The Evening Blues - 3-2-18



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: John Hammond Jr.

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer and guitarist John Hammond Jr. Enjoy!

John Hammond Jr - You're So Fine

"We are the people without land. We are the people without tradition. We are the people who do not know how to die peacefully and at ease. We are the thoughts of sorrows. Endings of tomorrows. We are the wisps of rulers and the jokers of kings.

We are the people without right. We are the people who have known only lies and desperation. We are the people without a country, a voice or a mirror. We are the crystal gaze returned through the density and immensity of a berserk nation. We are the victims of the untold manifesto of the lack of depth of full and heavy emptiness.

We are the people without sorrow who have moved beyond national pride and indifference to a parody of instinct. We are the people who are desperate beyond emotion because it defies thought. We are the people who conceive our destruction and carry it out lawfully. We are the insects of someone else’s thought. A casualty of daytime, nighttime, space and god without race, nationality or religion. We are the people. The people. The people."

-- Lou Reed


News and Opinion

Hillary Demands Even More Russia Escalations From Trump Administration


We need to ask ourselves: is there in fact anything that Russia can do to avoid being accused of election meddling in November by a power establishment that has an extensive history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to manufacture support for aggressions against a target of the empire? If Russia stays as far away from that election as possible, will we still receive as we did in 2016 completely unsubstantiated reports from the lying, torturing, surveilling, coup-staging US intelligence community that the Russians meddled in the election anyway? ...

I would like to point out that Clinton's tweet demanding more escalations against Russia from the Trump administration received over 14,000 shares in just seven hours. Articles focused solely on this one tweet have been published by CNN, The Independent, the New York Post, AOL, Fox News, and many other outlets as of this writing. Clinton remains the single most influential voice in the Democratic party, and to pretend otherwise is willful ignorance. When Clinton comes out and makes a decree, she is helping to shape a narrative and advance an agenda favored by the Democratic party. When she comes out and says Trump needs to escalate tensions even further with Russia than he already has, it matters. ...

This administration has already killed Russians in Syria, greatly escalated nuclear tensions with Russia, allowed the sale of arms to Ukraine (a move Obama refused for fear of angering Moscow), established a permanent military presence in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change, forced RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents, expanded NATO with the addition of Montenegro, assigned Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, shut down a Russian consulate in San Francisco and thrown out Russian diplomats as part of continued back-and-forth hostile diplomatic exchanges, all while keeping the troops on Russia's border placed there at the end of the Obama administration. On top of all this, this administration has recently increased US Navy presence in the Black Sea "to counter Russia's increased presence there". ...

Trump is marching us closer and closer to a third and final World War, and these psychos are saying he's not hawkish enough.

Well worth a full read:

Russia Shows Off New Weapons - Tells U.S. To "Come Down To Earth"

In his yearly address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation President Putin spoke about the progress his country has made and about future aims of Russian policies. ... The last part of the two hour long speech (video, English simultaneous translation) were a presentation of Russia's new military posture in response to U.S. encroachment and the global U.S. missile defense system. Putin announced the development and fielding of new types of strategic weapons which together will make the U.S. global missile defense systems useless. ...

In 2002 the U.S. unilateral ended the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. In 2004 the U.S. and NATO included global missile defense into their strategic nuclear forces’ drills. Since then Russia has continuously warned that it will have to respond to such a development. Since the ABM treaty had come into force it created stability by guaranteeing Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). If one side would fire its nuclear armed intercontinental missiles onto the other side that side would response by firing its own missiles. Thus both states would be destroyed. MAD guaranteed that neither had any interest in starting such a war in the first place. With a missile defense shield the balance changes. A first strike becomes possible because the missile shield can defeat the retaliating second strike. ...

The purpose of the new weapons Putin announced is to make the U.S. anti-ballistic missile shield useless and to thereby restore the stable state of Mutually Assured Destruction. ...

The "western" media will call Putin's speech and the announcement of new weapons a sign of "Russian aggression" and that he "threatens to start an arms race". But that is not what it was. This was the Russian response to 20 years of U.S. aggression and unilateral arms deployment. It is the response to NATO encroachment on Russia's border and to the attempted destruction of the balance of power that MAD ensured. This is the response that Putin had announced eleven years ago in Munich.

It will take some time for "Washington" to understand what Putin means.

