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This evening's music features r&b and soul singer Joe Tex. Enjoy!

"What chiefly governs the [U.S.] military budget is the need to spend enormous sums of money in a useless way. The allegedly powerful Pentagon is simply a receptacle for wasteful expenditure, just as a city dump is the receptacle for the refuse of a city."

-- Walter Karp

News and Opinion

A lovely freakout, indeed! I want to personally thank the republican "rebels" for a great comedic moment.

Washington is shrieking at the prospect of a defense budget cut

Many say that Washington is more divided than ever, but political quarrels in the nation’s capital and beyond are easily cast aside to unify against even the mere suggestion that perhaps the defense department’s budget might be a bit too high. That’s what happened when reports emerged late last week that Representative Kevin McCarthy had secured a deal with rogue Republicans to become the next House speaker. In exchange for their votes, the Freedom Caucus – a group of more rightwing House GOP lawmakers – received assurances that the federal budget will freeze at FY2022 levels, which could effectively mean a cut to the Pentagon budget by anywhere from $75bn to $100bn.

The shrieks from official Washington were almost immediate. Former GOP representative Liz Cheney, for example, accused McCarthy of “weaken[ing] our national defense for his own personal gain”, while the Democratic representative Abigail Spanberger said “cutting our nation’s defense spending is shortsighted and dangerous”, adding that “doing it for speaker votes is unconscionable”. Others went so far as to liken proponents of cutting the US military budget to being “pro-Russia”.

Let’s keep in mind that the reported deal in terms of defense spending would merely keep the DOD budget at its FY2022 level – the highest since the second wold war – one that both Cheney and Spanberger themselves supported with their votes authorizing it. But instead of seeing this proposal as a good opportunity to course-correct defense spending – which has been rife with waste, fraud and abuse for decades – the White House also came out swinging on Monday.

“This push to defund our military in the name of politics is senseless and out of line with our national security needs,” said the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, who added that any military budget cuts that are part of McCarthy’s speakership deal “mak[e] us less capable of keeping the American people safe and advancing our national security interests”.

Corporate Democrats Go to Bat for Bloated Pentagon Budget

A group of corporate Democrats led by Rep. Jared Golden of Maine sent a letter Wednesday defending the out-of-control U.S. military budget and expressing concerns about looming attempts by House Republicans to cut it, even as several GOP lawmakers insisted the Pentagon would be safe from their coming austerity spree.

In their letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Golden, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and other members of the right-wing Blue Dog Coalition celebrated the bipartisan vote last month to add $45 billion to the latest military budget proposed by President Joe Biden, claiming the extra money is necessary for "the procurement of additional naval ships at a time in which China has developed the world's largest navy" and for "strengthening the defense industrial base."

But the lawmakers voiced alarm over the House GOP majority's expressed support for capping federal outlays across the board at Fiscal Year 2022 levels—a move that would, in theory, cut tens of billions off the military budget in addition to slashing spending on education, healthcare, and other key areas.

The 12 Democratic signatories of the new letter focused their attention solely on the supposed national security implications of a spending cap, declaring "such a drastic cut in defense spending would not only undo this bipartisan consensus in support of our national defense, but would also endanger our long-term national security by injecting substantial uncertainty into the long-term defense budgetary planning necessary to ensure timely investments in personnel, procurement, readiness, and research and development."

The White House, too, weighed in on the side of maintaining the current military budget this week, calling any push for cuts "senseless and out of line with our national security needs."

But analysts have argued in recent days that such reflexive defenses of U.S. military spending don't stand up to scrutiny.

Far from a "drastic cut," $75 billion is less than 10% of the current military budget, which stands at $858 billion—much of which is likely to wind up in the coffers of defense contractors.

Progressive lawmakers, led by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), argued last year that $100 billion could and should be cut from the Pentagon budget—which has long been rife with waste, abuse, and profitable giveaways to private industry—and redirected toward pressing needs, from healthcare to poverty reduction to climate programs.

Their proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act was voted down in July by an overwhelming bipartisan margin.

