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“The construction of the nuclear doomsday machine—and its continued maintenance and development since the mid-twentieth century—is surely one of the most astounding acts of collective insanity in the history of the human species.”

-- Richard L. Currier

News and Opinion

Excellent, NYT/Government propaganda debunked. Worth a click and a full read:

Ukraine & Nukes

The New York Times recently published an article by David Sanger entitled “Putin spins a conspiracy theory that Ukraine is on a path to produce nuclear weapons.” Unfortunately, it is Sanger who puts so much spin in his reporting that he leaves his readers with a grossly distorted version of the what the presidents of Russia and Ukraine have said and done.

Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent statements at the Munich conference centered around the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which welcomed Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in conjunction with Ukraine’s decision to return to Russia the nuclear weapons left on its territory by the Soviet Union. In other words, the Budapest Memorandum was expressly about Ukraine giving up its nukes and not becoming a nuclear weapon state in the future. Zelensky’s speech at Munich made it clear that Ukraine was moving to repudiate the Budapest Memorandum; Zelensky essentially stated that Ukraine must be made a member of NATO, otherwise it would acquire nuclear weapons. ...

Sanger’s Times article implies that it was a “conspiracy theory” that Zelensky was calling for Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. Sanger was not ignorant of the meaning of the Budapest Memorandum, rather he chose to deliberately ignore it and misrepresented the facts. President Vladimir Putin, along with the majority of Russians, could not ignore such a threat for a number of historical reasons that The New York Times and ideologues such as Sanger have also chosen to ignore. ...

Sanger makes a very misleading statement when he writes, “Today Ukraine does not even have the basic infrastructure to produce nuclear fuel.” Ukraine is not interested in making nuclear fuel — which Ukraine already purchases from the U.S. Ukraine has plenty of plutonium, which is commonly used to make nuclear weapons today; eight years ago Ukraine held more than 50 tons of plutonium in its spent fuel assemblies stored at its many nuclear power plants (probably considerably more today, as the reactors have continued to run and produce spent fuel). Once plutonium is reprocessed/separated from spent nuclear fuel, it becomes weapons usable. Putin noted that Ukraine already has missiles that could carry nuclear warheads, and they certainly have scientists capable of developing reprocessing facilities and building nuclear weapons.

In his Times piece, Sanger states, “American officials have said repeatedly that they have no plans to place nuclear weapons in Ukraine.” But the U.S. and NATO have refused to sign legally binding treaties with Russia to this effect. In reality, the U.S. has been making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, while training and supplying its military forces and conducting joint exercises on Ukrainian territory. Why wouldn’t the U.S. place nuclear weapons in Ukraine — they have already done so at military bases within the borders of five other European members of NATO. This in fact violates the spirit of the NPT, another issue that Sanger avoids when he notes that Russia has demanded that the U.S. remove nuclear weapons from the European NATO-member states.

[Much more at the link. -js]

Impose “Economic Pain” On Russian People Says Hillary Clinton

Forever War in Ukraine or End of Unipolar World?

Ukraine war: Putin prompts fears that ‘the worst is yet to come’

Vladimir Putin has told Emmanuel Macron that Kyiv’s “refusal to accept Russia’s conditions” means he will continue to pursue his war in Ukraine, the Élysée Palace has said, adding: “We expect the worst is yet to come.”

As the number of refugees fleeing the conflict passed 1 million and Russian forces, backed by heavy shelling, advanced on cities and key ports in the south and east, Russia’s president said in a 90-minute call to his French counterpart he was “prepared to go all the way”, the French official said.

Putin said Moscow aimed to take “full control” of the country by diplomatic or military means and repeated his objective was what he claimed was the “neutralisation, demilitarisation and de-nazification” of Ukraine, the official said.

Macron had responded that Putin was making a “major mistake” that would cost Russia dearly over the long term. “There was nothing in what President Putin said to reassure us,” the official said, adding that Macron had told him he was “lying to himself”.

As talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators got under way, the Russian leader said separately that the invasion – which Russia still calls a “special military operation” – was going according to plan and praised Russia’s soldiers as heroes. “All the tasks that have been set are being successfully resolved,” he said.

