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This evening's music features Motown r&b singer Martha Reeves. Enjoy!

"Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention - the defining injustice of Guantanamo - as his own policy."

-- Glenn Greenwald

News and Opinion

Guantanamo 'Built on How to Destroy a Human Being': Shaker Aamer Speaks For the First Time

Shaker Aamer, the last British resident to be held at Guantanamo Bay, has said British security officers saw him being tortured by American soldiers in Afghanistan and knew about subsequent torture in Cuba — but he does not want to sue the British government.

Speaking to the media for the first time since his release in October, the former US translator said Guantanamo was "built on how to destroy a human being totally," but he did not believe bringing a case to court would bring justice for "what happened in the past."

The Saudi national, who is married to a British woman with whom he has four children — one of whom was born the day he arrived at Guantanamo Bay — was seized by bounty hunters in Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001. He was transferred to Guantanamo in 2002 and was held on suspicion of being an al Qaeda operative. He was never charged with any crime and he was cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo in 2007. ...

A spokeswoman for the British government said on Sunday it did not participate in or condone torture. "Neither does the UK make use of any so-called enhanced interrogation techniques," she said. "We have consistently made clear our absolute opposition to such behaviour and our determination to combat it wherever and whenever it occurs."

Shaker Aamer 'not seeking prosecutions' over Guantánamo detention

In his first interview since returning home to London in October after being detained without charge for 14 years, Shaker Aamer suggested to the Mail on Sunday that Tony Blair and Jack Straw were aware that he was being tortured while they were in office. ...

Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland, told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show that “as with so many other things” Blair and Straw had a great deal to answer for. “They have to be asked the straight question of how could they possibly not have known about the fate that had befallen a British citizen,” he said. ...

In his interview with the Mail on Sunday, Aamer alleged that he had about 200 interrogations during the 14 years that he was held. He claimed to have been tortured using methods including sleep deprivation and being shackled to the floor in sub-zero temperatures. ...

Dominic Grieve, chair of the intelligence and security committee, said he hoped Aamer and other British former detainees would feel able to give evidence to his inquiry into UK involvement in torture.

Asked about the allegations that Straw and Blair would have known about the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo, Grieve said: “These are serious allegations and they are to be taken seriously and they are some of the issues that the intelligence and security committee will be asked to look into.”

Still Leading Merchants of Death, US Arms Sales Remain Sky High

Amid raging conflicts and historic human displacement, U.S.-based companies are still leading the world in arms sales—dominating the list of the top 100 weapons-producers and accounting for 54.4 percent of total revenues, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealed Monday.

Examining data from the 100 largest "arms-producing and military services" firms in the globe, SIPRI found that U.S. and Western European companies together account for 80.3 percent of the arms revenue for the top 100 giants worldwide.

This is a large slice of a giant pie. Last year, sales of arms by the top 100 totaled $401 billion, SIPRI finds.

The report notes that worldwide weapons sales have seen a slight decline of 1.5 percent between 2013 and 2014, due to a moderate reduction in arms sales for North American and Western European producers.

However, the sales by the prominent U.S.-based firm Lockheed Martin are off the charts. A report summary notes, "One company bucking the downward trend is Lockheed Martin, which has occupied the first position in the Top 100 since 2009. Its arms sales grew by 3.9 percent in 2014 to $37.5 billion."

In addition, Boeing, which is ranked just below Lockheed, saw a $4.4 billion increase in arms sales in 2014 and $28.3 billion total.

Obama to visit Pentagon to review ISIS strategy

President Barack Obama will visit the Pentagon on Monday to review the military campaign against ISIS with national security advisers, his first visit since attacks in San Bernardino and Paris.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest cautioned on Friday that no major policy shifts would come as a result of the meeting but that it is more of an "update." Obama is also set to give remarks following the meeting.

"They're always assessing whether or not there are some intensifications that can be used to benefit our strategy, but there is no specific announcement of a change that I know of that's planned for Monday, but we will see what the meeting yields," Earnest told reporters at the White House briefing.

