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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: TV Slim

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues songwriter and guitarist TV Slim. Enjoy!

^{T V Slim - Flatfoot Sam}

"Don’t worry Americans, in 2028 you can elect a Democrat who will spend their entire administration creating the desperate conditions and strife which cause people to vote for tyrannical Republicans."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

The Imperial Murder Machine Is In A State Of Hyperactivity

I hate this.

I hate waiting for the next imperial act of war.

I hate having to be aware of sunrise time in Iran so I can relax knowing they made it through another night without US airstrikes.

I hate having to wonder which empire-targeted population is going to get hit next.

The imperial murder machine has been so frenetically active these last few years. When I first started writing about the US empire it was the beginning of Trump’s first term, at a state of relative calm. There were mounting cold war tensions with Russia and the US-backed Saudi atrocities in Yemen, a faltering dirty war in Syria and a half-assed coup attempt in Venezuela, but these frenzied nonstop regime change ops and brazen power grabs weren’t so much a thing back then.

There were days on end when there just wasn’t much to write about in terms of US warmongering. I try to write something every day, so a lot of the time I’d wind up putting out poems or articles about philosophy and spirituality, or just some observations about US politics, because things simply were not as tense as they are now. That went on for years.

Then in 2022 all the brinkmanship with Russia erupted in the Ukraine proxy war, and suddenly my audience started exploding, and I’ve been busy ever since.

In 2023 the Gaza holocaust began, and the US and Israel succeeded in turning the enclave into a gravel parking lot with the still-developing goal of ethnically cleansing the entire population.

The decapitation of Hezbollah, the rapidly accelerated assault on the West Bank, the fall of Assad, and the attacks on Yemen and Iran advanced middle east agendas that the US and Israel had been pursuing for years.

Then they started moving the war machinery to Latin America and eventually kidnapped Maduro, and then immediately shifted the imperial crosshairs to Cuba.

And now they’re doing everything they can to foment civil war in Iran, with airstrikes from the Trump administration reported possible at any time.

It’s just been a nonstop onslaught. As soon as they knock out one disobedient government or population, they’re on the to next.

In the circles I move in you often hear people talk about how the US empire is on its way out and getting weaker and weaker, but I dunno man. It sure has racked up a lot of wins lately. Maybe they’re just grabbing up as much global power as quickly as they can before things heat up with China, but whatever the reason, they’re certainly not acting like they’ve lost the ability to dominate world affairs right now.

Whether they have or not, the work remains the same: wake the public up to the unacceptable nature of the empire, and to the truth that a better world is possible.

Trump BLEW IT! Iran Vows BRUTAL Retaliation to US Strike | Scott Ritter & Ray McGovern

Trump promises ‘help is on its way’ and tells Iranians to ‘keep protesting’

Donald Trump has told Iranians to keep protesting and said help was on the way, in the clearest sign yet that the US president may be preparing for military action against Tehran.

“Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, a day after the White House press secretary said airstrikes were among “many, many options” the US president was considering.

Trump added that he had cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials until the “senseless killing” of protesters stopped. ...

His call to keep protesting comes a day after demonstrations had apparently subsided owing to the severity of the crackdown. [Or perhaps it was Iran using Russian technology to defeat the Starlink external command and control communications infrastructure. See video above. The Guardian is catapulting the propaganda. - js] Trump is still conferring with officials about the action he could take. But his words imply he will not be content with further economic pressure.

On Tuesday evening, the state department warned US citizens to leave Iran immediately and Trump said that there would be “very strong action” if the regime hangs protesters. He did not elaborate on what that would mean.

LIVE FROM TEHRAN: Foreign Pressure or Internal Crisis? : Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi

During a paid speech for Maryam Rajavi’s MEK cult, Rudy Giuliani celebrated claims that US sanctions had forced Iranians to sell their organs in the street pic.twitter.com/HyMqYEsQsy https://t.co/DalqJorGmb

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 11, 2026

Iran is Most Ready to Retaliate /Alastair Crooke & Lt Col Daniel Davis

White House threatens “lethal force” against Iran

Nine days after launching an assault on Venezuela, which killed 100 people, to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration is openly threatening strikes against Iran, using as a pretext mass protests that have erupted across the country. ... Trump is set to receive a military briefing on Iran on Tuesday. The Pentagon is presenting a wide range of strike options to Trump. The New York Times reported Monday, “Possible targets include Iran’s nuclear program, going beyond the US airstrikes that battered it in June, and ballistic missile sites.” ...

