This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist, singer and songwriter John Brim.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

US Corruption vs. World Corruption

One of the most hilarious things to me is Americans whacking other countries for being corrupt. Russia is a favorite target, but the US abuses virtually every non-Western country for “corruption.”

There is no more corrupt country in the world than the US. The bank bailouts were pure corruption, performed even though a supermajority of the population was against them, even though the banks had broken the law systematically, and even though the banks were bankrupt due to decisions they knew were corrupt, illegal, and (yes), stupid.

The US election system is flagrantly corrupt, with billions of dollars of direct and indirect donations from the rich. ... The regulatory class is completely owned. There is a revolving door between Wall Street and the Treasury and Federal Reserve, for example, and Wall Street pays far better. When senior officials leave, they get jobs from those whom they regulated, or give speeches for six figures a pop. Politicians are treated the same, receiving lobbying jobs worth six to seven figures, board positions, and so on.

This is all legal, but it is corruption. ...

What is unique about America is not its corruption, many countries are corrupt, it is the sheer hypocrisy the pretense that America is not corrupt, because Americans have made their corruption legal.

You want corruption back to reasonable levels? You want it illegal again? Take the oligarchs’ wealth away from them and break the great monopolistic and oligopolistic companies or bridle them with uncorrupted regulators who will crawl up their backside and tax the hell out of them.

You want you country back, and your children and yourselves to have a future?

It’s you or them. So far Americans keep choosing them.

Barry Ritholtz lets the banksters have it with both barrels, this article is worthy of a full read.

Who Really Benefits From Bailouts?

I always find it amusing whenever someone expresses surprise that the financial bailouts for Greece haven't benefited Greek citizens. "Bailout Money Goes to Greece, Only to Flow Out Again" in the New York Times is just the latest example. "The cash exodus is a small piece of a bigger puzzle over why — despite two major international bailouts — the Greek economy is in worse shape and more deeply in debt."

Unfortunately, this is a feature of bailout, not a bug.

A plethora of financial rescues during the past decades has proven quite convincingly that this isn't an aberration. Follow the money instead of following the headlines. That's how you learn who profits from a bailout.

Look around the world -- Japan, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Ireland, the U.S. and now Greece to learn who is and isn't helped by these enormous government-backed bailouts. No, it isn't the Greek people, nor even their banks. They never were the intended beneficiaries of the bailouts, nor were Irish citizens in that bailout. ... You probably learned the phrase "moral hazard" during the financial crisis. In short, what it means is that the bailouts rescued leveraged, reckless speculators from the results of their unwise professional folly and gave them an incentive to do it all over again. They were and the intended rescuees. ...

Which brings us back to Greece.

Its leaders never learned the lesson that Ireland eventually figured out and tiny Iceland understood from the start. The phrase systemic risk is nothing more than code; what it actually means is that a politically connected banker wants the government to cover losses on bad investments.

In the case of Greece, the money flows in large part from European governments and the International Monetary Fund through Greece, and then to various private-sector lenders. We all call it a Greek bailout, because if it were called the "Rescue of German bankers from the results of their Athenian lending folly," who would support it?

Obama Administration Celebrates its Arming of the Egyptian Regime With a YouTube Video

The Egyptian regime run by the despotic General Abdelfattah al-Sisi is one of the world’s most brutal and repressive. Last year, Human Rights Watch documented that that Egyptian “security forces have carried out mass arrests and torture that harken back to the darkest days of former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.” Just two months ago, the group warned that the abuses have “escalated,” and that Sisi, “governing by decree in the absence of an elected parliament, ha[s] provided near total impunity for security force abuses and issued a raft of laws that severely curtailed civil and political rights, effectively erasing the human rights gains of the 2011 uprising that ousted the longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak.”

Despite that repression – or, more accurately, because of it – the Obama administration has lavished the regime with aid, money and weapons, just as the U.S. Government did for decades in order to prop up Hosni Mubarak. When Sisi took power in a coup, not only did the U.S. Government support him but it praised him for restoring “democracy.” Since then, the U.S. has repeatedly sent arms and money to the regime as its abuses became more severe. As The New York Times delicately put it yesterday, “American officials . . . signaled that they would not let their concerns with human rights stand in the way of increased security cooperation with Egypt.” ...

The Leader of the Free World’s long and clear history of lavishing the world’s most repressive regimes with money and weapons is usually carried out with a bit of stealth, so that its inspiring, self-flattering rhetoric about Supporting Freedom and Democracy – used to justify invasions and other forms of imperial domination – will be credible to its domestic media and population (even if to nobody else in the world). But this week, the U.S. Government not only proudly touted its sending of weapons to the Cairo regime, but published a video celebrating it.

The US delivered 8 new F16s to the Egy Air Force this week - watch them fly over Cairo! #تحيا_مصر https://t.co/5CjJw7xqOh

— US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) July 31, 2015

“I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.”