Obama once again vowed that the United States is stepping up the campaign to destroy ISIS, during his weekly address issued Saturday.

"Our airstrikes are hitting ISIL harder than ever, in Iraq and Syria," Obama said. "We're taking out more of their fighters and leaders, their weapons, their oil tankers. Our special operations forces are on the ground -- because we're going to hunt down these terrorists wherever they try to hide."

Fmr. Bush Official says the Empire's Ship is Sinking

Thousands of Iraqis in Baghdad, Basra protest Turkish deployment in north

Thousands of Iraqis protested on Saturday against Ankara's deployment of troops to a base near the northern city of Mosul, with some burning Turkish flags and threatening violence against the soldiers for what they see as a violation of sovereignty.

News of the deployment of 150 Turkish soldiers earlier this month triggered a crisis between Ankara and Baghdad, which has appealed to the United Nations Security Council to demand their immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Ankara has refused, saying the troops were part of an international mission to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight Islamic State, which still controls a large part of the country. Baghdad denies inviting such a force. ...

"We consider any military presence on Iraqi land as foreign aggression which we should stand against using all possible means," Hadi al-Amiri, a Shi'ite lawmaker who heads the powerful armed Badr Organisation, told protesters in Baghdad.

Russian coast guard force Turkish ship to change course in Black Sea

Russia Warns Turkey After Naval ‘Close Call’ in Aegean Sea

Russia is once again warning Turkey against “provocations” tonight after an incident in the Aegean Sea, just off the coast of Lemnos, Greece, in which an anchored Russian destroyer opened fire on a Turkish fishing boat that came too close.

Russian officials reported that the Smetlivy was anchored off the coast of Lemnos when it noticed the Turkish fishing boat, the Geciclier-1, approaching to within a kilometer. They failed to respond to radio contact and semaphore, as well as flares fired by the destroyer. When the ship reached about 500 meters, the destroyer fired small arms “warning shots,” at which time they say the Geciclier-1 dramatically changed course.

France's Far-Right Kept Out of Power, But Leader Touts Party's 'Inexorable Rise'

After winning more votes than any other party in the the first round of regional elections last week in France, Marine Le Pen's far-right, anti-immigration National Front party failed to win any regions and was kept out of power in the second round of voting on Sunday.

Bolstered by fears about security and immigration in the wake of the attacks in Paris last month that killed 130 people, Le Pen's National Front (FN) had earlier appeared poised for victory on Sunday. But after the FN's early results — the best in the party's history — the Socialist party made a tactical decision to step down and withdraw its candidates from Le Pen's electoral strongholds in northern and southeastern France, urging their supporters to vote for former president Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative party instead.

Le Pen, who had hoped to use regional power as a springboard to boost her chances in 2017 presidential elections, lost by a huge margin in northern France on Sunday, where she led her party's ticket, attracting 42.8 percent of the votes in the run-off vs 57.2 percent for the conservatives.

In the southeast, another FN target where Le Pen's niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen was the FN's lead candidate, the conservatives scored 53.7 percent and the FN 46.2 percent, official results based on 84 percent of the votes said. ...

While it has been winning more and more votes in each election since then, its isolation in France's politics means it cannot strike the alliances it would need to win major constituencies. So it failed once more on Sunday to turn growing popularity into power.

National Front loses in 2nd round of French regional elections – exit polls

Looks like FN lost the elections but is winning the war thanks to Hollande laying the groundwork for a fascist state:

“Emergency” Measures May Be Written Into the French Constitution

Just hours into a terrorist attack that started on the evening of November 13, and would eventually claim 130 lives, François Hollande announced that France was reestablishing border controls, and used a 1955 law to proclaim a state of emergency.