Calls for Ukrainian no-fly zone, though still a minority, are growing and dangerous

Concern mounting over huge Russian military convoy outside Kyiv

Concern is mounting over the movements of a huge column of Russian military vehicles outside Kyiv, amid a lack of fresh information about its position and the threat it poses. While a US defence official suggested it appeared to have “stalled”, there was also speculation that an estimated 15,000 troops attached to it may be regrouping, and potentially waiting for logistical supplies before an assault on Kyiv.

Efforts to ascertain the status of the convoy and the threat it poses have been set back by recent cloud cover over Ukraine that has prevented Maxar Technologies – which issued the first satellite images of the convoy – from releasing new pictures. “Heavy cloud cover has blanketed Ukraine,” said Maxar, “and [it has] prevented us from providing new satellite imagery-based updates of the current activity.”

While information about Russian troop movements in other parts of Ukraine where there has been fighting has been well documented on social media, the convoy outside Kyiv has existed in what amounts to an information black hole, suggesting that Russia forces may closely control the territory around it.

The convoy, which at one stage was reportedly about 40 miles (65km) in length, with vehicles pictured three abreast on the P02 road to the immediate north of Kyiv, includes armoured vehicles, tanks, trucks, fuel tankers and artillery pieces. Its presence suggested Russian forces were massing for an attack on Kyiv.

Moscow calls ‘monstrous provocation’ Kiev’s claims on Zaporozhskaya Nuclear Power Plant attack

Russia shells Europe’s largest nuclear plant, starting fire

Russian forces pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city by shelling Europe’s largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire and raising fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station. The assault on the eastern city of Enerhodar and its Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant came as the invasion entered its second week with Russian forces gaining ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea. Elsewhere, another round of talks between the two sides yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors inside Ukraine to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.

Nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were falling directly on the facility and had set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.

Firefighters cannot get near the flames because they are being shot at, he said, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted a plea to the Russians to stop the assault and allow fire teams inside. ...

The American Nuclear Society condemned the attack but said the latest radiation levels remained within natural background levels. ... The plant’s reactor is a different type than the one used at Chernobyl, and there should be little risk if the containment vessel is not damaged and outside power can be restored, said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a former senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council and former special adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

US Put 'Doomsday Plane' Into the Air This Week After Putin Nuclear Threat

The so-called "doomsday plane"—an aircraft modified by the U.S. military to be operated as a mobile command post and protect the president and high-ranking officials in the event of a high-level disaster—went on a reportedly unusual four-hour flight Monday following a perceived nuclear threat by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to multiple news reports, citing military flight tracking websites, the modified Boeing 747, using the call sign GORDO15, made a round-trip flight from a U.S. Air Force base in Nebraska to Chicago.

While the aircraft engage in regular testing missions, Monday's flight was unusual, iNews reported, because the plane was accompanied by two Cobra Ball jets with the ability to track ballistic missile data.

The over $200 million "doomsday plane" is part of a fleet of E-4 series aircraft which have been militarized from a Boeing 747-200B to function as the National Airborne Operations Center. The E-4s have been in use since the 1970s, and at least one of the planes is kept on alert at all times.

"The conduct of E-4B operations encompasses all phases of the threat spectrum," according to an Air Force description of the aircraft.

According to Boeing, the aircraft have 13 external communications systems, are designed for missions lasting 72 hours, and include "hardness" features to protect against electromagnetic radiation and the effects of a nuclear blast.

An Air Force spokesperson told iNews that Monday's flight was "a routine sortie" and "not a response to actions taking place elsewhere in the world."

Monday's flight, however, took place amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and just hours after Putin ordered his military's nuclear forces on "special alert."

The Pentagon this week also announced Wednesday that it's postponed scheduled nuclear missile tests for this weekend in light of the ongoing conflict.

"This is not a step backwards in our readiness," said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, "nor does it imply that we will necessarily cancel other routine activities to ensure a credible nuclear capability."

French journalist criticized for reporting Kiev’s shelling of Eastern Ukraine

Spotify Purges Dissident Voices In Latest Censorship Escalation

Multiple American podcasters who speak critically of the political status quo in their country are reporting that their channels have been shut down as the censorship campaign against Russia-backed media continues to escalate. These include Moment of Clarity with Lee Camp, The Politics of Survival with Tara Reade, and By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik.

