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This evening's music features Texas blues piano player Whistlin' Alex Moore. Enjoy!

“For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.”

-- Charles Darwin

News and Opinion

Military Brass Tells Congress It Has No Idea What Saudi Arabia Is Doing With U.S. Bombs in Yemen

In a surprising admission on Tuesday, the head of U.S. Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia — admitted that the Pentagon doesn’t know a whole lot about the Saudi airstrikes in Yemen that the United States is supporting through intelligence, munitions, and refueling.

U.S. CENTCOM Cmdr. Gen. Joseph Votel made the admission in response to questions from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“General Votel, does CENTCOM track the purpose of the missions it is refueling? In other words, where a U.S.-refueled aircraft is going, what targets it strikes, and the result of the mission?” Warren asked.

“Senator, we do not,” Votel replied.

Warren followed up by describing an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition that struck civilians in February. The attack, in the northern Yemen town of Saada, killed five civilians. Medical staff who rushed in to help survivors were hit in a follow-up attack, Warren noted. (This is known as a “double-tap” airstrike.)

“General Votel, when you receive reports like this from credible media organizations or outside observers, is CENTCOM able to tell if U.S. fuel or U.S. munitions were used in that strike?”

“No, senator, I don’t believe we are,” he replied.

Netherlands votes to ban weapons exports to Saudi Arabia

The Dutch parliament has voted to ban arms exports to Saudi Arabia in protest against the kingdom's humanitarian and rights violations.

It sees the Netherlands become the first EU country to put in practice a motion by the European Parliament in February urging a bloc-wide Saudi arms embargo.

The bill, voted through by Dutch MPs on Tuesday, quoted UN figures which suggest almost 6,000 people - half of them civilians - have been killed since Saudi-led troops entered the conflict in Yemen.

It also cited the mass execution of 47 people, largely political dissidents, ordered by the Saudi judiciary on 2 January this year.

According to Reuters, the Dutch bill asks the government to implement a strict weapons embargo that includes dual-use exports which could potentially be used to violate human rights.

Russia says U.S. plans to strike Damascus, pledges military response

Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia’s General Staff, said Moscow had information that rebels in the enclave of eastern Ghouta were planning to fake a chemical weapons attack against civilians and blame it on the Syrian army.

He said the United States intended to use the fake attack as a pretext to bomb the government quarter in nearby Damascus where he said Russian military advisers, Russian military police and Russian ceasefire monitors were based.

“In the event of a threat to the lives of our servicemen, Russia’s armed forces will take retaliatory measures against the missiles and launchers used,” Gerasimov said in a statement. ...

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned on Monday that Washington “remains prepared to act if we must,” if the U.N. Security Council failed to act on Syria, as the Syrian army’s onslaught in eastern Ghouta continued unabated.

Trump’s New CIA Nominee, Gina Haspel, Faces Possible Arrest Warrant in Germany over Torture

Rand Paul to oppose Gina Haspel as CIA director over her 'gleeful joy' at torture

The Republican senator Rand Paul said on Wednesday he would oppose Donald Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel for director of the CIA, accusing her of having shown “joyful glee” during the torture of terrorism suspects. Paul also announced that he would try to block the president’s nomination of the current CIA director, Mike Pompeo, to succeed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

The Kentucky senator’s stance could be especially awkward for Haspel, who is under scrutiny for reportedly overseeing a secret CIA prison in Thailand where detainees endured so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. “To really appoint the head cheerleader for waterboarding to be head of the CIA?” Paul told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I mean, how could you trust somebody who did that to be in charge of the CIA? To read of her glee during the waterboarding is just absolutely appalling.”

Paul highlighted a ProPublica article from last year about a book written by one of the interrogators at the “black site” prison, recalling the waterboarding of the al-Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah. He said: “The quote from one of the interrogators says that Gina Haspel said: ‘Good job! I like the way you’re drooling. It adds to the realism. I am almost buying it. You wouldn’t think a grown man would do that.’

“When you read that, sort of the joyful glee at someone who’s being tortured, I find it just amazing that anyone would consider having this woman for head of the CIA." Haspel’s confirmation would send a “terrible” message to the world, Paul added. “I don’t want the message to be that if members of our armed services are captured that, since torture’s OK with the Americans, it’s going to be fine to torture Americans when they’re captured, and I think that is the message that it sends.”