This 60-year-old law gives French law enforcement wide and sweeping powers, freeing them from much of the normal judicial oversight. The law gives prefects, the French government’s local representatives, the ability to place people under house arrest, based merely on the suspicion of the intelligence service that they pose a threat to national security. They can also order police raids targeting any place where they think information about terrorism may be found, without a warrant.

Initially intended to last 12 days, the state of emergency was extended on November 19 for an additional three months by both chambers of parliament. During the vote in the lower house, only six MPs voted against the extension. ...

Since last month’s attacks, there have been some 2,500 police raids, and nearly a thousand people have been arrested or detained. French local and national press are now full of reports of questionable police raids. So outrageous were some cases that the French Interior Ministry had to send a letter to all prefects reminding them to “abide by the law.” ...

François Hollande, speaking in front of both chambers summoned in Versailles two days after the attacks, announced his plan to modify the French constitution in response to terrorism. ... A few weeks later, on December 1, the government unveiled the modification it plans to submit to the French parliament. The first measure would write the state of emergency into the constitution, because the 1955 law, even in its renewed 2015 form, is likely unconstitutional. ... The second modification would put into the constitution the ability to strip French citizenship from someone of dual nationality who has been convicted of “crimes against the fundamental interest of the Nation,” or terrorism.

'Saudis playing dangerous game as oil prices plunge'

US crude falls below $35/barrel

US crude oil just traded hands at $34.99 per barrel, a new near-seven year low.

WTI drops below $35 for the first time since Feb 2009 pic.twitter.com/sEFPcpjXnR

— Jonathan Ferro (@FerroTV) December 14, 2015

After Five Years of Legal Limbo, Sweden Agrees to Question Assange in London

Sweden reached a deal Sunday that will allow authorities to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living under asylum for the past three years.

Assange's legal team said the deal will allow the case to move forward while ensuring his safety.

"Julian Assange's rights need to be respected by Sweden and the United Kingdom. These countries have failed to do so until now," Baltasar Garzon, one of Assange's attorneys, told the BBC on Sunday. "Assange's only demands are that his fundamental rights are acknowledged and respected, including the asylum granted to him by Ecuador."

Swedish police will now be able to question Assange over a rape allegation after dropping two other sexual assault investigations, which expired after reaching a five-year statute of limitations. Assange has denied the allegations and said he fears arrest by Sweden would lead to his extradition to the U.S., where he faces possible trial over his involvement in WikiLeaks, including the 2010 publication of a trove of secret U.S. military and State Department documents.

In Powerful Warning to City Officials, Chicago Teachers Vote for Mass Strike

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) on Monday voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if contract disputes are not resolved, paving the way for members' second mass walkout since 2012 as city officials threaten further cuts and layoffs.

"Chicago Teachers Union members do not want to strike, but we do demand that you listen to us," said CTU vice president Jesse Sharkey. "Do not cut our schools, do not lay off educators or balance the budget on our backs."

CTU's 24,752 members voted over the course of three days, with a 91 percent turnout. Overall, 88 percent voted in favor of authorizing a strike.

A strike can only take place after mediation between teachers and city officials, so it would not happen before March 2016, Sharkey told the Chicago Tribune on Monday.

His statement following the vote specifically addressed Chicago Public Schools chief executive Forrest Claypool as well as Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who faces a growing call for resignation from grassroots groups demanding racial, social, and economic justice.

Uber and Lyft drivers look to Seattle to jump-start unionization effort

Seattle drivers working for taxi-hailing apps Uber and Lyft could get an early Christmas present on Monday when the city council is set to vote on whether to let them unionize. If the legislation were to pass, these on-demand drivers would be able to collectively bargain their future contract and pay.

Federal government has been hesitant to pass legislation relating to the “gig economy”, where freelance contractors provide the service in demand, but local and state governments have had to face the issue head on – setting up a politically explosive fight between the tech companies and officials.

“It’s clear the nature of work has shifted in part because of technology and in part because there are corporations that don’t like labor protections,” Mike O’Brien, a city council who introduced the Seattle measure, told the New York Times. “What is that reality going to look like? I believe there should be some solutions.” ...

