As much as liberals complain about conservative “misinformation”and incivility, they never seem to find it on channels like MSNBC, and we know there are small bands of liberals that wander over there. While many were watching the first GOP presidential debate on May 5, Ed Schultz invited on left-wing bomb-thrower (and 2010 congressional-seat loser) Alan Grayson to heap mud on George W. Bush. Schultz asked if Bush failed to accept Obama’s invitation to Ground Zero out of personal pique. Grayson replied through a smirk, “I suspect that President Bush might've been passed-out drunk for the last three or four days, so I’m not sure he made any conscious decision at all.” Schultz found that acceptable. “Great to have you with us tonight,” he said to Grayson at interview’s end. “Thank you for your take.” That wasn’t a “take.” It was a typical smear. That same shameless disregard for the truth really shook the crowd at the 2011 Media Research Center Gala on May 7. Special Ed – as radio talker Chris Plante calls him — overwhelmingly won on the applause meter for the (worst) “Quote of the Year,” which actually covered two years. On September 23, 2009, Schultz yelled this ridiculous, foam-flecked rant on MSNBC about critics of ObamaCare. “The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They'd rather make money off your dead corpse! They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don't have anything for her.” He wasn’t joking. He was serious. Poor Special Ed. It fell on Ann Coulter to point out – with glee — the redundancy of Schultz saying “dead corpse.” But where on the spectrum of “fact” and “misinformation” do you place the idea that conservatives want Americans dead and deeply enjoy denying health care to cancer patients? And who, exactly, is Ed Schultz to pose as the one who most definitely does not take glee in others’ medical misfortune? This is the same hack who said on February 24, 2010 that “You're damn right, Dick Cheney's heart's a political football! We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him! I'm glad he didn't tip over. He is the new poster child for health care in this country.” On June 16, 2009, Joe Scarborough asked Schultz if he felt Cheney hoped Americans would die in a terrorist attack so it would benefit Republicans. “Absolutely, absolutely,” said Schultz. “I think Dick Cheney is all about seeing this country go conservative on a hard-right wing and I think he'll do anything to get it there.” A month earlier, he begged for Cheney to die. “Lord, take him to the Promised Land.” Lack of civility is one thing. Lack of honesty is another. Schultz routinely uncorks sentences that seem to have recklessly rocketed off the planet of Fact. Here’s a funny one from days ago, on April 27. “I see that Sean Hannity is now on a regular basis losing to Rachel Maddow. Hmm, interesting. Must be that liberal media that just doesn't connect with people.” In reality, Hannity routinely doubles Maddow’s audience, just as Greta van Susteren has double the viewers of Ed Schultz now that he’s at 10 pm. That Ed Schultz, he “connects with people.” Here’s another jaw-dropper from Special Ed. On his radio show on October 22, 2010, he announced, “I call NPR National Pentagon Radio. They're no more left wing than Fox News as far as I'm concerned. Look at the commentators they have on there, right? They're all right-wing commentators. I couldn't get in the door of NPR.”
