All-purpose news and politics thread

[the4thpip]

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is conducting a full investigation into the deaths of two individuals in CIA custody during the Bush administration.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...tment_inve.php

[Captain Clarkie]

One of the things that the coalition will find hard to spin now is that the public sector doesn't matter, and these strikes show just how essential it is.

I'm not so sure, public perception of the strikes will be the battleground, and the media seems to be mainly against them.

[king mob]

I'm not so sure, public perception of the strikes will be the battleground, and the media seems to be mainly against them.

The media are but a lot of people on the ground aren't, and also, the scale of the strikes today have shat up this government.

[Charles RB]

A full fifth of the public sector went out today, 100k or so nationwide, and then there's all the parents who couldn't go to work because they had to watch the kids now...

Miliband's really done an own goal by taking an anti-strike stance - there goes the union support! Extra damage when some Labour MPs - like Hywel Francis, MP for Aberavon - refused to cross the picket lines at Westminster.

Speaking of Westminster and the London side of the protests:

1621: Jon Brain BBC News, London

The march passed off perfectly peacefully with only a few scuffles around Whitehall. It was always anticipated a few groups of anarchists would try and cause disruption, which is what's happened.

But the police have been ready for them - in some cases using a section 60 order to take pre-emptive action, for example if people would not remove face masks. So we have seen a slight change in tactics from the police, from what happened in the student tuition fee demonstrations.

Which is going to impair any ability to present this as unreasonable or 'Greek style'.

[Charles RB]

The first meeting of Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a new regional bloc that Chavez has been pushing to get started as an alternative to the Organization of American States (OAS), was going to be in Venezuela... and now is getting delayed because Chavez is still ill. Even though he has a vice-president who can handle it.

What's going on here? Is he afraid the VP won't give the power back afterwards?

[Paul McEnery]

That's what I don;t get about these protests.

What exactly is it they think the government should be doing?

It may not greatly satisfy you, but here's one Greek journalist's answer:

Athenians have had many worthy – or at least celebrated – interpreters over the last few days, and as the city erupted yesterday, they were hard at work. They were expected to answer questions: "Why are they on the streets?"; "Do they want a default?"; "Can't they see the need to swallow the medicine?"

I was born and raised in Athens. As a journalist on the ground yesterday, one of the country's darkest days in its post-junta history, I had to answer those questions. But I won't here: I write this as an Athenian, not a journalist.

This is a note about what I saw in my city, having arrived from London in the wee hours of the day that the Greek parliament passed a medium-term austerity plan to keep the bloodline of bailout funds flowing in, but that will simultaneously bleed the economy out.

I saw tens of thousands mass peacefully on Syntagma square. Among and around them, young men, dressed in black and wearing balaclavas and gas masks, chipping away at marble slabs and cement kerbs, picking up the pieces and throwing them at riot police. There was an officer trying to call his girlfriend while his colleagues unleashed vengeance on protesters like the ones in this amateur video.

I felt the pervasive force of teargas hit my eyes first and linger at the back of my throat for hours.

I spoke to a young municipal policewoman in her late 20s on Stadiou Street, a big road leading to Syntagma. She warned me to not go to the square. She broke down in tears and asked: "What have we done to each other?"

I was escorted by security, in my own hometown, between broadcasting locations around Syntagma. I saw fires burning on Voulis Street, where I used to go for a drink after finishing work at the newspaper I worked for. It was like seeing a dearly loved old relative on her deathbed: you're desperate to hold on to the person you knew, and the ailing body in hospital feels like a strange and ugly fantasy.

I walked into the Zappeion area to be greeted by hundreds of riot police and their motorcycles, regrouping, having a cigarette, awaiting orders. One, no older than 20, said to me: "Journalist? You're as underpaid as I am. But London is great, I went there on a holiday once."

And five blocks away from Syntagma I had a quiet chat with British colleagues and fellow Athenians. I met people on the streets who not only were not protesting, but were instead focusing on such issues as what shoes to buy. In the suburbs of the city, citizens were tending to their daily races of paying bills and looking after their kids, revising for exams, applying for jobs in Australia. Quietly biting the bullet.

