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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: The Falcons

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features the r&b vocal group that was the springboard for Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Mack Rice and Joe Stubbs The Falcons. Enjoy!

^{The Falcons – I Found A Love}

"We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world."

-- John F. Kennedy

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News and Opinion

Snowden Says Shut Down DHS After Report Revealed Secretive Effort to Police Online Speech

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should be shut down after reporting shined light on the agency's sweeping campaign to police what it deems disinformation online, an effort that raised alarm among civil liberties groups.

"It's time to talk about shutting down the Department of Homeland Security," Snowden, a former NSA contractor who exposed the agency's illegal mass spying program in 2013, wrote on Twitter.

DHS, formed in 2002 in the wake of the September 11 attacks, "was always a mistake, a costly artifact of the hysteric post-9/11 authoritarianism that left us no more safe, but much less free," Snowden continued. "Its plan to become the Speech Police is the final straw."

Snowden was responding to an in-depth story by The Intercept on Monday detailing secretive DHS attempts to "curb speech it considers dangerous" by trying to pressure and "influence tech platforms" such as Twitter and Facebook. The department's "stepped up counter-disinformation effort" began under former President Donald Trump and has continued under President Joe Biden, the outlet noted.

"According to a draft copy of DHS' Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS' capstone report outlining the department's strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target 'inaccurate information' on a wide range of topics, including 'the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine," The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang reported.

"How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech," Klippenstein and Fang stressed.

"DHS justifies these goals—which have expanded far beyond its original purview on foreign threats to encompass disinformation originating domestically—by claiming that terrorist threats can be 'exacerbated by misinformation and disinformation spread online," they added. "But the laudable goal of protecting Americans from danger has often been used to conceal political maneuvering."

Facebook and Twitter created special portals for the government to rapidly request takedowns of content. The portals, along with NGO partners used to censor a wide range of content, including obvious parody accounts and content disagreeing w gov pandemic policy. pic.twitter.com/Jth0WUfXAI

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 31, 2022

The ACLU, which has previously called for the dismantling of DHS over its myriad abuses, expressed concerns in response to the The Intercept's story, which noted that the agency's efforts to police disinformation online have only expanded in the wake of the agency's decision to scrap its widely derided Disinformation Governance Board earlier this year.

"The First Amendment bars the government from deciding for us what is true or false, online or anywhere," the ACLU tweeted earlier this week. "Our government can't use private pressure to get around our constitutional rights."

Adam Goldstein, the vice president of research at FIRE—a free speech organization that is fighting right-wing censorship campaigns across the U.S.—told The Intercept that "no matter your political allegiances, all of us have good reason to be concerned about government efforts to pressure private social media platforms into reaching the government's preferred decisions about what content we can see online."

"Any governmental requests to social media platforms to review or remove certain content should be made with extreme transparency," Goldstein added.

You’re Doing Great And Your Voice Makes A Difference

2022 is an insane year to be a critic of the empire. People are being censored for disputing official narratives about a war. Those who aren’t censored are being mobbed by astroturf trolling operations. A frenetic propaganda push is turning our friends, family, coworkers and acquaintances into brainwashed empire automatons who despise our heretical rejection of official imperial doctrine about Russia and Ukraine.

And this is just a quick note to say thank you for holding the line anyway, and to note that your opposition to nuclear brinkmanship, US warmongering and propaganda makes a difference.

If our rulers did not require the consent of the public, they would not work so hard to manufacture that consent. While the empire managers work hard to keep us from noticing that there a whole lot more of us than there are of them, this is a reality that our rulers are at all times acutely aware of. It gives them nightmares to contemplate the possibility of people growing tired of being impoverished and endangered by the economic warfare and nuclear brinkmanship our rulers are inflicting upon us in order to advance their unipolarist agendas of global domination. They are never not afraid of the possibility that we might begin to collectively push back in large numbers.

That is why we are being continually inundated by ever-rising levels of propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulations and empire trolls. And that’s why there are increasing artificially created pressures to shun, silence and shut down anyone who speaks out against the madness we are witnessing.

As the US-centralized empire ramps up cold war aggressions against not one but two powerful nations in China and Russia, manipulating public thought at mass scale to go along with those reckless and costly aggressions becomes more and more essential. What that means is that anyone who is voicing opposition to those agendas is a significant thorn in the side of the power structure that’s advancing them.