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It might seem a doddle being a living statue, but it’s not as easy as it looks The Silver Wizard won’t talk to me. Nor, for that matter, will the Golden Tin Man. This is, in part, because neither speak more than a smattering of English, and in part because both make a living as human statues, a profession in which not talking to strangers is, alongside standing still, more or less the whole point of the job. To the outside observer, imitating a statue must look like the easiest and least competitive career imaginable. Turn up, get dressed, stand still, get given money by passing members of the public. But the Silver Wizard, if he spoke, would tell you otherwise. Competition is fierce, and he has got a 14in scar to prove it. The wizard, real name Rumen Nedelchev, a 45-year-old former mechanic from Brest in Belarus, plies his trade on the southern bank of the Thames in central London, under the shadow of the London Eye. It was here that, one morning last year, his bronze rival The Invisible King clubbed the wizard to the ground with a concrete block for the simple crime of setting up his plinth in a prime location. After surgery, Nedelchev spent more than three months in hospital. Earlier this week, the king – 37-year-old Dechko Ivanov – was sentenced to a minimum of four and a half years in prison. It is, undeniably, a crowded market. Yesterday, on the South Bank, the wizard and the tin man jostled motionlessly for attention with a Roman centurion, the Queen, a not-very-convinving Scream and a very sweaty Spiderman. Some of these buskers appear to be taking considerably less than the minimum wage. Though professionals earn upwards of £200 a day, making a living as a living statue is much harder than it looks. David Ferguson, 42, of Statueman Living Statues, has been standing still professionally for 18 years. “To actually do it full time is quite strenuous. You have to be in control of every muscle in your body.” He and his wife Pamela have never busked, but perform exclusively for corporate events and parties, coated head to toe in gold, silver or bronze body paint. “We do up to an hour and a half per set. That’s the maximum you could do.” “There’s a difference between buskers and professionals,” he explains, when I tell him the Silver Wizard’s story. “It’s extremely hard. There’s a lot of people that do it but there’s very few that do it professionally.” Street art Art Tom Meltzer guardian.co.uk
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Matchmaker reveals how he found the right girl for al-Qaida leader – Yemeni woman who is now in Pakistan’s custody It was early in September 1999, when Rashad Mohammed Saeed Ismael, a Yemeni sheikh in his early 20s working as a preacher and a leading member of al-Qaida in Kabul, received the most important phone call of his life. Osama bin Laden had decided to marry for the fifth time and had charged Rashad, one of his closest aides, with the important task of finding him the right woman. The aide listened carefully as Bin Laden described to him his desired spouse: “She must be pious, dutiful, young [preferably aged 16-18], well mannered, from a decent family, but above all patient. She will have to endure my exceptional circumstances.” Luckily he knew just the right girl: Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, a 17-year-old daughter of a civil servant and a former student of his, was, according to Rashad, “the perfect match” for the al-Qaida leader, then 44. Now, just over 10 years later, Sheikh Rashad, who describes himself as a staunch supporter of al-Qaida in Yemen, is fighting for Amal and her daughter, who are currently being detained by Pakistani authorities to be brought back home in the wake of Bin Laden’s death. “We have a strong practice in Islam called ardth [family honour]. When a woman like Amal is widowed, it is a duty upon all Muslims to look after her and ensure her safety. All the Yemeni people want her to come home. Others fear that if Amal is brought back to Yemen she may be handed over by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to the Americans for further questioning. Any attempts by the US to hurt Amal or any of Bin Laden’s family, Rashad says, “will cause an explosion between the west and the Islamic world. Women are not warriors. America knew that Bin Laden never used women to participate in his battles.” In 2000, Rashad returned to his home town of Ibb, a verdant city in Yemen’s south-west, to make the necessary arrangements. He went to the woman first, explaining to her who Bin Laden was, what he was like, and how he moved from one place to another pursued by the Americans. After she “dutifully accepted” Bin Laden’s offer, a dowry of $5,000 was wired to Amal’s family, triggering a bout of pre-marriage celebrations in preparation for the young woman’s departure to Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s matchmaker, Amal and her elder brother left Yemen for Pakistan, first to Karachi, and then to Quetta, where they stayed for a few days until Bin Laden sent some guards to pick her up and bring her into Afghanistan. The wedding ceremony, which took place in Kandahar, then the heart of the Taliban’s operations, was an all-male affair carried out in traditional Yemeni fashion. The men sang and danced and a lamb was slaughtered at Bin Laden’s feet as distinguished guests recited poetry and sung him songs written for the occasion. Today Rashad believes the fate of Bin Laden’s family, especially his wives, is as, if not more, important to al-Qaida than Bin Laden’s death. “We [al-Qaida in Yemen] received the news of Bin Laden’s death with happiness because we knew it was his aim to die as a martyr at the hands of the Americans. But the question of his relatives is one of women’s honour, something we consider untouchable.” Last Thursday the US launched a drone attack aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual guru of al-Qaida in Yemen, on a town not far from Rashed’s village. He says he anticipates further US strikes on Yemeni soil in the near future. “The policy of the Arab world rulers has lost them the sovereignty of their countries. All constitutions and laws have been sacrificed. The Americans will continue to bomb us because Saleh’s regime no longer controls anything and will use anything to gain support and stay in power.” When asked about the size of the organisation in Yemen and its support base, Rashad replied: “Al-Qaida is a complicated web that has no end or beginning.” “This is not an organisation with application letters and a database. Those who want to join al-Qaida receive standard religious lessons and basic military training, after that they’re considered members.” Osama bin Laden al-Qaida Yemen Global terrorism Pakistan Afghanistan Tom Finn guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rep. John Boehner holding America hostage over debt ceiling and spending cuts
