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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Bob & Earl

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singers Bob & Earl. Enjoy!

^{Bob & Earl - Don't Ever Leave Me}

"In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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News and Opinion

Both Trumpism And Anti-Trumpism Are Fake, Decoy Revolutions

There’s a fuzzbrained narrative going around “MAGA” circles right now that if re-elected, Donald Trump is going to appoint Robert F Kennedy Jr to the position of CIA director. This narrative has been extrapolated from some very vague comments made by Donald Trump Jr on a conservative podcast last week.

It’s hilarious that anyone thinks this will happen, and it says so much about how perpetually gullible and confused Trump supporters are. Trump’s CIA directors have been Mike “We lied, we cheated, we stole” Pompeo and torture fetishist “Bloody Gina” Haspel, and these dopes think he’s going to suddenly give the job to RFK Jr? Come on. Trump isn’t going to drain the swamp. Trump is the swamp.

To this day, even after watching four years of evidence to the contrary, Trump supporters still believe he’s going to end the wars, drain the swamp, and take the fight to the Deep State. They believe he’ll be fighting the Deep State even after he imprisoned Assange. They believe he’ll be ending the wars even after he ramped up cold war aggressions against Russia, killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, vetoed attempts to save Yemen from US-backed genocide, worked to foment civil war in Iran using starvation sanctions and CIA ops with the stated goal of effecting regime change, came inches from starting a full-scale war with Iran with by assassinating General Qassem Soleimani, occupied Syrian oil fields with the goal of preventing Syria’s reconstruction, greatly increased the number of troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, greatly increased the number of bombs dropped per day from the previous administration killing record numbers of civilians, and reduced military accountability for those airstrikes. They believe he’ll drain the swamp after he packed his cabinet full of neocon swamp monsters like John Bolton and Elliott Abrams.

Trump supporters are the most gullible people on earth. They’ll stare right at you as you look them in the eye and prove you lied to them in broad daylight, and then they’ll sign right up to let you do it again.

Rightists who are discontented with the American political status quo have been herded into supporting a politician who embodies that status quo as much as any other president, wrongly thinking they are waging a battle against the establishment by doing so. And this is mirrored on the other side of the imaginary partisan divide in US politics, with people making entire identities out of despising Donald Trump and acting like this makes them brave revolutionaries.

When Trump was first elected I had hope that the Democrats who’d fallen asleep at the wheel under Obama would become politically engaged again and start criticizing the evils of the US empire like they did during the Bush years. But what actually happened was that while Democrats did start paying attention to politics again, they were corralled like livestock by the mass media into opposing things that had no relation to the actual realities of the US empire and how it functions in the world.

Instead of focusing on Trump’s many depravities listed above, Democrats wound up spending years shrieking about a completely fake conspiracy theory that the executive branch of the US government had been taken over by the Kremlin, only to lose interest and pretend nothing happened after the Mueller investigation failed to indict a single American over any involvement with Russia. They spent all their political energy freaking out about Trump’s mean tweets and how rude he was to members of the press, while ignoring or even praising his administration’s reckless warmongering and tyranny around the world.

So Trump has been made the central figure in US politics around whom everything revolves, and whether the election is won by those who support him or those who oppose him, the imperial status quo is guaranteed to remain unchanged. As Americans become more and more discontented with the abusive nature of their nation’s government, a man has shown up who leads both Democrats and Republicans to believe that the best way to stick it to the man is to take a highly emotional position either for him or against him. When really whether he wins or loses couldn’t matter less to those with real power.

Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room for real discourse about real things. Under Biden at least we’ve been seeing some real opposition to real things like the US-backed atrocities in Gaza, but under Trump it was four years of both mainstream political factions screaming about made-up nonsense under the delusion that they were fighting the power.

And that’s all mainstream electoral politics ever is in the US empire: a fake, decoy revolution staged for the public every few years so that they don’t have a real one. A symbolic ceremony where the public pretends to cast the abusive status quo into the sea so they feel like the battle against their oppressors has been won. And then their oppressors just keep right on oppressing them.

