Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.
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Question: Jim Murphy's mansion-tax boast is a cynical attempt to buy Scottish votes. We have now embarked on the longest general election campaign in the history of Britain . Even political obsessives quail at the thought . So I plead guilty to bringing a little genuine political debate into the process so early on in the process . The issue is the new Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, and his vainglorious boast that he is going to use mansion tax money from London and the south-east to pay for 1,000 new nurses in Scotland . Let me stress that I support the mansion tax in principle . It is a redistributive tax , which is important , and taxes on assets are always worth considering . The complication is that it is, in effect, a tax on London, 80% of which will be paid by people in London and the south -east . And the distorted nature of London's housing market could mean a tax with wildly distorted effects . No one really knows how much it will raise . It seems likely that the people everyone agrees should pay it- the international super-wealthy - will use their expensive lawyers and accountants to evade it . But it will hit older Londoners, often public sector workers who bought houses in what were then unfashionable parts of London , as in my constituency, Hackney North and Stoke Newington . Now they are living in houses worth ? 1m and rising . They are often asset rich but cash poor . Having seen London house prices spiral in value , they are not reassured by the idea that the mansion tax kicks in only at? 2m . At the very least, a lot of work needs to be put in to reassure those voters, and to fashion a tax that will not hit those people unfairly . Fortunately the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, has an open mind on the subject . That is why it is surprising that Murphy has jumped in feet first, boasting about how he will spend money from a tax when there is no agreement on exactly how it will be levied . I am a unionist , and I understand that the Labour party has a big electoral challenge in Scotland . But I cannot believe that Scottish voters will be taken in by a crude attempt to buy their votes with money expropriated from London . If Murphy is really interested in redistributing wealth , why isn't he talking about council tax revaluation or levels of income tax in Scotland? Instead he seeks cheap applause by telling the Scots how he will extract money from England . Recently there has been a series of reports, including from the London Finance Commission and the Royal Society of Arts City Growth Commission, calling for the devolution of powers to our great cities . In particular ,  experts are saying that big cities should be allowed to keep their property taxes - I believe that this process should start with the mansion tax . Devolution cannot be for Scotland alone ; there should also be devolution of powers to the cities and regions . Murphy cannot bully the rest of the UK about a considered devolution of fiscal powers to all our cities with a pre-emptive strike on the mansion tax . It is too easy to conflate London with bankers and the international glitterati . But London is more unequal than any other part of Britain . Child poverty is a third higher in London than the rest of England as a whole . So, general election campaign or not, we need a proper debate on devolution of powers to our great cities . It is part of the battle against the poverty that still exists in the shadow of the glittering towers of the City of London . And some people need to be prepared to stand up for London in this important debate .

Answer: The issue is the new Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, and his vainglorious boast that he is going to use mansion tax money from London and the south-east to pay for 1,000 new nurses in Scotland


