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This evening's music features Delta & Chicago blues guitarist Robert Nighthawk. Enjoy!

"There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that "it's not the crime, but the cover-up." But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable."

-- Josh Marshall

News and Opinion

CIA Torture Cover-Up Still Looms Over 9/11 Trials at Guantánamo

U.S. war crimes in the so-called War on Terror were back in the spotlight Tuesday as pretrial hearings for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants resumed at Guantánamo Bay, with a lawyer for one of the men asserting that a "continuing cover-up" of CIA torture is the reason none of the suspects have been tried 15 years after their transfer to the extralegal prison.

After a 17-month delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the five defendants—Mohammed, his nephew Ammar al-Baluchi, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shib, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi—appeared before a U.S. military court at Gitmo's "Camp Justice" Tuesday.

The men—two Pakistanis, two Yemenis, and one Saudi—stand accused of what military prosecutor Clayton Trivett Jr. has called the "summary execution" of nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania during the September 11, 2001 attacks. They face execution if convicted.

However, the defendants' attorneys argue that their clients' confessions should be thrown out because they were extracted through torture, evidence of which has been blocked from the courtroom. Experts also say that confessions and information resulting from torture are highly unreliable.

"Make no mistake. Covering up torture is the reason that these men were brought to Guantánamo and the continuing cover-up of torture is the reason that indefinite detention at Guantánamo still exists," Jay Connell, the lawyer representing al-Baluchi, said Tuesday. "The cover-up of torture is also the reason that we are all gathered at Guantánamo for the 42nd hearing in the 9/11 military commission on the 15th anniversary of the transfer of these men to Guantanamo."

The five defendants, who were all captured in Pakistan in late 2002 and early 2003, were turned over to the United States before being transfered to CIA black sites, including the notorius "Salt Pit" outside Kabul, Afghanistan, where suspected militant Gul Rahman was tortured to death in November 2002. In 2006, the prisoners were transferred to Gitmo.

All five men were tortured. Mohammed was subjected to interrupted drowning, commonly called "waterboarding," 183 times, as well as other torture and abuse approved under the George W. Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" program. Hawsawi suffered a shredded rectum resulting from sodomization during so-called "rectal hydration" and has had to manually reinsert parts of his anal cavity to defecate.

As recently as December 2017, United Nations special rapporteur Nils Melzer warned that al-Baluchi was still being tortured at Guantánamo.

The defendants' treatment is thoroughly documented in a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on post-9/11 CIA torture, which found that many innocent individuals were wrongfully detained due to mistaken identity and faulty intelligence, that detainees were subjected to horrific and even deadly abuse, and that the brutality and scope of the program were hidden from key government officials. The report also raised serious doubts about al-Hawsawi's guilt.

However, in December 2012, then-presiding judge James L. Pohl prohibited all testimony related to the defendants' capture, imprisonment, and torture, and according to a May 2016 court filing the Army colonel conspired with military prosecutors to destroy evidence in Mohammed's case.

Several Gitmo prosecutors have resigned over what they said is a corrupt military commissions system designed to convict every defendant. Former lead prosecutor Col. Morris Davis called the trials "rigged from the start" and said he was told by a top Bush lawyer that acquittals were unacceptable. At least four other military prosecutors requested removal from the military commissions because they felt the proceedings were unfair.

Alka Pradhan, a U.S. human rights attorney who has represented Guantánamo prisoners and other torture victims, on Monday called the Gitmo military commissions "purpose-built to launder the CIA torture program."

Of the approximately 780 men and boys imprisoned at Guantánamo since 2002, 39 remain following last month's transfer of 56-year-old Moroccan detainee Abdul Latif Nasser, who was jailed for 19 years without charge or trial. Of the 39, 28 have never been charged with crimes over nearly two decades of imprisonment. Ten have been recommended for third-country transfers.

"Two decades after the attacks of September 11 were carried out the survivors and their families have yet to see any justice, reparation, or accountability for that heinous crime," Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security With Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Wednesday.

"Rather than fair and transparent trials, the military commissions created at Guantánamo Bay have been a dismal failure," she added, "denying survivors and their families justice, skirting United States and international law, and abusing the rights of those who remain imprisoned at the facility."

