“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” – Sinclair Lewis
Feb 03, 2026
Ya think? Watch Contaminated: The Carpet Industry’s Toxic Legacy
Over much of the past year, the consortium of journalists — with support from FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative and the AP’s Local Investigative Reporting Program — reviewed thousands of pages of documents and court depositions and interviewed former regulators and industry insiders, as well as doctors, scientists and people who have the kinds of illnesses that researchers have linked to PFAS contamination. The carpet industry has long insisted it’s not to blame for PFAS getting into the environment and noted that chemical companies obscured the risks and assured them the products they were supplying were safe. But the recently reviewed records also show that executives from two of the largest carpet companies received warnings dating back decades about potential harms of some types of PFAS.
What the team found unfolds in full in Contaminated and related reporting from our partners, illuminating how carpet mills contaminated Southern communities with PFAS that take decades or more to break down.
Jolly polluted England, too: Environmental campaigners have criticised a “crushingly disappointing” UK government plan to tackle “forever chemicals”, which they warn risks locking in decades of avoidable harm to people and the environment.
The government said its Pfas action plan set out a “clear framework” of “coordinated action … to understand where these chemicals are coming from, how they spread and how to reduce public and environmental exposure”.
But campaigners described the plan as “incredibly weak” and criticised its failure to match tough action taken in Europe, where national governments are already banning chemicals on the grounds of public safety before EU-wide action.
Already thought to be in the blood of every person on the planet, man-made per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (Pfas) – a family of thousands of chemicals – are used in a huge range of consumer products, from waterproof clothing to electronics.
Research last year found that almost all English waters had Pfas levels above proposed safety limits. Dolphins, otters, porpoises, fish and birds across the UK have been found to have the chemicals in their tissue and organs.
Brazilian large companies withdraw from the ‘Soybean Moratorium.’
On Monday, international environmental organizations warned that the withdrawal of major soybean traders from the Soy Moratorium could lead to the deforestation of up to 9.2 million hectares in the Brazilian Amazon.
EPA? Under Jew Zeldin?? EDA. Not Epstein Dysfunction Affliction. Environmental Destruction AGENCY.?
Lee Zeldin seems confused. Recently, he decided that the mission of EPA was to: “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.” That is not EPA’s mission, that is the job of the Commerce Department and several other federal agencies. Here in New York City, the Fire Department puts out fires, the Police Department arrests criminals, and the Sanitation Department picks up garbage. All have different uniforms, different organizational capabilities, and different functions. Each department focuses on their assigned mission. It’s easy to understand. I guess we should be grateful that Zeldin isn’t New York City’s Mayor. The EPA’s job is to protect the environment. It is not trying to raise the cost of living and does not really do that. If you look at all EPA’s programs, the financial benefits are far greater than the costs. It does you little good to buy a car that costs $1,000 less if poisons from environmental pollution keep you out of work or put you in a hospital where your co-pay can be far greater than the cost of a car. Lee Zeldin and the Trump administration apparently do not understand the financial value of a clean environment. If one of President Trump’s golf courses had to close for a week due to the type of air pollution we used to see in China, perhaps he’d better understand the economic value of clean air. There are plenty of agencies involved in promoting the economy, EPA’s job is to protect the environment. In the New York Times on March 13, Lisa Friedman and Hiroko Tabuchi reported that:
“In a barrage of pronouncements on Wednesday the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands, and the legal basis that allows it to regulate the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet. But beyond that, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, reframed the purpose of the E.P.A. In a two-minute-and-18-second video posted to X, Mr. Zeldin boasted about the changes… Nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970.”
Fucking NEWS? Donald Trump told the New York Post last month that he isn’t planning to attend this Sunday’s Super Bowl in the Bay Area because it is “just too far away.” It was a transparently flimsy, fake-sounding excuse given that planes exist, he frequently travels long distances, and he went to last year’s Super Bowl.
What the president didn’t say in his Post interview is that some of his administration officials and advisers had privately assessed that if Trump were to attend Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, California, the crowd at the stadium would likely aggressively boo him.
