Glenn Greenwald in Salon shows how the Pentagon/TV Networks’ psyops program against the American public included 2005 reports denying the reality of Guantanamo, after Amnesty International described it as “the gulag of our time.” A group of so-called independent “military analysts” went to GTMO.
They spent a grand total of 3 hours and 55 minutes at the Guantanamo detention facilities, with almost one hour of that devoted to lunch with the troops. That was the sum total of their grand tour of the detention facility: less than 3 hours. And then the propaganda campaign to malign and dispute the extensive, amply documented findings of Amnesty was unleashed in full. [Emphasis from Greenwald]
AS one of these “analysts,”Gen. Don Sheppard, said:
“Did we drink the ‘Government Kool-Aid?’ — of course, and that was the purpose of the trip.”
This “analyst” witnessed a show-interrogation and reported on CNN how wonderful the interrogations were at GTMO:
NGUYEN: Let’s back up for just a moment, because you said you said watched an interrogation.SHEPPERD: Yes.
NGUYEN: Kind of explain to us how that played out. And were there any instances of abuse or possible abuse?
SHEPPERD: Absolutely not. These — when I sat and watched them, I want to be very careful in describing them. And I don’t want to describe how we watched or anything of that sort. But basically, you’re able to observe interrogations. They have various ways of monitoring the interrogations and what have you and letting you see what’s going on. With the interrogations that we watched were interrogators, there were translators that translated for the detainee and there were also intelligence people in there.
And they’re basically asking questions. They just ask the same questions over a long period of time. They get information about the person’s family, where they’re from, other people they knew. All the type of things that you would want in any kind of criminal investigation. And these were all very cordial, very professional. There was laughing in two of them that we…
NGUYEN: Laughing in an interrogation?
SHEPPERD: … in the two of them that we watched. Yes, indeed. It’s not — it’s not like the impression that you and I have of what goes on in an interrogation, where you bend people’s arms and mistreat people. They’re trying to establish a firm professional relationship where they have respect for each other and can talk to each other. And yes, there were laughing and humor going on in a couple of these things. And I’m talking about a remark made where someone will smirk or laugh or chuckle.
NGUYEN: All right. General Don Shepperd, we appreciate your time and that look inside Gitmo, with you being there on this tour. Thank you for that. [Emphasis from Greenwald]
Of course, American Psychological Association Presidents Ronald Levant and Gerald Koocher both went on similar demo tours and returned to tell us all they learned. But American Psychiatric Association President Sharfstein was along with APA President Levant and had no trouble realizing what was happening. Apparently, the wool can only be pulled over the eyes of those willing to shut them and turn off all critical faculties.
May 9th, 2008
Ow! Joe Conason thinks Hillary Clinton is starting “to sound like a reincarnation of the late George Wallace.” That must hurt.
May 9th, 2008
The Society for Community Research and Action [ SCRA: American Psychological Association Division 27] has written a strong and moving letter to the APA leadership expressing SCRA concerns regarding the APA’s position on psychologists participating in interrogations. The letter can be downloaded in pdf format here or read below:
Society for Community Research & Action
The Division of Community Psychology (27) of the American Psychological Association
April 18, 2008
Norman Anderson, PhD
CEO, APA
Alan Kazdin, PhD
President, APA
Stephen Behnke, PhD
Director, Ethics Board, APA
Gentlemen:
We, the Executive Committee of Division 27 [Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA)], are writing to you with the purpose of opening a dialogue regarding the involvement of psychologists in interrogations at military detention centers and CIA black sites. We appreciate the steps that APA has taken of late, including the closing of the loopholes in the 2007 resolution, the banning of psychologists’ participation in specific interrogation techniques as well as their involvement in setting up detention conditions for interrogation purposes, and the writing of letters to the White House.
We propose 3 steps that APA can take to put its values more closely in line with those of its members:
(1) Do not allow psychologists to work for a governing legal authority in settings that violate basic human rights. That is, affirm the referendum sponsored by Withholddues.com.
(2) Follow up on reports of ethical violations by psychologists who participated in interrogations in the military detention centers and CIA black sites.
(3) Change Standard 1.02 of the Ethics Code to be consistent with human rights as well as to be enforceable by APA.
(more…)
May 9th, 2008
I feel obligated to express my disgust, to put it mildly, with the racist turn in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Not being sure of the best way to do so, I’ve decided to copy and post this entry from Talking Points Memo:
Pretty Black and White
TPM Reader AB is having a hard time reconciling Hillary’s remarks on Obama’s support among working class whites:
It seems to me that every progressive voice in this country should be outraged - jumping up and down - shouting in print and word - to repudiate Hillary Clinton’s remarks that Obama “is having trouble winning over blue collar “white” voters… “white Americans”…It is a disgraceful, shameful tactic to justify her own non-candidacy. This is a remark I would expect from a politician from Mississippi or Louisiana - not from our New York State senator… I am outraged, I am deeply embarrassed that my children have heard this reported on the news…and I regret that have I ever gave her one hard earned nickel.
All the while she touts the glass ceiling as a woman but when her chips are down, the racism springs forth fully formed.
AB is right. Maybe it’s general campaign fatigue, or the sense that the race is all but over now, but a month ago her remarks would have been a huge story, the dominant political story of the day.
The political press spent weeks trying to divine whether the Clinton camp was really attempting to cast Obama as the black candidate, a favorite son candidate of the African American community. The Clinton camp vehemently denied it then and even as recently as a few days ago Bill Clinton claimed it was the Obama camp playing the race card against him.
Race has been the subtext of much of Hillary’s argument for her own electability. But now she’s thrown it right out there in the open: Obama can’t win because he’s black. Vote for me instead.