Question: Torturing Muslims is an 'awesome' way to get things done. On December 9, the Senate Select Committee released a partial report of the horrifying, illegal torture tactics used by the CIA during the Bush administration . Some question the timing . I think the timing is perfect . We are now in a position to recall what past black activists, from Martin Luther King to Angela Davis to Muhammad Ali, knew when they spoke against the immoral actions of their nation in Vietnam . The protesters in Ferguson got a sneak peek, or a reminder, of this lesson in August, when Palestinians, who had experience with being shot at with US-made weaponry, advised US protesters on how to treat the searing pain of tear gas bombs (pour Coca-Cola directly over the eyes) . But recently, because of the quick succession of the failures to indict the killers of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and then the release of the torture report, we are at a moment in which the link between our domestic terrorism and our international terrorism is being drawn for the rest of us . Immediately after the release of the report, many in the media did their best to claim that the release of this report was part of some wider conspiracy to demoralise Americans . The best example of this would be Fox News' Andrea Tantaros , who, in the middle of a conversation about the report, began shouting that "The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome." She seemed positively indignant that the Obama administration was attempting to "have this discussion to show us how we're not awesome" . For those unfamiliar with the slang of US hipsters and teenagers, we generally use the "awesome/not awesome" binary to evaluate things like pizza, beer, or surfboards - not the moral character of a nation-state . But , if we are to adopt her method of expression , Tantaros seems to be forgetting that she is able to be on television in part because one or two generations ago, a few people declared that women not being able to participate in news media was not very "awesome" . She also forgets that a couple generations before that, her Greek last name would have prevented her from being considered"white" , and she thus would not have been allowed in front of a camera . Whether Tantaros accepts it or not, the history of equality in the US has been one of people deciding that things were not yet awesome, and taking it upon themselves to make them more awesome . But we should note that Tantaros was primarily angry at being forced to have a public conversation, and at being embarrassed that the world was seeing us have a discussion about our behaviour . "This makes us look bad," she pleaded . "And all this does is have our enemies laughing at us." Not only is torture illegal , but by US' own standards, it is ineffective . The CIA knew this . The 1992 US Army Field Manual on Interrogation explicitly advises that "the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results", and can "induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear" . This ended up being true - we now know that one prisoner told the CIA that he was trying to recruit black Muslims in the US to attack gas stations . He later admitted that he made up the story,"because he thought that's what interrogators wanted to hear" . This year has also shown us that ineptitude can also happen at home, with our domestic police forces . The Ferguson Police Department has utterly failed to de-escalate tensions at every possible opportunity . We now know the officer that killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice was not fit to hold a pistol, much less a badge . In fact ,  a report by the Justice Department has shown that Cleveland police officers routinely use unjustified force in arrests, and fire their weapons "carelessly" , putting both innocent bystanders and themselves in danger . If the timing of the one-two punch of public revelations of anti-black racism and criminal torture do not convince us , then we can at least recognise a pattern in the people that are desperate to deny both . The torture report is available to anyone to view online, provided they are willing to wade through pages and pages of gruesome accounts . There is an account of putting a prisoner in a diaper, shackling him to the ceiling, and leaving him for days . One prisoner died of hypothermia after being chained, nearly naked, to a concrete floor . Many were sexually assaulted . Despite this, Republican Congressman Peter King attempted to wave these facts away, declaring that no harmful torture occurred . Instead ,  he brushed it off as merely a few"people made to stand in awkward positions" . This is the same Peter King who said that Eric Garner did not die because of a chokehold, but because he was overweight . It is also the same Peter King that implied that Garner, in his final moments, was lying about not being able to breathe . If Tantaros' reaction to the defiling of the "awesomeness" of the US seems childish , Peter King's reaction is worse . It is the rhetorical equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears, and shouting "nyah, nyah, I can't hear you" - as your brother drowns beside you . And , as if we needed any clearer indication on how racism and callousness regarding the torture of non-whites were connected , we were given a clear reminder last week , when Facebook released a 23 second commercial about a feature of its service, and cast a Sikh man as the spokesperson . The video was immediately bombarded with angry comments calling the man an "ISIL terrorist", a "raghead", and a "sand nigger" . One commenter blasted Facebook itself, asking"Why do you have a Muslim on this pic?" When another user replied that he was a Sikh, the commenter responded:"Same thing." We might chalk this up to ignorance : Our education system is focused on white European and US history . Most Americans don't know the difference between a friendly Sikh man and a scary Muslim terrorist . Actually, most Americans couldn't tell you the difference between a fatwah and a plate of chapati . But we should be more precise here - it's not that we don't know , it's that we don't want to know . But then again , separating "good" brown people from "bad" ones isn't the point, and wouldn't make a difference . For too many of us, anyone brown and bearded is automatically al-Qaeda, and deserves to be tortured and killed . Our understanding of humanity does not apply to anyone that can be mistaken for Muslim or Arab , and we excuse ourselves for this moral exception by constantly reminding ourselves that our country was attacked in 2001 . It's not that we can't know that we are terrorising black people . It's not that we can't know that the people we tortured in those prisons were people . We could, if we wanted to . But we don't want to . The events of the past few months have shown us that we are not up against a few crooked cops, a group of rogue rednecks, or a wacky news station . We are up against an empire of immorality that, in its fear, would rather shoot and waterboard the world, than to learn about it . If there is a true "enemy" , it is that Empire . It has been hiding in plain sight , and this year, it has revealed itself- in the mirror . As Tantaros says, it laughs at us . What we choose to do about that is up to us .