“My podcast ‘Moment of Clarity’ has been removed from Spotify,” Camp tweeted Wednesday. “Let it be known – you can do anti-women, anti-trans or racist content on Spotify but you can’t be anti-war. That’s not allowed.”

“Without explanation or notice, Spotify has removed By Any Means Necessary from their platform, but we’re not going anywhere!” said the program’s Twitter account. “There’s a clear effort in motion to suppress anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist voices, join us in the fight by spreading the word!”

“You can still find my podcast on other platforms even though Spotify inexplicably removed it,” tweeted Reade.

This comes as Spotify closes its office in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

It is true that these podcasters have been platformed by Russian state-sponsored media. It is also true that their grievances against their government are authentic, legitimate, and frequently excellent, as you can easily ascertain by listening to them for yourself. It’s easy to tell that these are nothing other than Americans who know about the malfeasance of their government and its allies and want to talk about it, and accepted a platform from the only place that would let them speak.

There’s this bizarre, stupid notion people have accepted that socialist and antiwar voices should never allow Russian media to platform them, and should instead wait until they are given a large platform by western mainstream media, and keep waiting, and waiting, and just keep on waiting until we all die in a nuclear holocaust. Like it’s your job to help the oligarchic empire marginalize and silence you, even when you know you’re right and you’re speaking the truth. Like you’re obligated to collaborate with their narrative management.

If you have something important to say and you know it’s a true and helpful message, then it doesn’t matter if it’s the Russian government who’s giving you your platform or anyone else, because the message itself is intrinsically valuable. Lee Camp did a great bit on this back in 2017 when people were beginning to shriek about the fact that his show Redacted Tonight is on RT America, mocking the idea that an American in America sharing his own ideas about America could somehow be a horrifying psychological weapon of the Russians.

Unfortunately the link I have for it is on YouTube, which means that since it’s on RT’s channel you won’t be able to watch it if you’re in Europe and don’t have a VPN because the Google-owned video sharing platform is censoring it there. Here it is for everyone else:

“It’s so backwards that I’m at the only network in all of US media that allows me to be anti-war. And for doing that, I’m called a war apologist,” Camp told me. “It’s being used to eliminate the tiny bit of remaining left wing voices.”

“It is another sign of the Western government failing when they have to silence voices with suppression and censorship,” Reade said of her de-platforming from Spotify.

Russia doesn’t write the scripts for what these dissident voices say on their platforms, it just gives them a platform to say it. The kind of platform that has been bolted shut to them in western media, where only voices which support the capitalist imperialist status quo are permitted to have a seat. As Noam Chomsky famously told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, “I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t been sitting where you’re sitting.”

Does Russia benefit in some way by amplifying western critics of oligarchy and empire? Sure, to an extent. It benefits from a greater awareness in the west of the horrific nature of western imperialism, of the lies we’re fed daily to hold the oligarchic empire together and feed its war machine, of the dangers of NATO expansionism and nuclear brinkmanship. But you know what? So does the rest of the world. The amplification of western voices who draw attention to those things is therefore an objectively good thing.

But they’re being banned, while bloodthirsty psychopaths like Sean Hannity get to maintain immensely influential platforms while calling for a direct NATO military attack on Russian forces in Ukraine. That’s perfectly fine. It’s not like he did something unforgivable, like criticize the Pentagon.

If they were telling the truth about Russia they wouldn’t be censoring Russia-backed media. One is reminded of the words of George RR Martin, “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

It’s funny that such a big deal is being made about “Russian propaganda” hijacking people’s minds and manipulating them, because the institutions doing so are so close to admitting to one of the most underappreciated and overlooked aspects of western society: that we’re all being aggressively propagandized constantly by the mainstream news media, by Hollywood, and by Silicon Valley, and that it greatly influences the way we think, act, and vote. And the amount of wealth and energy going into brainwashing us in this way is many orders of magnitude greater than Russia’s, done with billions of dollars worth of immensely sophisticated perception management instead of just letting someone who hates war have a podcast.

Really these escalations in censorship have never been about countering Russian propaganda, or fighting Covid misinformation, or any of the other excuses they’ve been churning out. It’s because the democratization of information poses a direct threat to ruling power structures, and their very existence depends on their ability to gain control.

