement in its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, while making it abundantly clear that it is seeking to provoke a war with China over Taiwan. In both conflicts, the type of long-range weapons being procured in massive quantities under the bill are seen as critical.

“Whether you want to call it wartime contracting or emergency contracting, we can’t play around anymore,” a senior congressional aide told Defense News. Chillingly, the aide referred to “operational plans” against China, implying that the Pentagon has a timetable for war with the world’s most populous country. “It’s hard to think of something as high on everybody’s list as buying a ton of munitions for the next few years, for our operational plans against China and continuing to supply Ukraine,” the aide said. ...

The massively expanded military procurement takes place amid a years-long program to expand the United States’ nuclear arsenal, including the purchase of all-new intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, and nuclear-capable submarines. In June, a strategy document adopted by NATO pledged to prepare the alliance’s members “for high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors.” ...

The plans to put the US economy and supply chain on a war footing comes against the backdrop of growing demands within the US political establishment for a wartime “mobilization.” On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed that the Chinese military was planning to seize Taiwan on a “much faster timeline,” amid the deepening Sino-American standoff over the Taiwan Strait.

Defying Pentagon Secrecy, Reporting Exposes Retired US Generals on Saudi Payroll

A sweeping investigation published by The Washington Post on Tuesday after years of digging and legal battles with the U.S. government shows that at least 15 retired American generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for Saudi Arabia's ministry of defense since 2016.

"Saudi Arabia's paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush," the Post reported, citing more than 4,000 pages documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings.

The Post noted that it "sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the State Department in federal court" in pursuit of the documents, which the outlet finally obtained after a protracted legal fight.

"Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department," the newspaper pointed out. "But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake."

In total, the Post found that "more than 500 retired U.S. military personnel—including scores of generals and admirals—have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments" such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, and Kuwait, mostly with the official approval of U.S. military branches.

"Records show they rarely reject a job request," the Post found.

The Post did highlight some cases of ex-military officials taking "foreign jobs or gifts without notifying the U.S. government at all," citing the prominent example of retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump loyalist and fascist who raked in nearly $450,000 in payments from Turkey and Russia in 2015 without receiving clearance from U.S. officials.

Other ex-servicemembers named in the Post story as paid consultants to the Saudi defense ministry include retired Air Force Brig. Gen. John Doucette and retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry.

Kate Kizer, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy, wrote on Twitter that the reporting provides further evidence that "war and crimes against humanity" are "big business for U.S. military leaders after their service."

The Post published its explosive story as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are pushing for a total reexamination of longstanding diplomatic and military relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in the wake of OPEC's decision to slash oil production, driving up prices in the U.S. and across the world.

Saudi Arabia receives around 70% of its weaponry from the U.S. on top of other military and logistical support.

"Saudi planes literally couldn't fly if it weren't for American technicians," U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said in an interview last week. "Yet they are fleecing the American public... There needs to be consequences."

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a watchdog organization, filed a similar FOIA lawsuit as the Post and also published the results of its investigation on Tuesday.

"Between April 2010 and August 2020, the State Department issued over 500 waivers to retiring servicemembers, allowing them to take emoluments to work on behalf of foreign interests," POGO's Julienne McClure wrote in a summary of the group's findings. "While many of these positions are not disclosed, some clearly support military operations, such as “battle trainer,” while others are far more general, including descriptions like 'consultant' or 'advisor.'"

McClure noted that "over half of these waivers were granted so former military officials could work on behalf of United Arab Emirates interests, despite the Emirati government's troubling record of human rights violations."

"Even as the State Department issued hundreds of these waivers," McClure wrote, "they simultaneously listed a bevy of human rights abuses in their 2020 Country Report on human rights issues in the United Arab Emirates, including 'arbitrary arrest and detention... government interference with privacy rights... undue restriction on free expression and the press... and criminalization of same-sex sexual activity.'"

Biden’s Empty Threats To Saudi Arabia Are Laughable

Biden set to release oil from emergency reserve in bid to lower US fuel prices

The Biden administration plans to sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a bid to dampen fuel prices before next month’s congressional elections, three sources familiar with the matter have said.

Joe Biden’s announcement is expected this week as part of the response to Russia’s war on Ukraine, one of the sources said.

