This evening's music features blues singer and harmonica player Big Daddy Kinsey.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Top officials charged with violating constitution with 9/11 detainee abuse

A US appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a claim against former attorney general John Ashcroft and other justice department officials, stemming from the abuse of Arab and Muslim men and others detained for months in New York and New Jersey after the September 11 attacks.

The unusual decision cleared the way for once-anonymous plaintiffs to advance charges that the top officials in the justice department had violated their constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law. The suit seeks class-action status for all detainees similarly abused.

A lower court had found that Ashcroft and his co-defendants, former FBI director Robert Mueller and former INS commissioner James Ziglar, had not been sufficiently linked to the abuse of detainees to support the plaintiffs’ claims.

In its reversal of that decision, the US court of appeals for the second circuit asserted that the justice department officials had put policies into place that were conducive to the abuse, that they knew the abuse was happening and that they knew the detainees weren’t terrorism suspects.

“It might well be that national security concerns motivated the defendants to take action, but that is of little solace to those who felt the brunt of that decision,” the court wrote. “The suffering endured by those who were imprisoned merely because they were caught up in the hysteria of the days immediately following 9/11 is not without a remedy.”

Hayden Mocks Extent of Post-Snowden Reform: “And This Is It After Two Years? Cool!”

Former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden on Monday marveled at the puny nature of the surveillance reforms put in place two years after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed a vast expansion of intrusive U.S. government surveillance at home and abroad.

Hayden mocked the loss of the one program that was reined in — the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata information about domestic phone calls — calling it “that little 215 program.”

And he said if someone had told him two years ago that the only effect of the Snowden revelations would be losing it, his reaction would have been: “Cool!”

Here is the video and the full text of his remarks.

House Rejects Vote Calling for End to ISIS War

Last week, the House rejected the Schiff Amendment, which would’ve forced a vote by March 31 of next year. Today, in a 139-288 vote, the House rejected another resolution, this time from Rep. Jim McGovern (D – MA) which, failing a vote approving the war would’ve required the Obama Administration to follow US law and end the war by the end of this year.

With both rules votes failing by fairly wide margins, it seems increasingly probable that the ISIS war will never get even a token vote in the US Congress, but that the president will continue to be allowed to illegally continue it without any objections from the legislative branch.

The White House insists that they fulfilled their obligations, more or less, by asking Congress to approve a resolution on the war which they openly bragged was so deliberately vague as to allow them to do anything. That resolution never got much support in Congress, and never got out of committee.

Sanctions not much of a blow to Russia

Why Arming Ukraine Is a Really Bad Idea

Renewed fighting in Ukraine has in turn renewed calls to arm Ukraine, including in the United States Congress. Yet there is an enormous and largely unacknowledged flaw in the argument to provide the Kiev government with lethal weapons.

Advocates of this approach assert that sending anti-tank missiles, mortars and other arms to Ukraine will help Ukrainian forces to kill more of the Russian troops fighting alongside separatist forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine. Since Russian president Vladimir Putin and other senior officials have repeatedly denied that Russian soldiers are in the country, they say, he must be trying to hide Moscow’s involvement from the Russian people because he fears political opposition from soldiers’ mothers (a significant political constraint during the first war in Chechnya, not to mention in Afghanistan a decade earlier) and others. If we can only kill enough of Putin’s troops, they continue, Putin will no longer be able to conceal the scale of Russia’s engagement in the conflict and will face public pressure to limit it or even to withdraw. ...

If the United States arms Ukraine—and announces that the policy is an explicit effort to kill more Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine—its impact on Russian public opinion is likely to be the opposite of what advocates say they intend. Indeed, it could transform the war there from a popular but essentially optional effort to help separatist forces and civilians in eastern Ukraine into a necessary conflict against a hostile American proxy. At the same time, for most Russians, it will probably confirm their government’s overheated rhetoric about U.S. ambitions in Ukraine and alleged American plans to force Russia to its knees or overthrow its government. Taken together, these shifts might increase Russians’ tolerance of battlefield deaths and injuries rather more rapidly than new U.S. arms will (or can) increase Russian casualties.

Moreover, the idea that more Russian deaths in Ukraine will “expose” Moscow’s role in the fighting is ludicrous. While Vladimir Putin and others may deny that Russian troops are in Ukraine in official meetings and statements, commentators on government-controlled television channels discuss Russia’s assistance to the separatists extensively. If the Kremlin were truly trying to conceal its participation, surely the Russian government would start by limiting this. On the contrary, Moscow’s denials are a diplomatic position in communicating with foreign audiences—a polite fiction—and are widely understood as such inside the country. ...