Answer: On December 9, the Senate Select Committee released a partial report of the horrifying, illegal torture tactics used by the CIA during the Bush administration


Question: The hostage rescue dilemma. Saturday's failed hostage rescue mission in Yemen was indeed tragic . While the official details as to exactly what happened have not yet been released , it appears Luke Somers, an American journalist, and Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher, were killed by their captors during a night-time rescue attempt carried out by US Navy SEALs . Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had been holding Somers and Korkie captive for over a year . It was the second such attempt to rescue Somers in two weeks . On November 25, a SEALs team hit what they thought was the compound holding Somers , who, as it turns out, had been moved from there just hours before . In Saturday's operation, the SEALs knew Somers' exact location . To maintain stealth, they landed by V-22 Osprey several kilometres away, and then made the trek overland to the compound where Somers and Korkie were being held captive . But something went terribly wrong in the final approach . Perhaps it was a barking dog or some other noise , but the SEALs came under fire as they approached the compound's main entrance . The element of surprise, which is so critical to rescue operations, was lost , and a fierce firefight ensued . Within 30 minutes, the SEALs had secured the compound and put Somers and Korkie, who were both still alive on a V-22 that had a surgical team standing by . Unfortunately, medics were unable to save them . Plainly necessary . For Somers, Saturday's rescue mission was as urgent as it was plainly necessary . Late last week AQAP released a video stating he would be killed in 72 hours unless unspecified demands were met . Those demands have not been made public, but likely involved payment of a ransom or release of AQAP captives, something the US is prohibited by law from doing . For Korkie, the sense of urgency in attempting the rescue operation is more controversial . According to the South African charity Gift of the Giving, a deal had been made with AQAP to release Korkie in just a matter of days, suggesting to many that it would have been better to wait . Maybe there was a deal that would have gone through in the end . Maybe there wasn't . But in rescue operations, hope is not figured into the equation , where planners and decision makers have to weigh the risks of action against the consequences of inaction . By their very nature, hostage rescue operations are among the most difficult and risky military missions to carry out . With little margin for error, either in intelligence or the operation itself, they demand highly trained and equipped special operations units that only a handful of countries have . Are they dangerous and uncertain? Absolutely . Are they impossible? No . In 2012, US Navy SEALs rescued Jessica Buchanan, an American aid worker, and Poul Hagen Thisted, a Danish aid worker , who had been held hostage by Somali pirates for 93 days . The pirates were demanding a $45m ransom for their release . In this particular case, precise intelligence as to their exact location, along with concerns about Buchanan's rapidly declining health, were major factors in moving forward with the rescue mission . Under the cover of darkness, the SEAL Team parachuted 19km from where they were being held, and then moved cross-country to conduct the rescue . Nine pirates were killed during the operation , and Buchanan and Thisted were unharmed . In 2009, US Navy SEAL snipers ended the hostage ordeal of American Richard Phillips, captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama , which had been hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean five days earlier . Talks with the pirates ended when they threw the phone used to communicate with negotiators into the ocean . When one of the pirates pointed his rifle at Captain Phillips' back , snipers shot and killed all three in near simultaneous fashion . Captain Phillips was unharmed . Heartbreaking failures . In 2005, US Delta Force operators rescued Roy Hallums, an American civilian contractor kidnapped by an al-Qaeda cell in Iraq, after 311 days in captivity . Again , the intelligence as to Hallums' location was exact - pull up the kitchen carpet and open the faux cement trap door leading into his one room cell . Hallums was unharmed in the operation . But , as was all too evident on Saturday, there are heartbreaking failures, too . This past July, US special operations forces attempted to rescue James Foley in Syria . Unfortunately, the intelligence as to where he was being held was incorrect . Foley was brutally murdered by ISIL just a few weeks later , the videotape of which was released on the internet for the world to see . In 2010, the US special operations team attempting to rescue her in Afghanistan accidentally killed Linda Norgrove, a British citizen . There are other failures, all tragic, as well . But there are also other successes , where hostages like Jessica Buchanan, Poul Thisted, Captain Phillips and Roy Hallums, all of whom faced indefinite captivity or even death, are home with their families because decisions were made to rescue them based on calculated risks . No guessing, no maybes, no "let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best" . Rescue missions are risky, both for the hostages and for the operators who carry them out . Lives are at stake , and it's never an easy choice to give the "green light" . But given the circumstances, particularly when dealing with terrorist organisations, leaders can't always sit back and wait to see what happens . Sometimes, it's less risky to act than not to . And in the case of a hostage rescue operation, I'd place my life in the hands of men dedicated to the task before taking my chances with the likes of a terrorist in the hope that maybe they'll let me go .

Answer:
Saturday's failed hostage rescue mission in Yemen was indeed tragic