Every few years the public gets to choose between two reliable lackeys of the oligarchic empire, and then all of the evils of that empire get pinned upon the winner. The public then directs their rage at the lackey rather than the actual power structure which has been oppressing them, after which they have another election to rid themselves of the scoundrel once and for all. They hug, they cry, they celebrate, and the oppression machine continues completely uninterrupted.

As Gore Vidal once said:

“It doesn’t actually make any difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. The genius of the American ruling class is that it has been able to make the people think that they have had something to do with the electing of presidents for 200 years when they’ve had absolutely nothing to say about the candidates or the policies or the way the country is run. A very small group controls just about everything.”

That small group is the plutocratic class whose legalized bribery and propaganda machine has immense influence over US politics, as well as the imperial war machine and special interest groups with whom the plutocratic class is allied. It is necessary to form coalitions of support within that power cluster if one wants to become president in the managed democracy that is the United States, and no part of that power cluster is going to support a president who won’t reliably advance the interests of the oligarchic empire.

From this point of view, the oligarchic power cluster is essentially running its own employees against each other and having them promise to end the injustices which are inextricably baked in to the oligarchic empire. Americans live in a totalitarian state whose most important elections are rigged from top to bottom, and they’re fed news stories about Evil Dictators in other countries rigging their elections to remain in power.

Politicians cannot change the status quo to one which benefits ordinary people instead of their oligarchic owners, because the oligarchic empire is built upon the need for endless war, poverty, and oppression. You cannot have a unipolar global empire without using violent force (and the threat of it) to uphold that world order, and you cannot have a plutocracy without ensuring that a few rulers have far more wealth control than the rank-and-file citizenry.

For this reason, even politicians who run on relatively progressive-sounding platforms are themselves a part of the fake decoy revolution unless they demand a complete dismantling of oligarchy and empire. The politicians who present themselves as progressives in America today offer only light opposition to some aspects of empire and oligarchy, in effect merely supporting an oligarchic empire that gives Americans healthcare. Since keeping Americans poor, busy and propagandized is an essential dynamic in the hub of a globe-spanning oligarchic empire, this is a nonsensical position; the oligarchs don’t want ordinary Americans to have money to burn on campaign donations and free time to research what’s really going on in their world, because then they might meddle in the gears of empire. A power structure built upon economic injustice will never permit economic justice.

The door to meaningful change in America via electoral politics has been closed, locked, bolted, welded shut, and barricaded with a metric ton of solid steel. The only thing that can cause an end to the oppression and exploitation is an end to the oligarchic empire, and the only thing that can cause the end of the oligarchic empire is direct action by the American people: mass-scale activism, national strikes, and civil disobedience the likes of which the nation has never before seen, in sufficient numbers to bring down the plutocratic institutions which maintain the status quo.

The problem is that this will never happen as long as Americans are being successfully propagandized into being content with their fake decoy revolutions. There is a zero percent chance of electoral politics leading to an end of the empire, but a concerted effort to spread awareness by those who understand what’s going on just might.

All positive changes in human behavior are always preceded by an expansion of awareness, whether you’re talking about awareness of the consequences of one’s addiction leading to their getting sober or an expansion of awareness of the injustices of racism leading to racial justice laws. Making people aware that the mass media are lying to us about what’s real, aware of the horrors of war, aware of the underlying dynamics of the economic injustice which is grinding Americans into the dirt, that can lead to a chain reaction which sees the collective using the power of its numbers to shrug off the chains of oppression as easily as you remove a heavy coat on a warm day.

What’s needed is for the people to awaken to the truth. An entire empire is built upon a pair of closed eyelids.

Matt Hoh: Will Israel Soon Stand Alone?

Netanyahu faces Israeli calls for broader strikes against Hezbollah

Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a political backlash in Israel for the limited nature of Sunday’s airstrikes against Hezbollah, amid calls for a broader offensive in Lebanon. Some of the fiercest criticism came from the far-right wing of the prime minister’s own fractious coalition, which is also increasingly divided over the status of Jerusalem’s holiest site.

Israel’s airstrikes and Hezbollah’s rocket and drone launches that followed soon after was the biggest cross-border engagement since the two sides fought a war in 2006 in terms of the number of aircraft sorties and munitions launched, though not in terms of casualties. Three Hezbollah and allied fighters were killed and one Israeli sailor, killed by fragments of an Israeli interceptor.

