In defense of failure
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan:
Einstein on God
Einstein is sometimes cited as a great scientist who believed in God. Cited in support of this is hiss famous statement in regards to the probabilistic nature of quantum theory: “God does not play dice with the universe. A recently auctioned January 3, 1954 letter however gives a clearer sense of his thoughts on religion, which in some sense resemble those of Freud and Marx:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
Involuntary Drugging of Deportees: Part of a Pattern of Misuse of Health Professions
In Soviet Russia, psychiatrists sometimes collaborated with the repressive regime by locking up dissidents in mental hospitals and injecting them with powerful psychotropic drugs, “antipsychotics” designed to treat schizophrenia. The Soviet psychiatrists were rightly condemned for their misuse of medicine for the un-therapeutic purpose of social control.
American health personnel are not immune from cooperating with efforts to misuse psychiatric drugs for social control purposes having no connection with those drugs’ intended uses. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has been systematically administering psychotropic drugs to immigrants in the process of being deported as the Washington Post reported this week. Deportees who in the past had resisted deportation were injected with drugs, often a three drug “cocktail,” in order to keep them pliant during deportation. These drugs included the powerful antipsychotic drug Haldol, as well as the antianxiety drug Ativan, and Cogentin, a drug used to treat the often severe Parkinsons illness like side effects of Haldol.
These drugs were prescribed by psychiatrists and administered by specially selected nurse “medical escorts.” The drugs were administered in extremely high doses, sometimes rendering the deportees unable to speak. It sometimes took deportees days or even weeks to get the drugs out of their system. Thus Michael Shango was injected with 32.5 milligrams (mg) of Haldol, as well as 8.5 mg of Ativan and some Cogentin over 11 hours. His initial Haldol dose was 10 mg. Compare this with a usual Haldol dose of 2 to 5 mg repeated in 4 to 6 hours for “control of the acutely agitated schizophrenic patient with moderately severe to very severe symptoms” and 2 to 6 mg of Ativan daily for patients whose bodies have already adapted to the medication; lower doses of these drugs are recommended for new patients as people need time to adjust to them.
These drugs, especially Haldol are extremely powerful and are almost never utilized in individuals not diagnosed as actively psychotic. They can be extremely uncomfortable, especially if first administered in high doses and can disorient an individual for days. When Shango was imprisoned upon his return to the Congo, he was so disoriented that he didn’t know where he was fortunately, friends helped him escape. It was weeks before he fully recovered from the drugs.
This use of powerful medications to control detainees is likely illegal. In fact, the Clinton administration had concluded:
“Regarding detainees who are not mentally ill, involuntary medication of such persons for the sole purpose of subduing them during deportation, without a court order, is not supported by any legal authority and raises ethical issues as well.” [emphasis in original]
VA coordinator suggests avoiding PTSD diagnosis
CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) and VoteVets.org have obtained a memo from a VA hospital’s PTSD program coordinator suggesting that they avoid giving PTSD diagnoses and instead give Adjustment Disorder R/O [rule out] PTSD. We need to find out if this is widespread.
Amy & David Goodman in Boston Friday to tak about Standing Up to the Madness
As some of you may know, Amy and David Goodman included out movement of psychologists fighting the APA policy on interrogations in their book, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary heroes or Extaordinary Times. While you DEFINITELY should by the whole book, I’ve scanned the chapter on us entitled “Psychologists in Denial“ and placed it at: http://tinyurl.com/53urep.
Enjoy! And go buy the book. I cried as I read each chapter.
BTW, Amy and David will be in Boston on Friday:
WHEN: Doors open at 6:00pm, event begins at 7:00pm
WHERE: The Jamaica Plain Forum, First Church in Jamaica Plain, Unitarian Universalist, 6 Eliot St., Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
DESCRIPTION: A talk and booksigning with journalists Amy Goodman and David Goodman.
TICKETS: Advanced Tickets and Books in advance:
$5 in advance or at the door (cash or check only, please)
To be sold at Rhythm and Muse Bookstore
470 Center St.
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
David and Amy have asked me to say a few words, though I’ll get there a bit late as I have to teach that night. So, if you’re in th Boston area, please join us.
Al-Qahtani, torture victim, has charges dropped
The US military has announced that it has dropped charges against[ one of] the so-called “20th hijacker,” Mohammad al-Qahtani. Back in 2006, Bill Dedman of MSNBC asked Can ‘20th hijacker’ ever stand trial? Evidently the answer is “no.” The reason is partially that al-Qahtani was tortured, as bioethicist Steven Miles describes. But being tortured doesn’t spare one from trial in Bush’s America. But al-Qahtani has the unique distinction that his torture is described in detail in the leaked log of his interrogation, the only interrogation log to become public so far.
