This evening's music features one of the Three Kings of the blues guitar, Albert King.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting...

AP Files Suit For FBI's Refusal To Come Clean on 'Fake Reporter' Operations

Following public outrage expressed when it was first discovered last year, the Associated Press took legal action against the Department of Justice on Thursday for the FBI's failure to come clean about details surrounding its decision to impersonate an AP reporter as part of a covert investigation.

Along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), AP filed the suit after the DOJ repeatedly refused to respect open records requests for documents related to the case.

The lawsuit argues that AP and the Reporters Committee "are statutorily entitled to disclosure of these records, which they seek so that they may inform the public about the nature and extent of the FBI’s impersonation of journalists and news organizations. Defendants have improperly withheld the records requested by Plaintiffs in violation of the law and in opposition to the public’s strong interest in obtaining information regarding a law enforcement practice that undermines both the credibility and independence of the news media."

As the RCFP recounts:

The lawsuit stems from an FBI operation in 2007, during which agents created and published a fake AP news story in order to trick a criminal suspect into downloading surveillance software onto his computer, software that enabled the Bureau to track the suspect's location. 

When the FBI’s impersonation of the AP came to light in October of 2014, the Reporters Committee and 25 news organizations immediately sent a letter to the attorney general and FBI director calling it "unacceptable." AP also wrote to the attorney general protesting the FBI’s use of a fabricated AP news story "in the strongest possible terms." 

As Common Dreams reported at the time, FBI Director James Comey defended the agency's action. "That technique was proper and appropriate under Justice Department and [FBI] guidelines at the time," he said last year. "Today, the use of such an unusual technique would probably require higher level approvals than in 2007, but it would still be lawful and, in a rare case, appropriate."

6 US Prisons May Soon House Guantanamo Detainees

In the coming weeks, the White House is expected to send Congress a final plan to "safely and responsibly" move dozens of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay to military and, possibly, federal prisons in the United States.

The move is part of President Barack Obama's pledge to shutter the 13-year-old detention facility, located on a remote part of the US Naval base in Cuba, before he leaves office. (The closing of Guantanamo would in some ways be symbolic; in 2011, Obama signed an executive order that made indefinite detention the law of the land.) Already, the plan has been met by fierce opposition by Republican lawmakers in Kansas and South Carolina, two states that are in the running to house detainees at military prisons located at Fort Leavenworth and the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston.

"A small team of DOD officials will travel to relevant facilities to assess those facilities, identifying the changes required to make those facilities suitable to house law-of-war detainees, to estimate the costs in making the changes necessary, and to estimate costs to operate the facilities thereafter," Ross said.

There are 116 detainees still being held at Guantanamo, 52 of whom have been cleared for release or transfer. The remainder includes so-called "forever prisoners" — those too dangerous to release, yet too difficult to prosecute before military commissions — and high-value detainees, like self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators, who have been targeted for prosecution for war crimes. ...

A GAO report, which was based on site visits to Guantanamo and DOD prisons, along with interviews the office conducted with Defense and Justice Department officials, identified six military facilities where detainees could be held: Naval Consolidated Brig in Chesapeake, Virginia; Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston; Naval Consolidated Brig in Miramar, California; Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; the Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility in Washington state; and the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.

'I have become a body without a soul': 13 years detained in Guantánamo

Zaher Hamdoun is a 36-year-old Yemeni man who has been detained in Guantánamo without charge since he was 22, one of 116 prisoners still detained there six years after Obama promised to close the facility. After I visited him earlier this summer, he followed up with a letter filled with questions.

... Will Obama’s conscience weigh on him when he remembers that tens of human beings who have fathers, mothers, wives and children have been waiting here for over 13 years, and some of them died before even seeing their loved ones again? Will his conscience weigh on him and make him finally put an end to this matter? Or are we going to remain the victims of political conflicts, which we have nothing to do with?

At the rate prisoners reviews are going, the administration will not finish by the time Obama leaves office. Of those reviewed, most have been approved for transfer, but they continue to languish. They’ve been added to the administration’s long list of people waiting for release, most for years. ...

I have become a body without a soul. I breathe, eat and drink, but I don’t belong to the world of living creatures. I rather belong to another world, a world that is buried in a grave called Guantánamo. I fall asleep and then wake up to realize that my soul and my thoughts belong to that world I watch on television, or read about in books. That is all I can say about the ordeal I’ve been enduring.

Saudi Arabia's Troops Have Crossed Into Yemen for the First Time

Saudi forces have reportedly crossed the border into northern Yemen near a site where Houthi rebels have launched shelling attacks toward the kingdom.

The incursion marks the first time that Saudi Arabia's troops have entered Yemen since a Saudi-led coalition began an air campaign in March against the Houthis, who captured large swaths of Yemen earlier this year.

Footage showing the troops on the Yemeni side of the border with the Saudi province of Jizan emerged on Wednesday a day after authorities in Riyadh said a battle for the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital of Sanaa was imminent.

