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“We think ourselves possessed, or at least we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact. There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny, or to doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself, it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not much better; even in our Massachusetts, which, I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemies upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any arguments for investigation into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Volney's Recherches Nouvelles? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws... but as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations.”

-- John Adams

News and Opinion

After Assange’s Espionage Act Indictment, Police Move Against More Journalists for Publishing Classified Material

Police in Sydney, Australia on Wednesday raided the offices of the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, copying thousands of files related to a 2017 ABC broadcast that revealed allegations of war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. ... The police demanded to look through the journalists’ emails, ABC reported. ...

John Lyons, ABC’s executive editor and head of investigative journalism said the federal police were going through dozens of emails with the authority to delete or even change their content. Protagonist Winston Smith’s job in Orwell’s 1984 was to rewrite news archives. ...

The criminalization and crack down on national security journalism is spreading like a virus. The #Assange precedent is already having effect. Journalists must unite and remember that courage is also contagious.https://t.co/sE67mZLTAf

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 5, 2019

On Tuesday morning in an unrelated case, Canberra police entered the home of the political editor, Annika Smethurst, of the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph. ... Ironically, the Smethhurst article in April 2018 that raised the ire of the government “revealed the departments of Defence and Home Affairs were considering new powers allowing Australians to be monitored for the first time,” The Telegraph reported. “Her original article included images of top secret letters between Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo and Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty.” ...

Assange was arrested in London on April 11. Police in Paris arrested two journalists who were covering Yellow Vest protests on April 20. One of the journalists, Alexis Kraland, said he was taken into custody after refusing to be searched and to turn his camera over to police at Gare du Nord train station. ...

And on May 10 in San Francisco, police using sledgehammers to break down the door, raided the home of Bryan Carmody, a freelance journalist, to get him, while handcuffed, to reveal the source who leaked him a police report into the sudden death of the city’s elected public defender. Police took away computers, cameras, mobile phones and notes.

LISTEN: Important 3-minute radio interview on the state of Julian Assange's health in Belmarsh prison.https://t.co/LaEavufv6s#FreeAssange

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 5, 2019

Robert Fisk is worth a click and a full read:

The final punishment of Julian Assange reminds journalists their job is to uncover what the state keeps hidden

From the start, I’ve been worried about the effect of Wikileaks, not on the brutal western governments whose activities it has disclosed in shocking detail (especially in the Middle East) but on the practice of journalism. When we scribes were served up this Wikileaks pottage, we jumped in, paddled around and splashed the walls of reporting with our cries of horror. And we forgot that real investigative journalism was about the dogged pursuit of truth through one’s own sources rather than upsetting a bowl of secrets in front of readers, secrets which Assange and co – rather than us – had chosen to make public. ... But the last few days have convinced me that there is something far more obvious about the incarceration of Assange and the re-jailing of Manning. And it has nothing to do with betrayal or treachery or any supposed catastrophic damage to our security.

In The Washington Post this week, we’ve had Marc Theissen, a former White House speechwriter who defended CIA torture as “lawful and morally just”, telling us that Assange “is not a journalist. He is a spy … He engaged in espionage against the United States. And he has no remorse for the harm he has caused.” So forget that Trump’s insanity has already turned torture and secret relations with America’s enemies into a pastime. No, I don’t think this has anything to do with the use of the Espionage Act – however grave its implications for conventional journalists – or “reputable news organisations”, as Thiessen cloyingly calls us. Nor does it have much to do with the dangers these revelations posed to America’s locally hired agents in the Middle East. I remember well how often Iraqi interpreters for US forces told us how they had pleaded for visas for themselves and their families when they came under threat in Iraq – and how most were told to get lost. We Brits treated many of our own Iraqi translators with similar indifference. ...