Seattle drivers pushing for the legislation to pass belong to App-Based Drivers Association, ABDA, and are likely to join the Seattle Teamsters Local 117 union if it passes. The city has 14,000 registered drivers-for-hire that the Local 117 believes would choose it to represent them come time to negotiate a new contract.

Chicago Police Adopt Israeli Tactics

After more than a year of stonewalling and what some might call obstructing justice, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued an apology for the horrific execution of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason van Dyke. ... But apology or not, the underlying substantive issue is that the summary execution of McDonald was the sort of atrocity that one would expect to see in what the U.S. once called “police states.” In fact, one can imagine a death squad execution in El Salvador in the 1980s looking very similar on video to McDonald’s slaying. ...

Under Mayor Emanuel, a former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) volunteer, and Garry McCarthy, the now former Chicago Police Superintendent (Emanuel fired him Dec. 1), it seems that parts of Chicago were treated as if they were occupied territory under police or paramilitary rule.

How could this be in the civilian government of Chicago? In part, because Police Superintendent McCarthy and the City of Chicago sought out and received training by Israeli occupation forces in “counter-terrorism” policing, that is, “pacifying” a population through aggressive intelligence gathering and the application of military force. Counter-insurgency is the term used for when this doctrine is applied by military forces.

This collaboration between Israel and U.S. police agencies, including Chicago, emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Since then, by one count, at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from cities both large and small have received counter-terrorism training in Israel. ...

Over more than a decade, senior Chicago police officials have been studying Israel’s militarized police practices for how best to maintain a repressive military control over an occupied population living under permanent, strict martial, or occupation, law.

This policing model is being sold by Israel’s government to gullible or authoritarian-leaning U.S. police officials as a legitimate domestic policing model when, in fact, it is a military model of the sort used by militaristic, authoritarian regimes, customarily referred to as “fascist.”

LA Sheriff's Office Responds to Video of Deputies Shooting Man As He Crawls Away

Police in Southern California are facing scrutiny after dramatic video footage emerged that appears to show two white officers repeatedly shooting a black man as he attempted to crawl away from them.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office held a press conference on Sunday afternoon to address the video and shooting incident, which occurred Saturday morning outside a gas station in Lynwood, about 15 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. The sheriff's office identified the victim as Nicholas Robertson, 28, from Compton. He was reportedly a father of three. ...

Speaking at Sunday's press conference, Captain Steve Katz of the sheriff's office said that deputies received numerous reports before 11am on Saturday of an individual toting a handgun in the vicinity of a busy intersection in Lynwood, and that shots were fired in the area around that time. Katz shared video footage and photographs from a business overlooking the intersection by the gas station that he said showed Robertson "behaving erratically" and carrying a handgun.

Katz said Robertson was "yelling out expletives," and that a .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun was found at the scene of the incident. It wasn't loaded, Katz said, but Robertson had additional rounds on his person. Katz said they had no evidence that Robertson fired at police deputies, but that they were certain it had been fired "multiple times" earlier in the day.

A Holiday Note to Congress: Half of Your Country is In or Near Poverty

Recent reports have documented the growing rates of impoverishment in the U.S., and new information surfacing in the past 12 months shows that the trend is continuing, and probably worsening. 

Congress should be filled with guilt -- and shame -- for failing to deal with the enormous wealth disparities that are turning our country into the equivalent of a 3rd-world nation.

According to the Social Security Administration, over half of Americans make less than $30,000 per year. 

That's less than an appropriate average living wage of $16.87 per hour, as calculated by Alliance for a Just Society (AJS), and it's not enough -- even with two full-time workers -- to attain an "adequate but modest living standard" for a family of four, which at the median is over $60,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. 

Members of Congress, comfortably nestled in bed with millionaire friends and corporate lobbyists, are in denial about the true state of the American middle class. The once-vibrant middle of America has dropped to lower-middle, and it is still falling.

