This evening's music features Texas blues singer and guitarist Mance Lipscomb.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Turkey’s Political Influence Felt as Washington Turns Its Back on Kurds Fighting ISIS

Some of the most successful fighters against the Islamic State are being isolated and attacked by America’s new favorite ally in the region.

Kurdish militias are achieving the stated goals of the Obama administration — to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS — as well or better than any other fighting force. From Kobane to the recent liberation of Tel Abyad, Kurdish militias have won hard-fought victories against ISIS fighters in Syria, while preventing the advance of ISIS into northern Iraq.

What’s more, the Kurds in northern Syria have established a political order like few others in this region of the world. Known as Rojava, the Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria are governed through participatory decision-making forums that include councils made up of women, Christians, Yazidis and Muslims. David Graeber, a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, calls Rojava a “remarkable democratic experiment.”

This past week, the Turkish government made two critical air bases available to U.S. forces, a long-sought concession that allows the U.S. military to launch anti-ISIS raids more quickly. ... Simultaneously with its announcement about U.S. access to the air bases, the Turkish government broke its truce with Kurdish militants. During the past week, the Turkish military began attacking Kurdish bases in Iraq and allegedly in Syria as well. ...

Rather than condemn the attacks on the Kurds, the Obama administration praised Turkey’s government for making its air base available.

A New War is Unfolding on Turkey's Eastern Border

DESVARIEUX: But some would argue, Patrick, that it may be a bit of a stretch because Erdogan has not openly said that he's going after any pro-independence Kurdish groups, just the PKK, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States. What do you make of that argument?

COCKBURN: Yeah. But I think--I think it's actually the PKK isn't even his main target. It's the parliamentary party, the Kurdish parliamentary party or Kurdish-dominated party called the HDP. Now, the history of this is only in June, last month, this party got 13 percent of the vote. It got about 6 million votes. And this deprived Erdogan, the president of Turkey, of his parliamentary majority. And they're desperate to get that back in a second election. So they kind of need to knock this Kurdish party out of the election by either pretending they're terrorists, actually, they've been calling for peace, or alternatively just putting their leadership in jail, stopping them functioning.

So I think that's probably one of the primary purposes of this whole new war is not the PKK, which the Turks probably know they can't really put out of business with air attacks, but the Kurdish political party, which is much more specific, which took away Erdogan's parliamentary majority.

DESVARIEUX: So do you see Erdogan's decision to join this fight against ISIS as being purely political, then?

COCKBURN: Yes, I think it's very largely political and it's motivated by internal Turkish politics.

Turkey sends in jets as Syria’s agony spills over every border

Turkish air strikes in Syria last week signalled a new phase in a conflict that has left its bloody mark on every country in the region. But will the Turks now agree to US demands to cease all clandestine dealings with Islamic State?

When US special forces raided the compound of an Islamic State leader in eastern Syria in May, they made sure not to tell the neighbours.

The target of that raid, the first of its kind since US jets returned to the skies over Iraq last August, was an Isis official responsible for oil smuggling, named Abu Sayyaf. He was almost unheard of outside the upper echelons of the terror group, but he was well known to Turkey. From mid-2013, the Tunisian fighter had been responsible for smuggling oil from Syria’s eastern fields, which the group had by then commandeered. Black market oil quickly became the main driver of Isis revenues – and Turkish buyers were its main clients. ...

In the wake of the raid that killed Abu Sayyaf, suspicions of an undeclared alliance have hardened. One senior western official familiar with the intelligence gathered at the slain leader’s compound said that direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking Isis members was now “undeniable”.

“There are hundreds of flash drives and documents that were seized there,” the official told the Observer. “They are being analysed at the moment, but the links are already so clear that they could end up having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and Ankara.” ...

The oil-smuggling operation run by Abu Sayyaf has been cut drastically, although tankers carrying crude drawn from makeshift refineries still make it to the border. One Isis member says the organisation remains a long way from establishing a self-sustaining economy across the area of Syria and Iraq it controls. “They need the Turks. I know of a lot of cooperation and it scares me,” he said. “I don’t see how Turkey can attack the organisation too hard. There are shared interests.”

Private firms at heart of US drone warfare

Corporate staff are reviewing top-secret data and helping uniformed colleagues decide whether people under surveillance are enemies or civilians

The overstretched US military has hired hundreds of private-sector contractors to the heart of its drone operations to analyse top-secret video feeds and help track suspected terrorist leaders, an investigation has found.

Contracts unearthed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveal a secretive industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars, placing a corporate workforce alongside uniformed personnel analysing intelligence from areas of interest.

While it has long been known that US defence firms supply billions of dollars’ worth of equipment for drone operations, the role of the private sector in supplying analysts for combing through intelligence material has remained almost entirely unknown until now.

Approximately one in 10 people involved in the effort to process data captured by drones and spy planes are non-military. And as the rise of Islamic State prompts what one commander termed “insatiable” demand for aerial surveillance, the Pentagon is considering further expanding its use of contractors, an air force official said.

The contractors review live footage gathered by drones and spy planes flying over areas of interest, and help uniformed colleagues decide whether people they spot are potential enemies or civilians.

Though private contractors do not formally make life-and-death choices – only military personnel operate armed drones and take final targeting decisions – there is concern that they could creep in to this function without more robust oversight.

Even now, contractors are aware that any errors of analysis they make could lead to the wrong people getting killed. “A misidentification of an enemy combatant with a weapon and a female carrying a broom can have dire consequences,” one told the bureau.

Israel’s 2014 Gaza bombardment deemed war crime, Amnesty says

On Aug. 1, 2014, after a temporary cease-fire was announced in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin, went missing after a firefight with Hamas gunmen in the town of Rafah.

