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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Peg Leg Sam

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features country blues harmonica player and singer Peg Leg Sam. Enjoy!

^{Peg Leg Sam - Froggy Went A-Courting}

"Part of growing up is learning that laws do not exist to prevent wrongdoing, they exist to keep society moving in an orderly way for the benefit of the world’s worst perpetrators of wrongdoing. None of the world’s worst people are in prison. Most of them are quite wealthy and respected, because they benefit from the abusive status quo that laws are set up to protect."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

Blinken: US Does Not Oppose Ukrainian Attacks Inside Russia With US-Supplied Missiles

During an appearance on ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl, Secretary of State Tony Blinken explicitly said that the US would not oppose Ukraine using US-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line” which would make the United States a direct party to the conflict.

“We understand that the United States is considering sending those long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for for a long time,” Karl said in the interview. “These are long-range missiles, 200 miles in range. Are you okay if those missiles allow Ukraine to attack deep into Russian territory?”

“In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” answered Blinken after some bloviation.

“We’ve seen an increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones, some in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don just a couple of days ago. Did you bring that up?” asked Karl.

“No,” said Blinken.

“Are you — are you okay with — I mean, obviously, they’re — it’s their decisions, but is this war now escalating into Russia?” asked Karl.

“ Jon, we haven’t encouraged and we haven’t enabled any use of weapons outside of Ukraine’s territory,” Blinken said. “Having said that, let’s take a step back for a second. Virtually every single day the Russians are attacking indiscriminately throughout the entire country of Ukraine. Just during the 48 hours that I was there going in, more missiles were launched at civilian targets, including in Kyiv while I was there; a horrific attack on a marketplace, people just going to buy food, civilians, had nothing to do with this war — killed 17 people. This is the daily life for Ukrainians. This is what they face every single day. So they have to make the basic decisions about how they’re going to defend their territory and how they’re working to take back what’s been seized from them. Our role, the role of dozens of other countries around the world that are supporting them, is to help them do that. And ultimately, what we all want is an end to this Russian aggression and an end to the aggression that, again, is just and is durable. That’s what Ukrainians want more than anyone else. That’s what we’re working toward.”

The interview then concluded without any further follow-up from Karl. By successfully winding down the clock babbling about what Ukraine has a right to do, Blinken avoided discussing the real issue of what the US itself is doing. Nobody disputes that Ukraine has a right to attack Russian territory; Russia is attacking Ukrainian territory, so of course Ukraine has a right to retaliate. That is not being seriously debated anywhere. What’s being debated is whether the US should be backing those attacks, because doing so could lead to nuclear war.

A year ago when Ukraine first started urging the United States to send it the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) — which has nearly four times the range of the HIMARS weapons the US has been supplying — Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately responded with a warning that their use on Russian territory would make the US a direct participant in the conflict, and Russia would respond accordingly.

“If Washington decides to supply longer-range missiles to Kyiv, then it will be crossing a red line, and will become a direct party to the conflict,” Zakharova said, adding that Russia “reserves the right to defend its territory.”

As Michael Tracey noted on Twitter, Blinken was saying last year that Ukraine had provided assurances to the US that it would not use the other weapons systems the US has been supplying “against targets on Russian territory.” Going by Blinken’s current statements and the attacks we’ve been seeing from Ukraine inside the Russian Federation, this agreement appears no longer to be in place. Blinken has already previously voiced support for Ukrainian use of US-supplied weapons in Crimea, and now he’s saying the US is fine with any US-supplied weapons being used on any Russian territory.

Which means there appears to have been yet another massive escalation between nuclear superpowers, which is once again going alarmingly under-reported by the western press.

In an article published in Antiwar this past July titled “ATACMS: Be Very Afraid of This Acronym,” West Suburban Peace Coalition president Walt Zlotow wrote that this missile system “has potential to draw the US and NATO into all out war with Russia”:

ATACMS are long range US missiles that can strike up to 190 miles. Top US officials, likely including President Biden, are seriously considering giving ATACMS to Ukraine in their battle to take back all Russian gains in Ukraine, including Crimea. They can reach both Crimea and the Russian mainland.

