This evening's music features Texas blues singer Lou Ann Barton.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

Witnesses Confirm First Saudi Ground Troops Arrive in Yemen

Weeks of Saudi airstrikes against Yemeni cities have extended into the first deployment of ground troops over the weekend, with witnesses confirming Saudi special forces on the ground in Aden, backed by helicopter gunships.

In previous weeks, Saudis had tried to drop weapons to the remnants of former President Hadi’s forces, hoping this and the airstrikes would shift the tide of battle against the Shi’ite Houthis, who control most of the rest of the country.

Not making much progress that way, the Saudis seem to be bringing in the first of their ground troops. With massive numbers of troops massed around the northern border, this may just be the first of a full-scale war.

Once the Youngest Prisoner at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr Could Be Released Today in Canada

The Canadian government is expected to make a last ditch effort on Tuesday to block the release of Omar Khadr, a 28-year-old man who agreed to a controversial plea deal for killing a US soldier when he was 15.

Khadr, who was at one point the youngest prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, was granted bail last month by a court in Edmonton, Alberta as he appeals an American military conviction he says was obtained through torture.

According to multiple media reports, the Canadian government is expected to argue on Tuesday that the country's interests "will suffer irreparable harm" if the Toronto-born man is released.

A story in the Toronto Star on Saturday, however, refuted those claims, with the US State department telling the newspaper that his release wouldn't hurt Canadian-American relations. ...

The Free Omar campaign, which began in 2011 to advocate for his release, said Monday the government's "'knee jerk' appeal of every court decision has prolonged his 12-year struggle for justice."

"The rights, freedom and liberties of all Canadians are diminished by the actions of this government," the organization said.

Samples of Israeli Horrific Brutality and War Criminality in Gaza

The Israeli group Breaking the Silence issued a report this morning containing testimony from Israeli soldiers about the savagery and criminality committed by the Israeli military during the attack on Gaza last summer. The Independent has a good article describing the report’s findings: “The Israeli military deliberately pounded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip with incessant fire of inaccurate ordinance” and “was at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population.” At best. ...

Reading the accounts from these Israeli soldiers is revolting and important in equal parts. It shines considerable light on the reality of what Israeli loyalists have long hailed as “the most moral army in the world,” one unfairly held to a difference standard that ignores their great “restraint.”

The Intercept has chosen some selected, representative excerpts from the report:

Staff Sargent, Armored Corps:

[A]fter 48 hours during which no one shoots at you and they’re like ghosts, unseen, their presence unfelt – except once in a while the sound of one shot fired over the course of an entire day – you come to realize the situation is under control. And that’s when my difficulty there started, because the formal rules of engagement – I don’t know if for all soldiers – were, “Anything still there is as good as dead. Anything you see moving in the neighborhoods you’re in is not supposed to be there. The [Palestinian] civilians know they are not supposed to be there. Therefore whoever you see there, you kill. . . .

The commander [gave that order]. “Anything you see in the neighborhoods you’re in, anything within a reasonable distance, say between zero and 200 meters – is dead on the spot. No authorization needed.” We asked him: “I see someone walking in the street, do I shoot him?” He said yes.

Did the commander discuss what happens if you run into civilians or uninvolved people?

There are none. The working assumption states – and I want to stress that this is a quote of sorts: that anyone located in an IDF area, in areas the IDF took over – is not [considered] a civilian. That is the working assumption. We entered Gaza with that in mind, and with an insane amount of firepower.

[More at the link. -js]

Canada poised to pass anti-terror legislation despite widespread outrage

Criticism of anti-terror bill C-51 has united a diverse array of prominent opponents as many fear the legislation creates the potential for a police state

Widespread protest and souring public opinion has failed to prevent Canada’s ruling Conservative Party from pushing forward with sweeping anti-terror legislation which a battery of legal scholars, civil liberties groups, opposition politicians and pundits of every persuasion say will replace the country’s healthy democracy with a creeping police state.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is looking forward to an easy victory on Tuesday when the House of Commons votes in its final debate on the bill, known as C-51. But lingering public anger over the legislation suggests that his success in dividing his parliamentary opposition may well work against him when Canadians go to the polls for a national election this fall.

No legislation in memory has united such a diverse array of prominent opponents as the proposed legislation, which the Globe and Mail newspaper denounced as a a plan to create a “secret police force”.

The campaign to stop Bill C-51 grew to include virtually every civil-rights group, law professor, retired judge, author, editorialist and public intellectual in Canada. ...

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Canadians signed petitions urging the bill be scrapped and took to the streets in a national day of protest last month.

Workers Movement Forces Democrats To Increase Their Idea of Minimum Wage

While proposed $12 wage isn't enough, Democratic Party clearly chasing after workers who have put themselves in the street for the increased pay

It's not fifteen, but the Democratic Party is angling to hang its hat on a $12 minimum wage as they attempt to harness the energy and enthusiasm created by the national low-wage workers movement that has been steadily building in recent years.

As The Hill reports on Tuesday:

Party leaders are rallying behind new legislation that would raise the wage to $12 an hour, well beyond the $10.10 effort that failed to pass when Democrats controlled the Senate.

While the new bill has little chance to clear the GOP-dominated Congress, Democrats see the issue as a political winner for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — who have announced White House bids — as well as for potential presidential candidates.

As Common Dreams has covered in-depth, the fight for higher wages by fast food workers and employees at large retail chains like Wal-mart has gained strength in recent years with increasing numbers of the working poor demanding better pay, increased protections, and the right to organize or unionize on their own behalf.

For Democrats, the push for a $12 minimum wage is largely understood as a political strategy to get Republicans on the record during the campaign season opposing the interests of low-income Americans.

Here's Why Elon Musk Might Have Just Really Pissed Off Your Utility Company

Musk unveiled on Thursday a new type of battery — not for use in his company's popular line of luxury electric vehicles, but for homes and business.

Measuring in at 3 feet across, 4 feet tall, and 7 inches deep, the batteries draw energy from rooftop solar panels, helping to power homes and businesses at night, reducing daytime demand on the electric grid during peak hours, and providing energy security during power outages. ...

Across the country, consumers who install rooftop solar arrays have increasingly clashed with utility companies over net-metering policies. Net metering allows a customer who generates energy from solar panels to run their meters backward — essentially feeding power into the electrical grid and lowering their utility bill — when they are producing more energy than they are consuming.

Forty-three states and the District of Columbia have such policies, but in recent years utilities have pushed back against net metering in California, Arizona, and Colorado, seeking to limit consumers' ability to ween themselves from utility-generated power.

According to attorney Katie Ottenweller, who leads the Southern Environmental Law Center's Solar Initiative, it's unclear how utilities will react as battery technology matures and cuts into their traditional customer base. ... Ottenweller told VICE News. "But there's also this double-edged sword where if utilities continue to pick fights with their solar customers, it makes it easy, once battery storage is available, for them to defect from the grid altogether."

Also of interest:

David Simon on Baltimore’s Anguish

The Wars Come Home: A Five-Step Guide to the Police Repression of Protest from Ferguson to Baltimore and Beyond