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This evening's music features Texas bluesman Albert Collins. Enjoy!

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.”

-- Simone Weil

News and Opinion

Intel Analysts: We Were Forced Out for Telling the Truth About Obama’s ISIS War

The growing scandal over cooked ISIS intelligence just got much worse. Now, analysts are saying they’re being forced out for not toeing the Obama administration’s line on the war.

Two senior intelligence analysts at U.S. Central Command say the military has forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, three sources with knowledge of their claim told The Daily Beast. It’s the first known instance of possible reprisals against CENTCOM personnel after analysts accused their bosses of manipulating intelligence reports about the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in order to paint a rosier picture of progress in the war.

One of the analysts alleging reprisals is the top analyst in charge of Syria issues at CENTCOM. He and a colleague doubted rebels’ capabilities and their commitment to U.S. objectives in the region. The analysts have been effectively sidelined from their positions and will no longer be working at CENTCOM, according to two individuals familiar with the dispute, and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The analysts’ skeptical views put them at odds with military brass, who last year had predicted that a so-called moderate opposition would make up a 15,000-man ground force to take on ISIS in its self-declared caliphate. An initial $500 million program to train and arm those fighters failed spectacularly. And until the very end, Pentagon leaders claimed the operation was more or less on track. Lawmakers called the plan a “joke” when Gen. Lloyd Austin, the CENTCOM commander, finally testified last September that there were just “four or five” American-trained fighters in Syria.

Earlier allegations from CENTCOM, the military command responsible for overseeing the Middle East, had focused on leaders there fudging intelligence reports about U.S. efforts to attack ISIS and undermine its financing operations. That analysts are now raising red flags around reporting on Syrian rebel groups suggests that, at least from the analysts’ perspective, there is a broader systemic problem than was previously known.

Obama, NATO chief discuss Islamic State, Libya

U.S. President Barack Obama and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that NATO could help Libya counter Islamic State militants as well as train and assist troops in Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere to fight the insurgent group.

"We are continuing to cooperate on an ongoing basis about operations potentially in areas like Libya where you have the beginnings of a government," Obama told reporters after meeting Stoltenberg in the Oval Office.

Western governments have been concerned that Islamic State is expanding in Libya as the U.S.-led coalition squeezes the militants' territory in Syria and Iraq.

Stoltenberg said the 28-country North Atlantic Treaty Organization is looking at how it could help stabilize and support countries in the region where Islamic State is operating, including Libya.

'It Was Torture': An Abu Ghraib Interrogator Acknowledges 'Horrible Mistakes'

Forget "enhanced interrogation techniques" — Eric Fair says what he did as an interrogator in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was torture.

"The idea that there's interrogation, and then enhanced interrogation, and then torture — there is no middle ground," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Torture is an enhanced interrogation."

The techniques Fair used were considered legal by the U.S. government, but what he did still weighs on his conscience. Though he says he didn't practice any of the worst abuses, he used stress positions and sleep deprivation, and he now deeply regrets it. He describes the emotional and mental toll of his actions in his new memoir, Consequence.

"We hurt people, and not just physically," he says. "We destroyed them emotionally, and ... I think at the very least it's a just punishment for us that we suffer some of those consequences, too."

Fair worked as an interrogator in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, employed by a private company under contract to the military. He had previously served in the military and worked as a police officer in his hometown of Bethlehem, Pa.

After working as an interrogator, he returned to Iraq as an intelligence analyst for the NSA. He says what he did during his time in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah was abhorrent.

Days of Revolt: Why the Brutalized Become Brutal

Protesters shut down CIA chief's university talk

CIA Director John Brennan was forced offstage during a Friday evening discussion at the University of Pennsylvania after a series of sustained interruptions from protesters.

At least three groups of protesters successively stood up to chant condemnations at the CIA for long stretches during Brennan’s appearance at the Penn Museum, according to reports and videos of the incident.

After the third interruption, moderator and Penn Professor Marjorie Margolies decided to end the event.

Members of the crowd, who repeatedly booed protesters, could be heard criticizing the protesters and calling for them to leave.

Syrian Rebels Sharply Divided Over al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front

The Nusra Front has been used as a front-line fighting forces in the Syrian rebellion for years, and has close alliances with several “moderate” rebel factions. Though it’s unthinkable in practice to allow al-Qaeda into the peace process, let alone to be part of the post-war government, many rebel groups feel clearly beholden to them. ...