Putin’s message couldn’t be clearer: The West needs to stop provoking a war we don’t want & which no one can win

Does anyone in the West understand what the real point of Putin’s comments about Russia’s new weaponry? The Guardian’s coverage (“Putin threatens US arms race with new missiles declaration”) shows us their masters see this as just another chance to cast Russia as a dangerous rogue state. The Times takes a similar line (“Putin unveils his super weapons to defy the West”). Elsewhere Putin’s speech is not only misinterpreted it’s also relegated to sidebars in favour of photos of snow (Telegraph), or dropped into the tiny print at the bottom of the page (New York Times).

The western press has basically opted out of analysing this, so let’s do it for them. Why is Putin talking about the new generation of weapons? What does he hope to achieve?

First and foremost what Putin’s speech – just as all his previous warnings – is ultimately intended to do is avert a pending worldwide catastrophe. The US political class is too fluoridated, too driven by ideologues, too crazy to understand MAD any more. And its current policy, in concert with the EU and NATO, is one of continued unremitting provocation toward Russia, presented through the subservient and frankly stupid corporate media as “responding” to Russian “aggression”.

Since the “aggression” in question is no more than Russia exercising its lawful rights as a sovereign nation, what the US/EU/NATO nexus is actually doing is demanding Russia return to the client status it occupied in the 1990s or face continued threats to its security both physical and financial. They are trying to wear Russia down, convinced that sooner or later, if pressure increases enough, Putin will fold, withdraw from Syria, agree to “co-operate” with Western interests and generally get in line.

This policy only makes (very limited) sense if there is a possibility Russia will agree to these demands. But even a cursory understanding of the situation makes it obvious Russia literally can’t agree to what amounts to assisted suicide. It can’t. The US/EU/NATO are making threats with no prospect of success. The only rational thing to do is realise this and back off. But instead they apparently think the best thing to do is increase the threat and increase and increase it – in the vain and stupid hope that some day it will work, and with no thought being given to what they will do if it doesn’t. ...

Their real delusion is not that they can win a nuclear war, but that they can continue to do what the are doing and avoid one.

Syrian army discovers Israeli weapons in Daesh hideouts

Syrian media have released new footage showing Israeli-made weapons discovered by government troops in areas newly liberated from Daesh [ISIS] terrorists in the eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr. The video shows a cache of rockets, mortars, tank shells and other ammunition that terrorists left behind in the cities of Bukamal and Mayadin.

Officials say Israeli-manufactured weapons are among the discovered munitions. Syrian government forces also found a plant for the production of shells and explosives. A package of documents and barrels of an unspecified liquid that could possibly be used to manufacture toxic substances was also among the discoveries.

This was not the first time that the Syrian government forces made such discoveries from terrorist hideouts across the country. According to Syrian army commanders, several discoveries of this kind prove the direct and systematic support provided to Daesh by a number of regional and trans-regional entities.

Mother of Accused NSA Leaker Reality Winner: My Daughter Wasn’t Read Her Miranda Rights

Catalonia’s exiled leader drops bid to be president again

Catalonia’s exiled separatist leader Carles Puigdemont announced Thursday that he was dropping his bid to be reappointed president of the restive Spanish region, in a bid to find a way out of a political impasse. But the separatist movement isn’t stopping. Puigdemont has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium since October. The former Catalan president fled Spain after the central government in Madrid dismissed him, with the rest of the regional government, for unilaterally declaring independence. ...

Madrid welcomed the move, which creates an opening for Catalonia to have a functioning regional government again, and a potential way forward out of Spain’s biggest political crisis since the death of military dictator Francisco Franco 1975.

But that hinges in no small part on who the Catalan separatist bloc selects as its next candidate. Puigdemont said that his Together for Catalonia party, one of the groups in the bloc, was supporting Catalan pro-independence activist Jordi Sanchez for the role instead – a nomination that would be just as fraught as his own. Sanchez is one of a number of pro-independence politicians currently being held in a Madrid jail on charges of sedition.

“It is a great honour and enormous responsibility to be able to represent the people of Catalonia,” Sanchez’s Twitter account tweeted Thursday.

Trump trade tariffs: Europe threatens US bikes, bourbon and bluejeans

Europe has warned Donald Trump to expect retaliatory strikes against American icons like Harley-Davidson, Levi’s jeans and Kentucky bourbon, if he sparks a trade war by going ahead with punitive US tariffs on foreign steel. The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned there would be consequences for the US if Trump’s threat of a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium imports takes effect.