“Turning Point”: Legacy of the U.S. Response to 9/11 Is Terror, Domestic Surveillance & Drones

On average US-led airstrikes have killed more than 1,000 civilians a year since 2001 pic.twitter.com/r3kwDO1Wim

— Airwars (@airwars) September 6, 2021

Taliban ban protests and slogans that don’t have their approval

The Taliban has moved to tighten its crackdown on escalating protests against its rule, banning any demonstrations that do not have official approval for both the gathering itself and for any slogans that might be used.

In the first decree issued by the hardline Islamist group’s new interior ministry, which is led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is wanted by the United States on terrorism charges, the Taliban warned opponents that they must secure permission before any protests or face “severe legal consequences’”

Wednesday’s formal ban follows violent and sometimes lethal confrontations between Taliban fighters and demonstrators in several cities since the group swept to power, with women often at the forefront of the protests.

In the capital Kabul, a small rally was quickly dispersed by armed Taliban security, while Afghan media reported a protest in the north-eastern city of Faizabad was also broken up. Hundreds protested on Tuesday, both in the capital and in the city of Herat, where two people at the demonstration site were shot dead.

The move follows other signs that Afghanistan’s new all-male interim cabinet – made up entirely of Taliban loyalists – is moving rapidly away from earlier promises of moderation and inclusivity.

Afghan women to be banned from playing sport, Taliban say

Afghan women, including the country’s women’s cricket team, will be banned from playing sport under the new Taliban government, according to an official in the hardline Islamist group.

In an interview with the Australian broadcaster SBS, the deputy head of the Taliban’s cultural commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, said women’s sport was considered neither appropriate nor necessary.

“I don’t think women will be allowed to play cricket because it is not necessary that women should play cricket,” Wasiq said. “In cricket, they might face a situation where their face and body will not be covered. Islam does not allow women to be seen like this.

“It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it. Islam and the Islamic Emirate [Afghanistan] do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed.”

“Humane”: Yale Historian Samuel Moyn on “How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War”

Blow to DeSantis as judge rules Florida cannot enforce mask mandate ban

A Florida judge ruled on Wednesday that the state cannot enforce a ban on public schools mandating the use of masks against the coronavirus while an appeals court sorts out whether the ban is ultimately legal.

The ruling by Leon county circuit judge John C Cooper came amid a surge in cases caused by the Delta virus variant. Though statistics show that surge has begun to wane, Miami-Dade county public schools, Florida’s largest school district, said this week 13 employees had died from Covid-19 since 16 August.

Judge Cooper lifted an automatic stay of his decision last week that the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and education officials exceeded their authority by imposing the blanket ban through executive order and hitting pro-mask local school boards with financial penalties.

Cooper said the overwhelming evidence before him in a lawsuit by parents challenging the DeSantis ban was that wearing masks does provide some protection for children in crowded school settings, particularly those under 12 for whom no vaccine yet exists.

Thomas Frank: How Liberals Use COVID To SMEAR Working Class Americans

Three Vermont state troopers accused of creating fake Covid-19 vaccination cards

Three Vermont state troopers have resigned after being accused of creating fake Covid-19 vaccination cards, state police announced on Tuesday. In a statement released on Tuesday, Vermont police said the three former troopers are suspected of having “varying roles” in creating false Covid-19 vaccine cards.

“Based on an initial internal review, we do not believe there is anything more the state police could have done to prevent this occurring. As soon as other troopers became aware of this situation, they raised the allegations internally,” said the Vermont public safety commissioner, Michael Schirling. ...

As pandemic restrictions get lifted, fraudulent vaccination cards are increasingly emerging across the US, as some unvaccinated people try to evade vaccine proof requirements to enter public spaces such as concerts, restaurants and schools.

US’s wealthiest 1% are failing to pay $160bn a year in taxes, report finds

The wealthiest 1% of Americans are responsible for more than $160bn of lost tax revenue each year, according to a new report from the US treasury.

Natasha Sarin, deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, said: “A well-functioning tax system requires that everyone pays the taxes they owe.” According to the treasury report, the wealthiest 1% of US taxpayers are responsible for an estimated $163bn in unpaid tax each year, amounting to 28% of the “tax gap”. Sarin said that tax gap – “the difference between taxes that are owed and collected” – amounted to “around $600bn annually and will mean approximately $7tn of lost tax revenue over the next decade.”