-- Hillary Clinton

War President Obama Authorizes Ongoing Airstrikes Against Syria

Escalation increases chances of direct military clashes between U.S. military and President Bashar al-Assad

President Barack Obama has authorized the use of airstrikes against targets inside Syria in order to defend Western-backed fighters now operating on the ground, according to administration officials who spoke with journalists off the record over the weekend and later confirmed by the Pentagon.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the new authorization was approved Friday in order to defend "a new U.S.-backed fighting force in Syria if it is attacked by Syrian government forces or other groups" and now raises "the risk of the American military coming into direct conflict with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad."

Citing a U.S. defense official, Bloomberg reports that Obama's authorization was quickly followed by airstrikes in Northern Syria against the al-Nusrah Front, an al-Qaeda offshoot, which was attacking U.S-backed fighters—thought to be a militia called "Division 30"—whose purported goal is to defeat Islamic State. The U.S. provided close air support to protect the rebels and quash the attack, the official said.

Obama's deal with Turkey is a betrayal of Syrian Kurds and may not even weaken Isis

The deal between the US and Turkey which will allow American bombers to use Incirlik airbase while Turkey takes action against Islamic State (Isis) looks stranger and stranger. When first announced over a week ago, US officials spoke triumphantly of the agreement being “a game-changer” in the war against Isis. In fact, the war waged by Turkey in the days since this great American diplomatic success has been almost entirely against the Kurds, at home and abroad. ...

At the time of writing, US aircraft have not started using Incirlik and the reason is that Turkey does not want US aircraft using it to launch air strikes in support of the Syrian Kurds who have hitherto been America’s most effective military allies against Isis in Syria. ... Turkey is now demanding that US planes based at Incirlik not be used in support of the PYD/YPG because they are the Syrian branch of the PKK which Turkey is busy trying to destroy with its own air campaign. But US bombing in Syria has mostly been in support of the YPG in the north-east of the country and against Isis-held oil and gas fields in other provinces.

Even if this dispute is ultimately resolved, it highlights the contradiction at the heart of US policy: Washington is teaming up with a Turkish government whose prime objective in Syria is to prevent the further expansion of PYD/YPG territory which already extends along 250 miles of the 550-mile-long Syrian-Turkish border. In brief, Ankara’s objective is the precise opposite of Washington’s and little different from that of Isis, which has been battling on the ground to hold back the PYD/YPG advance. ...

In terms of the stability of the region President Barack Obama may turn out to have made a poor deal with Turkey. It will not be a killer blow to Isis and may not even weaken it, but it will hit the Kurds who have been IS’s most resolute opponents. It will spread the violence stemming from the civil wars in Iraq and Syria into Turkey. And it will rekindle a Kurdish-Turkish civil war that had long been on the wane.

The game may have changed but peace is even further away.

From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much - Thomas Drake

From the exploding pantsuits on fire department:

Cables Show Hillary Clinton's State Department Deeply Involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday attempted to distance herself from the controversial 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. During her tenure as U.S. secretary of state, Clinton publicly promoted the pact 45 separate times -- but with her Democratic presidential rivals making opposition to the deal a centerpiece of their campaigns, Clinton now asserts she was never involved in the initiative.

"I did not work on TPP," she said after a meeting with leaders of labor unions who oppose the pact. "I advocated for a multinational trade agreement that would 'be the gold standard.' But that was the responsibility of the United States Trade Representative."

But at a congressional hearing in 2011, Clinton told lawmakers that "with respect to the TPP, although the State Department does not have the lead on this -- it is the United States Trade Representative -- we work closely with the USTR." Additionally, State Department cables reviewed by International Business Times show that her agency -- including her top aides -- were deeply involved in the diplomatic deliberations over the trade deal. The cables from 2009 and 2010, which were among a trove of documents disclosed by the website WikiLeaks, also show that the Clinton-run State Department advised the U.S. Trade Representative’s office on how to negotiate the deal with foreign government officials.

Rootsaction is petitioning Bernie Sanders to take a position on issues of war, militarism and foreign policy. Click the link to sign the petition.

Bernie Sanders, Speak Up: Militarism and Corporate Power Are Fueling Each Other

With a strong grassroots campaign for president, Senator Bernie Sanders is denouncing corporate power, economic inequality and “oligarchy.”

But he’s saying very little about crucial issues of war, militarism and foreign policy.

Martin Luther King Jr. explicitly and emphatically linked the issues of economic injustice at home with war abroad. Bernie Sanders should do the same.

Adequate funds for programs of economic equity and social justice will require an end to what Dr. King called “the madness of militarism.”

Overcoming militarism is just as vital as overcoming oligarchy. We won’t be able to do one without the other.

Keiser Report: The Precariat - The Dangerous New Class

Folks who remember Scott Wooledge, who used to be a frontpager at Daily Kos will be gratified to know that he is still out there making a difference:

Queer Activist’s Petition To Extradite Cecil the Lion’s Murderer Skyrockets To The White House

By now we’re all outraged by the death of Cecil the Lion, a beloved resident of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, who was shot by Minnesota game hunter Walter Palmer.

But one gay man is turning that outrage into activism: Scott Wooledge, the creator of the social-awareness platform Memeographs, launched a WhiteHouse.gov petition asking the Administration to extradite Palmer to Zimbabwe to submit to inquiry and (likely) stand trial.

Wooledge’s petition, which has garnered more than 211,000 signatures since Tuesday, has been reported on by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and other major outlets.