William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in a blog post Tuesday that "the idea that dictators worldwide are basing their decisions on whether the Pentagon budget is an enormous $750 billion or an obscenely enormous $850-plus billion is ludicrous."

Hartung acknowledged that the kinds of across-the-board cuts floated by House Republicans "are never the best way to reduce government spending" because "they mean cutting effective and wasteful programs in the same proportions instead of making smart choices about what works and what doesn't."

"By all means we should debate how the federal budget should be crafted at this chaotic political moment," Hartung added. "But we should not assume that there is no room to trim the Pentagon budget. Doing it correctly would not only make us safer, it would free up funds to address other urgent national priorities."

Russia Consolidates Soledar, Focuses Bakhmut, Reshuffles Command; Kiev Floats & Rejects Armistice

Ukraine Is Shedding Blood for ‘NATO Mission’: Ukrainian Defense Minister

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said last week that Ukraine is “shedding blood” for a “NATO mission” in candid remarks about the relationship between Kyiv and the Western military alliance.

“At the NATO Summit in Madrid (in June 2022), it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today, Ukraine is eliminating this threat,” Reznikov said in an interview on Ukrainian TV last week.

“We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons,” he added.

Reznikov’s comments reflect Russia’s view that they are not just fighting against Ukrainian forces in the war but also against the US and NATO.

Poland Says It’s Ready to Send German-Made Leopard 2 Tanks to Ukraine

Poland’s president said Wednesday that Warsaw has decided to send Ukraine a company of German-made Leopard 2 tanks as part of an “international coalition,” although it’s not yet clear if Berlin has signed off on the delivery.

“A company of Leopard tanks will be handed over as part of coalition-building,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said during a visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. “We want it to be an international coalition.”

Supplying the Leopards would mark the first time Western-made heavy tanks were sent to Ukraine. The delivery needs to be approved by Germany, but according to Reuters, a German government spokesman said Berlin hasn’t yet received any requests from allies to send the tanks. ...

Ukrainian officials have said they need 300 tanks, and Poland’s pledge to send a company, which typically consists of 14 tanks, falls far short.

New study reveals rampant conflicts of interest at think tanks

“Scholars, media organizations, and members of the public should be sensitized to the conflicts of interest shaping foreign policy analysis generally and nuclear policy analysis specifically,” is the conclusion of new academic research that documents how think tank funders are shaping the foreign policy debate.

The study, “No such thing as a free donation: research funding and conflicts of interest in nuclear weapons policy analysis,” authored by Kjølv Egeland and Benoît Pelopidas of the Center for International Studies in Paris, was released in late December by Sage. After an exhaustive review of the world’s top foreign policy think tanks — including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Atlantic Council, and many more — the authors found that they all receive “donations from actors with interests in the perpetuation of the extant nuclear order.” The study then answers the question posed in its title — “No such thing as a free donation?” — by showing exactly how these donations provide funders with considerable influence over these institutions’ work and the marketplace of ideas.

Through interviews with grant managers and former and current employees at these think tanks, the authors identified numerous instances where funding biased these organizations’ work through outright censorship, self-censorship, and perspective filtering.

Night Raids: Victims of CIA-Backed Afghan Death Squads Known as “Zero Units” Demand Accountability

Biden’s response to Israel’s far-right government: avoid confrontation

The more things change in Israel, the harder Joe Biden is working to make sure they stay the same. The new far-right government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, which includes openly anti-Arab racists, is already causing concern in the White House with commitments to expand illegal settlements in the occupied territories and annex Palestinian land. ...

Aaron David Miller, who worked for six US administrations including as an adviser on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, said Biden was in uncharted territory. “No administration has ever encountered an Israeli government like this,” he said. Miller said that while there are red lines for the White House – including if Israel exploits the growing weakness of the Palestinian Authority in order to annex territory – the administration’s immediate response is containment.

“They are going to go to extreme lengths to avoid a sustained confrontation with the Israelis,” he said. ...