Fucking stop calling it ZIONISM. 19 million Jews, dude: From Jabotinsky to Epstein: Zionism and the Cult of Cruelty. Israel now admits Gaza’s death toll—but only after years of denial. Mouin Rabbani joins to explore what this shift means, and how media and political elites helped enable genocide. We look at US complicity, the BBC’s Gaza coverage collapse, and the ideology of Jewish supremacy inside Israel’s government. Plus: the Epstein files, vice as political currency, and Arab states scrambling to prevent war with Iran.
JUDAISM!
Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp defended the firm’s surveillance technology as it reported a big jump in sales on Monday, saying it has safeguards to prevent government overreach, without mentioning US immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota that have drawn widespread protests.
The data analytics company said revenue derived from the US government spiked 66 per cent in the fourth quarter from the year-ago period to US$570 million. Total sales of US$1.41 billion exceeded analysts’ estimates and the firm anticipates a big jump in sales, in part due to government contracts in 2026.
Companies working with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are attracting more scrutiny as Americans have turned solidly against ICE’s aggressive tactics following the fatal shootings of two US citizens in separate incidents in January. The company won a contract last year with ICE to develop surveillance systems for immigration enforcement.
If only we could execute 130 Jewish Billionaires and . . .
China has executed four people found guilty of causing six Chinese citizens’ deaths and running scam and gambling operations out of Myanmar worth more than $4bn.
The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in southern China announced the executions on Monday morning in a statement. However, the timing of the executions was not clear.
[People from China, Vietnam and Ethiopia, believed to have been trafficked and forced to work in scam centers, sit with their faces masked while in detention after being released from the centers in Myawaddy district in eastern Myanmar]
The executions of 11 other people convicted of running scam centres in Myanmar had been announced last week.
The Shenzhen court sentenced five people accused of running a network of scam centres and casinos to death in November. One of the defendants, group leader Bai Suocheng, died of illness before the sentence was carried out.
The group had established industrial parks in Myanmar’s Kokang region bordering China, from where they allegedly ran gambling and telecom scam operations involving abductions, extortion, forced prostitution, and drug manufacturing and trafficking.
They defrauded victims of more than 29 billion yuan ($4.2bn) and caused the deaths of six Chinese citizens and injuries to others, the court said.
Their crimes “were exceptionally heinous, with particularly serious circumstances and consequences, posing a tremendous threat to society”, the court’s statement said.
The defendants appealed the verdict, but the Guangdong Provincial High People’s Court dismissed their applications, it added.
FUCKING CLOWNS.
What started as a meeting between frequent foes ended with Petro walking out of the Oval Office with a MAGA hat, altered with a pen to say “Make Americas Great Again.”
Trump hosted Petro, a former Marxist revolutionary, at the White House for the first in-person meeting between the two leaders. It was also Trump’s first sit-down with a head of state from the region after the U.S. captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela exactly one month ago.
The bilateral meeting ended in an unexpectedly positive tone, with both leaders saying afterward that it went smoothly. Ahead of the meeting, former Colombian and U.S. officials had expressed apprehension, citing both Trump’s and Petro’s unpredictable and fiery tempers.
“We got along very well,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon. “He and I weren’t exactly the best of friends, but I wasn’t insulted, because I’d never met him. I didn’t know him at all. And we got along very well.”
From Marxist to MAGA, what a fucking brain dead fucking Tio Taco. Has he been talking to Jason Hinkle?
In the last few years, a self-styled political movement that sounds like a contradiction in terms has gained ground online: “Maga communism”.
Promoted by its two most prominent spokespeople, Haz Al-Din, 27, and Jackson Hinkle, 24, Maga communism comprises a grab bag of ideas that can seem lacking in coherence – ranging from a belief in the power of Donald Trump’s followers to wrest power from “global elites” to an emphasis on masculine “honor”, admiration for Vladimir Putin and support for Palestinian liberation.