“If the Americans impose tariffs on steel and aluminium, then we must treat American products the same way,” Juncker told German television stations. “We must show that we can also take measures. This cannot be a unilateral transatlantic action by the Americans,” he said. “I’m not saying we have to shoot back, but we must take action. ...

His warning came as the International Monetary Fund said that Donald Trump’s plan would cause international damage – and also harm America’s own economy. “The import restrictions announced by the US President are likely to cause damage not only outside the US, but also to the US economy itself, including to its manufacturing and construction sectors, which are major users of aluminium and steel,” the IMF said. Other world leaders also threatened retaliation. Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said US tariffs would be “absolutely unacceptable” and China too expressed “grave concern” over the plans.

Trump’s metal war: EU, Canada vow retaliation over US steel & aluminum tariffs

Instead of Taking on Gun Control, Democrats Are Teaming With Republicans for a Stealth Attack on Wall Street Reform

In mid-January, Citigroup executives held a conference call with reporters about the bank’s fourth-quarter 2017 earnings. The discussion turned to an obscure congressional bill, S.2155, pitched by its bipartisan supporters mainly as a vehicle to deliver regulatory relief to community banks and, 10 years after the financial crisis, to make needed technical fixes to the landmark Wall Street reform law, Dodd-Frank.

But Citi’s Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach told the trade reporters he thought that some bigger banks — like, say, Citigroup — should get taken care of in the bill as well. He wanted Congress to loosen rules around how the bank could go about lending and investing. The specific mechanism to do that was to fiddle with what’s known as the supplementary leverage ratio, or SLR, a key capital requirement for the nation’s largest banks. This simple ratio sets how much equity banks must carry compared to total assets like loans. ...

Republicans and Democrats who pushed S.2155 through the Senate Banking Committee must have heard Citi’s call. (They changed the definition of a custodial bank in a subsequent version of the bill. It used to stipulate that only a bank with a high level of custodial assets would qualify, but now it defines a custodial bank as “any depository institution or holding company predominantly engaged in custody, safekeeping, and asset servicing activities.”) The change could allow virtually any big bank to take advantage of the new rule. ...

S.2155 is known in Washington as the Crapo bill, named for the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Idaho Republican Mike Crapo. But it is at least equally authored by North Dakota Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, with strong input from Jon Tester, D-Mont.; Joe Donnelly, D-Ind.; and Mark Warner, D-Va.

Heckler Confronts Pelosi "Whats Your Net Worth!?!?"

Amazon paid no US income taxes for 2017

Thanks to a complex system of credits and deferment, Amazon won't pay any federal income taxes after topping $5.6 billion in income in 2017. The Seattle-based online retailer will end up paying out roughly $769 million in taxes for the year, but $724 million of that will be in foreign taxes.

That's according to an analysis of the online behemoth's 2017 10-K form, which "provides a comprehensive overview of the company's business and financial condition," according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.



the evening greens


“The Scales Are Tipped”: Emails Show Louisiana’s Close Relationship With Oil Industry, Monitoring of Pipeline Opponents

Shortly after the controversial Bayou Bridge pipeline received its final major permit to begin construction in Louisiana, the head of the state’s Homeland Security office forwarded seemingly benign details on the activities of an environmentalist group opposing the pipeline to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the State Police, and the National Guard. The FBI also received a copy.

The January 4 email, authored by an intelligence officer with the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, pulled information from the social media page and email list of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. It highlighted a local pastor’s planned participation in an anti-pipeline Facebook livestream and described the fundraising efforts of Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who coordinated military relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina and now runs the environmental justice group GreenARMY. A similar email that GOHSEP Director James Waskom forwarded to Department of Environmental Quality head Chuck Carr Brown on December 20 pulled quotes from an article published by the news site Inside Sources describing the visitor vetting process used by the anti-pipeline L’eau Est La Vie Camp.

The emails were among a larger set turned over by the state’s environmental protection department in response to a public records request filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Taken together, they suggest that while Louisiana saw the oil company behind Bayou Bridge as a partner, officials increasingly viewed pipeline opponents as a security threat. Additional emails also indicate a close working relationship between the oil company, Energy Transfer Partners, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issued the permit that allowed construction to go forward. ...

The Bayou Bridge opposition movement is tiny in comparison to the thousands of people who showed up at Standing Rock in the fall of 2016 to physically block construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, but the two pipelines are related. Both are owned by Energy Transfer Partners, and they represent the northern and southern sections of a larger pipeline system carrying oil from the Bakken shale fracking region of North Dakota to the Gulf Coast. Connecting the two pipelines is the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline, which runs from DAPL’s endpoint in Illinois to Texas and was recently retrofitted to carry oil instead of gas. The Bayou Bridge pipeline would run 163 miles from ETCO’s endpoint to St. James, Louisiana.