Suspecting that he had been seized, Israeli troops launched a fierce onslaught, heavily bombarding and shelling parts of Rafah in an attempt to pin down the suspected kidnappers.

The intensive attack, following the “Hannibal Directive,” under which Israeli forces can respond to the capture of a soldier with overwhelming firepower, left at least 135 Palestinian civilians dead, including 75 children, according to Amnesty International, one of the deadliest episodes of the 50-day campaign.

In a report issued Wednesday that used digital technology and satellite images along with witness testimonies to piece together the sequence of events, the human rights group said Israeli forces committed war crimes during three days of attacks that continued even after Goldin was declared to have been killed in action.

Guantánamo detainee says his 'comfort items' were taken to force interrogations

A Guantánamo Bay detainee who recently published a bestselling memoir is alleging that US authorities at the detention facility have confiscated most of his legal mail and family correspondence to pressure him into submitting to further interrogations.

In a declassified letter written to his attorney on 17 April, Mohamedou Ould Slahi cryptically referred to Guantánamo officials offering to help him retrieve his “so-called comfort items” if he would allow the resumption of interrogations that a judge ordered to end approximately six years ago. ...

In 2009, as part of Slahi’s habeas case challenging his detention in federal court, Judge James Robertson ruled that the government can no longer interrogate Slahi, a prohibition that has held for five years. Slahi had previously been subject to sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, stress positions, death threats and rape threats to his mother.

The Joint Task Force at Guantánamo has yet to proffer an explanation for cutting off substantial amounts of Slahi’s ability to communicate with counsel and even review his letters with his family, attorney Nancy Hollander told the Guardian. ...

The US Justice Department is due to file an explanation on Wednesday in federal court before Judge Royce Lamberth. ...

In April 2010, Robertson ruled in Slahi’s original habeas case that the Obama administration could not continue to detain him merely out of concern Slahi could associate with terrorist groups post-release. A government appeal has kept Slahi at Guantánamo for the intervening five years.

Varoufakis Sued for Alleged Treason While Syriza's Left Platform is Accused of Conspiracy

Greece crisis escalates as IMF witholds support for a new bail-out deal

Talks over an €86bn bail-out for Greece have been thrown into turmoil after just four days as the International Monetary Fund said it would have no involvement in the country until it receives explicit assurances over debt sustainability.

An IMF official said the fund would withhold financial support unless it has guarantees Greece can carry out a "comprehensive" set of reforms and will be the beneficiary of debt relief from its European creditors. ...

The delay could last well into next year, forcing the other two-thirds of the Troika - the European Central Bank and European Commission - to bear the full costs of keeping Greece afloat. ...

The IMF's position now jeopardises the tentative basis for a new three-year package thrashed out by lenders over a tortuous weekend of talks in mid-July.

Drachma revolt adds unease to Greece's awkward alliance

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' power-sharing acrobatics look harder to perform by the day. ...

Tsipras will be battling to keep control of Syriza at a meeting of the party's 200-member executive, facing dissenters who argue the Left has abandoned its principles over the past six months under the country's popular prime minister. ...

In a vote three weeks ago, Tsipras effectively lost his majority in parliament, when nearly one-fourth of SYRIZA’s lawmakers refused to back new austerity measures. Pro-European Union opposition parties were left to save the bill.

Since then, far-left dissenters have grown more defiant.

Panagiotis Lafazanis, recently fired as energy minister in a reshuffle, called on the government and country to prepare for a national currency.

“An exit from the euro ... in spite of all the dark propaganda, would in no way be a disaster,” he told cheering supporters packed into an Athens theater this week.

Barter booms in cash-strapped rural Greece for the first time since Nazi occupation

A rising number of Greeks in rural areas are resorting to swapping goods and services as they struggle to keep businesses going under tight government capital controls, according to reports.

But even those facilitating the barter economy fear that it harks back to the Nazi occupation.

Christos Stamatis started the website Mermix three months ago to link farmers wanting to share heavy machinery in exchange for cash or other goods. "A barter economy is something that we shouldn't aspire to and should be a thing of the past – the last time we had it on a large scale was when we were under occupation," he told Reuters, referring to the Nazi occupation of Greece in the Second World War.

It is difficult to quantify the scale of the barter economy growing in rural Greece, but online forums and anecdotal evidence suggest that it is surging.

One barter website started three years ago said the number of users and the volume of transactions have doubled since the banks closed in June.

After Greece, everyone will want a Plan B to leave the euro

With the revelations of the secret plans for a parallel currency drawn up by officials at the Greek Finance Ministry at the height of this year’s crisis, we now have what is in effect a reversible euro. ...

Leaked transcripts have revealed that Varoufakis was working on a proposal for a parallel currency, and discussed it in depth with a group of hedge funds. ... The Germans were working on something similar. At the height of the crisis, the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble put forward his own Plan B for Greece. It involved a “temporary” suspension of its membership in the euro, along with plenty of humanitarian aid to help it through the first few difficult months of re-establishing its own currency.

As it happens, both plans were perfectly sensible. The only real difference was that one involved the Greeks breaking out of the chains of euro membership, and the other involved them being released — both end up with the prisoner being free again, but the process of getting there is very different. But whether they were sensible or not is not the real point. What is important is simply that the plans exist — and once they have been made they are impossible to ever take off the table.

Also of interest:

A tour of abandoned New Orleans, 10 years after Katrina - in pictures

The most polluted US national parks

Our monumental Turkey blunder: Who put the American exceptionalists back in charge?

The Kurdish Elephant and the Great Middle East War

The 1 percent declares war on Puerto Rico: The austerity push that unmasks neoliberalism