This evening's music features blues piano player Eurreal "Little Brother" Montgomery.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Obama's Secret Elite Interrogation Squad May Not Be So Elite -- And Might Be Doomed

When President Barack Obama took office, he promised to overhaul the nation's process for interrogating terror suspects. His solution: the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, a small interagency outfit that would use non-coercive methods and the latest psychological research to interrogate America's most-wanted terrorists -- all behind a veil of secrecy. ...

But six years on, the Obama administration’s elite interrogation force is on shaky ground. U.S. officials and outside critics question the effectiveness of its interrogators, whether they're following their own training, and whether they can continue to rely on psychological research to help break suspects. ... Obama's limited reforms to how American detains, interrogates and prosecutes suspected terrorists are ad-hoc and fragile. His successor could scrap most of them -- the HIG included -- with the stroke of a pen. ...

Perhaps the biggest mystery surrounding the HIG is whether its interrogators are any good.

HIG staffers aren't always the expert, elite interrogators Obama envisioned. Certain intelligence shops would prefer to keep their top interrogators to themselves, these sources argue, which means the HIG gets whoever's left. U.S. intelligence agencies sometimes interrogate the same detainees the HIG questions -- and claim better results. ...

A third U.S. official familiar with the HIG recalled an instance when, during a training exercise, one of the recruits based his assessment of a detainee on a self-described "gut instinct."

Afterward, the official asked the recruit what his background was.

“He said prior to joining DIA, he was an infantryman," the official recalled. "He had never been an interrogator, never had experience as an interrogator."

Several sources told similar stories about HIG recruits.

"They may or may not have some experience when they arrive at that assignment," a fourth official said.

But after a week of interrogation training, they’ll be eligible to join the Obama administration’s A-Team.

Once a recruit is assigned to the HIG, the formal interrogation training required to become one of Obama’s elite interrogators is completing the HIG’s weeklong Core Interrogation and Interview Course, sources said. ...

Congress and the White House have expressed little interest in whether the HIG's interrogators are qualified and whether their training is effective. Despite its fledgling status, and nearly a decade of international outrage over the CIA’s now-defunct torture program, no one in Washington seems particularly concerned with monitoring the new guard’s activities.

Evil but Stupid

The Obama Administration has been deeply invested in the fantasy of the war on terror’s end from its earliest days in office. In effect, it has attempted to do away with the idea that the country is conducting a war, technically subject to public approval via the legislative branch, and has put in place the hazier notion of a potentially endless chain of discrete war-resembling events overseen by a reluctant executive. In 2009, the administration asked the Pentagon to stop using the phrase “Global War on Terror,” favoring “Overseas Contingency Operations” instead, recasting the war as a series of ad hoc skirmishes. And five months after the Abbottabad raid, Obama announced that all American troops would be removed from Iraq. (The Senate voted down a proposal to bring Congress’s authorization of the war to an end, however, and in any case, Obama left thousands of private military contractors in the country. This June, Obama quietly signed off on a plan to send 450 “advisers” back to Iraq to fight ISIS.)

The US is a country engaged in an endless global war that never feels like one. The government prefers to refuse to acknowledge this war; much of the media follows suit. In this respect, bin Laden’s killing is only the most notable instance of the open fabrications and legalistic half-truths that we’ve come to accept as inevitable parts of our public discourse. ...

The advantage to conducting a war that doesn’t feel like a war is that the President — and the executive branch — continues to accrue more and more unaccountable power. Obama, the erstwhile antiwar candidate, came into a presidency whose powers were dramatically enhanced by his predecessor, thanks to Vice President Cheney’s belief that the executive had to regain the dignity lost in Watergate. Obama has been Uriah Heep–like in his professions of humility over the capacity of American war-making, but even as he has drawn down forces in one country, he has prosecuted smaller-scale wars in Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and Libya, to say nothing of the continuing maneuvers in Afghanistan and Iraq and the enhanced NATO presence along the border with Russia. He does not make major speeches to the public about these wars, nor does he let Congress decide whether to fight them. Meanwhile he reminds the public that he consults books by Augustine and Aquinas for guidance — as if turning to theology to justify murder would somehow be reassuring.

