Evening Blues Preview 6-4-15

This evening's music features blues singer Georgia White.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Back from the dead: US officials to ask secret court to revive NSA surveillance

The Obama administration intends to use part of a law banning the bulk collection of US phone records to temporarily restart the bulk collection of US phone records.

US officials confirmed to the Guardian that in the coming days they will ask a secret surveillance court to revive the program – deemed illegal by a federal appeals court – all in the name of “transitioning” the domestic surveillance effort to the telephone companies that generate the so-called “call detail records” the government seeks to access.

The unconventional and unexpected legal circumstance depends on a section of the USA Freedom Act, which Obama signed into law on Tuesday, that provides a six-month grace period to prepare the surveillance and legal bureaucracies for a world in which the National Security Agency is no longer the repository of bulk US phone metadata.

During that time, the act’s ban on bulk collection will not yet take effect.

But the NSA stopped its 14-year-old collection of US phone records at 8pm ET on Sunday, when provisions of the Patriot Act that authorized it until that point lapsed. The government will argue it needs to restart the program in order to end it.

"These are War Crimes": Shocking Details Emerge of U.S. Resident Majid Khan’s Torture by CIA

This is a very interesting article, well worth a full read. Here's a taste:

ISIS Forces That Now Control Ramadi Are Ex-Baathist Saddam Loyalists

The fall of Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province, to the Islamic State last month has frayed nerves in Washington, but what few appear to grasp is that ISIS’s May offensive has given Ramadi back to its former owners — the ex-Baathist Sunni terrorists known as the Former Regime Loyalists. The FRLs, as they’re called, were Saddam Hussein’s most ardent followers, the same fighters whom the United States fought non-stop for eight years. Their resurgence has implications not just for the United States but for ISIS itself. For while these forces may fly the ISIS flag today, their ultimate plans for Iraq are quite different than those of the “caliphate.”

ISIS’s roots in Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party are deep — many of the group’s most devoted commanders, advisers and fighters started out as Baathists. The ex-Baathists essentially run ISIS, and their past is evident in the tactics they are using now. ...

Der Spiegel magazine recently obtained Haji Bakr’s handwritten notes and organizational diagrams for creating an ISIS spy agency based on Saddam’s own intelligence agencies. The notes, the magazine reported, confirmed what American intelligence agencies had assumed for well over a decade — that the ex-Baathists ran almost everything in Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Since 2003 these ex-Baathists have been ruthlessly pulling the strings of the jihadists in Iraq. First they facilitated al Qaeda’s entry into the insurgency, then they built them hundreds of car bombs and provided intelligence on American operations. ...

Recall that from the moment the U.S. Army entered Baghdad, the coming Sunni terror insurgency was manned by almost 100,000 FRL officers from the most loyal organizations. This number included 30,000 commandos from Saddam’s Fedayeen; 26,000 Special Republican Guards; 31,000 spies, analysts and enforcers from five major intelligence agencies; as well as 6,000 seasoned combat officers — all freshly fired by Ambassador Bremer through his General Order #2. These people didn’t vanish into thin air after the invasion; they went underground, as had been planned long before the war, and formed the largest insurgent group in Iraq, the Army of the Mujahideen. They also took over others, such as Ansar al Sunna, giving them an Islamic patina to inspire resistance. ...

Simply put, ISIS today is essentially a Baathist-organized amalgam of virtually every Sunni tribal and jihadist insurgent group the United States has fought since April 2003. It is fueled by the ideology of al Qaeda and is under the nominal leadership of foreign terrorists. No matter that foreign fighters are the amirs with high-level roles, and that it took 12 years to usurp and merge all of those groups and to liberate the Sunni governorates. Ex-Baathists like Haji Bakr and al-Douri have helped ISIS’s Iraqi “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, manage it brilliantly.

Missile maker: MH17 shot down by Ukrainian missile

The Russian maker of the Buk air defense missile system said Tuesday that it has concluded that Malaysian Airlines flight 17 was downed by an older version of the missile, which isn’t in service with the Russian military but is in Ukrainian arsenals. ...