What these hundreds of thousands of documents represented was the shaming of America, its politicians, its soldiers, its torturers, its diplomats. There was even an element of farce which, I suspect, enraged the Thiessens of this world even more than the most terrible of revelations. I’ll always remember the outrage expressed by Hillary Clinton when it was revealed that she had sent her flunkies to spy on the United Nations; her State Department slaves had to study the encryption details of delegates, credit card transactions, even frequent flyer cards. But who on this earth would want to waste their time studying the tosh emanating from the UN’s hopelessly incompetent staff? Or, for that matter, who in the CIA wasted their time listening to Angela Merkel’s private telephone conversations with Ban Ki Moon? ...

But this is nitpicking amid the garbage tip of paper. Such tomfoolery is insignificant compared to the monstrous revelations of American cruelty; the account, for example, of how US troops killed almost 700 civilians for coming too close to their checkpoints, including pregnant women and the mentally ill. And the instruction to US forces – this bit of history from Chelsea Manning – not to investigate when their Iraqi military allies whipped prisoners with heavy cables, hung them from ceiling hooks, bored holes into their legs with electric drills and sexually assaulted them. In the secret US assessment of 109,000 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (itself a gross underestimation), 66,081 were officially classified as non-combatants. What, I wonder, would have been the American reaction to the killing of 66,000 US citizens, 20 times more than the dead of 9/11?

None of this, of course, were we supposed to know. And you can see why not. The worst of this material was secret not because it accidentally slipped into a military administration file marked “confidential” or “for your eyes only”, but because it represented the cover-up of state crime on a massive scale. Those responsible for these atrocities should now be on trial, extradited from wherever they are hiding and imprisoned for their crimes against humanity. But no, we are going to punish the leakers – however pathetic we may regard their motives.

Sure, we journalists, we folk from “reputable news organisations”, may worry about the implications of all this for our profession. ... But the usual red warning light: what we find out through the old conventional journalism of foot-slogging, of history via deep throats or trusted contacts, is going to reveal – if we do our job – just the same vile mendacity of our masters that has led to the clamour of hatred towards Assange and Manning and, indeed, Edward Snowden. We’re not going to be arraigned because the prosecution of these three set a dangerous legal precedent. But we’ll be persecuted for the same reasons: because what we shall disclose will inevitably prove that our governments and those of our allies commit war crimes; and those responsible for these iniquities will try to make us pay for such indiscretion with a life behind bars.

D-Day: How the US Supported Hitler’s Rise to Power

Republican, Democratic senators seek to block Trump Saudi arms sales

Republican and Democratic U.S. senators said on Wednesday they would introduce legislation to block President Donald Trump’s plan for $8 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without congressional review. Backers said the introduction of the 22 “resolutions of disapproval,” one for each of the 22 arms deals cleared by the Trump administration, was intended to “protect and reaffirm Congress’ role of approving arms sales to foreign governments.”

The announcement followed furious rejection in Congress late last month of the administration’s declaration that a growing threat from Iran was an emergency that forced it to sidestep lawmakers’ review of major arms deals and approve precision-guided munitions, aircraft engines, mortars and other equipment for Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan.

“We are taking this step today to show that we will not stand idly by and allow the President or the Secretary of State to further erode Congressional review and oversight of arm sales,” said Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ...

“While I understand that Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, the behavior of (Saudi Crown Prince) Mohammed bin Salman cannot be ignored,” Graham said in a statement. “Now is not the time to do business as usual with Saudi Arabia.” Graham said he expected “strong bipartisan support” for the resolutions.

Russia Intercepts U.S. Spy Plane in 'Dangerous' Maneuver Off Syrian Coast

A U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft in international airspace off the coast of Syria was intercepted three times by a Russian jet fighter over three hours on Tuesday, including a high-speed pass that was deemed unsafe and put the plane at risk, the U.S. Sixth Fleet said. ...

Russia's Ministry of Defense said it had scrambled a Sukhoi Su-35 jet from its air base in Syria to intercept the U.S. plane which it said had been approaching Russia's Tartus naval facility on the Syrian coast, the RIA news agency reported on Wednesday.

Moscow denied its aircraft had acted irresponsibly, saying it had stayed at a safe distance and had returned to its base after the U.S. aircraft changed course.

Flight tracking software showed just how close the U.S. aircraft came to the Syrian ATC boundary, putting it roughly 20km from the Russian naval facility.

