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This evening's music features blues harmonica player and singer, Willie Cobbs. Enjoy!

"Torture drives people mad. This is not a truth limited to its victims."

-- Charles Pierce

News and Opinion

CIA’s Mad Torture Scientists: We’re Like Those Who Made Gas For The Nazis

Usually, and for understandable reasons, the CIA frowns on people comparing it to Nazis, whether the insult comes from random trolls or the president of the United States. Rarer still are Nazi comparisons coming from the CIA’s own contractors. Vanishingly, once-in-a-lifetime, Halley’s Comet-rare are the times when those CIA contractors will not only compare the agency to Nazis, but themselves to the manufacturers of poison gas used in the Holocaust—and do it in their own defense.

As contractor psychologists for the agency, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen played an integral role in designing the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.They personally waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, a detainee effectively used as human guinea pig for torture. And the company they subsequently founded to contract with the CIA on the brutal interrogations earned them $81 million, according to the 2014 Senate torture report. Senator Dianne Feinstein called it “a stain on our values and on our history.”

Unlike every senior U.S. official who ordered and implemented the program, Mitchell and Jessen now face civil – though not criminal – liability. Three survivors of the CIA torture program have sued the two contractors in federal court for compensatory damages. ... After failing to convince a federal judge in Washington state to dismiss the suit, attorneys for Mitchell and Jessen have settled on an unexpected argument ahead of a critical Friday court hearing. They’re like contractors to Nazis and other war criminals, attorneys claim, but the sort that war-crimes tribunals have exonerated.

In a recent filing in the case, Mitchell and Jessen’s attorneys portray the two contract psychologists as analogous to those who  made the Zyklon B gas used to murder Jews and others in Nazi concentration camps. Mitchell and Jessen’s lawyers note that in a British military court in 1946, the Zyklon manufacturing company Tesch & Stabenow’s “first gassing technician” was ultimately acquitted. Although the technician, Joachim Drohsin, played “an integral part of the supply and use of the poison gas,” the British court wrote, he was “without influence” and was found not guilty.

Since the contractors were unable to make the decision to torture – instead designing torture regimens for the CIA and implementing them – their lawyers contend they are modern-day Drohsins, supplying modern-day Zyklon and advising on its use. (The 1946 court found the owner and second-in-command at the Zyklon manufacturing firm guilty and condemned them to death.)

North Korean ICBM appears to have failed on re-entry

Video footage of North Korea's latest missile test appears to show it breaking up before landing, indicating that Pyongyang may not yet have mastered re-entry technology needed for an operational nuclear-tipped missile, a think tank reported on Monday.

The apparent failure of the re-entry vehicle in Friday's test could mean North Korea will need to carry out several more tests of its intercontinental ballistic missile before it can be deemed operational, missile expert Michael Elleman told reporters.

Elleman, an expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, cited video footage taken by a weather camera in Japan's Hokkaido Prefecture broadcast by Japan's NHK television. ...

US officials say the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon spy agency, has determined that North Korea will be able to field a reliable nuclear-capable ICBM by next year, earlier than previously thought.

Germany urges EU countermeasures against U.S. over Russia sanctions

New sanctions against Russia proposed by U.S. lawmakers and which could harm European firms violate international law and the European Commission should consider counter-measures, the German economy minister was quoted on Monday as saying.

"We consider this as being against international law, plain and simple," Brigitte Zypries told the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain. "Of course we don't want a trade war. But it is important the European Commission now looks into countermeasures."

Negotiations, Not War: Green Party's Jill Stein Warns About U.S. Escalating Tension with N. Korea

Will the CIA Obey a Trump Order to Stop Funding Terrorists? An Interview with Rick Sterling

Late last week, the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump will end covert support of militias attempting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. I spoke to Rick Sterling, investigative journalist for Consortium News and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, about the report.

Ann Garrison: Rick Sterling, what’s your first reaction to the Washington Post’s claims?

Rick Sterling: If Trump orders the CIA to stop training and equipping extremists in Syria, that will be a good thing. We will have to see if this is implemented because sometimes they say one thing publicly but do other things secretly. For example, starting in late 2011, the CIA was coordinating the shipment of weapons from Libya to the armed opposition in Syria—in secret. ...

