The Evening Blues - 8-7-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features "The Godfather of Soul," James Brown. Enjoy!
James Brown - Cold Sweat
“Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them.”
-- Terry Pratchett
News and Opinion
These billionaire generative AI corporations reap profits by making us worse human beings.
There’s a creepy tweet going around by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recommending that parents feed their kids’ interests and schedules into ChatGPT so it can generate a daily custom-made bot podcast to listen to on their morning drive to school.
Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch posted the viral reply, “What if you just talked to your children?”
Which is a crazy thing to have to say. But here we are.
cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night:
connect your family calendars and explain your kids' interests.
every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid's soccer game that afternoon, one kid's upcoming birthday, some news, etc.
— Sam Altman (@sama) July 31, 2026
They’re trying to make us worse. These billionaire generative AI corporations reap profits by making us worse human beings.
They want us to become less human. Less connected. Less creative. Less capable. Less wise. Less intelligent. They want to atrophy our ability to speak, write, research, relate, draw, make music, and cultivate intimate connections with the most important people in our lives, and then sell those things back to us at the hands of some chatbot.
Their entire business model is built around turning us into a bunch of soup-brained narcissists who can’t manage our own lives and our own relationships, and then being the crutch that we use to compensate for that self-inflicted debilitation.
The product they are selling us is not the chatbot itself. The actual product they’re selling is freedom from cognitive and emotional discomfort. From the discomfort of learning new skills. From the discomfort of personal growth. From the discomfort of taking risks. From the discomfort of pushing past that intimidating blank page to get something written. From the discomfort of having to think about other people and consider their interests and feelings. From the discomfort of having to interact with other humans and maybe say the wrong thing sometimes. From the discomfort of leaping into the unknown.
But all the best things in life sit on the other side of discomfort. Love. Romance. Intimacy. Art. Creativity. Growth. Healing. Rising beyond our limitations. Liberating ourselves from the illusion of the ego. They all require us to push through discomfort to the treasure on the other side. An aversion to discomfort is an aversion to a fulfilling human life on this planet.
But that’s exactly what these chatbot companies are nudging people into. They’re encouraging us to spend our lives curled up in impotent little balls of emotional infancy and intellectual stagnation so that they can sell us machines which act as digital prostheses for the sacred parts of ourselves we have amputated.
We mustn’t let them do this to us. We must remain human. We must hold fast to all those precious aspects of our humanity they’re trying to extract and commodify.
Larry Johnson & Col. Larry Wilkerson: The Old Middle East Is DEAD
Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace issues first building contract – for a military base
Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which was set up in January to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, has finally issued its first construction contract in the devastated territory: a project to build a rudimentary 150-person military outpost to house Moroccan troops, a source familiar with the matter told the Guardian. The contract, which has not yet been finalised, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm that has previously carried out work with the US government in countries such as Iraq.
The Board of Peace is chaired by the US president and led by a team that includes his son-in-law Jared Kushner and friend Steve Witkoff. In an email, a Board of Peace official said the board and a group of Palestinian technocrats installed to oversee Gaza “are in the final stages of preparing several contract awards. None have been finalised.” The Palestinian group is known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza.
The official said “one prospective contract concerns facilities to support the international stabilisation force (ISF), which will assist in implementing the roadmap’s security and governance arrangements”. They added: “This contract will be one of many that are essential for the future of Gaza.”
The award comes just days after Trump announced that Hamas had agreed to disarm, though there are considerable questions about how the group would give up its guns. Israel has opposed the plan, and increased airstrikes in Gaza after Trump’s announcement.
REUTERS: ONLY 35% OF AMERICANS SUPPORT THE IRAN WAR — w/ Max Blumenthal
Top Democrats accuse Trump officials over Israeli settlers’ ‘unbridled violence’
Senior Democrats have accused Donald Trump’s administration of giving a green light to violent Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, warning that its policies created “a climate of impunity and unbridled violence” that endangers both Palestinians and US citizens. In a letter seen by the Guardian, a group of 19 Democratic senators and representatives call for the restoration of sanctions against extremist settlers and demand independent US investigations into the deaths of nine US citizens killed in the West Bank since 2022.