Where once the Palestinians were the focus of discussions, now they feature alongside Iran’s nuclear programme, Israel’s reluctance to stand with the US against Russia on Ukraine, and the Jewish state’s relations with the wider Arab world. But the Palestinians still figure in the talks, at least to the extent that the White House does not want Israel to do anything that would force Washington to make a stand. As Sullivan told NPR last week, US policy is predicated on maintaining what some say is the illusion of a “peace process”.

Miller recently co-authored an article calling on Biden to threaten to cut weapons supplies to Israel if the new government uses them to annex Palestinian land, expel Arabs or finally kill off the diminishing possibility of a Palestinian state. But he does not see the president taking such steps.

Macron’s attack on pensions sets stage for showdown with French working class

On January 10, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced plans for sweeping cuts to state pensions in France. The bill, which would raise the official retirement age by two years, resurrects the pension cut President Emmanuel Macron tried and ultimately failed to ram through in 2019-2020. Macron’s attack on French workers is part of a global offensive against the working class, whose aim is to impose the cost of the capitalist crisis onto workers all over the world. Macron’s plan has been been hailed by celebratory editorials in big business newspapers in the UK and US.

The cut is overwhelmingly unpopular, with 68 percent of the French people opposed, and Macron was forced to shelve the pension cut in 2019-2020. It provoked a six-week rail strike, which Macron and the parliament waited out, adopting the reform after the strike ended. However, Macron then felt compelled to abandon it in the spring of 2020—even after it was voted for in parliament—as mass strikes in Italy, France and across Europe against state inaction on COVID-19 forced Macron to heed doctors’ calls for a strict lockdown.

The revival of this plan by Macron, a former investment banker known as the “president of the rich,” makes clear the financial aristocracy’s plans for the new year. It acts with utter class contempt for the social rights of workers. As France and other NATO states recklessly pour billions of euros into sending tanks and artillery to Ukraine for war on Russia, risking an all-out Third World War, they intend to finance war by slashing living standards. ...

The ruling classes in France and internationally are fully aware that by proceeding this way, the Macron government risks provoking explosive strikes and social opposition. Last week, an IFOP poll commissioned by the SUD Radio station found that 79 percent of French people believe a social explosion is “possible” in the coming months. Moreover, 52 percent want such an explosion to take place.

Police clash with protesters at Peru's tourist city of Cusco

U.S. Responsible For Brazil Capital Riots?!?

Security tightened in Brazil amid fears of new attacks by Bolsonaro supporters

Security has been stepped up in Brazil’s capital amid concerns that hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro were planning to mobilise again, three days after thousands of extremists launched what the government has called a botched coup attempt.

Reports in the Brazilian media said far-right activists had summoned “a mega nationwide protest to retake power” on Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday night, members of the national public security force in black SUVs could be seen taking up position along the esplanade leading to Brazil’s congress, supreme court and presidential palace – the three buildings stormed and ransacked during Sunday’s turmoil in Brasília.

As the capital braced for possible further outbreaks of unrest, federal police said they had arrested one of the alleged organisers of the 8 January invasions in a city 32 miles from Brasília. Ana Priscila Azevedo allegedly used a Telegram group to urge tens of thousands of Bolsonarista radicals to head to the capital to challenge the recent election of the leftist president, which Bolsonaro supporters refuse to accept. “Babylon will fall,” Azevedo reportedly declared.

Senior members of Brazil’s security apparatus have also been implicated in the catastrophic security failure, which one of Lula’s top ministers on Tuesday called “an act of terrorism” designed to topple their week-old government. Late on Tuesday, federal police officers raided the home of Bolsonaro’s former justice minister, Anderson Torres, while the former commander of Brasília’s military police, Fábio Augusto Vieira, was arrested. A warrant for the arrest of Torres – the city’s public security chief at the time of Sunday’s attacks – has also been issued. Like Bolsonaro, who flew out of Brazil on the eve of Lula’s 1 January inauguration, Torres is currently in the US, purportedly on holiday, but said he would return to Brazil and present himself to authorities. “I’m certain the truth will prevail,” he wrote on social media.

