Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

Nation that held a general election in 2010, usually have four to five year election cycluses, referred to in the post before mine.

What is, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

(Sorry for the sarcasm, just had to. :p)
 
More getting the Middle Class to pay for others incompetence. ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13967580

"About half of all state schools in England and Wales are being affected by a strike by UK public sector workers.
Picket lines have been set up as three teaching unions join Public and Commercial Services union members such as jobcentre and border control staff to protest at planned pension changes.

They say the plans mean more work and contributions for a reduced pension.

The government says the plans are "fair to taxpayers" and other trade unions are continuing with negotiations."

Basically a 3% pay cut as this has to go into you Pension, and the retirement age increased and finally lower pension to be received. These workers had previously agreed to an adjustment in their pension in 2007. The Union Leader asked for a valuation of the Pension (If this was a normal Pension fund it has to be revalued every 3 years) but the government are 2 years late and have not responded - so far.

One union has never gone on strike in about 150 years - that is how seriously they are taking this.

In other news 15,000 further employees to be made redundant by Lloyds Bank. A sad day, I once worked for them and I used to hold in the highest esteem - not now though getting their fingers burned with a really stupid business move - pah!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9526000/9526600.stm

so our public sector's gold plated pensions become slightly less gilded, yet they remain some of the most generous in the world and we are finally changing a retirement age that was set for an era when our life expectancy was a decade shorter. These are completely justifiable changes.

The unions should stop striking for political gain and start realising that the public sector as it is at the moment is completely unsustainable. Also calling strikes when only 30% of members bother to vote - absolutely outrageous.
 
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U.S. to Look at 2 Detainee Deaths, Drops Wider Inquiry

WASHINGTON ? The Justice Department, after years of criticism over its inaction in probing the C.I.A.?s interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects, announced on Thursday that it was opening a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two detainees who died in American custody.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he had accepted a recommendation from a specially appointed prosecutor, John Durham, who said there was enough evidence of wrongdoing to warrant a full investigation. However, further investigation into the treatment of nearly 100 other terrorism detainees who were held overseas in American custody was ?not warranted,? Mr. Holder said.

Renewed attention to the issue of C.I.A. interrogations ? after the controversial issue had all but disappeared from public debate ? is sure to set off a range of difficult legal and political issues for the Justice Department, the C.I.A. and politicians on both sides of the aisle.

While liberals have criticized both the Obama and Bush administrations for failing to prosecute conduct that they say amounts to torture, conservatives have argued that intelligence officials did what was needed and lawful to protect national security.

Now under criminal investigation are the deaths of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in C.I.A. custody in 2003 at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and whose body was later photographed packed in ice, and Gul Rahman, who died in 2002 in a secret C.I.A. prison in Afghanistan after being shackled to a cold cement wall, according to The Associated Press, which cited unidentified government officials. The Justice Department did not immediately confirm the identities of the victims.

Justice Department prosecutors and other government investigators have examined the tactics of American captors since at least 2004 to determine whether their use of rough interrogation tactics ? even beyond those approved by lawyers at the time ? and the deaths that resulted in some cases broke the law. Prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., were known to have looked closely at the tactics used in the interrogations of more than two dozen detainees.

But no charges have been brought in any of those cases to date.

In 2008, Mr. Durham, who is based in Connecticut, began examining evidence that the C.I.A. had improperly destroyed videotapes of its interrogations in possible violation of court orders. The Justice Department declined to bring charges over the destruction of the tapes, but Mr. Holder, in 2009, authorized the expansion of Mr. Durham?s investigation to include possible mistreatment of prisoners.

President Obama signaled soon after his inauguration in January 2009 that there was resistance to re-examining some of the more controversial tactics of the Bush administration, including the treatment of prisoners. In his statement on Thursday, Mr. Holder was careful to stress the ?incredibly important service to our nation? that intelligence officials contribute. ?They deserve our respect and gratitude for the work that they do,? he said.
 
so our public sector's gold plated pensions become slightly less gilded, yet they remain some of the most generous in the world and we are finally changing a retirement age that was set for an era when our life expectancy was a decade shorter. These are completely justifiable changes.

The unions should stop striking for political gain and start realising that the public sector as it is at the moment is completely unsustainable. Also calling strikes when only 30% of members bother to vote - absolutely outrageous.
The public sector's pensions are not the problem - the problem was and is still the poor pensions offered by commerce, when they went from defined benefit to contribution cash sums no one kicked up a stink/went on strike.

I have to pay 6% from zero, gone from a 60ths. scheme to an 80ths. scheme to finally a cash scheme with reduced indexisation and a cap on rises of 5% no matter what inflation is doing.