The sale would market the remaining 14m barrels from Biden’s previously announced, and largest ever, release from the reserve of 180m barrels that started in May.

The administration has also spoken with oil companies about selling an additional 26m barrels from a congressionally mandated sale in fiscal year 2023, which began October 1, a fourth source said.

The Department of Energy will also release further details on eventually buying the oil back, reflecting the White House’s desire to combat rising pump prices while supporting domestic drillers.

Briahna Joy Gray: Does Biden's Inflation Plan SCREW THE POOR?

McCarthy Signals GOP Plan to Attack Social Security, Medicare

Progressives on Tuesday warned that U.S. voters should take House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans at their word when they threaten to enact cuts to Social Security and Medicare despite the cost-of-living crisis that already has Americans struggling to afford healthcare and other essentials.

In an interview with Punchbowl News Tuesday, the California Republican outlined plans to use the expected fight over the raising of the debt ceiling next year as leverage to pass several austerity policies and block additional aid for Ukraine, as well as blocking pandemic-related spending.

"If people want to make a debt ceiling [for a longer period of time], just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, okay, we'll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior," McCarthy told the outlet. "And we should seriously sit together and [figure out] where can we eliminate some waste?"

The "behavior" and supposed "waste" McCarthy has in mind likely includes the New Deal-era Social Security program, which helps keep 22.1 million Americans out of poverty, and Medicare. Working Americans' taxes keep both programs running and allow millions to benefit from them, but Republicans including Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Rick Scott (Fla.) have said this year that they should not be considered mandatory programs and should instead be brought up for a vote every five years or even annually.

McCarthy told Punchbowl that he wouldn't "predetermine" the "structural changes" his party plans to make to Medicare and Social Security, but he did suggest the Republicans will exploit the raising of the debt limit, which is expected by the second half of 2023, to force changes.

The debt limit is the amount of money the federal government is permitted to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including Medicare, Social Security, tax refunds, and other payments. Failing to raise the debt ceiling and defaulting on those obligations could cause a global financial crisis.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) accused the Republicans of planning to "hold the full faith and credit of the U.S. government hostage unless they are able to enact huge cuts" to the programs.

Social Security Works, which advocates for the strengthening and expansion of the Social Security program, urged voters to make their decisions with McCarthy's words in mind.

"Kevin McCarthy says he will cut Social Security and Medicare if he becomes Speaker," the group said. "Believe him!"

---

---

Say, didn't Obama say almost exactly the same thing before he got elected and then decided that codifying Roe was not that important?

Biden vows to codify Roe if Democrats win midterms: ‘You gotta vote’

With Democrats’ congressional majorities at risk this November, Joe Biden vowed on Tuesday that the first bill he sent to Capitol Hill next year would codify Roe v Wade – if Americans return his party to power with wide enough margins to pass abortion protections.

It’s a major lift for Democrats, who face a challenging political environment marked by a rocky economy and decades-high inflation. But the loss of abortions rights has sparked a political backlash, motivating Democratic voters and women more broadly who have registered to vote in significant numbers since the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe in Dobbs v Jackson.

“I’m asking the American people to remember how you felt that day the extreme Dobbs decision came down and Roe was overturned after 50 years,” Biden said during remarks at an event hosted by the Democratic National Committee at the Howard Theater in Washington. “The anger, the worry, the disbelief.”

“If you care about the right to choose,” he added, “then you gotta vote”.

Standing in front of a banner that read “Restore Roe”, the president cast the election as a choice between Republicans who would seek to impose a nationwide ban on abortion and Democrats who have vowed to protect reproductive rights.

Fake Republican Wins Vermont Republican House Primary

Jury acquits Russian analyst of lying to FBI in Trump dossier case

A jury on Tuesday acquitted a thinktank analyst accused of lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a discredited dossier about Donald Trump.

The case against Igor Danchenko was the third and possibly final case brought by special counsel John Durham as part of his investigation into how the FBI conducted its own investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin. ...

The acquittal marked a significant setback for Durham. Despite hopes by Trump supporters that the prosecutor would uncover a sweeping conspiracy within the FBI and other agencies to derail his candidacy, the three-year investigation failed to produce evidence that met those expectations.