Pentagon eyes rare earth supplies in Africa in push away from China

The U.S. Department of Defense has held talks with Malawi’s Mkango Resources Ltd and other rare earth miners across the globe about their supplies of strategic minerals, part of a plan to find diversified reserves outside of China, a department official said on Wednesday.

The push comes as China threatens to curb exports to the United States of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals used in a plethora of military equipment and high-tech consumer electronics.

Although China contains only a third of the world’s rare earth reserves, it accounts for 80% of U.S. imports of minerals because it controls nearly all of the facilities to process the material, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. ...

China, as part of the escalating trade conflict with the United States, implied through its state-controlled media last month that it could restrict rare earth sales to the world’s largest economy. Such a step would have precedence, as China in 2010 culled exports of rare earths to Japan after a diplomatic dispute.

Keiser Report: An Empire Goes Postal

New tool helps travelers avoid airlines that use facial recognition technology

A new tool launched by privacy activists offers to help travelers avoid increasingly invasive facial recognition technologies in airports.

Activist groups Fight for the Future, Demand Progress and CREDO on Wednesday unveiled a new website called AirlinePrivacy.com, which shows users what airlines use facial recognition to verify the identity of passengers before boarding. The site also helps customers to directly book flights with airlines that don’t use facial recognition technologies. ...

Airlines that do not use facial recognition technology include Alaska, United, Southwest, Allegiant and Air Canada.

YouTube bans videos promoting Nazi ideology

YouTube has decided to ban content promoting Nazi ideology from its service. The company confirmed it would no longer host videos that glorified fascist views or material that denied the existence of the Holocaust, following years of criticism over its role in spreading far-right hate and conspiracy theories.

The video-sharing website, which is owned by Google, said on Wednesday it would ban any videos “alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status”.

This would include “inherently discriminatory” videos promoting Nazi ideology or content denying that well-documented violent events took place, such as the deaths of millions of Jews in the second world war or the Sandy Hook school shooting in the US.

Platforms such as YouTube have traditionally taken a light-touch approach to hosted material, adopting a broad defence of free speech to justify the extremist views users post. This has become increasingly untenable under relentless media and public scrutiny, and pressure from advertisers. YouTube banned a handful of high-profile extremists, including Alex Jones of Infowars, in the last year.

Mexico tariffs: "It could be the global economy... that suffers"

US-Mexico talks to resume Thursday as tariff deadline nears

Mexican officials left the White House on Wednesday without a deal to stave off Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on all Mexican goods flowing into the United States. Tweeting from Ireland, the US president announced there had been progress during the talks, “but not nearly enough”.

The vice-president, Mike Pence, expressed similar sentiments, and tweeted that “Mexico must do more to address the urgent humanitarian crisis at our southern border.” Both men said talks would resume Thursday.

“We’re going to continue our conversations tomorrow because various issues have been raised which must be carefully studied in detail. This happens in any negotiation”, the Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said in a Wednesday press conference. Ebrard reported talks centered more on migration matters than Trump’s tariff threats – which would start 10 June at a rate of 5% and increase severely if migration numbers don’t drop drastically. ...

“What the US government is looking for are measures in the short-term and medium-term” on migration, Ebrard said. Mexico is promoting a multi-billion-dollar development deal for Central America, which the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, insists will slow migration. Observers say the agreement wouldn’t show results for decades.

Doctors' organization: calling abortion bans 'fetal heartbeat bills' is misleading

America’s largest professional organization for doctors specializing in women’s health has come out against the term “fetal heartbeat bill” to describe abortion bans recently enacted by US states. The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the bills “arbitrary” bans not reflective of fetal development or science.

“Arbitrary gestational age bans on abortion at six weeks that use the term ‘heartbeat’ to define the gestational development being targeted do not reflect medical accuracy or clinical understanding,” said Dr Ted Anderson, president of ACOG. The organization represents 58,000 physicians across the US. “Pregnancy and fetal development are a continuum. What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops,” Anderson said.