The FBI Is FREAKING OUT About New House Investigation

Republican Congressman Rips The FBI On House Floor!

Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers

Research conducted by New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics into Russian trolling behavior on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election has found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”

Which is to say that all the years of hysterical shrieking about Russian trolls interfering in US democracy and corrupting the fragile little minds of Americans — a narrative that has been used to drum up support for internet censorship and ever-increasing US government involvement in the regulation of online speech — was false.

And to be clear, this isn’t actually news. It was established years ago that the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency could not possibly have had any meaningful impact on the 2016 election, because the scope of its operations was quite small, its posts were mostly unrelated to the election and many were posted after the election occurred, and its funding was dwarfed by orders of magnitude by domestic campaigns to influence the election outcome.

What’s different this time around, six years after Trump’s inauguration, is that this time the mass media are reporting on these findings.

"Journalists" do this thing where they hype Party propaganda when needed, and then when the story is no longer relevant they quietly publish the truth about how they were totally lying. This way they can say "we DID report the facts!"

Truly bad people. https://t.co/NlIkeIpVKy

— David Angelo (@MrDavidAngelo) January 9, 2023

The Washington Post has an article out with the brazenly misleading headline “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters“. Anyone who reads the article itself will find its author Tim Starks acknowledges that “Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior,” but the insertion of the word “little” means anyone who just reads the headline (the overwhelming majority of people encountering the article) will come away with the impression that Russian trolls still had some influence on 2016 voters.

“Little influence” could mean anything shy of tremendous influence. But the study did not find that Russian trolls had “little influence” over the election; it failed to find any measurable influence at all.

Starks does some spin work of his own in a bid to salvage the reputation of the ever-crumbling Russiagate narrative, eagerly pointing out that the report does not explicitly say Russia definitely had zero influence on the election’s outcome, that it doesn’t examine Russian trolling behavior on Facebook, that it doesn’t address “Russian hack-and-leak operations,” and that it doesn’t say “doesn’t suggest that foreign influence operations aren’t a threat at all.”

None of these are valid arguments. Claiming Russia definitely had no influence on the election at all would have been beyond the scope of the study, the report’s authors do in fact argue that the effects of Russian trolling on Facebook were likely the same as on Twitter, the (still completely unproven) “Russian hack-and-leak operations” were outside the scope of the study, as is the question of whether foreign influence operations can be a threat in general.

What Starks does not do is make any attempt to address the fact that mainstream news and punditry was dominated for years by claims that Russian internet trolls won the election for Donald Trump. He does not, for example, make any mention of his own 2019 Politico article telling readers that the Russian Twitter troll operation ahead of the 2016 election “was larger, more coordinated and more effective than previously known.”

Starks also does not take the time to inform The Washington Post’s readership about the false reporting this story has received over the years from his fellow mainstream news media employees, like The Washington Post’s David Ignatius and his melodramatic description of the St Petersburg troll farm as “a sophisticated, multilevel Russian effort to use every available tool of our open society to create resentment, mistrust and social disorder” in an article hysterically titled “How Russia used the Internet to perfect its dark arts“. Or The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg in her article “Yes, Russian Trolls Helped Elect Trump“, in which she argues that it looks increasingly as though the Internet Research Agency “changed the direction of American history.” Or NBC’s Ken Dilanian (a known CIA asset), who described Russian trolling on Twitter in the lead-up to the election as “a vast, coordinated campaign that was incredibly successful at pushing out and amplifying its messages,” a claim that was then repeated by The Washington Post. To pick just a few out of basically limitless possible examples.

Starks and his editors could easily have included this sort of information in the article. It would have greatly helped improve clarity and understanding among The Washington Post’s audience if they had. It would have been entirely possible to clearly spell out the fact that all those other reports appear to have been incorrect in light of this new information, or at least to acknowledge the fact that there is a glaring difference between this new report and previous reporting. It would do a lot of good for awareness to grow, especially among Washington Post readers, that there’s been a lot of inaccurate information circulating about Russia and the 2016 election these past several years.