As I keep repeating, all positive changes in human behavior are always preceded by an expansion of consciousness. Whether you’re talking about positive changes in individual behavior or collective behavior, it always arises from an increase in awareness of something where there previously was less awareness. Self-destructive behavior patterns change when the individual becomes more conscious of the internal forces which drive them. Social injustices change when the collective becomes more conscious of how unwholesome they are. Abuses of power change when investigative journalism and whistleblowers bring awareness to those abuses.

By vocally opposing the madness our world is descending into, you are helping to expand consciousness. To whatever extent you draw more attention and awareness to the lies, manipulations and malfeasance that is being inflicted upon our world in facilitation of the agendas of oligarchy and empire, you are expanding consciousness by that much. You are bringing collective human behavior that much closer to real change, whether you’re talking to people in person, making videos, holding demonstrations, distributing pamphlets, tweeting, blogging, spray painting the truth on an overpass or yelling it at a street corner.

Which is why you meet up with so much opposition when you do. Just as there are forces within us which resist being seen in order to remain unconscious, there are forces in the world which work to shut down attempts to shine the light of truth on them. That’s all you’re ever meeting up with when people try to stop you from speaking out, and it deserves no more respect than that.

So keep speaking. Keep pushing for a sane and peaceful world. You’re doing great, and your voice makes a difference, and don’t you dare let anyone tell you otherwise. If our voices made no difference, the most powerful people in the world wouldn’t be trying to shut us down.

Kremlin: Considering 'Further Steps' Over Allegation Britain Attacked Nord Stream Gas Pipelines

Russia said on Tuesday it was considering what "further steps" to take in connection with its allegation that Britain was responsible for an attack on the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines.

Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that British navy personnel had blown up the Nord Stream pipelines in September, an assertion that London said was false and designed to distract from Russian military failures in Ukraine.

"There is evidence that Britain is involved in sabotage ... a terrorist act against vital energy infrastructure," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Such actions cannot be put aside. Of course, we will think about further steps. It definitely cannot be left like this," Peskov said.

Ukraine Energy Crisis Risks EU Migrant Crisis, EU in Denial; Putin Erdogan Reinstate Grain Deal

Germany Tells Serbia: You Have to Choose Between EU and Russia

Serbia must decide whether it wants to join the European Union or enter into a partnership with Russia, Germany told Belgrade on Tuesday, two days before six Western Balkan countries are scheduled to discuss closer cooperation in Berlin.

"The need for a decision is coming to a head in view of geopolitical developments," a German government representative said in reference to Russia's war in Ukraine.

Serbia, which was bombed by NATO two decades ago but now seeks to join the European Union, has long struggled to balance historically close ties with Russia against aspirations for economic and political integration with the West.

An agreement between Serbia and Russia on enhanced cooperation had been met with surprise and disappointment, and was a poor fit with expectations that EU accession candidates should also adopt EU sanctions against Russia, the representative said.

Putin Says ‘Necessary Conditions’ May Arise for Peace Talks

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the “necessary conditions” for peace talks with Ukraine could arise and acknowledged Kyiv was not ready for negotiations at this time.

“We reached an agreement with them in Istanbul, but they’ve thrown all of that into the bin,” Putin said at a press conference in Sochi, according to Newsweek, referring to peace talks that were held in Istanbul at the end of March. “And now they’re refusing to discuss anything with us.”

Putin said Russia is willing to wait until talks can happen. “How can we talk about possible agreements if the other side has no desire to even talk to us? Well, we can wait,” he said. “Maybe some necessary conditions will eventually arise; we have made our good will known.”

While the US and Ukraine have rejected the idea of diplomacy, over the past month, Russian officials have repeatedly stated that they’re open to talks.

Election result marks dangerous new turn in Israel’s rightward shift

An hour after the election exit polls predicted a comeback for former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night, Israel’s Channel 13 switched from vote count drama to its satirical late-night current affairs show, Wonderful Country.

The host was immediately joined by a comedian sporting round glasses, a yellow tie, white kippah and bulging fake belly, made up to look like the country’s new political kingmaker, the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir. Brandishing a pistol – as Ben-Gvir did recently in a Palestinian neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem – he danced his way across the set before taking a seat.

