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This evening's music features blues guitarist and singer Stick McGhee. Enjoy!

"We can't sit around like a bunch of nitwits just watching the planet burn down around us. If a radical political alternative is not opened up, then I think we are essentially going to amuse and entertain ourselves into extinction. Business as usual at this point is a death sentence on the human race."

-- Terence McKenna

News and Opinion

As Tensions Rise, Steve Bannon and ISIS Get Closer to Their Common Goal: Civilizational War

The Trump administration's Muslim ban was based on plainly dubious claims about national security, targeting for scrutiny some of the most heavily vetted visitors to the United States. But the tangible purpose it did serve, before being at least temporarily frozen by the courts, was to divide Americans from millions of people in the Muslim world by sending the latter a message of gratuitous insult and contempt — and emboldening the very extremist movements the order was ostensibly directed against.

That kind of polarization may be exactly what some members of the White House want. High-ranking members of the current administration — most notably its chief strategist, Steve Bannon — have publicly espoused apocalyptic theories of history that center on a forthcoming clash between Western countries and the Muslim world, a conflict that many of them seem to perceive as both inevitable and desirable.

There are striking parallels between Bannon’s worldview and the perspective of terrorist groups like the Islamic State, which see the world divided in similarly binary terms — hence their reported enthusiasm for the executive order that Bannon helped author. ...

A 2014 speech that Bannon delivered to an audience at the Vatican provides a hint of what kind of program he might want to use Trump to achieve. In that address, delivered via teleconference, Bannon called for a revival of the tradition of the “church militant,” describing a vague yet apocalyptic threat he claims that Western countries face from both “Islamic jihadist fascism” and their own loss of religious faith.

An interesting article worth a full read:

Bannon's obsession with a dark theory of history should be worrisome

President Trump's adviser, Steve Bannon, is on the cover of this week's Time magazine, and in the piece it is revealed that Bannon deeply believes in a theory about America's future laid out in a book called "The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny." ...

In the book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe theorize that the history of a people moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula." The idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that at a given saeculum's end, there would come "ekpyrosis," a cataclysmic event that destroys the old order and brings in a new one in a trial of fire.

According to the book, the last two Fourth Turnings that America experienced were the Civil War and the Reconstruction, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before that, it was the Revolutionary War. All these were marked by periods of dread and decay in which the American people were forced to unite to rebuild a new future, but only after a massive conflict in which many lives were lost. It all starts with a catalyst event, then there's a period of regeneracy, after that there is a defining climax in which a war for the old order is fought, and then finally there is a resolution in which a new world order is stabilized. ...

In the White House, Bannon has shown that he is willing to advise Trump to enact policies that will disrupt our current order to bring about what he perceives as a necessary new one. He encourages breaking down political and economic alliances and turning away from traditional American principles to cause chaos. In that way, Bannon seems to be trying to bring about the Fourth Turning.

Dark Essays By White House Staffer Are the Intellectual Source Code of Trumpism

[An] article, headlined “The Flight 93 Election,” caused a minor stir when it came out. Conservatives who didn’t like Trump were aghast at its strange endorsement of the brutish candidate, while liberals thought it showed the crackpot essence of the conservative case for the reality TV star. There was also the buzz of a guessing game: Who wrote this incredible thing? Here’s how the article began:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You — or the leader of your party — may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

On February 2, the guessing ended when the Weekly Standard revealed Anton as the author. More crucially, the magazine also revealed that Anton had just been hired as the senior director of strategic communications at the NSC and accurately described him as “the leading conservative intellectual to argue for the election of Donald Trump.” This cast Anton’s five-month-old essay, as well as other articles he has written, in a new light — they are virtually the only attempt by a Trump insider to present a holistic explanation of what his presidency stands for and seeks to accomplish. The outing of Anton has inadvertently exposed the intellectual source code of Trumpism.

Of course, Trump and his senior aides have issued a steady outpouring of startling statements and tweets about the administration’s ideas and plans. There’s also been a flurry of radical executive orders and appointments of cabinet officers whose backgrounds — as billionaires or Christian warriors or civil rights opponents — provide alarming data points. A number of officials have written crude and inflammatory books in years past, such as Michael Flynn, the retired general who heads the NSC. And, yes, there’s the case of Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart executive who is Trump’s senior adviser. But nobody in the administration has drawn up a real-time ideological blueprint to explain the intentional chaos of what’s happening under Trump — except, as it now turns out, Michael Anton, whose radical theories have been compared to those of a German philosopher named Carl Schmitt, who helped lay the legal foundations of the Nazi Party.

