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"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

-- Abraham Lincoln

News and Opinion

Court rules warrantless collection of cellphone location data constitutional

A federal appellate panel on Wednesday rejected a constitutional challenge to warrantless collection of cellphone location records, increasing the potential for the US supreme court to consider the legality of the practice.

In a 22-page opinion issued by the sixth circuit court of appeals, the judges said the FBI’s collection of records from wireless carriers for phone numbers connected to two Detroit men was constitutional.

Timothy Carpenter and Timothy Sanders, who were convicted for their role in a string of cellphone store robberies, argued the practice was a constitutional violation under the fourth amendment. A brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union noted that the location tracking in this case reveals the “extraordinary private details” police can obtain via location tracking, including where the defendants may worship and who they may be sleeping with.

The appellate panel disagreed in the ruling, saying the pair had “no expectation of privacy” for location information. The judges added the records are unprotected, as they “say nothing about the content of any calls”. ...

The ACLU found investigators obtained records that included nearly 13,000 separate location points for Carpenter, and more than 23,000 for Sanders, which they calculated was an average of one every six minutes.

The court reasoned that the defendants do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in “third-party” data such as that from a cellphone carrier. The judges also distinguished between the content of communications such as emails and location information. ...

The ruling is consistent with separate regional appeals courts, but conflicts with an August ruling by the fourth circuit court of appeals, which found that: “Even as technology evolves, protections against government intrusion should remain consistent with those privacy expectations society deems reasonable.”

Canadian Police Obtained BlackBerry’s Global Decryption Key

A high-level surveillance probe of Montreal's criminal underworld shows that Canada's federal policing agency has had a global encryption key for BlackBerry devices since 2010.

The revelations are contained in a stack of court documents that were made public after members of a Montreal crime syndicate pleaded guilty to their role in a 2011 gangland murder. The documents shed light on the extent to which the smartphone manufacturer, as well as telecommunications giant Rogers, cooperated with investigators. ...

Government lawyers spent almost two years fighting in a Montreal courtroom to keep this information out of the public record.

And while neither the RCMP nor BlackBerry confirmed that the cellphone manufacturer handed over the global encryption key, and both fought against a judge's order to release more information about their working relationship, the Crown prosecutors admitted that the federal police service had access to the key. ...

In light of a very public spat between the American FBI and iPhone manufacturer Apple about encryption, and whether or not consumer technology companies should comply with government orders to create new software to help release the keys to the proverbial castle, the Montreal case raises serious questions about the surveillance steps taken by police.

"We don't actually understand how the RCMP is using the laws that are developed for them," said Christopher Parsons, a security researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab. "An awful lot of Canadians would be surprised to learn that the RCMP would have this kind of capability."

Federal police admit seeking access to reporter's metadata without warrant

The Australian federal police have admitted they sought access to a Guardian reporter’s metadata without a warrant in an attempt to hunt down his sources.

It is the first time the AFP has confirmed seeking access to a journalist’s metadata in a particular case.

The admission came to light when the AFP told the privacy commissioner it had sought “subscriber checks” and email records relating to the Guardian Australia journalist Paul Farrell, and the correspondence was sent to Farrell by the office of the Australian information commissioner.

Earlier this year Guardian Australia reported that the AFP had accrued a file of at least 200 pages on Farrell in an attempt to uncover and prosecute his confidential sources. ...

The CEO of the journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Paul Murphy, said he was appalled by news that the AFP had sought access to Farrell’s metadata.

“It comes down to this: journalists writing legitimate news stories in the public interest now have police trawling through their private metadata all because a government agency is embarrassed about a leak,” Murphy said. “In the process, the rights of journalists are trampled on.

Secure Cars, but Not Phones? Government Doublespeak on Cybersecurity

Privacy advocates say government officials are talking out of two sides of their mouths when it comes to cybersecurity. The latest case in point: Assistant Attorney General John Carlin calling for super-secure, hack-proof cars at an automotive conference on Tuesday, even as FBI Director James Comey continues to pressure phone manufacturers and technology companies to roll back their security to allow for law enforcement access. ...

Driving a car in 2016 is not totally different from using a cellphone — and protecting either of them against hacking raises the same issues. These days, dozens of networked electronic control units manage things like braking and accelerating by communicating with each other, and more and more cars are connected to the internet, or accessible via Bluetooth. Securing the conversation between your brake pedal and your brakes is a lot like securing your banking app or your intimate phone conversation.