Paul claimed that Pompeo and Haspel both supported war in Iraq and currently want war in Iran, which he opposes. “I’m perplexed by the nomination of people who love the Iraq war so much that they would advocate for a war with Iran next. I think it goes against most of the things President Trump campaigned on.

“She Tortured Just for the Sake of Torture”: CIA Whistleblower on Trump’s New CIA Pick Gina Haspel

McCain: Trump’s CIA pick was involved in ‘one of the darkest chapters in American history’

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday condemned President Trump’s decision to nominate Gina Haspel to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), saying she was involved in “one of darkest chapters in American history.”

While he expressed confidence in current CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s ability to serve as secretary of State, an appointment Trump announced earlier Tuesday, McCain said in a statement that Haspel needs to explain her stance on torture.

“The torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history,” McCain said. “Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program during the confirmation process.”

Jeremy Scahill: Gina Haspel Should Be Answering for Her Torture Crimes, Not Heading the CIA

U.K. Expels Russian Diplomats Following Chemical Attack but Won’t Sanction Oligarchs

Prime Minister Theresa May disappointed opposition activists in Russia on Wednesday by ignoring their calls to sanction Russian businessmen and officials close to President Vladimir Putin in retaliation for the attempted murder of a former spy in the English city of Salisbury.

Instead, May told Parliament, Britain’s main response to the poisoning of the former double agent Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, would be the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats identified as “undeclared intelligence officers.” The prime minister also stopped short of announcing a boycott of this summer’s World Cup, saying instead that members of the British royal family would not attend the tournament, which kicks off in Moscow in June. ...

By declining to announce specific economic sanctions against prominent Russian oligarchs and Kremlin officials, who own vast property wealth in London and educate their children in elite British schools, May seemed to reject the advice of anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who told ABC News that only such measures “would really be painful for Putin and his corrupt circle.”

Following May’s announcement, Navalny responded on Twitter, noting that “23 Russian diplomats will be expelled from Britain. 23 Russian oligarchs and corrupt officials will keep enjoying life in London.” He added, sarcastically, that once Putin heard the British royals were boycotting the World Cup, he would be reduced to tears of anguish and immediately stop killing people.

Congresswoman Confirms Erik Prince Tied to Assassination Program Run Out of Dick Cheney’s Office

Former Equifax executive charged with insider trading after data breach

A former Equifax executive has been charged with insider trading after he sold nearly $1m of shares in the credit agency before the company announced a huge data breach. Federal prosecutors announced the charges against Jun Ying, the former chief information officer of Equifax’s US Information Solutions, on Wednesday.

“As alleged in our complaint, Ying used confidential information to conclude that his company had suffered a massive data breach, and he dumped his stock before the news went public,” said Richard Best, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Atlanta regional office. “Corporate insiders who learn inside information, including information about material cyber intrusions, cannot betray shareholders for their own financial benefit.”

Equifax announced on 7 September that it had discovered a months-long data breach that potentially exposed the personal information of 143 million people in the United States as well as some 700,000 in the UK.

We Must Cancel Everyone’s Student Debt, for the Economy’s Sake

Late last year, congressional Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut, which delivered the lion’s share of its benefits to the wealthy and corporations. The GOP did not justify this policy on the grounds that all corporate shareholders and trust-fund hipsters deserved to have their wealth increased. Rather, the party argued that, however one felt about making the rich richer, the tax cuts would ultimately benefit all Americans by increasing economic growth and lowering unemployment.

But what if we could have achieved those objectives, at roughly the same price, by forgoing tax cuts — and wiping out every penny of student debt in the United States, instead? A new research paper from the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College suggests this was, in fact, an option.

In America today, 44 million people collectively carry $1.4 trillion in student debt. That giant pile of financial obligations isn’t just a burden on individual borrowers, but on the nation’s entire economy. The astronomical rise in the cost of college tuition — combined with the stagnation of entry-level wages for college graduates — has depressed the purchasing power of a broad, and growing, part of the labor force. Many of these workers are struggling to keep their heads above water; 11 percent of aggregate student loan debt is now more than 90 days past due, or delinquent. Others are unable to invest in a home, vehicle, or start a family (and engage in all the myriad acts of consumption that go with that).