With the Nusra question splitting the rebels heavily, and getting seriously in the way of the peace talks, as many don’t want to negotiate a settlement that will ultimately cut their al-Qaeda allies out of the picture, and even if they do end up making a deal, expelling al-Qaeda from its territory is going to be no small task.

Turkey’s Erdogan: No Peace Talks Possible With Kurdish ‘Terrorists’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today ruled out any return to ceasefire with the Kurdish separatist PKK movement, saying there was “no room” to hold any sort of peace talks with the group, insisting the “terrorists” have to either surrender or be destroyed entirely, adding “there is no third way left in Turkey.” ...

Thousands of Kurds have been killed, and despite Erdogan’s protestation that they’re all “terrorists” many appear to be civilians, fueling growing condemnation from human rights groups. This too has fueled Erdogan’s rage, which has led to crackdowns against NGOs, the closure of private media, and threats to turn the military against opposition MPs who oppose the war.

Greece may have deported asylum seekers by mistake, says UN

Some of the first people to be deported from Europe under the terms of the EU-Turkey migration deal may have been deported by mistake, the UN refugee agency has said.

Greek police “forgot” to process the asylum claims of 13 of the 202 asylum seekers sent back to Turkey on Monday, the first day the deal was put into practice, according to Vincent Cochetel, director of UNHCR’s Europe bureau.

On Tuesday, EU officials repeatedly avoided saying whether they will investigate the allegation, which threatens the legitimacy of the deportation deal.

If proved, the claims would undermine the EU’s argument that the deal, which could lead to the expulsion of almost all asylum seekers who arrived in Greece after 20 March, is in line with international law. The EU has previously promised that people “who apply for asylum in Greece will have their applications treated on a case by case basis”, and that “there will be no blanket and no automatic returns of asylum seekers”.

North Korea releases 'ultimatum' video showing attack destroying Seoul

An official North Korean website has released a new propaganda video portraying a multiple rocket attack on South Korea’s presidential Blue House and other government buildings in Seoul.

It was uploaded on Monday to the DPRK Today website, which had released another video 10 days earlier depicting a nuclear attack on Washington.

The new 88-second video – entitled “If the ultimatum goes unanswered” – shows rockets fired from mobile launchers in the North destroying the buildings in a ball of fire.

It ends with the warning: “Everything will turn into ashes”.

Panama Papers Scandal Brings Down Iceland’s Prime Minister

The prime minister of Iceland submitted his resignation on Tuesday, according to his deputy, succumbing to political pressure two days after an enormous leak of documents from a secretive Panamanian law firm about offshore shell companies and tax shelters. ...

Mr. Gunnlaugsson’s resignation was announced on television by Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, a government minister and the deputy chairman of his Progressive Party, and was greeted with celebration by Icelanders who have been protesting against him.

The move still requires the formal approval of both Mr. Gunnlaugsson’s junior coalition partner, the right-wing Independence Party, and Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grímsson. It was not immediately clear how the country’s other parliamentary parties would react. Early elections in Iceland, a tiny island nation of 323,000 still recovering from the global financial crisis eight years ago, could still be a possibility.

Panama Papers Leak Sparks Protests in Iceland Over Prime Minister’s Secret Finances

Thousands of protestors rallied outside Iceland’s parliament, the Althing, on Monday, to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, one day after his secret use of offshore accounts was revealed in the leaked Panama Papers.

Gunnlaugsson was the first world leader to be confronted directly about secret financial dealings detailed in the massive leak, abruptly walking out of a television interview with Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT on Sunday when asked to explain his own interest in Wintris, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that had bonds in three Icelandic banks that collapsed in 2008. ...

Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer of Süddeutsche Zeitung, who first obtained the leaked documents from an unnamed whistleblower at the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealed on Sunday that Gunnlaugsson had failed to report his 50 percent stake in the shell company Wintris when he was elected to parliament in April 2009, an apparent breach of transparency regulations.

Panama Papers: World Leaders from Iceland to Argentina Exposed in Massive Tax Evasion Scheme

Panama Papers Leak Taints David Cameron's Effort to Curb Massive UK Tax Avoidance

The failure of UK Prime Minister David Cameron to fulfill his pledge to curtail widescale tax avoidance has been thrust into the spotlight by the trove of leaked legal documents known as the Panama Papers, which includes revelations concerning his father's offshore financial dealings.