“It’s ironic to see the head of the FBI pressing companies to deploy less encryption at the same time the Justice Department’s top national security lawyer is highlighting just how important and hard it is to secure our devices and networks in an increasingly connected and hostile digital environment,” Kevin Bankston, director of the Open Technology Institute, wrote in an email to The Intercept.

A truly excellent essay worth clicking the link and reading in full:

What’s the Meaning of Failure?

Since 9/11, can there be any doubt that the public has become numb to the euphemisms that regularly accompany U.S. troops, drones, and CIA operatives into Washington’s imperial conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa?  Such euphemisms are meant to take the sting out of America’s wars back home.  Many of these words and phrases are already so well known and well worn that no one thinks twice about them anymore. ...

These days, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter often resorts to cancer imagery when describing the Islamic state. "Parent tumor" is an image he especially favors -- that is, terrorism as a cancer that America’s militarized surgeons need to attack and destroy before it metastasizes and has “children.”  (Think of the ISIS franchises in Libya, where the organization has recently doubled in size, Afghanistan, and Yemen.)  Hence the proliferation of “surgical strikes” by drones and similarly “surgical” Special Ops raids, both of which you could think of as America’s equivalent of white blood cells in its war on the cancer of terrorism. ...

The very notion of progress in America’s recent wars is one that a colleague, Michael Murry, recently critiqued.  A U.S. Navy Vietnam War Veteran, he wrote me that, for his favorite military euphemism, “I have to go with ‘progress’ as incessantly chanted by the American military brass in Iraq and Afghanistan…

“We go on hearing about 14 years of ‘progress’ which, to hear our generals tell it, would vanish in an instant should the United States withdraw its forces and let the locals and their neighbors sort things out. Since when do ‘fragile gains’ equate to ‘progress’? Who in their right mind would invest rivers of blood and trillions of dollars in ‘fragility’?  Now that I think of it, we also have the euphemistic expression of ‘drawdown’ substituting for ‘withdrawal’ which in turn substitutes for ‘retreat.’ The U.S. military and the civilian government it has browbeaten into hapless acquiescence simply cannot face the truth of their monumental failures and so must continually bastardize our language in a losing -- almost comical -- attempt to stay one linguistic step ahead of the truth.”

Progress, as Murry notes, basically means nothing when such “gains,” in the words of David Petraeus during the surge months in Iraq in 2007, are both “fragile” and “reversible.” Indeed, Petraeus repeated the same two words in 2011 to describe similar U.S. “progress” in Afghanistan, and today it couldn’t be clearer just how much “progress” was truly made there.  Isn’t it time for government officials to stop banging the drums of war talk in favor of “progress” when none exists? 

"America’s Afghan Refugee Crisis": 15 Years into War, U.S. Urged to Resettle More Displaced Afghans

Obama warns US effort in Syria and Iraq has caused Isis recruits to head to Libya

Efforts to stem the flow of Islamic State recruits into Syria and Iraq have been met by an increase in foreign extremists heading to Libya instead, Barack Obama has warned.

Just days after describing the failure to prevent extremists filling a power vacuum in Libya as the “worst mistake” of his presidency, Obama’s remarks underline growing White House anxiety about the foothold gained by Isis in the country.

“As we, and our foreign allies and partners, have made it harder for foreign terrorists to reach Syria and Iraq, we have seen an uptick in the number of Isis fighters heading to Libya,” Obama told reporters at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after a meeting with intelligence chiefs intended to review US strategy against the terror group. ...

“We are going to continue to use the full range of our tools to roll Isil back from Libya while insisting the new, nascent Libyan government works to secure their country,” insisted Obama on Wednesday, using an alternative name for Islamic State.

US Report Faults Key Allies for Stifling Freedom, Killing Dissidents

The 40th annual State Department report on human rights is raising more eyebrows than usual this year, as the preface by Secretary of State John Kerry warns of a “global governance crisis” wherein countries around the world are cracking down on basic freedoms and stifling dissent, often violently.

While the report goes after usual targets like China and Russia, it also singles out a number of high-profile US allies on this note, criticizing NATO member Turkey for prosecuting journalists as terrorists and killing Kurdish civilians, criticizing Israel for excessive and arbitrary violence against Palestinians, and noting that Egypt’s military junta continues to torture detainees to death in its prisons.

Kerry suggested the report would “strengthen US determination” to promote human rights abroad, though the largest US recipients of foreign aid are also some of the most glaring violators of human rights, and there is no suggestion that recognizing their violations in the report will mean anything in practical terms.

