Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Louisiana blues guitarist and singer Lonesome Sundown. Enjoy!

"Whether I'm trying to figure out what the U.S. military is doing in Latin America or Africa, Afghanistan or Qatar, the response is remarkably uniform - obstruction and obfuscation, hurdles and hindrances. In short, the good old-fashioned military runaround."

-- Nick Turse

News and Opinion

Syrian ‘Chemical Victims’ Suffered from Dust Inhalation, Reports Say

We are now being told (and I assure you I am not making this up) that if the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons doesn’t find evidence that the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapons attack in Douma last week, it’s because Russia hid the evidence. “It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site,” reportsU.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward. “It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation.” ...

The Independent‘s Robert Fisk has published a report which affirms the story so many westerners have been dismissing as Kremlin propaganda for days now after interviewing a doctor from the hospital of the area where the Douma attack was supposed to have occurred. Dr Assim Rahaibani told Fisk that what was in actuality an outbreak of respiratory distress among occupants of a dusty oxygen-deprived tunnel was made to look like the aftereffects of a chemical weapons attack when a member of the White Helmets started shouting about a gas attack in front of a bunch of video cameras. Everyone panicked and started hosing themselves down, but in the video, according to Rahaibani, “what you see are people suffering from hypoxia—not gas poisoning.”

This report was independently backed up by a reporter from One America News Network named Pearson Sharp, who gave a detailed account of his interviews with officials, doctors, as well as many civilians on the street Sharp says he deliberately selected at random in order to avoid accusations of bias. Many people hadn’t even heard that a chemical weapons attack had taken place, and the ones who had said it was staged by Jaysh al-Islam. The staff at the hospital, including a medic-in-training who was an eyewitness to the incident, gave the same story as the account in Fisk’s report. (Fisk also reported that the White Helmets in Duma had joined jihadists on Syrian government buses on the way to Idlib province.)

The increasing confidence with which these unapproved narratives are being voiced and the increasing discomfort being exhibited by empire loyalists like Ambassador Ward indicate a weakening narrative in the greater propaganda campaign against the Assad government and its allies, but don’t hold your breath for the part where Fox News and the BBC turn around and start asking critical questions of the governments that they are meant to be holding to account. ...

Watch them closely. Watch how they steadfastly ignore the growing mountain of evidence and keep promoting the Syrian regime change agenda that the western empire has been working toward for decades. Watch them dismiss all evidence they can’t ignore as Kremlin propaganda and shift the narrative whenever things start to look bad for them.

Sergei Lavrov: "Proof by punishment is what is being applied by the troika of Western countries"

Hat tip Azazello. Here are some excerpts from a Moon of Alabama post about the Syria strike that cover some things that have not been widely reported:

F.U.K.U.S. strikes Syria

France now admits that its 'intelligence' of the Douma incident is solely based on the obviously staged youtube videos and claims made by 'western' financed propaganda operations who cooperate with the Jihadis. ...

Last night some 107 missiles and cruise missiles were fired against two research sites and eight military airports in Syria by U.S., French and British forces. The Russian and Syrian forces were warned. People and equipment had been moved. The Russian forces did not directly respond as their areas in Syria were not targeted. The Syrian air defense managed to shoot down or divert 71 of the incoming missiles before they reached their target. The Pentagon claims that none of its missiles were destroyed or diverted from its aim. A well known Syrian opposition outlet disagrees with the Pentagon's claim:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights managed to monitored interception by the regime forces to tens of missiles which targeted their positions and military bases in the Syrian territory, where several intersected sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory, that the number missiles that were downed, exceeded 65 missiles ...

A 60 to 70% air defense success rate against incoming missiles is stunning. Most of these will have been killed by the Pantsir-S1 systems Russia supplied to Syria. Every Syrian military airport is now protected by such short range systems and while eight were targeted only one was hit.