But they didn’t. And nobody else in the mass media has done so either. Even The Intercept’s report on the same story, despite having the far more honest headline “Those Russian Twitter bots didn’t do $#!% in 2016, says new study,” doesn’t name any names or criticize any outlets for their inaccurate reporting on Russian trolls stealing the election for Donald Trump.

Indeed, it’s very rare in the west to see mainstream journalists hold other mainstream journalists accountable for their false reporting, facilitation of propaganda, or journalistic malpractice, unless it’s journalists whose approval they don’t care about like members of the opposite political faction or independant media reporters. This is because western journalists are worthless, obsequious cowards whose entire lives revolve around seeking the approval of their peers.

How interesting that this is coming out now. Will the Washington Post address the countless stories they wrote hyping Russian influence on the 2016 race? The Pulitzer they won for such coverage? https://t.co/NKVV58SB8Q

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 9, 2023

The most important reporting a journalist can do in the western world today is help expose the lies, propaganda and malpractice of other western journalists and news outlets. But that is also the last thing a western journalist is ever likely to do, because western journalists seek praise and approval not from the public, but from other western journalists.

You can see this in the way they post on Twitter, with their little in-jokes and insider references, how they’re always cliquing up and beckoning and signaling to each other. Twitter is a great window through which to observe western journalists, because they really lay it all out there. Watch their bootlicking facilitation of status quo power, their ingratiating tail-wagging with each other, the way they gang up on dissenters like zealots burning a heretic. To see what I’m talking about you have to pay attention not to their viral tweets that go off but to all the rest that receive little attention, because the ones that take off are the ones the public are interested in. If you watch them carefully it becomes clear that for most of them the intended audience of the majority of their posts is not the rank-and-file public, but their fellow members of the media class.

Look at this Twitter conversation between Australian journalists right after the Ecuadorian embassy cut off Julian Assange’s internet access in 2018 for a good illustration of this. Former ABC reporter Andrew Fowler (now a vocal supporter of Assange) questions ABC’s Michael Rowland for applauding Ecuador’s move, and ABC’s Lisa Millar rushes in to help Rowland argue that Assange is not a journalist and doesn’t deserve the solidarity of journalists, and that Fowler is putting himself on the outside of the groupthink consensus by claiming otherwise. Millar and Rowland are part of the clique, Fowler is being ostracised from it, and Assange is the heretic whose lynching they’re braying for.

Western journalists have a freakish herd-like mindset that makes the derision and rejection of their class the most nightmarish scenario possible and the approval of their class the most powerful opiate imaginable. They’re terrified of other journalists turning against them, of being rejected by the people whose approval they crave like a drug, of being kicked out of the group chat. And that’s exactly what would happen if they began leveling valid criticisms at mass media propaganda in public. And that’s exactly why that doesn’t happen.

The western media class is a cloistered, incestuous circle jerk that only cares about impressing other members of the cloistered, incestuous circle jerk. It doesn’t care about creating an informed populace or holding the powerful to account, it cares about approval, inclusion and acclaim from its own ranks, regardless of what propagandistic reporting is required to obtain it. The Pulitzers are mostly just a bunch of empire propagandists giving each other trophies for being good at empire propaganda.

A journalist with real integrity would spurn the approval of the media class. It would nauseate and repel them, because it would mean you’ve been aligning yourself with the most powerful empire in history and the propaganda machine which greases its wheels. They would actively make an enemy of the mainstream western press.

Journalists without integrity — which is to say the overwhelming majority of journalists — do the opposite.

Richard Wolff REACTS To Record Inflation

Apparently, the Milkman of Human Kindness has ceased deliveries in some sections of San Francisco.