The Danchenko case was the first of the three to delve deeply into the origins of the “Steele dossier,” a compendium of allegations that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was colluding with the Kremlin. ...

Danchenko, by his own admission, was responsible for 80% of the raw intelligence in the dossier and half of the accompanying analysis, though trial testimony indicated that Danchenko was shocked and dismayed about how Steele presented the material and portrayed it as factual when Danchenko considered it more to be rumor and speculation.

Biden Goes ALL IN On Roe, IGNORES That Voters Care More About INFLATION, Crime

Why pro-Israel lobby group Aipac is backing election deniers and extremist Republicans

The US’s largest pro-Israel lobby group is backing dozens of racists, homophobes and election deniers running for Congress next month because they have pledged to defend Israel against stiffening criticism of its oppression of the Palestinians.

The powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has justified endorsing Republicans with extremist views, including members of Congress with ties to white supremacist groups and representatives who attempted to block Joe Biden’s election victory, on the grounds that the singular issue of support for Israel trumps other considerations.

But Aipac’s support for rightwing politicians has privately embarrassed some Democrats also endorsed by the powerful group and drawn accusations from more moderate pro-Israel organisations that it is attempting to stifle legitimate criticism of hardline Israeli policies. ...

Aipac’s backing of extreme rightwing Republicans follows its $27m advertising campaign during the Democratic primaries to defeat candidates who spoke up for Palestinian rights, mostly with attacks over issues that had nothing to do with Israel.

The campaign is part of push by more hawkish pro-Israel groups to shore up support in Congress in the face of rising advocacy for the Palestinian cause within the Democratic party and erosion of approval for Israeli actions among American Jews, particularly younger people.

---

---

New Jersey latest state to sue oil companies over climate misinformation

New Jersey has joined the ranks of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont as the latest state to sue some of the world’s largest oil companies for their role in delaying climate policy and increasing the climate impacts, risks and costs borne by state governments. Like Minnesota and the District of Columbia before it, New Jersey has also included the industry’s top US trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, in its suit, which includes not only liability, but also fraud claims against five oil majors: ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, BP and ConocoPhillips.

Some two dozen climate liability suits have been making their way through the courts since 2015, bolstered by media investigations and attribution studies that are able to accurately pinpoint the precise contribution climate change has made to the damages inflicted by extreme weather events. A 2021 study in the journal Nature, for example, found that just over $8bn (£7bn) of the $62.7bn (£55.3bn) in damages caused by Superstorm Sandy across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, is attributable to sea-level rise caused by climate change.

Patrick Parenteau, professor and senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law School says that while these cases started as common law nuisance claims – these companies created the nuisance of climate change, which caused financial damages to various cities and states – they “have evolved to where the failure-to-warn based claims and duty of care type claims are coming to the forefront”, which is why the more recently filed cases all tend to include fraud claims as well. The damages and the fraud go hand in hand, the argument goes. The costs of dealing with climate change today are measurably higher because oil companies, aided by the American Petroleum Institute in this case, misled the public about climate change.

This “failure to warn” approach helps to narrow the fraud claims to something a court can actually rule on, according to Doug Kysar, deputy dean and professor at Yale Law School. “Earlier cases took a broader approach to fraud.”

“Like the industry engaged in a conspiracy of misinformation,” Kysar says. “And it ended up looking like a fraud on democracy … like this industry was so powerful and so diabolical in their efforts that they hoodwinked the entire government for the last few decades. To be honest, I think that that is what happened. But that’s an uncomfortable place for a court – to be willing to pronounce that an entire governmental system was manipulated and defrauded by powerful actors.”

Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows

The next pandemic may come not from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice, according to new data. Genetic analysis of soil and lake sediments from Lake Hazen, the largest high Arctic freshwater lake in the world, suggests the risk of viral spillover – where a virus infects a new host for the first time – may be higher close to melting glaciers.

The findings imply that as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, it becomes more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife, particularly as their range also shifts closer to the poles.

For instance, in 2016 an outbreak of anthrax in northern Siberia that killed a child and infected at least seven other people was attributed to a heatwave that melted permafrost and exposed an infected reindeer carcass. Before this, the last outbreak in the region had been in 1941.