Mikhail Malyshevsky, an adviser to the director general of the missile maker, state-controlled Almaz-Antei consortium, said at a news conference Tuesday that its analysis was based on photographs of the wreckage available to the public. He said the holes in the plane’s parts were consistent with a specific type of Buk missile and its warhead.

Each of the Buk subtypes has its warhead rigged with shrapnel of a specific shape. This variation of the missile is in the Ukrainian military arsenals, but not in the Russian, said Almaz-Antei director Yan Novikov.

Novikov said that in 2005 when Ukraine contacted the consortium regarding the maintenance of its Buk systems, it had 991 such missiles. ...

Rebels have staunchly denied even possessing a functioning Buk missile launcher at the time that MH17 was brought down, although one was seen in separatist-controlled Snizhne by AP reporters a few hours before the plane crashed. ...

Novikov and Malyshevsky said that the company’s analysis of shrapnel impact on the plane’s fragments allowed it to pinpoint the location of the missile launcher, which they said was placed near the town of Zaroshenske. A missile launched from Snizhne would have incurred different damage, they said.

The Vietnam Syndrome and the Project for a New American Century

The Forgotten Massacres

On the morning of September 30, 1965, a small group of army officers and Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) members attempted a coup against the Indonesian army leadership. Six army generals were killed, but the coup failed and was crushed by surviving army leaders in a few days. Together with other right-wing forces, the army, under the command of Gens. Suharto and Abdul Haris Nasution, retaliated.

Hundreds of thousands of real and suspected communists were massacred, and a new, military-dominated regime under Suharto was installed. Western powers like the US, Britain, and the Netherlands condoned and often actively supported the massacres. ...

Within days of the coup, US and British officials began making plans to exploit the political situation. The coup offered them the chance to crush the PKI, a party that Western officials feared was getting dangerously close to state power. ...

The Indonesian government still refuses to admit the killings were systematic violations of human rights. No one has ever been held accountable for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, and not a single one of the many known mass graves has been fully excavated to give the victims a decent burial. ...

The massacres achieved their goal. To this day, the Indonesian left has not recovered."

Republican Jeb Hensarling Attacks Democrats for “Throwing Wall Street a Big, Wet Kiss”

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling called out Democrats on Wednesday for their support of the Export-Import bank, which mostly subsidizes big business.

“Now, how many times have we heard Democrats vilify Wall Street banks?” the Texas Republican asked. “By reauthorizing Ex-Im, my Democratic colleagues are simply throwing Wall Street a big, wet kiss.” ...

Citing figures from a Mercatus Center report, he said, “the big banks profit off Ex-Im like few others. The latest data I’ve seen shows JP Morgan Chase received $5.1 billion in assistance, Citigroup $1.5 billion, Wells Fargo half a billion dollars, and HSBC almost $1 billion.” ...

“Just six weeks ago the ranking member asked the question, ‘Why is it that the richest of the folks in the businesses in this country, who have so many paid lobbyists … [are] able to direct the public policy in ways the average citizen cannot do?’ Boeing, which receives fully one-third of Ex-Im’s support, spent $35 million in lobbying expenses in the last Congress to help keep Ex-Im afloat. Their top five executives made $48.6 million in 2013 alone. The public reports from the other top beneficiaries of Ex-Im like GE, Caterpillar, Exxon Mobil look pretty similar. So I would say to my friend the ranking member, perhaps their paid lobbying is so successful and their executives are getting so rich because you’re doing everything you can to help them.”

Hillary Clinton's State Department Increased Chemical Arms Sales To Middle East Countries That Gave To Clinton Foundation

As Egyptian democracy protesters massed in the streets of Cairo in 2011, provoking a bloody crackdown from the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented herself as a champion of human rights. Clinton was “deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters,” she told reporters at the State Department. “Egyptian authorities,” she urged, should not impede “peaceful protests.”