That was only unaffordable because Gordon Brown decided to abolish the tax relief pensions investments attracted actually. Now the public sector has, I understand, been for many years paid out of taxiation as government of all shades have failed to build up funds for investment purposes, now they find that they need in the teacher's case a saving of 2.8 Billion so working backwards from that figure gives you the answer that the government have calculated would be the needed to be raised and that is a 3% additional contribution (i.e. = pay cut), later retirement date, and other adjustments on the inflation proofing (downwards - CPI rather than RPI).

So who do I blame? Let me see people who do not want the pay cut and their terms and conditions worsened or their employers who seem to be incompetent?

Actually what the real game is that we are trying to make employing Brits competitive by cutting pay and benefits, this is the governments answer to the problem of jobs going offshore and cost savings at the exchequer IMHO.

Nation that held a general election in 2010, usually have four to five year election cycluses, referred to in the post before mine.

What is, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

(Sorry for the sarcasm, just had to. :p)

The reason why I asked is that you never know when an election will be called by the PM in Ukania, he may think he is popular and can get out of the deal with the Liberals so he may call a snap election at any time - 5 years is a maximum when he must call an election.
 
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The reason why I asked is that you never know when an election will be called by the PM in Ukania, he may think he is popular and can get out of the deal with the Liberals so he may call a snap election at any time - 5 years is a maximum when he must call an election.

he wouldn't want to get out of the deal with the Liberals unless it was obvious that they would win with a huge majority, if they won with a slim majority then he would have to deal with the far right of their party which won't let anything pass unless it had amendments for leaving the EU, reintroducing capital and corporal punishment and kicking the immigrants out.
 
Yeah. Like the rt. hon. Herbert Henry Asquith MP. George V got his bollocks bollocked by the Liberals. Really bollocked.
 
If you happen to have 44 minutes and 39 Seconds to listen to a radio interview. I would point you towards Fareed Zakaria on NPR yesterday. I thought it was an interesting listen.

"We have the leading companies and the leading sectors in the advanced industrial world, we have an incredibly dynamic society, and we have high levels of entrepreneurship. And we have the best universities in the world. ... We also have impeccable credit. What we don't have is a political system that can take the simple measures to deal with our short-term deficit."

He references this report as a good way to avoid the looming fiscal crisis.
 
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Petraeus confirmed by Senate unanimously as new CIA director



Since I brought up the CIA:

?Some Will Call Me a Torturer?: CIA Man Reveals Secret Jail

Admitting that ?some will call me a torturer? is a surefire way to cut yourself off from anyone?s sympathy. But Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative, isn?t sure whether he?s the hero or the villain of his own story.

Distilled, that story, told in Carle?s new memoir The Interrogator, is this: in the months after 9/11, the CIA kidnaps a suspected senior member of al-Qaida and takes him to a Mideast country for interrogation. It assigns Carle ? like nearly all his colleagues then, an inexperienced interrogator ? to pry information out of him. Uneasy with the CIA?s new, relaxed rules for questioning, which allow him to torture, Carle instead tries to build a rapport with the man he calls CAPTUS.

But CAPTUS doesn?t divulge the Qaida plans the CIA suspects him of knowing. So the agency sends him to ?Hotel California? ? an unacknowledged prison, beyond the reach of the Red Cross or international law.

Carle goes with him. Though heavily censored by the CIA, Carle provides the first detailed description of a so-called ?black site.? At an isolated ?discretely guarded, unremarkable? facility in an undisclosed foreign country (though one where the Soviets once operated), hidden CIA interrogators work endless hours while heavy metal blasts captives? eardrums and disrupts their sleep schedules. Afterward, the operatives drive to a fortified compound to munch Oreos and drink somberly to Grand Funk Railroad at the ?Jihadi Bar.? Any visitor to Guantanamo Bay?s Irish pub ? O?Kellys, home of the fried pickle ? will recognize the surreality.

But Carle ? codename: REDEMPTOR ? comes to believe CAPTUS is innocent. ?We had destroyed the man?s life based on an error,? he writes. But the black site is a bureaucratic hell: CAPTUS? reluctance to tell CIA what it wants to hear makes the far-off agency headquarters more determined to torture him. Carle?s resistance, shared by some at Hotel California, makes him suspect. He leaves CAPTUS in the black site after ten intense days, questioning whether his psychological manipulation of CAPTUS made him, ultimately, a torturer himself.

Eight years later the CIA unceremoniously released CAPTUS. (The agency declined to comment for this story.) Whether that means CAPTUS was innocent or merely no longer useful as a source of information, we may never know. Carle spoke to Danger Room about what it?s like to interrogate a man in a place too dark for the law to find.