The “liberal democracies” of the western empire found a loophole in their own freedom of expression laws (the same laws they claim make them superior to overtly authoritarian regimes) in that they can outsource their censorship to government-tied monopolistic megacorporations. This allows the oligarchic empire to control the dominant narratives about what’s going on, thereby controlling how people think, act, and vote.

Ukraine War Driving Rampant Censorship At Home

New Analysis Says US Doesn't Need 'Bigger Military Budget to Deter Putin'

As war hawks in the U.S. Congress attempt to use Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an opportunity to pour more money into the Pentagon's overflowing coffers, a new analysis released Thursday argues that such a move would be "counterproductive" and potentially detrimental to American security.

Authored by William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the report argues that "current U.S. defense strategy costs too much and achieves too little," citing specifically the disastrous wars the U.S. launched in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere following the September 11 attacks.

On top of the incalculable human costs of the so-called "war on terror," the U.S. spent an estimated $8 trillion on post-9/11 conflicts.

"In the two largest wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has failed to meet its primary objectives of promoting stable, pro–U.S. governments and reducing the spread of global terrorism," Hartung notes. "The Taliban are now in power in Afghanistan. The U.S. intervention in Iraq helped bring a sectarian regime to power that created an environment in which the Islamic State, ISIS, could organize itself and seize large parts of northern Iraq—a development that took billions of dollars and thousands of troops to reverse."

Such failures, Hartung contends, demonstrate that more military spending is not the solution to present and future conflicts, including Russia's ongoing invasion and bombardment of Ukraine, carried out on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We don't need a bigger military budget to deter Putin," states a Quincy Institute press release summarizing the new report. "Contrary to rising calls to increase the United States' already massive military budget in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, boosting military spending would be misguided, counterproductive, and it would ultimately make America less safe."

Hartung's analysis was published as U.S. lawmakers from both major parties clamored for more military spending in response to Russia's deadly attack on Ukraine.

"Without question it's going to have to be bigger than we thought," Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the hawkish chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday, referring to the U.S. military budget. "The decision to invade Ukraine by Russia changes it and it's gonna go up. There's no doubt about it."

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) expressed a similar view in a speech on the Senate floor earlier this week, calling for more "shipments of lethal military arms to Ukraine, to the Baltics, to Poland and Romania, as well as increasing defense spending here at home."

Last month, before Russia launched its assault on Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden asked lawmakers to approve more than $770 billion for the military budget in Fiscal Year 2023, a request that progressive lawmakers and anti-war groups criticized as "absurd."

By comparison, Russia's annual military budget is roughly $62 billion. In 2020 alone, Hartung notes in his analysis, Lockheed Martin received $75 billion in Pentagon contracts.

A day after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Biden White House told Congress that the U.S. Defense Department would need an additional $3.5 billion to respond to the attack.

But Hartung argued Wednesday that dumping more money into the U.S. Defense Department would perpetuate a destructive approach to foreign policy that has done much to fatten the pockets of weapons makers and little to advance the cause of peace.

"The Pentagon budget authorized by Congress this year was, at $778 billion, one of the highest levels since World War II and, as noted, $25 billion higher than what the Pentagon asked for," Hartung noted.

"In addition to being grounded in a misguided, military-first strategy," he continued, "these immense sums reflect the power of influence-peddling and pork-barrel politics—notably contributing to elections campaigns, distributing weapons facilities and bases in the states and districts of key members of Congress, hiring former government officials to lobby for arms companies, funding think tanks, and tapping corporate officials for government panels that define 'the threat.'"

Hartung called for a "new defense strategy grounded in a more realistic assessment of the challenges posed by Russia and China, a diplomacy-first approach to regional threats, a less-militarized approach to dealing with global terrorism, and a sharp reduction in the U.S. global military footprint."

"The Biden administration wants to have its cake and eat it too—trying to increase the military budget while also spending more on diplomacy and addressing the climate crisis," Hartung said in a statement. "This 'both and' strategy has failed—Pentagon spending increases have sailed through Congress while climate investments have stalled. It's time for our leaders to rightsize our bloated military budget, re-orient our defense strategy around urgent threats, and help deliver real security for the American people."