The Biden administration proposes closing the tax gap by empowering the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to more aggressively pursue unpaid taxes, at a cost of $80bn and in the process helping fund the president’s ambitious domestic economic agenda. Republicans in Congress and lobbyists for business are united in opposition to the proposal to shore up tax enforcement.

Krystal Ball: Docs REVEAL Manchin's Crime Family PROFITS off Misery & Death

With 38 Million Facing Food Insecurity, Hunger in US Soared by Nearly 9% in 2020

More than 38.2 million Americans struggled with food insecurity at some point last year, a roughly 9% surge in hunger compared with the 2019 level of 35.2 million, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The USDA's new report (pdf)—the federal government's first comprehensive attempt to document how the Covid-19 pandemic and corresponding spike in unemployment exacerbated food insecurity—found that the number of children in the U.S. suffering from hunger increased from 10.7 million in 2019 to 11.7 million last year, also an uptick of approximately 9%.

Another USDA report (pdf) released last month showed that federal spending on domestic food and nutrition assistance programs in Fiscal Year 2020 reached a historic high of $122.1 billion, which was 32% greater than the previous year.

In addition, roughly 60 million people—close to one in five U.S. residents—received charitable food assistance last year, up 50% from 2019, according to Emily Engelhard, managing director of research at Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization. CNN reported Wednesday that the group's network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries distributed over six billion meals in 2020, an increase of 44% from the year before.

Meanwhile, biweekly data from the Household Pulse Survey—a new Census Bureau methodology unveiled soon after the interlinked public health and economic crises began 18 months ago—have revealed that food insecurity declined at various points last year when federal lawmakers provided households with additional income support.

Progressive advocates on Wednesday emphasized that hunger, which already affected millions of people in the world's richest nation well before 2020, would have grown even more severe in the U.S. last year had Congress not allocated billions of dollars to fund anti-poverty measures in response to the coronavirus crisis. For instance, following the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, which in contrast to the Covid-19 pandemic did not provoke an enlargement of the social welfare state, the number of Americans facing food insecurity soared by almost 13 million, hitting a peak of 50.2 million.

"The new federal data tells us two things," Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, said in a statement. "First, while hunger was already a massive, systemic problem in all 50 states before Covid-19 hit the U.S., domestic hunger surged during the pandemic."

"Second, while tens of million of Americans suffered mightily from food hardship in 2020—and are still suffering mightily—the nation avoided mass starvation mostly because the federal government stepped in to dramatically increase food and cash aid," Berg continued. "This safety net was a giant food life preserver."

Stressing that "the pandemic is far from over," Berg added that "we need that aid to continue, as a down payment on the even bigger investments needed to create jobs, raise wages, and ensure an adequate safety net so we can finally end hunger in America once and for all."

BREAKING: Robert E. Lee statue, erected in 1890, removed from its pedestal on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. pic.twitter.com/RGRZQXDA9n

— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 8, 2021

‘It’s a beautiful day for democracy’: Virginia removes Robert E Lee statue from capital

For 131 years it loomed over Richmond, Virginia, once the capital of America’s slave-owning south, sending a chilling message about the resilience of white supremacy to generations that passed beneath.

But at 8.55am on Wednesday, daylight reappeared between a giant statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee and its granite pedestal, now covered with Black Lives Matter graffiti. In warm sunshine the towering sculpture was hoisted by work crews and lowered to the ground amid cheers, songs and whoops from a watching crowd.

No one believed that the final humbling of insurrectionist Lee or the removal of a bronze monument, albeit one of the biggest to the Confederacy, was going to fix systemic racism overnight. But in the moment there was elation after a decades-long campaign galvanised by last year’s racial justice protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in faraway Minneapolis.

“It’s a beautiful day for democracy,” said a 47-year-old man who gave his name as Rig and carried a monochrome version of the Stars and Stripes that bore the words “Black Lives Matter” and a raised fist.

“It’s time for us to be honest about our history. Germany has zero statues of Hitler or Rommel. They learned the lesson and we have to learn the lesson: we cannot coddle white supremacy in this country.”

LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop

The Los Angeles police department (LAPD) has directed its officers to collect the social media information of every civilian they interview, including individuals who are not arrested or accused of a crime, according to records shared with the Guardian.

Copies of the “field interview cards” that police complete when they question civilians reveal that LAPD officers are instructed to record a civilian’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media accounts, alongside basic biographical information. An internal memo further shows that the police chief, Michel Moore, told employees that it was critical to collect the data for use in “investigations, arrests, and prosecutions”, and warned that supervisors would review cards to ensure they were complete.

The documents, which were obtained by the not-for-profit organization the Brennan Center for Justice, have raised concerns about civil liberties and the potential for mass surveillance of civilians without justification.

“There are real dangers about police having all of this social media identifying information at their fingertips,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a deputy director at the Brennan Center, noting that the information was probably stored in a database that could be used for a wide range of purposes.

The Brennan Center conducted a review of 40 other police agencies in the US and was unable to find another department that required social media collection on interview cards (though many have not publicly disclosed copies of the cards). The organization also obtained records about the LAPD’s social media surveillance technologies, which have raised questions about the monitoring of activist groups including Black Lives Matter.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) suggested 'eliminating rape' as a solution to helping rape and incest victims who could be effected by Texas' restrictive anti-abortion bill. "If you have a magic formula for it, why haven't you done it already?" Fmr. Texas State Sen. @wendydavis responds. pic.twitter.com/bN1oJKKhcj

— Ayman Mohyeldin Reports (@AymanMSNBC) September 8, 2021

AOC on Texas governor’s ‘disgusting’ abortion remarks: ‘He is not familiar with a female body’

Democrats including New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have decried Greg Abbott’s “deep ignorance” after the Texas governor inaccurately defended his state’s new anti-abortion law, saying that it does not require victims of rape and incest to carry pregnancies to term because it provides ample time for a person to get an abortion. The law, which took effect on 1 September, is the most extreme anti-abortion measure in the US and essentially bans most abortions, offering no exceptions for rape or incest.

Asked by a reporter on Tuesday why he would “force a rape or incest to carry a pregnancy to term,” Abbott denied that was the case, saying the law “doesn’t require that at all because, obviously, it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion”.

Ocasio-Cortez called Abbott’s remarks “disgusting,” adding: “I do know that he is not familiar with a female or menstruating person’s body because if he [was], he would know you don’t have six weeks.” Cortez went on to explain the basic biology surrounding pregnancies, and that many pregnancies are often undetected at six weeks. She said: “In case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late on your period. And two weeks late on your period, for any person with a menstrual cycle, can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes, or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have six weeks.”

Cortez added: “He speaks from such a place of deep ignorance, and it’s not just ignorance. It’s ignorance that’s hurting people.”

While defending the radical new law and its lack of exemptions for victims of sexual violence, the governor also vowed to purge the state of all rape and sexual assault. Abbott said: “Rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting off the streets.”

Kim Iversen: Gavin Newsom Recall Is Hillary 2.0

Anti-logging protest becomes Canada’s biggest ever act of civil disobedience

A string of protests against old-growth logging in western Canada have become the biggest act of civil disobedience in the country’s history, with the arrest of least 866 people since April.

The bitter fight over the future of Vancouver Island’s diminishing ancient forests – in which activists used guerrilla methods of resistance such as locking their bodies to the logging road and police responded by beating, dragging and pepper-spraying demonstrators – has surpassed the previous record of arrests set in the 1990s at the anti-logging protests dubbed the “War in the Woods”.

For months, hundreds of activists with the Rainforest Flying Squad have camped out in the remote Fairy Creek watershed in a desperate attempt to shift the course of logging in the region. They have chained themselves to tripods crafted from logs, suspended themselves in trees and even locked their arms inside devices called “sleeping dragons” cemented into the ground.

“We have experts in rigging, we have climbers, we have carpenters – we have all these people getting together to build amazing, beautiful things,” said Jean-François Savard, who has been at the camp since the injunction was granted to a logging company in April. “The [police] are getting very frustrated by our tenacity because we’re constantly rebuilding and coming up with new ideas. People aren’t giving up.”

Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been tasked with enforcing the injunction, but have increasingly faced sharp criticism for their tactics and use of force, including ripping off protesters masks to pepper-spray them and dragging them by their hair. Police have also come under fire for wearing “thin blue line” patches, obscuring their faces, not wearing name badges – and for their attempts to bar media from reporting on the long-running protests. Last month, a British Columbia supreme court judge ruled that the police force’s expulsions zones – set up to prevent media from entering certain areas of the injunction area to monitor police action – were unlawful.

Vast majority of fossil fuels ‘must stay in ground’ to stem climate crisis

The vast majority of fossil fuel reserves owned today by countries and companies must remain in the ground if the climate crisis is to be ended, an analysis has found. The research found 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas reserves could not be extracted if there was to be even a 50% chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C, the temperature beyond which the worst climate impacts hit.

The scientific study is the first such assessment and lays bare the huge disconnect between the Paris agreement’s climate goals and the expansion plans of the fossil fuel industry. The researchers described the situation as “absolutely desperate”.

“The [analysis] implies that many operational and planned fossil fuel projects [are] unviable,” the scientists said, meaning trillions of dollars of fossil fuel assets could become worthless. New fossil fuel projects made sense only if their backers did not believe the world would act to tackle the climate emergency, the researchers said.

The conclusions of the report are “bleak” for the fossil fuel industry, implying that oil, gas and coal production must have already peaked and will decline at 3% a year from now. States that are heavily reliant on fossil fuel revenue, such as Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, are at especially high risk. A minister from one Opec state recently warned of “unrest and instability” if their economies did not diversify in time. ...

“It is absolutely desperate,” said Prof Paul Ekins of University College London, UK, and one of the research team. “We are nowhere near the Paris target in terms of the fossil fuels people are planning to produce.”

“Whenever wherever oil and gas is found, every government in the world, despite anything it may have said [about climate], tries to pump it out of the ground and into the atmosphere as quickly as possible. It will require private companies to write down their reserves but, for countries with nationalised oil companies, they just see a whole heap of their wealth evaporating."

Also of Interest

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

In his own words: Assange witness explains fabrications

There’s a straight line from US racial segregation to the anti-abortion movement

Last member of Afghanistan’s Jewish community leaves country

Australia Has No Bill Of Rights, And It Shows

Blinken Says US Getting ‘Closer’ to Giving Up on Iran Nuclear Deal

Ben & Jerry's: The 'boycott' of Israel and the battle of competing narratives

CNN 'Exclusive' Repeats MoA's Year Old Reporting - Ukraine/CIA Tried To Snatch Russian Veterans

Politico runs Lockheed Martin puff piece amid sponsorship questions

Anger Mounts Over Democrats' Refusal to Address Jobless Aid Crisis

Natalie Edwards Was Imprisoned this Month by the U.S. for Blowing the Whistle on Wall Street Banks’ Laundering of Dirty Money

Facebook pays contractors to read ‘encrypted’ WhatsApp messages

Despite Manchin Roadblock, Schumer Vows 'Full Speed Ahead' on $3.5 Trillion Plan

A Climate Disaster Is Unfolding Before Our Eyes—And Politicians Still Refuse to Take Action

Will Fossil Fuel Giants Be Held Accountable?

Jimmy Kimmel's DISGUSTING Call To Let Unvaxxed Die

ACLU CAUGHT Flip Flopping On Vaccine Mandates

US hybrid warfare in Latin America, the new phase of imperialism: Behind Nicaragua coup attempt

Ryan Grim: NEW Recordings BLOW UP Julian Assange Case

Joe Rogan’s Case For DEFAMATION Against CNN Over Claims He Took Horse Dewormer

A Little Night Music

Robert Nighthawk - Blues Before Sunrise

Robert Nighthawk - Prowling Nighthawk

Robert Nighthawk - Someday

Robert Nighthawk - My Sweet Lovin' Woman

Robert Nighthawk - Take It Easy Baby

Robert Nighthawk -The Moon Is Rising

Robert Nighthawk -- Mama Talk to Your Daughter

Robert Nighthawk - I Need Love So Bad

Robert Nighthawk - Maggie Campbell