Monday evening, Trump announced on Truth Social a 25 percent tariff, “effective immediately,” on any country that does business with Iran. Trump’s latest threats echo those he made after his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in late December. The Washington Post reported that strikes against Iran were a major topic of discussion at the meeting. “If Iran is trying to build up again,” Trump said at the meeting, “we’ll knock the hell out of them.” ...

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, writing on his Substack, noted the relationship between the Venezuela operation and the threats against Iran. “The objective of the Venezuela operation is to cut off China, America’s economic rival, from its ongoing purchases of Venezuela’s cheap heavy crude oil,” Hersh wrote. China is the largest importer of Venezuelan oil. “The next target, I have been told, will be Iran, another purveyor to China whose crude oil reserves are the world’s fourth largest,” Hersh continued. He characterized the operations as “the opening shot in a US energy war on China.”

The Democratic Party has offered no serious opposition to Trump’s global military escalation. In an interview with Fox, Senator Mark Warner declared, “The Iranian regime is awful, and I stand with the Iranian people.” In December, 115 House Democrats—including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar—voted for a $901 billion defense authorization bill, authorizing the largest annual military spending in US history.

Trump Threatens IRAN STRIKES, Israeli Media ADMITS Arming Protesters

Iran Says Protests End; Prepares For War; US Debates Options; Kiev Crisis; Blackout Constant Strikes

Leaked documents reveal UAE proposal to back Israel's genocide in Gaza ‘by all means necessary’

A leaked document obtained by the EmirateLeaks outlet has revealed an Emirati government proposal to use UAE bases in the Red Sea to provide direct military, intelligence, and logistical support to Israel throughout its war on Gaza. The document dates back to October 2023 and is addressed to the Joint Operations Command of the UAE Armed Forces. It was written by Hamdan bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Representative of the Al-Dhafra Region and Chairman of the UAE Red Crescent Authority.

“With the [7 October] terrorist … attacks on the sister state of Israel, and based on the historic agreement stipulating cooperation between the two countries … and in implementation of the order issued by the UAE Joint Operations Command to support the State of Israel through military bases in the southern Red Sea region – Al-Mokha on Yemen’s western coast, as well as Massawa and Assab in Eritrea and Somalia – swift preparations and readiness were undertaken to provide our military bases in the southern Red Sea, especially in Yemen, with everything necessary to support the State of Israel,” the document starts out by saying.

The document explicitly calls for the UAE to “strengthen Israel in its war on the terrorists in Palestine,” and for that support to continue “until the terrorists are defeated.” The leaked document also calls for the continuation of “community initiatives” to enhance “social cohesion” between the two states. It also calls for “close, cohesive, and integrated” cooperation in “counterterrorism, intelligence sharing, and military technology, and “confirms the provision of intelligence equipment and devices to Israel worth one billion dollars.”

It goes on to criticize Qatari support for Hamas, and accuses Kuwait of acting “alongside Qatar” in “providing massive financial support to fighting groups in Palestine,” while calling this a “clear contradiction to our state’s policies and to the agreements between our state and Kuwait.”

“There is ample room to cite our previous ties with the State of Israel, which obligate us to cooperate with it and come to its aid, to rally in its support in times of adversity and prosperity alike. The United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel are linked by close cultural, diplomatic, economic, and security relations, and these relations have intensified since the historic agreement of 2020,” it says. The UAE officially normalized ties with Israel in 2020, when the US-brokered Abraham Accords were signed. Washington and Tel Aviv have been pushing for Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to join the Abraham Accords.

Max Blumenthal : Protecting Protesters or Manipulating Unrest? Trump and Iran

Winter storms kill five in Gaza amid desperate conditions in makeshift camps

Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, as dangerous living conditions persist after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls.

A ceasefire has been in effect since October, but aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms. The dead include two women, a girl and a man, officials at the Shifa hospital, Gaza City’s largest, which received the bodies, said on Tuesday. The Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

Three members of a family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre (26ft) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City, Shifa hospital said. At least five others were injured. Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

“The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” Bassel Hamouda said after the family funeral. “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people were killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

Tucker EXPOSES Zionist Billionaire Venezuela War Profiteer!