Danger Room: Do you consider yourself a torturer? At the end of the book, you wrestle with the question.

Glenn Carle: According to Justice Department lawyer John Yoo?s August 2002 memo on interrogation, the answer is no. As one can see from the entire book, I opposed all these practices and this approach. I was involved in it, although I tried to stop what I considered wrong. I feel I acted honorably throughout my involvement in the CAPTUS operation, and tried to have him treated properly, but much of it was disturbing and wrong.

DR: You?re maybe the only CIA officer to publicly describe a ?black site? prison, your Hotel California. What was it like to be inside a place completely off the books from any legal accountability? Did it make you feel like you could act with impunity? How did you restrain yourself?

GC: No, I never, never felt like I could or should act with impunity. No one I know felt that way. We all felt we were involved in an extraordinary, sensitive operation that required very careful behavior. What was acceptable was often unclear, despite the formal guidance that eventually was developed. ?How did I restrain myself? implies perhaps that I was inclined to act in unrestrained ways. I never, ever was; nor were, in my experience, my colleagues. From literally the first second I was briefed on the operation, I was acutely aware that I would have to weigh every step I took, and decide what was morally, legally acceptable. There was never the slightest thought that I or anyone could act with impunity. We were acting clandestinely; but never beyond obligations to act correctly and honorably. The dilemma comes in identifying where those lines are, in a situation in which much was murky.

DR: You came to believe that the man you call CAPTUS ?was not a jihadist or a member of al-Qaida.? Well, even so, was he still dangerous? Did you ever feel he duped you? You write that he lied to you, after all.

GC: CAPTUS himself was not a terrorist, or a dangerous man. He had been involved in activities of legitimate concern to the CIA, because they did touch upon al-Qa?ida activities. That?s a fact. But he was not a willing member of, believer in, or supporter of, al-Qa?ida. He was not a terrorist, had committed no crimes, had not intentionally supported jihad or terrorist actions.

Did he dupe me? He evaded and lied on occasion, yes. And I always wrestled with the question of whether he was duping me. In the end, I had to decide, though, and I decided he was, fundamentally, straight with me. Never totally, but fundamentally, yes. This is not a black and white hat situation. I try to make that as clear as can be in the book. Little was simple ? thus, my descriptions of the ?gray world? in which knowledge is imperfect, motivations and actions are sometimes contradictory ? in which CAPTUS, perhaps, was truthful, innocent, disingenuous, and complicit simultaneously.

DR: Did you ever feel, at Hotel California or before, that interrogating CAPTUS put you in legal jeopardy down the road?

GC: I think everyone was concerned with this, at every level, and at every second of one?s involvement in interrogation operations. We all worked very hard to act legally. The challenges are how to reconcile contradictory laws, which are morally repugnant, perhaps, and which leave room for broad interpretation and abuse. No one consciously broke the law, ever, in my experience or knowledge. But what should one do? How could one follow one?s orders and accomplish one?s mission, when it was flawed, objectionable, and perhaps itself legally, albeit ?legally? ordered. That?s the supreme dilemma I wrestled with, and others did, too.

DR: When you first interrogate CAPTUS, you write that you tried to establish a rapport with him ? even as you kept him fearful that you controlled his fate. When that didn?t get the intelligence CIA HQ wanted, they shipped the both of you to Hotel California. Did CIA consider the possibility that he wasn?t who they thought he was?

GC: I had slow, partial, success during my time of involvement in bringing colleagues and the institution to see him more as I did. But I failed, ultimately. The view that he was a senior al-Qa?ida member or fellow-traveler remained decisive for a long, long time. The agency or U.S. government didn?t change its views for eight years. Perhaps it never did.


DR: Run me through how CAPTUS was treated at the Hotel.

GC: The objectives are to ?dislocate psychologically? a detainee. This is done through psychological and physical measures, primarily intended to disrupt Circadian rhythms and an individual?s perceptions. So, noise, temperature, one?s sense of time, sleep, diet, light, darkness, physical freedom ? the normal reference points for one?s senses are all distorted. Reality disappears, and so do one?s reference points. It is shockingly easy to disorient someone.

But that is not the same as making someone more willing to cooperate. The opposite is true ? as the CIA?s KUBARK interrogation manual cautions will occur; as I predicted and forewarned; and as occurred in my and other officers? experiences.

DR: In 2003, according to declassified documents, your old boss, George Tenet approved the following ?enhanced interrogation techniques? for use on high value detainees: ?the attention grasp, walling, the facial hold, the facial slap (insult slap), the abdominal slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation beyond 72 hours, the use of diapers for prolonged periods, the use of harmless insects, the water board? Were any of these used on CAPTUS? Did you take part in any of their use?