“Thus, ACOG does not use the term ‘heartbeat’ to describe these legislative bans on abortion because it is misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy,” Anderson said. The ACOG president called on politicians to base policy on “science and evidence”.

Trump Just Ended Fetal Tissue Research to Please the Anti-abortion Crowd

The Trump administration just blocked certain government scientists from using human fetal tissue in their research into diseases like HIV, Zika, and Parkinson’s disease.

The White House determined Wednesday that the National Institutes of Health scientists could find an alternative for their research, in a move that overrides scientists’ advice and gives a win to anti-abortion activists, who have long protested the use of fetal tissue in research. ...

Controversially to some, fetal tissue comes from elective abortions and would otherwise be discarded. Often used to produce mice that can model the human immune system, it’s been part of disease research and vaccine development for decades.

During a House hearing on fetal tissue in December, neuroscientist Sally Temple testified that there’s no adequate alternative for fetal tissue for many researchers, considering the tissue “is a different developmental stage, it has unique properties,” according to the Associated Press. The Trump administration said it will continue to research alternative tissues, and the NIH last year budgeted $20 million to looking for a suitable substitute.

Joe Biden Worked to Undermine the Affordable Care Act’s Coverage of Contraception

As vice president, Joe Biden repeatedly sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, working in alliance with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to push for a broad exemption that would have left millions of women without coverage. Biden’s battle over contraception is a window into his approach to the politics of reproductive freedom, a function of an electoral worldview that centers working-class Catholic men over the interests of women. The issue has been causing his presidential campaign some discomfort — on Wednesday, Biden’s campaign clarified that he remains a supporter of the so-called Hyde Amendment, a provision that bars federal money from being used to fund reproductive health services. Biden had recently told an activist with the ACLU that he opposed the amendment, and wanted to see it repealed.

On contraception, according to contemporaneous reporting and to sources involved with the internal debate, Biden had argued that if the regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act were going to mandate coverage, it would anger white, male Catholic voters, and threaten President Obama’s reelection in 2012. Biden’s main ally in the internal fight over contraception was Chief of Staff William Daly; both men are Catholic.

Opposing Biden was a faction of mostly women advisers, joined by some men, who argued that Biden had both the policy and the politics wrong. On policy, they noted that if his broad exemption went into effect, upwards of six million women who happened to be employed by religious-affiliated organizations would lose contraception coverage. The politics were just as bad, they argued, given that women were increasingly becoming central to the party’s success. To turn on them on the issue of access to birth control — embracing a fringe position not even adopted by most Catholics who aren’t bishops — would put that support at risk.

Biden has long said that he is personally opposed to abortion, but supports the legal right. His support of Roe v. Wade has not always been full throated.

“When it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother,” Biden said in a June 1974 article. “I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.”

Norm Macdonald Out Smarts Astrophysicist Neal deGrasse Tyson

Oakland Just Decriminalized ’shrooms

Oakland, California, just became the second U.S. city to decriminalize the use of magic mushrooms and other naturally grown psychedelics. The resolution, parts of which read like a groovy guide to getting high, was passed by the Oakland City Council Tuesday night in a unanimous vote.

“This initiative aims to empower the Oakland community by restoring their relationship to nature,” the resolution says. “The Oakland community behind this initiative believe it is an inalienable right to develop their own relationship with nature, both as a measure of personal liberty and to embrace what it means to be human on Planet Earth.”

According to Councilman Noel Gallo, who introduced the resolution, legalizing the drug would also allow Oakland police to focus their resources elsewhere. ... Last month, Denver became the first American city to decriminalize psychedelic plants and fungi for residents 21 and older with the same goal: to refocus law enforcement resources toward more serious crimes.

Democrats Still Can’t Decide on Subpoenaing Robert Mueller

House Democrats are gearing up to hold a series of public hearings aimed at picking up where Special Counsel Robert Mueller left off, namely President Trump’s potential obstruction of justice. They may have to do so without their star witness: Mueller himself.

In fact, Mueller, has made his position clear: all the answers are in his report already on Congress’s desks. Democrats, on the other hand, want the camera-shy special counsel front and center in an effort to breathe new life into their probes of the president.

