This evening's music features early blueswoman Ida Cox.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

GCHQ’s Rainbow Lights: Exploiting Social Issues for Militarism and Imperialism

Over the weekend, the British surveillance agency GCHQ — the most extremist and invasive in the West — bathed its futuristic headquarters with rainbow-colored lights “as a symbol of the intelligence agency’s commitment to diversity” and to express solidarity with “International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.” GCHQ’s public affairs office proudly distributed the above photograph to media outlets. Referring to Alan Turing, the closeted-and-oppressed gay World War II British code-breaker just memorialized by an Oscar-nominated feature film, Prime Minister David Cameron’s office celebrated GCHQ’s inspirational lights:

Modern-day Turings at GCHQ celebrate #IDAHOT day by lighting their building in rainbow colours http://t.co/sYCCoUbtqT pic.twitter.com/sKBbSW5n42

— UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) May 17, 2015

This is all a stark illustration of what has become a deeply cynical but highly effective tactic. Support for institutions of militarism and policies of imperialism is now manufactured by parading them under the emotionally manipulative banners of progressive social causes.

The CIA loves this strategy. It now issues press releases hailing LGBT Pride Month and its “Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers and Allies (ANGLE),” which “heralded the start of Pride Month by unveiling a photography exhibit at CIA Headquarters showcasing LGBT officers, allied employees, and their families.” Last month, the spy agency actually set up a recruiting tent at the Miami Beach Gay Pride Parade. Also last month, it summoned Maureen Dowd to Langley to interview female agents — ones whom the NYT columnist hailed as a “perky 69-year-old blond” and a mid-30s “chic analyst” — to produce a glowing portrait of “the C.I.A. sisterhood.” What Good Progressive could possibly view such such a pro-gay and feminist institution with disdain?

Neocons have long adeptly exploited this tactic and are among its pioneers. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, Americans were inundated with stories about the Taliban’s oppression of women: as though feminism was part of the cause of that war. To help justify the invasion of that country, the Bush State Department suddenly discovered its profound concern for the plight of “Afghan women and girls.” Some American feminist groups dutifully took up the cause as U.S. bombs were falling and U.S. soldiers were invading that country, as though it were some sort of War for Feminism and the Liberation of Afghan Women.

What Good Progressive could oppose a war like that? The fact that the U.S. not only refrained from invading, but lavishly supported, all sorts of regimes that were at least as repressive to women as the Taliban went unmentioned.

Cronies Profited From Hillary's War

As Hillary Rodham Clinton embarks on her second presidential bid, [former Clinton fixer] Sidney Blumenthal’s service to the Clintons is again under the spotlight. Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr. Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview. ...

But an examination by The Times suggests that Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement was more wide-ranging and more complicated than previously known, embodying the blurry lines between business, politics and philanthropy that have enriched and vexed the Clintons and their inner circle for years.

While advising Mrs. Clinton on Libya, Mr. Blumenthal, who had been barred from a State Department job by aides to President Obama, was also employed by her family’s philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation, to help with research, “message guidance” and the planning of commemorative events, according to foundation officials. During the same period, he also worked on and off as a paid consultant to Media Matters and American Bridge, organizations that helped lay the groundwork for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Much of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government. The venture, which was ultimately unsuccessful, involved other Clinton friends, a private military contractor and one former C.I.A. spy seeking to get in on the ground floor of the new Libyan economy.

The projects — creating floating hospitals to treat Libya’s war wounded and temporary housing for displaced people, and building schools — would have required State Department permits, but foundered before the business partners could seek official approval.

It is not clear whether Mrs. Clinton or the State Department knew of Mr. Blumenthal’s interest in pursuing business in Libya; a State Department spokesman declined to say. Many aspects of Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement in the planned Libyan venture remain unclear. He declined repeated requests to discuss it.

There's lots of good information in this article by Jason Leopold, here's a small taste:

The Watchdog, the Whistleblower, and the Secret CIA Torture Report

On June 9, 2010, a CIA employee working on a secret review of millions of pages of documents about the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program contacted the CIA's internal watchdog and filed a complaint. The employee had come to believe that the CIA's narrative about the efficacy of the program — a narrative put forward by not just CIA officials, but also then-President George W. Bush — was false.

The CIA employee made the discovery while she was working on the Panetta Review. Named for former CIA Director Leon Panetta, the Panetta Review is a series of documents that top Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee say corroborates the findings and conclusions of the landmark report they released last December about the CIA's detention and interrogation program — that the torture of detainees in the custody of the CIA failed to produce unique and valuable intelligence, and that it was far more brutal than the CIA let on. ...

The CIA employee told the agency's internal watchdog that intelligence about a "second wave" of attacks al Qaeda planned in Los Angeles after 9/11 was misattributed. Interrogators had long claimed they learned about the planned attacks from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad after he was tortured. But in actuality, that intel came from another detainee: Majid Khan, currently the only legal US resident imprisoned at Guantanamo, according to documents from the CIA's Office of Inspector General (OIG). ...