The more we forget the wars Obama conducts, the better he is able to conduct them. Obama knows that a basic skepticism toward American imperial ambitions, the great achievement of the Sixties, still inheres in the republic. Though the Bush Administration drummed up a frenzy of nationalism to prepare for the invasion of Iraq, it was only two years later that the public mood soured on the war and its rationalizations. (By contrast, a majority of the public did not oppose the Vietnam War until 1969, some eight years after Kennedy first sent in advisers.) And yet it cannot be said that there is, or has been for a long time, anything resembling an antiwar movement in the country. The streets are empty, and media discussion of the current war has largely been limited to “how to fight ISIS” or whether Obama’s strategy is all wrong — rather than whether we should be conducting a war at all, whether the empire itself ought to be dismantled.

US Sends More Advisers, Munitions for Saudi War on Yemen

US involvement is growing, with the number of Pentagon advisers sent to Saudi Arabia more than doubled to 45 now, and regular shipments of munitions and in-air refueling of bombers serving as the main US contributions to the war effort against Yemeni Shi’ites.

Officials say that the advisory role includes helping the Saudis pick out which targets to attack, a particularly damning admission given the enormous civilian death toll from the Saudi airstrikes against residential areas nationwide.

The Pentagon is insisting, by way of an explanation, that they aren’t “responsible” for any specific strikes that happen in Yemen, so even though they provided the bombs, fueled the planes, and picked the targets, those deaths are somehow not their fault.

US-Created Syrian Rebel Faction Eyes Fight Against Assad

The massively expensive and massively unsuccessful US training program in Syria continues to go off the rails today, as members of the group, which is called either “Division 30″ or the “New Syrian Forces’ depending on who is talking about them, look to pick a fight with the Assad government .

Now the “secular” US rebels are endorsing al-Qaeda publicly, declaring themselves to support the other “holy warriors” in the civil war, and in an interview today with CNN, openly talk about their desire to go after the Assad government, irrespective of US wishes.

I was found guilty of all 4 charges @ today's board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation--no gym, library or outdoors.

— Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) August 18, 2015

Chelsea Manning Found Guilty Over 'Contraband' — But Won’t Face Solitary Confinement

Chelsea Manning, the former US Army soldier who received a 35-year sentence in military prison for providing classified documents to WikiLeaks, has been found guilty again, this time for possessing unapproved reading material and expired toothpaste.

According to a tweet sent from Manning's official account, she was found guilty on all four charges she faced, but will avoid the indefinite solitary confinement that she reportedly could have received as a possible punishment.

Manning, 25, is being held at the Army's Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas. The latest charges stemmed from the discovery of an expired tube of anti-cavity toothpaste in her cell following a routine inspection. Because the toothpaste was expired, Manning faced charges for "medicine misuse," which Nancy Hollander, the attorney working on Manning's appeal, decried as "utterly ridiculous."

This is the official inventory of confiscated books and magazines. pic.twitter.com/MvlaU2UmbL

— Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) August 14, 2015

Now these convictions will follow me thru to any parole/clemency hearing forever. Was expecting to be in min custody in Feb, now years added

— Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) August 18, 2015

Undercover Police Have Regularly Spied On Black Lives Matter Activists in New York

Documents obtained by The Intercept confirm that undercover police officers attended numerous Black Lives Matter protests in New York City between December 2014 and February 2015. The documents also show that police in New York have monitored activists, tracking their movements and keeping individual photos of them on file.

The nearly 300 documents, released by the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Metro-North Railroad, reveal more on-the-ground surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists than previous reports have shown, conducted by a coalition of MTA counterterrorism agents and undercover police in conjunction with NYPD intelligence officers.

This appears to be the first documented proof of the frequent presence of undercover police at Black Lives Matter protests in the city of New York, though many activists have suspected their presence since mass protests erupted there last year over a grand jury’s decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, a police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner.

The protest surveillance and use of undercover officers raises questions over whether New York-area law enforcement agencies are potentially criminalizing the exercise of free speech and treating activists like terrorist threats. Critics say the police files seem to document a response vastly disproportionate to the level of law breaking associated with the protests.

Greenspan Imagines Better, Alternate Universe in Which Greenspan Was Not Fed Chair

Alan Greenspan, the policy failure whose tenure at the Federal Reserve helped create the conditions for the largest financial crisis in nearly a century, was inexplicably given a major newspaper platform on Monday to opine about regulation, which he ideologically abhors.

So it came as a surprise to read the second paragraph of his Financial Times op-ed, wishfully describing an alternative history of 2008, if only there had been robust regulation.

“What the 2008 crisis exposed was a fragile underpinning of a highly leveraged financial system,” Greenspan writes. “Had bank capital been adequate and fraud statutes been more vigorously enforced, the crisis would very likely have been a financial episode of only passing consequence.”