I found this darkly amusing. Youtube thought that I might like it.

Joe Scarborough Takes Stephen Miller 'To School' On Law

Believe It Or Not, This Is What The Great Awakening Looks Like

We’re headed straight for a cliff. If humanity continues on its current course, we’ll either wipe ourselves out via nuclear holocaust or die off in natural disasters, droughts, famines, plagues, food riots and predation when global warming-induced climate chaos and temperature extremes collapse industrial agriculture.

Anyone who thinks humanity can keep going the way it’s been going for even one more generation is either ignorant, delusional, or both. It is unquestionably evolve-or-die time for our species. We will go extinct if we do not drastically change our collective behavior, and in order for that to happen we’re going to have to drastically change our consciousness. For whatever reason, the ruling elites of our society have been using our fear, insecurity and inertia to keep manipulating us into marching in this same omnicidal direction, and we will not be able to collectively overcome those manipulations without a drastic shift in collective consciousness. ...

So now we’ve got people screaming at each other, scared and angry but finally awake. It’s ugly and sloppy and uncomfortable, but you know what? So is birth. This is what it looks like when a populace starts to awaken from the lies and propaganda it’s been fed for as long as it can remember. This is what it looks like when people start feeling into their true power and stretching out their newfound wings. Nothing remotely like this political environment has ever existed before, nor could it have existed until society had developed this degree of comfort with its relationship with the internet. So in that sense the people who predicted the world would end in December of 2012 weren’t actually wrong; the world in which an establishment neoliberal could run for reelection against an establishment neocon and have the public pretend that’s acceptable died forever, never to return. November 2012’s election between Obama and Romney was the very last time that we will ever see such a thing.

People who think humanity is safe from danger are ignorant and delusional, but so are people who think that we can’t pass this test. The doomers, nihilists and defeatists who insist we’re heading for a horrible end are refusing to acknowledge the undeniable, unprecedented, and rapidly accelerating changes that our species has been making in their lifetime. This ain't their daddy's Homo sapiens no more. We’ve changed so much so quickly, and there’s so much more to it than just internet access. ...

If we can work through this thing, the desire to collaborate will win out over the desire to compete. Solutions to our many problems will come quickly and smoothly and from all around the globe in the form of many thousands of micro-solutions. Imagine freeing up even a tiny percentage of the imagination and effort we put into killing each other and competing all the time. Just half a percent would be enough to turn the whole thing around, because despite what it looks like right now our problems are relatively simple: we just need to find better transportation, better energy sources and better ways of looking after each other.

NATO Checking Claim that U.S. Airstrikes Killed 22 Afghan Civilians

The NATO mission in Afghanistan has opened a preliminary investigation into claims that more than 20 civilians were killed in recent American airstrikes in the southern province of Helmand, military officials said Saturday.

Elders from the Sangin district, the scene of heavy fighting in recent weeks, with the Taliban blowing up Afghan Army posts there, have said that multiple American airstrikes early Friday morning killed at least 22 civilians, including several women and children. ...

Hameed Gul, 18, who sells soft drinks in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, said nine of his family members in the village of Lakari in the Sangin district were killed by the airstrikes. He and one of his brothers, who was also in Lashkar Gah, are the only surviving members of their family, he said. Their father, Mullah Pacha, was killed in an explosion years ago.

“My elder brother and I traveled to the village to find out how our mother, brothers and sister have been killed,” Mr. Gul said. “When we arrived, the villagers were digging them out of the debris.”

Mr. Gul said that fighting around his village had forced his family to move to Lashkar Gah, but that his mother and siblings had returned to Sangin about three months ago because violence had intensified in the Lashkar Gah area.

He said the airstrike killed his mother, Bibi Bakhtawar, 40, six brothers ages 4 to 17, a sister, Naz Bibi, 5, and an infant niece.

Afghan Reconstruction Watchdog SIGAR Publishes ‘Gallery of Greed’ over Fraud

A $99 million Afghan road-building project funded by U.S. taxpayers has been scrapped, according to a report that details how American military personnel were bribed with Rolex watches in exchange for contracts.

The deal was ditched in October after evidence emerged of corruption during the award of the contract by the country's government.