The letter, signed by the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren among others, is addressed to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary. It argues that Trump’s promise last year that “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank” has been undermined by events on the ground. “In practice,” the Democrats write, “violent settlers and the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government have proceeded to rapidly extend Israeli control over civilian populations in the region.”
The Democrats argue that Trump’s decision on his first day back in office to rescind sanctions imposed on more than 30 settlers and organisations linked to violence has had profound consequences. “Ending sanctions against those individuals and entities associated with West Bank extremism sent a clear message,” they write. “Settlers can use violent and deadly force with impunity against Palestinians and Americans while seizing land … and no one will face consequences.”
The letter cites UN figures showing 1,835 attacks on Palestinian communities and property during 2025, the highest number since records began, and says the UN has reported that the pace of settler attacks this year is higher than in any year on record. It highlights repeated attacks on Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town where the majority of residents are US citizens, including the burning of a family home belonging to Americans from Massachusetts and Washington state.
UNICEF Says 300 Children Killed in Gaza Over 300 Days
“The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children.”
That was one United Nations spokesperson’s assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
“A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children,” said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised.”
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with “painfully simple” and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: “When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?”
Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel’s withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
“Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action,” said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help “exhausted and hungry mothers” arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
UK Tribunal Says Anti-Zionism Is Protected Speech w/ Dr. David Miller
Israel charges West Bank settler over death of renowned Palestinian activist
Israeli prosecutors have charged a Jewish settler over the killing of a Palestinian community leader in the occupied West Bank last year – the first such indictment in nearly three years. In papers filed by the state attorney’s office, Yinon Levi is charged with reckless manslaughter in the death of Awdah Hathaleen, a prominent activist who was involved in the 2025 Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
The charges against Levi also include armed trespassing and malicious property damage during a July 2025 incident in which settlers operated a large excavator in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair, setting off a confrontation with residents.
Hathaleen filmed the moment he was shot during the confrontation. Footage released by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem shows Levi draw a weapon and fire in Hathaleen’s direction. Hathaleen is then heard moaning as he falls to the ground.
Thursday’s indictment is the first since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks that set off Israel’s war in Gaza and led to a sharp rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, B’Tselem said. Israeli soldiers and settlers have since killed at least 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank, among them at least 240 children, according to UN data.
Trita Parsi: New Deals Will Change the Middle East Forever
Strait of Hormuz over the last 24 hours: Another deadline goes by
Strait of Hormuz was supposed to be open today according to Axios. The day went by and nothing happened.
Instead, UKMTO reported another vessel that heard explosion nearby as it transited the Oman lane as if the… pic.twitter.com/d6X1MiVSGt
— HFI Research (@HFI_Research) August 6, 2026
text continued:
as if the Iranians are sending warning shots on purpose.
Meanwhile, news outlets are unanimously reporting that the supreme leader of Iran has not signed off. Shocker.
Well, as Trump said, we will know in the next 48 hours (24 hours left). Either the Strait is open or it's not, it's a black and white issue.
Trump denies US low on key munitions in war with Iran after reports of shortages
Donald Trump has lashed out at reports that the US is running short of key munitions in its war with Iran, threatening long prison sentences for officials who leak information about the military’s weapons stocks. The US president claimed on Thursday that the US had “massive amounts” of ammunition and said more was being manufactured and shipped to the region, as his frustration over the conflict spilled into a public attack on the media.
“Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, without providing evidence or details about the specific weapons in question. His remarks came after a report that he had demanded answers from his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, over alleged shortages at a cabinet meeting last Friday at Camp David, the US presidential retreat in Maryland.
Trump told Hegseth he felt misled because he believed the problem “had been fixed”, according to the Washington Post newspaper, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the exchange. Hegseth defended himself and sought to shift blame to his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, the Post reported.
The president responded angrily on Thursday, accusing the media of spreading “treasonous statements” and warning that those responsible would be pursued. “The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” he wrote. “Long term jail sentences will be sought!”
