The Evening Blues - 9-17-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues harmonica player Little Willie Anderson. Enjoy!
Little Willie Anderson - Late Night
"The older you get, the easier it is to spot the phonies. And I just think, how unpleasant for them."
-- Carrie Fisher
News and Opinion
Western Civilization Is A Phony Pop Star
Western liberal democracies are like a narcissistic wife beater who postures as a sensitive he/him feminist on social media. Like a pop star who makes a show of fighting the power and defending the marginalized while supporting Israel.
Our society isn’t what it pretends to be.
Our entire civilization sustains itself through an endless river of blood, sweat and tears from the global south while making movies about fighting for justice and saving the world.
Our pundits wag their fingers at the “tyrannical regimes” in empire-targeted nations while our own rulers murder, starve and terrorize disobedient populations in order to dominate the planet.
In school they teach us that we are lucky to live in a free society where the people command the government with their votes and we have the right to express ourselves in whatever way we choose, when in reality wealthy oligarchs control the entire electoral process and our expression is aggressively manipulated through a complex system of censorship and propaganda.
We have no integrity.
To have integrity as an individual is to be the same sort of person you are at home as when you’re in public. To treat everyone with the same amount of kindness and respect regardless of whether they’re your boss, your child, your subordinate, or your friend. When all your thoughts align fully with all your words, and all your words fully align with all your actions, whether nobody’s watching or everyone’s watching. When the values you claim to hold are the same as the values people see you embodying in the life you actually live.
To cultivate integrity as an individual is to bring all of these factors into alignment, and eliminate all conflicts and contradictions between them in the way you live your life. To cultivate integrity as a society is no different.
And as denizens of the western empire we’ve got a long, hard journey ahead of us if we are to eliminate all the conflicts and contradictions between the type of society we claim to be and the type of society we actually have. In practice we’re about as incongruent with our theoretical values as any civilization could possibly be. We are an empire of frauds.
The fight for a healthy world is largely a fight to move us from fraudulence to integrity. To create a society in which our most noble aspirations and most deeply cherished values are reflected in the way our civilization is actually organized. That is the cause toward which we all strive, when all is said and done.
Gaining integrity as an individual means getting uncompromisingly real with yourself about what you’re actually like as a person. Gaining integrity as a society means opening as many western eyes as possible to the reality that everything we’ve been told about our civilization and about our world is a complete sham. Only then can we begin striking at the true roots of our problems and move into health and harmony.
Patrick Henningsen: Multiple Saudi Drones Down: Yemen's Air Defense Shift—WSJ on F-15 Shootdown
US opts not to back Saudi Arabia in Yemen after meeting Houthi leaders
Officials from the US met Houthi leaders over the weekend at the country’s embassy in Muscat, Oman, it has been confirmed, leading to the US decision not to intervene to help Saudi Arabia drive back a Houthi advance inside Yemen.
The Iran-backed militant group reassured the US that the ceasefire agreement between the two sides struck in 2025 still held and the movement had no intention of attacking US shipping in the Red Sea. Only Saudi-linked shipping was regarded as a target owing to its blockade of Yemen, the Houthis confirmed.
The meeting helps to explain Donald Trump’s decision to condemn the Houthi advance down the west coast of Yemen for threatening freedom of navigation through the Bab al-Mandab strait, but so far to reject any military response in support of Riyadh. The US is already embroiled in an expensive and resource sapping conflict with Iran, which backs the Houthis.
The US labelled the Houthis as a foreign terrorist entity in March 2025, but in the recent past American officials have met leaders from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. The US vice-president, JD Vance, confirmed on Monday that the US was in direct contact with the Houthis.
The US refusal to become directly involved has put pressure on Saudi Arabia to reach either a diplomatic solution with the Houthis over the future governance of Yemen, or to try to build a regional alliance with Pakistan and Turkey to force the Houthis back. In a lightning offensive last week, the Houthis seized control of large swathes of western Yemen along the Red Sea coast.
