Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features country blues singer Larry Johnson. Enjoy!

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”

-- Lysander Spooner

News and Opinion

Secret court rebukes NSA for 5-year illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens

U.S. intelligence agencies conducted illegal surveillance on American citizens over a five-year period, a practice that earned them a sharp rebuke from a secret court that called the matter a “very serious” constitutional issue.

The criticism is in a lengthy secret ruling that lays bare some of the frictions between the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and U.S. intelligence agencies obligated to obtain the court’s approval for surveillance activities.

The ruling, dated April 26 and bearing the label “top secret,” was obtained and published Thursday by the news site Circa.

It is rare that such rulings see the light of day, and the lengthy unraveling of issues in the 99-page document opens a window on how the secret federal court oversees surveillance activities and seeks to curtail those that it deems overstep legal authority.

The document, signed by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, said the court had learned in a notice filed Oct. 26, 2016, that National Security Agency analysts had been conducting prohibited queries of databases “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court.”

It said a judge chastised the NSA’s inspector general and Office of Compliance for Operations for an “institutional ‘lack of candor’ ” for failing to inform the court. It described the matter as “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

Yale Historian Timothy Snyder on How the U.S. Can Avoid Sliding into Authoritarianism

Iraq: US military admits failures to monitor over $1 billion worth of arms transfers

The US Army failed to keep tabs on more than $1 billion worth of arms and other military equipment in Iraq and Kuwait according to a now declassified Department of Defense (DoD) audit, obtained by Amnesty International following Freedom of Information requests.

The government audit, from September 2016, reveals that the DoD “did not have accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location”of a vast amount of equipment pouring into Kuwait and Iraq to provision the Iraqi Army. “This audit provides a worrying insight into the US Army’s flawed – and potentially dangerous - system for controlling millions of dollars’ worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region,” said Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Arms Control and Human Rights Researcher.

“It makes for especially sobering reading given the long history of leakage of US arms to multiple armed groups committing atrocities in Iraq, including the armed group calling itself the Islamic State.” ... Amnesty International’s research has consistently documented lax controls and record-keeping within the Iraqi chain of command. This has resulted in arms manufactured in the USA and other countries winding up in the hands of armed groups known to be committing war crimes and other atrocities, such as IS, as well as paramilitary militias now incorporated into the Iraqi army.

Perhaps we should worry just as much about the weapons that are going to Navy Seals as those going to Islamic State:

Villagers Say Yemeni Child Was Shot as He Tried to Flee Navy SEAL Raid

Five civilians including a child were killed and another five were wounded in the latest U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Yemen, according to eyewitness accounts gathered by The Intercept. The raid by U.S. commandos in the hamlet of al Adhlan, in the Yemeni province of Mareb on May 23, also destroyed at least four homes. Navy SEALs, with air support from more than half a dozen attack helicopters and aircraft, were locked in a firefight with Yemeni tribesmen for over an hour, according to local residents.

Details from five eyewitnesses in the village conflict with statements made by the Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command, which have not acknowledged that civilians were harmed. Official military reports claimed seven militants from the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, were killed “through a combination of small arms fire and precision airstrikes.” Two commandos were also reportedly lightly wounded in the gunfight. Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis told reporters on May 23 there were “no credible indications of civilian casualties.”

Yet village residents gave a list of 10 names of civilians killed and wounded during the raid. Fifteen-year-old Abdullah Saeed Salem al Adhal was shot dead as he fled from his home with women and children. Another child, 12-year-old Othman Mohammed Saleh al Adhal, was injured but survived. ...

The aim of the al Adhlan raid was to gather electronic equipment such as cell phones and laptops in order to gain “insight into AQAP’s disposition, capabilities and intentions,” according to Central Command’s statement. This was also the supposed intention of the January mission, although it later emerged that the actual target of the first raid was AQAP leader Qassem al Raymi. None of the villagers in al Adhlan spoken to by The Intercept were aware of any materials or people taken by commandos on May 23.

Trump said he would ‘take out’ the families of ISIS fighters. Did an airstrike in Syria do just that?

Back when he was still a candidate and not president of the United States, Donald Trump had a suggestion for winning the battle against the Islamic State: “Take out their families.”

“The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox News' “Fox and Friends” in December 2015. “They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”

The comment prompted criticism from other candidates, who argued that such a tactic would constitute a war crime. A year and a half later, Trump is now president — and on Friday, a monitoring group said that airstrikes from a U.S.-backed coalition on a town in Syria had killed a large number of relatives of Islamic State fighters. ...

In total, at least 106 people died in the strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, including 42 children of Islamic State fighters. The article announcing the deaths dubbed it “the largest massacre against the [the Islamic State's] families in Syria.”