Resisting Trump's escalating attack on independent media, with Rania Khalek
50 percent say US military action in Iran will destabilize Middle East
Five months after the U.S. entered its war with Iran, more Americans expect the conflict to destabilize the Middle East, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday.
The survey found that 50 percent of Americans said they believe the war will decrease stability in the region over the next year, compared with just 17 percent who said they expect it to improve.
An additional 16 percent predicted the conflict would have little effect on the state of the region, while another 17 percent said they were unsure of the war’s broader consequences.
The poll also found that Americans are increasingly worried about the economic strains of the conflict. Since the Strait of Hormuz’s closure, global oil supplies have continued to dwindle and costs have risen.
Nearly 60 percent of Americans said they expect these prices to continue to rise over the next year, compared with 15 percent who said they anticipate lower prices.
Disaster Jobs Report! Top MAGA Republican Shock Defeat!
Most Americans view rising living costs as biggest barrier to a better life
Americans may seem increasingly divided on beliefs and values, but in a new survey of more than 30,000 adults from across the country spanning generations and economic classes, a majority of Americans agree there’s a significant barrier to achieving a better life: the rising cost of living.
When asked to describe what a better life in three to five years would look like, 60% of Americans said they wanted greater financial security, according to a survey that was conducted by the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and the WK Kellogg Foundation in mid-April.
In interviews that accompanied the survey, respondents often defined financial security as being able to afford basic necessities without worry. Though it may appear to be a simple goal, many Americans believe it’s out of reach. Forty per cent of respondents described themselves as either “getting by but financially vulnerable” or “struggling to meet basic needs”. Groceries and food costs in particular are causing financial distress, with 90% of respondents listing it as their top cost-of-living concern, followed by housing, transportation and healthcare.
The survey is the latest illustration of how the rising cost of living is the defining challenge for many Americans today. Between higher gas prices, growing electricity bills and a housing market that feels out of reach, many everyday expenses have turned into everyday frustrations for Americans whose paychecks aren’t keeping up with rising inflation. A recent Harris poll that found 95% of Americans believe the country is undergoing an affordability crisis.
A majority (60%) of respondents said local, state and federal government was responsible for helping people get ahead – 20% more than other institutions including faith organizations, banks, non-profits and schooling systems. But only 30% reported that government institutions have been helpful. Instead, respondents ranked friends and family as the top group helping them get ahead, followed by employers.
Airline workers reportedly decline to help US agents as Trump migrant crackdown accelerates
A dramatic increase in immigration enforcement at US airports has reportedly placed the airline industry at odds with the Trump administration as workers decline to help federal officials arrest their targets – many of whom have pending applications for visas, asylum or green cards. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) – both part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have expanded their collaboration to make as many as three dozen daily arrests at US airports last month, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Some of the people who have been taken into federal immigration custody include a former au pair, an asylum seeker with sickle cell anemia who uses a wheelchair, and women who are married to US citizens and in the process of applying for lawful permanent residency, according to the New York Times. “It’s not people with criminal records,” said Ghassan Shamieh, a San Francisco-based immigration lawyer who had four clients detained at airports over 10 days. “You are talking about people with legitimate pending applications.”
The latest crackdown represents another policy shift for the DHS, which has generally avoided immigration enforcement at airports so as not to disrupt domestic travel. But with a goal of 2,000 daily immigration arrests, ICE has started detaining people – many of whom have overstayed visas after coming to the US legally and have pending applications for immigration relief – in public places far from security checkpoints, whether at ticket counters or near gates.
At one point, in Dallas, a federal agent went so far as to try to board a plane in search of a target. But the Southwest Airlines gate agent reportedly refused to allow the officer to do so without a warrant signed by a judge, and airline employees blocked ICE from seeing a computer screen while passengers were boarding. Southwest told the Wall Street Journal that it follows the law and has protocols “to ensure appropriate legal documentation is presented by law enforcement personnel before any information about customers is shared”.
US law enforcement gave false information in case against woman charged in anti-ICE protest
Law enforcement officials provided false information to federal judges as they sought to build a criminal case against the independent journalist Georgia Fort in connection with a January protest, her lawyers said in court filings Thursday asking that the charges against her be dismissed.