The documents show how Ian Cameron employed dozens of people in the Bahamas to sign off on matters relating to his company Blairmore Holdings Inc., which managed tens of millions of pounds of assets. The company is based in the Bahamas but was incorporated in Panama, where it has been a longstanding client of the law firm at the center of the controversy, Mossack Fonseca. ...

Ian Cameron died in 2010, leaving 2.75 million pounds ($3.9 million) in UK-based assets and an unknown amount of overseas assets to his four children. Under the terms of his father's will, David Cameron inherited 300,000 pounds ($430,000), an amount just shy of the upper limit for incurring inheritance tax. A spokesperson for the prime minister told the Guardian that the question of whether Blairmore Holdings still held family assets is a "private matter." ...

Ian Cameron's financial activity and David Cameron's refusal to acknowledge whether family assets are still held by the company are particularly damaging in the context of the prime minister's insistence that he has acted effectively to combat tax evasion and avoidance, which costs the UK around 32 billion pounds ($45.5 billion) per year. The UK government has stated that it has closed the gap by 7 billion pounds ($10 billion) between 2010 and 2015.

Panama Papers: "The US need to get a handle on what's going on in Nevada and Delaware"

‘Corruption’ as a Propaganda Weapon

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.

We are now seeing what looks like a new preparatory phase for the next round of “regime changes” with corruption allegations aimed at former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new anti-Putin allegations – ballyhooed by the UK Guardian and other outlets – are particularly noteworthy because the so-called “Panama Papers” that supposedly implicate him in offshore financial dealings never mention his name.

Or as the Guardian writes: “Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage. The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”

Note, if you will, the lack of specificity and the reliance on speculation: “a pattern”; “seemingly”; “suggest”; “appear.” Indeed, if Putin were not already a demonized figure in the Western media, such phrasing would never pass an editor’s computer screen. Indeed, the only point made in declarative phrasing is that “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records.” ...

But whatever the truth about Putin’s “corruption” or Lula’s, the journalistic point is that the notion of objectivity has long since been cast aside in favor of what’s useful as propaganda for Western interests.

Brazil's Legal Order as the Source of Political Disorder

Prisoners in Multiple States Call for Strikes to Protest Forced Labor

Inmates at up to five Texas prisons pledged to refuse to leave their cells today. The strike’s organizers remain anonymous but have circulated fliers listing a series of grievances and demands, and a letter articulating the reasons for the strike.  ... “Beginning on April 4, 2016, all inmates around Texas will stop all labor in order to get the attention from politicians and Texas’s community alike.” ...

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution bans “involuntary servitude” in addition to slavery, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” thus establishing the legal basis for what is today a $2 billion a year industry, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research institute.

Most able-bodied prisoners at federal facilities are required to work, and at least 37 states permit contracting prisoners out to private companies, though those contracts account for only a small percentage of prison labor. “Ironically, those are the only prison labor programs where prisoners make more than a few cents an hour,” Judith Greene, a criminal justice policy analyst, told The Intercept. ...

“If you’ve ever seen pictures of prisoners in Texas working in the fields, it looks like what it is,” Greene said. “It’s a plantation: The prisoners are all dressed in white, they got their backs bent over whatever crop they’re tending, the guards are on horseback with rifles.” In the facilities Greene visited, prisoners worked all day in the heat only to return to cells with no air conditioning. “The conditions are atrocious, and it’s about time the Texas prison administration had to take note.” ...

On April 1, a group of prisoners from Ohio, Alabama, Virginia, and Mississippi called for a “nationally coordinated prisoner work stoppage against prison slavery” to take place on September 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riot. “We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves,” that announcement reads. “They cannot run these facilities without us.”

Chicago may pay $4.9m to family of man who died in police custody

Chicago would pay $4.9m under a proposed settlement of a lawsuit brought by the family of a man who died in police custody after a videotaped incident in which officers subdued him with a stun gun and dragged him from his jail cell, a city official said on Monday.

Alderman Roderick Sawyer said Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office is recommending that city council members approve the settlement for Philip Coleman’s family and has been briefing them on the deal.