AG: Last question: If Trump really does want to stop arming and funding Al-Qaeda/Nusra/HTS and other jihadist militias, won’t Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE step into the breach so they can keep fighting Assad—or the Kurds—with weapons that the US sold them?

RS: Yes, all those countries have been funding terrorists in Syria to attack and overthrow the Damascus government. Sometimes they work together; sometimes not. No matter, the Syrian Army and their allies have weathered the worst period and now are on the offensive. The mercenaries are in retreat, and the influx of brainwashed new recruits is drying up.

AG: Anything else you’d like to say?

RS: We are in a critical period where the enemies of Syria, including the CIA, may create a false flag incident to provoke and justify a direct intervention by the US, France, and others. Even if that does not happen, the pro-war elites clearly hope to use Kurdish forces to split off eastern Syria and install a puppet government. However, on the positive side, increasing numbers of Syrians who fled abroad are now returning to Syria. The reconciliation program is expanding. These are positive signs. After six years of bloodshed, it’s way past time for the enemies of Syria to stop supporting terrorism and let the Syrian people determine their own destiny.

White House Looks at Afghanistan Pullout as an Option

After months of the Pentagon failing to sell a concrete plan of escalation to the White House, officials now say that the administration is considering getting back on track with a drawdown headed for a full pullout from the country after 16 years.

This is happening for the same reason the Pentagon hasn’t been able to sell the escalations, that a number of officials are unconvinced that the escalation is going to accomplish anything, and that they don’t think there’s a clear strategy for victory.

The Pentagon was more or less uniform in arguing escalations, albeit of varying sizes, and are said to be objecting to the proposed pullout as a “minority viewpoint,” warning that it does not meet the goals of the conflict.

As U.S. Sanctions Maduro and Hints at Regime Change, a Debate on Resolving the Crisis in Venezuela

Brazil prepares to vote on removing second president in a year

The lower house of Brazil’s congress will on Wednesday vote on corruption charges against the president, Michel Temer. If two thirds of its deputies approve the charges – and Brazil’s supreme court agrees – Temer will be suspended for up to 180 days and put on trial.

The latest twist in Brazil’s political nightmare will mark the second time in a year that lawmakers vote on whether to remove a president. But if more than a third of lawmakers vote to reject the charges – which political insiders regard as increasingly likely – Temer’s troubled administration could survive until presidential elections in 2018. And the persistent pall of corruption that hangs over Brazil’s political leaders will linger on.

Temer, who took over from the Workers’ party president Dilma Rousseff after her impeachment, is accused of corruption after a close aide was given $150,000 in cash – part of $12m in bribes prosecutors allege he and the aide were due to receive after intervening in a business deal. ... Rousseff denounced her impeachment as a coup and accused Temer, her former vice-president, of conspiring to usurp her. Since taking over he has been hit by one scandal after another. And with his 5% approval rating even lower than Rousseff’s was, Brazilians are wondering whether his government is even more compromised than the one it forced out.

But there is little appetite for a fresh round of street protests like those which helped drive Rousseff from power, said Maurício Santoro, a professor of international relations and political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “What people hoped for was something very different,” he said. “There is a certain apathy in the Brazilian population and this is benefitting Temer. He would be in much more difficulty if he was facing big demonstrations.”

Keiser Report: Distant American Dream

Nissan attacked for one of 'nastiest anti-union campaigns' in modern US history

Days before a potentially historic union vote at the Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi, the car company has been accused of running one of the “nastiest anti-union campaigns in the modern history of the American labour movement”.

The vote, a fiercely contested effort by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to represent a foreign automaker’s US plant, is planned for Thursday and Friday this week. It comes as US unions are hopeful they can overturn a series of defeats as they seek to build membership in southern states, where manufacturers have moved to take advantage of lower wages and non-union workforces.

In the closing days of the campaign, which has attracted support from the former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, UAW officials have become increasingly confident of victory even as managers have pressured workers to vote no. “People are rallying,” says Frank Figgers, co-chair of the Mississippi Alliance for Fairness at Nissan. ...

Nissan has responded with fierce opposition. The company has blitzed local TV with anti-union ads and stands accused of both threatening and bribing workers to vote no. It requires workers to regularly attend anti-union roundtable group meetings as well as one-on-one meetings with their direct supervisors, some of whom have worn “vote no” T-shirts to work. ...