There are thousands of human triumphs and tragedies I did not witness yesterday. Others did, and I'm grateful to have heard some of them, mostly through Twitter.

As a Greek journalist working abroad, I am asked to part with wisdom on the future of this country, with the startling sound of stun grenades going off behind me. I duly do my job, offering macroeconomic projections with a sprinkling of social unrest, political volatility, international interconnectedness and market pressure.

But as an Athenian, I must write that it is heartbreaking to see my city torn apart while 300 people, most of whom are fundamentally part of the problem, decide on dubious solutions without any form of mandate, even in the loosest sense of indirect democracy.

I am certain that Syntagma is the locus of the first advanced-democracy revolution we have ever seen. It is amorphous, apolitical, ill-guided at times and unguided mostly. It is painful and destructive, as all revolutions have been, and it's only just beginning.

[Captain Clarkie]

The thing is, I kind of think Industrial action is out of date. It's for the Industrial age. People are used to putting up with disruptive shit and carrying on because they have to, and labour can be farmed out one way or another. Digital action in some form is the way forward. Proliferation of information.

[Paul McEnery]

The thing is, I kind of think Industrial action is out of date. It's for the Industrial age. People are used to putting up with disruptive shit and carrying on because they have to, and labour can be farmed out one way or another. Digital action in some form is the way forward. Proliferation of information.

Um, no.

And no, people are not used to putting up with disruptive shit. They've seen damn all of a proper strike in decades.

[Captain Clarkie]

Um, no.

And no, people are not used to putting up with disruptive shit. They've seen damn all of a proper strike in decades.

We shall see then shan't we. I bet the strikes end up being used against the strikers. The whole thing is already being played as a battle for public opinion. A government with no electoral mandate against a privately voted for power structure. It's out of date.

[Charles RB]

People are used to putting up with disruptive shit and carrying on because they have to

We should be - the last eleven years have seen multiple strikes and several floods & snow storms - but we're not. Every time there's a Tube strike it's a pain in the ass for everyone, same with a teacher's strike if you have a child. This strike had enough teachers involved to make a big impact.

That's not counting all the other strikes like Border Security (a big whack) and JobCentre staff (a bit of a pisser if you're unemployed). People got disrupted, albeit not me because I don't work in London and don't have children. But if the train drivers ever go on strike that's me and half of London & south England up the swanney.

The whole thing is already being played as a battle for public opinion.

That's not a new thing with strikes. The government needs public opinion or they can't do much about a strike.

[Paul McEnery]

We shall see then shan't we. I bet the strikes end up being used against the strikers. The whole thing is already being played as a battle for public opinion. A government with no electoral mandate against a privately voted for power structure. It's out of date.

Privately voted for power structure? I R confused. Surely union power structures are legally bound to be transparent.

Also: I rather think that people are in favour of kicking up a public stink these days.

[Charles RB]

There's certainly more marches - and large ones - going on in the last year than I remember being under any period of New Labour, with the exceptions of the Iraq War buildup and the 2005 G7 (both about foreign policy and not domestic).

[Captain Clarkie]

Privately voted for power structure? I R confused. Surely union power structures are legally bound to be transparent.

Also: I rather think that people are in favour of kicking up a public stink these days.

I meant private members voting. Unions are a member's club. That doesn't work, it creates them and us. My point is - General disruption doesn't win, we've seen it for 30 years at least. All you do is create antagonism against your viable cause.

[Captain Clarkie]

There's certainly more marches - and large ones - going on in the last year than I remember being under any period of New Labour, with the exceptions of the Iraq War buildup and the 2005 G7 (both about foreign policy and not domestic).

and they achieved so much.

[Paul McEnery]

I meant private members voting. Unions are a member's club. That doesn't work, it creates them and us.

*blinks*

wow, that's so dumb even Michelle Bachmann wouldn't try it on.

My point is - General disruption doesn't win, we've seen it for 30 years at least. All you do is create antagonism against your viable cause.

You've never seen it. Never. Not in the last 30 years. Except for the poll tax, of course. Shame the protests happened -- you might have gotten rid of it.

Oh, and those people in Egypt, they just saw a bit of it, though. And the people in Yemen. And Syria.

I'll be sure to pass along your thoughts about how pointless it all was.