The prime minister was widely blamed on Monday, from both the centre and right of the political spectrum, for the limited goal of Sunday’s air raids, which disrupted Hezbollah’s planned aerial assault, but had done nothing, the critics said, to allow up to 80,000 residents of northern border towns, displaced from northern Israel since October, to return home.

Representatives of the displaced population, forced from their homes by bombing by Hezbollah in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, have said they would boycott meetings with government representatives, accusing the coalition of prioritising the defence of central Israel but not the north.

Ben Caspit, a columnist in the centre-right Maariv newspaper, wrote: “For nearly a year, the Galilee has been pulverised, ravaged and set on fire; tens of thousands of Israelis have been torn from their homes; and the entire country, which not long ago was considered to be a regional superpower, has been humiliated.” He said Netanyahu had chosen the most cautious of the military options presented to him by his generals. “He prevented and disrupted one of Hezbollah’s operational plans, but he didn’t change our strategic situation in the northern theatre,” Caspit added.

Palestinian Healthcare Workers Chained, Starved, Sexually Abused: New HRW Report on Israeli Prisons

Amnesty Urges War Crimes Probe of 'Indiscriminate' Israeli Attacks on Gaza Camps

In an investigation focusing on a pair of Israeli massacres of forcibly displaced Palestinians in Gaza, Amnesty International on Monday urged the International Criminal Court—whose chief prosecutor has already applied for warrants to arrest Israeli and Hamas leaders—to open a war crimes probe of the attacks, which it said were likely "indiscriminate" and "disproportionate."

"On May 26, 2024, two Israeli airstrikes on the Kuwaiti Peace Camp, a makeshift camp for internally displaced people in Tal al-Sultan in west Rafah, killed at least 36 people—including six children—and injured more than 100," noted Amnesty, which early in the assault on Gaza found "damning evidence" of Israeli war crimes including indiscriminate killing of civilians.

The Tal al-Sultan attack, which hit an Israeli-designated "safe zone," ignited an inferno that burned people alive inside the tents in which they were sheltering. One survivor told Amnesty that "there were so many dead people all around us," many of them "in pieces and in pools of blood."

The Amnesty report states that the airstrikes, "which targeted two Hamas commanders staying amid displaced civilians, consisted of two U.S.-made GBU-39 guided bombs" and that "the use of these munitions, which project deadly fragments over a wide area, in a camp housing civilians in overcrowded temporary shelters likely constituted a disproportionate and indiscriminate attack, and should be investigated as a war crime."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Tal al-Sultan massacre a "tragic mistake."

"On May 28, in the second incident investigated, the Israeli military fired at least three tank shells at a location in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, which was designated by the Israeli military as a 'humanitarian zone,'" Amnesty continued. "The strikes killed 23 civilians—including 12 children, seven women, and four men—and injured many more."

"Amnesty International's research found that the apparent targets of the attack were one Hamas and one Islamic Jihad fighter," the publication notes. "This strike, which failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives by using unguided munitions in an area full of civilians sheltering in tents, likely was indiscriminate and should be investigated as a war crime."

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement that "while these strikes may have targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders and fighters, once again displaced Palestinian civilians seeking shelter and safety have paid with their lives."

"The Israeli military would have been fully aware that the use of bombs that project deadly shrapnel across hundreds of meters and unguided tank shells would kill and injure a large number of civilians sheltering in overcrowded settings lacking protection," she added. "The military could and should have taken all feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, harm to civilians." ...

The new Amnesty report was published on the same day that Human Rights Watch called upon the ICC to investigate alleged and documented incidents of Israeli forces torturing imprisoned Palestinian medical workers, including at the notorious Sde Teiman prison, where guards are accused of war crimes including murder, rape, and torture.

Pepe Escobar : How Strong Is the Resistance?

Israel Says US Has Delivered 50,000 Tons of Military Aid Since Start of Gaza Slaughter

The Israeli Defense Ministry said Monday that the US has delivered over 50,000 tons of weapons and other military equipment since the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, demonstrating the Biden administration’s staunch support for the slaughter.