Prof. Mohammad Marandi : US Is Now The Gulf’s Worst Enemy
More Republicans are turning on Iran war as midterms come into view
As the US war with Iran drags on, the ranks of Republicans signaling the conflict is a liability for their party continues to grow. When the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening considered its sixth war powers resolution intended to force Donald Trump to withdraw troops from the conflict, three Republicans who had not supported the previous efforts broke with their party to vote this one to passage. Earlier that day, a Republican who had lost his primary after repeatedly clashing with Trump proposed impeaching the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, alleging a variety of constitutional transgressions including prosecuting the war against Iran without congressional authorization.
The rebellions in the GOP are thus far mostly symbolic – Trump has ignored the sole war powers resolution to make it through both the House and Senate, and the prospects of Hegseth’s impeachment are unclear. But they underscore the growing nerves among both the party’s most vulnerable and most disobedient lawmakers over continuing a conflict that appears to have accomplished little other than play into the hands of Democrats, who have spent the entirety of Trump’s second term arguing that only they can be trusted to lower costs for Americans.
Since the US joined Israel in attacking Iran at the end of February, Democrats have wielded war powers resolutions as a cudgel to get Republicans on the record about a conflict that polls indicate is not popular with the public. Their first three attempts failed, but in June, the fourth passed with the votes of two libertarian-minded Republicans – Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio – along with Tom Barrett of Michigan and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, both of whom occupy battlefield districts.
The Senate later approved that measure, but Trump refused to abide by it. In July, the same lineup in the House passed a fifth war powers resolution, before Zach Nunn, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Nancy Mace of South Carolina expanded the ranks of Republican objectors to seven in Tuesday’s vote.
Iran spent $1 million to wipe out $30 billion in data center plans, and take down Amazon in the ME
Key House Democrat refuses to clear Trump’s $2.8bn arms sale to Israel
The top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee has thrown up a roadblock to one of the largest US arms transfers of Trump’s second term, refusing to clear a $2.8bn sale of 2,000lb bombs to Israel. Gregory Meeks announced the hold on Tuesday on a package of 40,000 of the bombs, among the most destructive conventional munitions in the US arsenal.
“The Trump administration has not provided sufficient assurances that these weapons will be used by the Netanyahu government in accordance with US law and with appropriate protections for civilians,” he said. “I therefore will not clear this sale at this time.” The deal, funded through US Foreign Military Financing, covers 20,000 MK-84 bombs, 20,000 BLU-117 bombs and 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads.
Meeks cannot single-handedly veto the $2.8bn arms transfer, but his leverage comes from the informal custom of “tiered review”. Under this practice, the state department submits major weapons packages to top foreign affairs lawmakers for an informal sign-off before triggering a formal notification to Congress. Killing the sale outright would need a veto-proof joint resolution of disapproval in both chambers, a bar Congress has not cleared. A similar push by Senator Bernie Sanders failed along party lines in April.
The hold also lands amid longstanding accusations that Israel has used American weapons unlawfully. The Leahy laws bar US assistance to foreign military units credibly linked to extrajudicial killings and serious abuse; the state department in 2024 flagged at least five Israeli units on those grounds before the war in Gaza even began, including one battalion tied to the death of a Palestinian American at a West Bank checkpoint.
The Geneva conventions, meanwhile, bar arming a party where there is a clear risk of war crimes – a standard a UN commission of inquiry cited last year in finding Israel’s Gaza campaign amounted to genocide and calling on the US and other states to halt weapons transfers. In 2024, Biden administration lawyers, including some at the state department, had concluded it was reasonable to assess that Israel had violated international humanitarian law and Leahy laws by using American weapons in Gaza, even as the administration publicly avoided making that determination. Meeks, long known for his strong pro-Israel views, emphasized that the hold was not a break with the country itself.