GC: No. These measures were formally set out, I believe, after my involvement in interrogation. And in any event, from my first second of involvement in the CAPTUS operation I simply would not allow or have anything to do with any physical coercive measure. I would not do it. That point I was certain of instantaneously. I also had literally never heard of waterboarding until the story about it broke in the media.

DR: Did you get any useful intelligence out of CAPTUS? If so, what interrogation techniques ?worked??

GC: Oh, yes, CAPTUS definitely provided useful intelligence. The methods that worked were the same ones that work in classic intelligence operations: establishing a rapport with the individual, understanding his fears, hopes, interests, quirks. It is a psychological task, very similar to what one should do when establishing any human relationship. The plan was to be a perceptive, and sometimes manipulative, thoughtful, knowledgeable, and purposeful individual who understood the man sitting opposite him, and earn his trust.

DR: You came to question whether even the mild psychological disorientation you induced on CAPTUS was too severe an interrogation method. Why? Did you sympathize with CAPTUS too much?

GC: There is always a danger for a case officer to ?fall in love? with his ?target.? That?s the term we use. Any good officer guards against that, and always questions his own perceptions. Always. But I was the one who looked in CAPTUS? eyes for hours and hours and days and days. It was I who knew the man, literally. I?m confident in my assessment of him. And yes, I at first accepted my training: that psychological dislocation induced cooperation, and would not be lasting or severe, therefore could be acceptable in certain circumstances. I came quickly to conclude that this was founded on erroneous conclusions ? nonsense, actually ? about human psyche and motivation; did not work; was counterproductive; and was, simply, wrong in every way. So I came to oppose it.

DR: How did the CIA react to you publishing this book? Huge sections of it are blacked out.

GC: The agency redacted about 40 percent of the initial manuscript, deleting entire chapters, almost none of which had anything to do with protecting sources or methods. Much of it was so the agency could protect itself from embarrassment, or from allowing any description of the interrogation program to come out. One would infer, obviously, that large segments of the agency would have preferred to leave CAPTUS? story in the dark, where it took place.

DR: David Petraeus, the incoming CIA director, suggested to Congress that there might be circumstances where a return to ?enhanced interrogation? is appropriate. What would you say to him?

GC: That there is almost no conceivable circumstance in which the enhanced interrogation practices are acceptable or work. This belief is a red herring, wrong, and undoes us a bit. We are better than that. Enhanced interrogation does not work, and is wrong. End of story.

DR: The Justice Department decided on June 30 to seek criminal inquiries in 2 cases of detainee abuses ? out of 101. Was that justice, a whitewash, or something in between?

GC: It wasn?t a whitewash. It?s in general better not to seek retribution, but to seek to inculcate correct values and behavior going forward.

DR: Did you ever learn what happened to CAPTUS? treatment after you left at Hotel California? Why was he was released? Have you tried to find him? What would you tell him if you saw one another?

GC: No. I left the case and knew nothing about him for years. I presume he was released because the institution, at last, accepted what I had argued as strongly as I had been able to do so. He was ultimately let go, I hope, because the institution and US Government, at last, came to accept my view of CAPTUS. His release validates ? substantiates ? everything I argued.

I came to respect CAPTUS. We are from such different worlds, and his and my circumstances ? he a detainee and I one of his interrogators ? are so radically different that conversation would be awkward if we ever met again. It is natural that he feel resentment. And little was ever clear in the entire operation. That?s the nature of intelligence work. He is not a total innocent, I don?t think. But his rendition was not justified by the facts as I came to learn them, which was at odds with the agency?s assessment of him.

DR: Finally, how many CAPTUSes ? people you believe to be innocent men swept up in the CIA ?enhanced interrogation? system ? are there?

GC: I do not know.
 
?Some Will Call Me a Torturer?

Yes, so? As long as they are not torturing Americans I feel they should have free reign in such matters. War is a nasty business, if instead of killing the CIA feels the need to torture then so be it.
 
It is against our laws, military law, and world wide conventions and agreements.
 
Yes, so? As long as they are not torturing Americans I feel they should have free reign in such matters. War is a nasty business, if instead of killing the CIA feels the need to torture then so be it.

First and foremost, it's illegal. Secondly, it's forsaking moral. Thirdly, it gives you sketchy intel.

Oh, and other than that, stop being so smug. If they can torture an alien illegally. They can do it to you too.

You just don't care about anything, do you jetsetter? Heck, you remind me of a cross between King Leopold and Cecil Rhodes. Rule America!
 