US aircraft that attacked suspected drug boat reportedly disguised as civilian plane

The US aircraft that carried out the first airstrike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean was reportedly disguised as a civilian plane – a possible war crime. The New York Times reported that the aircraft had been painted to obscure its military identity, and its munitions were hidden inside its fuselage rather than visible under its wings.

The 2 September attack on a small boat last year killed 11 Venezuelans, including two survivors from the first strike who were clinging to wreckage in the water when they were bombed a second time. The Venezuelan government denied that the dead men had been gang members, and Washington presented no proof they were involved in drug smuggling.

The Trump administration went on to kill more than 120 people in 35 separate attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, in what it said was a counter-narcotics campaign in the run-up to this month’s direct attack on Venezuela. The Pentagon has justified the killings on the grounds that the US is at war with drug trafficking cartels. Most international legal experts reject that and say the attacks amount to murder.

Even if the claim of being at war is justified, specialists in the laws of war say the use of a plane disguised to look like a civilian aircraft, so that its targets would be caught off-guard, would represent the war crime of “perfidy” under international and US military legal standards. “If we move from the legally incorrect premise that this is a lethal operation governed by the laws of war, then the concept of perfidy here is relevant,” Nehal Bhuta, professor of public international law at the University of Edinburgh, said.

Bhuta said the use of civilian disguises in war would have a corrosive effect, for example making every airliner with civilian markings a potential target. “This is precisely the destructive slippery slope that a firm commitment to prohibition against perfidy is aimed to avoid,” he said. He added, however, that in the absence of an armed conflict, the “perfidy” issue was irrelevant as the strikes should be classed as extra-judicial killings. “Fundamentally, the debate about ‘war crimes’ is a distraction – the whole operation is illegal, and the conduct of an extrajudicial execution by means of a plane with civilian markings is in fact reminiscent of a death squad operation,” Bhuta said.

Greenland and Denmark unite against US advances before White House talks

Greenland’s prime minister has said “we choose Denmark” before high-stakes talks at the White House as Donald Trump seeks to take control of the Arctic territory. Amid rising tensions over the US president’s push, Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Tuesday told a joint press conference with his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, that the island would not be owned or governed by Washington.

“We are now facing a geopolitical crisis. If we have to choose between the US and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark, Nato and the EU,” Nielsen said, adding that the island’s “goal and desire is peaceful dialogue, with a focus on cooperation”.Trump’s pursuit of the island was also a matter of “international law and our right to our own country”, he said.

Trump first raised the idea of a US takeover of Greenland, a largely self-governing part of the Danish kingdom, in 2019, during his first term, and again in the weeks before he took office for his second term last January. But he has ramped up his rhetoric significantly this month, saying the US would take it “one way or the other”. Trump’s most recent threats have prompted a geopolitical crisis, raised significant doubt over the survival of Nato and, for many of the 57,000 Greenlandic people who have found themselves at the centre of it, sleepless nights and anxiety over their safety, identity and futures. ...

The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Vivian Motzfeldt, are due to hold a crunch meeting in Washington on Wednesday with the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Naaja H Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for business, mineral resources, energy, justice and gender equality, said on a visit to London on Tuesday that the Greenlandic government did not know what was on the agenda for the White House meeting. Urging the US to act as allies, she said: “For others it might be a piece of land but for us it is home.”

The meeting comes as Trump has shocked the EU and Nato by refusing to rule out military force to seize the strategically located and mineral-rich island, which is covered by many of the protections offered by the two organisations because Denmark belongs to both. Frederiksen said it had not been easy for Denmark to “stand up to completely unacceptable pressure from our closest ally”. She said something fundamental was at stake, and there was “much evidence the most challenging part lies ahead”.

Thomas Massie IN STUDIO: Iran War, Venezuela, Epstein Coverup

Trump claims victory on US economy despite many Americans’ cost of living concerns

Donald Trump claimed victory on the economy after 12 months back in office on Tuesday, declaring it to be the “greatest first year in history” as many Americans express alarm over the cost of living. In a stream-of-consciousness speech at the Detroit Economic Club, the US president delivered his gold-tinted view of how the economy has fared on his watch. Prices were down, he claimed, despite official data showing otherwise, and productivity was “smashing expectations”.