But behind the scenes, Clinton pursued contrasting aims. She cautioned the White House about backing the ouster of President Mubarak, whom she had previously described as a family friend. Her State Department cleared Egypt to continue purchasing arms the U.S. government classified as "toxicological agents,” a broad designation that included chemical and biological weapons, as well as vaccines -- this, at the very moment Mubarak’s forces were unleashing one toxicological agent, tear gas, against protesters demanding his ouster.

The Clinton-run State Department’s approval of chemical and biological exports to the Egyptian government increased in volume just as dollars flowed from Mubarak-linked entities into the coffers of Clinton family concerns. A group closely associated with the Mubarak government paid Bill Clinton a $250,000 speaking fee in 2010, less than 4 months before the Egyptian revolution began. In 2012, a firm with an ownership stake in the company that manufactured the tear gas reportedly used by Egyptian security forces against the uprising paid $100,000 to $250,000 for another Bill Clinton speech.

The approval of American chemical weapons sales to Egypt as Mubarak’s associates were stocking Clinton family interests with cash is but one example of a dynamic that prevailed though Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. During the roughly two years of Arab Spring protests that confronted authoritarian governments with popular uprisings, Clinton’s State Department approved $66 million worth of so-called Category 14 exports -- defined as "toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment" -- to nine Middle Eastern governments that either donated to the Clinton Foundation or whose affiliated groups paid Bill Clinton speaking fees.

That represented a 50 percent overall increase in such export approvals to the same countries over the two years prior to the Arab Spring, according to an International Business Times review of State Department documents. In the same time period, Arab countries that did not donate to the Clinton Foundation saw an overall decrease in their State Department approvals to purchase chemical and biological materials. The increase in chemical, biological and related exports to Clinton Foundation donors was part of a larger jump in overall arms sales authorized by Hillary Clinton’s State Department to foreign governments that gave her family’s foundation at least $54 million, according to a previous IBTimes analysis.

Also of interest:

Frustrated NSA Now Forced To Rely On Mass Surveillance Programs That Haven’t Come To Light Yet

The South China Sea Word War

Why Bernie Sanders is a Dead End

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mimi's picture

so happy I don't want to read your EB... Smile Reminds me a bit of the Charleston music, my aunts used to dance to in the 1920ies.
Off to read, but I have headaches already, I hope I'll understand the ISIS stuff. Don't you want to live off-grid somewhere in a lush, green garden with a light breeze caressing your skin, swinging in a hammock, gliding with one eye over the ocean and the other one over a nice book or just day dreaming away thinking as much as nothing?
I-m so happy

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It appears that the Assad government is going to conceed the last of its strongholds in eastern Syria.
Deir ez-Zor

Syrian regime forces started evacuating the contents of the national museum of Deir ez-Zor, amid growing power of the Islamic State militants (IS/ISIS) in the province, locals reported Friday.
“The pro-regime forces transferred the museum’s contents in the midnight to an unknown destination,” an eyewitness told ARA News on the condition of anonymity for security concerns...
“This process is a prelude to the entire withdrawal of the regime forces from the city, similar to what happened in Palmyra,” he said.
The source added that buildings of the Assad Hospital, the University of al-Furat, the University of al-Jazeera and the State Security Division in Deir ez-Zor have been completely evacuated.
“Apparently, the regime is preparing to hand over the city of Deir ez-Zor to the terrorists of ISIS,” al-Din said, adding that families of the security officers have left the city days ago,” the source added.
Pro-regime forces have also evacuated the Ayyash military warehouses in Deir ez-Zor last week.

Nearly a quarter of a million people have been trapped in Deir ez-Zor for over a year. Relief supplies have not been able to reach the town for months. There is nowhere for the people there to flee except through hundreds of miles of ISIS territory.

Meanwhile, on the edge of Syrian Kurdistan.