Consumers Are Revolting Against Animal Cruelty — So the Poultry Industry Is Lobbying for Laws to Force Stores to Sell Their Eggs

Over the last ecade, thanks to a cascade of undercover exposés of factory farms and slaughterhouses by animal rights activists, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the horrors of industrial animal agriculture. Though it has received less attention than than the systematic torture of pigs and cows, perhaps no part of animal agriculture is more heinous than egg production, an industry in which hens are confined to excruciatingly small cages for the entirety of their tortured lives. As the Humane Society put it after an extensive investigation into the indescribable cruelties of this industry, “Perhaps the most abused farm animals, nearly 280 million laying hens in the United States are confined in barren wire battery cages so restrictive the birds can’t even spread their wings.”

As consumers have awoken to the barbaric conditions of the egg industry, they have begun to turn toward incrementally more humane alternatives, such as cage-free eggs, as well as truly humane options, such as eggs from pasture-raised hens at places like Vital Farms. The market, as they say, is speaking. As Americans become more educated about the morally repellent practices of this industry, they are increasingly refusing to reward barbaric practices by buying eggs that are the byproduct of industrial torture.

But in response, the powerful poultry industry — which long invoked principles of the “free market” to justify their torture-derived products being available to consumers — have now reversed course. With consumers choosing more humane egg products, lobbyists for the poultry industry are pushing laws that would force stores to carry their products even if doing so offends their moral sensibilities and ethical judgments.

In Iowa, the nation’s biggest egg-producing state, lawmakers, at the behest of the poultry lobby, are making their most brazen attempt yet to fight the tides of change: simply making it a legal requirement for grocery stores to carry inhumanely produced eggs. A new bill in the Iowa state legislature, overwhelmingly passed by the Iowa House of Representatives on Monday by a vote of 81-17, would force any Iowa grocery store that participates in the Women, Infants and Children federal food assistance program and sells what the bill refers to as “specialty eggs” to also stock “conventional eggs.” “Specialty eggs” are cage-free eggs, free-range eggs, or “enriched colony cage” eggs — eggs produced in larger cages with perches and other amenities in them. “Conventional eggs” are eggs from hens confined in battery cages.

Arctic spring is starting 16 days earlier than a decade ago, study shows

The Arctic spring is arriving 16 days earlier than it did a decade ago, according to a new study which shows climate change is shifting the season earlier more dramatically the further north you go.

The research, published on Friday in the journal Scientific Reports, comes amid growing concern about the warming of Greenland, Siberia, Alaska and other far northern regions, which have recently experienced unusually prolonged and frequent midwinter temperature spikes.

The authors from the University of California, Davis, based the study on temperature records and 743 previous phenological studies looking at timings of bird migrations, flowers blooming and amphibians calling. The results showed a curve, with spring events occurring earlier further north of the equator.

“Spring is arriving earlier, and the Arctic is experiencing greater advances of spring than lower latitudes,” said lead author Eric Post, a fellow of the John Muir Institute and polar ecologist at UC Davis.

Over the past 10 years, this means the end of winter will come about a day earlier in Los Angeles, but two weeks earlier in the Arctic. The authors say the northward increase in the rate of springtime advance is roughly three times greater than indicated by previous studies. This underlines how pronounced climate change is in the Arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average and ice fields are rapidly shrinking.


Also of Interest

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

Bomb the Public Schools: a Modest Proposal

Bernie Sanders on Puerto Rico Neglect: “Do You Think This Would Be Happening in Westchester County?”

'This is all stolen': Canadian man offers to share his land with First Nations


A Little Night Music

John Hammond — Barbecue Blues

John Hammond — Get Behind the Mule

John Hammond — Don't Go No Further

John Hammond — Love Changing Blues

John Hammond — Dust My Broom

John Hammond Jr & The Nighthawks.- Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut

John Hammond Jr. - Maybelline

John Hammond - Lookin' For Trouble

John Hammond- Heartattack And Vine

John Hammond - Fattening Frogs For Snakes

John Hammond - Ride 'Til I Die


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OLinda's picture

“Spring is arriving earlier, and the Arctic is experiencing greater advances of spring than lower latitudes,” said lead author Eric Post, a fellow of the John Muir Institute and polar ecologist at UC Davis.