Since October 7, 107 ships and 500 transport planes have brought US military aid shipments to Israel. The Israeli Defense Ministry said the deliveries have included “armored vehicles, munitions, ammunition, personal protection gear, and medical equipment.”...

Besides the military aid, the Biden administration has also provided intelligence for operations in Gaza and political support at the UN. The administration has also helped Israel by portraying Hamas as the obstacle to a hostage and ceasefire deal, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been working to sabotage the chances of an agreement.

Matt Kennard & Jeremy Corbyn on Palestine, Keir Starmer and US Empire

NYU Policy Change Equates Anti-Zionism With Antisemitism

After cracking down on anti-genocide campus protests this spring, New York University is under fire this week for its new policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism as Israel continues its U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.

The Anti-Defamation League—which has also been criticized for conflating the two—defines Zionism as "the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel."

NYU's Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy and Procedures for Students (NDAH), updated last week, states in part that "using code words, like 'Zionist,' does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH Policy. For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists."

"For example," the document details, "excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a 'no Zionist' litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., 'Zionists control the media'), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate."

The policy—seen as a potential model for other universities, as the next academic year begins—was blasted by critics of the Israeli slaughter of over 40,000 Palestinians, which is being investigated as genocide by the International Court of Justice, and the U.S. campus administrations that have invited violent law enforcement oppression of anti-war protests.

NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) said Sunday that it was "alarmed" by the guidance, which "sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people. Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group's understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections."

The "deeply disturbing" development "will legitimize far-right and ethnonationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from racial discrimination," the group continued. "This weaponization of the Title VI apparatus openly threatens the university's commitments to academic freedom and to nondiscrimination, and we insist that the administration reconsider these changes for the good of the university community."

Chinese military plane reportedly carries out first violation of Japanese airspace

Japan scrambled fighter jets after a Chinese military aircraft “violated” its airspace in a further escalation of regional tensions, with local media reporting it as the first such move by a Chinese military plane. The incursion into Japanese airspace was made by a Y-9 surveillance aircraft at 11.29am on Monday and lasted two minutes.

Japan’s defence ministry said the aircraft “violated the territorial airspace off the Danjo islands in Nagasaki prefecture”, prompting Japan to deploy “fighter jets on an emergency basis”. It said steps such as “issuing warnings” to the aircraft were taken. Public broadcaster NHK reported that no weapons, such as flare guns, were used as an alert. The defence ministry released a photograph of what it said was the plane.

Deputy foreign minister Masataka Okano summoned China’s acting ambassador late on Monday to lodge a “firm protest”, and called for measures against a recurrence, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The Chinese diplomat said in response that the matter would be reported to Beijing, the ministry said. There was no immediate official comment from Beijing.

Arresting Durov, taking control of Telegram

Chaos in France after Macron refuses to name prime minister from leftwing coalition

France has been plunged into further political chaos after Emmanuel Macron refused to name a prime minister from the leftwing coalition that won the most parliamentary seats in the snap election last month.

The president had hoped consultations would break the political deadlock caused by the election that left the Assemblée Nationale divided into three roughly equal blocks – left, centre and far right – none of which has a majority of seats.

After two days of talks with party and parliamentary leaders to break the stalemate and allow him to name a prime minister with cross-party support, Macron’s decision not to choose the New Popular Front’s candidate was met with anger and threats of impeachment. ...

Macron announced another round of consultations with party leaders and veteran politicians to start on Tuesday.

What Is RealPage? DOJ Sues Software Firm Using Algorithm Enabling Landlords to Fix High Rents

Abuse of migrants rampant at Louisiana Ice centers

Abuse of thousands of migrants at federal immigration detention centers in Louisiana is rampant, inhumane and meets the legal definition of torture, according to a report published on Monday by a coalition of human rights groups.

Accusations include the shackling of detainees for lengthy periods in painful positions, filthy drinking water, food contaminated by rat feces and served in meager portions, and a denial of or restricted access to medical and mental health treatment.

Additionally, the report alleges, women are routinely refused essential menstrual products, some restrained detainees were denied food, water, exercise or restroom facilities for more than 24 hours at a time and others were taunted, beaten or sexually assaulted by guards.