Alastair Crooke: West Asia Is Incubating a New Era of Revolutions — “A Decisive and Historic Stage”
As the world pretends there’s a ceasefire & plan to rebuild Gaza, Israeli def min Israel Katz says quiet part out loud —> “the IDF is prepared, once given the directive to eliminate Hamas, to finish the job so that we can also implement the migration plan” https://t.co/CQuvj53ATe
— Khaled Elgindy (@elgindy_) September 16, 2026
At least 21 killed after Israeli-hit building in Gaza City collapses
A building housing about 100 displaced Palestinian families has collapsed in Gaza City, killing at least 21 people in their sleep, including 11 children, forcing rescuers to dig through the rubble with their bare hands as they search for dozens of people believed to be trapped. A rescue team from Gaza’s civil defence said they had recovered the bodies of five children among the victims, while 25 injured people were taken to hospital. Medical sources said rescuers could hear the voices of people trapped beneath the rubble as they tried to reach them.
The bombed-out multistorey building, which contained four apartments on each floor, had previously been hit by Israeli strikes during the war, leaving its structure badly weakened and at risk of collapse. When it gave way on Wednesday, it fell on to tents beside it housing displaced families, witnesses said. The collapse highlights the continuing danger facing tens of thousands of Palestinians living in an estimated 2,000 buildings damaged by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza.
Mohammed Abu Dan, a superviser with the civil defence team recovering victims, said more than 10 families had been living in the building and displaced people had been forced to stay there because no other shelter was available. “Search and rescue operations are being carried out under extremely difficult conditions due to a lack of the necessary equipment and resources,” he said.
Similar incidents have occurred repeatedly over the past two years, with dozens of homes and buildings damaged during the war later collapsing, trapping people and causing further deaths and injuries. With few other options, many Palestinians have returned to partly destroyed homes or moved into abandoned buildings, clearing small spaces among the rubble despite the danger. Soaring rents and the cost of vacant land have made finding safer accommodation increasingly difficult.
Israeli strikes on Gaza have continued despite the ceasefire. According to Gaza’s health ministry, 1,369 Palestinians have been killed and 4,627 wounded since the fragile ceasefire took effect on 11 October 2025.
Macklemore, Ed Sheeran & the Palestine ‘Tidal Wave’ | w/ Alana Hadid
Netanyahu seeks to strip citizenship from Israelis as threats to film directors intensify
Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he would seek new laws allowing Israel to strip citizenship from people who “smear” Israeli soldiers, escalating the campaign against the Oscar-winning film-makers behind the Gaza documentary NAZA, who have faced threats from senior government and military officials and groups of far-right Israelis gathering outside their families’ homes.
NAZA, which was produced by the Guardian, concerns the country’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza and is named for an acronym used euphemistically by Israel’s intelligence service to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike. The film builds on revelations first published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call and the Guardian from 2023 to 2025.
The 80-minute documentary won the special jury prize at this year’s Venice film festival on Saturday, after receiving a 25-minute standing ovation – a festival record.
Soon afterwards, however, the film’s directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, came under attack from members of Israel’s government, with the culture minister, Miki Zohar, calling for their citizenship to be revoked, and accusing them of “treason against the state”. Zohar on Wednesday thanked the Israeli prime minister for his announcement to change the law in order to revoke their citizenship, saying it was “time to put an end to this disgrace”.
On Wednesday evening, dozens of rightwing activists gathered outside the home of the parents of Rachel Szor, one of the directors of NAZA. Among the organisers were activists and campaign staff linked to the far-right Otzma Yehudit party of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister. Messages circulated in activist groups earlier on Wednesday urged supporters to gather outside her house. Some of the messages included explicit calls for violence. One protester called for the “death penalty for traitors” and demanded that the homes of the film-makers’ families be demolished. The latest attacks followed a series of threats and incidents targeting the directors.
Family of pregnant woman who died sues Texas AG Ken Paxton for wrongful death
A wrongful death lawsuit filed on Tuesday accuses Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, doctors and state health officials of contributing to the death of a pregnant San Antonio woman whose family says she was denied an abortion that could have saved her life. Tierra Walker, 37, died in December 2024 while 20 weeks pregnant after being diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy-related high blood pressure condition that can be fatal.