Fort was one of nearly 40 people charged after demonstrators interrupted a service at Cities Church in St Paul, Minnesota after they learned an ICE official was a pastor there. Trump administration officials vowed to arrest anyone involved in the protest. Fort and the former CNN anchor Don Lemon were among those charged with conspiring to interfere with the religious rights of parishioners at their house of worship. They both have strongly denied the charges.
In at least 15 applications for search warrants, an investigator with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) said Fort had been chanting with protesters when they entered the church, her lawyers said. The justice department later conceded the claim was false. The error was insignificant, justice department lawyers later argued, because it ultimately didn’t make it into the indictment that they filed.
The errors were among those detailed in three different motions explaining why the criminal case against Fort should be dismissed. The case prosecutors have sought to make against her violates the first amendment, fails to state an actual crime, and is vindictive, her lawyers say.
“The government is punishing Fort for entering a church open to the public (after being invited in, no less) to document a protest, and then filming and disseminating that footage,” her lawyers wrote in one of the filings. “All of the evidence in this case points to the government prosecuting Fort precisely because she is a journalist, and in particular because she engaged in that constitutionally sacred work to amplify a message with which the government vehemently disagrees.”
Trump signs new orders targeting birthright citizenship
Donald Trump has made a second attempt to restrict the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, just weeks after the US supreme court rejected his initial, more sweeping bid to deny automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents. Trump on Thursday signed two executive orders that seek to broaden the categories of children ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called “birth tourism”. The directives are expected to face legal challenges.
Trump has long sought to dismantle birthright citizenship and has made the effort a centerpiece of his second-term immigration crackdown. He has thus far been unsuccessful. On Thursday, the president lashed out at the supreme court over what he called “a very unfortunate decision in the supreme court concerning birthright”.
A first new order seeks to expand the definitions of children who would not be able to receive birthright citizenship. Historical exceptions to the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment have included children born in the US to foreign sovereigns and diplomats; children of occupying foreign forces; children born on foreign ships; and children of Indigenous Americans. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, said the order aims to expand the categories to include children of members of “foreign terrorist organizations” as well as “large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments”, though it is unclear who would fall into the latter category.
The second order targets “birth tourism” – travel to the US with the intention of giving birth so that the child will acquire US citizenship. Trump claimed on Thursday, without pointing at any evidence, that “hundreds of thousands” of people have undertaken this practice. Traveling to the US under the guise of tourism while actually intending to give birth so the child automatically obtains citizenship constitutes visa fraud and is already illegal, raising questions about the practical implications of the new order beyond existing law.
Mitch McConnell announces discharge from rehabilitation center
The Republican US senator Mitch McConnell has been discharged from a rehabilitation center following the fall that left him hospitalized, he announced on Thursday. McConnell, 84, whose weeks‑long absence from Capitol Hill fueled mounting speculation about his health, said he will continue his recovery at home.
While the Senate is set to wrap up legislative business this week, before a five‑week recess, several agenda items remain – including a vote to confirm Todd Blanche as US attorney general. McConnell’s absence further narrows Republicans’ already tight path to approving Donald Trump’s former personal attorney as head of the Department of Justice.
McConnell is one of the highest-profile figures in Congress, as a former Senate majority leader. He has been absent from the Senate and not seen in public since mid-June, although his office has released several photos of him.
Van Jones PANICS To DEFEND AIPAC From David Axelrod
Can Palestine Transform the Democratic Party?
Aipac-linked Super Pacs spend millions in California to thwart progressive candidate
Super Pacs tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) have spent millions in a California congressional race to keep a progressive Democrat from winning Eric Swalwell’s former seat. Aisha Wahab, a state senator who has been endorsed by the California Democratic party, is widely considered the frontrunner in the special election for the district covering a swathe of the East Bay.
Wahab outpaced her closest competitor, Melissa Hernandez, the president of the board of directors for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) agency and a former Dublin mayor, in a June primary as well as a special election to complete the remainder of Swalwell’s term, by more than 20 points. They are set to face off against each other in a runoff election later this month, and then again in November.