As anyone reading this blog regularly knows, al-Qahtani’s interrogation is notable because a psychologist, Maj. John Leso, is documented as being present at the interrogation. Also notable is that in the two years since this became public knowledge the American Psychological Association has failed to take action against Maj. Leso, an APA member, despite at least four ethics complaints being filed against him dating back to the summer of 2006. Evidently the APA is against torture, except when it is documented to have occurred.
Here is a BBC account of reasons for the dropping of charges: (more…)
National Lawyers Guild calls for Special Prosecutor
National Lawyers Guild Calls For Special Prosecutor to Investigate Bush Administration Officials and Lawyers Who Wrote Torture Memos
Issues White Paper On Torture Liability
Contacts:
Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 858-204-3565
Jeanne Mirer, NLG International Committee, mirerfam@earthlink.net; 313-515-2046
New York. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials and lawyers including John Yoo for their role in the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.
The NLG has issued a White Paper explaining why the memos, which purported to give objective legal advice, subject all those involved to prosecution under international and U.S. domestic law. This includes people who ordered the torture, approved it or gave advice to justify it.
Guild President Marjorie Cohn testified on May 6 before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee, that some lawyers in the Department of Justice were “part of a common plan to violate U.S. and international laws outlawing torture.”
The 14-page White Paper details the ways in which the lawyers, including Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, and William Haynes, counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes. The lawyers said that the Department of Justice would not enforce federal laws against torture, maiming, assault and stalking. “Just because the statute says,” John Yoo explained in a recent Esquire interview, “that doesn’t mean you have to do it.”
Professor Cohn told the congressmen it was “reasonably foreseeable” the lawyers’ advice “would result in great physical and mental harm or death to many detainees”; more than 100 have died, many from torture. Torture, like genocide, slavery and wars of aggression, is absolutely prohibited at all times. No country can ever pass a law that would allow them.
Professor Philippe Sands, a British international litigator and author of the new book, “Torture Team,” also testified at the congressional hearing. He said that after his extensive interviews with many Bush officials, including John Yoo, “it became clear to me that the Administration has spun a narrative that is false, claiming that the impetus for the new interrogation techniques came from the bottom-up. That is not true; the abuse was a result of pressure and actions driven from the highest levels of government.”
It was recently revealed that Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft met in the White House and personally oversaw and approved the torture by authorizing specific torture techniques including waterboarding. President Bush admitted he knew and approved of their actions.
“They are all liable under the War Crimes Act and the Torture Statute,” Professor Cohn testified. “Under the doctrine of command responsibility, commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief, are liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them, and they did nothing to stop or prevent it. The Bush officials ordered the torture after seeking legal cover from their lawyers.”
The National Lawyers Guild calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute the high officials of the Bush administration and the lawyers who advised them, for their roles in misusing the rule of law and legal analysis to justify torture and other crimes.
The White Paper can be read at www.nlg.org/news/statements/White Paper - Yoo hearing.doc
Teacher fired for making toothpick dissappear
American education at its best. Apparently a substitute teacher in Land O’ Laked Florida was fired for showing his students a magic trick in which he made a toothpick disappear. It seems a student, and the School District, thought he was exhibiting wizardry!
The trick requires a toothpick and transparent tape. A sleight-of-hand maneuver causes the toothpick to disappear then reappear. At least, so it seems. In reality, the toothpick hides behind the performer’s thumb, held in place by the tape.
“The whole thing lasted 45 seconds,” Piculas said.
He said the students liked the trick. He showed them how to do it so they could perform it at home.
One student in the Rushe Middle class apparently took the trick the wrong way, Piculas said. He said he was told the student became so traumatized that the student’s father complained.
Glad to hear that Florida school districts are protecting our students from the evils of magic.
People-to-people aid for Burma
In response to the horrifying situation Burma, Avaaz has launched an urgent people-to-people fund-raising effort, to be filtered through the International Burmese Monks Organization and related groups. So far they have raised over one million Euros. To find out more, go here.
McKibben: Act now or else…
Thanks to Tomdispatch, Bill McKibben reminds us that we have only milliseconds, historically speaking, to make massive environmental changes, or all humanity will suffer the consequences:
The World at 350
A Last Chance for CivilizationBy Bill McKibben
Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.
It’s not just the economy. We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so inextricably tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem… how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.
There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA’s Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