Advocates of lethal arms supplies to Ukraine have not yet met the first requirement of policy making—demonstrating with reasonable confidence that their proposed course of action will produce the results they want and expect, rather than something worse. Taking into account Washington’s frequent and unpleasant encounters with the unintended consequences of its choices over the last two decades, Americans should insist on a much stronger case.

Your tax dollars at work - American imperialism is helping to create a human crisis of enormous proportions:

The Global Refugee Crisis Is Unprecedented and Getting Worse

The number of people forced from their homes from violence, persecution or war has reached record levels, the United Nations warned on Thursday, with Syria overtaking Afghanistan to become the country more people flee from than any other.

The number of people forced from their homes by conflicts worldwide rose to 59.5 million last year, up from 51.2 million in 2013 — the equivalent to 42,500 per day, or one in every 122 people on the planet. If those 59.5 million people lived in one nation, noted the UN, that country would have the 24th largest population in the world.

More than half those displaced were children.

"We are witnessing a paradigm change," said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, "an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before."

Pointing to crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Burundi, and elsewhere, Guterres said he didn't expect any improvement in 2015.

One in every 122 people is displaced by war, violence and persecution, says UN

War, violence and persecution left one in every 122 humans on the planet a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum at the end of last year, according to a stark UN report that warns the world is failing the victims of an “age of unprecedented mass displacement”.

The annual global trends study by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, finds that the level of worldwide displacement is higher than ever before, with a record 59.5 million people living exiled from their homes at the end of 2014.

The UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, said that although the world was experiencing “an unchecked slide” into an era of massive forced global displacement, it seemed unwilling to tackle the causes.

“It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is [a] seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace,” he said.

The report also notes that the wealthy countries are relying overwhelmingly on poorer states to take in those who have been forced to abandon their homelands: in 2014, 86% of refugees were in regions or countries deemed economically less developed.

Twenty years ago, developing regions hosted about 70% of the world’s refugees; last year, countries ranked least developed by the UN were home to 3.6 million refugees – or 25% of the global total.

All 50 US states fail to meet global police use of force standards, report finds

Amnesty International report describes ‘shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life’ as nine states have no laws to deal with police force

Every state in the US fails to comply with international standards on the lethal use of force by law enforcement officers, according to a report by Amnesty International USA, which also says 13 US states fall beneath even lower legal standards enshrined in US constitutional law and that nine states currently have no laws at all to deal with the issue.

The stinging review comes amid a national debate over police violence and widespread protest following the high-profile deaths of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; 43-year-old Eric Garner in New York; 50-year-old Walter Scott in South Carolina; and 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – all unarmed black men killed by police within the past 11 months.

Amnesty USA executive director Steven Hawkins told the Guardian the findings represented a “shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life”.

“While law enforcement in the United States is given the authority to use lethal force, there is no equal obligation to respect and preserve human life. It’s shocking that while we give law enforcement this extraordinary power, so many states either have no regulation on their books or nothing that complies with international standards,” Hawkins said.

The analysis, which Hawkins said he believed was the first of its kind, compared state statutes on law enforcement’s use of lethal force with international legislation, including the enshrinement of the right to life, as well as United Nations principles limiting lethal use of force to “unavoidable” instances “in order to protect life” after “less extreme means” have failed. Further UN guidelines state that officers should attempt to identify themselves and give warning of intent to use lethal force.

Amnesty found that in all 50 states and Washington DC, written statutes were too broad to fit these international standards, concluding: “None of the laws establish the requirement that lethal force may only be used as a last resort with non-violent means and less harmful means to be tried first. The vast majority of laws do not require officers to give a warning of their intent to use firearms.”

Bank withdrawals surge, revenue slumps as Greece defies creditors

Bank withdrawals accelerated and government revenue slumped as Greece defied its international creditors on Thursday, escalating a debt crisis that may reach a climax at a European Union summit next week.

Savers pulled out some 2 billion euros between Monday and Wednesday, senior banking sources told Reuters, double the amount that the European Central Bank granted Greek banks in extra emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) for the whole week.

The IMF meanwhile dashed any hope that Greece could avert default if it fails to repay a 1.6 billion euro ($1.8 billion) loan by the end of June, piling pressure on Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who showed no sign of yielding to the lenders.

If deposit flight continues to outpace ELA, it could force Greece to impose capital controls, as Cyprus did in 2013, to ration cash withdrawals and stop money fleeing the country.

The 2 billion euros taken out in just three days represents about 1.5 percent of total household and corporate deposits of 133.6 billion euros held by Greek banks as of end-April.

Before this week, withdrawals had been running at 200-300 million euros a day.

