The Big Picture

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• Market Whackage Open Thread
• A gadget’s life: From gee-whiz to junk
• Octopus Ballet
• Look Out Below!
• World’s Strongest Banks
• Wolf: Greek Debt Crisis “An Absolute Nightmare”
• Sitting is Killing You
• Trade Deficit jump all Petro
• Dear Bull . . .
• Interrogation Experts From Every Branch of the Military and Intelligence Agree: Torture DOESN’T Produce Useful Information

Market Whackage Open Thread Posted: 11 May 2011 05:15 PM PDT Markets took a nice shellacking today on a strong dollar, weak energy, (Oil and Gasoline), and rumors of a big margin call from a futures trader. The Dow lost 130 points, SPX dropped 14, while the Nasdaq gave up 27 — each was off about 1%. Is this the beginning of the end? A pause that refreshes? Just another step on the path to QE3 ? What say ye? ~~~

A gadget’s life: From gee-whiz to junk Posted: 11 May 2011 12:30 PM PDT A very cool look at the cost and popularity of gadgets since the 1980s – covering phones, computers, TV, video, and audio. You can clearly see the "digital revolution" start around 2000, killing off earlier technologies; it's also interesting to see the cost of any gizmo fall over time (the circles get smaller). > Source: Alicia Parlapiano Washington Post

Octopus Ballet Posted: 11 May 2011 10:00 AM PDT This white octopus was filmed with a high-definition underwater video camera at 6600 feet depth 200 miles off the coast of Oregon in September 2005 as part of the VISIONS ’05 expedition led by Professors John Delaney and Deborah Kelley of the University of Washington. Little is known about the deep-sea octopuses that live in proximity to the hydrothermal vent fields associated with the underwater volcanoes of the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. Hat tip boingboing

Look Out Below! Posted: 11 May 2011 09:26 AM PDT > Dollar rally, Gasoline futures limit down, and a softening market = mucho ugliness intraday. grantham said he tends to be early, but he seems to have nailed this one perfectly: Time To Be Serious (and probably too early) Once Again. Watch for an attempt at a snapback  after lunch . . .

World’s Strongest Banks Posted: 11 May 2011 08:30 AM PDT > The list of the World’s strongest bank is dominated by Canadians, and headed by Singapore's Oversea-Chinese Banking (OCBC). No. 2 is Svenska Handelsbanken AB of Sweden. Just three U.S. banks — Fifth Third Bancorp (No. 7), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (No. 14) and (WTF?!?) Citigroup (No. 16) — make the top 20. > Source: (Singapore's OCBC Strongest Bank as Canadians Dominate ) John J. Curran and Yoolim Lee Bloomberg, May 10, 2011 http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aOL_DIcScvOA

Wolf: Greek Debt Crisis “An Absolute Nightmare” Posted: 11 May 2011 07:44 AM PDT ~~~ Source: Greek Debt Crisis "An Absolute Nightmare," FT's Wolf Says Aaron Task May 11, 2011 http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/greek-debt-crisis-absolute-nightmare-ft-wolf-says-120246255.html

Sitting is Killing You Posted: 11 May 2011 07:12 AM PDT Via: Medical Billing And Coding Hat tip Lifehacker

Trade Deficit jump all Petro Posted: 11 May 2011 07:09 AM PDT The March Trade Deficit widened to $48.2b from $45.4B in Feb and is the 2nd widest since late ’08 but in March the increase was solely due to higher petroleum imports which alone rose more than $8b m/o/m. Ex petro, the trade deficit would have fallen by $3b as overall exports rose 4.6% to a record high which squares with the positive momentum that manufacturers have experienced year to date.

Dear Bull . . . Posted: 11 May 2011 07:00 AM PDT Dear Bull, On July 14th, 2010 I wrote a “letter” to short sellers warning them to “be very, very careful here into year end” and that “we are set up for a big rally over the next 5 1/2 months.” I cited a calming down in European credit stress, a better than feared earnings season at the time, the Nov election possibilities, an underinvested buyside and lastly and the most important, a Fed that would remain extraordinarily easy. I thought though at the time that 2011 would bring new worries but QE2 gave the market fresh legs to where we stand today. I am now putting out a warning to you, the long only, mostly long PM. The road is about to get rougher as QE2 is near its end at the same time US economic growth is moderating and central banks around the world continue to raise rates (the BoE is going to be forced to soon). Also, Europe is reaching a tipping point now with Greece and investor sentiment remains very bullish or at least not bearish at all. Do you know anyone that is set up for a market drop? I don’t. The correction in commodities over the past week is the first shaking of the tree that should not be ignored and will be the precursor to a painful 10%+ correction in stocks over the next few months. Both rallied hand in hand since late August and thus won’t be separated in market action.