Attorneys representing Walker’s family filed the lawsuit in Bexar county district court, alleging that Paxton, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, several doctors and other defendants were responsible for “deliberate indifference, discrimination, and medical mistreatment [that] ultimately caused her horrific and tragic death”, according to CBS News.
The lawsuit says Walker and members of her family requested an abortion as her condition reportedly worsened and she faced seizures and blood clots. Her family alleges doctors refused to provide the treatment. The legal action also names the executive director of the Texas Medical Board, Stephen Brint Carlton, the University of Texas health system and individual doctors. The lawsuit further challenges Texas’ abortion ban as unconstitutional, according to ABC7.
Walker’s family alleges Paxton and Carlton deprived her of her right to life by enforcing “a merciless blanket prohibition” on abortion and that doctors failed to provide medical treatment that could have saved her life.
Trump FREAKS Over Interest Rate Hike HE CAUSED
US Federal Reserve raises interest rates for the first time since 2023
The US Federal Reserve voted to raise interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2023 as the central bank continues to fight to tamp down inflation. The Fed’s open market committee voted unanimously to raise its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-percentage point to a range of 3.75% to 4%. This is the first time the Fed has raised rates since July 2023 and potentially sets Kevin Warsh, the current Fed chair, on a collision course with Donald Trump.
“The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” Warsh said on Wednesday. “This summer’s inflation readings do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”
After the announcement, Trump said in a Truth Social post that interest rates should be 1% or less and criticized the US trade deficit. Trump said the US would make “at least 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year” if it were to stop trading with countries with which it has a deficit. “We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!,” Trump wrote.
New projections showed a majority of officials penciled in another rate hike before the year’s end, with four officials predicting the Fed’s benchmark interest rate would reach a range of 4.25% to 4.5% by the end of the year.
And though estimates on the country’s economic growth and unemployment rate were upbeat, Fed officials believed it would take roughly until 2029 for inflation to reach its 2% goal.
Yanis Varoufakis: EU Is Finished & China Can Now Pull the Plug on the U.S. Economy
House speaker calls early recess before midterms amid AI regulation frenzy
The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, announced on Wednesday that he would again cancel votes scheduled for Thursday, sending lawmakers home one day early ahead of the midterm election recess.
The latest change to the legislative schedule means House members will avoid voting on Republican Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and comes amid a frenzied attempt to propose legislation on artificial intelligence.
It’s the latest round of cancellations at the hands of Johnson, who had already cut the pre-election session short by two weeks. Democrats have reacted angrily, encouraging Johnson to keep lawmakers on Capitol Hill before the midterm recess beginning on Friday.
“I think it shows the cowardice of the Republican party. They are canceling votes to do business for the American people because they are afraid that that impeachment resolution of Pete Hegseth would pass on a bipartisan basis,” the Democratic representative Pramila Jayapal told MediasTouch.
Lawmakers also hoped to address regulating AI development after industry executives and whistleblowers expressed a dire need for oversight. Johnson, however, has been reluctant to intervene – aligning himself with Donald Trump.
Republicans PANIC After Massie FORCES Hegseth Impeachment
US judge blocks DHS from threatening prosecution against man who criticized ICE
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may no longer issue a “warning notice” – threatening prosecution against a US citizen – for criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal judge in Washington DC ruled on Tuesday. Judge Rudolph Contreras sided with David Streever, a New York man who accused DHS officials of violating his first amendment rights when they showed up first at his home in June with a “warning notice”, claiming he made a threat against former ICE director Todd Lyons, and then to a hotel where Streever and his young daughter were staying.
The notice and visits were in response to an email Streever sent Lyons in January, after federal agents fatally shot two US citizens amid an immigration crackdown in Minnesota. In the email, Streever called Lyons a “monstrous human being”, compared him to Nazi and warned him that his own conscience would “eat himself alive”.
Contreras ruled the notice “practically shouts that Mr Streever may be prosecuted if he continues to engage in his political speech”.