Thus, if the government were to forgive all the student debt it owns (which makes up more than 90 percent of all outstanding student debt), and bought out all private holders of such debt, a surge in consumer demand — and thus, employment and economic growth — would ensue.

'Enough': US students come together in spectacular walkout to end gun violence

Thousands of students poured out of classrooms in the US on Wednesday in an unprecedented expression of mourning and a demand for action to stem the country’s epidemic of gun violence.

In a stunning visual riposte to the public inertia that has followed mass shootings in the US, crowds of students at an estimated 3,000 schools across the country marched on running tracks, through parking lots and around building perimeters, carrying signs that read “Enough” and chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, gun violence has got to go”. ...

The protesters called for new gun safety legislation, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and the introduction of universal background checks. They also opposed the additional fortification of schools with fences and armed guards, policies endorsed by the NRA, America’s powerful gun lobby group.

The NRA’s “national school shield” proposal to prevent school shootings calls for the “hardening” of school sites with not only armed guards and armed teachers but also the elimination of trees, parking lots and some windows, and the construction of fences.

Teachers and cops keep accidentally firing guns in schools

Two blunders involving guns in schools on Tuesday — one in California, the other in Virginia — are vindicating those who say putting more guns in schools won’t make them more safe.

In Seaside, California, not far from Monterey, a math and “administration of justice” teacher who also serves as a reserve police officer accidentally fired a gun inside a classroom while teaching a course on public safety, injuring three students (non seriously). Dennis Alexander discharged his weapon while it was pointed at the ceiling. Fragments of bullet and pieces of ceiling went flying across the classroom. One 17-year-old boy got fragments of the bullet lodged in his neck. Alexander has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Meanwhile, in Alexandria, Virginia, on Tuesday morning, a school resource officer accidentally discharged his firearm while sitting down in his office. The interim superintendent of the school district said the incident further affirmed her opposition to the idea of arming teachers. “We had this happen with someone who’s a highly trained officer,” Lois Berlin told NBC Washington. “I think that speaks for itself.”

West Virginia, Not Women’s Day, Proved the Power of a Women’s Strike

Last Thursday afternoon, millions of women and their allies across the world took to the streets, withdrawing all forms of labor, both workplace and domestic, in response to a call for a women’s strike to mark International Women’s Day. In New York, a few hundred people, predominantly women, gathered between the marble arch and the fountain in New York’s Washington Square Park. While more than 5 million women in Spain took part in the strike, the Women’s Day rally in Manhattan could barely be seen or heard from the other side of the park. ...

We don’t need to look to Spain to see the potency of a women-led wildcat strike — we can look to the teachers in West Virginia. For about two weeks, 30,000 West Virginia teachers and school staff went on strike. Last Tuesday saw them earn a victorious end to their efforts, which shuttered schools in all the state’s 55 counties. The strike, one of the largest in the country in years, began with teachers demanding long overdue pay rises and protections against charter school expansion, and was also in furious reaction to austerity policies, particularly soaring public employee health care costs. ...

[T]he strike, which rank-and-file workers continued for days after union leaders called for a return to work, offers a case study in the power of withholding typically feminized labor. The teacher strike was not a women’s strike in the strict sense — of course, not all teachers are women. But women constitute more than 75 percent of teachers nationwide, including in West Virginia. ... As one striking teacher, Karla Hillard, told the New York Times, “In West Virginia we deal with high levels of poverty and the opioid epidemic. … But then there are the smaller things, like kids who come in and they don’t have support at home and they just need someone to care about them and love them.” A strike organized around this sort of labor and its recognition is political action around women’s work.

Several elements of the West Virginia strike demonstrated how workers can take their destiny into their own hands and win victories against the odds. The teacher strike was unlawful, which is not to say the teachers could be charged with a crime, but rather that in West Virginia, as in many states, public employees have no right to strike. With labor rights under attack, no mass women’s strike would be protected, yet the teachers struck nonetheless. The rank-and-file also did not rely on union leadership to set the strike’s terms. ... [T]he West Virginia teacher strike didn’t come together in union halls, but on Facebook forums and locally organized rank-and-file meetings, connecting together as a radical coalition. The strike has shone a light on a way forward, even as the death knells for traditional unionism may be ringing.