Senators Want Legislation To Limit US Bomb Sales to Saudi Arabia

US Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he is proposing a bill to limit US munition sales to Saudi Arabia in protest for its conduct of the war in Yemen.

Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he is troubled by civilian deaths in the Saudi-led bombing campaign and would like to see restrictions placed on US sales of air-to-ground bombs. Though he said support for the measure might be slim, he sees "a growing discomfort [in Congress] about the growing level of arms sales to the Mideast, and a lot more people willing to ask questions than there were just a few years ago." ...

"I'm increasingly worried the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen is not supporting US national security interests," Murphy said. "I've been hearing regularly, in Yemen, that this is being seen as a US campaign. It's clearly creating more, not less, space for extremist groups to operate, and I think the bar should be higher for the US to send replacement munitions."

The US in November cleared a sale of more than 10,000 advanced air-to-ground munitions for Saudi Arabia, a week after key allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council raised concerns over dwindling supplies of weapons. The value of the sale — which includes tens of thousands of laser-guided bombs — is $1.29 billion, with a supplier to be determined by competitive bid.

As John Kerry Visits Hiroshima, U.S. Quietly Launches $1 Trillion Effort to Upgrade Nuclear Arsenal

Hiroshima survivors look to Obama visit for disarmament, not apology

Progress on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, not an apology, is what Hiroshima would want from a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Japanese city hit by an American nuclear attack 71 years ago, survivors and other residents said. ...

Miki Tsukishita, 75, remembers watching something shiny falling from the sky over Hiroshima that morning.

He ran back into his house shouting: "The sun is falling down". That shielded him from direct exposure to the blast, heat and radiation. ...

Tsukishita wants Obama, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in part for his push for nuclear disarmament, to use his influence to persuade leaders of other nuclear-armed countries to visit Hiroshima too, so they understand the inhumanity of atomic weapons.

"What really matters is not repeating the tragedy. I want him to say to other nuclear states 'I've come to Hiroshima, so should you'," he said.

Hear Hillary Clinton Defend Her Role in Honduras Coup When Questioned by Juan González

"She’s Baldly Lying": Dana Frank Responds to Hillary Clinton’s Defense of Her Role in Honduras Coup

Russian Jets Execute 'Simulated Attack' Passes Near US Naval Destroyer

Two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near the USS Donald Cook, a guided missile destroyer, in the Baltic Sea on Tuesday, the US military said, with one official describing them as one of the most aggressive interactions between the two countries in recent memory.

The repeated flights by the Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes, which also flew near the ship a day earlier, were so close they created wake in the water, the official said. The planes, which made 11 passes, carried no visible weapons, the official added.

A Russian KA-27 Helix helicopter also made seven passes around the Donald Cook, taking pictures. The nearest Russian territory was about 70 nautical miles away in its enclave of Kaliningrad, which sits between Lithuania and Poland. ...

It comes as NATO plans its biggest build-up in Eastern Europe since the Cold War to counter what the alliance, and in particular the three Baltic states and Poland, consider to be a more aggressive Russia.

San Francisco police release details of homeless man's killing as outrage grows

San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr told a crowd of angry community members that the officers who shot and killed a homeless man last week told investigators they feared he “was going to kill one of them or harm them with the weapon” before opening fire.

San Francisco police department (SFPD) policy allows officers to use lethal force if they have “reasonable cause to believe” that they or other people are in “imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury”.

Suhr’s statement at a “town hall” meeting is the latest attempt by the embattled police chief to explain how Luis Gongora, a 45-year-old man who lived in a tent on the street where he was killed, ended up fatally wounded within 30 seconds of three police officers arriving at the encampment.

The new information on the shooting did not appease the crowd, which broke out into chants of “Fire chief Suhr”. The shooting has prompted outrage and heartbreak among friends and neighbors of Gongora – who describe him as harmless and non-violent – and among San Franciscans who see the shooting as just the latest assault on the homeless and poor by a city that is increasingly unaffordable to all but the wealthy.

More than 10,000 people have signed an online petition calling for the officers to be prosecuted for Gongora’s killing.

Arrests in Washington: Black Lives Matter activists detained at Democracy Spring protest

Fight for $15 protesters across US demand living wage in day of action

California and New York may have won battle but workers in more than 300 cities will march and demand a rise in minimum wage and the right to unionize

Billboards in Times Square shone bright on Thursday morning as hundreds of workers huddled in front of a nearby McDonald’s. The early hour of 6am was not enough to dim the joyous feel of this gathering, taking place just weeks after California and New York became the first states to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022.