May 10, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media House Speaker John Boehner told Republicans that he will not raise the debt ceiling without everybody bowing down to their demands on trillions of dollars in spending cuts to the federal government . But what was most monumental was Boehner’s laying a marker that will set the stage for interesting negotiations with Congressional Democrats and the White House as they work to find a solution to raising the debt ceiling. “Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase,” Boehner said. “And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given. We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions.” Let’s cut trillions and trillions and trillions just for the heck of it. Why David Plouffe seemed to think — as he told us on a blogger conference call — that the debt-ceiling negotiations with Republicans was going to be as easy as apple pie I’ll never know. Everyone could see this coming. Why aren’t the media railing at Boehner and Republicans for their mind-boggling irresponsibility about this whole debt-ceiling debate? Did you ever hear Republicans complaining about it when Bush was in office? Of course not: They understood that the full faith and credit of the United States was at stake, and the thought never crossed their minds. Then Boehner made an appearance on the Today show to top it all off and highlighted the absolute gibberish that Republicans speak when they talk about tax cuts, the wealthy and deficits. John Boehner’s Tax Gibberish: LAUER: Why not use an increase in revenues? Tax hikes to help with that debt problem? What is the evidence that you can present that the tax cuts of the Bush era have actually accomplished their goals? BOEHNER: Well, what you’re – what some are suggesting is that we take this money from people who would invest in our economy and create jobs and we give it to the government. The fact is you can’t tax the very people that we expect to invest in our economy and create jobs. Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem. Washington has a spending problem. LAUER: But when you look at – you talk about creating jobs, when the Bush era tax cuts were passed in 2001, unemployment in this country was 4.5%. Today it’s at 9%, just down from 10%. So why are the Bush-era tax cuts creating jobs? BOEHNER: They created about 8 million jobs over the first ten years that they were in existence. We’ve lost about 5 million of those jobs during this recession. But you can’t raise taxes. We can take all of the money from the wealthy and guess what? We’d hardly make a dent in the annual deficit and do nothing about the $14.3 trillion worth of debt. Lauer begins with a good question. What is the evidence that the Bush tax cut accomplished its goal? Boehner refuses to present any. Indeed, answering this question would lead him into an inescapable minefield. The Bush tax cuts are currently in effect, so any benefits of continuing them must have been felt from 2001 until the present date. That would imply those effects are less than impressive. So instead, Boehner simply restates his position. We can’t take money away from job creators. Why not? You just can’t . “The fact is,” he continues, mistaking opinion for fact, “you can’t tax the very people that we expect to invest in our economy and create jobs.” You can’t tax them at all? Obviously we have to tax them some, right? So then the question is what is the optimal level. I believe recent history suggests that Clinton-era tax levels create no significant harmful incentive effect. Boehner can’t even come near this question, because he simply insists that tax the rich is wrong is an absolute sense. And as Chait highlighted in his post: Lauer, to his credit, tries again, asking for any evidence the Bush tax cuts created jobs. Boehner replies, “They created about 8 million jobs over the first ten years that they were in existence. We’ve lost about 5 million of those jobs during this recession.” Right. That’s a net of 3 million jobs over eight years. That’s horrible! 3 million new jobs is, as the Wall Street Journal news staff put it, “the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.” Clinton created 23 million new jobs without the Bush tax cuts. It is frustrating that these lies about tax cuts by Republicans keep percolating throughout the media. They don’t want to have an intelligent conversation about any of this and the beltway media lets them get away with it. You can’t cut your way out of a recession and if tax cuts were teh awesome , then why have they failed so swimmingly?
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enlarge The LA Times reports that Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger have separated . From their joint statement: “This has been a time of great personal and professional transition for each of us,” the statement read. “After a great deal of thought, reflection, discussion and prayer, we came to this decision together. At this time, we are living apart while we work on the future of our relationship. “We are continuing to parent our four children together. They are the light and the center of both of our lives. We consider this a private matter and neither we nor any of our friends or family will have further comment. We ask for compassion and respect from the media and the public.” Shriver and Schwarzenegger have been married for 25 years. It must be a difficult transition for both of them. I wish them and their children all the best.