As Trump Surges, New Polls Underscore Corporate Media's 'Bernie Blackout'

New Wall Street Journal/ NBC News polling numbers out Sunday showed that Donald Trump continues to lead the wide and varied Republican presidential field and—despite increasingly inflammatory rhetoric—reached a new high with 27 percent support.

The latest survey comes on the heels of an analysis by the Tyndall Report which showed that media coverage of Donald Trump eclipses that of all his rivals from both parties.

According to the study of nightly news programs on NBC, CBS and ABC, Trump has received more network coverage than all the Democratic candidates combined and accounts for 27 percent of all campaign coverage thus far.

What's more, there appears to be a concerted "blackout" of news about Bernie Sanders, despite similar voter support.

As Eric Boehlert at Media Matters for America pointed out this week, "The network newscasts are wildly overplaying Trump, who regularly attracts between 20-30 percent of primary voter support, while at the same time wildly underplaying Sanders, who regularly attracts between 20-30 percent of primary voter support.

In fact, ABC World News Tonight devoted a total 81 minutes this year to Donald Trump's campaign and just about 20 seconds to Sanders' candidacy — a ratio of 81:1 which Boehlert calls a "stunning revelation." This comes despite the fact that a recent poll found that Sanders would beat Trump by eight points in the general election.

[My math on the coverage ratio comes up 3 times larger at 243:1. - js]

The War on Drugs Isn't Just Destroying Lives — It's Also Killing the Environment

Long-standing drug policies backed by the United Nations and financed by the United States have not only failed to slow global drug trafficking, they may also be driving widespread environmental degradation and accelerating climate change.

In a report published by the Open Society Foundation, researcher Kendra McSweeney calls for a broad reconsideration of conventional "cat and mouse" policies that have driven growers, producers, and traffickers into new frontiers, causing deforestation and inviting chemical contamination into some of the most sensitive ecosystems on the planet, including national parks and indigenous reserves. ...

While the environmental impacts of drug crop cultivation have been discussed in policy circles — the United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC) recognized that the herbicides and fertilizers used to grow and process coca are damaging to the environment, and more than 700,000 acres of forest were lost to coca crop cultivation between 2001 and 2013 — there has been little discussion about how drug policy itself is driving environmental degradation.

This is important, the report highlights, because UNODC policies work "in direct opposition to concurrent UN efforts to protect biodiversity, secure ecosystem services, ensure the rights of indigenous peoples, mitigate climate change, and promote sustainable development." It is a glaring institutional contradiction, McSweeney says, that should be confronted at the UNGASS session on current drug policy. ...

Fumigation campaigns, for example, are commonly used as a means of drug crop eradication. They have been a cornerstone of the 15-year, multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia, an aid package created by the United States to fight drug trafficking in the Central American country. For years, government planes sprayed glyphosate — the active ingredient in Monsanto's Round Up — onto illicit coca crops, with notable impacts on wildlife, food crops, livestock, and the health of nearby residents. ... Between 2001 and 2014, an estimated 1,124 square miles of primary forest were lost to coca cultivation in Colombia.

Leaders Sidestep Pentagon's Carbon Emissions at COP21

Climate Deal Sealed, Campaigners Say it's Time to Kick Corporate Polluters Out of Policy

As the dust settled in Paris on Sunday following the adoption of a landmark global climate agreement (pdf), the question remains, what happens next now that the world has reportedly reached the "end of the fossil fuel era?" And for many, the answer is simple: Kick the big corporate polluters out of the policy-making process—once and for all.

Among the COP21 pact's many shortcomings, according to environmental campaigners, is that it sets the aspirational goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5°C without providing any "meaningful" direction to how that is achieved.

Countries have essentially been left to their own devices to meet their individual greenhouse gas reduction targets, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (or INDCs). In reality, scientists have said that these individual pledges are not enough to reach the internationally agreed-upon goal of limiting warming "well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels."