A Chip Off The Old Bailout

During his State of the Union speech Tuesday, President Joe Biden recounted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger telling him that the only thing preventing the company from investing more in America is a delay of legislation providing huge new government subsidies. “Pat came to see me, and he told me they’re ready to increase their investment from $20 billion to $100 billion,” Biden said. “That would be the biggest investment in manufacturing in American history. And all they’re waiting for is for you to pass this bill.”

But microchip companies like Intel are hardly cash-strapped paupers that desperately need a bill providing $52 billion of federal subsidies in order to build factories in the United States. According to a study by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Intel and four other wildly profitable American semiconductor giants that stand to benefit from the bill were so awash in cash that they spent nearly a quarter trillion dollars in the last decade — or 70 percent of their profits — on stock buybacks. Those buybacks diverted money from capital investments and into stock price boosts that enriched shareholders and executives. Intel and the microchip industry did this while moving manufacturing jobs away from the U.S. over the past three decades.

Now the companies stand to be rewarded by Biden’s microchip subsidy legislation — which omits safeguards that could have required recipients to use public funds for domestic investments rather than for even more stock buybacks, shareholder dividends, and executive pay packages. ...

Amid a spate of Biden-backed free trade deals between 1985 and 2014, the United States lost more than a third of its jobs in the semiconductor industry, even as the five major American-headquartered semiconductor companies raked in more than $9 billion of state and federal subsidies, loans, and other support, according to data compiled by the watchdog group Good Jobs First.

Much of the world’s microchip production is now concentrated in Taiwan, 100 miles off the coast of China — a major economic competitor on hostile terms with the island. Proponents of the CHIPS Act have cast their bill as a way to onshore some of that production capacity, further away from the risk of the microchip supply chain being disrupted by any strife between the two countries. To do this, the CHIPS Act proposes to provide even more subsidies to semiconductor companies, ostensibly for them to invest in new chip production plants in the United States.

SCROTUS rules, injustice for all:

Supreme court blocks men behind CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ from testifying

Two psychologists who devised the CIA’s post-9/11 system of US “enhanced interrogation”, which has been widely denounced as torture, cannot be called to testify in a case in Poland brought by a terrorism suspect subjected to the abuses, the supreme court has ruled. In a 6-3 ruling on Thursday, the court allowed the US government to block the psychologists from giving evidence in a case brought by Abu Zubaydah, a Guantánamo prisoner who was arrested in 2002 and has been held without charge ever since. The majority of the justices granted the government the privilege of “state secrets” – a power that prevents the public disclosure of information deemed harmful to national security.

Zubaydah had wanted to call the psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, to confirm that he had been unlawfully detained and tortured in a so-called CIA “black site” in Stare Kiejkuty, Poland. It is public knowledge that the prisoner was tortured in a number of black sites in several countries between 2002 and his transfer to Guantánamo four years later. Among the many harrowing torture techniques that were applied against him, he was waterboarded – a form of controlled drowning – 83 times.

In Thursday’s ruling, the nine justices of the supreme court divided along unusual lines that crossed the traditional conservative-liberal divide. The majority opinion was written by Stephen Breyer, the court’s senior liberal justice who is retiring at the end of this term. In his opinion, Breyer argued that the government was entitled to assert the “state secrets” privilege even though the critical information in question – in this case the location of a CIA black site in Poland – was already publicly known. Breyer agreed with the CIA that “clandestine” relations between the US and foreign intelligence services were based on trust and had to be protected in the interests of national security.

Two justices dissented from the opinion – the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor and conservative Neil Gorsuch. In a lengthy rebuttal, Gorsuch pointed out that the torture to which Zubaydah was subjected had been extensively chronicled in official reports, books and movies. “Ending this suit may shield the government from some further modest measure of embarrassment. But respectfully, we should not pretend it will safeguard any secret,” he wrote.

Kentucky jury clears ex-officer who fired shots in raid that killed Breonna Taylor

A Kentucky jury has cleared a former police officer who fired shots during the 2020 drug raid that ended in Breonna Taylor’s death.

The jury on Thursday found Brett Hankison not guilty of three counts of wanton endangerment for firing shots that ripped into a neighboring apartment. Hankison was the only police officer charged in the raid that ended with Taylor’s death.

