This evening's music features r&b piano player Amos Milburn.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Former General, former Democratic candidate for President loses mind - is this the Republicans dream candidate or what?

Wesley Clark Calls for Internment Camps for "Radicalized" Americans

Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Friday called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” In an interview with MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts in the wake of the mass shooting in Chatanooga, Tennessee, Clark said that during World War II, “if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.”

He called for a revival of internment camps to help combat Muslim extremism, saying, “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”

The comments were shockingly out of character for Clark, who after serving as supreme allied commander of NATO made a name for himself in progressive political circles. ... But on Friday, he was advocating the revival of a policy widely considered to be among the most shameful chapters in American history: World War II domestic internment camps. Aside from the inherent problems in criminalizing people for their beliefs, Clark’s proposal (which his MSNBC interlocutor did not challenge him on) also appears to be based on the concept of targeting people for government scrutiny who are not even “radicalized,” but who the government decides may be subject to radicalization in the future. That radicalization itself is a highly amorphous and politically malleable concept only makes this proposal more troubling.

[New convert to fascism, Wesley Clark speaks:]

Preventive Wars: The Antithesis of Realpolitik

In the domestic debate about the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 nations including the United States, it is often routinely asserted, by Democrats and Republicans alike, that “all options are on the table,” including “the military option,” by which is meant an unprovoked preventive war by the United States or perhaps Israel to destroy Iranian facilities which might be used to produce nuclear weapons. The casual and widespread acceptance of “the military option” is a disturbing development.

Before the presidency of George W. Bush, preventive war was not considered a legitimate tool of anti-proliferation by the United States. In 2003, the United States fought the only preventive war in its history, on the pretext of preventing Saddam Hussein from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. The inadvertent result was the disintegration of Iraq, a regional Sunni-Shia proxy war and the emergence of the Islamic State. The preventive war against Iraq was the stupidest blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy. That some Americans today, only twelve years later, can even consider the possibility of repeating that blunder in the case of Iran is as remarkable as it is appalling. ...

The distinction between preemptive and preventive war is a matter of common sense and basic morality. In December 1941, the United States would have been justified in defending itself by attacking the Japanese fleet before it could reach Pearl Harbor. But it would have been criminal folly if the United States had bombed Japanese factories and shipyards in 1921, on the theory that some of their output might be used in a sneak attack on the United States at some point in the next few decades. ...

Like torture and genocide, preventive war is a foreign policy option which civilized countries deny to themselves, at some cost if necessary. Individual countries and the international community have many legal and legitimate options for preventing countries from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, but preventive war is not and should not be one of them.

SYRIZA's Stability Rocked by New Memorandum

Slavoj Žižek sorts out the eurozone and the Greek crisis. Here's a small taste:

Greece: The Courage of Hopelessness

Tsipras himself publicly stated his doubt about the bailout plan: "We don't believe in the measures that were imposed upon us," he said during a TV interview, making it clear that he supports it out of pure despair, to avoid a total economic and financial collapse. The eurocrats use such confessions with breathtaking perfidity: now that the Greek government accepted their the tough conditions, they doubt the sincerity and seriousness of their commitment. How can Tsipras really fight for a program he doesn't believe in? How can the Greek government be really committed to the agreement when it opposes the referendum result?

However, statements like those from IMF demonstrate that the true problem lies elsewhere: does EU really believe in their own bailout plan? Does it really believe that the brutally imposed measures will set in motion economic growth and thus enable the payment of debts? Or is it that the ultimate motivation for the brutal extortionist pressure on Greece is not purely economic (since it is obviously irrational in economic terms) but politico-ideological – or, as Paul Krugman put it in the New York Times, "substantive surrender isn’t enough for Germany, which wants regime change and total humiliation — and there’s a substantial faction that just wants to push Greece out, and would more or less welcome a failed state as a caution for the rest.” One should always bear in mind what a horror Syriza is for the European establishment – a Conservative Polish member of the European parliament even directly appealed to the Greek army to make a coup d’etat in order to save the country.