“We love democracy,” the actor said, a grin on his face. “We’re going to miss it.”

Israeli politics has been shifting rightwards for several decades, but Ben-Gvir’s unprecedented success in this week’s election marks a new, dangerous turn. Bereft of necessary coalition partners after breaking promises in the past, Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, engineered a merger between three fringe far-right parties in 2021, ushering the new Religious Zionists slate into the political mainstream.

In the short term, the move has paid off: his extremist allies have doubled their number of seats to 13 or 14. With 86% of the votes counted, Netanyahu’s rightwing bloc has a 65 seat lead - more than enough for a relatively stable majority government in the 120-seat Knesset. ...

Ben-Gvir, the slate’s charismatic deputy with a large and youthful following, is a former follower of the far-right terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane. He built a legal career defending Jewish extremists, and in the past called for the deportation of Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20% of the population.

Briahna Joy Gray: AOC, Summer Lee VS AIPAC. Elites Don’t Care Who Wins As Long As YOU LOSE

ACLU Asks Supreme Court to Take Up Right to Boycott

On October 20th, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling upholding a 2017 Arkansas law that requires government contractors to sign a pledge stating they will not boycott Israel if they do not want to face a 20% reduction in contractor fees. The ACLU’s intervention on behalf of an Arkansas newspaper that refused to sign the anti-boycott pledge marks the first time the Supreme Court has been prompted to review a law aimed at suppressing boycotts of Israel.

The Arkansas statute is one of 28 similar laws that make government contracts conditional on pledges not to boycott Israel. Supported by Christian evangelicals and Jewish establishment groups and boosted by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, these laws aim to weaken the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel over its human rights abuses against Palestinians. “We know what these laws’ overall intent is and that’s because their backers have been very clear about this. It’s to try to suppress speech for Palestinian rights,” said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, a group that defends the free speech rights of Palestinian rights advocates. “There’s a growing movement in this country supporting Palestinian freedom, and pro-Israel advocacy groups are quite afraid of this.”

Anti-boycott laws’ impact goes beyond the Palestine advocacy world. In the past few years, states have passed or considered a wave of copycat laws modeled on anti-BDS legislation, aiming to protect fossil fuel companies and gun manufacturers from boycotts. The top court’s decision could thus have major implications for the legality of political boycotts writ large.

There is no guarantee the Supreme Court will agree to the ACLU’s request. Reviewing the case would require granting what is known as a writ of certiorari, which needs the assent of four Supreme Court justices. If the Supreme Court does take up the case, it would lead to a first-of-its-kind ruling on whether anti-boycott laws violate the First Amendment. If the court declines to take the case, the lower court’s ruling upholding the constitutionality of Arkansas’s anti-boycott law stands, serving as a binding precedent in the states under the Eighth Circuit’s jurisdiction and a potential model for decisions on anti-boycott laws in other circuits.

Big oil, food giants, restaurant chains reap windfall profits as US real wages plunge

With one week remaining before the US midterm elections, President Joe Biden has taken to denouncing the oil monopolies for “war profiteering” and price-gouging. On Monday, he took time out from traveling around the country to boost the faltering campaigns of Democratic House and Senate members and candidates for state offices to attack the record profits reported last week by oil and gas companies as “outrageous” and threaten the imposition of an excess profit tax. ...

It is all too obvious that Biden’s bluster against corporate profit-gouging is prompted by polls showing that soaring prices for basic necessities is the biggest concern driving voters in elections that may very well shift control of one or both chambers of Congress, as well as much of the country’s electoral machinery, to Trump’s fascistic Republicans. Nobody knows better than Biden that there is no possibility of getting an excess profits tax through Congress, even should it remain under Democratic control.

The oil magnates responded contemptuously to Biden’s threat. ...

The New York Times on Monday reported that major food companies and restaurant chains have driven up their profits by charging the public far more than what was needed to cover their increased costs. The article noted that over the past year, the price of food eaten at home has increased 13 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Basic staples have risen far more than the 8.2 percent year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index. Cereals and bakery goods are up 16.2 percent. Dairy products have shot up by 15.9 percent. A dozen eggs that could have been purchased for $1.83 in 2021 now cost $2.17.