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A growing number of NGOs are offering package tours to developing countries so that donors can see their work in action The first thing Takayo Minakami did when she and her nine-year-old daughter Ghislaine got back from their trip to Ethiopia was sack the nanny. Then she told her husband there was no need to go for the fancy new wardrobe they had been eyeing up as part of a major overhaul of their Seattle home. The cheapest model would do fine. Meanwhile, Ghislaine stopped fighting with her younger brothers and kept hugging them at random moments, for no particular reason. “It was supposed to be a life-changing experience. But it was even better than we expected,” says Takayo. Takayo, 41, and Ghislaine were part of a group of similar well-off housewives and their daughters and nieces aged between seven and 17 who recently flew from Seattle to Addis Ababa on a package tour organised by an aid agency. Over a week, the group took in the sights, markets and flavours of the capital city like any other tourists. But most of their time was spent on a dusty journey to villages two hours’ drive away, where they met some of the country’s poorest people, learned about their lives and checked out – among other things – their toilet facilities. Water 1st is a Seattle-based non-governmental organisation that specialises in water sanitation and is one of a growing number of NGOs taking westerners on package tours to developing countries to see their work. The “water tour” brochure for February’s Ethiopia trip promised would-be travellers a “once in a lifetime experience”, with the aid agency providing transport, translators, accommodation, food and contact with the communities and the local aid agency that Water 1st works with. “It’s a better way of seeing real life in a country than you can see any other way,” says Kirk Anderson, one of the five staff who run Water 1st, which has raised $4m (£2.4m) for projects in four countries since its launch in 2005. “We try to make this affordable for as many people as possible while covering our costs,” he adds. The trip, excluding flights, cost $1,600 (£980) a head. “We don’t demand anything in return. But we make our money in donations when people get back home.” Some donors increase their donations from three figures to five figures, while others become loyal fundraisers for life. Those who went on the Ethiopia trip said they had an “awesome”, inspiring time and learned a lot. The children were “like sponges”, said one mother, absorbing the reality of a world where children laugh and take care of each other despite having flies crawling on their faces and no shoes. “The children were very dirty, very happy and excited and very welcoming. I played with a little girl who was really cute and super smart,” says Ghislaine, who is eager to go back. The group is aware that critics may accuse them of poverty tourism – paying to look at the poor to assuage their guilt. But most of those who travelled to Ethiopia talk of something more positive. “We live in a little bubble – we are comfortable, we have nice houses, food on our plates, clean water,” says Susan Sercu, 39, who took her 12-year-old daughter Giuliana on the trip. “What this does is give us more of a global perspective. It’s a chance to expose our children to what happens in the rest of the world. We want our children to be empathetic and informed. “I don’t feel bad about spending the money because it was educational and now we can be a kind of spokesperson, hopefully spreading the word.” Most of the Seattle families had never been to Africa or a developing country and felt reassured to be accompanied by experts. Anderson says the Ethiopians the group visited were thrilled to meet westerners who had come so far to find out about their lives. So is this the future for development agencies? To show people and not just tell people how hard life is for the poorest of the world’s population? And will this become the ultimate way for the discerning donor to decide if an agency deserves his or her support? For some time, aid agencies specialising in child sponsorship have made ad hoc arrangements, despite the time and resources this demands of local staff, for individual donors to meet the child they support. Many also take major donors, board members and policy-makers on “immersion” trips. And many run volunteer working trips and fundraising adventure holidays. Last year, for the first time, the US branch of Plan International turned to a specialist travel agency to organise a group donor trip to Ghana. Elevate Destinations says that its “donor tourism” business is growing fast – it is organising trips to three more countries this year for Plan USA donors alone. Many though, and particularly those focused on emergency relief, are scathing of the idea of an aid agency regularly taking larger groups of visitors to see its work. Two years ago MSF Switzerland instituted a policy of taking donors to the field two at a time. But, says communications chief Laurent Sauveur, “we are a far cry from any concept of humanitarian tourism. We are not acting as a tour agency.” But while emergency relief agencies can count on surges in compassion when disaster strikes, development agencies realise that to build lasting connections between donors and their beneficiaries, increasingly the donor needs to get something back. “Providing an ‘experience’ [for donors] is coming more to the fore,” says Richard Turner, fundraising director at the UK’s ActionAid, which specialises in child sponsorship. Actionaid’s latest publicity campaign reflects this. Under the slogan “What a feeling”, a donor says: “I didn’t just change the world. I changed myself. And what a feeling!” And the reader is then urged to “get yours today”. Aid Sophie Arie guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The Foxheads/Cheneyites claim that torture works, so America should become a torture nation
