This evening's music features soul singer Laura Lee.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

LA Times Editors Advocate Prosecution of Sources

When it comes to taking the lead in advocating for the criminalization of leaking and demanding the lengthy imprisonment of our source, it hasn’t been the U.S. Government performing that role but rather – just as was the case for WikiLeaks disclosures – those who call themselves “journalists.” Just think about what an amazing feat of propaganda that is, one of which most governments could only dream: let’s try to get journalists themselves to take the lead in demonizing whistleblowers and arguing that sources should be imprisoned! As much of an authoritarian pipe dream as that may seem to be, that is exactly what happened during the Snowden debate. ...

So many journalists were furious about the revelations, and were demanding prosecution for it, that there should have been a club created called Journalists Against Transparency or Journalists for State Secrecy and it would have been highly populated. They weren’t even embarrassed about it. There was no pretense, no notion that those who want to be regarded as “journalists” should at least pretend to favor transparency, disclosures, and sources. They were unabashed about their mentality that so identifies with and is subservient to the National Security State that they view controversies exactly the same way as those officials: someone who reveals information that the state has deemed should be secret belongs in prison – at least when those revelations reflect poorly on top U.S. officials. ...

I hadn’t intended to use the two-year anniversary to write about these media issues – until I read the editorial this week from the Los Angeles Times demanding that Snowden return to the U.S. and be prosecuted for his transparency crimes. Isn’t it extraordinary that people who want to be regarded as journalists would write an editorial calling for the criminal prosecution of a key source? Principles aside: just on grounds of self-interest, wouldn’t you think they’d want to avoid telling future sources that the Los Angeles Times believes leaking is criminal and those who do it belong in prison? ...

The LA Times itself constantly publishes illegal leaks, though the ones it publishes usually come from top government officials. Indeed, for years it employed a national security report, Ken Dilanian, whose specializes in stenographically disseminating the pro-government claims which government officials want him to convey (and, totally unsurprisingly, Dilanian himself became one of the leading journalistic opponents of the Snowden disclosures, and, now with AP, this week was bemoaning that Snowden made Americans aware of so much about what their government has been doing to the internet). ...

These journalists are literally agents of political power. Just as countless journalists demanded Snowden’s imprisonment while never uttering the same about James Clapper or David Petraeus, the LA Times editors want Snowden imprisoned but not the leakers whose leaks make the U.S. Government look good, much of which gets laundered in that particular paper.

Obama’s ‘G-1-plus-6′

The “G-7 summit” at a resort in Germany’s picturesque Bavaria region is likely to show whether “G-7” should be called “G-1-plus-6” – number “one” being what President Barack Obama continues to call the “only indispensable country in the world”; the “six” being those countries that Russian President Vladimir Putin has labeled Washington’s “junior partners.” ...

Last year, the West was in high dudgeon over what it deemed “Russian aggression” and what Secretary of State John Kerry termed Russia’s “Nineteenth Century behavior.” After all, the U.S. and its allies are well known for always respecting the territorial integrity of other countries regardless of the circumstances. Okay, well, maybe not.

However, at the Bavarian summit, the U.S. is hoping to rekindle some of that old outrage to get the European Union to extend economic sanctions on Russia, though they are hurting the EU’s struggling economies, too.

The main question is whether German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, who have witnessed up-front-and-personal the behavior of Washington’s neocon policymakers and their Ukrainian puppets, will summon the courage to act like adults. ...

Merkel and Hollande have had the chance personally to take the measure of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his client relationship with the U.S. At a very different kind of summit on Feb. 11-12 in Belorussia, with U.S. representatives pointedly not invited and only Poroshenko reflecting U.S. objectives, Merkel and Hollande worked out with him and Putin the so-called “Minsk II” package agreement that included a ceasefire – which pretty much held until just recently – and a mechanism for resolving the political confrontation between the post-coup regime in Kiev and the ethnic Russian resistance in the east.