Late Friday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the independent US government agency responsible for enforcing US labor law, filed the latest in a series of complaints against Nissan. The NLRB alleged that Nissan had violated the law in these anti-union sessions by warning that workers would lose wages and benefits if they supported the union. The NLRB also found that a supervisor at the plant told workers that if they spoke out against the union, he would personally ensure that they received increased wages and benefits.

Finnish citizens given universal basic income report lower stress levels and greater incentive to work

Finland has been giving 2,000 of its citizens an unconditional income for the last five months and some are already seeing the benefits, reporting decreased stress, greater incentives to find work and more time to pursue business ideas. The scheme is the first of its kind in Europe and sees participants receive €560 (£473) every month for two years.

Recipients do not have to demonstrate that they are seeking employment and they are not required to regularly report to authorities to prove they still need the payment, as is the case with standard unemployment benefits. They can spend the money however they like. Under the pilot, if a participant finds work, they will continue to receive the stipend, removing one of the limitations of current welfare systems - the disincentive to find work.

The trial is one measure introduced by the centre-right government to tackle Finland's unemployment problem.

Trump personally crafted son's misleading account of Russia meeting – report

Donald Trump personally dictated the press statement issued in the name of his eldest son Donald Jr that misleadingly downplayed the significance of a 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer, a new report alleged on Monday night.

According to the Washington Post, Trump personally intervened to prevent senior White House advisers from issuing a full and truthful account of the meeting on 9 June 2016 in which Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and then presidential campaign manager Paul Manafort came face-to-face with four Russians. One of the Russian visitors was the well-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya

The report, based on multiple though largely anonymous sources that included the president’s own advisers, has the potential to cause political, and even legal, trouble for the White House because it draws Trump himself much closer into the fray over the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a lightning rod in the Russian affair. ...

According to the Post, senior White House officials together with the circle around Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, had spent days rehearsing various ways to address the Trump Tower meeting publicly. Kushner’s team was reported to have decided that it was better to “err on the side of transparency” because the whole truth would eventually come out. Trump, however, appeared to have seen things differently.

Freedom Rider: Democrats Smear Jill Stein

Democrats hate the left more than they hate the right. Democrats are allegedly the counter weight to the right wing in America when in reality their goal is to replicate the same policies. The subterfuge inherent in the political duopoly allows them to live off the pretense of defending the people from the neo-liberal forces they in fact support.

Their hatred is most evident when people who are truly on the left dare to make the case for political change. When Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost presidential races in the Electoral College, Democratic Party scorn was directed solely at the Green Party and their voters. In both elections there were far more instances of registered Democrats voting for George W. Bush and Donald Trump respectively. ...

The Russiagate phenomenon makes Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein an even bigger target. Stein visited Russia in 2015 and attended the RT network’s anniversary dinner. She was seated at the same table with Vladimir Putin, although the two never spoke. This simple act is now being included among the flimsy so-called evidence that the Russian government interfered in the election. ...

It is important for the left to defend Stein at this moment. She and all Americans have a right to disagree with their government’s foreign policy. We have a right to visit any nation and interact with anyone we choose and to question presidents, congress and elite punditry. We should be able to do so without fear of harassment or legal jeopardy. ...

The notion that Russia is a hostile power is a concoction of the corporate media and the war loving members of the duopoly. If they attempt to silence or smear Stein or anyone else they must be met with staunch opposition.

Meat industry blamed for largest-ever 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico

The global meat industry, already implicated in driving global warming and deforestation, has now been blamed for fueling what is expected to be the worst “dead zone” on record in the Gulf of Mexico. Toxins from manure and fertiliser pouring into waterways are exacerbating huge, harmful algal blooms that create oxygen-deprived stretches of the gulf, the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay, according to a new report by Mighty, an environmental group chaired by former congressman Henry Waxman.

It is expected that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) will this week announce the largest ever recorded dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It is expected to be larger than the nearly 8,200 square-mile area that was forecast for July – an expanse of water roughly the size of New Jersey.

Nutrients flowing into streams, rivers and the ocean from agriculture and wastewater stimulate an overgrowth of algae, which then decomposes. This results in hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, in the water, causing marine life either to flee or to die. Some creatures, such as shrimp, suffer stunted growth. Algal blooms themselves can cause problems, as in Florida last summer when several beaches were closed after they became coated in foul-smelling green slime.