The allegations draw on interviews over a two-year period with more than 6,200 people held in nine Louisiana detention centers under the purview of the New Orleans immigration and customs enforcement field office (Nola Ice). The report paints a damning picture of a miserable life in the facilities, eight of which are run by private contractors that have made substantial financial contributions for lobbying and to various politicians’ campaigns.

“These individuals have fled persecution and violence only to be thrown in ‘civil’ detention and left to fend for themselves in an abusive, profit-driven and manipulative system,” said Sarah Decker, staff attorney at Robert F Kennedy Human Rights and one of the report’s lead authors. “We’ve heard horrific stories that have been corroborated by extensive documentation. Our findings further support what detained people and their advocates have long demanded. The Nola Ice jails must be shut down.”

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Mark Zuckerberg ADMITS Biden Admin PRESSURED FACEBOOK To Censor Hunter Biden Laptop

Special counsel appeals Trump classified documents case dismissal

Special counsel prosecutors asked a federal appeals court on Monday to reinstate Donald Trump’s criminal case over his retention of classified documents, arguing the trial judge was wrong to toss the charges on grounds that the prosecution team’s appointment violated the US constitution.

The submission of the filing by the special counsel, Jack Smith, marks the start of what is likely to be a protracted legal battle that is likely to reach the US supreme court and with it, the viability of not just the documents case but Trump’s criminal case in Washington.

Over 81 pages, prosecutors argued that the US district judge Aileen Cannon erred in tossing the charges on grounds that the special counsel was illegally appointed, complaining that she ignored prior court rulings and misread at least four statutes that authorized Smith’s appointment.

The filing to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit merely starts a process that could take months or potentially years to resolve, as prosecutors try to resuscitate their moribund case against Trump that once appeared the most legally perilous for the former president.

Cannon’s stunning decision to dismiss the classified documents case was based on a key distinction – compared to other special counsels – that Smith had been brought in externally and was not a Senate-confirmed justice department official when he was named to lead the Trump cases.

At least five US Secret Service agents placed on leave after Trump shooting

At least five US Secret Service agents have been placed on leave after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July. The action is reportedly the latest consequence of the security failings surrounding the 13 July shooting, when a 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire on Trump as he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. ...

The agents who were placed on leave work at the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh field office, which was responsible for coordinating security at the rally along with local law enforcement, according to Real Clear Politics, which broke the story. They include the head of the Pittsburgh office.

The officers concerned are believed to have been put on administrative leave, which usually involves being taken off operational duties while still receiving a full salary. They are expected to report to the office and may be given paperwork duties. An agency investigation is understood to be looking into how a low-rise building – from whose roof Crooks fired – was left outside the security perimeter, despite being only 150 yards (137 metres) from where the former president and Republican nominee for November’s election spoke.

RFK Jr Trump Endorsement Could BACKFIRE ON Kamala Harris

Michigan elections board places Cornel West back on the ballot, for now

In a 3-1 decision, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers voted to place independent presidential candidate Cornel West on the ballot following a challenge from Democratic lawyers seeking to bar him.

Former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, Mark Brewer, on behalf of Rosa Holliday, another Democratic Party operative, sought to block West from the ballot on the basis that circulator petition signatures had allegedly been forged.

West had been previously removed from the ballot by the Michigan State Department over technical issues regarding his affidavit of identity not being properly notarized.

This past Saturday, Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford overruled the state’s decision, noting that West’s campaign had submitted more than the minimum number of signatures to be on the ballot and that presidential candidates are not even required in the state of Michigan to file an affidavit of identity.

Despite the judge’s ruling, on Monday Democrats on the Michigan Board of State Canvassers were poised to vote to keep West off the ballot and readily accepted arguments put forward by Brewer that circulator’s signatures had been “forged.”

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Plutonium levels near US atomic site in Los Alamos similar to Chornobyl

Soil, plants and water along popular recreation spots near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, are contaminated with “extreme concentrations” of plutonium, a new study has found, but calls for the federal government to act have been dismissed.

Michael Ketterer, a Northern Arizona University scientist and lead researcher on the project, said the plutonium levels in and around New Mexico’s Acid Canyon were among the highest he had ever seen in a publicly accessible area in the US during his decades-long career – comparable to what is found in Ukraine at the site of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

The radioactive isotopes are “hiding in plain sight”, Ketterer said.

