WikiLeaks: RSF is peeved over reactio... WikiStencil U.S. interrogation techniques U.S. interrogation techniques In late 2002 and early 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved specific interrogation techniques for extracting information from Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush administration made the previously classified lists public Tuesday. The final April 2003 list of 24 techniques approved by Rumsfeld, plus three he rejected out of hand and seven that were initially approved but apparently later rejected: Approved techniques • "Direct": Asking straightforward questions. • "Incentive/removal of incentive": Providing a reward or removing a privilege, beyond those that are required by the Geneva Conventions. • "Emotional love": Playing on the love a detainee has for an individual or a group. • "Emotional hate": Playing on the hatred a detainee has for an individual or a group. • "Fear up harsh": Significantly increasing the fear level in a detainee. • "Reduced fear": Reducing the fear level in a detainee.
Long-term scarring of hysteresis on employment Imagine having a fever so bad that it permanently raised your body temperature. Now think of the current unemployment crisis, with new numbers being announced today of a steady 9.6 percent unemployment rate, functioning at the same way. Thinking in terms of "natural" is very, well, natural to us. Some think we are hard-wired for it. And it is a useful concept in many ways. This type of thinking piggybacks onto our thinking about unemployment. But what if it doesn't? The economy right now is performing an experiment in this very thing, and the results are not promising. It starts by reproducing this chart from "Long-Term Earnings Losses due to Mass Layoffs During the 1982 Recession," a 2009 paper by von Wachter, Till, Jae Song and Joyce Manchester. And this summary of some of the ill effects of hysteresis and unemployment: Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney continue to look at other measures of the 1982 recession by location.
WikiLeaks: Reporters Sans Fact-checki... WikiLeaks General promised quick results if Gitmo plan used at Abu Ghraib General promised quick results if Gitmo plan used at Abu Ghraib By Blake Morrison and Peter Eisler, USA TODAY The general who pushed for more aggressive interrogation tactics at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison predicted better intelligence within a month if his strategies were adopted, according to a copy of his classified plan obtained by USA TODAY. In the plan, sent in early September to top military officials in Iraq, Maj. The recommendations in Miller's 12-page report were based on the interrogation operation he supervised at the U.S. By Oct. 12, the Army moved ahead with Miller's strategy to team guards and interrogators, an approach at odds with long-established military doctrine. Those recommendations called for increasing the number of guards and interrogators, improving their training and assigning a legal adviser to Abu Ghraib who was dedicated to monitoring the intelligence-gathering operation. By late October, guards began abusing prisoners and taking humiliating photos of them.
Assange to meet with British police Updated Tue 7 Dec 2010, 12:08pm AEDT WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is preparing to meet police in Britain in the next 24 hours to discuss sexual assault charges laid against him by Swedish police. This morning Mr Assange's lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told the ABC a fresh warrant for her client's arrest had reached Scotland Yard. Sweden wants to question Mr Assange in connection with allegations of sexual assault, but he and his lawyers say they will fight any extradition because they fear he will be handed over to US authorities. "The arrest warrant has been communicated today and I can confirm that we were contacted by the police and are in the process of arranging a meeting to deal with this matter," Ms Robinson said. "I'm not in a position to confirm anything about that meeting just yet. Mr Assange has not been charged and Ms Robinson says he will fight the accusations. But she says her client's ability to fight the charges have been hampered by the freezing of his bank account.
Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity: Tech News « The past week has seen plenty of ink spilled — virtual and otherwise — about WikiLeaks and its mercurial front-man, Julian Assange, and the pressure they have come under from the U.S. government and companies such as Amazon and PayPal, both of which have blocked WikiLeaks from using their services. Why should we care about any of this? Because more than anything else, WikiLeaks is a publisher — a new kind of publisher, but a publisher nonetheless — and that makes this a freedom of the press issue. Not everyone agrees with this point of view, of course. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn), the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, is the one who put pressure on Amazon to remove support for WikiLeaks (although the company claims it removed the organization’s site from its servers because Wikileaks did not own the rights to the content, not because of political pressure). So what makes WikiLeaks different from the New York Times?
Donald Rumsfeld, “Known and Unknown, A Memoir” « Arturo's space Donald Rumsfeld, “Known and Unknown, A Memoir” Posted on The Rumsfeld Papers www.rumsfeld.com/ – Cached Welcome to the home of The Rumsfeld Papers, Donald Rumsfeld’s archival site released in conjunction with his memoir, Known and Unknown. Known and Unknown: A Memoir [Book] By Donald Rumsfeld – Penguin Group USA (2011) – Hardback – 815 pages – ISBN 159523067X “If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.” – Rumsfeld’s Rules Few Americans have spent more time near the center of power than Donald Rumsfeld. Preview this book on Google Book Search Like this: Like Loading... US military threatens soldiers not to read Wikileaks | Raw Story By Monday, December 6, 2010 12:52 EDT The US military in Iraq is warning soldiers not to access the documents released by WikiLeaks, informing them it could result in their computers being “sanitized.” An anonymous tipster told Gawker that “the Army’s unclassified, NIPRNET network in Iraq has blocked every major news website because of the Wikileaks issue.” The US military denied the accusation, but said it is warning troops that it is illegal to access classified materials on an unclassified network. “[U.S. forces in Iraq have] not blocked any news websites from being read,” a spokesperson for US forces in Iraq said. “This page simply warns the user that the website they are about to view may contain classified documents and that such documents should not be viewed, downloaded, or distributed on NIPR computers. Despite the fact that the documents released by WikiLeaks are easily available on the Internet, the information is still considered classified.
The Race to Fix the Classification System The massive disclosure of a quarter million diplomatic records by Wikileaks this weekend underscores the precarious state of the U.S. national security classification system. The Wikileaks project seems to be, more than anything else, an assault on secrecy. If Wikileaks were most concerned about whistleblowing, it would focus on revealing corruption. If it were concerned with historical truth, it would emphasize the discovery of verifiably true facts. If it were anti-war, it would safeguard, not disrupt, the conduct of diplomatic communications. But instead, what Wikileaks has done is to publish a vast potpourri of records — dazzling, revelatory, true, questionable, embarrassing, or routine — whose only common feature is that they are classified or otherwise restricted. This may be understood as a reaction to a real problem, namely the fact that by all accounts, the scope of government secrecy in the U.S. These are not cosmetic changes. Finally, we want to ask for your help.
National and International News Abu Ghraib deal made NEWARK, N.J. — An Army sergeant accused in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal will plead guilty to reduced charges next week as part of a deal with military prosecutors, his lawyer said Thursday. Sgt. Graner often disobeyed FORT HOOD, Texas — The first witness for Army Spc. Graner case continues FORT HOOD, Texas — A Syrian inmate at Abu Ghraib said Army Spc. Graner trial begins FORT HOOD, Texas — A military guard testified Monday that he saw Spc. Wikileaks publishes large cache of US neo-Nazi group's emails Anyway, Wikileaks has published them all, and you can browse through chronologically, or by author, or download the whole lot of 'em for fun weekend reading. Yeah, there's a lot of what you'd expect in here. The one funny light spot was finding utterly banal spam for Bing.com, and "back-to-school specials" and ancestry.com promotions mixed in with the more sobering stuff like this: This email is not a calling for a putsch, revolution, or violence of any type, those types of actions will not be necessary; nonetheless, certain events will naturally occur and will need to be taken advantage of by all of us. (...)