Illinois' death row officially shuts down

CHICAGO (AP) ? After spending years at the center of heated national debate over capital punishment, Illinois' death row officially died Friday when a state law abolishing the death penalty quietly took effect.

The state garnered international attention when then-Republican Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium in 2000 after several inmates' death sentences were overturned and he cleared death row three years later. One man who came within 48 hours of being executed was among those later declared innocent.

The fate of executions in the state was sealed in March when Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation ending the death penalty, following years of stories of men sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit and families of murder victims angrily demanding their loved ones' killers pay with their own lives.

Illinois has executed 12 men since 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated, but none since 1999.

Quinn subsequently commuted the sentences of the 15 men on death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Fourteen are now in maximum security prisons, while one is in a medium-high security prison with a mental health facility.

Ironically, the state's death row at the prison in Pontiac, southwest of Chicago, has been turned into a place where inmates go when they're deemed worthy of leaving the state's super-maximum prison in southern Illinois, the Tamms Correctional Center, and enter a less-restrictive program.

"It is a step down from Tamms," said Stacey Solano, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Corrections. "When they transition out, it is a restrictive environment but not as restrictive as Tamms."

As for the death chamber itself, no decision has been made about what ? if anything ? will be done with it, Solano said.

The legislation abolishing the death penalty was signed by Quinn amid much fanfare, but Friday's finality was barely noted around the state. Solano said the department received just two calls for information from the media on Friday.

That lack of interest stands in contrast to the last dozen years or so when Illinois was often at the forefront of debate over the death penalty.

Ryan, who imposed the execution moratorium after the death sentences of 13 men were overturned, called the state's capital punishment system "haunted by the demon of error." He cleared death row shortly before leaving office in 2003, by commuting the sentences of 167 condemned inmates to life in prison.

Even as lawmakers debated the death penalty and the moratorium, prosecutors continued to seek the death penalty. By the time Quinn signed the bill in March, there were 15 men on death row.

Among them was Brian Dugan, who was convicted in 2009 in the 1983 slaying of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico ? years after two men were sentenced to death for the same slaying before they were ultimately exonerated and released from prison.

His attorney, Steven Greenberg, said Friday that shutting down death row was proper given that people were convicted and sentenced to death for that crime and others they did not commit.

"Anytime you've got a system where there is a danger of providing retribution on the wrong person, that's no different than vigilante justice, which is what we had," he said.

Greenberg said some juries, with their decisions not to recommend the death penalty in other cases in recent years, were already sending a message that they remained concerned about the possibility of executing an innocent person.

Former Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine, a proponent of the death penalty and a vocal critic of Ryan's decision to clear death row, pointed out that among those who benefit from the ban is a man who raped a mother and daughter in front of one another before stabbing them to death.

"I believe there are some people who do such terrible things that they forfeit their right to be among us," he said.
 
Yes, so? As long as they are not torturing Americans I feel they should have free reign in such matters. War is a nasty business, if instead of killing the CIA feels the need to torture then so be it.
The Gestapo said exactly the same thing during WWII - the only difference is they did this on an industrial scale. When they had finished interrogation they dumped the hapless person into a concentration camp to await death. Where exactly is the difference, oh CIA do not have concentration camps. ...

I am appalled by this line: "As long as they are not torturing Americans. ...". American life = 100, everyone else worth = 0. Well that is all right then.
 
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Yes, so? As long as they are not torturing Americans I feel they should have free reign in such matters. War is a nasty business, if instead of killing the CIA feels the need to torture then so be it.
The vast majority of the military and intelligence community disagree with you.
 
The Gestapo said exactly the same thing during WWII - the only difference is they did this on an industrial scale. When they had finished interrogation they dumped the hapless person into a concentration camp to await death. Where exactly is the difference, oh CIA do not have concentration camps. ...

I am appalled by this line: "As long as they are not torturing Americans. ...". American life = 100, everyone else worth = 0. Well that is all right then.


That is part of the problem with right wingers (of course not all), they seem to think that Americans are somehow superior to all other humans. We (America) then don't need to follow the rules laid out for us and others and do as we please. Makes you wonder how we are hated by so many doesn't it?
 
Not hated by everyone exactly - baffled many perhaps, but hated only by a few.

We managed to be attacked by both Israeli (King David Hotel, hanging of the three sergeants, yada, yada) and Palestinian/Muslim (07/07) terrorists - way to go Brits.
 
Death penalty abolished in Illinois

I was pretty happy when I initially heard the news some time ago. Now I am ecstatic.


Oh, and jetsetter is a armchair war psycho. I am surprised none of you have caught onto that until now.
 
You think we don't know?
 
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