This evening's music features soul and jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron and Motown legend Marvin Gaye.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

It ain't over til it's over: America's wars drag on no matter what officials say

In all three of the countries where the Obama administration declared US wars “over” in the past few years - Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya - the US military is expanding its presence or dropping bombs at an ever-increasing rate. And the government seems to be keeping the American public in the dark on the matter more than ever.

Pentagon leaders suggested this week that the US military wants to keep remaining 9,800 troops in Afghanistan from withdrawing in 2016, despite the fact that the Obama administration declared combat operations in the country “over” six months ago. The gradual extension of the Afghanistan War hasn’t been a secret to anyone who’s been paying close attention, but sadly it has happened far away from the pomp and circumstance of Obama’s now embarrassingly false State of the Union announcement that the Afghanistan War had ended.

Shortly after his January speech, the president signed a secret order that would keep the military fighting and killing in the region through 2015, then delayed any troop pull-out through 2016. ... As the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko remarked: “First it was al Qaeda, then the Taliban, now ISIS will be reason US military remains in Afghanistan.” There’s always going to be someone. What unnamed group will be holding our attention in 2020 when we still have troops fighting and dying there for nebulous reasons?

Away from the headlines, Libya continues to deteriorate since the US and NATO allies bombed the region and deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. ... As a result, the US military to desperately look to build another drone base near Libya that they can start launching regular drone strikes from - targeting both Libya and “elsewhere in North Africa.” ... This potential expansion of the Isis war to a third country has all happened without congressional approval. Hardly anyone seems to care that we’re engaged in a generational war spanning multiple continents that we haven’t legally declared, almost a year after it was started.

What Will Obama Do for Syrian Rebels?

Without any formal announcement from Washington, the United States became further militarily committed to the civil war in Syria last week. It was reported that the first wave of a few dozen U.S.-trained Syrian rebels had crossed the Jordanian border into Syria on July 12. They were reportedly instructed to integrate themselves into other rebel units in order to increase the opposition forces’ overall combat effectiveness. Commander Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokesperson, wrote that rebels are expected to “coordinate with other moderate opposition forces to build trust between organizations that are countering ISIL.”

This consequential development is one of the many barely noticed examples of mission creep that have unfolded since the fight against the self-declared Islamic State began last summer. However, this latest step is unique in that it has occurred without the Obama administration offering any clarification of important questions posed by Congressional overseers over the past ten months. Unless there is a secret plan that adequately answers these questions, the Syria train-and-equip program is one of the more poorly conceived and implausible foreign policy schemes in modern history.

Since last September, military officials in the Middle East have been meeting with exiled rebel leaders and canvassing former fighters in refugee camps to assemble this force. Given the poor U.S. record of developing “moderate” proxy forces that will neither harm civilians nor eventually turn against U.S. interests, the vetting of the rebels included psychological evaluations and biometric screenings. While there are tens of thousands of rebels willing to receive training and equipment to go after the Assad regime, few are willing to fight the Islamic State. The initial plans were to train 5,400 over the first year and between 5,000 and 5,500 each consecutive year to reach 15,000. Given this ambitious agenda, senators were stunned two weeks ago when Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter acknowledged, “As of July 3, we are currently training about 60 fighters,” at a reported cost of $36 million so far.

Drone Contractors: An Oversight and Accountability Gap

A slew of news reports have highlighted the crisis of drone pilot burnout in the United States military. Indeed, pilot shortages have prompted the US Air Force to cut the number of drone flights to fewer than 60 per day. That’s an important problem, but buried in these stories is another one. The Air Force has announced that, in response to the shortage, it will increase its use of contractors for these flights. Given the service’s manpower shortages, this statement is not surprising. Yet the growing numbers of contractors in drone operations, while little discussed, raise significant concerns about oversight and accountability at a time when drone use is set to accelerate. We simply don’t know enough about how contractors will be used in the increasingly automated version of war that appears to be our future. And that means we need to ask hard questions now about how this system should operate rather than simply letting it evolve without oversight. ...

The Air Force has repeatedly said that only uniformed personnel actually fly drones that carry bombs and engage in targeting. Recent Air Force statements about the increased role for contractors do not anticipate a major shift in this policy, (although officials have said that contractors could perform limited flying roles such as assisting with takeoff and landing). But even in supporting roles, contractors’ actions could raise concerns. A study from 2012 estimates that contractors fill 75 to 100 percent of maintenance jobs for some categories of drones and 10 percent of jobs related to intelligence processing, exploitation, and dissemination.