Forces aligned against the Houthis and their allied loyalists of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country's former president, have made significant gains in recent weeks, expelling the rebels from the Southern port of Aden and pushing north toward strategic cities like Taiz, Yemen's third largest.

While Emirati special forces have reportedly taken part in some fighting in Yemen's south, Saudi soldiers have not, and the kingdom's commanders appeared loath to send their troops into conflict areas. Houthi rebels have repeatedly hit and in some cases killed Saudi forces guarding the border, however, and in one instance documented by a pro-Houthi television station, appeared to cross into Saudi territory.

Massive Protests Call for President to Resign as Corruption Scandal Hits Guatemala

The administration of Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has continued to waver. Following the arrest of the country's former vice president, and the filing of charges against Perez Molina, eight more members of the president's cabinet announced their resignations. Meanwhile, thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand Perez Molina's resignation.

Hundreds of businesses and schools across Guatemala chose to close or suspend classes on Thursday in solidarity with the movement demanding the president's resignation. The demands come after a UN Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala connected the president to a corruption ring within the Presidential Palace.

As of Thursday afternoon, the president had not been seen in over 72 hours.

Shock Doctrine: A Look at the Mass Privatization of NOLA Schools in Storm’s Wake & Its Effects Today

When the Bank Robs You: Wells Fargo Contractors Allegedly Stole Family Heirlooms Rescued From Nazis

The few remaining defenders of the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute the executives who helped cause the 2008 financial crisis argue that the bankers’ actions were unethical but not criminal. President Obama himself has made this claim: “Some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street … wasn’t illegal,” he told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes in December 2011.

The president might want to take this up with David Adier, who says he was victimized by Wells Fargo breaking and entering into his family’s home in Morris Township, New Jersey, and then committing property damage and theft. Burglary is a felony subject to prison time — if anybody but a bank does it.

Adier’s case is doubly disturbing because of what was taken: items his father retrieved from his family’s apartment in France before fleeing the Nazis in 1940, including a Kiddush cup, a Seder plate and a sewing machine used by his grandmother.

Adier has since filed suit against Wells Fargo. According to the complaint, Wells Fargo’s contractors deemed the house abandoned, despite explicit instructions that it was not. The house had been in Adier’s family for 40 years, Adier and his sister had grown up there, and Adier’s father had lived there until his death in August 2012. According to Adier, who lives 30 miles away in Bayonne, he missed two payments on the home’s mortgage over the next several months due to troubles with his small business. On November 29, 2012, Wells Fargo’s contractors illegally broke in for the first time. ...

Adier is not alone. Since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis in 2007, banks have hired contractors to inspect properties in foreclosure and determine whether they are abandoned. If they make that subjective determination — based on overgrown grass, or a broken window — they are authorized to enter the home, change the locks, and “trash-out” the property by removing all belongings.

Banks claim they must secure abandoned properties to protect their investment and fulfill responsibilities under state laws. But the contractors frequently get things wrong, illegally ransacking properties still inhabited by homeowners, spurring hundreds of lawsuits. “It’s happening at exactly the same rate” now as during the previous seven years, argues Adier’s attorney, Josh Denbeaux.

'Blind Spot': Progressives Demand Stronger Sanders Stance on Endless War, Pentagon Largesse

Something is seriously missing, say campaigners, when a candidate denounces corporate power and oligarchy without emphasizing militarism and perpetual war

Though otherwise impressed by his bold positions on economic inequality, climate change, and getting money out of politics, progressive campaigners on Thursday presented presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders with a demand that he take a much stronger position against U.S. militarism, endless war, and a bloated Pentagon budget that directly impedes the other social investments for which he so strongly advocates.

Organized by the online group RootsAction.org, a petition signed by more than 25,000 people—many of whom are actively supporting his campaign—was delivered to Sanders' campaign headquarters as a way to highlight the intersection of military spending and corporate power and to hold the candidate's feet to the fire on key issues of foreign policy.

The petition itself reads:

"Senator Sanders, we are enthusiastic about your presidential campaign’s strong challenge to corporate power and oligarchy. We urge you to speak out about how they are intertwined with militarism and ongoing war. Martin Luther King Jr. denounced what he called 'the madness of militarism,' and you should do the same. As you said in your speech to the SCLC, 'Now is not the time for thinking small.' Unwillingness to challenge the madness of militarism is thinking small."

...

Though the petition sent to Sanders on Thursday is clearly a challenge for the candidate to speak about specific issues he has tended to avoid, RootsAction co-founders Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen made it clear that even as they support the campaign for its populist core, there remain critical gaps in his platform and stump speeches they believe ought to be addressed more frequently and forcefully.

Solomon said his group launched its petition campaign because ongoing U.S. wars and huge military spending "continue to be deeply enmeshed with basic economic ills from upside-down priorities." Solomon cited data from the National Priorities Project which shows that 54 percent of the U.S. government’s current discretionary spending now goes to military purposes. "We sidestep these realities at our peril," he said.

Sanders Lead: Why is He Silent on U.S. Foreign Policy?

Also of interest:

3 reasons Bernie Sanders is now the Democratic front-runner