In the last three months of 2016 alone, criminal investigations resulted in one conviction and six sentencings, nearly $2 million in criminal fines and the recovery of $320,000 according to a new quarterly report to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

The report features a new "gallery of greed" that details some of the corruption cases uncovered since the American mission began some 15 years ago. Since then, the U.S. has spent some $117 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Democrats and Republicans agree Trump needs “guardrails” regarding Russia

House Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much, but as national security adviser Michael Flynn puts the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia back in the spotlight, a push to limit the president’s ability to conduct diplomacy with Russia is under way.

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill giving Congress the power to block Trump from lifting sanctions on Russia and halt any effort to do so while they reviewed the plan. Now work is under way on a companion bill in the House, California Rep. Adam Schiff told VICE News in an interview Thursday.

Flynn's communications with Russian Ambassador bring new scandal to Trump's White House

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn can’t seem to get his story straight on the nature of his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration — raising concerns that Trump’s trusted adviser may have unlawfully interfered in U.S. foreign policy interactions with Russia and then tried to cover it up.  ...

Leading congressional Democrats immediately called for an investigation into Flynn’s relations with Moscow, and on Saturday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in a statement, demanded that Flynn be suspended until an FBI investigation determines the extent of “his secret contacts with the Russians.” ...

Trump said Friday that he planned to “look into” reports regarding Flynn’s communications with Russia’s ambassador. “I don’t know about that,” Trump said. “I haven’t seen it.” ....

On Sunday, Al Franken was unreserved in his criticism of Flynn. “Either he was lying about not having discussed that, or he forgot,” Franken told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I don’t think you want a guy who’d forget that.”

Others, including Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-N.Y., Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Md., and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., also weighed in with similarly tough takes.

CIA freezes out top Flynn aide

A top deputy to national security adviser Michael Flynn was rejected for a critical security clearance, effectively ending his tenure on the National Security Council and escalating tensions between Flynn and the intelligence community. ...

On Friday, one of Flynn’s closest deputies on the NSC, senior director for Africa Robin Townley, was informed that the Central Intelligence Agency had rejected his request for an elite security clearance required for service on the NSC, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

That forced Townley, a former Marine intelligence officer who had long maintained a top secret-level security clearance, out of his NSC post, explained the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

One of the sources said the rejection was approved by Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump’s CIA director, and that it infuriated Flynn and his allies.

Both sources said the CIA did not offer much explanation for why Townley’s request for so-called “Sensitive Compartmented Information” clearance was rejected. But the sources said that Flynn and his allies believe it was motivated by Townley’s skepticism of the intelligence community’s techniques — sentiments shared by Flynn.

Paris' Banlieues Are Burning

Donald Trump's doctrine of unpredictability has the world on edge

Trying to piece Donald Trump’s foreign policy together, one cannot be blamed for missing the grand strategy in it all. Maybe Trump is a realist; or maybe he wants to dismantle the US-led international order. Perhaps he is purely a dealmaker.

Whatever the approach, one theme is consistent in Trump’s actions and words: his desire to make US foreign policy appear as unpredictable as possible. As Trump so succinctly summarized it himself during a foreign policy speech in April 2016: “We have to be unpredictable.” ...

Trump believes that the US should pursue the foreign policy of a gambler, shedding the more “predictable” aspects of foreign policy that have, until now, helped keep the world somewhat stable. As gambler-in-chief, Trump’s perceived unpredictability will supposedly give him leverage to negotiate anything with anyone at anytime. ...

His foreign policy of unpredictability would mean raising questions about US commitments to allies from Europe to Asia. When asked about US alliances with Japan and South Korea, Trump said: “There is going to be a point at which we just can’t do this anymore.” When asked about Nato, his sarcastic response made it clear that he believes that the US is committed to too many alliances: “We defend everybody. When in doubt, come to the United States. We’ll defend you.” ...

And while Trump believes he can squeeze more money from US allies in an approach reminiscent of a protection racket rather than an alliance, those allies may very well come to believe they too can get better deals elsewhere. Apparently Trump is comfortable with this, as was evident from his willingness to see other countries in north-east Asia acquire nuclear weapons.

Report: Trump reassures Palestinians embassy not moving to Jerusalem /h3>

US President Donald Trump has responded to the Jordanian king’s request that the United States refrain from moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Arab media reported on Saturday.

The Palestinian daily Al-Quds reported that the Trump administration transferred a message to the Palestinian Authority that the embassy would not be moving to Jerusalem. ...