Definitely Springy here today! 68 degrees F at 3PM. Sunny with a light breeze. It has been such a beautiful day! Maybe one good thing about snow is that it sure makes you enjoy perfect days like this that much more.

Hope all is well with everybody.

Happy Friday Bluesters!

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joe shikspack's picture

@OLinda

well, it was a little springy here, but then last night the wind kicked up. and when i say kicked up, it's like 60 mile an hour winds and the weatherstripping in my front door howls and moans. apparently, i'm lucky to have electricity since falling trees and limbs have taken out power in a lot of my area.

heh, in the wee hours of the morning we're supposed to get some snow, but probably not much accumulation.

wee hah! Smile

anyway, have a great evening, glad you're having nice weather!

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Pricknick's picture

And the majority are happy about it.
Insect populations have plummeted and the majority are happy about it but
wonder where all the birds have gone.
I have no sympathy for the human race.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

joe shikspack's picture

@Pricknick

well, look on the bright side. our elites have an accelerated plan to create peace on the planet.

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Meteor Man's picture

An amusing list because Hope Hicks is #1. The issue date is Feb. 22nd so it is already "so last week":

https://www.gq.com/story/50-most-powerful-in-trump-dc

Jeff Bezos and Rebekah Mercer made the list, but not the Koch Brothers. Putin is #38. A Russian hockey player for the Washington Capitols came in at #44 but Laureen Jobs, Steve Jobs widow, who owns the Washington Capitols and recently bought The Atlantic is #46.
Eight ghosts of Trump's political past are #50:

Anthony Scaramucci. Sean Spicer. Reince Priebus. Corey Lewandowski. / Bottom row: Mike Flynn. Paul Manafort. Sebastian Gorka. Omarosa.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

joe shikspack's picture

@Meteor Man

heh, i bet the 50 most powerful people in washington aren't even in washington and rarely visit.

it's funny how the media never seem to point out who it is that really pulls the strings.

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Shahryar's picture

as I get older I forget which stories I've told and to whom I've told them. Like this one.

As a junior in high school I loved John Hammond's Big City Blues LP and played it over and over, when I wasn't spinning Revolver or East-West by the Butterfield Blues Band. But one particular week it was Hammond. My aunt, uncle and older cousin dropped by and I said to my cuz "listen to this, this is great!" and he said "oh yeah, John. I went to college with John."

Well! As you can imagine that impressed me no end. I didn't even know where Peter had gone so I asked him and he said "Antioch". That was enough for me. If John Hammond went to Antioch then I was going there, too! My parents were a little freaked 8 months later when that was the only school I'd applied to. But I got in so that worked out.

I suppose, given the way I've always thought about things and given the political atmosphere of the late 1960s that I might have gone there anyway...maybe. But I find it interesting that this or that can lead to a major decision that turns one's life in some direction.

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joe shikspack's picture

@Shahryar

cool story. heh, when i started thinking about applying to colleges the vietnam war was still going and it seemed like nixon might keep it going forever, so i thought about applying to some canadian colleges to kind of get a jump on things (wink, wink).

these days i wonder if i shouldn't have followed up on my instincts and applied there after all. Smile

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Shahryar's picture

@joe shikspack

and the war department (Selective Service) even announced about how high up they'd call. My number was 128. Funny how memorable one's draft number is. As soon as I knew my number wouldn't be called I dropped my student deferment. Good times for me but, as we well remember, bad times for the poor guys with low numbers.

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snoopydawg's picture

Putin: The Man Who Stopped Washington’s Regime Change Rampage

March 01, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system that divides the world into “permanent winners and losers”? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a “KGB thug”, Putin is the “new Hitler”?

American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he’s also a big believer in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility. Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right.

I bet if he ran for president here and no one knew his name, people would think that he would make a pretty good president. But then, Bernie did run on these issues and look at how that turned out.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

given putin's popularity - at 81% a rating that no american politician can even dream of - he must be doing something (or a lot of somethings) right.

there's an economic case for putin's popularity - he took over from the bumbling u.s. imposed (oh, that's right we don't meddle in elections) idiot yeltsin under whose booze-addled "leadership" the russian economy was sinking into oblivion. putin stabilized the ecomomy and brought a semblance of middle-class prosperity to much of russia.

there's more importantly a political case for putin's popularity - he has been able to run against the evil that the u.s. does in the world. russians approve of it and are proud of their return to geopolitical significance.