To see why even this level of contractor involvement could be a problem, consider a 2010 incident in the Oruzgan province of Afghanistan. Hellfire missiles launched from an Air Force Predator killed 15 Afghan civilians and injured a dozen more traveling near US special operations forces who were conducting a capture mission. Subsequent investigations revealed that, although military personnel were operating the drone and the ground force commander made the decision to strike, the decision to fire was largely based upon an intelligence analysis that a civilian contractor had provided.

We know much less about the operation of the CIA’s drone program, but reports have indicated significant contractor involvement there as well. For example, contractors have assembled the bombs that get loaded onto the aircraft. In some cases, these bombs have not exploded, raising questions about contractor performance. In another reported case, a bomb assembled by the contractor firm formerly known as Blackwater fell off a drone before it reached its target, leading to a search for the unexploded weapon.

While we don’t know nearly enough about how contractors are and will be used in drone warfare, we can look to the past role of contractors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the so-called “War on Terror.” In each, a toxic brew of anemic governmental oversight, inter-agency squabbling and deception, and a culture of impunity made it possible for contractors at times to send governmental and military authorities down a path of poor judgment, based on little experience, to misguided adventures in abuse.

Varoufakis: Troika Forced Syriza Into Choice Between 'Suicide or Execution'

In his first international television interview since stepping down from his post as Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday that European lenders had forced his government to make a choice between "suicide or execution."

After five months of rigorous negotiations, the outspoken Varoufakis stepped down from his post the night of the Greek referendum. And despite voting against the latest austerity package, Varoufakis said he understood why Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras decided to accept the punishing new terms.

"The truth of the matter is, the very powerful Troika of creditors were not interested in coming to a sensible, honorable mutually beneficial agreement," Varoufakis said, referring to group that represents foreign creditors, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission (eurogroup), and the European Central Bank (ECB).

Varoufakis admitted that during negotiations his government did make some mistakes, but mostly in assuming that they were holding "a rational bargaining session."

"If you look at the way they have behaved from the very first day [the Syriza government] assumed power," he continued, "close inspection will reveal... [that] they were far more interested in humiliating this government and overthrowing it—or at least making sure it overthrows itself in terms of its policies—then coming to an agreement that would ensure they would get most of their money back."

How we can already see the debt deal killing Greece

The evidence is data released by Booking.com, the largest travel agency in Europe, owned by Priceline Group. ... The chaos surrounding the debt deal slashed the number of people willing to book vacations in Greece nearly to zero. Even now, with the situation ostensibly resolved, the number of cancellations is up nearly 20% from a year ago.

Tourism doesn’t just matter a little to Greece’s economy — for purposes of generating the imported currency that will let Greece even begin to make payments on the soon-to-be 400 billion euro debt owed by a poor country with a population the size of Ohio, tourism IS the economy.

With few other export industries, and olive oil generating less than $1 billion a year, the 17% to 18% of the economy represented by tourism is where the debt will be serviced, let alone repaid. If it is serviced at all. ...

The economy only gets even worse when the deal takes effect — complete with a big tax hike on travel to the Greek islands. That’s only part of a broader insistence that Greece run a much bigger surplus than even Germany, where unemployment is just 4.7%. We’ve seen tax hikes and spending cuts applied to an economy in depression — in the U.S., in 1937, prompting a jump in unemployment to 19% from 14%. Among other things, they mean that the Greek budget won’t run the surplus that official creditors demand.

Worthless - Agnes Török

Sanders Calls Violent Arrest of Sandra Bland 'Totally Outrageous Police Behavior'

Just days after being challenged by Black Lives Matter activists to do a better job of addressing police violence against black women in the U.S., presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Wednesday released a statement in response to new footage of Sandra Bland's arrest which he called "totally outrageous." ...

Dashcam footage of her arrest was released Tuesday night, showing a chain of events that betray Encinia's earlier claim that Bland had assaulted him. Instead, the footage shows that the officer escalated their encounter with threats before violently restraining her.

"This video of the arrest of Sandra Bland shows totally outrageous police behavior," Sanders stated on Wednesday. "No one should be yanked from her car, thrown to the ground, assaulted and arrested for a minor traffic stop. The result is that three days later she is dead in her jail cell. This video highlights once again why we need real police reform. People should not die for a minor traffic infraction. This type of police abuse has become an all-too-common occurrence for people of color and it must stop."