Meanwhile, the profits of major food companies have risen even faster than the prices they charge. Last month, PepsiCo, whose prices for drinks and chips were up 17 percent from year-earlier levels, reported that its third-quarter profit grew by more than 20 percent. Coca-Cola reported a profit increase of 14 percent from the previous year. Many restaurant chains are likewise reaping super-profits on the basis of inflated prices. The Times article focused on Chipotle Mexican Grill, which reported that its prices by the end of 2022 would be nearly 15 percent higher than a year earlier. It reported a nearly 28 percent increase in its profits in the latest quarter as compared to the same quarter last year.

The newspaper quoted Kyle Herrig, president of advocacy group Accountable.Us as saying, “The [earnings] calls tell us corporations have used inflation, the pandemic and supply chain challenges as an excuse to exaggerate their own costs and then nickel and dime consumers.”

Fed announces sixth consecutive hike in US interest rates to fight inflation

The Federal Reserve stepped up its fight against a 40-year high in US inflation on Wednesday, announcing its fourth consecutive three-quarters of a percentage point hike in interest rates but signaling the pace of increases may soon slow.

With the cost of living crisis battering consumers and Joe Biden’s political fortunes, Fed officials have now imposed six rate rises in a row, the sharpest increases in interest rates since the 1980s, when inflation touched 14% and rates rose to nearly 20%.

The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said there were “no grounds for complacency” but acknowledged that officials were considering the pace of rate rises as they assess their impact on the wider economy. “Even so, we still have some ways to go. And incoming data since our last meeting suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates will be higher than previously expected,” he said.

The Fed’s latest increase brings the federal funds rate – which acts as a benchmark for everything including business loans, credit card and mortgage rates – to between 3.75% and 4% after sitting at 0% for more than a year during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m pleased that we have moved as fast as we have. I don’t think we’ve overtightened,” said Powell. He said the Fed would, at some point, slow the pace of rate rises but warned it was “very premature to think about pausing”.

More coffins discovered with possible link to 1921 Tulsa race massacre

The search for the remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre has turned up 21 additional coffins in unmarked graves in the city’s Oaklawn cemetery, officials said.

Seventeen adult-size graves were located on Friday and Saturday, the Oklahoma state archaeologist, Kary Stackelbeck, said on Monday. The city announced on Tuesday that four more graves – two adult-size and two child-size – had also been found.

The coffins, then the remains inside, will be examined to see if they match reports from 1921 that the victims were males buried in plain caskets. ...

A violent white mob targeted Black people during the 1921 massacre, in which more than 1,000 homes were burned, hundreds were looted and a thriving business district known as Black Wall Street was destroyed. Historians have estimated the death toll at between 75 and 300.

Rumors persisted for decades of mass unmarked graves but previous searches found no remains. The current search began in 2020 in areas identified with ground-penetrating radar as possibly containing coffins. It resumed last year, with nearly three dozen coffins found.

Ohio jury orders police officer to pay $4.4m to family of Black man he killed

An Ohio jury has ordered that a white police officer must pay $4.4m in compensatory damages to the family of a Black man the officer killed after approaching him while the man was sleeping. Officer Matthew Rhodes “climbed” into the car of Luke Stewart, 23, as he was asleep on a street in Euclid, Ohio, in March 2017, according to reports.

The officers were called to the scene after someone reported a “suspicious car”, according to ABC News 5 Cleveland. They apparently believed the man was under the influence and tried to get him to come out of the car, but Stewart allegedly tried to drive away. Rhodes then got into the car, and the two engaged in a scuffle. Rhodes used a Taser on Stewart, hit him and finally fired four fatal shots. Stewart was unarmed.

His mother, Mary Stewart, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Rhodes in 2021. This week following deliberations the jury awarded compensatory damages, aimed at restitution for the family’s losses, though it neglected to indict the officer or order punitive damages, which are paid in order to punish the plaintiff.

In January, Rhodes was promoted to sergeant.

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FBI arrests two alleged far-right Boogaloo Boys group members

The FBI has arrested two alleged members of the far-right anti-government group the Boogaloo Boys, as authorities express increasing concern about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections.

Timothy Teagan was expected to appear on Wednesday in federal court in Detroit, where charges against him would be unsealed, an FBI spokesperson said.