But the special counsel's reluctance has put the Democrats in a tough position between moving forward without him in an investigation they see as having utmost importance, or dragging an unhappy Mueller into Congress against his wishes. ... Many Democrats think the reward of simply having Mueller speak to the public again outweighs any of the associated risks. It comes down to reading vs watching — even if Mueller just repeats what’s in his report. ...

“It was the difference between reading the book, and watching the movie adaptation,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a member of Ken Starr’s investigation into former president Bill Clinton. “The audio of Mueller saying that he couldn’t exonerate the president will resonate for years, in a way that the same written statement simply won’t.”

Paul Manafort is being sent to solitary confinement in my district - Rikers Island.

A prison sentence is not a license for gov torture and human rights violations. That‘s what solitary confinement is.

Manafort should be released, along with all people being held in solitary. https://t.co/9rERLDSzrD

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 5, 2019

Citing Threats to Abortion Rights, Sanders Endorses Marie Newman's Democratic Primary Challenge Against Anti-Choice Incumbent Dan Lipinski

In a clear rebuke of Democratic Party leadership and the mounting threats to abortion rights across the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday endorsed Marie Newman, who is challenging anti-choice Illinois Congressman Dan Lipinski in the 2020 primary after she narrowly lost to the Blue Dog Democrat in the last cycle.

"At a time when workers are under attack by Wall Street and women's rights are under attack by well-funded extremist groups across the country, I am proud to support Marie Newman's grassroots campaign for Congress," Sanders (I-Vt.) told BuzzFeed News.

"Marie will challenge the establishment by fighting for Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, expanding workers' rights," Sanders said, "and she will be a powerful voice for upholding Roe v. Wade at a disturbing moment in our history when a woman's right to control her own body and future is at stake."

Waleed Shahid, the communications director for Justice Democrats, called the endorsement "huge" and tweeted, "I wonder if other 2020 candidates will follow suit." So far, Newman has the support of only three of the 23 Democratic candidates: Sanders, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

The senator's endorsement of Newman—his first for a congressional candidate in this primary cycle, according to BuzzFeed—comes as states continue to enact restrictions on abortion that are designed to provoke a lawsuit that forces the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that affirmed the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy up until viability.

Accused of Plagiarism, Biden Campaign Admits Lifting 'Carbon Capture' Section of Climate Plan From Fossil Fuel-Backed Group

Almost immediately after releasing a climate plan Tuesday that green groups slammed as woefully inadequate in part due to its embrace of industry-backed proposals such as "carbon capture," presumptive 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden faced accusations of plagiarizing language from a number of sources, including a coalition consisting of major fossil fuel companies.

Josh Nelson, vice president of the progressive organization CREDO Mobile, was the first to highlight possible instances of plagiarism in Biden's plan, noting on Twitter that the section "about carbon capture and sequestration includes language that is remarkably similar to items published previously by the Blue Green Alliance and the Carbon Capture Coalition"—two organizations backed by major fossil fuel companies and labor unions.

"Membership of the Carbon Capture Coalition, where some of Biden's language seems to have originated, includes Shell, Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Cloud Peak Energy," wrote Nelson, who tweeted side-by-side screenshots of language from the Carbon Capture Coalition and Biden's plan. ...

In response to the plagiarism accusations—which spread rapidly on social media and were picked up by a number of media outlets—Biden's presidential campaign said "citations were inadvertently left out of the final version of the 22-page document." ...

While some observers noted that it is hardly uncommon for presidential candidates to take policy language from advocacy groups and other sources, Nelson told USA Today that parts of Biden's plan stood out because they "looked like the type of thing the coal industry, trade groups, and coal companies themselves say about carbon capture and sequestration." Biden, who has a long history of plagiarism scandals, has yet to personally comment on the accusations.

Thousands could perish annually in US if global heating not curbed, study finds

Thousands of heat-related deaths in major US cities could be avoided if rising global temperatures are curbed, new research has found. On current global heating trends, thousands of people are set to perish due to the heat every year across 15 major US cities, in an analysis by a team of British and American researchers.