One of the targets that were hit was the undefended Barzah Scientific Research Center near Damascus. The Pentagon claims that chemical weapons are made or stored there. That claim is obviously a lie:

• In 2013 Syrian joined the Chemical Warfare Convention and gave up all its chemical weapons.
• The OPCW has checked all accessible former chemical weapon sites in Syria and observed the destruction of the production equipment.
• It has since visited and inspected (pdf) the Barzeh facility at least twice. That last time in November 2017.
• One does not attack a site with normal bombs if one knows that chemical weapons are stored their. The bombs would distribute the dangerous chemicals and everyone downwind would be seriously affected.
• After the U.S. strikes people can be seen walking through the fresh ruins. None wear any protection. There surely was nothing 'chemical' there.

The same holds for the Jaramana facility hit by the strikes. The Pentagon's claim that the strikes hit Syrian 'chemical production and storage facilities' is a lie.

At destroyed Syria lab, workers say they produce antidotes to snake venom not toxic weapons

Plastic gloves and face masks lay scattered in the rubble of a Syrian research lab destroyed by Western strikes on Saturday, where an official denied the centre was developing chemical weapons. ... “The building had three storeys: a basement, ground floor, and second floor,” said Said Said, an engineer who identified himself as head of the centre’s paint and plastics department. ...

The site, according to Western powers, was part of the Syrian government’s “chemical weapons infrastructure.”

But Said told AFP only non-lethal research and development was under way at the centre. “As we work in civilian pharmaceutical and chemical research, we did not expect that we would be hit,” he said. Instead, the centre had been producing antidotes to scorpion and snake venom while running tests on chemical products used in making food, medicine and children’s toys, according to Said.

“If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here. I’ve been here since 5:30 am in full health -- I’m not coughing,” he added.

Said said the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had visited the site in Barzeh in recent years and had declared it free of any toxic weapons. “The OPCW used to stay in the two upper rooms, and use the labs, and we would cooperate with them completely,” he said.

This is the 1st time in history where a capital, #Damascus, is hit by foreign power and people celebrate it in the street few hours later, challenging the attackers and expressing their solidarity with the government by dancing in the street: #USA #UK #France boosted #Assad today

— Elijah J. Magnier (@ejmalrai) April 14, 2018

Syria: missiles fired at air base near Homs – state TV

Syrian air defences have responded to a missile attack over Homs which targeted Shayrat air base late on Monday night, Syrian state television reported.

It also reported that the missiles were shot down by the country’s air defences. State television showed pictures of a missile shot in the air above the air base.

The Syrian state television report did not, however, specify who may have fired the missiles.

The Pentagon said there was no US military activity in the area at the time.

In addition, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia’s media unit said on Tuesday Syrian air defences had intercepted three missiles aimed at Dumair military airport, north-east of Damascus.

Corbyn: Does this mean countries could now bomb Saudi airfields over crisis in Yemen?

Democrats Love Trump's Wars, Too

American politicians on both sides of the aisle love war. On Monday, an In These Times survey found that 92 percent of U.S. Democratic and Independent senators did not mount meaningful opposition to Donald Trump’s April 13 air strikes against the Syrian government. The primary point of contention that Democrats—and most of the partisan Democratic media—leveled were vague legal or constitutional meta-objections that Trump did not have the “authority” or should consult Congress. But the bulk of the “resistance” did not raise meaningful objections to the strikes themselves.

Only a handful of Democrats—Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.— opposed the air strikes on substance. The vast majority, instead, relied on process demands that Trump get congressional approval—without saying if the strikes themselves were good or bad.

Process critiques over legality are useful as far as they go, but untethered to normative critiques on the substance of that which is being called to a vote, they amount to little more than busy work, a way of looking anti-Trump without the mess of opposing air strikes that the Democratic establishment —including former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her primary messaging apparatus, Center for American Progress — have been backing for years. It amounts to little more than vacuous hall monitor-ism: Bomb away, but make sure you follow the rules. ...

Congressional Democrats like Tim Kaine, D-Va., Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., took this posture last week, calling on Trump to hold Bashar Assad accountable for alleged chemical attacks in vague terms while posturing as anti-war by calling for a vote they, by all indications, would probably back in any event. ...