‘Cruel and cold’: man faces backlash for dousing unhoused woman with water

San Francisco is once again reckoning with its treatment of unhoused people after a video of a business owner spraying a woman with water from a garden hose spread online. Collier Gwin, the owner of Foster Gwin Gallery in downtown San Francisco, admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that he blasted water on an unhoused woman sitting on the sidewalk in front of his business. The video, captured on Monday morning by the owner of a nearby bakery, shows Gwin spraying the woman, who was crying out in distress. In a calm voice, Gwin then tells her, “Just move,” before spraying her again. ...

Gwin did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. In an interview with the Chronicle, he did not express remorse, saying: “I’m only sorry that … my way of helping her countlessly has gotten nothing done.”

“It was really just cruel and cold. And I think most people who saw the video were really taken aback by the callousness and lack of feeling of the act,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “It’s anti-Black and anti-homeless.” The footage elicited shock and outrage online. Commenters called Gwin’s actions “reprehensible” and “evil”. The gallery’s Google page had been taken down by Tuesday afternoon, while dozens of one-star reviews on its Yelp page referenced the video.

The owner of Foster Gwin Gallery displays a lack of emotion as he sprays a desperately poor person with freezing cold water in San Francisco.
Most people are one bad month away from homelessness, & before long it's near impossible to escape. pic.twitter.com/elIlVFFpIV

— ChudsOfTikTok (@ChudsOfTikTok) January 10, 2023

Republican-controlled House pushes for new abortion restrictions

The Republican-led House on Wednesday pressed ahead with a pair of anti-abortion measures, despite warning signs that the issue had galvanized the opposition in the wake of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade last year.

Voting mostly along party lines, Republicans first approved a bill that would compel doctors to provide care for an infant who survives an attempted abortion – an occurrence that is exceedingly rare.

After its passage, Republicans broke into applause on the House floor as the bill’s sponsor, congresswoman Ann Wagner, a Republican of Missouri, waved the text of the legislation in celebration.

Democrats, several of them wearing white in protest, remained silent. However, on the measure, two Texas Democrats broke with the party: the congressman Henry Cuellar, who opposes abortion, supported it while his colleague Vicente González voted present.

The House also passed a non-binding resolution condemning attacks on pregnancy crisis centers, with the support of all Republicans and three Democrats.

RIGHT TO Strike UNDER ASSAULT At Supreme Court

Shitlibs in glass houses ...

Biden under scrutiny as second batch of classified documents reportedly found

Joe Biden was facing fresh scrutiny over his handling of government secrets on Wednesday after a second batch of classified materials was reportedly found at a location linked to him.

The White House was already on the defensive after revelations that classified documents were discovered last November in an office used by Biden after he served as US vice-president. On Tuesday he said he was “surprised to learn” of their existence.

Then came a report from the NBC News network, followed by other media outlets, that said the president’s aides had found another set of classified documents at a separate location. The classification level, number and precise location of the material was not immediately clear, NBC News added. ...

Josh Hawley, a Republican senator for Missouri and ardent Trump defender, responded to the disclosure by tweeting: “Special counsel”.

Special thanks to Obama and Hillary for the coup that allowed thugs to take over Honduras' government.

Honduran environmental defenders shot dead in broad daylight

Two environmental defenders have been shot dead in broad daylight in Honduras, triggering fresh calls for an independent investigation into the persecution and violence against a rural community battling to stop an illegally sanctioned mine.

Aly Domínguez, 38, and Jairo Bonilla, 28, from Guapinol in northern Honduras, were murdered on Saturday afternoon as they returned home on a moped after finishing work collecting payments for a cable company. They were intercepted by armed assailants and died at the scene, according to relatives.

Domínguez and Bonilla were co-founders of Guapinol’s grassroots resistance against an iron ore mine owned by one of the country’s most powerful couples. Domínguez was among 32 community leaders falsely accused of crimes by the mining company and local authorities.

Local police and prosecutors immediately ascribed the deaths to a botched mugging – even though the assailants fled without taking the victims’ moped, cellphones or money. UN agencies, rights groups and the US embassy condemned the killings. Relatives and lawyers have questioned the official version of events, pointing to the ongoing threats and harassment faced by the community.