The research, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggested that the risk of viruses spilling over to new hosts was higher at locations close to where large amounts of glacial meltwater flowed in – a situation that becomes more likely as the climate warms. The team did not quantify how many of the viruses they identified were previously unknown – something they plan to do in the coming months – nor did they assess whether these viruses were capable of triggering an infection.

However, other recent research has suggested that unknown viruses can, and do, loiter in glacier ice. For instance, last year, researchers at Ohio State University in the US announced they had found genetic material from 33 viruses – 28 of them novel – in ice samples taken from the Tibetan plateau in China. Based on their location, the viruses were estimated to be approximately 15,000 years old.

More than 80% of US waterways contaminated by ‘forever chemicals’

Most of America’s waterways are likely contaminated by toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, a new study conducted by US water keepers finds. The Waterkeeper Alliance analysis found detectable PFAS levels in 95 out of 114, or 83%, of waterways tested across 34 states and the District of Columbia, and frequently at levels that exceed federal and state limits. “The results clearly show widespread PFAS contamination across the country and demonstrate that existing laws and regulations are inadequate for protecting us,” said Marc Yaggi, CEO of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-profit network that represents local “water keepers” who monitor watersheds throughout the country for pollution.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 12,000 chemicals often used to make products resist water, stain and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down, and are linked to cancer, liver problems, thyroid issues, birth defects, kidney disease, decreased immunity and other serious health problems.

Previous analyses have used municipal utility data to estimate that the chemicals are contaminating drinking water for over 200 million people, while another study found widespread contamination of groundwater drawn by private and municipal wells.

Lax regulation allows industrial users to discharge the chemicals into the environment largely unchecked, though some states and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are taking steps to begin tracking them. Landfills, airports, military bases, paper mills and wastewater treatment plants are among common sources.

The new study checked a range of surface waters, including canals, creeks and rivers. It found PFAS in 29 out of 34 states, and the 19 waterways in which it didn’t detect the compounds ran through largely undeveloped regions.

UN warns against alarmism as world’s population reaches 8bn milestone

The world must not engage in “population alarmism” as the number of people living on Earth nears 8 billion, a senior UN official has said.

The global population is projected to reach that milestone on 15 November, with some commentators expressing worries about the impact of the growing number on a world already struggling with huge inequality, the climate crisis, and conflict-fuelled displacement and migration. ...

As a result of falling birthrates, the pace of worldwide population growth, which reached a recorded peak at just over 2% a year in the late 1960s, has now fallen below 1%.

However, the global picture is more varied than ever before. The UN estimates that about 60% of people live in countries with fertility levels below the recognised replacement level (when a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next) of an average of 2.1 births for every woman.

At the other end of the spectrum, just eight countries, including Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Philippines, are forecast to account for half of all population growth by 2050. One of those countries, India, is expected to pass China from next year and become the world’s most populous country.

---

Also of Interest

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

The Most Powerful Weapon The West Gave Ukraine: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Ukraine - Drones Turn Off Electricity

German Green Party in a war frenzy

How soulmates Hungary and Poland fell out over Ukraine war

It’s Time To Cut Zelensky and Ing-wen From the US Dole

Blood in the Archives

Deferring To Donors, Dems Ignore Their Cautionary Tale

Turning the Tables on Right-Wing Jurists

NOPEC Bill Would Mean the End Of Aramco and OPEC as We Know Them

Democrats Tried to Sell Appalachia Down the Pipeline

There’s lithium in them thar hills – but fears grow over US ‘white gold’ boom

Activists Say Fossil Fuel Interests Have Declared 'War on Africa's Sustainable Future'

Venezuelans Seeking Asylum Are Now Turned Away at U.S. Border as Biden Expands Trump-Era Title 42

Kyiv Ambassador Predicts NATO WILL Send Fighter Jets To Ukraine EVENTUALLY, Risking WWIII?

---

A Little Night Music

The Olympics - Western Movies

The Olympics - U S Mail

The Olympics - Baby Hully Gully

The Olympics - Well

The Olympics - Big Boy Pete

Lemme B. Good - 1st RECORDING OF: Good Lovin’

(note the lyric differences between this and the Olympics version, which the Rascals covered.)

Lemme B. Good - Hard Times

Lemme B. Good - I Can't Stop Myself

Lemme B. Good - Mother May I

The Olympics - The Slop

---