A close cousin of the process criticism is “strategy” trolling. This is when Democratic lawmakers or pundits support Trump’s air strikes, either expressly or implicitly, but hand-wring over a lack of a “strategy,” as Sens. Warren, Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. and Michael Bennet, D-Colo. did, along with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “Strategy,” of course, almost always means putting the one-off bombing in the context of more bombing and building military bases in east Syria to fight the “Iranian” and Hezbollah presence. The “strategy” of not bombing Syria anymore or pulling out troops is an option center-left serious people never entertain, much less promote. Trump’s wanton warmongering is OK so long as it’s followed by a 10-point presentation on how he plans on carving up Syria to serve the U.S. and Israel’s interests.

North and South Korea Reportedly in Talks to Officially End Korean War

Technically, North and South Korea are still at war, and have been for more than six decades—but an "absolutely earth-shaking" new report on Tuesday indicates the conflict may soon be coming to an end.

Citing an anonymous South Korean diplomatic official, Munhwa Ilbo—a South Korean daily newspaper—reported that the neighboring countries are hashing out a statement that could officially bring the war to an end later this month, when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are set to meet in person for the first time.

As CNBC reports:

Kim and Moon could also discuss returning the heavily-fortified demilitarized zone separating them to its original state, the newspaper said.

Pyongyang and Seoul have technically been at war since the 1950-1953 Korean conflict ended with a truce—and not a peace treaty. Geopolitical tensions have occasionally flared up since the armistice, although to date both countries have managed to avoid another devastating conflict.

A successful summit between the Koreas later this month could help pave the way for a meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump. The U.S. president and North Korean leader are poised to hold talks in late May or June, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The groundbreaking report comes as Kim has increasingly expressed his willingness to discuss denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula—an openness that foreign policy experts have attributed to South Korea's "masterful" diplomacy, not President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and warmongering.

Korea experts and journalists argued that if the new report is true, it is major news for the Korean Peninsula and a crucial step toward establishing permanent peace in the region.

Far more than 87m Facebook users had data compromised, MPs told

Far more than 87 million people may have had their Facebook data harvested by Cambridge Analytica, according to evidence from former employee Brittany Kaiser. Speaking to the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee, Kaiser said Cambridge Analytica had a suite of personality quizzes designed to extract personal data from the social network, of which Aleksandr Kogan’s This Is Your Digital Life app was just one example.

In evidence to the committee, Kaiser wrote: “The Kogan/GSR datasets and questionnaires were not the only Facebook-connected questionnaires and datasets which Cambridge Analytica used. I am aware in a general sense of a wide range of surveys which were done by CA or its partners, usually with a Facebook login – for example, the ‘sex compass’ quiz.

“I do not know the specifics of these surveys or how the data was acquired or processed. But I believe it is almost certain that the number of Facebook users whose data was compromised through routes similar to that used by Kogan is much greater than 87 million; and that both Cambridge Analytica and other unconnected companies and campaigns were involved in these activities.”

Giving oral evidence on Tuesday, Kaiser said: “When I first joined the company, our creative and psychology teams, and data science teams, would work together to design some of these questionnaires. “In my pitches I used to give examples, even to clients, that if you go on Facebook and you see these viral personality quizzes, that not all of them would be designed by Cambridge Analytica, SCL group or our affiliates, but these applications were designed specifically to harvest data from individuals using Facebook as the tool.

“So I know, at least of those two examples, the music version and the sex compass, which were both quizzes that were separate from Aleksandr Kogan’s quiz. Therefore it can be inferred or implied that there were many additional individuals as opposed to just the ones through Aleksandr Kogan’s test whose may have been compromised.”

“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask

One-shot cures for diseases are not great for business—more specifically, they’re bad for longterm profits—Goldman Sachs analysts noted in an April 10 report for biotech clients, first reported by CNBC.

The potential to deliver “one shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies... While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

... To get around the sustainability issue overall, the report suggests that biotech companies focus on diseases or conditions that seem to be becoming more common and/or are already high-incidence. It also suggests that companies be innovative and constantly expanding their portfolio of treatments. This can “offset the declining revenue trajectory of prior assets." Lastly, it hints that, as such cures come to fruition, they could open up more investment opportunities in treatments for “disease of aging.”