In a criminal complaint filed on Monday, the FBI said there was enough evidence to charge Aron McKillips, of Sandusky, Ohio, with illegal possession of a machine gun and the interstate communication of threats. The complaint said McKillips was a member of the Boogaloo Boys and was believed to be in a militia group called the Sons of Liberty.

McKillips’s lawyer, Neil McElroy, said he had asked for McKillips to be released pending a 9 November detention hearing in Toledo.

Teagan’s arrest on Tuesday came a week before election day. Election workers have been targeted by threats and harassment since the 2020 election, which Donald Trump has refused to admit he lost.

Dems Abortion Pitch FAILS With White Women

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Europe’s climate warming at twice rate of global average, says report

Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average in the last 30 years, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The effects of this warming are already being seen, with droughts, wildfires and ice melts taking place across the continent. The European State of the Climate report, produced with the EU’s Copernicus service, warns that as the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate breakdown outcomes will affect society, economies and ecosystems.

From 1991 to 2021, temperatures in Europe have warmed at an average rate of about 0.5C a decade. This has had physical results: Alpine glaciers lost 30 metres in ice thickness between 1997 and 2021, while the Greenland ice sheet has also been melting, contributing to sea level rise. In summer 2021, Greenland had its first ever recorded rainfall at its highest point, Summit station.

Human life has been lost as a result of the extreme weather events. The report says that in 2021, high impact weather and climate events – 84% of which were floods and storms – led to hundreds of fatalities, directly affected more than 500,000 people, and caused economic damages exceeding $50bn.

“Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and reminds us that even well-prepared societies are not safe from impacts of extreme weather events,” said the WMO secretary general, Prof Petteri Taalas. “This year, like 2021, large parts of Europe have been affected by extensive heatwaves and drought, fuelling wildfires. In 2021, exceptional floods caused death and devastation.”

It also found that this trend was very likely to continue, with more weather disasters predicted in the future. It predicts that temperatures will rise in all European areas at a rate exceeding global mean temperature changes, similar to past observations. As the climate warms to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the weather events will accelerate, with ever-decreasing summer rainfall likely to cause devastating droughts. Extreme rain and flooding are likely to follow in the later months in all regions except the Mediterranean.

Third of glaciers to vanish by 2050

‘Carbon timebomb’: climate crisis threatens to destroy Congo peatlands

The Congo peatlands are a huge carbon “timebomb” that could be triggered by the climate crisis, research has shown.

The peatlands flipped from storing carbon to releasing it into the atmosphere when the climate became drier 5,000 years ago, the study showed, before returning to accumulating carbon 2,000 years ago.

Scientists are now worried that human-caused global heating could tip the fragile system over the edge once more, accelerating the climate crisis.

The peatlands, which span the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, are the largest in the tropics and cover 17m hectares (42m acres). They store a vast amount of carbon – the equivalent of three years of global fossil fuel emissions. They are also threatened by logging and oil and gas exploitation.

“We know today that these peatlands are very close to that tipping point where they could release billions of tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere,” said Prof Simon Lewis, from the University of Leeds, UK, and University College London, and a senior author of the study. “We don’t know exactly how close but we do know that for the last couple of decades, droughts have been getting longer in the centre of the Congo basin.

At least 6% of global fishing ‘probably illegal’ as ships turn off tracking devices

Up to 6% of global fishing activity is hidden because commercial vessels disable their tracking systems, a practice that can be used to hide illegal fishing, according to a new study.

Ships use automatic identification systems (AIS), tracking beacons that enable them to be located on global shipping maps. Researchers applied a machine learning algorithm to a dataset of fishing vessel activity compiled by the non-profit Global Fishing Watch, which included more than 3.7bn AIS messages from fishing vessels between 2017 and 2019.

They discovered geographical hotspots for ships disabling their trackers, including west Africa, the coast of Argentina and the north-west Pacific – suggesting these are locations where illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is likely to be taking place.

IUU fishing accounts for one-fifth of global fisheries’ catches, causing up to $23.5bn (£20bn) in economic losses annually. It is the third most lucrative natural resources crime after timber and mining. It is also a big driver of marine ecosystem destruction and has been linked to human rights violations.