If so used by Ukraine to attack Russia, it may be a missile too far that could ignite Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Further escalation into nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US/NATO alliance seeking Russia’s defeat becomes more likely.

The US and its allies keep providing Ukraine with more and more offensive weapons that they had previously refused to supply for fear of getting drawn into the war and provoking a nuclear conflict. Last year Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov correctly predicted that the US would wind up supplying the tanks, F-16s and ATACMS it had previously deemed too escalatory, because that had already been established as the trend from the beginning of the war.

“When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,” Reznikov told The New Yorker last year. “Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM, no. Now all of that is a yes.” He added, “Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and ATACMS and F-16s.”

As Branko Marcetic explained earlier this year in an article for Responsible Statecraft titled “Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated,” this continual pattern of escalation is actually incentivizing Russia to start taking aggressive action against western powers so that its warnings and red lines will cease being ignored.

“By escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the U.S. and NATO have created an incentive structure for Moscow to take a drastic, aggressive step to show the seriousness of its own red lines,” Marcetic writes. “This would be dangerous at the best of times, but particularly so when Russian officials are making clear they increasingly view the war as one against NATO as a whole, not merely Ukraine, while threatening nuclear response to the alliance’s escalation in weapons deliveries.”

“Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; U.S. officials say since Moscow hasn’t acted on those threats, they can freely escalate. Russia is effectively told it has to escalate to show it’s serious about lines,” Marcetic added on Twitter.

And it’s just so strange how this isn’t the main thing everyone talks about all the time. The fact that we are drawing closer and closer to nuclear conflict should dominate headlines every single day, and the subject of how to avoid planetary disaster should be the constant focus of mainstream political discourse. But it isn’t, because that would interfere with the grand chessboard maneuverings of a globe-dominating empire working to secure unipolar planetary domination by undermining disobedient nations like Russia and China.

It’s hard to think about the end of the world. It’s hard to even wrap your mind around it, much less stand staring into the harsh white light of deep contemplation about what it is and what it would mean. A lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort comes up, and it’s easier to shift one’s attention to something easier to chew on like the presidential race.

But this is something that urgently needs to be looked at. Because the people steering our world today appear to be driving blind.

Putin Rejects Negotiations, Says Ukr 71K Casualties Failed Offensive; Vietnam Deal, Armenia Tilts US

NATO Begins War Games in Baltic Sea, Simulate Attack on Russia

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has launched major war games taking place off the coasts of Latvia and Estonia. A Western official said the drills are intended to be a clear message to Russia.

The war games – dubbed Northern Coasts – began on Saturday and will run for two weeks. Germany is leading the drills and 13 other nations will participate, including the US and non-NATO member Sweden. Over 3,000 troops and 30 warships are involved in the exercises.

German Navy chief Vice Admiral Jan Christian Kaack told Reuters the war games are a show of force to Russia. “We are sending a clear message of vigilance to Russia: Not on our watch,” he said. “Credible deterrence must include the ability to attack.” Acting NATO Spokesperson Dylan White added, “Exercises like these send a clear message that NATO stands ready to defend every inch of Allied territory.”

UN Atomic Watchdog Warns of Threat to Nuclear Safety as Fighting Spikes Near a Plant in Ukraine

The United Nations atomic watchdog warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety from a spike in fighting near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine, whose forces continued pressing their counteroffensive on Saturday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said its experts deployed at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant reported hearing numerous explosions over the past week, in a possible indication of increased military activity in the region. There was no damage to the plant.

“I remain deeply concerned about the possible dangers facing the plant at this time of heightened military tension in the region,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned in a statement issued late Friday.

He noted that the IAEA team was informed that staff at the nuclear power plant had been reduced temporarily to minimum levels due to concerns of more military activity in the area.

Heads of sovereign countries meet, empire has a hissy fit and starts generating conspiracy theories:

Kremlin confirms Putin meeting as Kim reportedly boards armoured train

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, will visit Russia in the coming days at the invitation of Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin has confirmed, amid concerns in the west that Pyongyang plans to provide weapons to Moscow to use in the war against Ukraine.