Super Pacs are pouring money into the race, dropping more than $5m in recent weeks and supporting pro-Hernandez ads and Wahab attack ads, Politico reported on Thursday. The spending includes $1.2m from United Democracy Project, which is backed by Aipac, and $2.1m from Bold America Pac, which has received significant financial backing from the United Democracy Project, according to the outlet.
Track Aipac, which tracks the group’s funding of US politicians, reported that the lobby has spent more than $4.4m to support Hernandez in the race. Wahab said there has been a barrage of attack ads against her in the last month that have misrepresented her record, particularly as it relates to public safety issues. She described the Super Pacs’ involvement as election interference.
“You have to ask yourself, why? Aipac is clearly not interested in having diverse voices at the table, they are not interested in supporting the Jewish community and a peaceful dialogue,” she argued. “They want a puppet they can control.” The ads have generated outrage among her constituents, she said, adding that her campaign fields calls and emails daily from people “disgusted by the ads”.
Corporate Dems FULL PANIC, Declare $15 MILLION "WAR" On DSA
Blowhards Against Wind Power strikes again!
Trump administration to pay German firm $1.22bn to cut offshore wind leases
The German energy company RWE has reached a $1.22bn deal with the US government to relinquish its offshore wind leases and instead redirect funds towards fossil fuel investments. The agreement marks the fifth deal the Donald Trump administration has struck with energy companies, offering payouts in exchange for abandoning renewable energy projects and redirecting investment towards fossil fuels.
This latest deal takes it to almost $4bn of taxpayer money spent on killing offshore wind projects.
Announcing the deal with the US interior department on Thursday, RWE said it had agreed to give up its offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana. “After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the US for the foreseeable future,” the company said, referring to the leases it initially secured with a “long-term commitment to develop offshore wind capacity”.
RWE paid $1.1bn for its New York lease in a 2022 auction held by the Joe Biden administration, while its leases in Louisiana and California cost a combined $163m, Reuters reports. “The settlement resolves RWE US Offshore’s legal claims and provides $1.22 billion in settlement funds,” RWE continued, adding that the deal would allow it to “direct resources toward energy projects that can be advanced with certainty.”
As part of the agreement, RWE will spend $900m to acquire a 16% stake in an unnamed Louisiana liquified natural gas (LNG) project. The company said the settlement proceeds would be used to fund construction of the terminal. RWE has also signed a $300m turbine reservation agreement under which it will develop a pipeline of 15 natural gas peaker plants across the country. Meanwhile, a report released last fall by the Environmental Integrity Project found that every fully operational LNG facility in the US had violated federal pollution limits in recent years.
Human-driven climate crisis fuels Canada’s deadly wildfires
The human-driven climate crisis made the conditions that led to blazes roaring across Canada, which have caused toxic smoke to spew throughout the country and into the US, twice as likely to occur, a new analysis has found.
Heightened global temperatures, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, amplified the risk of fire-prone weather in Ontario and the Northwest Territories, scientists found. These provinces have been racked by fires this summer, causing towns to be evacuated and unhealthy smoke to unfurl across multiple cities in North America.
There are currently nearly 700 fires ablaze across Canada, with a huge 3.8m hectares of the country, mainly in its sprawling boreal forests. But the study by World Weather Attribution, a consortium of scientists that analyses climate change’s influence upon extreme events, found that fire weather seen in Canada this year is no longer a rare event.
The climate-influenced conditions that dry out vegetation and soils, making them more prone to combustion, are now expected every two to six years in the Northwest Territories and every six to 15 years in Ontario. If humanity hadn’t overheated the planet by burning coal, oil and gas, the scientists determined, such extreme fire conditions would occur less than once every 40 years.
Canada, which has a quarter of the world’s boreal forests, has always experienced fire. But the climate crisis has made fire conditions more extreme and since 2023, when huge fires also spread across Canada, the country has suffered a “fundamentally different” scale and intensity of blazes, according to Theodore Keeping, an expert in extreme weather at Imperial College London and part of the WWA research team. “The geographic spread of these fires is scary and shows that despite preparedness from wildfire governance, adaptation alone is not enough,” Keeping said. “We need to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid events like this becoming even more of a reality.”