The CIA claimed the intelligence that interrogators supposedly obtained from Muhammad thwarted the second wave of attacks and showed the effectiveness of the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by interrogators. But the fact that one of the CIA's own employees discovered that the information was collected from Khan while he was in the custody of a foreign government seems to support the Senate Intelligence Committee's conclusion that the program was mismanaged, and that the CIA provided an inaccurate portrayal to policymakers about the program's effectiveness.

Intelligence and US government officials told VICE News that the intel attributed to Muhammad after he was waterboarded — the intel the CIA employee discussed with the inspector general — had to with information that led to the capture of an alleged al Qaeda terrorist named Zubair. ... But details about Zubair were actually obtained using rapport-building techniques by interrogators working for a foreign government, the CIA employee told the inspector general. There are also numerous other examples in the Senate report of the CIA claiming intelligence was obtained from Muhammad when in reality it was obtained from Khan.

Is America About to Make a Fatal Mistake in the South China Sea?

An already tense and dangerous situation in the South China Sea threatens to become even worse.  The latest development focuses on reports that the United States is considering plans to initiate systematic military patrols with ships and planes in that volatile area. Without even waiting for confirmation that the reports are accurate, Beijing expressed its great displeasure regarding such a step.

If this actually comes to pass, Washington is about to deepen its involvement in a bitter, multi-sided territorial dispute.  The underlying issues are murky and complex.  Based on dubious interpretations of both history and international law, China claims an oceanic boundary that would convert some 80 percent of the South China Sea—and the small islands dotting itf—from international waters into Chinese territorial waters.  Beijing has begun to enforce its claims with air and naval patrols and major reclamation projects to build serviceable artificial islands (in one case, even including an runway) from nearly submerged reefs. Several neighboring countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, not only challenge Beijing’s claim, they assert significant territorial ambitions of their own. Vietnam has even commenced a more limited artificial island construction of its own. ...

Washington’s unsubtle backing of China’s rivals is encouraging them to take uncompromising stances that they may be incapable of enforcing without direct U.S. military involvement.  That is especially true of the Philippines.  Responding to prodding from its U.S. protector, Manila has announced ambitions to build a large naval base on its western coast near the disputed Spratly Islands to press its territorial claim there.   Such a move would further escalate tensions.

Instead of becoming more deeply entangled in the South China Sea quarrel, the United States needs to take a step back.  It is one thing to make clear to Beijing that Washington will never countenance China transforming 80 percent of that area into Chinese territorial waters.  It is quite another matter to implicitly back rival claimants and become a military participant in the underlying feuds.  Yet the United States has already done the former and seems poised to do the latter.  Such a course is likely to exacerbate an already dangerous security environment, and perhaps even more worrisome, create the prospect of a direct military confrontation between the United States and China.  Such an outcome would benefit no one.

Heh, in Macedonia people get appropriately pissed off when the government illegally wiretaps them.

Political Crisis in Macedonia Raises Fear of Ethnic Violence as Protests Flood Capital

Macedonia's political leaders failed to make headway on Monday during talks aimed at resolving the current political crisis in the small Balkan country. Despite an earlier joint pledge to respect the "values of democracy" and the "right to peaceful protests," ruling party and opposition leaders failed to compromise on a solution to end the unrest.

Protesters swarmed the streets of the Macedonian capital Skopje on Sunday, calling for Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to vacate office amid allegations that his government secretly recorded the telephone conversations of some 20,000 Macedonians — including politicians, religious leaders, and journalists. ...

Many fear the political unrest will revive enduring ethnic tensions between the Balkan nation's Macedonian majority and its Albanian minority, which makes up about one quarter of the country's 2.1 million population. ...

The current unrest comes just a few weeks after a deadly shootout between the police and ethnic Albanian gunmen in the northern town of Kumanovo, in which some 22 people — including 8 police officers and 14 members of an armed group — were killed and a further 37 officers were injured. ... The opposition has accused the government of fomenting ethnic discord, claiming that it had known about the rebels for a while and only decided to stage a violent intervention in order to rally Macedonian public opinion around the threat of Albanian nationalism.

Warren Whacks Obama on 'Broken Promises' of Corporate Trade Pacts

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took decisive aim at President Barack Obama's pending global trade pacts on Monday with the release of a new report, which argues that—despite pledges to the contrary—so-called "free trade" agreements have a record of undermining workers rights.

The 15-page staff report, Broken Promises: Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in Free Trade Agreements (pdf), contends that under previous agreements, the United States has repeatedly either failed to enforce or adopts unenforceable labor standards resulting in widespread labor-related human rights abuses.

"Supporters of past trade agreements have said again and again that these deals would include strong protections for workers, but assurances without strong enforcement are just empty promises," Senator Warren said in a press statement. "The facts show that, despite all the promises, these trade deals were just another tool to tilt the playing field in further of multinational corporations and against working families." ...

Citing analyses from the Government Accountability Office, the State Department, and the Department of Labor, that report charges that under Obama's watch, trade pacts have ushered in a host of abuses, from child labor to intimidation and violence against union organizers.

Also of interest:

The Infernal Cocktail Party Corruption of Washington’s Elite Media

The Misfire in Hersh's Big Bin Laden Story