“We reject the official hypothesis. These two young men were founders of the struggle to protect our natural resources from an illegal mine that is destroying rivers in the national park. For five years we’ve been threatened, criminalised and falsely imprisoned, the only thing left was murder,” said Rey Domínguez, 58, a community leader and Aly’s brother.

World’s large dams could lose quarter of capacity by 2050, says UN

Thousands of the world’s large dams are so clogged with sediment that they risk losing more than a quarter of their storage capacity by 2050, UN researchers have concluded, warning of the threat to water security. A new study from the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health found that, by mid-century, dams and reservoirs will lose about 1.65tr cubic metres of water storage capacity to sediment. The figure is close to the combined annual water use of India, China, Indonesia, France and Canada.

That is important, the researchers say, because these big dams are a key source of hydroelectricity, flood control, irrigation and drinking water throughout the world. “Global water storage is going to diminish – it is diminishing now – and that needs to be seriously taken into account,” the study’s co-author and institute director, Vladimir Smakhtin, told AFP.

Researchers looked at nearly 50,000 large dams in 150 countries, and found that they have already lost about 16% of water storage capacity. They estimated that if buildup rates continue at the same pace, that will increase to about 26% by mid-century.

Rivers naturally wash sediment downstream to wetlands and coasts, but dams disrupt this flow and over time the buildup of these muddy deposits gradually reduces the space for water.

As Historic Storms & Flooding Kill 19 in California, Why Is Media Ignoring Role of Climate Change?

Storm-ravaged California scrambles as fresh atmospheric river rolls in

California is facing a new round of brutal storms that will bring torrential downpours and gale force winds in the north as the state scrambles to clean up and repair widespread damage amid a break in the weather.

The state has been ravaged by a relentless string of storms that have killed at least 17 people – a number the governor warned was likely to grow. The bout of extreme weather has closed highways, knocked out trees and infrastructure and cut power to thousands of people. More than half of California’s 58 counties have been declared disaster areas.

The newest round of storms is forecast to hit the northern coast, where the threat of flooding will persist until Friday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. A wind advisory is in effect in some areas, which could see gusts of up to 60mph (96.5km/h). The plume of moisture lurking off the coast stretched all the way over the Pacific to Hawaii, making it “a true Pineapple Express”, the NWS said.

Meanwhile, southern California will see a break in rains until the weekend, when more wet weather is forecast.

Also of Interest

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

Scott Ritter: 2023 Outlook for Ukraine

Ukrainian Defense Lines And What Happens When They Are Breached

CIA BLOCKED Release Of Key Russiagate Documents!

Twitter leaks expose Russian bots sham

Hawks blow a lot of hot air over proposed budget cuts

Italy and the EU Are on Collision Course as Economic Conditions Worsen

Guaidó Is Gone, but Media Dishonesty Is Here to Stay

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pledges to “put aside” differences with Democratic leadership after Republican concessions to far right

Atmospheric Rivers Over California’s Wildfire Burn Scars Raise Fears of Deadly Mudslides – This Is What Cascading Climate Disasters Look Like

‘Cool’: nine-year-old finds rare, ancient shark tooth on Maryland beach

More classified documents found in the garage of Biden’s home

Worst Speech EVER! Delivered By New Dem House Leader

Briahna Joy Gray: LYIN' BIDEN Abandons The Poor, Does DIRTY WORK For Insurance Industry

BIDEN CORRUPTION RECKONING? SECOND Batch Of Classified Papers Found, GOP Asks For Hunter Biden Docs

A Little Night Music

Joe Tex - You Better Believe It Baby

Joe Tex - Green green grass of home

Joe Tex - Show Me

Joe Tex - CC Rider

Joe Tex & King Curtis - You Never Miss Your Water

Joe Tex - One Monkey Don't Stop No Show

Joe Tex - Give the Baby Anything That Baby Wants

Joe Tex - I Gotcha

Joe Tex - Hold On To What You've Got

Joe Tex - You Little Baby Face Thing