Why this horror? Greeks are now asked to pay the high price, but not for a realist perspective of growth. The price they are asked to pay is for the continuation of the "extend and pretend" fantasy. They are asked to ascend to their actual suffering in order to sustain another's (eurocrats') dream. Gilles Deleuze said decades ago: Si vous etez pris dans le reve de l'autre, vous etez foutus. ("if you are caught into another's dream, you are fucked"), and this is the situation in which Greece finds itself now. Greeks are not asked to swallow many bitter pills for a realistic plan of economic revival, they are asked to suffer so that others can go on dreaming their dream undisturbed.

The one who now needs awakening is not Greece but Europe. Everyone who is not caught in this dream knows what awaits us if the bailout plan is enacted: another 90 or so billions will be thrown into the Greek basket, raising the Greek debt to 400 or so billion euros (and most of them will quickly return back to Western Europe - the true bailout is the bailout of German and French banks, not of Greece), and we can expect the same crisis to explode in a couple of years.

But is such an outcome really a failure? At an immediate level, if one compares the plan with its actual outcome, obviously yes. At a deeper level, however, one cannot avoid a suspicion that the true goal is not to give Greece a chance but to change it into an economically colonised semi-state kept in permanent poverty and dependency, as a warning to others. But at an even deeper level, there is again a failure – not of Greece, but of Europe itself, of the emancipatory core of European legacy.

Keiser Report: Two Faced Greek Govt

Greek PM Tsipras rallies Syriza backing before bailout vote

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tried to rally his leftwing Syriza party on Tuesday ahead of a vote in parliament on the second package of measures demanded by international creditors as a condition for opening talks on a new bailout deal.

Tsipras has faced a revolt in the ruling Syriza party over the mix of tax hikes and spending cuts demanded by lenders but is expected to get the package through parliament with the support of pro-European opposition parties.

Talking to Syriza officials on the eve of the vote, he said he aimed to seal the bailout accord, which could offer Greece up to 86 billion euros in new loans to bolster its tottering finances and ward off the threat of a forced exit from the euro.

"Up until today I've seen reactions, I've read heroic statements but I haven't heard any alternative proposal," he said, warning that party hardliners could not ignore the clear desire of most Greeks to remain in the single currency. ...

The bill to be passed on Wednesday adopts into Greek law new European Union rules on propping up failed banks, decreed after the 2008 financial crisis and aimed at shielding taxpayers from the risk of having to bail out troubled lenders.

The so-called bank recovery and resolution directive (BRRD) imposes losses on shareholders and creditors of ailing lenders, in a process known as "bail-in", before any taxpayers' money can be tapped in a bank rescue.

The bailout bill also includes the adoption of new rules for the country's civil justice system, aimed at accelerating lengthy judicial processes and cutting costs.

The European Union Still Can't Agree on How to Relocate Migrants Stuck in Greece and Italy

European Union (EU) ministers have failed to reach a promised agreement about how to redistribute 40,000 migrants from overburdened Italy and Greece.

The 40,000 figure comprises of mostly Syrian and Eritreans, and was decided on amid the outcry after some 800 people drowned in the Mediterranean's largest disaster this year.

Both Italy and Greece — in the middle of its own consuming financial crisis — have appealed for other European countries to step in and alleviate some of the strain being caused by the consistent influx of refugees from war-torn parts of Africa and the Middle East.

During a meeting in Brussels on Monday, European Home Affairs ministers pledged to relocate 32,256 migrants, beginning in October. ...

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told VICE News that approximately 5,000 people have made it to the Greek island of Lesbos over the past few days. These came mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and were now living in unmanaged camps lacking basic assistance. On the Greek island of Kos, 700 people are sleeping each night on the floor of an overcrowded, dilapidated building.

"The current situation is a violation of Greece's and the EU's obligations towards asylum seekers and migrants," said Stathis Kyroussis, MSF's head of mission in Greece.

Also of interest:

Bernie Out of the Closet: Sanders’ Longstanding Deal with the Democrats

Obama, Mass Incarceration and the “Extreme Center”

The Spirit of Judy Miller is Alive and Well at the NYT, and it Does Great Damage

Danger Mice