This evening's music features The Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

Pentagon War Manual Gives Military License To Target & Attack Journalists

The Pentagon has adopted a “law of war manual” [PDF], which enables commanders to treat journalists as “unprivileged belligerents.” It suggests that correspondents who report some information about combat operations may be taking “direct part in hostilities,” a disturbing argument for justifying the killing of reporters in war zones. There also is a part of the manual that encourages journalists to submit to censorship of news reports that might aid enemies.

On July 31, the Committee to Protect Journalists published an analysis on the Pentagon’s weak justifications for treating journalists as spies. The New York Times Editorial Board also condemned the guidelines in an August 10 editorial. ...

The manual claims, “Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying.” It instructs journalists to “avoid being mistaken for spies” by acting openly and “with the permission of relevant authorities.” Supposedly, this can be done by presenting “identification documents” given to “authorized war correspondents” (though it is unclear how one might do this when if they are about to be wrongfully targeted in a drone strike).

“States may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy,” the manual claims. “Under the law of war, there is no special right for journalists to enter a state’s territory without its consent or to access areas of military operations without the consent of the state conducting those operations.”

Widney Brown, Amnesty International senior director for international law and policy, explained the government’s theory in Manning’s case that “making information available on the internet—whether through Wikileaks, in a personal blog posting, or on the website of The New York Times — can amount to ‘aiding the enemy.'”

Although Manning was acquitted of the “aiding the enemy” charge, military prosecutors spent hours during the court-martial alleging Manning had aided al-Qaida and other terrorist groups without ever having to prove that Manning was sympathetic toward terrorists.

Black Lives Do Matter But Do They Move?

The Fear of Too Much Justice: Tariq Ba Odah and the Department of Defense

There are new developments in the shameful saga of Tariq Ba Odah. I wrote about Tariq in an earlier column. He has been on a hunger strike at Guantanamo for 8 ½ years. According to the United States government, he now weighs 75 pounds, which is slightly more than half his normal body weight. Medical experts say he has no more weight to lose and that his body has begun to cannibalize itself to survive, slowly consuming his organs. ...

When I wrote my last column, I noted that the Obama Administration had thus far opposed Tariq’s release. After my column appeared, the New York Times picked up the story and ran an editorial about Tariq, likewise calling for his release. After the Times editorial, the government asked for additional time to respond to CCR’s papers. And last Friday we learned that Ba Odah’s situation has divided the Obama Administration. Charles Savage reported that the State Department favors his release, but the Defense Department opposes it.

According to the Times, the Defense Department fears for the precedent it might set. After all, if the United States were to release this 75-pound, starving prisoner, it might have to release every prisoner who starved himself to a shadow, and who knows where that might lead? Other prisoners might put themselves through the torture that Tariq has endured and submit to being force-fed every day, twice a day, for more than eight years, simply so they could pass within sight of death and thereby secure their release.

This position is breathtaking in its moral bankruptcy. To begin with, note that DoD does not challenge Tariq’s claim so much as it fears other claims that do not yet exist. ... Anyone who supposes the Obama Administration—at least in the particulars of its counter-terror policy—is morally superior to the Bush Administration should reflect on DoD’s position.

PKK Official: Turkey Protecting ISIS by Attacking Kurds

In an interview with the BBC, top PKK leader Cemil Bayik says he believes Turkey’s government has wanted ISIS to succeed as a way of tamping down Kurdish nationalism, and is protecting ISIS by attacking Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria.

“The Turkish claim they are fighting ISIS but in fact they are fighting the PKK,” Bayik insisted, noting that since Turkey started hyping offensives against both groups there’ve been virtually no attacks on ISIS. By contrast Turkey seems to be much more aggressively going after PKK targets.

Other Kurdish officials echoed this sentiment, saying they don’t believe the Syria “safe zone” is going to target ISIS territory, but will rather end up being carved mostly out of Kurdish territory in Syria. Though the US and Turkey have agreed in principle on the zone, they have not defined where it will be.

Nusra Front in Syria Withdraws From Territory Where Turkey Seeks Buffer Zone

The Al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front says it has quit frontline positions against Islamic State north of Aleppo and ceded them to other rebels, leaving an area of northern Syria where Turkey wants to set up a buffer zone.

A Nusra Front statement dated Sunday criticised a Turkish-U.S. plan to drive Islamic State (also known as ISIS) from the Syrian-Turkish border area, saying the aim was to serve "Turkey's national security" rather than the fight against President Bashar al-Assad. ...

Nusra said Turkey was acting to prevent the formation of a Kurdish state in northern Syria, and the Turkish government and the U.S.-led alliance against ISIS were seeking to direct the battle according to their priorities. "Facing this current scene, our only option was to withdraw and leave our frontline positions (with ISIS) in the northern Aleppo countryside for any fighting faction in these areas to take over," the Nusra Front said.

The planned buffer would prevent a powerful Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, from further expanding a zone of control that already stretches some 400 km (250 miles) along the Syrian-Turkish border. The YPG has seized wide areas of territory from ISIS this year, backed by U.S.-led air strikes.

To avoid losses, Syrian army retreats in key region: army source

A Syrian military source said on Tuesday the army had retreated to new defensive lines in a region of vital strategic importance to President Bashar al-Assad, seeking to avoid losses at the hands of advancing rebels.

The insurgent advance into the Sahl al-Ghab plain in northwestern Syria has brought rebels including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front to the eastern edge of mountains that form the historical heartland of Assad's Alawite people.