An armoured train carrying Kim was reported by South Korean media to have departed Pyongyang for Russia via North Korea’s north-eastern border, with a meeting expected to be held in the Russian port city of Vladivostok, where Putin has already arrived, as early as Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin would host a state lunch for Kim and the two would meet “one on one if necessary.” He said the two would discuss bilateral relations, adding: “We seek to build good, mutually beneficial relations with North Korea.”

The White House said last week it had intelligence that showed Russia was looking to purchase additional artillery shells from North Korea to shore up its defence industrial base. ... The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters that North Korea “will pay a price” for supplying Russia with weapons to use in Ukraine.

German deindustrialization accelerates

China, Philippine Vessels in Stand-Off in South China Sea

China and the Philippines have engaged in another stand-off near the Second Thomas Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea’s disputed Spratly Islands. This comes as Washington is building up its military presence in the Philippines and elsewhere in the region, eyeing a future war with Beijing.

Last month, during a tense confrontation, Chinese Coast Guard ships fired a water cannon at Philippine boats attempting to re-supply a World War II era tank-landing ship. The BRP Sierra Madre, grounded on the reef in 1999, is used by Manilla as a base of operations and to assert its claims. In a more recent incident, the Chinese Coast Guard claimed it allowed the vessels to resupply the warship because a “temporary special arrangement” was made since no “illegal construction materials” were being delivered.

However, on Friday, China’s Coast Guard said in a statement that two Philippine supply ships and two coast guard vessels made an “unapproved entry” to the reef and were given a warning as Beijing holds “indisputable sovereignty” over the atoll.

Second Thomas Shoal is controlled by Manilla, but is also claimed by Beijing, Taipei, and Hanoi. “[China] firmly opposes the Philippines’ delivery of illegal building materials to warships illegally grounded on the beach,” the statement reads. The Philippines conversely denounced the “illegal” actions of the Chinese Coast Guard, citing “harassment, dangerous maneuvers, and aggressive conduct.”

Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Adm. Samuel Paparo, has previously declared Washington “stand[s] ready” to assist Philippine boats attempting to resupply the BRP Sierra Madre. Last week, the US and the Philippines conducted a joint naval patrol in the South China Sea where Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of the US Seventh Fleet, believes Beijing should be “challenged.”

Pentagon Misled Congress About U.S. Bases in Africa

Since a cadre of U.S.-trained officers joined a junta that overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president in late July, more than 1,000 U.S. troops have been largely confined to their Nigerien outposts, including America’s largest drone base in the region, Air Base 201 in Agadez. The base, which has cost the U.S. a total of $250 million since construction began in 2016, is the key U.S. surveillance hub in West Africa. But in testimony before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in March, the chief of U.S. Africa Command described Air Base 201 as “minimal” and “low cost.”

Gen. Michael Langley, the AFRICOM chief, told Congress about just two “enduring” U.S. forward operating sites in Africa: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and a longtime logistics hub on Ascension Island in the south Atlantic Ocean. “The Command also operates out of 12 other posture locations throughout Africa,” he said in his prepared testimony. “These locations have minimal permanent U.S. presence and have low-cost facilities and limited supplies for these dedicated Americans to perform critical missions and quickly respond to emergencies.”

Experts say that Langley misled Congress, downplaying the size and scope of the U.S. footprint in Africa. AFRICOM’s “posture” on the continent actually consists of no fewer than 18 outposts, in addition to Camp Lemonnier and Ascension Island, according to information from AFRICOM’s secret 2022 theater posture plan, which was seen by The Intercept. A U.S. official with knowledge of AFRICOM’s current footprint on the continent confirmed that the same 20 bases are still in operation. Another two locations in Somalia and Ghana were also, according to the 2022 document, “under evaluation.”

Of the 20, Langley apparently failed to mention six so-called contingency locations in Africa, including a longtime drone base in Tunisia and other outposts used to wage U.S. shadow wars in Niger and Somalia. The U.S. military has often claimed that contingency locations are little more than spartan staging areas, but according to the joint chiefs of staff, such bases are critical to sustaining operations and may even be “semi-permanent.”

“This is a case of the U.S. military showing a marked lack of transparency by using technicalities to avoid conveying an accurate understanding of the extent of U.S. bases in Africa,” Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University, told The Intercept. “I’ve done field research near the sites of some of the ‘contingency locations’ that don’t seem to be part of the general’s official count, and in practice, if not in name, they serve as significant hubs of U.S. military operations. To not include them in an official count is to pull wool over the eyes of Congress and the U.S. public.”