Interrogation Experts From Every Branch of the Military and Intelligence Agree: Torture DOESN’T Produce Useful Information Posted: 11 May 2011 05:30 AM PDT Virtually all of the top interrogation experts – both conservatives and liberals (except for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution) – say that torture doesn’t work: • Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says: “Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” • The C.I.A.’s 1963 interrogation manual stated: Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex 'admissions' that take still longer to disprove. • According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s top spy – Michael Sulick, head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service – said that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration. “I don't think we've suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint.” • The CIA’s own Inspector General wrote that waterboarding was not “efficacious” in producing information. • A 30-year veteran of CIA's operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks (Milton Bearden) says (as quoted by senior CIA agent and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern): It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose. This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn't work — it doesn't — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize. • A former high-level CIA officer (Philip Giraldi) states: Many governments that have routinely tortured to obtain information have abandoned the practice when they discovered that other approaches actually worked better for extracting information. Israel prohibited torturing Palestinian terrorist suspects in 1999. Even the German Gestapo stopped torturing French resistance captives when it determined that treating prisoners well actually produced more and better intelligence. • Another former high-level CIA official (Bob Baer) says: And torture — I just don’t think it really works … you don’t get the truth. What happens when you torture people is, they figure out what you want to hear and they tell you. • Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, says: “I personally think that any information gotten through extreme methods of torture would probably be pretty useless because it would be someone telling you what you wanted to hear.” • A retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002 (Glenn L. Carle) says: [Coercive techniques] didn't provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information…Everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work." • A former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, and wrote a book called How to Break a Terrorist writes: As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight. Consider that 90 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are these foreign fighters and you can easily conclude that we have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives because of our policy of torture and abuse. But that's only the past. Somewhere in the world there are other young Muslims who have joined Al Qaida because we tortured and abused prisoners. These men will certainly carry out future attacks against Americans, either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or possibly even here. And that's not to mention numerous other Muslims who support Al Qaida, either financially or in other ways, because they are outraged that the United States tortured and abused Muslim prisoners. In addition, torture and abuse has made us less safe because detainees are less likely to cooperate during interrogations if they don't trust us. I know from having conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, that when a captured Al Qaida member sees us live up to our stated principles they are more willing to negotiate and cooperate with us. When we torture or abuse them, it hardens their resolve and reaffirms why they picked up arms. He also says: [Torture is] extremely ineffective, and it’s counter-productive to what we’re trying to accomplish. When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve … The information that you get is unreliable. … And even if you do get reliable information, you’re able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda’s then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members. And he repeats: I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. He said last week: They don't want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the lives of Americans…. The way the U.S. treated its prisoners “was al-Qaeda's number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers. • The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn’t work • Another FBI interrogator of 9/11 suspects said: I was in the middle of this, and it's not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective • A third former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists • A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states “[we] explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques.” (see also this) • The FBI warned military interrogators in 2003 that enhanced interrogation techniques are “of questionable effectiveness” and cited a “lack of evidence of [enhanced techniques'] success. • “When long-time FBI director Mueller was asked whether any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through "enhanced techniques", he responded "I don't believe that has been the case." • The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found that torture doesn’t work, stating: The administration's policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. • The military agency which actually provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects warned the Pentagon in 2002 that those techniques would produce “unreliable information.” • General Petraeus says that torture is unnecessary, hurts our national security and violates our American values • Retired 4-star General Barry McCaffrey – who Schwarzkopf called he hero of Desert Storm – agrees. • The number 2 terrorism expert for the State Department says torture doesn’t work, and just creates more terrorists. • Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson says: Fundamentally, those kinds of techniques are ineffective. If the goal is to gain actionable intelligence, and it is, and if that's important, and it is, then we have to use the techniques that are most effective. Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough. He also says: Another objection is that torture doesn’t work. All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners. • Army Colonel Stuart Herrington – a military intelligence specialist who interrogated generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated US detention operations at Guantánamo – notes that the process of obtaining information is hampered, not helped, by practices such as "slapping someone in the face and stripping them naked". Herrington and other former US military interrogators say: We know from experience that it is very difficult to elicit information from a detainee who has been abused. The abuse often only strengthens their resolve and makes it that much harder for an interrogator to find a way to elicit useful information. • Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, said: If you torture somebody, they'll tell you anything. I don't know anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that's an effective means of getting information. … So I don't think it's effective. • Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn’t work • The head of all U.S. intelligence said: The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world … The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security. • Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America’s indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool. • A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said, Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It's used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo. • The first head of the Department of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – says we were wrong to torture.The former British intelligence chairman says that waterboarding didn't stop terror plots. • A spokesman for the National Security Council (Tommy Vietor) says: The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003. • The Marines weren’t keen on torture, either • As Vanity Fair reports: In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts…Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading "information" that boosted the administration's argument for invading Iraq. • Neuroscientists have found that torture physically and chemically interferes with the prisoner’s ability to tell the truth • An Army psychologist – Major Paul Burney, Army's Behavior Science Consulting Team psychologist – said (page 78 & 83): It was stressed to me time and time again that psychological investigations have proven that harsh interrogations do not work. At best it will get you information that a prisoner thinks you want to hear to make the interrogation stop, but that information is strongly likely to be false. *** Interrogation techniques that rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to garner inaccurate information and create an increased level of resistance…There is no evidence that the level of fear or discomfort evoked by a given technique has any consistent correlation to the volume or quality of information obtained. • An expert on resisting torture – Terrence Russell, JPRA's manager for research and development and a SERE specialist – said (page 209): History has shown us that physical pressures are not effective for compelling an individual to give information or to do something' and are not effective for gaining accurate, actionable intelligence. And – according to the experts – torture is unnecessary even to prevent “ticking time bombs” from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real ‘ticking time-bomb’ situation Indeed, it has been known for hundreds of years that torture doesn’t work: • In the ancient Far East, torture was used as a way to intimidate the population into obedience (rather than a method for gaining information) • As a former CIA analyst notes: During the Inquisition there were many confessed witches, and many others were named by those tortured as other witches. Unsurprisingly, when these new claimed witches were tortured, they also confessed. Confirmation of some statement made under torture, when that confirmation is extracted by another case of torture, is invalid information and cannot be trusted. • Top American World War 2 interrogators got more information using chess or Ping-Pong instead of torture than those who use torture are getting today • The head of Britain’s wartime interrogation center in London said: "Violence is taboo. Not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information." • The national security adviser to Vice President George H.W. Bush (Donald P. Gregg) wrote: During wartime service with the CIA in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972, I was in charge of intelligence operations in the 10 provinces surrounding Saigon. One of my tasks was to prevent rocket attacks on Saigon’s port.Keeping Saigon safe required human intelligence, most often from captured prisoners. I had a running debate about how North Vietnamese prisoners should be treated with the South Vietnamese colonel who conducted interrogations. This colonel routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false. I argued for better treatment and pressed for key prisoners to be turned over to the CIA, where humane interrogation methods were the rule – and more accurate intelligence was the result. The colonel finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying, “This man knows a lot, but he will not talk to me.” We treated the prisoner’s wounds, reunited him with his family, and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city’s affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon. Admittedly, it would be hard to make a story from nearly 40 years ago into a definitive case study. But there is a useful reminder here. The key to successful interrogation is for the interrogator – even as he controls the situation – to recognize a prisoner’s humanity, to understand his culture, background and language. Torture makes this impossible. There’s a sad twist here. Cheney forgets that the Bush administration followed this approach with some success. A high-value prisoner subjected to patient interrogation by an Arabic-speaking FBI agent yielded highly useful information, including the final word on Iraq’s weapons programs. His name was Saddam Hussein. • Top interrogators got information from a high-level Al Qaeda suspects through building rapport, even if they hated the person they were interrogating by treating them as human Postscript: Even if – despite the above – you still believe that torture produces helpful information, you should note that the U.S. government used Communist torture techniques specifically designed to produce FALSE Confessions.

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