But in an interview with the Hebrew daily Israel Hayom, Trump said he had not yet made a decision on whether or not to relocate the embassy.

“I am thinking about the embassy, I am studying the embassy [issue], and we will see what happens. The embassy is not an easy decision. It has obviously been out there for many, many years, and nobody has wanted to make that decision. I’m thinking about it very seriously, and we will see what happens,” Trump told the paper. On Wednesday, the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt discussed Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem during a meeting in the Jordanian capital Amman.

Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War

Amnesty International (AI) has done some good investigations and reports over the years, which has won the group widespread support. However, less well recognized, Amnesty International has also carried out faulty investigations with bloody and disastrous consequences.

One prominent example is in Iraq, where AI “corroborated” the false story that Iraqi soldiers were stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. The deception was planned and carried out in Washington to influence the U.S. public and Congress.

A more recent example is from 2011 where false accusations were being made about Libya and Muammar Gaddafi as Western and Gulf powers sought to overthrow his government. AI leaders joined the campaign claiming that Gaddafi was using “mercenaries” to threaten and kill peacefully protesting civilians. The propaganda was successful in muting criticism of what became an invasion and “regime change.” ...

Now, on Feb. 7, Amnesty International released a new report titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison,” which accuses the Syrian government of executing thousands of political prisoners, a set of accusations that has received uncritical treatment in the mainstream news media.

Like the Iraq/Kuwait incubator story and the Libyan “mercenary” story, the “Human Slaughterhouse” report is coming at a critical time. It accuses and convicts the Syrian government of horrible atrocities against civilians – and AI explicitly calls for the international community to take “action.” But the AI report is deeply biased and amounts to a kangaroo-court conviction of the Syrian government.

[See article for litany of facts which debunk AI's reporting. - js]

Naomi Klein to Cover Shocks of Trump Era for The Intercept

Naomi Klein has joined The Intercept as senior correspondent.

In her own words: “I will be covering the shock of the Trump victory and the crisis it has created, and the many ways this is already being exploited for profit at the expense of both people and the planet.”

Klein will be contributing articles as well as commentary in other formats, such as her Facebook Live conversation with Intercept co-founding editor Jeremy Scahill at the Women’s March and appearances on our Intercepted podcast.

Trump Labor Nominee Andrew Puzder Does Not Respect Women At All

Huge Counter-Protests Overwhelm 'Defund Planned Parenthood' Rallies

Anti-abortion groups called for 'Defund Planned Parenthood' demonstrations at more than 200 Planned Parenthood locations throughout the United States on Saturday to pressure President Donald Trump to strip the women's health provider of federal funding.

Then, Planned Parenthood supporters got organized.

And the response has been massive: Hundreds of different counter-demonstrations, large, small and in between, were held across the country Saturday - overwhelming the anti-choice rallies.

Rights don't protect themselves, people do! Live from MN standing 4 Planned Parenthood care. #IStandWithPP pic.twitter.com/zEhROsFXbl

— Dawn Laguens (@dawnlaguens) February 11, 2017

ICE Raids Speed into Overdrive: Advocates Say Obama's Deportations Reaching "100 MPH" Under Trump

Immigration raids hit major cities throughout U.S.

United States immigration officials arrested hundreds of undocumented residents in a series of raids conducted across at least six states this week.

It was the first major crackdown on the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. since President Donald trump signed an executive order on Jan. 25 vowing to ramp up immigration enforcement activity and improve security along the U.S. Mexico border.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents carried out raids this week in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, the Los Angeles Area and across North and South Carolina, the Washington Post reported, citing immigration officials. In New York alone, there were nearly 40 arrests in the last week, according to a leaked memo by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday. The memo said that 95 percent of those arrested had criminal records. ...

Democratic lawmakers have spoken out against the raids. Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro wrote in a statement that he was “concerned about the raids.” “I am asking ICE to clarify whether those individuals are in fact dangerous,” Castro said. “And not people who are here peacefully raising families and contributing to our state.”

Reminder: WikiLeaks Revealed The Deliberate Construction Of A Liberal ‘Echo Chamber’

In all the excitement about Hillary and Donald and Putin and pizza during our last election cycle, there was an important WikiLeaks document that had nothing to do with any of these things which got largely lost in the shuffle. Republican outlets barely touched on it, and it didn’t make the slightest blip on the radar among Berners and DemExiters, so I’d like to write a reminder piece about Podesta email #59125 (click ‘Attachments’ and then ‘2008 Combined Fundraising, Message and Mobilization Plan’), because we need more awareness on this one. ...