Once the average worldwide temperature rises to 3C (5.4F) above the pre-industrial period nearly 5,800 people are expected to die each year in New York City due to the heat, more than 2,500 are forecast to die annually in Los Angeles and more than 2,300 lives will be lost annually in Miami.

This dire scenario would probably be avoided if the world was able to keep to its commitments made in the Paris climate agreement, where governments pledged to limit the global temperature rise to 2C, with an aspiration to keep the increase to 1.5C. If global heating was limited to 1.5C, a total of 2,716 lives would be saved each year from heat mortality in New York City, the researchers found. Thousands of lives across other US cities would also be saved, right down to San Francisco, where 114 people a year would avoid dying due to the the heat, compared to a 3C world. ...

Scientists have warned the world is now dangerously close to breaching the 1.5C limit, which would push societies to a new reality of severe droughts, coastal flooding, wildfires and the loss of key ecosystems such as coral reefs.But even keeping global temperatures at a 2C increase would save lives compared with the warmer alternative according to the new paper, published in Science Advances. Researchers found that 1,980 New Yorkers would be saved from a heat-related death at a 2C increase compared with 3C heating. In Los Angeles, 759 people would avoid this same fate.

US to label nuclear waste as less dangerous to quicken cleanup

The US government plans to reclassify some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to lower its threat level, outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.

The Department of Energy said on Wednesday that labeling some high-level waste as low level will save $40bn in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex. The material that has languished for decades in the three states would be taken to low-level disposal facilities in Utah or Texas, the agency said.

Critics said it’s a way for federal officials to walk away from their obligation to properly clean up a massive quantity of radioactive waste left from nuclear weapons production dating to the second world war and the cold war. The waste is housed at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, the Idaho National Laboratory and Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state – the most contaminated nuclear site in the country.

The new rules would allow the energy department to eventually abandon storage tanks containing more than 100m gallons (378m liters) of radioactive waste in the three states, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The change means that some of the “most toxic and radioactive waste in the world” would not have to be buried deep underground, the environmental group said. “Pretending this waste is not dangerous is irresponsible and outrageous,” group attorney Geoff Fettus said.

People eat at least 50,000 plastic particles a year, study finds

The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution. The true number is likely to be many times higher, as only a small number of foods and drinks have been analysed for plastic contamination. The scientists reported that drinking a lot of bottled water drastically increased the particles consumed.

The health impacts of ingesting microplastic are unknown, but they could release toxic substances. Some pieces are small enough to penetrate human tissues, where they could trigger immune reactions.

Microplastic pollution is mostly created by the disintegration of plastic litter and appears to be ubiquitous across the planet.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Criminalizing Freedom: The Attacks on Abortion Rights and Free Speech in the Age of Trump

Corporate Media Have Second Thoughts About Exiling Julian Assange From Journalism

Australian PM Scott Morrison grilled on press freedom after Government raids on ABC, journalist Annika Smethurst

More Police Raids As War On Journalism Escalates Worldwide

‘No One is Above the Law’ (Except the U.S.A.)

Israel made girl with cancer suffer alone

What the Horror of “Chernobyl” Reveals About the Deceit of the Trump Era

The Economic Cost of Devastating Hurricanes and Other Extreme Weather Events Is Even Worse Than We Thought

Trump Administration Asks Congress to Make Disrupting Pipeline Construction a Crime Punishable by 20 Years in Prison

The GOP's White Supremacy Now Has a Smoking Gun

Trump Just Erased Any Doubt That He’s Clueless About Climate Change

D-Day And The Myth Of A U.S. Victory

Ancient Siberia was home to previously unknown humans, say scientists

A Little Night Music

Lovie Lee with Carey Bell - Sweet Little Girl

Lovie Lee with Carey Bell - Nobody Knows My Troubles

Lovie Lee - Tell Me That You Love Me

Lovie Lee - Stick Candy

Lovie Lee - I Dare You

Lovie Lee - Mind To Ramble

Lovie Lee - Good Candy

Lovie Lee - She's Gone

Lovie Lee - Lovie's Boogie