Even as he touted achievements during the first year of his second term, Trump has started to acknowledge concerns over affordability across the US, with November’s midterm elections creeping closer. The White House has moved to roll out a series of policy proposals in recent days that aspire to address affordability. “We’ll go down as the greatest first year in history that nobody’s ever had, just based on the numbers,” Trump said in Michigan, citing inflation and GDP data that showed price growth had stabilized, and the economy grew at a higher pace at the end of 2025.

Inflation has come down slightly since the fall, but remains significantly above typical levels. While GDP growth unexpectedly surged last summer, it came amid a turbulent year for the US economy. Annualized inflation went down to a four-year low in April at 2.3% before crawling up to 3% by September. GDP contracted in the first quarter of 2025, for the first time since 2022. The US labor market, which Trump didn’t touch on in his speech, had a particularly volatile year – its weakest since the pandemic – as the unemployment rate edged up to a four-year high.

Trump fired the federal government official in charge of labor statistics in August, hours after data revealed jobs growth had stalled. On Tuesday, however, he extolled official data which he argued was without comparison. The numbers had been “unbelievable”, he said.

Luigi Mangione Judge PIVOTS!

Bill and Hillary Clinton refuse to testify in House Epstein investigation

Bill and Hillary Clinton announced they would not comply with a subpoena demanding congressional testimony about their relationships to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, while launching an extraordinary attack on Republicans and Donald Trump.

The Republican-led House oversight committee in August subpoenaed the former president and first lady after its chair, James Comer, announced the panel would review the government’s handling of Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died by what was determined to be suicide while awaiting trial in 2019.

In a letter to Comer dated Monday, attorneys for the Clintons called the subpoenas “invalid and legally unenforceable, untethered to a valid legislative purpose, unwarranted because they do not seek pertinent information, and an unprecedented infringement on the separation of powers”.

The demand for testimony “runs afoul of the clearly defined limitations on Congress’ investigative power propounded by the Supreme Court of the United States”, they wrote, adding that “it is clear the subpoenas themselves – and any subsequent attempt to enforce them – are nothing more than a ploy to attempt to embarrass political rivals, as President Trump has directed”.

Bill Clinton’s subpoena commanded him to appear for testimony by Tuesday, and Hillary Clinton by Wednesday. After the former president did not show up, Comer told reporters at the Capitol that he would move to hold him in contempt next week. “I think it’s important to note that this subpoena was voted on in a bipartisan manner by this committee. This wasn’t something that I just issued as chairman of the committee,” Comer said. “No one’s accusing Bill Clinton of anything, any wrongdoing. We just have questions, and that’s why the Democrats voted along with Republicans to subpoena Bill Clinton.”

‘Madness’: two US citizens violently detained by ICE in Minnesota

Two US citizens who are employees of a Minnesota Target store were detained by federal immigration agents, before at least one was dumped in a different parking lot, community leaders and a Democratic politician have alleged. The Richfield incident is one in a growing number of violent encounters between civilians and federal agents captured on video since the killing of Renee Nicole Good by the ICE officer Jonathan E Ross on 7 January.

According to the Minnesota state representative Michael Howard, who represents Richfield, and video footage taken by witnesses, a team of ICE agents that had assembled at the Target on 8 January forced two employees to the ground at the entrance to the store, then bundled them into a dark SUV.

Gregory Bovino, the senior US border patrol official who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement action in Minnesota and elsewhere, was present during the incident. A later clip posted on X purports to show one of the two in a distressed state at a different parking lot. In the clip, he is crying, and a bystander is heard saying that he is bleeding, although blood is not visible in the video. “They threw me on the fucking ground,” he says between sobs. ...

Howard [...] said he had spoken to both of the people who were detained and criticized what he called an ICE “rampage across Minnesota” in the wake of Good’s killing. “In Richfield, federal agents, including Greg Bovino, senior commander of US Border Patrol, entered Target without a warrant, physically assaulted, and arrested two Target employees, both US citizens,” he said in an update to his webpage. “They have now been released, but sustained injuries and untold trauma while their rights were trampled for no reason whatsoever.”

In a subsequent interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, he added: “I can’t believe in the year 2026, in our country, we have two workers, they’re US citizens, violently arrested and hauled away. It’s madness.”