Teachers’ struggle spreads to Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona

The nine-day strike by West Virginia teachers and school employees, which was initiated by rank-and-file educators, became a powerful pole of attraction precisely because it broke free, at least temporarily, from the stranglehold of the unions when teachers rejected the order by the West Virginia Education Association (WVEA) and the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia (AFT-WV) to return to work on March 1 based on a “good faith” deal with the state’s billionaire governor, Jim Justice. The walkout was shut down on March 7 when the unions backed a deal with Justice, which ignored the teachers’ main demand to end soaring health care costs. To add insult to injury, the meager 5 percent raise will not be paid for by increasing taxes on the state’s coal, natural gas and chemical corporations, but by slashing funding from other essential services.

Despite this betrayal, the rebellion in West Virginia has inspired teachers, school service workers and public employees everywhere. On Saturday, 32,000 state employees in Oklahoma voted to join an April 2 teachers’ strike, which rank-and-file educators have called to demand a $10,000 raise. According to data compiled by educators, 85 percent of teachers and 75 percent of parents support a walkout by educators, who like their counterparts in West Virginia rank near the bottom in the US in teacher salaries.

The Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) has sought to prevent any walkout. Instead, the union has told educators to place their faith in Democratic state legislators, who no less than the Republicans, defend the natural gas and other energy interests that run the state. ... The proposal to “unite behind” the OEA would be fatal for the teachers’ struggle, as the experience in West Virginia showed. The chief role of the unions is not to broaden the fight but to block strike action, subordinate the movement to the Democratic Party, and kill it. Sensing the danger posed by the proposal to “unite behind the OEA,” a rank-and-file teacher on the group’s Facebook page commented, “OEA has never stood up for us. They have taken our money for years and no changes. It’s time for teachers to stand up for themselves!”

In Arizona, the teacher unions are similarly seeking to derail a rank-and-file movement of educators. Teachers who have been protesting at the capitol building in Phoenix to oppose stagnating wages, increased class sizes and the lack of state funding, have called for a “Day of Action for Education” for March 28. The president of the Arizona Education Association (AEA), Joe Thomas, has been regularly consulting with Dale Lee, the president of the West Virginia Education Association (WVEA), who played the leading role in betraying the nine-day strike. According to NBC News, “With Lee’s encouragement, Thomas and his members adopted “small symbolic steps”: having teachers wear red, planning walk-ins and walkouts—all while they mull whether to strike.”

Stephen Hawking, science's brightest star, dies aged 76

Tributes poured in on Wednesday to Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions. He died at the age of 76 in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

In a statement that confirmed his death at home in Cambridge, Hawking’s children said: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world. ...

“Stephen was far from being the archetypal unworldy or nerdish scientist. His personality remained amazingly unwarped by his frustrations,” said Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, who praised Hawking’s half century of work as an “inspiring crescendo of achievement.” He added: “Few, if any, of Einstein’s successors have done more to deepen our insights into gravity, space and time.”

"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet" - RIP Stephen Hawking you fucking legend.

— Foo Fighters (@foofighters) March 14, 2018

Dan Lipinski Raked in Rail Industry Campaign Dollars While Delaying Safety Standards

Chicago-area Rep. Dan Lipinski has a significant cash advantage over his rival in an upcoming Democratic primary, activist Marie Newman. The war chest is thanks, in significant part, to Lipinski’s friendly relationship with the railroad industry. Nearly one out of every six dollars Lipinski raised to accumulate a $1.2 million campaign war chest over the last decade came from rail company PACs, a review of Federal Election Commission reports reveals.

But that relationship has put him at the center of one of the most heated public safety controversies of our time: the railroad industry’s resistance to installing the automatic braking technology known as Positive Train Control. Lipinski helped lead a push in 2015 to delay the requirement that railways install the technology, which experts say will save lives when finally implemented.