The fight, however, is far from over, say workers whose goal is to secure a $15 minimum wage for all Americans. On Thursday, workers in more than 300 cities across the US were expected to protest to demand a rise in the minimum wage and the right to unionize, which they hope will lead to better working conditions. ...

Five months ago, the Fight for $15 movement held another day of action this time to get the attention of the presidential hopefuls. Their message? Come get our vote.

So far only one presidential candidate, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, has come out in support of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

His Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has previously said that people should not have to march in the streets for a living wage, but has yet to support $15 federal minimum wage. Instead, she has come out in support of raising it to $12 an hour by 2020, as proposed by Democrats in Congress.

Closing Panama Tax Haven Will Require Fighting the Most Powerful Lobby In the World

The Biggest Companies in America Are Being Handed $27 for Every $1 They Pay in Taxes

Oxfam America took a close look at the way large, profitable companies use offshore tax havens and other methods to slash their corporate tax rates in the US rather than pay taxes where the majority of their business takes place.

The report, "Broken at the Top," found that the 50 largest companies in the US have $1.4 trillion hidden in tax havens while at the same time receiving trillions of dollars in tax payer-funded loans and subsidies. The tax practices of these corporate behemoths cost Americans an estimated $111 billion per year and cost developing countries another $100 billion a year.

Apple, the world's second-largest company, was the company with the greatest amount stored abroad — $181 billion in three subsidiaries. Next in Oxfam's league table was General Electric, with $119 billion stored in 118 tax haven subsidiaries, followed byMicrosoft which had $108 billion kept overseas.

The US House of Representatives is currently considering a budget plan that would slash even more federal funding for food stamps by over $150 billion over the next decade, for example, taking food assistance benefits away from about three million of the country's poorest and most vulnerable citizens. Major cuts to public health funding have also left health departments ill equipped to deal with the growing threat posed by the Zika virus. ...

The Oxfam report found that between 2008 and 2014, the 50 largest US companies — which include Disney, Walmart, American Express, Alphabet (Google), AT&T, Bank of America, Pepsi, and so on — collectively received $27 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts for every $1 they coughed up in federal taxes. Between 2008 and 2014, they collectively received more than $11.2 trillion in tax-payer funded help.

A Contested Democratic Convention Is Now a Near Statistical Certainty

Hillary Clinton needs to win 65.3 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to avoid a contested Democratic convention at which she and Bernie Sanders separately plead their cases to the Party’s 714 unpledged “super-delegates.”

Democratic candidates in 2016 need 2,383 pledged delegates to win the Party’s nomination via pledged delegates alone. Barring Senator Sanders dropping out of the Democratic race prior to the New York primary, it is virtually impossible for Secretary Clinton to hit that mark.

Here are Clinton’s current percentages of the total vote in upcoming primary states, according to the most recent polling available in each state:

• California: 47
• Maryland: 55
• New York: 53
• Pennsylvania: 49

Recent polling isn’t available in any of the other upcoming primaries and caucuses. ...

The question, given the above data, is not what percentage Sanders or Clinton will win by in upcoming states, but rather how strong a case each candidate will be able to make to super-delegates, who don’t cast any votes until the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia — the media’s decision to pretend that they do, against the express direction of the Democratic National Committee, notwithstanding.

Money influences everybody. That includes Hillary Clinton.

Democrats have a decision to make: do they think money in politics is a corrupting force that influences the decisions made by elected officials, or not? After years railing against the Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates to outside spending in elections, some of them appear to have done a complete reversal.

The Clinton campaign has spent the last few weeks furiously pushing back at the criticism that she is influenced by the vast donations her campaign receives from backers in the oil and financial industries. Her supporters have been vigorously arguing there’s no evidence of a quid pro quo. ...

By taking this position that only quid pro quo equals corruption, Clinton supporters are essentially adopting the reasoning of the Roberts court that they claim to abhor – that unless there is direct evidence of overtly trading money for votes, corruption doesn’t exist. As Lawrence Lessig has written, Democrats have been slowly embracing this stance for years, but the Clinton campaign seems to cementing it as the party’s policy.

Hillary Clinton rakes in Verizon cash while Bernie Sanders supports company’s striking workers

Bernie Sanders has spoken passionately in support of striking Verizon workers on multiple occasions.

