This evening's music features blues, funk, soul and jazz saxaphonist Maceo Parker.

CIA's torture experts now use their skills in secret drones program

The controversy over the CIA’s secret drone program has gone from bad to worse this week. We now know that many of those running it are the same people who headed the CIA’s torture program, the spy agency can bomb people unilaterally without the president’s explicit approval and that the government is keeping the entire program classified explicitly to prevent a federal court from ruling it illegal. And worst of all, Congress is perfectly fine with it.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that many of those in charge of the CIA’s torture program – the same people whose names were explicitly redacted from the Senate’s torture report in order to avert accountability – “have ascended to the agency’s powerful senior ranks” and now run the CIA drone program under the agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Rather than being fired and prosecuted, they have been rewarded with promotions. ...

Adding to the disturbing nature of the CIA’s ability to kill people in complete secrecy, the agency apparently now has a carte blanche to conduct drone strikes on its own. According to the New York Times, President Obama doesn’t individually approve them anymore – he lets the CIA unilaterally decide to kill people if the strikes “fit certain criteria.” We have no idea what those conditions are since virtually everything about drone strikes at the CIA is secret. ...

The most absurd part of this whole debate is that the White House actually refused to admit that the two hostages killed in Pakistan died in a US drone strike. ... The reason for this denial apparently has nothing to do with legitimate secrets; the administration just wants to avoid a court ruling their program illegal. ... Think about that for a second: The Obama administration has promised more transparency around drone strikes, yet at the same time, won’t even acknowledge that the controversial drone strike it’s apologizing for even happened - just because such admission might force courts to hold the government accountable for its actions.

American Psychological Association Bolstered C.I.A. Torture Program, Report Says

The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists.

The report is the first to examine the association’s role in the interrogation program. It contends, using newly disclosed emails, that the group’s actions to keep psychologists involved in the interrogation program coincided closely with efforts by senior Bush administration officials to salvage the program after the public disclosure in 2004 of graphic photos of prisoner abuse by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program,” the report’s authors conclude.

The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals to make sure they were safe.

About 150 US workers are killed on the job every day – report

About 150 US workers die every day from hazardous working conditions, according to a new report by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US.

In 2013, 4,585 US workers were killed on the job and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, found the report. Additionally, about 3.8m work-related injuries and illnesses were reported. The AFL-CIO estimates that the real number of work-related injuries is somewhere between 7.6m to 11.4m each year as many work-related injuries are not reported. ...

“America’s workers shouldn’t have to choose between earning a livelihood and risking their life, yet every day too many end up on the wrong end of that choice,” the AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, said in a statement. “Corporations are prospering while working people suffer because of corporate negligence and insufficient government oversight. We must go beyond mourning those we’ve lost, and take bold, decisive action to ensure that a day’s work brings opportunity, not the risk of death or injury.”

The Middle East Policy of President Bernie Sanders

A President Bernie Sanders would endorse the Iran negotiations of the Obama administration. He said of the talks,

“While much more work remains to be done this framework is an important step forward. It is imperative that Iran not get a nuclear weapon. It also is imperative that we do everything we can to reach a diplomatic solution and avoid never-ending war in the Middle East. I look forward to examining the details of this agreement and making sure that it is effective ‎and strong.”

Note that Sanders accepts the Washington consensus that Iran is trying to get a nuclear weapon, which Iran denies. Sanders has slammed the GOP obstructionists of the talks for “itching” for a war with Iran. He himself says that a war with Iran should be avoided ‘at all costs.’ However, it is not clear what he would do if the current talks broke down and he became convinced as president that the Iranians had developed a nuclear weapons program.

Sanders opposed the US taking the lead in the aerial campaign against Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) in Iraq and Syria, asking where the Arabs were and saying that American kids shouldn’t be dying to protect Saudi Arabia. ... But Sanders also did say that the US should be “supportive” of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Jordan and Iraq in their campaigns against Daesh. It is not clear to me what this stance implies. ...

Sanders supported the Israeli attack on Gaza last summer but thought the Israeli army was a little heavy-handed and ‘over-reacted’ with some of its actions like bombing schools being used as civilian shelters. (There were no weapons at these schools). Sanders excused Israeli actions against Gaza civilian populations on the grounds that missiles were being fired from Gaza into Israel from populated centers. ... Sanders’ Israel policy seems likely to tilt more toward Tel Aviv than that of Obama, though Sanders did boycott the address of PM Binyamin Netanyahu to Congress in March.

Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders, the TPP "Corporate Coup d’Etat" & Writing to the White House

Also of interest:

Cowardly Firing of Australian State-Funded TV Journalist Highlights the West’s Real Religion

Lawless President Obama Chides Baltimore “Criminals And Thugs,” Ignores Savagery Of Baltimore Police