Lipinski, one of the most conservative Democrats facing a serious progressive primary challenge this year, won his seat when his father, longtime Rep. William Lipinski, announced his retirement after the 2004 primary — allowing his son to ease his way onto the ballot and effectively face no competition. The senior Lipinski, long backed by the Illinois Democratic machine, went on to become a rail industry lobbyist.

The PTC technology refers to a system of track sensors, satellites, and radio signals used to continuously calculate safe train speeds. The system can automatically slow down or brake a train to avoid a crash or derailment. Experts say the technology could have prevented a number of fatal rail incidents, including an incident last December in which an Amtrak train derailed near Tacoma, Washington, leaving three dead and 62 injured. After each fatal accident, pressure to install the technology grows, lobbyists swarm Capitol Hill, and, as public attention fades, Congress allows the railroad industry to delay installing PTC. Then more people die, and the cycle repeats itself.

Bernie Warns Dems: Stop Screwing Progressives In Primaries

Facebook Quietly Hid Webpages Bragging of Ability to Influence Elections

When Mark Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook had influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the founder and CEO dismissed the notion that the site even had such power as “crazy.” It was a disingenuous remark. Facebook’s website had an entire section devoted to touting the “success stories” of political campaigns that used the social network to influence electoral outcomes. That page, however, is now gone, even as the 2018 congressional primaries get underway. ...

Facebook’s “success stories” page is a monument to the company’s dominance of online advertising, providing examples from almost every imaginable industry of how use of the social network gave certain players an advantage. ... The case studies that Facebook used to list from political campaigns, however, included more interesting claims. Facebook’s work with Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott “used link ads and video ads to boost Hispanic voter turnout in their candidate’s successful bid for a second term, resulting in a 22% increase in Hispanic support and the majority of the Cuban vote.” Facebook’s work with the Scottish National Party, a political party in the U.K., was described as “triggering a landslide.”

The “success stories” drop-down menu that once included an entire section for “Government and Politics” is now gone. Pages for the individual case studies, like the Scott campaign and SNP, are still accessible through their URLs, but otherwise seem to have been delisted.

Pennsylvania special election: Democrats declare victory in setback for Trump

Democrat Conor Lamb has claimed victory in a very tight special election race for Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, where his surprisingly strong showing in a Republican stronghold dealt a blow to Donald Trump. On Wednesday morning, with all precincts reporting, unofficial results had Lamb leading Republican Rick Saccone by 627 votes.

But provisional and military ballots were left uncounted, and Saccone was refusing to concede.

Saccone, who ran as an extension of Trump in a district the US president won by 20 points in 2016, had said he would be “Trump’s wingman” in Washington and touted himself as “Trump before Trump”. He appeared with Trump in a rally only days before the election and held campaign events with two of the president’s children as well as a number of administration officials.

The photo finish in a deep red district made clear how much Trump’s standing has fallen since 2016 and gives Democrats increased optimism for November’s midterm elections. In a race this close, either candidate’s supporters can ask for a recount. However, there are stiff requirements, including requiring three voters in the same precinct who can attest that error or fraud was committed.

Intel Committee Rejects Basic Underpinning of Russiagate

Let’s try to make this simple: The basic rationale behind charges that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to help candidate Donald Trump rests, of course, on the assumption that Moscow preferred Trump to Hillary Clinton. But that is wrong to assume, says the House Intelligence Committee, which has announced that it does not concur with “Putin’s supposed preference for candidate Trump.” So, the House Intelligence Committee Republican majority, which has been pouring over the same evidence used by the “handpicked analysts” from just the CIA, FBI, and NSA to prepare the rump Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017, finds the major premise of the ICA unpersuasive. The committee’s “Initial Findings” released on Monday specifically reject the assumption that Putin favored Trump.

This puts the committee directly at odds with handpicked analysts from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who assessed that Putin favored Trump – using this as their major premise and then straining to prove it by cobbling together unconvincing facts and theories. Those of us with experience in intelligence analysis strongly criticized the evidence-impoverished ICA as soon as it was released, but it went on to achieve Gospel-like respect, with penance assigned to anyone who might claim it was not divinely inspired.

Until now.