The rapid advance so close to an area of such importance to Assad underscores the difficulties facing the army and the manner in which Syria is splintering: Assad said last month the army faced a manpower shortage and had given up some areas in order to defend others of greater significance. ...

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that tracks the war, estimates the amount of territory now held by Assad at a quarter of Syria. The government-held area includes cities where the bulk of the population still live.

Survivors of Chile’s Dictatorship Celebrate Death of ‘Bloodthirsty’ Former Spy Chief

The Chilean spy held responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Chile's dictatorship was buried on Saturday in Santiago, closing a dark chapter for tens of thousands of people who were unjustly imprisoned, tortured, or executed during the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Manuel Contreras, who headed the once-feared spy agency known as DINA — which kidnapped, tortured and killed scores of civilians during Chile's military dictatorship — died late Friday at a military hospital while serving a combined sentence of 520 years for crimes against humanity. ...

Born on May 4, 1929, in Santiago, Contreras was a career military man who also helped organize Operation Condor, a coordinated effort formed in the mid-1970s by South America's dictatorships to eliminate dissidents who sought refuge in neighboring countries. ...

His prominence in Pinochet's government waned after the United States sought to extradite him for involvement in the 1976 bombing assassination in Washington DC of Orlando Letelier, who had been defense and foreign relations minister under Allende.

Chile's Supreme Court blocked the extradition, but Pinochet removed Contreras from his post under US pressure and dismantled and replaced DINA. After Chile returned to democracy in 1990, Contreras was indicted in the Letelier case and eventually served seven years for the assassination. He always denied responsibility and blamed the CIA for the bombing. ...

Starting in 2005, Contreras served time in Cordillera, a luxury prison for dictatorship-era officials convicted of crimes against humanity. The government for years was under pressure to shut down the prison, which had tennis courts, barbecues, and a swimming pool for its prisoners

The Collapsing US Economy

Do you remember when real reporters existed? Those were the days before the Clinton regime concentrated the media into a few hands and turned the media into a Ministry of Propaganda, a tool of Big Brother. The false reality in which Americans live extends into economic life. Last Friday’s employment report was a continuation of a long string of bad news spun into good news. The media repeats two numbers as if they mean something—the monthly payroll jobs gains and the unemployment rate—and ignores the numbers that show the continuing multi-year decline in employment opportunities while the economy is allegedly recovering.

The so-called recovery is based on the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate. This measure does not include any unemployed person who has become discouraged from the inability to find a job and has not looked for a job in four weeks. ... The government has a second official measure of unemployment, U.6. This measure, seldom reported, includes among the unemployed those who have been discouraged for less than one year. This official measure is double the 5.3% U.3 measure. What does it mean that the unemployment rate is over 10% after six years of alleged economic recovery?

In 1994 the Clinton regime stopped counting long-term discouraged workers as unemployed. Clinton wanted his economy to look better than Reagan’s, so he ceased counting the long-term discouraged workers that were part of Reagan’s unemployment rate. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to measure the long-term discouraged with the official methodology of that time, and when these unemployed are included, the US rate of unemployment as of July 2015 is 23%, several times higher than during the recession with which Fed chairman Paul Volcker greeted the Reagan presidency.

An unemployment rate of 23% gives economic recovery a new meaning. It has been eighty-five years since the Great Depression, and the US economy is in economic recovery with an unemployment rate close to that of the Great Depression.

Bernie Sanders assures Black Lives Matter protesters: I'm your guy

They came to “Feel the Bern” and to see how the man himself felt about being recently singed. Bernie Sanders did not disappoint.

The Democratic presidential candidate fired up supporters at a huge rally in Los Angeles on Monday night and in the process allayed some, though not all, doubts about his relationship with the Black Lives Matter movement.

He electrified the Los Angeles sports arena with vows to take the White House and tackle billionaire oligarchs, income inequality, institutional racism and mass incarceration. “This is an economy that is rigged and meant to benefit those on top,” he thundered in a hoarse voice. “We need an economy that works for all people.”

Instead of protesters upstaging him – which has sabotaged two previous events – the 73-year-old senator from Vermont had African American allies on stage to introduce him and reassure the Black Lives Matter movement, and others, that he may be an old white guy, but he was their old white guy.

“There’s no president that will fight harder to end institutional racism,” he promised.

The estimated 15,000 people in the stadium, and several thousand more in overflow sections outside, stomped and cheered in rapture, injecting fresh momentum into a campaign which was already surging in the wake of other big rallies and a national trade union’s endorsement.

Demockery is in action just about everywhere:

Despite Majority Opposition, Japan About to Hit 'Go' on Nuclear Restart

Despite widespread public opposition and lingering safety concerns, Japan on Tuesday will switch on a nuclear reactor for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The restart of Reactor No. 1 at the Sendai nuclear plant, about 620 miles southwest of Tokyo, comes four and a half years after an earthquake-triggered tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, leading to the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. In the aftermath of the Fukushima crisis, which led to the displacement of more than 100,000 people, all 43 of the country's operable commercial nuclear reactors were taken offline.

Last fall, the Sendai reactors became the first to clear safety hurdles imposed by a revamped Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), established after Fukushima. More than two dozen other reactors have applied for a restart. All are now subject to the NRA's safety checks before they can come back online.

Also of interest:

The Philosopher of Surveillance

Regional powers are making a mess of the Middle East

Michele Bachmann: Iran deal a cause for celebration because it proves the End Times have begun in earnest

Black Lives Matter and The Failure to Build a Movement

Bernie Sanders is not the Black Lives Matter savior: Arguing over whether a single protest “worked” is missing the point