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My wife just finished a book

"Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way The World Eats"

From a book review

Today, animals consume four times the amount of antibiotics of humans – and we know they are overused and misused in people.

Alexander Fleming, who discovered the first antibiotic – penicillin – in 1928, warned of dangers of misuse. Bacteria are wily, able to mutate and become resistant. With increased use in animals came the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of common meat-borne pathogens such as staphylococcus and salmonella – a phenomenon first seen in chicken-farm workers.

This wasn't broadly known, but it was hardly a secret. In 1964, an exposé of factory farming entitled Animal Machines was published and, in 1967, New Scientist magazine published a damning piece titled Antibiotics On The Farm: Major Threat To Human Health.

Women need to watch out for bladder inflammations from bacteria in chicken. There has been a major move to reduce antibiotic usage but it is now a world wide problem. We now only buy chickens that have not been treated.

I found a TED talk by the author Mayrn McKenna which has had 1.5 million views.

The major theme is antibiotic resistance from superbugs. In 2015 there were an estimated 700,000 deaths per year world wide from antibiotic resistance and 50,000 in USA and UK.

I am listening to the TED talk as I type this

What do we do when antibiotics don't work anymore

***

By coincidence today I found out about the champion bacteria breeder.

The Man Who Bottled Evolution: Richard Lenski’s Long-ter,m evolution experiment creates a milestone

Mich State Univ prof started breeding bacteria 30 years ago. He has reached the milestone of 68,000 generations which in human terms is a million years.

But who, outside of the science community, should care about this milestone? Why celebrate and why bacteria?

Because the LTEE shows how seemingly small mutations lay the groundwork for evolution. Lenski’s bacteria grow more than six generations a day. It takes mice a year to do the same thing. On human terms, the LTEE generations span the equivalent of well more than a million years of human evolution.
The long-term experiment demonstrates definitively—rather than theoretically—how new lineages arise and diverge. It confirms that evolution occurs, is ever-present and never stops. In other words, according to science writer Carl Zimmer, Lenski has done something Darwin never dreamed of: he has observed evolution in his own time.

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joe shikspack's picture

@DonMidwest

thanks for the links!

if you follow the british press at all, there have been lots of stories about the american meat industry lately that will give you pause. the brits are worried that after brexit, deals will be made that allow filthy, unsafe american meat (the poultry industry seems to be a big focus of many of the articles i've seen) will be allowed into british markets.

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I like him better without the sun changing glasses

Look at all the crap from democrats in this post from joeshikspack just today

it may be that the republican party collapses but why not have dems that stand for Bernie's agenda

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Azazello's picture

@DonMidwest
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMf9SM3jO-s width:400 height:240]

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@Azazello they have to be defeated....

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Shahryar's picture

@DonMidwest

She's just about the last person the Dems should be using to talk about income inequality, just as Hillary was so ineffective when she criticized Trump for his sexist ways, as if no one would make the connection between her and Bill, and as if no one would remember the hatchet jobs she did on Bill's victims.

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enhydra lutris's picture

from a chickenshit legislature on behalf of some chickenshit businessmen. It's really difficult to see how this could be legal, but who knows, especially in this day and age.

The mad bomber is amazing. The fact that other Dems haven't sat her down and told her to STFU shows what that party has become. Hilary's hysterical hyperbole broadcast network.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

It's really difficult to see how this could be legal, but who knows, especially in this day and age.

i guess it's like they say, "money talks, bullshit walks."

i'm not sure where chickenshit fits into this aphorism. Smile

it seems that hillary and her friends just want to get it all over with. they don't get to run the world, so why not just blow it up?

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snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

We just need to get Russia to nuke Israel and game on! This might be what Pence is telling Trump. "Hey, let's move our embassy to Jerusalem and see if that speeds up the rapture."

Yippee! Bring them on!

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

for that.
I'm becoming quite fond of Putin. He has probably saved us from ourselves in Syria & now looks to have restored MAD--much to the chagrin of Obama & HRC I would wager. But Trump, Congress, & the MIC will no doubt piss away the $1 trillion "modernizing".

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chuck utzman

TULSI 2020

joe shikspack's picture

@chuckutzman

putin may be a lot of things, but among them he seems to be a serious, careful, calculating politician for whom there is no equal counterpart in the u.s. leadership and there hasn't been one for a long time.

oh, well, trump, congress and the mic will have already taken putin's presentation as an excuse to "modernize." i'm pretty sure that we will look back on this time when "modernization" was only supposed to cost $1 trillion wistfully.

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