Rep. K. Michael Conway (R-Texas), who led the House Committee investigation, has told the media that the committee is preparing a separate, in-depth analysis of the ICA itself. Good. The committee should also take names — not only of the handpicked analysts, but the hand-pickers. There is ample precedent for this. For example, those who shepherded the fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 15 years ago were named in the NIE. Without names, it is hard to know whom to hold accountable.

Seth Rich parents sue Fox News and say network used death as 'political football'

The parents of a Democratic National Committee employee who was killed in 2016 have filed a federal lawsuit alleging Fox News exploited his death as a “political football”.

Joel and Mary Rich claim Fox News, a reporter and a guest commentator used “lies, misrepresentations and half-truths” in an article in May 2017 that claimed their son Set Rich had leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign. ...

The lawsuit claims that Fox News reporter Malia Zimmerman and frequent network guest Ed Butowsky intentionally fabricated the story connecting Rich to WikiLeaks. The story was heavily promoted by Fox News host Sean Hannity and other conservative pundits such as Alex Jones of Infowars.

Joel and Mary Rich said in a statement: “No parent should ever have to live through what we have been forced to endure. The pain and anguish that comes from seeing your murdered son’s life and legacy treated as a mere political football is beyond comprehension.”

Squirrel!

The FBI tried to meet with "sex huntress" who claims to have dirt on Trump and Russia

FBI agents tried to meet with an escort detained in Thailand who claims to have information about Russian involvement in President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, but they were refused access by Thai officials, CNN reported Tuesday.

The FBI’s reported attempt last week provides the first indication that U.S. investigators are looking seriously at claims made by the 21-year-old Belarusian with a flamboyant NSFW social media presence named Anastasia Vashukevich, who goes by the name Nastya Rybka. ...

The self-described “sex huntress” claims to have been an eyewitness at meetings between well-connected Russians and unnamed Americans. From her cell in Bangkok, she’s told The New York Times she has over 16 hours of relevant audio recordings, and offered to turn them over to American investigators in exchange for political asylum.

FBI agents contacted Thai immigration officials last week about trying to meet Vashukevich and another man detained with her, a self-proclaimed “sex guru” named Alex Kirillov who goes by the name Alex Lesley, CNN said. But the request was denied because Thai officials would only allow legal representatives and family members are allowed to meet with the pair, according to CNN.

Anti-Pipeline Indigenous 'Mass Mobilization' Has Begun IN British Columbia

Schwarzenegger planning to sue oil companies for 'knowingly killing people all over the world’

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is planning to sue oil companies, alleging they are "knowingly killing people all over the world." Schwarzenegger said during an interview with Politico's "Off Message" podcast that he is still working on the timing for his push, but he is now speaking with private law firms.

"This is no different from the smoking issue. The tobacco industry knew for years and years and years and decades, that smoking would kill people, would harm people and create cancer, and were hiding that fact from the people and denied it. Then eventually they were taken to court and had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of that," Schwarzenegger, a global environmental activist, said.

"The oil companies knew from 1959 on, they did their own study that there would be global warming happening because of fossil fuels, and on top of it that it would be risky for people's lives, that it would kill." Schwarzenegger accused oil companies of being irresponsible and vowed to go after them.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: The Lyin’, the Rich, and the Warmongers

Peace as Armageddon - The liberal freak-out over Kim Jong-un

The truth about torture: Trump’s CIA pick can't lead without facing her past

Despite Torture-Loving Pasts, Schumer Not Pushing Democrats to Oppose Pompeo or Haspel

Trump Promotes Longtime Russia Hawk Just As Russiagate Loses Momentum

Politicians Campaign on Free Speech While Voting to Penalize Boycotts of Israel

Alan Dershowitz demands censorship of Al Jazeera Israel lobby film

White House summit on Gaza aims to 'end Palestinian cause'

A Little Night Music

Alex Moore - Going Back to Froggy Bottom

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Whistling Alex Moore's Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Lillie Mae Boogie

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Blue Bloomer Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - It Wouldn't Be So Hard

Whistlin' Alex Moore - I Want My Mary

Whistlin' Alex Moore - West Texas Woman

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Ice Pick Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Miss No Good Weed

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Black Eyed Peas And Hog Jowls (The Katy Blues)