The email describes with interesting accuracy the strategy Democrats would go on to use in their campaigns against Republican opponents, without even knowing who the candidates would be yet in the case of the Presidential election. Their plan to “keep the President’s numbers down and brand all conservative candidates as ‘Bush Republicans’,” for example, was used throughout the 2008 campaign in a nonstop barrage of criticisms against Bush by the liberal media while Barack Obama took every opportunity to accuse his opponent John McCain of “running for Bush’s third term.” Their plan to “use national, state and local media to define the issues and narratives that will ultimately shape the election” was used very effectively to turn out “record numbers of voters” and secure victory in 2008 as they predicted. But mixed in with those understandable strategies were two explicit references to the goal of creating a strong “echo chamber” to control political discourse in America.

On page two:

“Control the political discourse. So much effort over the past few years has been focused on better coordinating, strengthening, and developing progressive institutions and leaders. Now that this enhanced infrastructure is in place—grassroots organizing; multi-issue advocacy groups; think tanks; youth outreach; faith communities; micro-targeting outfits; the netroots and blogosphere—we need to better utilize these networks to drive the content of politics through a strong “echo chamber” and message delivery system”

And on page four:

“Create a robust echo chamber with progressive messaging that spans from the opposition campaigns to outside groups, academic experts, and bloggers.”

So to recap, an elite insider of the Democratic party met with a group of powerful neoliberal oligarchs to discuss how they would use their footholds in the media, the internet, academia, faith-based groups and think tanks to create “a group situation where information, ideas, and beliefs are uncritically bounced from insider to insider and amplified, while dissenting views are censored and/or ignored,” exactly like the idiocy-generating manipulation machine that conservative think tanks were inflicting upon Americans of the political right. They planned this, and they succeeded, which is why Democrats have been acting like raving lunatics lately.

After Cancellation, Sanders Vows to Hold WV Town Hall 'In The Streets'

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he will not be "intimidated" from speaking in West Virginia's McDowell County, "one of the poorest areas in one of our poorest states," after officials pulled the plug on a Monday town hall event.

"If anyone in West Virginia government thinks that I will be intimidated from going to McDowell County, West Virginia, to hold a town meeting, they are dead wrong," declared Sanders in a Facebook post on Sunday after the state's National Guard announced the meeting, which was slated to be aired on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes," would not be able to take place at the Welch National Guard Armory two days before it was scheduled to occur.

"If they don't allow us to use the local armory, we'll find another building. If we can't find another building, we'll hold the meeting out in the streets," vowed the Vermont independent. "That town meeting will be held. Poverty in America will be discussed. Solutions will be found."

Hundreds of people had already signed up to attend the event, Sanders said.

On a speaking tour to promote his new book and highlight some of the most economically distressed areas of the country, the progressive champion and former presidential candidate continues to draw massive crowds in some of the most conservative corners.

An upcoming speech in Topeka, Kansas on Feb. 25th had to be moved to a larger venue after more than 1,500 tickets were sold in one week.

Trump has given “Saturday Night Live” its best ratings in decades

Donald Trump has referred to himself as a ratings machine, and judging from the recent viewership of “Saturday Night Live,” he’s right.

Alec Baldwin’s searing send-up of the controversial president has helped lift “SNL” ratings to a 22-year high, according to Nielsen numbers.

Trump’s campaign and the first few weeks of his administration have provided ample material for NBC’s legendary live comedy show, currently in its 42nd season. Viewers are tuning in in droves.

Through late January, “SNL” was averaging 10.6 million viewers per episode — including a seven-day window after the show airs — this season, according to Nielsen metrics, up 22 percent from the comparable period last year.

Al Franken repeats senators' concern that Trump is 'not right mentally'

Al Franken has repeated his contention that some of his fellow senators think Donald Trump is “not right mentally”.

“A few” Republicans are so concerned, the Minnesota Democrat told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “It’s not the majority of them, it’s a few.”

Such concerns are expressed, he said, “in the way all of us have this suspicion. He lies a lot, he says things that aren’t true, that’s the same as lying I guess.”

Standing Rock chairman looks to history as divisions emerge among activists

Dave Archambault II pulled his car over and grabbed a piece of paper. Parked in a quiet lot near his home in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux chairman drew a line graph representing the history of his tribe.