The Hillary Clinton campaign, meanwhile, has received tens of thousands of dollars from Verizon executives and lobbyists.

That’s not all. For a May 2013 speech, the corporation paid Clinton a whopping $225,000 honorarium, according to her tax records.

Verizon has also given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which investigative journalist Ken Silverstein has referred to as a “so-called charitable enterprise [that] has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich family friends.”

Moreover, the Clinton Foundation has partnered directly with Verizon, which is notorious for its vehement opposition to unions. The corporation is a partner in the Clinton Health Matters Initiative, and said it is “proud to partner with the Clinton Foundation.”

Journalist Zaid Jilani reported in AlterNet in October, when Sanders spoke in support of a Verizon strike, that the corporation’s executives and lobbyists had poured money into Clinton’s campaign or PACs. ...

While Clinton’s campaign is receiving Verizon cash, Sanders is delivering powerful impromptu speeches physically on Verizon workers’ picket lines.

Verizon CEO Attack on Bernie Sanders Receives Gushing Praise — From Fellow Execs

As 40,000 Verizon workers went on strike Wednesday to protest cuts to health care and pensions, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders rallied with some of them in New York City, blasting the company’s practices.

“This is just another major American corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans,” Sanders told the workers, who decided to strike after failing to reach a contract. “Today you are standing up not just for justice for Verizon workers, you’re standing up for millions of Americans who don’t have a union.”

Meanwhile, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam published a lengthy essay on LinkedIn titled “Feeling the Bern of Reality — the Facts About Verizon and the ‘Moral Economy,’” in which he called Sanders’s views “contemptible.”

The response to McAdam’s post was effusive — from other Verizon executives. [See link for samples of executive slime. If you go read McAdam's screed, ponder the graphic below in relation to his claims. - js]

Scarborough: Obama has ‘rigged’ FBI’s Clinton probe

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough says President Obama is unfairly influencing the FBI’s investigation of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

“[Obama] said he wasn’t going to talk to the attorney general about the pending investigation, but he just did,” Scarborough said on Monday's broadcast of “Morning Joe." "Talk about a rigged process.”

Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday that Clinton had exercised “carelessness” by using a private storage device while secretary of State.

“I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized national security,” the president added.

Bloomberg Politics Managing Editor Mark Halperin said Monday on "Morning Joe" that Obama’s remarks seem at odds with a fair investigation.

More stinky Clinton corruption, insider dealings and influence peddling. A full read of this article will boggle the mind with the incestuous relations of Clintonites in and out of government and some in both at the same time, drawing salaries from the private sector while allegedly performing government jobs.

How a Clinton insider used his ties to build a consulting giant

When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state she personally sought out a man named Declan Kelly to be her economic envoy to Northern Ireland, giving her 41-year-old former fundraiser a special status outside normal diplomatic channels.

“Yeah! Is he now official? Can I call him? Can I ask him to start?” she wrote in an Aug. 28, 2009 email to her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

By some measures, Kelly was a bargain for the government. The Ireland-born businessman refused a salary, hired five staffers on his own dime and pushed for U.S. companies to invest in the once-troubled region, a diplomatic priority for Clinton.

But while serving as Clinton’s special envoy, reaching out to global corporations for those investments, he was also working for two of them as a private consultant — earning about $2.4 million from Dow Chemical, a longtime client of his and one of the firms that participated in Clinton’s Ireland initiative.

It was also during this time period that Kelly and Doug Band, a close aide to former President Bill Clinton, were preparing to launch a global consulting business that would soon become a well-known and controversial success story. Their new venture, Teneo Holdings, would go on to employ numerous Hillary Clinton associates, including her closest confidante, Huma Abedin, and, for a time, Bill Clinton as “honorary chairman,” giving clients rare access to the couple and their network of world leaders.

The fact that Kelly and Band were laying the groundwork for their enterprise while Kelly was working for the State Department, reported here for the first time, represents a fresh illustration of the blurring of the lines between Hillary Clinton’s political network and her State Department that critics have long noted. And it shows how one enterprising fundraiser was able to insinuate himself into Clinton's inner circle and then built a 500-person, multinational consulting firm whose value, at least at first, was greatly enhanced by its founders’ closeness to the Clintons.

Jill Stein To Voters: Time To Leave “Abusive Relationship” With Democratic Party

Jill Stein is a physician and an environmental-health advocate. She earned over 469,000 votes in 2012 as the Green Party’s candidate for President of the United States. Stein is running for president again this year, and she’ll be in Madison April 15th and 16th for a meet-and-greet with supporters and for the Wisconsin Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention.