Wow, such a deal. The empire will return some of what it stole from Iran to another country and remain in control of how Iran is allowed to use it. What a bunch of bullies.

US agrees to release $6bn in Iran funds as part of deal to free detained Americans

The Biden administration has issued a waiver to allow the transfer of $6bn in frozen Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar as part of a deal to free five Americans detained in Iran.

The deal also involves the freeing of five Iranian citizens imprisoned in the US, mostly for sanctions-busting offenses.

The waiver allowing international banks to transfer the Iranian funds was signed by the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, late last week, and Congress was informed on Monday.

Under the deal, the money, frozen revenues from past sales of Iranian oil, will be sent to Qatar’s central bank, from where it can be disbursed for the purchase of humanitarian goods for Iran.

“Secretary Blinken signed a waiver last week enabling the effectuation of this transfer. It was a critical step in securing the release of these five US citizens,” the spokesperson said. “This waiver allows for the transfer of funds from one location to another but does not change the fact that they can only be used to fund Iran’s purchases of humanitarian goods … These funds will be moved to restricted accounts in Qatar, and the United States will have oversight as to how and when these funds are used.”

50 Years After Chilean Coup: Peter Kornbluh on How U.S. Continues to Hide Role of Nixon & Kissinger

Democratic Party's Wall Street Donors Are Reportedly Pushing Biden to Fire Lina Khan

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan's efforts to challenge corporate consolidation across the U.S. economy—from gaming to pharmaceuticals to semiconductors—have drawn vocal outrage from industry-backed Republican lawmakers and other mouthpieces for big business.

And now, according to the Financial Times, some of the Democratic Party's Wall Street donors are privately calling on President Joe Biden to fire Khan if he wins reelection in 2024.

"Anybody talking to dealmakers over the past year or so will have noticed that barely anyone has been capable of hiding their loathing for Khan," wrote FT's James Fontanella-Khan. "In private, financiers accuse her of being anti-American and against business. Several Wall Street donors to the Democratic Party are using their position of influence to quietly lobby Biden to drop Khan if he gets reelected, according to people briefed on the matter. That's how badly they want her out of the FTC."

Wall Street spent over $74 million in support of Biden in 2020 and industry executives—at the urging of the president's team—have hosted fundraisers this year for his reelection campaign.

Under Khan's leadership, the FTC has taken legal action against several prominent merger proposals—including Microsoft's $69 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, a case the agency paused after recent court defeats. The FTC has also helped rewrite pro-consolidation merger guidelines that were established during the Reagan era, launched a probe into Big Tech's cloud computing businesses, and proposed a ban on exploitative non-compete agreements.

Additionally, as soon as this month, the FTC is expected to file a major antitrust lawsuit against the online retail behemoth Amazon, which Khan has long argued is a monopoly.

The Khan-led FTC's proactive approach to taking on entrenched power that has worsened inequality and harmed workers has predictably angered corporate America and its GOP allies in Congress, who used a recent hearing to attack Khan as a "bully."

Some of the Republican Party's most outspoken critics of Khan are funded by Big Tech.

The Wall Street Journal's right-wing editorial board has also taken on a major role in fueling the outrage, running dozens of pieces this year attacking Khan's work.

FT's James Fontanella-Khan argued that the widespread "animus" toward Khan in corporate America "might indicate she is having an impact despite the setbacks."

"Khan has an egalitarian vision of competition law that seeks to improve the well-being of citizens beyond their roles as consumers," he added. "The Amazon case will be a big test."

Google faces 10-week trial over charges of unfair competition

Fed Court Rules Biden Admin, Agencies COERCED Social Media To Nix Unfavorable Content

Ginni Thomas and rightwing activists exploited supreme court ruling

In the months before the US supreme court handed down Citizens United, the 2010 ruling which unleashed a flood of dark money into American politics, the wife of a conservative justice worked with a prominent rightwing activist and a mega-donor closely linked to her husband to form a group to exploit the decision.