Hinkle frequently distorts Marxist theory, claiming that Mao Zedong encouraged people in Japan and the United States to be patriotic[1] (when in fact Mao condemned the patriotism of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany),[6] that communists do not support the abolition of private property, and that Communism/Marxism has always been conservative and supported patriotic education. The goal of Communists, according to Hinkle, is more Capitalist enterprises.[7] Hinkle has also engaged in slavery apologia.[8] In an interview with Alex Jones, Hinkle denounced the pro-Palestinian student protestors as “extremists” and admitted that he had friends among the anti-Palestinian reactionaries.
“And now we have ‘all white people are bad and they owe me money, based upon something I have no knowledge about’ and I must have missed in that song — I didn’t hear them talking about how, you know, when we brought the slaves over here, there was [sic] active slave trades in Africa that we actually purchased them from, but… maybe that’s the next episode.”
It’s never been a better time to read Roderic Day’s essay On Chomsky
Black History Month! Don Lemon says agents sent to arrest him despite offer to turn himself in
Former CNN anchor faces charges over coverage of an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a Minnesota church service.
Don Lemon says about a dozen federal agents came to his Los Angeles hotel to arrest him overnight on 30 January, even though the former CNN anchor’s attorney had told authorities he would turn himself in to face federal civil rights charges over his coverage of an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a Minnesota church service.
Lemon on Monday told the ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that sending the agents was a waste of resources because law enforcement would not have had to dispatch agents to follow him if he had been allowed to turn himself in.
In the wake of his executive order, the Defense Department issued guidance declaring “identity months dead” and said that working hours would no longer be used to mark cultural awareness months such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month and National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
Read more Subscribers only What Trump did on Day 1
That seemed to clash with a National Black History Month proclamation signed the same day by Trump, which called for “public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”
While the White House has issued its position, agencies of the government have discretion on whether to continue to recognize Black History Month, according to the official.
On February 1, the first day of Black History Month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that his department “will no longer participate in celebrations based on immutable traits or any other identity-based observances.” And in a diplomatic cable, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency’s removal of DEI policies would dovetail with “eliminating our focus on political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad.”
The administration has issued a deadline to schools and universities to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money. Major corporations have backtracked on DEI policies in hiring, promotion and workplace culture in recent months, with many citing potential legal challenges from the administration.
Meanwhile, multiple artists have canceled scheduled performances at the center since Trump’s takeover. Maria Shriver, a niece of the former president, theorized those cancellations were the reason for the pending renovation project.
“Translation: It has been brought to my attention that due to the name change (but nobody’s telling me it’s due to the name change), but it’s been brought to my attention that entertainers are canceling left and right, and I have determined that since the name change no one wants to perform there any longer,” Shriver wrote on X of the president’s announcement.
“I’ve determined that due to this change in schedule, it’s best for me to close this center down and rebuild a new center that will bear my name, which will surely get everybody to stop talking about the fact that everybody’s canceling… right?”
New documents and emails to and from the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein detail his connections to some professors, putting pressure on those named to explain their communications.
The Department of Justice released more than 3 million documents and thousands of videos and images Friday in its latest, largest and reportedly last release of the so-called Epstein Files, a trove of information related to Epstein, who pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008 and was sentenced to 18 months in a minimum-security prison. As was true in previous file drops, prominent higher education figures are named in the files as Epstein’s correspondents, friends and colleagues.
The new documents have prompted action in the higher ed space; the US-Ireland Alliance announced Sunday that its George J. Mitchell Scholarship will no longer bear Mitchell’s name. The former senator from Maine appears to have met frequently with Epstein, according to the latest files.
The 68th Grammy Awards last night, which comedian Trevor Noah helmed for the sixth and final time, was filled with firsts — and proved to be a political hot spot.
Bad Bunny made history when “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” was crowned album of the year, the first time an all-Spanish-language album won the coveted category. The Puerto Rican artist also made perhaps the biggest statement of the evening against the Trump administration’s immigration operations across the country.
“Before I say thanks to God, I gotta say: ICE Out,” he said during one of his acceptance speeches. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”
It’s all about rootedlessness in America, and cheap lattes and 3,000-square-foot homes.