“Americans have long voiced their displeasure with their government. The Declaration of Independence itself is a list of grievances between Americans and the British government. And Americans have not always indulged in the elevated prose of the Declaration. Government officials have long endured ‘vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.’ Today is no different,” Contreras wrote.
The court order is limited in that it prohibits the DHS, its secretary, Markwayne Mullin, or ICE from issuing another “warning notice”, making similar threats or pursuing prosecution for his speech while Streever’s case continues in court.
House votes to hold Leon Black in contempt over Epstein subpoenas refusal
The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to hold billionaire investor Leon Black in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with subpoenas issued to him by the House oversight committee as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
The action came a day after the committee voted unanimously to recommend that the House hold Black in contempt. Wednesday’s House vote passed under unanimous consent, meaning there was not a formal roll call, but no member objected to the contempt resolution.
The Department of Justice will now decide whether to take action on the resolution, though it is not required to. Congress held former attorney general Merrick Garland in contempt in 2024, but the justice department did not act on it. But it did prosecute Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon after congressional referrals for contempt, and both men served prison time.
Black, whose name came up repeatedly in the Epstein files, and who, as reported by the New York Times, paid Epstein a total of $170m for what he described as tax and estate planning services from 2013 to 2017, first voluntarily appeared before the committee for a transcribed interview as part of its investigation in June, but the session ended abruptly after lawmakers from both parties said that Black refused to answer questions about NDAs. Black has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said he had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities.
On Wednesday morning, more than a dozen survivors of Epstein’s abuse praised the House oversight committee for their vote. “Survivors have fought for years to bring the truth about Epstein’s network into the open and have helped create this moment of accountability,” they said on Wednesday morning before the House vote. “Congress now has an opportunity to build on that work by following the investigative leads contained in the Epstein files wherever they go and demanding answers from the powerful people connected to them.”
Climate crisis likely behind devastating Nepal-Tibet floods that killed more than 1,300
Climate breakdown probably weakened the glacier that collapsed causing catastrophic floods and killing hundreds of people in Nepal and Tibet last month, the first scientific study of the disaster has found. Researchers identified unusually warm conditions before the glacier’s collapse, which sent an avalanche of 110m cubic metres (3,885 cu ft) of snow and ice into the valley below. This triggered flash floods on an almost unprecedented scale, hitting communities downstream without warning.
“Communities in Nepal are paying with their lives for a crisis driven by fossil fuel emissions thousands of miles away,” said Dr Friederike Otto, a climate science professor at Imperial College London, which carried out the study. “When warming destabilises the roof of the world, no amount of local adaptation can fully shield vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction. Without much faster action to transition to zero fossil fuel emissions we will inevitably see more disasters of this scale occurring in the years to come.”
More than 1,300 people were killed and more than 5,000 people remain missing after a massive section of overhanging glacier and rock measuring roughly 200,000 sq metres (2,153,000 sq ft) fell from Langtang Lirung mountain on 26 August. It dropped about 1,400 metres (4,660ft), slamming into the valley floor with such intensity that it registered as an earthquake, liquidising ice and sparking a freezing flood that careened downriver at speeds exceeding 110 mph. The devastating flood of water, ice, rock and sediment swept away families, homes, settlements, roads, bridges and other infrastructure, leaving survivors stranded and cut off.
The research was unlike previous studies by Otto and her team at World Weather Attribution (WWA) – a collaborative project between Imperial and other climate specialists worldwide – in that the role of climate breakdown could not be ascribed to one particular weather event. Instead, the researchers found the disaster was the result of a compound crisis, with a number of factors made worse by decades of atmospheric heating as a result of greenhouse gas pollution.
Dr Ben Clarke, who researches extreme weather and climate change at Imperial, said the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear in the long-term changes that happened around the glacier before its catastrophic collapse. Otto, Clarke and the WWA team said their study did not directly ascribe climate breakdown as the fundamental cause of the catastrophe. Instead, it was best understood as a destabilising factor on the existing geology. Clarke said: “We found that climate change is transforming the high mountain environment, influencing many of the possible drivers of this collapse.”