So said a blockbuster report from Politico, detailing moves by Ginni Thomas – wife of Justice Clarence Thomas – and Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society chief who has worked to stock the court with rightwingers, leading to a series of epochal decisions, including the removal of the federal right to abortion.

Half a million dollars in seed money, Politico said, came from Harlan Crow, the Nazi memorabilia-collecting billionaire whose extensive and mostly undeclared gifts to Clarence Thomas have fueled a spiraling supreme court ethics scandal.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island and champion of ethics reform, said the report laid out “the creepy intermingling of dark billionaire money, phoney front groups, far-right extremists and the United States supreme court”.

Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan DESTROY Biden's Maui Response: Island Should 'CALL ITSELF UKRAINE' For $$$

Louisiana ordered to remove teens from ‘intolerable’ conditions at state prison

Louisiana has until Friday to remove children from its notorious state penitentiary at Angola after a federal judge found they were being held in “intolerable” conditions that included prolonged solitary confinement, punishment with mace and handcuffs, and inadequate education and mental health care.

The ruling brings to a climax a year-long battle between civil rights groups and the state of Louisiana, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Angola prison, named after the African country from which enslaved people were forcibly brought to work on the plantation where the penitentiary is located, has a reputation for penal brutality and violence.

Up to 80 children – almost all Black boys, some as young as 15 – have been brought to Angola since October 2022 and housed in cells in which condemned death row prisoners used to await execution. The move followed turmoil in the state’s juvenile detention institutions, which have struggled with understaffing, riots and frequent breakouts.

Rights groups immediately denounced the transfer, saying Angola was entirely inappropriate as a site for captive children. Led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Fair Fight Initiative, they began legal proceedings that culminated in a seven-day hearing last month and Friday’s federal court order. ...

In her ruling, US district judge Shelly Dick denounced the state for failing to meet the standards that it had set itself. “Virtually every promise that was made was broken,” she said, setting a 15 September deadline for the removal of the teenagers from Angola. Dick listed the violations that had been perpetrated on the children which she said amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. They included solitary confinement, known as “cell restriction”, which could last five or six days, or in one case 14 consecutive days. Officials had promised that the juveniles would only be placed in solitary confinement in the old death row cells overnight.

Time to boycott Georgia yet?

Outcry as Atlanta refuses to handle petitions over ‘Cop City’ police campus

The city of Atlanta has refused to begin counting and verifying petitions signed by about 116,000 registered voters to put on the ballot the question of whether a controversial police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” should be built. The move was backed by a legal memo from lawyers hired by the city, citing an active court case, after dozens of activists and Atlanta residents delivered the petitions to the clerk’s office at city hall on Monday.

At stake is the question of when Atlanta residents could vote on the Cop City project if enough signatures are verified. Meanwhile, work on the project continues apace, resulting in clear-cutting, and eventually, cement being poured on a 171-acre footprint in the South River forest, south-east of Atlanta. ...

The city’s move surprised activists and at least one member of the city council, Liliana Bakhtiari, whose district is one of two closest to the forest – and who said she had not been told of the city’s decision beforehand. “I’m livid,” Bakhtiari said. “How can we expect people to have any faith in the democratic process when they keep moving the goalposts?”

Monday’s memo continued months of roadblocks put up by the city, a jarring litany by mostly Democratic officials that observers say are undemocratic and will jam the process of letting voters decide on such a major project.

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Trump asks judge to recuse herself in federal 2020 election subversion case

Donald Trump’s legal team on Monday asked the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference prosecution against him to remove herself from the case, arguing that her previous public comments after the former president’s culpability in the January 6 Capitol attack was disqualifying.

The recusal motion, filed to and against the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, faces major legal hurdles: to succeed, Trump must show a “reasonable person” would conclude from just her remarks – but not any of her actual rulings – that she was unable to preside impartially.

Trump has long complained that the judge assigned to the case was biased against him because of her previous comments about Trump in other January 6 riot defendant cases and his legal team weighed filing the motion for weeks, according to two people familiar with deliberations.

The nine-page motion identified two episodes where Chutkan remarked on her opinion about Trump’s responsibility in instigating the Capitol attack, which Trump’s lawyers argued gave rise to the appearance of potential bias or prejudice against the former president.