“This is one of the most shocking things I’ve ever stumbled across in my life,” he said.

The paper comes on the heels of the US Department of Defense announcing it will ramp up production of plutonium pits, a core component of nuclear weapons, at Los Alamos. Meanwhile, the US Senate approved a defense bill with expanded funding for those exposed to the government’s radioactive waste. Local public health advocates say they are outraged by the exclusion of the Los Alamos region from the benefits.

‘A crisis entirely of humanity’s making’: UN chief issues climate SOS on trip to Pacific

Pacific island nations are in “grave danger” from rising sea levels and the world must “answer the SOS before it is too late”, the UN chief has warned during a visit to Tonga.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, urged the world to “look to the Pacific and listen to the science” as he released two new reports on the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s most important annual political gathering.

Sea-surface temperatures in the south-west Pacific have risen three times faster than the global average since 1980, according to a regional report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and released on Tuesday.

It also found that marine heatwaves in the region had roughly doubled in frequency since 1980 and become more intense and longer-lasting. The report said 34 mostly storm or flood-related “hydrometeorological hazard events” in the south-west Pacific last year led to more than 200 deaths and affected more than 25 million people.

In a second report published on Tuesday, the UN’s climate action team warned that the climate crisis and sea-level rise were “no longer distant threats”, especially for the Pacific’s small island developing states. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded with high confidence in 2021 that the global mean sea level was rising at rates unprecedented in at least the last 3,000 years as a result of human-induced global warming.

Bacteria helping to extract rare metals from old batteries in boost for green tech

Scientists have formed an unusual new alliance in their fight against climate change. They are using bacteria to help them extract rare metals vital in the development of green technology. Without the help of these microbes, we could run out of raw materials to build turbines, electric cars and solar panels, they say.

The work is being spearheaded by scientists at the University of Edinburgh and aims to use bacteria that can extract lithium, cobalt, manganese and other minerals from old batteries and discarded electronic equipment. These scarce and expensive metals are vital for making electric cars and other devices upon which green technology devices depend, a point stressed by Professor Louise Horsfall, chair of sustainable biotechnology at Edinburgh. ...

And the key to this recycling was the microbe, said Horsfall. “Bacteria are wonderful, little crazy things that can carry out some weird and wonderful processes. Some bacteria can synthesise nanoparticles of metals, for example. We believe they do this as a detoxification process. Basically they latch on metal atoms and then they spit them out as nanoparticles so that they are not poisoned by them.”

Using such strains of bacteria, Horsfall and her team have now taken waste from electronic batteries and cars, dissolved it and then used bacteria to latch on to specific metals in the waste and deposit these as solid chemicals. “First we did it with manganese. Later we did it with nickel and lithium. And then we used a different strain of bacteria and we were able to extract cobalt and nickel.” Crucially the strains of bacteria used to extract these metals were naturally occurring ones.

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Also of Interest

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

NYT Uncritically Reported Israel’s Version of Golan Bombing

Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, Arrested In France

Jewish Terror Has Exploded, and Nothing Is Standing in Its Way. It May Bring Israel Down

Why US Belligerence Towards Russia Is Likely to Continue No Matter Who Is President

Ukraine Develops 'Its Own' Cruise Missile

Colonialism as a Bulwark Against China

More than 60 Ice detainees on hunger strike over ‘inhumane’ living conditions

Elon Musk Doesn’t Protect Speech, He Monetizes It

High-End US Donors Target an Antitrust Champion

Pavel Durov’s Arrest Sparks OUTRAGE in Russia; France Must RELEASE Or CHARGE

Dems just said: "I've made a huge mistake"

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A Little Night Music

Bob & Earl - You Made A Boo-Boo

Bob & Earl - Baby, Your Time Is My Time

Bob & Earl - Dancin' Everywhere

Bob & Earl - Deep Down Inside

Bob & Earl - Oh Baby Doll

Bob & Earl - Puppet on a string

Bob & Earl - The Duck

Bob & Earl - Baby, it's over

Bob & Earl - Everybody Jerk

Bob & Earl - Harlem Shuffle

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