May 10, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media The right-wingers keep claiming — contra reality — that Osama bin Laden’s death was made possible by torture, proving that torture works. But even if you ignore reality and admit for argument’s sake that it does work, the question then goes begging: Should the United States be doing it? Following the weekend’s steady drumbeat , the meme that “the torture worked” was again the main topic on Fox yesterday, this time bouncing off Chris Wallace’s wankery on Sunday. Both Bill O’Reilly (as Karoli notes) and Sean Hannity built their entire shows around this single snippet. The most appalling performance came from Liz Cheney on Hannity’s show : HANNITY: All right. On the next segment, what I mentioned with Dick Morris, so we are going to play this tape of FOX News’ Sunday host Chris Wallace. I thought he asked a really good question of the White House National Security adviser, about, you know, enhanced interrogations are contrary to American values. Well, is that worse than putting a bullet in the brain of bin Laden? I mean, I thought the answer was weak. We’ll show in the minute, but go ahead. CHENEY: Yes, you know, I think you are exactly right. And I thought it was a great question that Chris asked. Because this administration, you know, even before they came into office worked hard to try to score political points by making allegations that simply weren’t true about the enhance interrogation program. And trying to act as it though it was somehow counter to American values. Now, I don’t think, you know, probably most people watching tonight have no problem at all, I certainly don’t, I know you don’t, with the fact that the Navy SEALs killed Usama bin Laden. But, if it is OK to go after terrorists to do targeted assassinations, which I believe it is, and the administration seems to believe it is. Then it is very hard to understand how it is not OK from their perspective to subject terrorists to the very same techniques that our own people have to go through in SEAL training. And a very specific example of this is Chip Burlingame who was the pilot of American airlines flight 77 who was killed by the terrorists exactly. And he himself was subjected to these techniques. So, I think it is pretty appalling that the administration is trying to score political points here, trying to sustain a position that is unsustainable. And frankly, that makes us less safe because it means if we do in fact capture somebody as a result of this treasure trove, there’s no really effective way we’ve got in place right now to interrogate them. But then we get to what this is all really about: Vindicating the torture conducted under the Bush regime: HANNITY: Do you believe what happened in the killing of bin Laden vindicates — your father was a fierce, strong advocate is to this day of enhanced interrogations, black sites, rendition policies, all of the things that President Obama cancelled — go ahead. CHENEY: I think that it certainly shows that those programs worked. I think it is one more piece of evidence. We knew that those programs were effective before. We now know that they helped lead us to the information that ultimately led to bin Laden. And I think once again, you know, it shows that the administration, as were you saying in the last segment, they ought to stop this investigation, stop this threat of prosecution of those Americans who in fact, bravely carry out these programs. It is really an abomination that they are continuing to live under the threat of indictment and the threat of prosecution for something that led to the death of bin Laden. There’s only one little problem with Cheney’s and Hannity’s love of torture: It’s illegal, immoral, unethical, and depraved. OK, make that a few little problems. The most succinct answer to this palpable load of utter rubbish came from Matthew Alexander, the former military-intelligence interrogator who has been a consistent and thoughtful critic of the use of torture . He was on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman a few days ago (via mcjoan ) and offered a careful explanation of why torture is never, ever right — even beyond the fact that it wastes resources and really doesn’t work: Click here to view this media ALEXANDER: My argument is pretty simple, Amy. I don’t torture because it doesn’t work. I don’t torture because it’s immoral, and it’s against the law, and it’s inconsistent with my oath of office, in which I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States. And it’s also inconsistent with American principles. So, my primary argument against torture is one of morality, not one of efficacy. You know, if torture did work and we could say it worked 100 percent of the time, I still wouldn’t use it. The U.S. Army Infantry, when it goes