Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
AP’s Today in History for October 9th
Guerrilla leader Che Guevara executed in Bolivia; Anthrax-laced letters sent to Capitol Hill; Achille Lauro hijackers surrender; Andrei Sakharov wins Nobel Peace Prize; Musician John Lennon born.
Breakfast Tune I Feel Fine Clawhammer
Guy Wolff – Published on Feb 9, 2016
“After hearing Abdul over at Banjo Hang Out do this great old Beatles song I thought I would give it a go .. Crazy hard stuff in there .I love how John Lennon was moved to seventh chords and Paul McCartney loved going from major to minor . This has a very subtle transition back and forth from one to the other .. I always wondered if John would do a verse and Paul a chorus and vice a versa .. Wonderful stuff to put to a rhythm instrument like the clawhammer banjo .. I am playing an 1880’s Dobson Silver Bell with Nylgut strings in gCGCDD + 2 or aDADE .. All the best , Guy”
Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below
Judge Rules Ex-CIA Officials Can Be Questioned in Torture Case
Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams
A federal judge has ordered that former CIA officials can be deposed in a lawsuit against the architects of the agency’s torture program, in what human rights advocates say is a vital step for accountability.
The order (pdf), issued by U.S. District Court Senior Judge Justin Quackenbush earlier this week, rejected an attempt by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that would have protected the officials from oral questioning. The deposition will be carried out as part of a discovery process for a case against the program’s architects, psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of three men who were subjected to beatings, exposure to extreme temperature, sleep and food deprivation, and other abuses while in CIA custody.
Two of the four officials are John Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez, who both held high-ranking positions in the agency at the time the torture program was being developed and implemented. In a blog post about the order, the ACLU wrote of Rizzo, who was the CIA’s chief lawyer for much of George W. Bush’s administration:
Rizzo went along with the now-discredited Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel [OCL] memos that purported to approve torture, privately acknowledging the OLC’s “ability to interpret over, under and around Geneva, the torture convention, and other pesky little international obligations.” Rizzo also helped draft Bush’s still-secret order authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention facilities overseas and to interrogate detainees.
…
Banks ponder the meaning of life as Deutsche agonizes
Carmel Crimmins and Olivia Oran, Reuters
It wasn’t just Deutsche Bank that was grappling with big questions about the future at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington last week.
The German bank is scrambling to overhaul its operations as it faces a multi-billion dollar fine for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities in the United States.
But many others in the banking industry are also still figuring out what they should be doing, nearly a decade after the financial crisis, as they grapple with anemic economic growth, wafer-thin returns on lending and the possibility that regulators will further hike their cost of doing business.
“This new world of low interest rates and even negative interest rates is something that is very difficult,” said Frederic Oudea, the chief executive of French bank Societe Generale.
“It is a game changer, not just for banks but for the whole financial industry,” he told an audience from the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a trade group for big banks that holds its annual meeting alongside the IMF. …
Accused NSA contractor was workaholic hoarder into computers, says ex-wife
David Smith, The Guardian
The ex-wife of a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor arrested for allegedly stealing classified information has described him as a workaholic hoarder more interested in computers than politics.
Elizabeth Martin told the New York Times she would be shocked if her former husband Harold, whom she has not seen since 2009, betrayed his country by deliberately passing on government secrets.
Harold Martin, 51, from Glen Burnie, Maryland, was secretly arrested by the FBI in August after federal prosecutors said he illegally removed highly classified information and stored the material in his home and car. Martin worked for the same NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, that employed the whistleblower Edward Snowden, but his own motive remains a mystery. …
Scores Dead After Saudi-Led, US-Backed Coalition Bombs Yemen Funeral
Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams
The Saudi-led coalition, whose planes the U.S. continues to refuel, reportedly killed at least 90 people in Yemen on Saturday when airstrikes targeted a funeral hall in the capital of Sanaa. Some put the death toll as high as 155.
…
Thousands of civilians have been killed since the Saudi-led campaign began in March. Just last month, the U.S. Senate rejected an attempt to block a $1.15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, leading one human rights expert to decry the U.S. as “indifferent to Yemen’s misery.”Indeed, Human Rights Watch researcher Priyanka Motaparthy wrote just this week: “Despite rising outrage over the bloody civilian toll in Yemen’s war, the United States administration is showing no signs of breaking with—or attempting to check—the actions of its ally Saudi Arabia.” …
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Man Allegedly Fires AR-15 To Scare Dogwalker He Mistook For Clown
Hilary Hanson
A man accused of shooting an AR-15 into the air near a woman walking a dog allegedly did so because he mistook her for a clown.
Police in Bardstown, Kentucky, say Adam Tingle’s wife told him she saw a clown outside, and he yelled at the person in question, The Kentucky Standard reported Saturday. When the person didn’t react, he allegedly fired one shot into the air to scare them off, and his wife called 911.
Apparently, the “clown” was actually a woman walking her dog. Tingle was charged with second-degree wanton endangerment.
Of course, this raises the question of why someone’s reaction to seeing a clown would be shooting at them. …
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