Merkel and Hollande are no political novices. And, if they know their history, they know what a Pétain or a Quisling looks like. In any case, they cannot have failed to recognize what Poroshenko looks like and how he continues to do the bidding of the neocons running U.S. policy on Ukraine, who are hell-bent on demonizing Putin and ostracizing Russia – all with little heed to the economic and longer-term security damage inflicted on “junior partners” like Germany and France.

Nuclear missiles could be sited again on British soil in new 'Cold War' with Russia

The UK could site American new nuclear missiles on British soil amid heightened tensions with Russia, Philip Hammond has indicated.

The comments raise the prospect of a return to a Cold War-type arms race with Russia over the use of nuclear missiles

The Foreign Secretary said there were “worrying signs” about the increased activity of Russian forces and the UK would consider the pros and cons of taking US intermediate-range weapons.

Mr Hammond said there was “no clear sign” of an imminent attack on Ukraine but Vladimir Putin is “keeping his options open”.

But he warned against making “unnecessary provocations” against Russia, which has a “sense of being surrounded and under attack”.

White House Backs Israeli Attacks on Gaza Strip

Fresh off the latest round of Gaza rockets and Israeli airstrikes against the strip, the White House has issued  statement endorsing any Israeli attacks on the strip, saying they have the right to take whatever military action they see fit to “defend their nation.”

There have been two spates of rocket fire from Gaza, both by the ISIS-linked Omar Brigades. Neither did any damage. The Israel airstrikes have centered on Hamas, despite Hamas fighting against the Omar Brigades, and warning Israel that the strikes are being done by the smaller faction explicitly to try to start a war they can take advantage of.

Plunged into uncertainty, Turkey could face early election

Turkey faces the prospect of weeks of political turmoil after the ruling AK Party lost its parliamentary majority in weekend polls, dealing a blow to President Tayyip Erdogan's ambitions to acquire sweeping new powers. ...

Some voters may have been disillusioned by Erdogan's increasingly bellicose tone, others wary of his plans to amass further power or alarmed by recent graft scandals around the government that Erdogan ascribed to attempts to topple him and which he cited in launching a purge of the judiciary.

Decisive was the success of a pro-Kurdish opposition party campaigning on a broad leftist agenda that surged ahead to enter parliament.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters the AKP would try to form a coalition government as its first option and was optimistic that it would be able to do so, but added that an early election could be on the cards if it failed. ...

"The possibility of a government coming out of the current situation is very slim," one senior AKP official said, ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and party leaders to evaluate Sunday's outcome.

"With these results, an early election seems inevitable."

South Carolina ex-police officer indicted in death of black man

A grand jury on Monday indicted a white former police officer on a murder charge for the shooting death of a black man in North Charleston, South Carolina, the prosecutor overseeing the case said.

Michael Slager, 33, was fired from his patrolman job after being charged with murder in the April 4 death of Walter Scott, 50, who was fatally shot in the back as he ran from Slager following a traffic stop.

Video of the shooting captured by a bystander on his cellphone was widely distributed and the death reignited a public outcry over police treatment of African Americans that flared last year after killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, New York City and elsewhere.

With 2°C Target Falling Swiftly Out of Sight, Inaction on Climate a 'Crime Against Humanity'

As representatives from nearly all the world's nations meet in Bonn, Germany this week with the aim of building a framework for a final deal that can be signed at the UN climate summit in Paris later this year, voices from the least developed countries and members of civil society are warning that the major powers are still offering far too little in the way of meaningful action.

According to the sharpest critics of the largest polluting nations—which includes the U.S., Canada, China, and the European Union—a continued failure to make bold and enforceable reductions of greenhouse gas emissions should be considered nothing less than a "crime against humanity."

As observers describe progress at the talks in Bonn as moving at a snail's pace, the attempt to forge a meaningful agreement for Paris appears to be slipping quickly through the fingers of world leaders.

Also of interest:

David Graeber and the Bureaucratic Utopia of Drone Warfare

The Bomb Iran Lobby Gears Up for 2016

Killing the Black Panthers