Posts from — December 2014

Heinrich Müller, Chief of the Geheime Staatspolizei [Gestapo] coined the term Verschärfte Vernehmung, “enhanced interrogation”, in 1937. The useful euphemisms are recycled forever – “homeland security”, etc.

In my experience, torture is only used as an attempt to produce information in Western Christian societies. In the rest of the world it is punishment to force conformity and/or compliance, when it isn’t used strictly to cause pain and suffering.

Consider the sacrament of penance in the Christian tradition. That is really the basis for the Inquisition and was part of Western laws for centuries in many forms like trial by ordeal.

Some “think tank” in ages past decided that souls have weight, ergo witches would weigh less than normal people because they have sold their souls to Satan. This leads to tying up people suspected of witchcraft and throwing them into deep water. If they didn’t sink and drown, they were pulled out to be hanged and/or burned. Those who drowned were obviously innocent and given a Christian burial.

From McClatchy in DC: New NY Attorney General wants to prosecute police who kill unarmed civilians

Washington — New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked Gov. Mario [sic should be Andrew as Mario is the former governor and father of Andrew] Cuomo on Monday to let his office investigate and prosecute cases in which police officers kill unarmed civilians.

In a letter to Cuomo, Schneiderman says the move would help address a “crisis of confidence” in the judicial system following the grand jury decision not to prosecute New York City police officers in the recent chokehold death of Eric Garner.

Schneiderman needs the approval of Andrew Cuomo to take over local cases, but he makes a very persuasive argument about the conflict of interest involved in the prosecution of local police officers by local prosecutors.

I hope that Cuomo has the intelligence to understand that letting Schneiderman do it is a winner politically for him. Even if cops aren’t convicted, Cuomo can say that he did everything he could in the furtherance of justice for the victims.

The BBC notes CIA torture report: US raises security ahead of release

Security has been stepped up at US facilities around the world ahead of the release of a report expected to reveal details of harsh CIA interrogations, the White House says.
…

It is expected to detail the CIA’s campaign against al-Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11.

As well as detailing the controversial methods used by CIA operatives in an effort to extract information from high-value suspects, the report is expected to say harsh interrogations failed to deliver appropriate results.

In other words, the US violated its own laws and principles to torture people and it didn’t produce anything useful.

Torture doesn’t provide you with the truth, and never has. Torture produces whatever the victim believes the torturer wants to hear.

The seventy-third anniversary of “a date which will live in infamy…”

The official US Navy site on the Pearl Harbor attack.

There will be a memorial service aboard NAS Pensacola that normally features local survivors of the attack. Obviously there are fewer of them every year.

Yes, it is the day that kindly old Saint Nicholas fills the footware of good little girls and boys with treats [or his assistants beat the evil out of bad children, depending on the local customs – they didn’t just leave the sticks – in some places they use them.] Don’t forget the carrot if he rides a horse in your area.

He is the patron saint of Russian merchants and pawnbrokers (three gold balls are one of the symbols associated with him).

Finding Tadpole

Have you seen him?

[Editor: Hadley wants to play tag, but Tadpole is avoiding him.]

Friday Ark

Cops are out on the ‘Net complaining about the civilian reaction to the decision of the grand jury on Staten Island, and they are making up all kinds of excuses.

According to the medical examiner after an autopsy was conducted, the death was caused by the choke hold and the compression on the man’s chest which are not natural causes or accidental, so he ruled the death was a homicide. If the cops want to argue that the cause was obesity or asthma, they had better show their degrees in pathology, and indicate when they examined the body.

They are claiming that the normal procedures were followed and the police officer was cleared. Sorry, but normal grand juries do not get extended testimony from suspects, and they do not take months to hear evidence and decide.

Resisting arrest without violence is not a capital offense, and suspects should not die as a result. The officer at the center of the case violated stated NYPD policy when he used the choke hold. As soon as you arrest someone, you are responsible for their well-being.

Stupidity must be catching because a prosecutor in the borough of Staten Island, NYC did what the prosecutor in St. Louis County, Missouri did, used a grand jury to avoid charging a white police office involved in the death of a black man – from the BBC Eric Garner: No charges in NY chokehold case.

The medical examiner ruled the death of Eric Garner was “Homicide”, which means it wasn’t “Natural Causes” or “Death by Mischance”, not that it was “Murder”, “Manslaughter”, or any other violation of the Penal Law of the State of New York. If a death is not the result of old age, illness, or accident, it is called a homicide. Even if the death is the result of illness or accident, criminal charges may be filed.

After looking at the video, the officer used his forearm as a block across Garner throat while attempting to control him. It was a stupid move that isn’t effective at controlling a suspect. The standard police ‘choke hold’ has nothing to do with breathing. It applies pressure to both sides of the neck to close the carotid arteries which renders the suspect unconscious very quickly. Cutting off the air supply can take minutes to be effective, and the suspect will almost immediately go into full scale, brain stem panic mode, which will generate injuries.

Mr. Garner had asthma. Asthmatics are a special class when it comes to breathing. Most of them tend to be claustrophobic, and they will panic at having anything over their face, including oxygen masks. They also panic at anything restricting their breathing. By applying the throat bar, then forcing him flat and kneeling on him, the cops triggered a fatal asthma attack.

Apparently Mr. Garner was confronted by multiple police officers for the heinous crime of ‘selling untaxed cigarettes’, which appears to mean he was selling individual cigarettes from a pack. I’m having a hard time believing that such a law exists, much less that the NYPD bothers to enforce it.

There is absolutely nothing that really interests me happening today. The officials in St Louis are still proving that they have no concept of public relations or public safety. I wonder how much of an economic loss they are willing to absorb for this stupidity, because there are a lot of people in the rest of the US who are going to avoid the area as if it was a center for the Ebola virus.

I assume everyone decided to go on a holiday schedule early.

There were nine depressions that resulted in eight tropical storms. Six of the tropical storms became hurricanes, and two of those became major hurricanes [Edouard & Gonzalo].

This was a below average season because of a larger Saharan Air Layer of dust in dry air over the eastern Atlantic, and higher than normal wind shear in the Caribbean. The sea surface temperatures in the southern Atlantic were near average.

The only storm to impact the US mainland was Hurricane Arthur, which grazed North Carolina as a Category 2 and went on to final landfall as a tropical storm near the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick border in Canada.

Bermuda was the primary target this year, getting hit by Tropical Storm Fay and then, a week later, by Hurricane Gonzalo [Category 3].

Gonzalo was the most destructive storm of the season. It came through the Antilles as a Category 1, peaked at Category 4 with 145mph winds, dropped to a Category 3 before it hit Bermuda. It continued northeast and transitioned to a Post-Tropical Cyclone with 100mph winds when it hit Great Britain. It then moved into Europe and caused major flooding all the way down to Greece.

This was Florida’s ninth year without being hit by a hurricane, which means we are way overdue.

This is Dr Masters’s wrap-up with all of the technical bits included.

Right between Hogwatch and Festivus on December 22^nd I have to add: Jury Duty.

It should be interesting to see how much attention a jury will pay to testimony at a trial during Christmas week, with all of the things the jurors have to do before Christmas.