The first instance came in October 2022 when she said, referring to January 6: “And the people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man… It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” ... The second instance was when the judge told another January 6 rioter in December 2021: “The people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged,” adding, “I have my opinions,” but that was out of her control.

Biden IMPEACHMENT: McCarthy To OK Inquiry Into Allegedly TROUBLING Bank Statements

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US sets new record for billion-dollar climate disasters in single year

With four months of 2023 still left, the US has set a record for the most natural disasters in a single year that have cost $1bn or more, as fires, floods and ferocious winds were among deadly events experts warn are being turbo-charged by the climate crisis.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) announced on Monday that there have already been 23 extreme weather events in the US this year that have cost at least $1bn. The current figure surpasses the record of 22 such events set in 2020.

So far, the total cost of disasters in 2023 is more than $57.6bn, according to Noaa. The record figure does not include major disasters such Tropical Storm Hilary last month, as the cost of damage is still being totaled, Adam Smith, the Noaa applied climatologist and economist who tracks the billion-dollar disasters, told the Associated Press. Hilary brought life-threatening flooding and rainfall to the US south-west, leaving thousands of people without power.

Smith said the increase in expensive weather events is caused by a rise in the number of natural disasters and more communities being built in risk-prone locations.

Nasa says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean and possible hint of life

Scientists at Nasa have announced the existence of a possible rare water ocean on a giant exoplanet scores of light years away and also a chemical hint of a sign of potential life. The “intriguing” discovery was made by the space agency’s James Webb telescope, peering 120 light years from Earth in the constellation Leo, building on earlier studies of the region using Webb’s predecessors, Hubble and Kepler.

Researchers have named the exoplanet K2-18 b, an unremarkable moniker for something with such potential significance. Almost nine times the mass of Earth, it is, Nasa, says: “a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface”.

The space agency said that its observations of the chemical make-up of the planet’s atmosphere suggested the possibility of an ocean world. “The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b,” it said.

But the agency also hinted at even more remarkable possibility in the potential finding of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which on Earth is only produced by life. “The bulk of the DMS in Earth’s atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments,” the Nasa press release said. The presence of DMS, however, is still to be confirmed, and requires further investigation.

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Also of Interest

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

Zelensky Threatens To Terrorize Europe

Has the West Closed All Its Project Ukraine Exits?

Russia Sticks to Demands on Black Sea Grain Deal, Rejects UN Bank Proposal

Chris Hedges: The Pedagogy of Power

Patrick Lawrence: Exceptionalism & Its Consequences

Wall Street Journal love letter to the arms industry

Biden officials ‘likely violated First Amendment’ in Big Tech COVID censorship efforts, appeals court affirms

Laws Don’t Exist To Prevent Wrongdoing

Up to 2,000 feared drowned after Libyan city hit by ‘catastrophic’ storm floods

Heat pumps twice as efficient as fossil fuel systems in cold weather, study finds

Nature’s War of Revenge

15 Dad Jokes that Are Actually Funny

Economist Jayati Ghosh on G20, India, China & More

“Capitalism Is an Insecurity Machine”: Astra Taylor on Student Debt & Our Radically Unequal World

Woody Harrelson DESTROYS Ukraine War Narrative!

Cornel West Hires Hillary Clinton shill and Bernie Sanders smear merchant Peter Daou

Kamala Harris TORCHED As 'IMPEACHMENT INSURANCE' By DeSantis: 'NOBODY WANTS' Her

McCarthy Announces FORMAL IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY Into Joe Biden

America's secret wars w/Norman Solomon

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A Little Night Music

Peg Leg Sam - Bumble Bee

Peg Leg Sam w/ Louisiana Red - Navaho Trail

Peg Leg Sam & Henry Rufe Johnson - Who Do You Love

Peg Leg Sam - Lost John

Peg Leg Sam w/ Louisiana Red - Poor Boy

Peg Leg Sam & Baby Tate - Skinny Woman Blues

Peg Leg Sam - Strollin'

Peg Leg Sam & Henry Rufe Johnson - Before You Give It All Away

Peg Leg Sam with Baby Tate - Who's That Left Here 'While Ago

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