out into battle and it faces resistance, it doesn’t come back and ask for the permission to use chemical weapons. I mean, chemical weapons are extremely effective—we could say almost 100 percent effective. And yet, we don’t use them. But we make this—carve out this special space for interrogators and say that, well, they’re different, so they can violate the laws of war if they face obstacles. And that’s an insult to American interrogators, who are more than capable of defeating our enemies and al-Qaeda in the battle of wits in the interrogation room. And American interrogators have proven this time and time again, from World War II through Vietnam, through Panama, through the First Gulf War. And let’s go back to the successes of American interrogators. You know, American interrogators found Saddam Hussein without using torture. We found and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda Iraq, which helped turn the Iraq war, without using torture. And numerous other leaders that we have found and captured—another guy named Zafar, that I describe in my book—all these successes have come without the use of torture. GOODMAN: You say that the use of torture was al-Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool. ALEXANDER: Yes. When I was in Iraq, I oversaw the interrogations of foreign fighters. And those foreign fighters, the majority of them, said, time and time again, the reason they had come to Iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse of detainees at both Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. And this is not my opinion. The Department of Defense tracked these statistics. And they were briefed, every interrogator who arrived there, that torture and abuse was al-Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool. That’s a simple and unambiguous answer to the Foxheads and Cheneyites out there who want torture to be a legitimate tool of government agencies.
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Lloyds, RBS, Barclays and HSBC face huge staff costs and admit £5bn needed to compensate PPI customers The big high-street banks are preparing to hire up to 6,000 workers to tackle complaints from millions of customers wrongly sold payment protection insurance. The banks are believed to be seeking temporary offices to house the army of staff needed to contact customers who may be in line for a payout after the banks abandoned their legal action against a decision by the Financial Services Authority to demand they compensate customers mis-sold PPI. Contingency plans are now being dusted down by the banks, which have disclosed that they face bills of more than £5bn to compensate their customers andcover the adminstration costs involved. None of the banks – Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC – was prepared to disclose their staffing requirements as a result of the PPI climbdown. However, industry sources said that they expected up to 6,000 staff to be needed. Bailed-out Lloyds, which started the capitulation by the banks last week by announcing a £3.2bn provision, has linked up with outsourcing company Huntswood to bring in 500 extra staff. Industry sources believe its headcount is likely to swell – at least temporarily – by 1,000 or more while it works through all the complaints it faces as the largest player in the market. A Lloyds spokesman said: “We are already using third parties and internal resources to deal with PPI complaints. We are keen to move quickly to bring about resolution for our customers”. It is estimated to have a share of around 40% of PPI, which was intended to keep up loan repayments in the event of illness or redundancy. In reality the insurance rarely paid out and many customers bought it without being aware they had. The PPI payout industry that is expected to be created comes at a time when banks have been making employees redundant to trim costs. Lloyds alone has cut more than 26,000 roles as it integrates HBOS, which it rescued in the banking crisis, into its operations. One banker said that staff facing redundancy might now be offered redeployment to work on complaints handling, while others reckoned that outsourcing firms such as Huntswood and Capita would be asked to help provide temporary staff as quickly as possible to contact customers and to work on the dedicated hotlines that are being established. The industry went through a similar process during the endowment mis-selling scandal when staff were housed in temporary backup sites around the UK to process the paperwork. Complaints handlers – unlike many banking roles – do not need to be directly regulated by the Financial Services Authority but fall under the compliance finance functions of banks, which are regulated directly. One banker said there was substantial concern about call centres having enough capacity to deal with the inquiries that will be sparked by the recent publicity, even before banks start their efforts to contact customers. Lloyds is particularly affected as its takeover of HBOS means it also owns Halifax, which was also active in PPI. Even before the latest move by the industry to facilitate large-scale compensation payments, Lloyds had already begun a mass mailshot of more than 230,000 Halifax credit card customers. The project Kestrel programme began in January to target customers who were sold policies in 2008 and 2009. Banks are refusing