North Korea launches its 12th missile test of 2017

North Korea conducted yet another weapons test Monday (its third missile launch in as many weeks), successfully firing a short-range ballistic missile into Japan’s exclusive economic waters in open defiance of UN sanctions and growing international pressure from the U.S., China, Japan and others.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense said the missile was launched from the eastern coast town of Wonsan at approximately 5.40 a.m. local time and landed in the Sea of Japan having traveled for six minutes covering a distance of about 450 kilometers (280 miles). Though there is some dispute about where exactly the missile landed. ...

North Korea’s state run newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported that Kim Jong Un referred to the test of the “new-type anti-aircraft guided weapon system” as having been “perfect” and said it should be “mass-produced to deploy all over the country.” 

Early analysis suggests this was a short range scud-type ballistic missile, which follows Pyongyang’s rapid testing of long and medium-range missiles in recent weeks.

UK - PM May and Labour leader Corbyn in brutal pre-election TV grilling

Europe May Finally Rethink NATO Costs

President Donald Trump’s politically incorrect behavior at the gathering of NATO leaders in Brussels on Thursday could, in its own circuitous way, spotlight an existential threat to the alliance. Yes, that threat is Russia, but not in the customary sense in which Westerners have been taught to fear the Russian bear. It is a Russia too clever to rise to the bait – a Russia patient enough to wait for the Brussels bureaucrats and generals to fall of their own weight, pushed by financial exigencies in many NATO countries. ...

Over time, even the most sophisticated propaganda wears thin, and more and more Europeans will realize that NATO, in its present form, is an unnecessary, vestigial organ already a quarter-century beyond its expiration date – and that it can flare up painfully, like a diseased appendix. At a time when citizens of many NATO countries are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, they will be reluctant to sink still more money into rehab for a vestigial organ.

That there are better uses for the money is already clear, and President Trump’s badgering of NATO countries to contribute ever more for defense may well backfire. Some are already asking, “Defense against what?” Under the painful austerity that has been squeezing the Continent since the Wall Street crash nearly a decade ago, a critical mass of European citizens is likely to be able to distinguish reality from propaganda – and perhaps much sooner than anyone anticipates. This might eventually empower the 99 percent, who don’t stand to benefit from increased military spending to fight a phantom threat, to insist that NATO leaders stop funding a Cold War bureaucracy that has long since outlived its usefulness.

A military alliance normally dissolves when its raison d’etre – the military threat it was created to confront – dissolves. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 – more than a quarter century ago – and with it the Warsaw Pact that was established as the military counter to NATO.

Donald Trump acted like 'a drunk tourist' on Europe trip that led Angela Merkel to proclaim end of US alliance

Donald Trump was like a “drunk tourist” on his first trip abroad, which saw awkward handshakes with the French President, shoving the Prime Minister of Montenegro and causing German Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare the end of the US alliance with Europe. A US State Department official blasted the “arrogance” of the President as he flew from Saudi Arabia and Israel to Europe last week. “When it comes to diplomacy, President Trump is a drunk tourist,” the unnamed official told The Daily Beast. ...

At a ceremony to celebrate Nato member nations' strength after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mr Trump said Germany was “bad, very bad” for its trade surplus and told off the 28 countries for “not paying what they should be paying”.  He also refused to commit to upholding Article 5 of the Nato Treaty, and did not utter the words “all for one, one for all”. ...

Ms Merkel declared to a crowd in Bavaria that Europe’s ability to rely on the US was “over, to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.” Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands”, Ms Merkel added.

This is important. It is well worth a full read. The Intercept is doing great work on this.

Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies”

A shadowy international mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first detailed picture of how TigerSwan, which originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror, worked at the behest of its client Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, to respond to the indigenous-led movement that sought to stop the project.

Internal TigerSwan communications describe the movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component” and compare the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters. One report, dated February 27, 2017, states that since the movement “generally followed the jihadist insurgency model while active, we can expect the individuals who fought for and supported it to follow a post-insurgency model after its collapse.” Drawing comparisons with post-Soviet Afghanistan, the report warns, “While we can expect to see the continued spread of the anti-DAPL diaspora … aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and active coordination between intelligence and security elements are now a proven method of defeating pipeline insurgencies.”

More than 100 internal documents leaked to The Intercept by a TigerSwan contractor, as well as a set of over 1,000 documents obtained via public records requests, reveal that TigerSwan spearheaded a multifaceted private security operation characterized by sweeping and invasive surveillance of protesters.

As policing continues to be militarized and state legislatures around the country pass laws criminalizing protest, the fact that a private security firm retained by a Fortune 500 oil and gas company coordinated its efforts with local, state, and federal law enforcement to undermine the protest movement has profoundly anti-democratic implications. The leaked materials not only highlight TigerSwan’s militaristic approach to protecting its client’s interests but also the company’s profit-driven imperative to portray the nonviolent water protector movement as unpredictable and menacing enough to justify the continued need for extraordinary security measures.