Sacramento police waited to call for help after shooting Stephon Clark because they thought he was “pretending”

When two Sacramento Police officers shot 22-year-old Stephon Clark seven times in the back in his own backyard, he didn’t die instantaneously. The officers, however, didn’t call for medical help right away — they thought he might be faking unconsciousness and still hiding a weapon.

Fifty-four video and audio clips — released Monday by the Sacramento Police Department, exactly one month after the shooting — reveal new details as to why the officers waited about five minutes before helping Clark. An independent autopsy revealed Clark didn’t die for between three and 10 minutes after being hit by the officers’ first bullets. Had help arrived sooner, Clark might have had a greater chance of surviving.

The Sacramento officers were responding to 911 calls of someone breaking car windows in the neighborhood when they began chasing after Clark, who led them to his grandparents' backyard, where he lived, too. Officers said they thought he had a gun, but Clark was only holding a cell phone.

California cops kill black man after firing dozens of bullets at his car in Walmart parking lot

California police fired what sounded like as many as 30 bullets when they shot and killed a black father of three in a Walmart parking lot two hours north of Los Angeles a few weeks ago. He was believed to have been unarmed.

In addition to killing 26-year-old Diante Yarber, the shooting in Barstow, California, on April 5 also injured a 23-year-old woman sitting in the back of his car. Police said they were responding to a call reporting a “suspicious vehicle” and mistakenly thought Yarber was wanted for questioning in a stolen vehicle case. When they tried to pull Yarber over for questioning, officers said, he put his car in reverse, accelerated, and struck their vehicle.

In blurry video taken by a bystander in the Walmart parking lot, Yarber’s car does move in reverse, and about 30 shots can be heard as people scream. But when Yarber’s family retrieved the vehicle — which was Yarber’s cousin's car and not stolen — the frame showed no damage that would indicate a collision with another vehicle, Yarber’s aunt told the Guardian.

Yarber’s death came three weeks after Sacramento police shot 22-year-old black man Stephon Clark in the back seven times. The two officers responsible thought Clark was armed at the time. The department later clarified he was carrying a “toolbar”; in reality, all he had was a cell phone.

233 Members of Congress Just Voted to Steal Social Security’s $2.9 Trillion Surplus

The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, in reaction to nearly every Republican member of the House of Representatives, as well as seven Democrats, voting for a Constitutional amendment requiring that all annual revenue and spending balance every year:

“Every pay period, starting with our first jobs, America’s workers contribute to Social Security. The program uses those funds to pay all benefits and related administrative costs. Social Security does not add even a penny to the deficit, as Republican President Ronald Reagan so clearly stated when he was president.

When Social Security runs a surplus, Social Security holds the funds in trust. Social Security currently has a $2.9 trillion accumulated surplus. In the guise of a so-called balanced budget amendment, 233 members of the House of Representatives just voted to pretend that the accumulated surplus does not exist.

Ninety-seven percent of Republicans just voted to steal those past contributions. They voted, in effect, to not pay back hardworking Americans when those funds will be needed to pay their earned benefits. (Ninety-six percent of Democrats voted to honor their commitment to the American people.)

That 233 politicians would vote to steal this money is shameful. It helps explain the low regard the American people have for Congress. Fortunately for Social Security beneficiaries, the amendment did not attain the two-thirds majority required to pass the House. But those who voted for it are now on the record in support of stealing the American people’s earned Social Security benefits.”

A list of the Members of Congress who voted for the so-called balanced budget amendment is here.

This is an excellent article, here's a teaser:

The Corporate Plan to Groom U.S. Kids for Servitude by Wiping Out Public Schools

West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, nine-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.

It’s the latest battle in a contest between two countervailing forces: one bent on reengineering America for the benefit of the wealthy, the other struggling to preserve dignity and security for ordinary people. If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country will henceforth be groomed for a third-world life. ...

After five years of research and the publication of The One Percent Solution, [Gordon Lafer, Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon,] concluded that by lobbying to make changes like increasing class sizes, pushing for online instruction, lowering accreditation requirements for teachers, replacing public schools with privately-run charters, getting rid of publicly elected school boards and a host of other tactics, Big Business was aiming to dismantle public education.