US agents use teargas on Minneapolis protesters as anti-ICE calls intensify

Federal officers in Minneapolis used teargas and eye irritant against activists on Tuesday as the Department of Homeland Security announced it was carrying out “its largest operation in DHS history”, deploying hundreds of border agents on top of the thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents already in the city. A DHS official told CBS News that there were currently 800 Customs and Border Protection agents and 2,000 ICE officials in the Minneapolis area as tensions have risen in recent days. “This is the largest DHS operation in history,” the official told the news outlet.

The surge comes on the same day several federal prosecutors in the state and in Washington resigned in protest over the justice department’s decision not to hold a civil rights investigation into the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis. The government’s immigration crackdown is next headed to a federal court where Minnesota and two mayors are asking a judge to immediately suspend the operation. No hearing has been set on the request.

Gas clouds filled a Minneapolis street near where Good was fatally shot in the head by an immigration agent last week. A man scrubbed his eyes with snow and screamed for help while agents in an unmarked Jeep sprayed an orange irritant and drove away. It’s common for people to boo, taunt and blow orange whistles when they spot heavily armed agents passing through in unmarked vehicles or walking the streets, all part of a grassroots effort to warn the neighborhood and remind the government that they are watching.

Separately, a judge heard arguments and said she would rule by Thursday or Friday on a request to restrict the use of force, such as chemical irritants, on people who are observing and recording agents’ activities. Government attorneys argued that officers were acting within their authority and must protect themselves.

With the Department of Homeland Security pledging to send more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota, the state, joined by Minneapolis and St Paul, sued Donald Trump’s administration on Monday to halt or limit the surge. The lawsuit says the Department of Homeland Security is violating the first amendment and other constitutional protections by focusing on a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants. “This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and it must stop,” Keith Ellison, the state attorney general, said.

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Trump redefining what "presidential" means.

Trump gives heckler the middle finger during Michigan Ford plant visit

Donald Trump gave someone the middle finger on Tuesday, reportedly responding to shouts admonishing him as a “pedophile protector” as he toured a Michigan Ford plant. The celebrity news and gossip site TMZ shared a short video featuring the president’s flustered response to someone heckling off-screen, during which he appears to issue the hand gesture.

Trump spent Tuesday afternoon touring Ford’s River Rouge complex in Dearborn, before giving a speech at the Detroit Economic Club.

White House communications director Steven Cheung didn’t confirm whether Trump flashed his middle finger, but said in a statement issued to the Guardian that he gave an “appropriate and unambiguous response” when “a lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage”.

In the roughly 15-second clip, a person can be heard yelling from the floor of the Ford plant while Trump looks down from a railing. TMZ claims Trump yelled obscenities before giving the finger.

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Trump says Microsoft will pay more for its datacenters’ electricity

Donald Trump said he is partnering with tech companies to ensure the large energy-hungry datacenters vital for AI do not drive up electricity bills in the US. On Tuesday, the US president announced that Microsoft was “first up”.

“We are the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and Number One in AI. Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but, the big Technology Companies who build them must ‘pay their own way.’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you, and congratulations to Microsoft.”

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, outlined the company’s plan at an event on Tuesday near the White House titled Community-First AI Infrastructure. He said the initiative aimed to minimize water use and ensure that Microsoft’s electricity usage does not add to individuals’ utility rates. In towns where Microsoft has datacenters, he said, the company would pay its property taxes and accept neither tax reductions nor electricity rate discounts.

“Like major buildouts of the past, AI infrastructure is expensive and complex,” Smith wrote in a blogpost on Tuesday. “This revives a longstanding question: how can our nation build transformative infrastructure in a way that strengthens, rather than strains, the local communities where it takes root?”

Trump has embraced AI during his second term in office, hosting tech CEOs at the White House and Mar-a-Lago. He has signed executive orders to deregulate AI, hasten innovation and ease environmental rules to expedite federal permitting for datacenters. But as concern over affordability and backlash against datacenters have rippled across the country, Trump seems to be modifying his stance.

‘A perfect, wild storm’: widely loathed datacenters see little US political opposition

In late October, an unlikely coalition formed to fiercely oppose controversial plans for more than a dozen Michigan datacenters – rightwing “Stop the Steal” activists joined forces with groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, and people of all political stripes in between. Polling showed just 28% of residents supported new datacenters, and, amid the furor, Dylan Wegela, a Michigan state congressman, introduced a bill to repeal datacenter tax credits. Despite an opportunity for what looked like an easy political win, the bill has few co-sponsors, is unlikely to move in the state house, and most datacenter plans are poised to be built.