Hundreds of years of despair leading to a peak moment of harmony and euphoria last year, when indigenous people from across the country converged on the area to fight the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. ...

Archambault has become the face of the internationally recognized battle to stop the pipeline, but the oil corporation and the federal government are no longer his only enemies. Some of the most dedicated activists opposing the project now see Archambault as an adversary, a leader who has weakened and divided “water protectors” and threatened the resistance. His angriest Native American critics call him “DAPL Dave”.

With the tribe’s legal battle against the project still active, the chairman has insisted that people leave. But many have returned following Trump’s fast-tracked approvals, and Archambault fears flooding could endanger people’s safety.

More broadly, he struggles to understand the ongoing value of the camps. “Do you think someone will get hurt? Do you think they have a family? Is it wrong of me to think about their family?” He said he fears the “war” that some seek on the ground will only lead to further oppression. He recalled his people’s victory in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, which led to invasions, massacres and devastation. ...

On Saturday evening in Fort Yates, half an hour south of the camps, longtime friends from Standing Rock said it was difficult to have faith in the chairman. “The council asked them to leave at the most critical time,” said Wasté Win Young, 38. “I want to understand his viewpoint, but I can’t,” added Floris White Bull, 33. “To me, it feels like he didn’t just let us down. He let a lot of tribes down. It feels like an opportunity slipping away.”

'Extraordinary' levels of toxic pollution found in 10km deep Mariana trench

Scientists have discovered “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution in the most remote and inaccessible place on the planet – the 10km deep Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean.

Small crustaceans that live in the pitch-black waters of the trench, captured by a robotic submarine, were contaminated with 50 times more toxic chemicals than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China.

“We still think of the deep ocean as being this remote and pristine realm, safe from human impact, but our research shows that, sadly, this could not be further from the truth,” said Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University in the UK, who led the research.

“The fact that we found such extraordinary levels of these pollutants really brings home the long-term, devastating impact that mankind is having on the planet,” he said.

Jamieson’s team identified two key types of severely toxic industrial chemicals that were banned in the late 1970s, but do not break down in the environment, known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). These chemicals have previously been found at high levels in Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic and in killer whales and dolphins in western Europe.

The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, suggests that the POPs infiltrate the deepest parts of the oceans as dead animals and particles of plastic fall downwards. POPs accumulate in fat and are therefore concentrated in creatures up the food chain. They are also water-repellent and so stick to plastic waste.

America's tallest dam's “imminent failure” leads to evacuation of 200,000 people

More than 180,000 people have been asked to evacuate the area downstream of the Oroville Dam in California, after officials warned of an “imminent failure” as a result of a hole in the crumbling structure. ...

Lake Oroville was inundated by unusual amounts of rainfall as a result of three atmospheric river storms — a type of storm associated with major flooding events — in the area during January and February. Once Lake Oroville reached capacity, officials from California’s Department of Water Resources began utilizing the dam’s spillway — a structure that provides the controlled release of water.

Cracks began to appear around the spillway last week, according to the declaration of emergency from Gov. Jerry Brown’s office. On Saturday, officials began relying on the backup auxiliary spillway, which had never been used since the dam’s construction in 1968, but soon determined that that structure was also at risk of failing.

A failure of the dam could send a 30-foot wall of water cascading into the surrounding towns along the Feather River Basin, causing potentially devastating flash flooding.

Also of Interest

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

The Right Has No Answer For Automation Job Loss, But The Left Does

Who Needs the Dakota Access Pipeline?

Donald Trump will spark a war with Iran – which is great news for Isis

The Neocons’ Back-Door to Trump

Americans aren't as attached to democracy as you might think

Oklahoma Lawmakers Want Men to Approve All Abortions

Pride and Protest on Display as Mexico City Marches Against Donald Trump

Chelsea Manning: to those who kept me alive all these years, thank you

A Little Night Music

Stick McGhee - My Baby's Comin' Back

Stick McGhee - Money Fever

Stick McGhee - Southern Menu

Stick McGhee - Blue and Brokenhearted

Stick McGhee - Jungle Juice

Stick McGhee - Drank Up All The Wine Last Night

Stick McGhee - I´m Doin´ All this Time

Stick McGhee - Things Have Changed

Stick McGhee - Six To Eight

Stick McGhee - Tennessee Waltz Blues

Stick McGhee - Sleep In Job