Coleman, who was black, was taken into custody in 2012 after allegedly attacking his mother. He had a fatal reaction to an anti-psychotic drug, but his family’s federal lawsuit contends Coleman would still be alive if he had been taken to a hospital instead of jail.

Some odd and interesting new developments in the peculiar California case of a man whose beating by the police was captured on video and the officers involved attempted to bribe a homeless witnesses by offering the beating victim's possessions to them.

Stanislav Petrov's mother says California police 'destroyed him' in beating

The mother of Stanislav Petrov, a man whose beating by police in California was captured on video, says her son has been “criminalized” and “destroyed” by law enforcement officials, who refuse to disclose details about his arrest during an FBI raid last week and new charges against him.

“They destroyed him physically. They destroyed him mentally,” Olga Petrov, 59, said after her son’s hearing on Monday in San Francisco federal court, where charges against the 29-year-old remain sealed and a US judge forced the mother and other members of the public to leave the hearing room.

The closed-door hearing was the latest in a series of stunning developments in the case, which first attracted national attention in November when footage emerged of two Alameda county sheriff’s deputies severely beating Petrov in an alley in San Francisco. ...

Days after the new allegations were made, San Francisco police and the FBI raided a home where Petrov was and arrested him and three others in an incident that allegedly left an individual with multiple gunshot injuries.

Leaked documents show strong business support for raising the minimum wage

Whenever minimum wage increases are proposed on the state or federal level, business groups tend to fight them tooth and nail. But actual opposition may not be as united as the groups' rhetoric might make it appear, according to internal research conducted by a leading consultant for state chambers of commerce.

The survey of 1,000 business executives across the country was conducted by LuntzGlobal, the firm run by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, and obtained by a liberal watchdog group called the Center for Media and Democracy. (The slide deck is here, and the full questionnaire is here.) Among the most interesting findings: 80 percent of respondents said they supported raising their state's minimum wage, while only eight percent opposed it.

"That’s where it’s undeniable that they support the increase,” LuntzGlobal managing director David Merritt told state chamber executives in a webinar describing the results, noting that it squares with other polling they’ve done. “And this is universal. If you’re fighting against a minimum wage increase, you’re fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are okay with raising the minimum wage.”

Leaked Video Shows How Business Lobbyists Conspire Against a Higher Minimum Wage

New materials provided to the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch reveal that a top GOP polling firm instructed state Chamber of Commerce lobbyists how to try to defeat popular measures like increasing the minimum wage, despite polling data from business leaders that shows overwhelming support for such progressive workplace policies.

Here is a copy of the slideshow, marked up by CMD.

Here is a transcript of the webinar, highlighted by CMD.

Here is the link to the longer version of the webinar.

Here is some information about who spoke during the webinar.

Democrats silent as one million lose food stamp benefits in the US

Tens of thousands of impoverished, unemployed adults were cut off food stamps Friday, the first wave of a social catastrophe that could affect more than one million people this year.

Some 22 states began terminating benefits for “Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents,” or ABAWDs, in the jargon of the US Department of Agriculture, which administers the federally funded food stamp program, or Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as it is formally known. ...

The harsh “work for food” requirements were first introduced for food stamps under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. This is the notorious “welfare reform” bill sponsored by then-US Rep. John Kasich, who is now Ohio’s governor and a Republican candidate for president, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, husband of the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. ...

Senator Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in the midst of a campaign in the April 19 New York primary, but neither has said a word on behalf of the more than 50,000 New Yorkers who began losing their food stamp benefits Friday. ...

Hillary Clinton gloried in the “welfare reform” legislation in her 2003 memoir Living History (for which she was paid $8 million). She wrote that Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the program the bill abolished, “had helped to create generations of welfare-dependent Americans … I strongly argued that we had to change the system, although my endorsement of welfare reform came at some personal cost.” The “cost,” of course, was to her political credibility as a supposed advocate of the poor.

Clinton claimed that the legislation her husband signed “was a critical first step to reforming our nation’s welfare system. I agreed that he should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage—though he and the legislation were roundly criticized by some liberals, advocacy groups for immigrants and most people who worked with the welfare system.”

Conservative challenge to voting rights unanimously rejected by supreme court

The US supreme court on Monday unanimously rejected a conservative challenge to voting rights – ruling that states could count the total population, not just eligible voters, in drawing legislative districts.