With that in mind, campaigners say that the next essential step is for governments to decouple climate policy from those who benefit most from an economy based on fossil fuels.

"For climate policy— including the Paris Agreement—to compel the rapid transition our planet so desperately needs, we must first address this conflict of interest," said Jesse Bragg, media director for international corporate watchdog Corporate Accountability International.

"At the national level, emissions-intensive corporations have shaped our policies in their interest for decades and obscured their impacts on the environment. And, at the international level, these same corporations have forced themselves into every aspect of policymaking to not only influence policy outcomes but greenwash their otherwise dirty track records," he stated.

Chris Hedges: Capitalism’s Cult of Human Sacrifice

Bryan Parras stood in the shadows cast by glaring floodlights ringing the massive white, cylindrical tanks of the Valero oil refinery. He, like many other poor Mexican-Americans who grew up in this part of Houston, struggles with asthma, sore throats, headaches, rashes, nosebleeds and a host of other illnesses and symptoms. The air was heavy with the smell of sulfur and benzene. The faint, acrid taste of a metallic substance was on our tongues. The sprawling refinery emitted a high-pitched electric hum. The periodic roar of flares, red-tongued flames of spent emissions, leapt upward into the Stygian darkness. The refinery seemed to be a living being, a giant, malignant antediluvian deity.

Parras and those who live near him are among the hundreds of millions of human sacrifices that industrial capitalism demands. They are cursed from birth to endure poverty, disease, toxic contamination and, often, early death. They are forced to kneel like bound captives to be slain on the altar of capitalism in the name of progress. They have gone first. We are next. In the late stages of global capitalism, we all will be destroyed in an orgy of mass extermination to satiate corporate greed.

Idols come in many forms, from Moloch of the ancient Canaanites to the utopian and bloody visions of fascism and communism. The primacy of profit and the glory of the American empire—what political theorist Sheldon Wolin called “inverted totalitarianism”—is the latest iteration. The demand of idols from antiquity to modernity is the same: human sacrifice. And our cult of human sacrifice, while technologically advanced, is as primitive and bloodthirsty as that which carried out killings atop the great Aztec temple at Tenochtitlán. Not until we smash our idols and liberate ourselves from their power can we speak of hope. ...

The 21 international climate summits that have been held over the decades have produced nothing but empty rhetoric, false promises and rising carbon emissions. Paris was no different. We must physically obstruct the extraction, transportation and refining of fossil fuels or face extinction. Those who worship before the idols of profit will use every tool at their disposal, including violence, to crush us. This is a war waged between the forces of life and the forces of death. It is a war that requires us, in every way possible, to deny to these industries the profits used to justify gaiacide. It is a war we must not lose. 

Also of Interest

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

Shaker Aamer raises fresh questions about British involvement in torture

A Special Relationship: The United States is teaming up with Al Qaeda, again

Lots of Americans are cooperating with ISIS:

Threats and Violent Attacks Against Muslims in the U.S., Just From This Week

Big Banks In a Tizzy Want to Take Their Billions and Go Home

18 CEOs Called Out By Bernie Sanders For Taking Trillions In Bailouts, Evading Taxes, and Outsourcing Jobs

Backslash: Anti-surveillance gadgets for protesters

A Little Night Music

Martha & The Vandellas - Dancing in the Streets

Martha and the Vandellas - Tear It On Down

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Nowhere To Run

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Come and Get These Memories

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Quicksand

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - I can't dance to that music you're playin'

Martha Reeves + Dusty Springfield - Wishin' and hopin'

Martha & The Vandellas - Jimmy Mack

Martha & The Vandellas - I'm Ready for Love

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Spellbound

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Show Me The Way

Martha Reeves - Power of Love

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Easily Persuaded

Martha & The Vandellas - I Can't Wait Till Summer Comes

Martha Reeves, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins - Many Rivers To Cross

Martha Reeves - No one there

Martha & The Vandellas - Honey Chile

Martha Reeves - Higher and higher