Merkel accuses Greece of breaking pledges despite 'unprecedented help'

Angela Merkel has delivered an unusually sharp rebuke to the Greek government, accusing it of failing to implement necessary structural reforms while insisting a last-minute deal was still possible to keep it in the eurozone.

In a parliamentary speech she said that although Greece had received “unprecedented help from its partners”, it had failed to honour commitments it made to lenders. She quoted from agreements Athens had signed earlier this year, saying they had been broken. ...

Gregor Gysi, of the far-left Die Linke (the Left party), accused Merkel’s grand coalition of “total failure” in its handling of the Greek crisis. “You are endangering the euro ... and with that European integration,” he told parliament. Gysi said the Greek government had inherited a financial “mess” from his social democrat and conservative predecessors, but had nevertheless managed to repay a total of €7bn (£5bn) of debt to creditors.

“The Greek government is prepared to save – but just not there where you would like them to,” Gysi said, pointing a finger at Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

Goldman Sachs restricts intern workday to 17 hours in wake of burnout death

The benevolent firm introduced new work hours for summer interns after Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern died from seizure induced by all-nighters

Go home before midnight, and don’t come back before 7am. Goldman Sachs – one of Wall Street’s toughest firms – has told interns they have got to work hard, but not too hard.

The new rules, introduced for this summer’s crop of investment banking interns, have been introduced “to improve the overall work experience of our interns”, a Goldman Sachs spokesman said. All of its summer interns across the world were informed of the new working hours rule on their first day in the office earlier this month.

Wall Street’s shift to caring capitalism comes in the wake of the death of a 21-year-old Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern who had regularly pulled all-nighters in a desperate bid to impress his bosses.

Hat tip JayRaye:

25 Years Later: Lessons From The Organizers Of Justice For Janitors

On June 15, 1990, the Los Angeles Police Department viciously attacked immigrant janitors who were striking for the right to organize in Century City, Los Angeles. In a story that is now all too familiar, the police claimed they were defending themselves. Only later, when TV news footage exposed the police clubbing non-violent strikers, was the self-defense claim discredited. Two women miscarried, dozens were hospitalized, and 60 strikers and supporters were jailed.

After the violence, the workers regrouped in a nearby park where one of the strikers said, “What they did to us today in front of the TV cameras, is the way the police treat us every day.” Another woman striker told a reporter, “I wasn’t robbing a bank or selling drugs, I’m simply asking for an increase in pay but the police beat us as if we were garbage.” ...

Over the next weeks, public outrage at the police helped galvanize support for the strikers. Janitors in Century City won their union, doubling their pay and benefits. Century City also proved a tipping point for the Justice for Janitors campaign. Many in the labor movement had argued that janitors were impossible to organize—they were undocumented, part-time, subcontracted, workers of color—but the campaign demonstrated clearly that not only could these workers organize, they could win.

Emboldened by success in Century City, Janitors in Washington, D.C. blocked the 14thStreet Bridge with school buses, effectively shutting down the nation capital’s rush hour commute.

At the University of Miami, Janitors fasted for weeks as part of their lengthy and winning strike. Workers in wheel chairs, weakened by the fast, surrounded the university’s president, Donna Shalala and chanted in Spanish, “Union or death!” In Houston, 5,000 Janitors won a first-time union contract in a “right-to-work” state, despite the fact that bail was set at more than $20 million for people arrested for non-violent acts of civil disobedience in the city. Workers in cities across the nation went on strike in support of the Houston Janitors, and allies in Europe occupied buildings. Finally, pension fund trustees in charge of $1 trillion in workers’ pension fund capital adopted “responsible contractor” procedures—committing to invest only in office buildings where janitors were treated fairly.

The Justice for Janitors campaign succeeded because it relentlessly went after the building owners and financiers at the top of the real estate industry—the people who truly had power over the janitors’ livelihood—not the cleaning companies who were powerless subcontractors.

Clinton Campaign Fundraises With Pro-TPP Lobby Firm As Congress Reschedules Trade Vote

While Hillary Clinton continues to hedge her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the related issue of trade promotion authority, her campaign is partnering with a pro-TPP/TPA law and lobby firm to raise cash.

The House Rules Committee held an “emergency meeting” at 4:40 p.m. on Wednesday to plan how to move forward with TPA.

At 5:00 p.m., the Clinton campaign was holding a Washington, D.C., fundraiser with the McGuireWoods law firm’s PAC. According to lobby registration documents, the firm’s McGuireWoods Consulting subsidiary is lobbying on behalf of Smithfield Foods to help pass both the TPP and TPA.

Pope Francis: "Bold Cultural Revolution" Needed to Save Planet from Climate Change & Consumerism

Also of interest:

Colombia's pipes to nowhere: villagers die of thirst as corruption stalls dam project