The grand plan was even more ambitious. These titans of business wished to completely change the way Americans and their children viewed their life potential. Transforming education was the key. ... “One of the ways I think that they try to avoid a populist backlash is by lowering everybody’s expectations of what we have a right to demand as citizens,” says Lafer. “When you think about what Americans think we have a right to, just by living here, it’s really pretty little. Most people don’t think you have a right to healthcare or a house. You don’t necessarily have a right to food and water. But people think you have a right to have your kids get a decent education.”

Not for long, if Big Business has its way.

Politicized by Trump, Teachers Threaten to Shake Up Red-State Politics

The teachers strikes that have roiled red states across the country burst onto the national scene seemingly out of nowhere. But a closer look at the people who make up this movement reveals the distinct Trump-era nature of the uprising.

In the four states where teachers movements have erupted over the past few months — Arizona, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma — educators and community members are encountering broadly similar circumstances. In all four states, residents are reacting to years of Republican-controlled legislatures, a decline in state funding for students and teachers, an expansion of private school vouchers and charter schools, and an increasingly galvanized electorate that is motivated by all sorts of other organizing efforts that have emerged since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.

And while the ranks of the educators are stocked with progressives, the strikes would have flopped had they not been joined by conservative Republican teachers who are, in significant ways, manifestations of what Washington pundits have begun to believe are purely imaginary people outside of the Beltway: folks who remain ardently conservative but are rejecting the direction the party has taken in the White House, back home or both.

“This whole effort has helped shake people from a slumber, and more people are asking, ‘Well, how is my representative voting?’” said Noah Karvelis, a public school teacher in Phoenix and a #RedforEd organizer. “People are asking if they need to rethink their votes. On our Facebook page, we even have a lot conservative teachers writing about how frustrated they are with our Republican legislators.” ...

Kathy Hoffman, who is in her fifth year of teaching in Arizona public schools, decided to run for state superintendent after watching Betsy DeVos’s shambolic Senate confirmation hearing. “That was really the tipping point, the day it hit me [that] we really need more educators to run,” she told The Intercept. “I’m sick of people who never taught in schools leading them, and that’s also what we have in Arizona.”

Trump’s Legal Worries Grow as Judge Rejects Effort for President to Review Docs Seized in FBI Raid

Comey is still on Team Hillary’s shit list

Allies of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have come to agree on at least one thing: They both can't stand former FBI Director James Comey. ...

"All of us were operating in a world where the polls were showing that Donald Trump had no chance," Comey told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in recalling his rationale to the Justice Department. Comey said he was worried that if Clinton won as expected, then the public would later discover he had not revealed the new emails discovered on Anthony Weiner’s computer and it would hurt Clinton's standing, as well as the FBI and the Department of Justice.

“She’ll be an illegitimate president, but these organizations will never recover from that,” he said in explaining his thinking at the time. But that explanation has just further frustrated veterans of the Clinton campaign who believe Comey’s interference during the 2016 election was decisive, and they're surprised he's admitting that politics affected his decision-making.

“It was not his job to worry about a future President Clinton's legitimacy. That is a purely political consideration that should never have come into play,” Clinton campaign Press Secretary Brian Fallon told VICE News. “His job was to go by the book and adhere by the Department guidelines and then let the political chips fall where they may."

"Admitting that he let political optics creep into his head was one of his more damning acknowledgments in the interview," he said. "I am not sure he even realizes how bad he sounds admitting that.”

More than 95% of world's population breathe dangerous air, major study finds

More than 95% of the world’s population breathe unsafe air and the burden is falling hardest on the poorest communities, with the gap between the most polluted and least polluted countries rising rapidly, a comprehensive study of global air pollution has found.

Cities are home to an increasing majority of the world’s people, exposing billions to unsafe air, particularly in developing countries, but in rural areas the risk of indoor air pollution is often caused by burning solid fuels. One in three people worldwide faces the double whammy of unsafe air both indoors and out.

The report by the Health Effects Institute used new findings such as satellite data and better monitoring to estimate the numbers of people exposed to air polluted above the levels deemed safe by the World Health Organisation. This exposure has made air pollution the fourth highest cause of death globally, after high blood pressure, diet and smoking, and the greatest environmental health risk.