Hankison, 45, had been charged with three counts of wanton endangerment, punishable by one to five years in prison, for firing shots during the raid that went through a sliding-glass side door and a window of Taylor’s apartment and into a unit next door where a couple and small child lived. ...

Kentucky attorney general David Cameron ’s prosecutors asked a grand jury to indict Hankison on charges of endangering Taylor’s neighbors, but declined to seek charges against any officers involved in Taylor’s death. Protesters who had walked the streets for months were outraged.

US Capitol attack committee plans April hearings to show how Trump broke law

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is hoping to show through public hearings in April how it believes Donald Trump came to violate federal laws in his efforts to overturn the 2020 US election results, the panel has indicated in court documents.

The hearings are set to be a major and historical political event in America as the panel seeks to publicly show the extent of its investigations so far into the shocking events that saw a pro-Trump mob invade the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election of Joe Biden by Congress.

The panel alleged in a court filing on Wednesday that Trump and his associates obstructed Congress and conspired to defraud the United States on 6 January, arguing it meant the former Trump lawyer John Eastman could not shield thousands of emails from the inquiry.

But the public hearings – which are likely to come late next month, the chair of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, told the Guardian – will address just how Trump came to interfere with the joint session of Congress through rhetoric he knew to be false or unlawful. ...

The select committee indicated the public hearings would serve as the opportunity to cast a light on Trump’s secret efforts to overturn the election, from his attempts to pressure the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to return him to office, to abuse of the justice department.

Wild fish stocks squandered to feed farmed salmon, study finds

Shoppers’ appetite for salmon is causing millions of tonnes of nutritious mackerel, sardines and anchovies to be wasted as fish feed, according to new research. Its authors say farming salmon is an inefficient way to produce nutritious seafood, calculating that half to 99% of minerals, vitamins and fatty acids in the wild-caught fish are not retained when fed to farmed Atlantic salmon.

They say removing wild-caught fish from aquaculture feed production and diverting them to human consumption, and farming more carp and fewer salmon, could increase global seafood production by 6.1m tonnes, while leaving 3.7m tonnes of fish in the sea.

Lia ní Aodha, of Feedback Global, which worked on the report said: “Salmon farming is a good example of how deeply inefficient and inequitable the global food system is. Much of the nutrient-rich fish used to feed farmed salmon is sourced from regions in the global south, where food insecurity is endemic, while the salmon is mainly sold to consumers in high-income markets in Europe, North America and parts of Asia.”

Feedback, which campaigns for sustainable food supplies, worked with researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Lancaster and Liverpool to investigate feed sources – and the nutrients transferred from them – in the Scottish salmon industry, Britain’s largest food export. They calculated that in a single year, 179,000 tonnes of salmon produced in Scottish aquaculture farms consumed fish meal and fish oil produced from 460,000 tonnes of wild-caught fish, 76% of which was edible.

In their paper, published on the research forum Plos Sustainability and Transformation, they said: “Most edible wild-caught fish species in [fish meal and fish oil] have higher concentrations of key micronutrients than farmed salmon, and for some of these micronutrients, as little as 1% is retained in farmed salmon.

Also of Interest

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

The Overton Window Is Being Shoved Toward Warmongering Extremism

Ban on Russian Cats

NBC Off by 18 Years on US’s Last Use of Cluster Bombs

Ukraine War Highlights Tensions in Putin’s Objectives. Will He Win the War and Lose the Peace?

Trump’s border wall breached by smugglers over 3,000 times, records reveal

California wants to eradicate microplastics. Will a new strategy be enough?

Russian Invasion Bolsters Case for Ending Use of Fossil Fuels

A Little Night Music

Maceo Parker - Pass The Peas

Maceo Parker - Children´s World

Maceo Parker - Right Place Wrong Time

Maceo Parker - The Soul Of A Black Man

Maceo Parker - Let's get it on

Maceo Parker - Soul Power ´92

Maceo Parker - Georgia On My Mind

Maceo Parker - Tell Me Something Good

Maceo Parker - Splashin'

Maceo Parker - My First Name is Maceo (feat. Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis, George Clinton and others)

Maceo Parker @ North Sea Jazz Festival 1995