This evening's music features San Francisco area one man band Jesse Fuller.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Detainee alleges CIA sexual abuse, torture beyond Senate findings

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used a wider array of sexual abuse and other forms of torture than was disclosed in a Senate report last year, according to a Guantanamo Bay detainee turned government cooperating witness.

Majid Khan said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals, twice videotaped him naked and repeatedly touched his "private parts" – none of which was described in the Senate report. Interrogators, some of whom smelled of alcohol, also threatened to beat him with a hammer, baseball bats, sticks and leather belts, Khan said.

Khan's is the first publicly released account from a high-value al Qaeda detainee who experienced the "enhanced interrogation techniques" of President George W. Bush's administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.

Khan's account is contained in 27 pages of interview notes his lawyers compiled over the past seven years. The U.S. government cleared the notes for release last month through a formal review process. ...

"I wished they had killed me," Khan told his lawyers. He said that he experienced excruciating pain when hung naked from poles and that guards repeatedly held his head under ice water. ...

Khan's description of his experience matches some of the most disturbing findings of the U.S. Senate report, the product of a five-year review by Democratic staffers of 6.3 million internal CIA documents. ... Years before the report was released, Khan complained to his lawyers that he had been subjected to forced rectal feedings. Senate investigators found internal CIA documents confirming that Khan had received involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration.

FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over US cities

The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found. ...

U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Even basic aspects of the program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department's inspector general. ...

"These are not your grandparents' surveillance aircraft," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the flights significant "if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft."

Army War College recommends New Detente

The unexpected May 12 meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at Sochi, Russia, suggested the beginning of a new direction for the Ukraine crisis. Suddenly, it seemed possible that the U.S. would join last winter’s Minsk 2 agreement drawn up to resolve Ukraine’s civil war.

It is therefore disappointing to see that developments since the parley have been uniformly negative. But a surprising source, the U.S. Army War College, sees a possibly promising outcome. It recently issued a report exploring different scenarios of how U.S.-Russian tensions may play out over Ukraine and suggesting that Washington and its NATO allies adopt a more conciliatory and accommodationist approach to Moscow. ...

With this deterioration in relations since mid-May, it is striking to find a promising recommendation at the close of a study (PDF) out this month from the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, titled “From Cooperation to Competition: The Future of U.S.-Russian Relations.” ...

The study’s half-dozen hypotheticals seem at first glance to be rehearsals for an imminent disaster. Collectively, however, they demonstrate that there is no stable solution without accommodation with Russia — what is likely to be disdained by more hawkish members of the U.S. national security establishment as appeasement. ...

The study concludes that the U.S. has fallen into a “reactive posture” that creates a risk of “misunderstanding” and threat of serious violent confrontation. By shaping the present stand-off in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe into scenarios that largely favor Moscow’s options, the study makes a strong case that Washington and its NATO allies would be wise to stand down.

How the US Helped ISIS

A recently declassified US military intelligence document is further evidence of US complicity. Formerly classified as “secret,” an August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report was among a batch of documents obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch. ...

American officials claimed the ascendancy of ISIS had caught American intelligence by surprise. Yet in the 2012 report — which was circulated widely through the US government — the DIA foresaw the creation of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria. It also said that Islamic State of Iraq could “return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi” and declare an “Islamic state” in western Iraq and eastern Syria.

More than that, the report says the creation of an Islamic state was precisely the goal of the foreign governments that support the opposition:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor) and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

The document previously identifies, in a slightly different context, “supporting powers” as “Western countries, the Gulf States, and Turkey.” Even if one interprets the document to exclude the United States from the “supporting powers” — indeed, why would its intelligence agency tell the US government what its policy was? — it reveals that at least as early as 2012, the United States knew that its client states sought the creation of an “Islamic state.” Two years would pass before the United States offered its peep of performance protest.

More broadly, the United States participated in a war against the Syrian government that turned Islamic State of Iraq into a regional power encompassing — and devastating — large parts of two countries. Such an outcome was predictable — and indeed predicted by the US government itself.

While American politicians and pundits have blamed the ascendance of ISIS on former Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki and Assad — or on the removal of American troops from Iraq — the DIA report reminds us that the key event in the rise of ISIS was the corresponding rise of the insurgency in Syria.

Defense Secretary: Nothing Will Stop US Operations in South China Sea

In an interview today with the BBC, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter threatened further US military involvement in the South China Sea, saying nothing would stop the United States from carrying out overflights and naval patrols through the area as they have for years.

The comments are a continuation of increasingly bellicose US rhetoric against China over the construction of artificial islands in the Spratly chain. China is one of several nations with competing claims in the Spratlys, and the US has claimed China’s land reclamation program threatens a regional war.

Bernanke blames Congress as China flexes economic muscles

Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday rebuked US lawmakers for allowing China to steal a march with a new Asian bank that threatens to upend Washington's oversight of the world economic order.

Speaking in Hong Kong, Bernanke also echoed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in saying China's currency was "much better aligned" today, after Western criticism that Beijing cheats in global trade by distorting the yuan's exchange rate.

With the launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its plans to gradually roll out the yuan as an international currency, China is flexing its economic muscles to the consternation of some US critics.

But, Bernanke said, the US Congress only had itself to blame after refusing to ratify reforms agreed in 2010 that would have given greater clout to China and other emerging powers in the IMF.

It remains "better to have a global unified system" playing to standardised rules, he told an audience of investors on the sidelines of the World Business Forum in Hong Kong.

"But I understand entirely that if the Congress will not allow the (IMF's) governance system to appropriately reflect the changing economic weights, then I understand why other countries would say 'let's take our marbles and go home'," Bernanke said.