Islamic State group jihadists, emboldened by a string of battlefield victories, advanced Thursday to the gates of the Syrian city of Hasakeh after intense fighting with regime troops.
Now "IS is 500m away from the entrance of Hasakeh, after fierce clashes against regime forces south of the city," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.
He said IS had seized all military posts in that area of northeastern Syria, including an unfinished prison building and a power plant, after at least six suicide bombers struck on Wednesday.

At least the people of Hazakeh can flee into Syrian Kurdistan.
Both Hazakeh and Deir ez-Zor are provincial capitals. If they fall there will be nothing between Hama/Homs and Iraq except for ISIS.

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This is NOT good

A number of Sunni tribal sheikhs and tribes in Iraq's Anbar province have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a defection that comes as a major blow to the Iraqi government as it struggles to roll the Sunni insurgents back.
The sheikhs’ statement said the only way peace would come to Anbar province would be if the tribes joined ISIL. They said they were joining ISIL’s self-declared “caliphate” in order to “fight the infidels, apostates and Shias,” using a derogatory term to refer to them.
If the statement was given freely, the move would be very worrying for the Iraqi government. The inclusion of the al-Jumaili tribe in Wednesday’s pledge was of particular concern for Iraqi authorities, given the tribe's influence in the contested Anbar province.
But the pledge comes after a number of Sunni leaders in Anbar publicly criticized the involvement of hardline Shia militias in the fight to retake areas of the province from ISIL, including the provincial capital city of Ramadi, which fell last month.

The transition of this war to a straight-up sectarian war is nearly complete.

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link

The U.S. military is limited in its airstrikes because there are no Iraqi forces in strategic positions inside the city to direct strikes, ensuring they target militants and avoid civilian casualties.
"With no friendly forces in Ramadi, verifying ground targets is a challenge," said Air Force Capt. Andrew Caulk, an Air Force Central Command spokesman...
Sterling Jensen, a former political adviser to U.S. forces in Anbar Province, where Ramadi is located, said local Sunnis are fearful of the Shiite militias and have been reluctant to join Iraqi government efforts to expel militants in the region.
"Without local buy-in there is no way the ISF (Iraqi security forces) can advance," said Jensen, who keeps in regular touch with officials in the province.

In other words, the Shia militias can't retake Ramadi. If ISIS can somehow avoid alienating the Sunnis then Anbar province is lost to Baghdad.

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NCTim's picture

Screwed up when they purged the Sunnis and dissolved civil institutions.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

joe shikspack's picture

oh my! shocking!

i guess we can cancel those cakewalk lessons, so that we can do the official dance of welcome liberators.

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CBS went there

Here’s the premise of the show, as Lyons explains it. A family dealing with what CBS euphemistically calls “financial setbacks” is given a briefcase full of $101,000. They are then shown another “financial setbacks”-plagued family and are told they must decide how much of the cash to share — if any. Unbeknownst to either family, this alienating setup is presented to both. Lyons writes that in the early episodes sent to critics, the families find their responsibility to be so great as to cause one woman to vomit and “several” to say it’s “the hardest decision they’ve ever made.”

How do they make such a decision? By engaging in a time-honored American tradition of separating the poor into two, mutually exclusive categories: those who deserve to be poor, and those who don’t. “The families visit each other’s homes and look through each other’s bills,” Lyons writes. Maybe they could afford to pay for their children’s surgery, if only they switched from Cheerios to Frosted Flakes! Essentially, CBS has decided Ronald Reagan’s stories about “welfare queens” and “young bucks” using welfare to buy Ferraris may not be technically true — but they’re true enough for reality TV.

Lyons calls this “altruism pornography,” but I think even that gives CBS — and the culture that allows the suits at the network to believe “The Briefcase” could be the next “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” — too much credit. Altruism pornography would involve episode after episode of charitable, kind-hearted giving. What’s happening here is much more dehumanizing, and requires much more of a buy-in on the part of its victims. It’s not porn; it’s “The Hunger Games.” And in its own way, it’s no less violent.

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gulfgal98's picture

After reading this, I am glad that we gave up tv five years ago. This is pure pornography. Sad

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy