This evening's music features Nashville blues and boogie woogie piano player Cecil Gant.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Greece Approves Creditors' Reforms to Protest on the Streets

Greece's government emerged bloodied but alive following a key vote in parliament, which saw lawmakers overwhelmingly approve new creditor-demanded reforms, despite a clear rift among the governing left-wing Syriza party and thousands of people protesting outside.

The reforms to the judiciary and banking systems were the final hurdle the financially-battered country was obliged to clear before it can start talks with its international creditors on a third bailout worth around 85 billion euros ($93 billion). ...

Before the debate got underway, about 10,000 people demonstrated outside the parliament in Athens, protesting the latest measures to overhaul Greece's judicial and banking sectors. Minor violence marred the end of the protest when a few teenagers threw petrol bombs at riot police, but no injuries or arrests were reported.

Lawmakers eventually voted 230-63 in favor of the measures, following a whirlwind debate that ended at 4am local time. ...

Government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili conceded that there is a clear rift within Syriza, but would not say whether rebels would be expelled.

"From this point on, party procedures will be followed in order to deal with the problem," she said after the vote.

The number of disaffected Syriza lawmakers, who see the reforms as a betrayal of the anti-austerity platform that brought their party to power in January, shrunk slightly compared to last week's similar vote — from 38 to 36. But that is still roughly a quarter of all the party's representatives.

Shock Therapy: Greek govt votes ‘yes’ for 2nd round of reforms

Greece to fall deeper into recession this year

[From the Guardian's liveblog]

The Foundation for Economic & Industrial Research (IOBE) has abandoned its prediction from April that Greek GDP would rise by 1% this year, given the turmoil in the economy since capital controls were imposed.

IOBE now fears that the economy will shrink by between 2% and 2.5% in 2015, due to the damage caused to exports, tourism, business investment and consumer spending.

That would more than wipe out last year’s modest progress, when Greece grew by 0.7%.

Keiser Report: Bankers Lives Matter

NBC News Releases the Long-Awaited Trailer for its Summer Horror Film About ISIS

During a discussion yesterday in Aspen with even-more-sycophantic-than-usual CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, FBI Director James Comey somberly warned that ISIS now officially poses a bigger threat to the “U.S. homeland” than the one posed by former title-holder Al Qaeda – because, of course, the Latest Threat must always be the Greatest Threat. Comey also said that the previous bigger-than-Al-Qaeda contender, “The Khorasan Group,” has been “diminished” by “the work done by our great military” – because the War on Terror narrative requires that it must always be somehow simultaneously true that (1) the Terror Threat facing Americans is Greater Than Ever™ and (2) U.S. military actions against Terrorism are succeeding.

To commemorate this official FBI warning and to accompany the AP “news article” about Comey’s proclamation, NBC News posted a video which . . . . well, which you have just have to see to believe. Watch it here.

New York state fast food workers celebrate $15 minimum wage victory

After more than a year of organized action, fast food workers in New York are about to get what they have been demanding: a $15 minimum wage.

The Fast Food Wage Board appointed by New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday that they are recommending a new $15 an hour minimum wage for fast food workers employed by chains with 30 or more stores nationwide.

Those working in New York City will see their wages increase to $15 an hour by December 2018, whereas those working in the rest of the state will see their wages increase at a slower pace and will reach $15 by July 2021. ...

“This is a historical moment. We did it,” Jorel Ware, a McDonald’s worker, said at the rally celebrating the wage board’s recommendations. Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with both “I can’t breathe” and “Fight for $15”, he said fewer people would live in poverty thanks to the wage increase.

“It’s wonderful. I get to live on my own again. I am telling you it’s a wonderful thing. When I started the fight, I just wanted something better for myself,” he said. “The Fight for $15 has showed me what’s possible when people stick and work together.”

Aiming to Lift 'Starvation Wage,' Progressive Lawmakers Push for $15 Nationwide

Sanders and Congressional Progressive Caucus introduce new legislation before crowd of striking federal workers

"We are here today to send a very loud and a very clear message to the United States Congress, the President of the United States, and corporate America," Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders bellowed before a crowd of striking low-wage workers in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. "In the richest country on the face of the earth, no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty."