Trump EPA’s arguments for letting power plants spew unlimited pollution ‘dead wrong’
In allowing US power plants to emit any amount of planet-heating pollution they wish to, the Trump administration made two striking claims – that this will cut Americans’ electricity bills and that the pollution itself doesn’t really matter anyway. Both claims struggle to stand up to even basic scrutiny. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it would erase any limits on emissions from coal and gas plants that are dangerously heating up our planet. This move, which follows a similar dismantling of pollution limits from cars ands trucks, is part of a broader push to eliminate the longstanding legal authority of this, or any future, US administration to deal with the climate crisis.
In justifying this rollback for a sector that’s responsible for a quarter of all US greenhouse gas emissions, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, vowed that “Americans will see a decrease in electricity prices”. He added: “Realizing the full potential of American energy means more jobs, lower prices and a more prosperous America.” Yet the EPA’s own analysis, published with the new rule, outlines a very different picture. Retail electricity prices will actually be 0.7% higher in 2030, rather than lower, as a result of the administration’s rule change, it shows. Power prices won’t drop until the mid 2030s and beyond, the document states.
The cost of running coal-fired power plants – the dirtiest of fossil fuels, which has been propped up by taxpayer funding and emergency non-closure orders by the administration – will continue to escalate, the analysis finds, with coal delivered for power set to be 27.3% more expensive than otherwise by 2045. “He’s really dead wrong,” said Meredith Hankins, a leading attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), about Zeldin’s claim of electricity bill cuts. A recent NRDC analysis found people in the US will spend an extra $30bn a year on electricity by 2035 due to Trump’s policies, which has heavily favoured fossil fuels over renewables.
“Even when bills go down in the 2030s it is a natural result of coal plants retiring,” said Hankins. “When they retire bills will go down as coal is the most expensive way of producing power in the US – the fall has nothing to do with this new rule. There’s no way to say this will save consumers money because they are propping up the most polluting, expensive forms of energy and removing incentives for the cleanest, cheapest forms of energy,” she added.
The EPA has said the reversal of Joe Biden-era carbon pollution standards, set in 2024, will save $310bn. The agency did not answer questions as to how it derived this number, nor when households can expect to see their bills fall, nor what the impact will be of the extra planet-heating carbon dioxide will be.
Microplastics in soil pose global threat by acting like ‘Trojan horse’ to deliver toxins
Microplastics act like a “Trojan horse” delivering pollutants, pesticides and bacteria through the soil, a five-year multinational research project has found. The EU-funded project, which has so far resulted in 22 peer-reviewed studies, found microplastics in the soil of all 227 agricultural fields it tested across 11 European countries. The researchers said this poses a global threat, with healthy soils essential for life on Earth. In many cases, this contamination reflected current farming practices as well as historical land use, demonstrating that plastic pollution can persist for many years.
The researchers also found that microplastics could interact with other agricultural stressors such as pesticides and veterinary drugs. One study in Switzerland found that fields with the highest levels of tyre-wear particles also had the highest levels of other toxic chemicals and metals.
Microplastics can create new microbial habitats on their surfaces. Known as the plastisphere, these surfaces form a hotspot for interactions between plastics, microbes and agrochemicals, the researchers found. An increase of antibiotic-resistant genes was found within plastispheres when compared with controls. Pesticides appeared to amplify this effect further. Edoardo Puglisi, a partner of the project and professor of microbiology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Piacenza, Italy, said the smaller the microplastics were, the more they tended to adsorb pollutants, microbes and DNA, leading to a “Trojan horse effect that can potentially increase the diffusion of pathogens and antibiotic-resistance genes”.
This Trojan horse effect can have an impact on earthworms and soil organisms by disrupting critical processes such as nutrient cycles, one study found. Earthworms play a vital role in shaping the composition of the soil microbiome as well as the ecological functions of soils.