The case was brought before the court after conservative activists challenged the legal principle of “one person, one vote”, which has long established that election districts should be drawn to be equal in population. The two plaintiffs, both residents of Texas, argued the principle diluted the influence of those living in districts where a larger number of individuals were ineligible to vote.

But shifting the method would most certainly lend greater power to states with wealthier populations with mostly white voters, and away from urban and more racially diverse areas. ...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg authored the opinion for the court, in which the liberal justice wrote that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate a rationale upon which the court should overturn the longstanding use of total population in drawing districts.

The nation’s founders, she added, intended that “representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote”.

Did Bernie Sanders Predict the Panama Papers When He Opposed Clinton-Backed U.S.-Panama Trade Deal?

Hedge Funds Are Part of a Tricky Money Maneuver to Put Hillary in the White House

At the Democratic debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa on November 14, 2015, Hillary Clinton attempted to portray herself as the fierce enemy of hedge funds. She told the audience the following:

“You have two billionaire hedge fund managers who started a Super PAC and they’re advertising against me in Iowa as we speak. So they clearly think I’m going to do what I say I will do….”

But two hedge fund billionaires backing a Republican candidate pales in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars flooding into Hillary Clinton’s campaign from other hedge fund billionaires – including money flowing into a joint fundraising committee called the “Hillary Victory Fund” that is sluicing money to both Hillary’s main candidate committee, Hillary for America, as well as into the Democratic National Committee and 33 separate state Democratic committees, which has some observers crying foul. ...

Hedge funds and private equity firms are desperate to hold on to their tax perversion known as “carried interest,” which allows their winnings to be taxed at rates lower than those paid by some plumbers and nurses. In no small part, it’s how hedge fund operators ended up as billionaires, effectively subsidized by the wage earner.

[See article for details of many hedge fund donors to various Clinton campaign vehicles. - js]

There's lots of talk about parties being destroyed as in this article. What is really being destroyed is the consensus that has caused both parties to align with the demands of the 1%. Regardless of the outcome of the primaries and even the general election, the nation's governing consensus has come apart at the seams.

Even if Trump loses in Wisconsin, Republicans have little to celebrate

The #NeverTrump forces are hoping for a Trump loss in Wisconsin. They want a chain of events that would deny him the delegates he needs to secure the nomination. If he doesn’t clinch it on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer, that would allow Cruz – or some other Republican – to possibly overtake Trump on subsequent ballots. No matter what happens in Wisconsin, though, Trump has already succeeding in destroying the Republican party.

The modern Republican party is built on the proverbial “three-legged stool” of conservatism. Since Barry Goldwater, the Republican coalition has been made up of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and defense hawks. In just a few short months, Trump has in effect obliterated that coalition. ...

Trump’s populism and nationalism has divided social conservatives, some of whom have been willing to abandon the Huckabees and the Santorums of the world for a thrice-married Manhattan billionaire who once bragged about being “very pro-choice”.

Trump’s neo-populist rhetoric has turned large segments of the Republican base against what were once tenets of modern economic conservatism – globalism, corporatism and free trade.

Trump has not only divided social conservatives and turned economic conservatism on its head – he has convinced a growing portion of the Republican primary electorate to reject the neoconservative foreign policy that has been the hallmark of the party for decades.

Trump’s 21st-century populism has unmoored a large segment of the Republican “base” from modern conservatism.

Obama’s Endorsement Of Debbie Wasserman Schultz Brings In Serious Money... For Her Challenger

Tim Canova, a progressive law professor taking on Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), pulled in more than half a million dollars in the first three months of 2016, according to his campaign — a massive sum for a political newcomer.

Canova raised $557,000, powered by small donations. Nearly 15,300 people donated, for an average contribution of $20. Only six donors gave the maximum amount allowed under law, meaning he still has a significant pool of people to tap into for future donations. ...

Last Monday, Wasserman Schultz scored the official backing of President Barack Obama. It wasn’t entirely surprising, given her leadership position in the party. But it still gave her a high-profile boost and one of the most coveted endorsements in the party.

It also prompted her opponents to give Canova an infusion of cash.

In the four days following Obama’s endorsement, Canova received nearly $100,000, according to his campaign — almost a quarter of what he raised in the three-month period, even though they never actually fundraised off the endorsement.