She spoke with WORT’s Darien Lamen about the connection between economic and environmental justice, about nuclear power, and about the need for progressive voters to break what she calls an “abusive relationship” with the Democratic party.

Bill Gates: Only Socialism Can Save the Climate, ‘The Private Sector is Inept’

In a recent interview with The Atlantic, billionaire tech magnate Bill Gates announced his game plan to spend $2 billion of his own wealth on green energy investments, and called on his fellow private sector billionaires to help make the U.S. fossil-free by 2050. But in doing so, Gates admitted that the private sector is too selfish and inefficient to do the work on its own, and that mitigating climate change would be impossible without the help of government research and development.

“There’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems,” Gates said. “Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch.”

Gates even tacked to the left and uttered words that few other billionaire investors would dare to say: government R&D is far more effective and efficient than anything the private sector could do.

“Since World War II, U.S.-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area,” Gates said. “The private sector is in general inept.”

Oil Industry's Suppression of Climate Science Began in 1940s, Documents Reveal

"What we found is they knew a great deal, and they knew it much earlier and with greater certainty than anyone has recognized or that the industry has admitted."

A trove of newly uncovered documents shows that fossil fuel companies were explicitly warned of the risks of climate change decades earlier than previously suspected.

And while it's no secret—anymore—that the companies knew about those dangers long ago, the documents, published Wednesday by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), reveal even more about the broader industry effort to suppress climate science and foment public doubt about global warming.

Industry executives met in Los Angeles in 1946 to discuss growing public concern about air pollution. That meeting led to the formation of a panel—suitably named the Smoke and Fumes Committee—to conduct research into air pollution issues.

But the research was not meant to be a public service; rather, it was used by the committee to "promote public skepticism of environmental science and environmental regulations the industry considered hasty, costly, and potentially unnecessary," CIEL writes.

The group continues:

In the decades that followed, the Smoke and Fumes Committee funded massive levels of research into an array of air pollution issues, often conducted by institutes fostered and governed by the oil companies themselves. By the mid-1950s at the very latest, climate change was one of those issues.

The documents also show how Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) scientists actively engaged on climate science in the company’s name beginning in the 1950s, even as they actively funded and published research into alternate theories of global warming.

"We begin with three simple, related questions," said CIEL President Carroll Muffett. "What did they know? When did they know it? And what did they do about it?"

"What we found is they knew a great deal," Muffett said, "and they knew it much earlier and with greater certainty than anyone has recognized or that the industry has admitted."

CDC: 'There is No Longer Any Doubt that Zika Causes Microcephaly'

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday confirmed that the Zika virus causes fetal defects, including microcephaly, the condition that causes infants to be born with abnormally small brains and deformed heads.

The CDC published its findings in the New England Journal of Medicine after conducting what it called a "careful review of existing evidence." The conclusion, that there is a causal relationship between the virus and the defects, puts an end to months of speculation that the two were related.

"This study marks a turning point in the Zika outbreak," said Frieden.

He added to the New York Times, "There is no longer any doubt that Zika causes microcephaly." ...

The CDC said it hoped the announcement would raise awareness about the threat to those traveling to and living in affected regions in Latin America, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and southern U.S. states like Texas and Florida where the virus is expected to be seen this year.

Also of Interest

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

How Hillary Helped Ruin Haiti

The Mental Disease of Late-Stage Capitalism

2016: The Year the Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged

Death Squads Are Back in Honduras, Activists Tell Congress

Evidence Of Absence: Northern Spotted Owls Are Still Vanishing From The Northwest

Bernie begins raising cash for down-ballot progressives

Bernie Sanders Is Doing Something More Than Just Running for President

A Black Man Brought 3 Forms of ID to the Polls in Wisconsin. He Still Couldn’t Vote.

The Fed Sends a Frightening Letter to JPMorgan and Corporate Media Yawns

In Guatemala, US-Born Kids Struggle After Their Parents' Deportation

John Kerry and the Legacy of Hiroshima

A Little Night Music

O.V. Wright - I'd Rather Be Blind, Crippled, and Crazy

O.V. Wright - Eight men four women

O.V. Wright - Ace Of Spades

O.V. Wright w/The Keys - That's How Strong My Love Is

O.V. Wright - Everybody Knows

O.V. Wright - You're gonna make me cry

O.V. Wright - I've Been Searching