The EU-funded Minagris research project, in collaboration with the Countryside and Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire, also found microplastics could affect plant growth and function. One study found that higher concentrations of microplastics reduced leaf area, chlorophyll content, photosynthetic efficiency and plant biomass in lettuce. When drought conditions were added, these effects became even more pronounced, with plants performing less well than under either stress alone.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Trump's govt makes 'treasonous' claim of weapons shortages
US Officials Met With Ansar Allah Representatives in Oman
When Britain Used Torture to Control the Strait of Hormuz
Israel Accuses Lebanon Army Chief of Being in League With Hezbollah
As World ‘Pretends There’s a Ceasefire,’ Israeli Minister Doubles Down on Gaza Expulsion Plan
Israeli Arms Industry’s Integration With Britain’s Military
Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 2
Top Trump military adviser says US must prepare to fight around moon
Trump 2.0 has cut or frozen $177bn in grants across every state, analysis finds
US government paid federal employees $9.5bn not to work amid Doge cuts
A Little Night Music
Barrelhouse Chuck & Willie Anderson - Westside Baby
Little Willie Anderson - Willie's Women Blues
Little Willie Anderson - Come Here Mama
Little Willie Anderson - Been Around
Little Willie Anderson - Looking For You Baby
Willie Anderson - Had A Dream
Willie Anderson - Everything Gonna Be Alright
Little Willie Anderson - 69th Street Bounce
Willie Anderson - Lester leaps in
Comments
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. Fun rendition of
Lester Leaps in.
The Sheeran dust-up is pretty funny. It seems to still be in the recent past when I first stumbled across him as a self promoted You Tuber doing covers while browsing looking for other stuff. Glad I never stopped to listen to any of it.
Looks like the weekend is upon us and then I'm batching it for a week, wonder if I still remember how to make pieroshki.
be well and have a good one
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 --
evening el...
i was kind of trying to ignore the sheeran thing, but it seems to have exploded and everybody wants to get their oar in the water about it. it may turn out to be a useful demonstration of the power of culture to mobilize people behind necessary change.
good luck with the pieroshki and have a great weekend!
Well there is this.
As Texans say,
"Bless their hearts."
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Trump makes Nancy Pelosi look like a lowly amateur with
regards to stock trading.
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/trump-outpaces-congres...
evening humphrey...
heh, rules for thee, but not for me. sounds about right.
Information that Trump and his cronies keep hidden from the
public that will impact us all in the long term.
The rest of the tweet:
We all get skeptical
of constant scary, news that smacks of fear porn.
Well, not this time. I come from 2 generations of farmers, and a first cousin still farms rice.
This shouldn't be read as fear porn. One should be genuinely afraid, and stop calling anyone who is or has been stocking up on food and other necessities of life crazy preppers.
I have been called worse.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
what now is called prepping was just prudent resource management when i was a kid. most folks i knew canned food and put it aside, it was just part of the pattern of life.
if i could afford it, i'd get a few acres and put in a root cellar, but the value of the land in my area is in planting houses not food and it's priced accordingly.
have a good one!
I have the acres,
but water is the issue. My Grandpa grew cotton and rice, grafted pecans. Never a problem with rain. My Dad grew 30 or more acres of corn and peas and 30 or more acres of hay for the cattle. We planned for dry spells. Got yields.
But then, I bought 11 acres for a hay patch for my cows, and for sale of excess bales. A couple of years of 4 hay cuts went to one, maybe two, as we went through a 9 year drought. At the same time, I was growing gardens at my home, having to water the rows with a water hose hooked up to my home.
Any tomato produced was double the price at the grocery store.
A friend simply drove a pipe 8 ft. into the ground, put some pump on it, has water. I might be able to do that, since the water table is very high here. I think we can locate the actual spring in the back pasture.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Hmm! Perhaps soryang can elaborate on this?
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/south-korea-president-lee-ap...
This recent announcement might be related?
Sometimes it appears as if Trump likes to hear himself talk
whether it makes any sense when he open his mouth.
What does
he even mean? Do you, or any of you, notice he is getting more unhinged by the day? By the DAY!!!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981