Move over, Florida and Texas. The United States has new hot spots for growth, and they both have Carolina in their name.
North Carolina last year attracted more new residents, 84,000 people, from other parts of the country than any other state, a title held by Texas in 2024 and Florida in the two years before that. South Carolina had the highest overall growth rate last year at 1.5%, a distinction among states held by Florida in 2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released this past week.
Domestic migration, or people moving within the U.S., slowed in Texas. The 67,300 domestic migrants heading to the second most populous state year over year barely squeaked by South Carolina, which had the third highest number of domestic migrants at 66,600.
The appeal of Florida, the nation’s third most populous state, dimmed. It dropped to No. 8 for state-to-state migration, as more U.S. residents preferred to move elsewhere, including Alabama.
Sabrina Morley and Steven Devereaux sold their Tampa-area house last year, moved out of Florida and landed outside Valencia, Spain. Growing up in the 1990s, they both enjoyed Florida’s diversity and being able to run around freely outdoors. But in recent years, as they planned to have children, they had grown wary of the state’s costs, regular threats of mass shootings at schools, the quality of education and political divisiveness. They are expecting a daughter in the spring.
“I had a pretty good childhood, but I don’t think we’d be able to give our child the same quality of life because of the cost of living, food quality, and guns have become more prevalent,” Devereaux said. “We think where we are now, it’s the best decision we could make to give any future children the best quality of life.”
North Carolina state demographer Michael Cline credited the state’s growth to high-paying jobs in banking and tech, the topographical diversity and having smaller big-cities than Florida and Texas.
“North Carolina is attracting younger folks because we have so many nice areas in North Carolina — the mountains and beaches and lakes in between — that we’re benefiting from younger people who decided they can work from anywhere and would rather be in a nice area,” Cline said. “One of the things about North Carolina, our cities are not huge, and that may be attractive to folks, too.”
Dirty dirty three-faced Republicans!
But audience questions quickly turned to recent events in Minneapolis and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s tactics.
Just days before, Rep. Mike Lawler had published a guest essay in The New York Times saying that the country’s current immigration policy is not working and called for a “a common-sense bipartisan solution.”
“I think what happened in Minneapolis is tragic,” Lawler said Sunday. “I believe it was entirely preventable.”
Lawler told the town hall audience that he supports certain reforms of ICE tactics and immigration policy. He said he supports equipping ICE agents with body cameras and a ban on masks. The congressman said he also wants to create a path to legal status for immigrants who’ve worked in the U.S., pay taxes and have no criminal record.
“ That does not mean citizenship, but it does mean that they come out of the shadows and that they can participate in our economy and in our community without fear of being deported,” Lawler said.
DHS keeps making false claims about people. It’s part of a broader pattern
While Lawler called for a thorough federal investigation into the shootings of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minnesota, he faced jeers and insults from many in the room.
“What is the line that you won’t cross?” one audience member could be heard asking at a microphone set up for constituents. “What can Trump do that you’ll say that’s wrong?”
Many people in the audience also demanded that Lawler be more forceful in his response to the recent fatal shootings in Minneapolis and immigration enforcement tactics in general.
Oh shit, the Jerusalem Post calls them Jews: From Gaza to Iran, Israel readies space ‘surprises’ for next conflicts – exclusive
Israel’s space capabilities play a key role in the Jewish state’s strategic military capabilities, and now the space industry is moving toward dual-use and commercial roles as well.
Research of David McGowan, author of the 2004 crime book Programmed to Kill, becomes essential to understanding how our political order works. Going off of information that’s already public, McGowan discusses how U.S. State Department officials are supplied with a consistent stream of underage sexual slaves—not because all of the officials who pass through this system personally participate in crimes against children, but because just by putting them into contact with this abuse system the war machine is able to render its ranks compromised. Being complicit in child sexual assault is a requirement for being a member of the U.S. empire’s top leadership. With this context about the fundamental workings of American foreign policy, every other pedophilic crime that the foreign policy infrastructure produces makes total sense.
Gerald Horne, ending this:
Paul Haeder, Author 