Wegela in part attributed the tepid legislative response to “a lack of political courage” from other politicians. But the situation in Michigan is emblematic of the broader dynamics unfolding around datacenters in the US. The centers are often so widely loathed across the political spectrum that they are bringing together people who can agree on little else, and the issue has been dubbed “the great unifier”. Despite this, there has been scant political opposition or action among many Democrats or Republicans – why?

In short, there is a very powerful confluence of forces pushing for datacenters, advocates say. “It is a perfect, wild storm,” said Christy McGillivray, a former Sierra Club Michigan lobbyist who helped push for stronger regulations around the centers in the state. Among other issues, national Republican and Democratic leadership are jockeying for big tech’s financial favor in the wake of an election cycle in which the sector shattered spending records as it shifted from leaning left to right.

Meanwhile, those who benefit most from centers represent a potent political force: big tech, the fossil fuel industry, utility companies and the AFL-CIO are allied in support of datacenters and the claims of new jobs they might create. At the same time, the political establishment has made AI expansion a national security issue, and some pro-business Democrats in Michigan are driven by purported economic development. Moreover, the problems are relatively new, and many Congress members are not yet educated enough on the issue, industry observers say.

The grassroots opposition stems from fears that the centers would increase energy bills, deplete water sources, destroy communities’ rural character, pollute, and cause more fossil fuel to be built. The centers, which house AI infrastructure, create very few jobs, and AI is in part designed to eliminate many jobs. With state and federal lawmakers largely in support, David v Goliath fights are playing out at the local level across the US, often pitting working- and middle-class residents of all political backgrounds against the interests of tech oligarchs.

‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body

High-profile studies reporting the presence of microplastics throughout the human body have been thrown into doubt by scientists who say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives. One chemist called the concerns “a bombshell”.

Studies claiming to have revealed micro and nanoplastics in the brain, testes, placentas, arteries and elsewhere were reported by media across the world, including the Guardian. There is no doubt that plastic pollution of the natural world is ubiquitous, and present in the food and drink we consume and the air we breathe. But the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear, and an explosion of research has taken off in this area in recent years.

However, micro- and nanoplastic particles are tiny and at the limit of today’s analytical techniques, especially in human tissue. There is no suggestion of malpractice, but researchers told the Guardian of their concern that the race to publish results, in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to rushed results and routine scientific checks sometimes being overlooked.

The Guardian has identified seven studies that have been challenged by researchers publishing criticism in the respective journals, while a recent analysis listed 18 studies that it said had not considered that some human tissue can produce measurements easily confused with the signal given by common plastics.

There is an increasing international focus on the need to control plastic pollution but faulty evidence on the level of microplastics in humans could lead to misguided regulations and policies, which is dangerous, researchers say. It could also help lobbyists for the plastics industry to dismiss real concerns by claiming they are unfounded. While researchers say analytical techniques are improving rapidly, the doubts over recent high-profile studies also raise the questions of what is really known today and how concerned people should be about microplastics in their bodies.

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Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: The Machinery of Terror

The Extortionate Human Cost of US-Led Sanctions, and the Role of Western Media in Covering It Up

Iran Riots – Now What Does This Mean?

By suspending 37 aid orgs is Israel pushing toward a final expulsion?

‘UK Waiting for Us to Die’

South Korean prosecutors demand death penalty for former president Yoon Suk Yeol

EU official plotted to ‘organise resistance’ against Hungary’s Orban, files show

Minnesota Should Charge ICE Agent With Murder

LA Protester Permanently Blinded After DHS Agent Unloads ‘Nonlethal’ Round Into His Face

Newsom Ripped as Billionaire ‘Errand Boy’ for Opposing Wealth Tax on California Plutocrats

Mapped: how the world is losing its forests to wildfires

Saudis, UAE Break Into Regional HOT WAR

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A Little Night Music

T V Slim - Hold Me Close To Your Heart

T.V. Slim & his Bluesmen - You Won't Treat Me Right

TV Slim - Don't Knock The Blues

T.V. Slim - Don't Reach Across My Plate

T.V. Slim - My Baby is Gone

T.V. Slim - Bad Understanding Blues

TV Slim And The Soul Bros. - Can't be satisfied

T V Slim - Gravy Around Your Steak

TV Slim and his Heartbreakers - Flat Foot Sam Met Jim Dandy

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