US Oligarchs Shown Using Military Espionage Against Peaceful Protesters In Leaked Documents

So, wait… are we letting Wall Street build its own domestic military now?

A series of leaked documents published by The Intercept reveals disturbing new details about how Energy Transfer Partners, a Wall Street-entrenched corporate conglomerate with massive political influence, hired counterterrorism mercenary firm TigerSwan to conduct military-style espionage and infiltration upon Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, as well as strategize against them in collaboration with local, state, and federal law enforcement. ...

TigerSwan shared the information they obtained via surveillance and infiltration not only with local police departments, but with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI?—?and can I just say how intensely creepy it is that those agencies are taking an active interest in American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights? It’s chilling enough that Wall Street and big oil are able to hire actual, literal mercenaries to disrupt and undermine peaceful protests on American soil using actual, literal military tactics, but the fact that those mercenaries are then able to collaborate with the federal defense and intelligence sectors to advance their agendas is something straight out of a William Gibson dystopian cyberpunk novel.

America is barely even pretending to be anything other than a corporatist oligarchy anymore. Soon the oligarchs might not even need to pretend, and armed troops with corporate logos on their uniforms will be patrolling the streets to make sure nobody tries to hurt their profit margins. The leaked documents provide a window into the conversations of the unelected power establishment’s mercenary goon squad, and if the goons they selected for the job are already talking about environmental activists as “terrorists” and demonstrations as “attacks”, imagine how hard they’ll start stomping people down once climate chaos gets rolling and folks really start paying attention to what these people have been doing to the environment. I guarantee you the plutocrats have already discussed this possibility in depth.

DAPL Photographer Cleared of Charges After Drone Footage Proves His Case

A Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protester and photographer was cleared of all charges Thursday after he was accused of endangering a police plane with his drone. Aaron Turgeon, also known as Prolific the Rapper, faced seven years in prison after he was arrested in October and charged with reckless endangerment and physical obstruction of a government function. Prosecutors said he had put the pilot of a surveillance plane, as well as water protectors on the ground, in harm's way when he used a drone to capture protest footage over a DAPL site.

The footage proved to be useful in the trial, which ended in one day after Judge Allan Schmalenberger found that Turgeon flew his drone in a "methodical manner" and did not put others at "substantial risk of bodily injury under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life," the Bismarck Tribune reported. "The defendant did not fly the drone at the plane. He did not fly the drone in a reckless manner over either the people or at the plane," Schmalenberger said.

Turgeon testified that he was flying the drone to film the protest, and that he was aware of the police plane's position and made sure to stay out of its way. He said protesters raised their fists when they saw the drone, indicating that they wanted to be filmed, the Tribune reported. Turgeon documented the DAPL resistance often, posting videos and livestreams to various Facebook groups. Among the footage he captured was of police assaulting protesters with water cannons and tear gas.

North Dakota Highway Patrol Sgt. Shannon Henke, who spoke with Turgeon at the scene and briefly attempted to confiscate the drone, testified in court that the aerial device could have fallen from the sky and injured someone. The incident helped prompt the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to implement a no-fly zone over the protest sites.

"It's a call for other judges here in Morton County to understand that there might be things happening that you're not seeing," Turgeon said Thursday. "In my case, they tried to take my drone. If they would have taken my drone, I would not have video evidence that showed I never flew toward that plane."

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

We Need Memorial Day to Obscure the Unbearable Truth About War

No Laughing Matter: The Manchester Bomber is the Spawn of Hillary and Barack’s Excellent Libyan Adventure

Is America (Really) Collapsing?

Donald Trump’s War on Journalism Has Begun. But Journalists Are Not His Main Target.

You Only Hate Assad Because Your TV Told You To

Trump Submits to Neocon Orthodoxy

$25 Million Oil Tanker Gifted to Erdogan’s Family Is Just One of Many Revelations in the Malta Files

Trump’s “America First“ Infrastructure Plan: Let Saudi Arabia and Blackstone Take Care of It

George W. Bush’s Horrific Legacy

Why Does the United States Beat Up On Capitalist Russia?

The Democratic Campaign for Georgia Governor Is Being Fought Over Free College

Cut Corporate Taxes? This Is How the Biggest Companies Cheated on Taxes in 2016

Lyme Isn’t the Only Disease Ticks Are Spreading This Summer

Roger Waters brings powerful Anti-Trump message on new tour offending some fans

A Little Night Music

Larry Johnson - Midnight Hour

Larry Johnson - So Sweet

Larry Johnson - Seaboard Train Blues

Larry Johnson - Keep It Clean

Larry Johnson & Woody Mann - Bad Feeling Blues

Larry Johnson - Rampart Street

Larry Johnson - That's The Wrong Woman

Larry Johnson - Trouble In Mind

Larry (Johnson) & Hank (Adkins) - The Captain Don't 'Low That Here

Larry Johnson - Four Women Blues