All bodies of water in England polluted with toxic chemicals, official data shows
Every single English water body is polluted with toxic chemicals, new government data shows, while just 14.3% of surface waters achieved good ecological status. Each of the country’s rivers, lakes and estuaries was assessed by the Environment Agency as part of a six-yearly evaluation of England’s water quality. The EA checked for a range of toxic chemicals, from Pfas – or “forever chemicals” – to microplastics. Waters were also checked against a range of standards covering wildlife, water quality and physical habitat.
If concentrations of the chemicals exceed the set standards, the water body fails to meet good chemical status. In the latest assessment, every surface water body in England failed on this measure. Under water framework directive regulations, the official target date for all water bodies to reach good chemical and ecological status is December 2027, although some chemicals have deadlines in the 2030s.
The Environment Agency said this failure was driven almost entirely by the presence of mercury, Pfos – a type of Pfas with links to cancer - and PBDEs, which were formerly used as flame retardants. These chemicals are persistent, meaning they do not break down and can accumulate in the environment.
England’s water bodies are not predicted to reach good chemical status until 2063, when the EA says the persistent chemical pollutants should have degraded sufficiently for waters to again be considered unpolluted.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Rights Groups: Israel’s Killing of Journalist Amal Khalil ‘Must Be Investigated as a War Crime’
The Continued Abandonment Of America’s Poor
Corporate-Funded Third Way Plans to Spend $15 Million Waging ‘War’ on Progressives
A Little Night Music
James Brown - Get Up Offa That Thing
James Brown - Papa Don't Take No Mess
James Brown - Super Bad (Parts 1 & 2)
James Brown - Funky Drummer
James Brown - Get on the Good Foot
James Brown - Please Please Please
James Brown ~ Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
James Brown - I Feel Good
James Brown - Sex Machine
James Brown - Night Train
Comments
Who cares about the usual crapo
current events when you've got an ABFAB music program by an iconic soul singer to listen to? "Papa Don't Take No Mess." No, he sure doesn't!!! James Brown was the only Godfather of Soul!! Thank you, Professor Joe. REC'D!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
evening orlbucfan...
heh, whatever "it" is, james brown certainly got a double scoop. i think most people would prefer listening to jb than the news.
have a great weekend!
Hey, joe!
Yeah, who can get enough of James Brown, but the news that a superior court in GB said antisemitism is is not the same as antisemitism is like rockin' in the new world.
ABOUT TIME!
I will read, learn, not stress about the unknown, and go to sleep tonight better informed because of all that you do, dear friend.
Thanks so much!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
i suspect that the superior court decision in the uk that anti-zionism is not anti-semitism will piss off an awful lot of lobbyists and authoritarians in government who would like to use the false definition of antisemitism pushed by israel and zionists to oppress their ideological adversaries.
have a great weekend!
Those judges
need a security guard. Otherwise, they might die from stabbing themselves in the back.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs.
Have a wonderful weekend.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
have a great weekend!
Speaking of fun,
a Grammy nominated Zydeco band is coming to a venue close by on Sunday afternoon. We are planning on a great meal, great show, and me having a blast tossing French fries to the gators in the bayou. And, of course, the turtles!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
cool beans!
he's the grandson of john delafose and the nephew of geno delafose, both of whose bands i've posted stuff from here before. they're a talented family.
have a great time!
The Venue is
The Pine Tree Lodge. It is in Labelle, Texas, but Labelle is not an actual incorporated town. I doubt if more than 100 people claim to live there, if that many. A settlement, no post office, nothing like that. The Lodge is officially in Beaumont, but they are miles separated. It is so fun, I wish all of us could be there. Country or country rock bands on Friday and Saturday, but Sundays are for the zydeco bunch. The place will be packed!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Thanks joe
Your James Brown playlist went straight to the top of my playlist to rebound to. It makes exercising more enjoyable. I guess music makes a lot of things more enjoyable ; ).
evening janis...
i hope that you got on the good foot when you got up offa that thing.
So far so good ; )