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Israel Has Officially Banned Fluoridation of Its Drinking Water

On Tuesday of this week (Aug. 26), Israel officially stopped adding fluoride to its water supplies. The decision has “been lauded by various rights groups, but criticized by many in the medical and dental communities as a serious mistake,” as the Times of Israel put it.

The tasteless, colorless chemical is put into water for the purpose of reducing cavities, but critics say that it amounts to mass medication, and forces people to consume the substance whether they want to or not.

By law, fluoride had been added to public drinking water supplies of large Israeli towns since the 1970s, and until this week about 70 percent of the country was fluoridated. (For comparison, 67 percent of Americans receive fluoridated tap water.)

Health Minister Yael German announced last year that she planned to end the practice, but faced a wave of backlash. Undeterred, she said earlier this month that she had nevertheless decided to end the process effective Aug. 26, and to not even allow optional fluoridation in communities that support it.

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Cattle Mutilations in Oregon Continue

The mysterious cattle mutilation phenomenon continues to vex ranchers in Oregon as three more curious cases have now been reported. According to a local media outlet, the latest incident occurred earlier this month on the property of rancher Fee Stubblefield near the community of Ukiah. As he was checking on his cattle one evening, he spotted a dead cow that sported unusual injuries which “didn’t look right.”

Specifically, the creature’s tongue and sex organs had been removed by way of a bloodless cut described by Stubblefield as unusual. Additionally, in a rather odd detail, one of the animals ears had been severed and inexplicably placed upon its neck. The rancher’s misgivings about the manner in which the cow died were subsequently confirmed by local authorities who examined the creature and noted that it bore all of the telltale signs of a cattle mutilation case.

The determination was particularly worrisome to Stubblefield as “now that we’ve identified this as a mutilation kill, we’ve actually discovered we had two other ones.” Those cases, he said, took place earlier this year under similarly puzzling circumstances. Stubblefield’s most recent lost cattle comes on the heels of an odd cattle mutilation that took place in Oregon back in July as well as a highly-publicized incident last summer in which five mutilated bulls on a different ranch in the state.

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CRUMBLING CASE AGAINST ASSANGE SHOWS WEAKNESS OF “HACKING” CHARGES RELATED TO WHISTLEBLOWING

BY 2013, the Obama administration had concluded that it could not charge WikiLeaks or Julian Assange with crimes related to publishing classified documents — documents that showed, among other things, evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan — without criminalizing investigative journalism itself. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department called this the “New York Times problem,” because if WikiLeaks and Assange were criminals for publishing classified information, the New York Times would be just as guilty.

Five years later, in 2018, the Trump administration indicted Assange anyway. But, rather than charging him with espionage for publishing classified information, they charged him with a computer crime, later adding 17 counts of espionage in a superseding May 2019 indictment.The alleged hacking not only didn’t happen, according to expert testimony, but it also couldn’t have happened.

The computer charges claimed that, in 2010, Assange conspired with his source, Chelsea Manning, to crack an account on a Windows computer in her military base, and that the “primary purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information.” The account enabled internet file transfers using a protocol known as FTP.

New testimony from the third week of Assange’s extradition trial makes it increasingly clear that this hacking charge is incredibly flimsy. The alleged hacking not only didn’t happen, according to expert testimony at Manning’s court martial hearing in 2013 and again at Assange’s extradition trial last week, but it also couldn’t have happened.

The new testimony, reported earlier this week by investigative news site Shadowproof, also shows that Manning already had authorized access to, and the ability to exfiltrate, all of the documents that she was accused of leaking — without receiving any technical help from WikiLeaks.

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Increasing Number Of Americans Believe Violence Is Justified If ‘Other Side’ Wins

“Our research, which we’re reporting here for the first time, shows an upswing in the past few months in the number of Americans—both Democrats and Republicans—who said they think violence would be justified if their side loses the upcoming presidential election,” reads a Thursday article.

The outlet noticed an uptick in the number of respondents who say they would condone violence committed by members of their own political party – which coincided with a willingness by both Democrats and Republicans to justify violence as a means to achieve political goals.

Here’s what Politico found (emphasis ours):

• Among Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican, 1 in 3 now believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ political goals—a substantial increase over the last three years.

• In September, 44 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats said there would be at least “a little” justification for violence if the other party’s nominee wins the election. Those figures are both up from June, when 35 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats expressed the same sentiment.

• Similarly, 36 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said it is at least “a little” justified for their side “to use violence in advancing political goals”—up from 30 percent of both Republicans and Democrats in June.

• There has been an even larger increase in the share of both Democrats and Republicans who believe there would be either “a lot” or “a great deal” of justification for violence if their party were to lose in November. The share of Republicans seeing substantial justification for violence if their side loses jumped from 15 percent in June to 20 percent in September, while the share of Democrats jumped from 16 percent to 19 percent.

• These numbers are even higher among the most ideological partisans. Of Democrats who identify as “very liberal,” 26 percent said there would be “a great deal” of justification for violence if their candidate loses the presidency compared to 7 percent of those identifying as simply “liberal.” Of Republicans who identify as “very conservative,” 16 percent said they believe there would be “a great deal” of justification for violence if the GOP candidate loses compared to 7 percent of those identifying as simply “conservative.” This means the ideological extremes of each party are two to four times more apt to see violence as justified than their party’s mainstream members.

Notably, those at the ideological extremes are more likely to condone violence, with ‘very liberal’ respondents over 50% more likely than ‘very conservative’ individuals to do so.

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US military eyes nuclear thermal rocket for missions in Earth-moon space

The U.S. military aims to get a nuclear thermal rocket up and running, to boost its ability to monitor the goings-on in Earth-moon space.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) just awarded a $14 million task order to Gryphon Technologies, a company in Washington, D.C., that provides engineering and technical solutions to national security organizations.

The money will support DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, whose main goal is to demonstrate a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system in Earth orbit. 

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