“This is the first time intentional AIS disabling has been quantified and mapped on a global scale,” said the report’s author, Heather Welch, a spatial ecologist at University of California Santa Cruz. “Prior to this work, we didn’t have an understanding of how big a problem disabling is, where it happens, who does it and why they do it.”

Flint Residents Return to Court After City Misses Deadline to Replace Lead Pipes

Flint, Michigan residents and advocacy groups said Wednesday that they are returning to court for the fifth time in nearly six years to ensure the city removes the lead pipes which contributed to the community's devastating water crisis that began in 2014.

The city failed to meet a court-ordered deadline of September 30 for excavating and replacing all the lead service lines, which officials had agreed to do under a 2017 legal settlement. The city has been granted several extensions to complete the work.

"The people of Flint won't tolerate any more broken promises from the city, which is under a federal court order to get the lead pipes out of the ground and somehow still can't get the job done," said Melissa Mays, operations manager for the grassroots group Flint Rising, in a statement. "The city's mismanagement is adding insult to the injury we've endured for years. Flint residents are fighters and we intend to stop at nothing short of securing safe water for our entire community."

Mays was one of the plaintiffs in the federal drinking water case that arose from the lead crisis in the city, where the majority of residents are Black and about 40% live in poverty.

To save money, city officials decided in 2013 to temporarily pump drinking water from the Flint River, failing to treat the water. Nearly 9,000 children were supplied lead-contaminated water for 18 months and the crisis spurred residents including Mays to action as the community called on the Environmental Protection Agency to take immediate emergency action. After the EPA failed to take action, the residents sued the city and state officials, resulting in the 2017 settlement.

By the end of 2021, lead pipes going to roughly 400 Flint homes still needed to be excavated and officials still needed to complete outreach to 1,400 households.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Lakeshore Global Corporation, which was awarded a $17.8 million contract to remove the lead pipes, did not resume the work until September, weeks before the latest deadline.

Democratic Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley said as the latest deadline passed that 95% of service line excavations had been completed, but advocates said Wednesday that they have lost patience with the city.

On October 28, the city announced that the EPA had granted a $100 million funding extension for one year to complete the replacement of lead pipes. The city's contracts now stipulate that the work must be finished by the end of 2023.

"The city of Flint did not manage to replace even a single lead pipe this year until September and is unable to tell us which homes and how many still need lawns, driveways, and sidewalks restored from the excavation work," said Pastor Allen C. Overton of Concerned Pastors for Social Action. "This is unacceptable. Residents have no option but to ask the federal court to hold the city accountable and push this work over the finish line."

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Also of Interest

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

Democrats Are Ignoring the Death Blow to the Middle Class

Progressive Economists Warn of 'Catastrophic Outcomes' for Workers as Fed Hikes Interest Rates

Capitalism Has Failed As Badly As Anything Can Fail: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Biden Administration Again Plants False Nuclear Scare Stories

Michael Hudson: Germany’s Position in America’s New World Order

Biden’s boilerplate defense strategy: it’s all about China

EU Threatens Secondary Sanctions Against Turkey Amid Row Over NATO Bids, Russian Ties

Trump Judge Allows Starbucks to Assail Press Freedom

Why unhoused people in the US are choosing to go to jail: ‘I kept reoffending’ | Homelessness | The Guardian

None Of This Had To Be: The Two Paths

Egypt Arrests Hundreds in Crackdown Before U.N. Climate Summit; Pressured to Free Alaa Abd El-Fattah

South Texas Voters TRASH Dems For Abandoning Working Class

Peace Activists Heckle Obama Over Nuclear War

Independent Anti-War Candidate Challenging Chuck Schumer On Ballot!

Green Party Candidate for NC Senate Matthew Hoh Says Democrats FOUGHT to Keep Him OFF the Ballot

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A Little Night Music

The Falcons - The Teacher

The Falcons - You're Mine

The Falcons - Darling

Falcons - Oh Baby

The Falcons feat. Wilson Pickett - Take This Love I've Got

The Falcons - You Must Know I Love You / That's What I Aim To Do

The Falcons - Lonely Nights / Has It Happened To You Yet

The Falcons - She's My Heart's Desire

The Falcons - You're On My Mind

Falcons - Baby That's It / This Day

The Falcons - You're So Fine

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