to say how long they expect to take to handle all the PPI complaints, some of which have been in limbo while the now abandoned legal action was underway. Observers believe it will take at least until the end of the year to scrutinise all the claims. While Lloyds has said its provision for PPI will be £3.2bn, Barclays has disclosed a figure of £1bn, RBS £1bn – if compensation paid and past provisions are included – and HSBC £280m. City minister Mark Hoban blamed the regulatory regime created by Labour – rather than the banks – for the PPI debacle. Hoban said: “One aspect of the reforms that we are introducing by setting up the financial conduct authority is to give the regulator more powers to intervene earlier to prevent that sort of scandal happening again.” Payment protection insurance Banking Lloyds Banking Group Royal Bank of Scotland Barclays HSBC Insurance Insurance industry Financial Services Authority (FSA) Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Bill O’Reilly is so invested in torture he cannot let it go. He cannot. It is his signature issue, what he will carry water for no matter what the facts may be. He led off his show tonight with two questions. First, why does the President refuse to torture but has no problem killing terrorists? Two, can President Obama keep the nation safe when he refuses to torture terrorists to gain information to prevent attacks? Does this sound as ridiculous to you as it does to me? I realize I am preaching to the choir here on C&L, but maybe it’ll get in The Google enough times that some poor confused soul will actually happen across this post and understand why Bill O’Reilly is full of it. In order to accept BillO’s premise; that is, torture yields answers which will not be gotten any other way and it is the only way to get those answers, one must also accept that the Bush administration knew the name of Bin Laden’s courier way back in 2003 when the waterboarding interrogations were in full force and effect. And if that is the case, then why on earth would he put on Bush administration lackeys like Karl Rove to defend his arguments? What surprises me is how deeply invested O’Reilly is in this whole argument. He truly believes, with his entire heart and soul, that torturing someone is the only way to get information from them. Does he write for “24″? Either BillO is seriously into S&M or he’s got some kind of fixation with the idea that being violent with prisoners/detainees is a strong, manly way to behave. Rather than try to lay this out for BillO myself, I’m going to let Lawrence O’Donnell explain it in his own words, as broadcast on his Rewrite segment. Click here to view this media Simply put: Torture doesn’t work. If I were as nasty as O’Reilly, I’d suggest that he be waterboarded until he admitted torture doesn’t work, but I’m not. I’m guessing he’d agree that it doesn’t work in order to stop the torture, but then, he’d be lying, wouldn’t he? Do you feel safer under President Bush 0% (0 votes) President Obama 83% (5 votes) Neither of them. Terrorists gotta terrorize. 17% (1 vote) 6 votes
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Violence broke out around Tesco Express in Stokes Croft on two nights last month, with further night and day of violence following a week later The Tesco Express store in Bristol that has been the focus of violent protests is to be reopened, the chain has said. Tesco said the store, in the Stokes Croft area of the city, would be open for business again “soon”, arguing that local businesses and residents wanted it back. However, there will be fears that further protests could follow the reopening. “We will reopen the store soon,” a Tesco spokesman said. “We’re also playing our part in a community dialogue following the disorder. Local businesses and residents tell us they see us as a catalyst for further investment and regeneration – they want us to reopen.” Violence broke out around the store on two nights last month. A week later, there was another night and day of violence. There has long been opposition in Stokes Croft to the opening of the Tesco. However, local protestors claimed much of the violence was caused by people travelling from outside the area. Tesco representatives have met with the community’s newly-elected Green party councillor, Gus Hoyt, to discuss the unrest. Hoyt said he would be calling for an independent inquiry into the cause of the protests, adding: “The local community want to get to the bottom of what happened and move on.” The councillor had hoped that Tesco could be persuaded to “bow out gracefully” for “public safety”. Earlier, detective Chief Inspector Will White, of Avon and Somerset police, called for the public to help the force’s investigation into the incidents. He said: “A number of people have used the large disorders to commit serious criminal offences. “We are determined to identify the outstanding offenders who have done extensive damage to the Stokes Croft area to make them accountable to the local residents and businesses that experienced the consequences of their actions. “We need the assistance of the public to do this, and hope that these video clips and images prompt more people to come forward and help us bring the remaining offenders to justice.” Crime Tesco Supermarkets Retail industry Steven Morris Shiv Malik guardian.co.uk
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