Polar bears losing weight as Arctic sea ice melts, Canadian study finds

Three decades of melting sea ice has led to significant weight loss among the world’s southernmost population of polar bears, new data from Canadian researchers suggests.

“It’s a red flag,” said Martyn Obbard, a scientist with the Ontario provincial government and co-author of a recently published study in the journal Arctic Science. ...

The drop in weight was strongly correlated with melting sea ice. Since 1980, the ice season in Hudson Bay has fallen at a rate of about one day a year, forcing polar bears to spent more time on dry land rather than hunting seals – their main source of food – on sea ice.

Polar bears now get some 30 fewer days each year on ice than previous generations. “That’s 30 days less out on the sea ice when they’re actively hunting seals,” Obbard said.

He highlighted the drop in weight among females as worrisome. “It’s more than a 10% decline for adult females,” he said, and could ultimately affect the survival of the population. “We could see females having cubs less often and with less success.”

Tax Windfall for Deepwater Horizon Settlement a 'Major Coup for BP'

In the six years since BP's catastrophic Deepwater Horizon spill poured millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, environmentalists, Gulf coast residents, and politicians have clamored for justice. But Monday's historic $20 billion settlement against the oil giant is not what they hoped it would be.

The settlement's terms are so generous to BP that it amounts to a tax break worth billions—as some observers predicted.

A whopping $15 billion of the $20 billion settlement can be written off by BP as a "normal operating expense," meaning the multinational corporation will pay only a fraction of the total settlement amount and American taxpayers will be left with the majority of the astronomical costs of the company's mistake. ...

Legal journalist at Forbes Robert W. Wood notes that just $5.5 billion of the settlement "is indicated explicitly as a penalty under the Clean Water Act," and it is only this portion of the settlement which is not tax-deductible. However, "the federal government could have received as much as a $13.7 billion penalty under that Act based on a recent finding by a New Orleans judge that the spill was the result of 'gross negligence,'" he argues. ...

Of course, BP wasn't the only player making sure this was the outcome. Huffington Post reporter Nick Visser delves into how U.S. officials took deliberate steps to ensure BP could evade paying the majority of the settlement:

Shortly after BP agreed to the terms of the settlement last year, 53 members of Congress asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch to deny the company the ability to deduct the expenses from its taxes. Such a provision would've matched the terms of the $5.5 billion in fines for the company's violation of the Clean Water Act, which prohibit the company from claiming them as a business expense.

The International Business Times notes the U.S. tax code allows punitive damages to be written off as a business expense, as BP will be allowed. But provisions added to settlements can restrict this freedom.

Making the American taxpayer pick up BP's bill for cleaning the disastrous Deepwater Horizon spill is an outrage. https://t.co/Tn3owikZ8X

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 5, 2016

Report: Health Impacts from Climate Change a 'New Kind of Threat' (with No Easy Cure)

Climate change is a serious threat to public health, particularly for pregnant women, children, communities of color, and low-income people, a government report issued Monday has warned.

The report, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment finds that rising temperatures in the coming years will bring along with them the increased risk of:

• death from heat stroke, particularly in the summer months;
• chronic and acute respiratory issues;
• vector-borne illnesses like the West Nile virus and Lyme disease, as well as the new emergence of new pathogens;
• chemical toxins in the food chain;
• and mental health consequences of being exposed to climate disasters—among a litany of other risks.

"Every American is vulnerable to the health impacts associated with climate change," White House science adviser John Holdren said Monday. "Some are more vulnerable than others."

Also of Interest

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

The Democrats Are Flawlessly Executing a 10-Point Plan to Lose the 2016 Presidential Election

Will Sanders Play His Ace?

The Forces Behind the Attempted Coup in Brasil

The Elite's Comforting Myth: We Had to Screw Rich Country Workers to Help the World's Poor

Chris Hedges: The Lie of Patriotism

How I deal with the unbearable hypocrisy of being an environmentalist

A Little Night Music

Albert Collins - The Moon is Full

Albert Collins - Iceman

Albert Collins - If trouble was money

Albert Collins - Honey Hush

Albert Collins - Cold Cold Feeling

Albert Collins - I Ain't Drunk

Albert Collins Montreux 1979