Experts estimate that exposure to air pollution contributed to more than 6m deaths worldwide last year, playing a role in increasing the risk of stroke, heart attack, lung cancer and chronic lung disease. China and India accounted for more than half of the death toll. Burning solid fuel such as coal or biomass in their homes for cooking or heating exposed 2.6 billion people to indoor air pollution in 2016, the report found. Indoor air pollution can also affect air quality in the surrounding area, with this effect contributing to one in four pollution deaths in India and nearly one in five in China.

Amazon coral reef would be ruined by planned oil drilling, scientists say

Scientists aboard a Greenpeace ship have discovered a massive and unique coral reef near the mouth of the Amazon, in an area where the French company Total intends to drill for oil.

The 1,000km long and 56,000 sq km Amazon coral reef is a biome thought to contain dozens of undiscovered species that environmentalists say would be irreparably damaged if drilling for oil began – a vision at odds with the wish of oil companies hoping to explore the area’s vast estimated reserves.

The reef was discovered in 2016, but Greenpeace’s latest find shows that it extends into the area where Total plans to drill. The Brazilian government has estimated that the Foz de Amazonas, or Amazon Mouth area, could hold 15.6bn barrels of oil.

A group of oil companies led by French company Total that included BP and Brazil’s state oil giant Petrobras acquired rights to five exploration blocks in a 2013 auction.

Greenpeace says that the recent discovery of coral in Total’s FZA-M-86 block, located 120km off the coast of the Amazon state of Amapá, invalidates the company’s last environmental impact assessment and their estimation that corals would be 30% affected in the event of an oil spill.

Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles

Scientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles – by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the full recycling of bottles. The new research was spurred by the discovery in 2016 of the first bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic, at a waste dump in Japan. Scientists have now revealed the detailed structure of the crucial enzyme produced by the bug.

The international team then tweaked the enzyme to see how it had evolved, but tests showed they had inadvertently made the molecule even better at breaking down the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic used for soft drink bottles. “What actually turned out was we improved the enzyme, which was a bit of a shock,” said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who led the research. “It’s great and a real finding.”

“What we are hoping to do is use this enzyme to turn this plastic back into its original components, so we can literally recycle it back to plastic,” said McGeehan. “It means we won’t need to dig up any more oil and, fundamentally, it should reduce the amount of plastic in the environment.”

About 1m plastic bottles are sold each minute around the globe and, with just 14% recycled, many end up in the oceans where they have polluted even the remotest parts, harming marine life and potentially people who eat seafood. “It is incredibly resistant to degradation. ... However, currently even those bottles that are recycled can only be turned into opaque fibres for clothing or carpets. The new enzyme indicates a way to recycle clear plastic bottles back into clear plastic bottles, which could slash the need to produce new plastic.

Also of Interest

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

Syria - Pentagon Hides Attack Failure - 70+ Cruise Missiles Shot Down

Robert Fisk: The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack

The US secret plan on Damascus foiled: the Russian role before and after the US/UK/France attack revealed

How 'Russiagate' Produced the Missile Attack on Syria

War Profiteer Erik Prince Reportedly in Talks to Help Forge Occupying Force in Syria

It Started Over Lunch and Led to the Exposure of One of the Greatest Scandals in U.S. History

Arundhati Roy: “I Need to Know the Place Where I Stand and Why I Stand There”

Fracking Has Brought the World to the Brink of Disaster

It’s Time to Admit That Half-Measures Can’t Stop Climate Change

A Little Night Music

Lonesome Sundown - I Had A Dream Last Night

Lonesome Sundown - Gonna Miss You When You're Gone

Lonesome Sundown - Dealing From The Bottom of the Deck

Lonesome Sundown - I've got a broken heart baby

Lonesome Sundown - Guardian Angel

Lonesome Sundown - Don't Say A Word

Lonesome Sundown - I'm Gonna Cut Out On You

Lonesome Sundown - I'm A Mojo Man

Lonesome Sundown - I Wanta Know Why

Lonesome Sundown - I'm a Samplin' Man

Lonesome Sundown - Black Cat Bone