And it was with that message and those federal contract workers in mind that Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.), along with his progressive counterparts in the U.S House, on Tuesday introduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

"In the year 2015, a job has got to lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it," Sanders said at a rally of striking federal contract workers near the Russell Senate Building in the nation's capital. "The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage. It has got to be increased to a living wage."

The Pay Workers a Living Wage Act would phase in a $15 minimum wage nationwide by 2020 over 5 steps, increasing to $9 in 2016, $10.50 in 2017, $12.00 in 2018, $13.50 in 2019, and $15 in '20. After that, the minimum wage would be indexed to the median hourly wage.

Bernie and Baltimore: “The People” in American Politics

We have all seen how the conservative media patronizes Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. He is a diversion, a cute sideshow, and the newscasters insist that he will not get the Democratic nomination. Someone more mainstream, more sensible—someone like Hillary Clinton—will be the nominee. But, we have to ask, how is it that a candidate can be diversionary and alternative because his platform and politics are about the needs of American people?

The answer is that Bernie isn’t out there talking the deceitful politics of greed that we are used to. Bernie Sanders talks about those politics, in order to expose and challenge them, but he is talking a different politics than we have heard on a national scale in a long time. Because of the Sanders campaign—because it is happening at all—Americans have to recognize that what has been for many years disguised as politics is simply the squabbling of financiers and corporations with politicians on their side who win campaigns based on how enticingly they can package the agenda of capital. Sanders, by doing something different, puts the lie to that mode of politics as definitive. ...

Something else has been happening in America that makes us think differently about politics. Black people in cities American cities have mobilized against police brutality. They have confronted police brutality en masse. ... Like the Sanders campaign, and probably better, the mobilisations of black people in American cities have changed how Americans have to look at politics. Politics is not, for example, the prim show of denouncing racism or feeling sad about racism. Politics is contesting racism. As our recent history of the 1960s shows, if official structures offer no avenue for contestation—if racism pervades those structures so deeply that to seek the aid of the police or the local government is useless—then politics must happen on the paved avenues. And that is politics: politics by the people.

Cries of Betrayal, Calls to Organize as Obama Approves Arctic Drilling

President Barack Obama on Wednesday afternoon gave the final go-ahead for Royal Dutch Shell PLC to drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea near Alaska, flouting fierce public opposition to the extraction over the severe danger it poses to the ocean ecosystem, climate, and coastal communities.

Obama Administartion Grants Shell Final Permits to Start Drilling in #Arctic Ocean http://t.co/WvOy9Colpk #ShellNo pic.twitter.com/smFf8e6E5c

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) July 23, 2015

"The president has made a big mistake allowing Shell back into the Arctic," declared Center for Biological Diversity Alaska director Rebecca Noblin in a press statement released Wednesday. "The risks of a devastating oil spill in this harsh environment are just too great, particularly for a company with such poor performance record. This is a reckless move by a country that is still struggling to reduce its impact on global warming."

The permits granted Wednesday mean that the oil giant can commence with drilling exploratory wells as soon as its vessels and equipment reach the sea. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement announced it has included some conditions, limiting Shell to "drilling only the top sections of wells and prohibit Shell from drilling into oil-bearing zones."

But campaigners say that the restrictions are weak, and the fact that Shell will now be permitted to drill in the Arctic constitutes a deep betrayal of Obama's own pledge to make tackling climate change one of his top three priorities during his second term.

"With this decision, President Obama has given Shell an open invitation to turn the Chukchi Sea into an energy sacrifice zone, threatening both the resilience of the American Arctic Ocean and his climate legacy," Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Marissa Knodel declared Wednesday. "Shell will pollute the environment, threaten endangered species, impair the subsistence practices and livelihoods of coastal communities, and take us further down the path of climate disruption."

Also of interest:

The U.S. Aids and Abets War Crimes in the Philippines

Now the Senate's Trying to Torpedo Net Neutrality

“If you don’t want to get shot, just do what I tell you”: American cops are on a dangerous power trip

The Ghost of Thatcherism Stalks the Greeks

Sirens of the Potomac: Think Tanks and Torture