Greenspan must have temporarily forgotten that he had the power to accomplish both of these priorities as Fed chair. ...

Greenspan famously did none of this during the inflating of the housing bubble from 2002 to 2006, instead extolling the virtues of adjustable-rate loans and mortgage securitization, even as fellow Fed governors and the FBI publicly warned about looming fraud. The responsibility for vigorously enforcing fraud statutes, then, fell to Greenspan, and he ignored it.

Greece is for Sale – and Everything Must Go

I've just had sight of the latest privatisation plan for Greece. It's been issued by something called the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund –the vehicle supervised by the European institutions, which has been tasked with selling off an eye-watering €50 billion of Greece's ‘valuable assets’. ...

Fourteen regional airports, flying into top tourist hubs, have already gone to a German company, but don’t panic because stock in Athens airport is still on the table, as well as Athens' old airport which is up for a 99 year lease for redevelopment as a tourism and business centre.

Piraeus and Thessaloniki ports are up for sale – the former case has caused the chief executive to resign and industrial action has begun. A gas transmission system looks likely to be sold to the government of Azerbaijan, but there’s still a power and electricity company, the postal service, a transport utility which allows trains and buses to run, the country’s main telecommunications company, a 648 km motorway, and a significant holding in the leading oil refiner, which covers approximately two-thirds of the country’s refining capacity.

Holdings in Thessaloniki and Athens water are both on sale – though public protest has ensured that 50% plus 1 share remains in state hands. Nonetheless, the sale will mean that market logic will dictate the future of these water and sewerage monopolies. Finally there are pockets of land, including tourist and sports developments, throughout Greece. ...

Why does this matter? First because makes no sense to sell off valuable assets in the middle of Europe’s worst depression in 70 years. Those industries could generate revenues to help the Greek government rebuild the economy. In fact, the vast majority of the funds raised will go back to the creditors in debt repayments, and to the recapitalisation of Greek banks.

So the privatisations aren’t to do with helping Greece. The beneficiaries are corporations from around the world, though eyebrows are particularly being raised at the number of European companies – from German airport operators and phone companies to French railways – who are getting their hands on Greece’s economy. Not to mention the European investment banks and legal firms who are making a fast buck along the way. The self-interest of European governments in forcing these policies on Greece leaves a particularly unpleasant flavour.

When Black Lives Matter Met Clinton: Activists Speak Out on Challenging Candidate over Crime Record

Canada Might Start Dumping Nuclear Waste Near the US Border - A Mile From Lake Huron

A Canadian plan to build an underground nuclear waste dump less than a mile from Lake Huron is getting unfriendly attention from US lawmakers, who are trying to force the Obama administration to invoke a 106-year-old treaty against its northern neighbor.

Though a Canadian review panel declared that the proposed Deep Geologic Repository will have "no significant adverse effects on the Great Lakes," opponents wonder why a site so close to the world's largest freshwater system was chosen. ... The project would bury 7 million cubic feet worth of low and intermediate level nuclear waste — including contaminated mop heads, paper towels, floor sweepings, but also filters and reactor components — 2,230 feet underground. Ontario Power Generation, which operates two nuclear power plants in Canada's most populous province, has chosen a site just north of the lakefront town of Kincardine, after getting approval from the municipality.

Last week, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters announced that they will introduce the Stop Nuclear Waste by Our Lakes Act. The law will call on the US State Department to invoke the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty and demand a binational review of the project by the International Joint Commission, a body that mediates boundary disputes. Representative Dan Kildee of Michigan will introduce a similar bill in the House. ...

The State Department seems to agree. A department representative told VICE News that, along with the US Environmental Protection Agency, they are participating in the Canadian review process, which they consider "the appropriate channel for providing US input on this proposal." They said they have no plans to call for the binational review the senators are demanding.

Also of interest:

The Short, Hard Life Of Freddie Gray

Maryland Judge Rules Public Has Right To Information On Dangerous Oil Trains

“You’ve Got to Cozy Up”: More Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics

Trumping the Federal Debt without Playing the Default Card

Who’s the Real Troublemaker in the Middle East?

Barack Obama: The Nobel Peace Prize Winner Who’s Bombed 7 Countries

4 Million Muslims Killed In Western Wars: Should We Call It Genocide?

Why Bernie Sanders Should Add a Job Guarantee to His Policy Agenda