America’s vast appetite for meat is driving much of this harmful pollution, according to Mighty, which blamed a small number of businesses for practices that are “contaminating our water and destroying our landscape” in the heart of the country.

Green Groups Celebrate as Court Orders EPA to Reinstate Obama-Era Methane Rule

A federal court issued another blow to the Trump administration's aggressive deregulatory agenda when it ruled on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must immediately reinstate an Obama-era pollution rule that sets methane emission standards for the oil and natural gas industry.

The Monday ruling, issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was celebrated by green groups that filed a suit challenging an EPA attempt to delay implementation of the rule. The "issuance of the mandate by the full D.C. Circuit protects families and communities across America under clean air safeguards that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt sought to unlawfully tear down," said Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) lead attorney Peter Zalzal.

"The court's order is a victory for our communities' health and the safety of our climate. Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt's attempt to delay the implementation of these crucial protections had no basis in law, and we are glad to see their effort to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry fail once again," said Joanne Spalding, Sierra Club's chief climate counsel. "Trump and Pruitt have repeatedly overreached in their efforts to undermine environmental protections and prop up the oil and gas industry."

As part of Trump and Pruitt's attempts to roll back climate regulations—which have caused multiple federal scientists to resign from the EPA and condemn the administration's environmentally destructive policies—in June, Pruitt attempted to halt the rule while the agency considers a formal repeal. The 2016 rule was established as part of former President Barack Obama's second-term climate regulations, and seeks to curb the emission of methane—a primary component of natural gas that has been on the rise due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and that has a greater impact than carbon dioxide. A coalition of environmental groups, cities, and states, led by the EDF, sued the EPA over the delay, which a federal court deemed unlawful on July 3.

Utilities companies won't let you sell your own solar power. Why not?

A new report from the US-based Energy and Policy Institute last week found that investor-owned utilities have known about climate change for nearly 50 years – and done everything in their power to stop governments from doing anything about it. From their commitment to toxic fuels to their corrosive influence on our democracy to their attempts to price-gouge ratepayers, it’s long past time to bring the reign of privately-owned electric utilities to an end.

Climate forecasts are more dire now than they were when utilities and oil companies started looking into them, and a key piece of avoiding the most severe impacts of warming is to rapidly change how we turn on our lights. Electric power currently accounts for about 35% of all of the United States’ energy-related carbon emissions. Nearly 70% of that stems from the coal-fired power plants utilities have spent millions trying to keep running. Scientists say we have a rapidly closing window of time to decarbonize the whole of our economy, a large part of which involves making huge swaths of it run off of electricity.

The utilities needed to make that change happen, meanwhile, seem dead-set on doing exactly the opposite. The industry has set its sights in particular on rooftop solar. In backing campaigns to end net-metering – a policy that lets people with solar panels sell excess power back to utilities at market rates – investor-owned utilities are deliberately stymying changes that could be as good for ratepayers as they are for the environment. On this and their other political priorities, electric utilities spent more than $114.3m on lobbying in 2016. Already in 2017 that figure is up to $59.9m.

What’s clear now is that the electric utility sector is broken, and its biggest and most influential firms can’t be trusted to work in the public’s best interest. Massive transformations in the electric power sector are both desperately needed and eminently possible. Updating our outmoded grid system, for instance – making it easier for customers to sell back power to their power providers – could yield fairer rates for customers and hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs. The only way to get there is to take investors’ endless thirst for short-term profits out of the equation.

Also of Interest

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

The Architects of American Torture Are Using an Intriguing Legal Defense Strategy

Shielding Israel from Popular Outrage

'Anonymous' browsing data can be easily exposed, researchers reveal

Federal indictment charges Fiat Chrysler paid top UAW negotiator $1.2 million in bribes

Capitalism's excesses belong in the dustbin of history. What's next is up to us

“Centrists” Are Violent Extremists

A World Without Poor People (Sort of)

Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases

A Little Night Music

Willie Cobbs - Worst Feeling (I Ever Had)

Willie Cobbs - Don't Say Good-Bye

Willie Cobbs - Slow Down Baby

Willie Cobbs - You Don't Love Me

Willie Cobbs - Eating Dry Onions

Willie Cobbs - I'll Love You Only

Willie Cobbs - Got A Little Girl

Willie Cobbs - Mistreated Blues

Willie Cobbs - You're So Hard To Please

Willie Cobbs - Kiss Me One More Time