What Sandra Bland Illustrates about the “Right to Abuse”

Her real crime was “disrespect of cop”, of course: she didn’t put out her cigarette when asked, she was annoyed to be stopped.

Racism appears to have been operative here, but I want to point out something else. Being black is also a proxy for, “no one important”. No one important is proxy for “as a cop or other authority figure I can do what I want to you.”

Sandra Bland clearly knew her rights. Sandra Bland is dead. (Sandra Bland may well be right because she knew her rights and the cop didn’t want to go to trial over that arrest. Or it may have been punishment for an “uppity black.”)

You have precisely and only the rights that you can enforce: the rights that you have the power to enforce. You have no other rights, and you never did.

“You” can be a group. If a group of citizens is strong enough to insist it be treated according to what the law actually requires (or even better, as with bankers, say), then they have rights. They have those rights only because they can hurt those who violate them, and it is known that they can hurt them.

Obama Prosecutes No Mega-Crooks. Hillary Also Wouldn’t. Would Sanders?

Any country where someone stands above the law is a dictatorship, by those people, against the public — against everyone who is punishable by that nation’s executive, legal, and judicial, process, if they violate that country’s laws.

Any country where there are two classes of people, one class who are above the law, and another class who are subject to the law, is, by definition, a dictatorship, by the former group, over and against the latter mass. That’s what a dictatorship is — that’s what it consists of: an aristocracy and its agents, on the one hand; and the public on the other.

For example, George W. Bush still has not been prosecuted, nor even investigated by the U.S. Government under Obama, for his mega-crimes, from which not only Americans suffer, but people around the world suffered — and we all suffer them today.

He certainly was guilty of violating U.S. laws, including treaties that the U.S. had signed, against torture, even though he has never been prosecuted, nor so much as (in the U.S.) investigated, for any of the numerous crimes, organized crimes, RICO-type crimes, such as Hitler did and for which Hitler’s subordinates were hanged after foreign powers took over. (Hitler, of course, committed suicide.) Nor were Bush’s subordinates investigated for that. Obama has protected them all. If Hillary Clinton becomes President, she certainly won’t instruct her Attorney General to investigate either Bush’s crimes or Obama’s crimes (such as his protection of his predecessor from even being investigated for his numerous crimes). But would Sanders? If he wouldn’t, then no one would, and then there is no chance for the U.S. peacefully to become a democracy, because there will then remain two classes of people in the U.S. — the aristocrats and their agents (such as the U.S. Presidents they place into office) on the one hand, and the public on the other. (The law is applied against only the latter group, the public.) If this ongoing succession of criminal Presidents who let their predecessors off the hook continues, then unquestionably the United States is a land where crimes that are committed by the nation’s leadership are not and will not be prosecuted; so, it’s then an established dictatorship, because the nation’s leaders stand, and will continue to stand, above the law, and the law is applied only to punish and restrain the people down below in the social order.

Study: When Human Consumption Slows, Planet Earth Can Heal

Despite the oft-repeated claim that the recent decline in U.S. carbon emissions was due to the so-called 'fracking boom,' new research published Tuesday shows that it was the dramatic fall in consumption during the Great Recession that deserves credit for this drop.

As nations grapple with the best strategy for decreasing carbon emissions ahead of the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Paris, the report, published in the journal Nature Communications, underscores the need for communities to transition away from an economy based on endless growth and towards a more renewable energy system to stem the growing climate crisis.

The study analyzed six possible sources for the change in fossil fuel emissions: population growth, consumption volume, the types of goods consumed, the labor and materials used to produce goods and services, the type of fuel used, and how much energy is used.

What the researchers found was that 71 percent of the rise in carbon emissions from 1997 to 2007 was due to "economic growth." Alternately, "83 percent of the decrease during 2007-2009 was due to decreased consumption and changes in the production structure of the U.S. economy," with just 17 percent related to changes in the type of fuels used.

Further, during the period of economic recovery from 2009 to 2013, there was a much smaller decrease in emissions of only about one percent. "We conclude that substitution of gas for coal has had a relatively minor role in the... reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions since 2007," the researchers state. ...

The study's findings echo other recent arguments linking the rise of overall consumption and the growth economy with the decline in the Earth's ecosystems.

Also of interest:

Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War

Iran Deal Dooms ‘Full-Spectrum Dominance’

Did Putin Sell Out Greece?