You don’t have to believe that Hillary’s a racist (I don’t) to conclude that a combination of the rigors of the campaign trail and her own powerful ambitions have clouded her judgment and curdled her spirit. It has certainly soured what had been a historic relationship between the Clintons and the black community.
Hers is not an appeal we’d tolerate from a Republican candidate, nor should we from a Democrat, no matter how sterling her progressive credentials might otherwise be.
There’s been a lot of talk about the damage Hillary will do to the party by staying in the race this long. Perhaps she should consider the damage she’s doing to herself.
–David Kurtz
The one thing I would disagree with is the formulaic statement that David doesn’t think Hillary is racist:
You don’t have to believe that Hillary’s a racist (I don’t)…
After all, we psychologists, and any thinking person living in this society knows that, at some visceral level, we all harbor racist impulses. So, if the term “bot a racist” is to mean anything, it should mean one who fights against those impulses. Someone who chooses, for expediency, to fan these impulese, is a “racist.” After all, the same argument was made about George Wallace, that he wasn’t a “racist,” but only used racist themes for political expediency. And we know that Strom Thurmond had a complex relationship with race, with his mistress and child and all. To accept these arguments is to reduce “racism” to a personal predilection, and ignore the social and systemic aspects that make it so pernicious. Whether Hillary Clinton dislikes black people, or simply chooses to increase hatred of them for her benefit is irrelevant, except to biographers. If she chooses to unleash racism, she’s a racist.
So I would argue that anyone who deliberately appeals to racism for personal benefit, especially in a way likely to increase racial animosity, is a racist. We should not let Clinton, either one of them, off so easy. And we should should shout it from the rooftops. To do any less is to become complicit in the inexcusable.
May 8th, 2008
Marjorie Cohn, President of the national Lawyers guild, testified to Congress on Tuesday regarding legal culpability for US torture by commanders and by the torture lawyers:
Testimony of Marjorie Cohn
“From the Department of Justice to Guantánamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules”
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties
House Judiciary Committee
May 6, 2008
What does torture have in common with genocide, slavery, and wars of aggression? They are all jus cogens. That’s Latin for “higher law” or “compelling law.” This means that no country can ever pass a law that allows torture. There can be no immunity from criminal liability for violation of a jus cogens prohibition.
The United States has always prohibited torture in our Constitution, laws, executive statements, judicial decisions, and treaties. When the U.S. ratifies a treaty, it becomes part of American law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, says, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”
Whether someone is a POW or not, he must always be treated humanely; there are no gaps in the Geneva Conventions.
The US War Crimes Act, and 18 USC sections 818 and 3231, punish torture, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and inhuman, humiliating or degrading treatment.
The Torture Statute criminalizes the commission, attempt, or conspiracy to commit torture outside the United States.
(more…)
May 8th, 2008
Senator Russ Feingold, the only senator to vote against the original Patriot Act, has an LA Times op-ed on the dangers posed by today’s secret laws and legal opinions, such as the long-secret Yoo torture memos. We are not a nation of laws if we don’t know the laws whereby our rulers are acting.
Government in secret
The Yoo memo is just one example of Bush’s hidden laws
By Russ Feingold
May 8, 2008
The Bush administration recently announced it will allow select members of Congress to read Justice Department legal opinions about the CIA’s controversial detainee interrogation program that have been hidden from Congress until now. But as the administration allows a glimpse of this secret law — and it is law — we are left wondering what other laws it is still keeping under lock and key.
It’s a given in our democracy that laws should be a matter of public record. But the law in this country includes not just statutes and regulations, which the public can readily access. It also includes binding legal interpretations made by courts and the executive branch. These interpretations are increasingly being withheld from the public and Congress.
(more…)
May 8th, 2008
Three key Senators — arl Levin (D-MI), Joe Biden (D-DE) and Chuck Hagel (D-NE) — have issued a letter calling for the Defense department and CIA Inspectors General to investigate allegations of forced drugging of detainees reported by the Washington Post and CQ last month. [See my commentary here.] While this call is welcome, it is unfortunate that they do not call for the appointment of an Independent Prosecutor, as the ACLU has done, rather than an in-house investigation. After all, these claims have been known for years now, and the Inspectors General have had adequate time to act. We now need to get investigations out of the mainstream Executive branch.
further, whoever conducts an investigation needs to be pressured to issue a public report on their findings. Only by getting this information out in the clear light of day can the American public take steps to see that these abuses don’t continue. Secret investigations are unacceptable at this point.
Here is the text of the Senator’s letter: (more…)
May 8th, 2008
Mildred Loving died May 2 at home in Virginia. Here is her statement prepared for delivery on June 12, 2007, the 4oth anniversary of Loving v Virginia. It was not that long ago that these ordinary heroes had to fight for the right to marry a partner of a different race. Gays and lesbians today are still fighting for the right to marry whom they choose:
Loving for All
By Mildred Loving
Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement
When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.
We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.
When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?
(more…)
May 8th, 2008
The sign of an authoritarian state:
Lawyers for Guantánamo Inmates Accuse U.S. of Eavesdropping
By William Glaberson
One lawyer for Guantánamo detainees said he replaced his office telephone in Washington because of sounds that convinced him it had been bugged. Another lawyer who represents detainees said he sometimes had other lawyers call his corporate clients to foil any government eavesdroppers.
In interviews and a court filing Tuesday, lawyers for detainees at Guantánamo said they believed government agents had monitored their conversations. The assertions are the most specific to date by Guantánamo lawyers that officials may be violating legal principles that have generally kept government agents from eavesdropping on lawyers.
“I think they are listening to my telephone calls all the time,” said John A. Chandler, a prominent lawyer in Atlanta and Army veteran who represents six Guantánamo detainees.
Several of the lawyers, including partners at large corporate law firms, said the concerns had changed the way they went about their work apart from Guantánamo cases. A lawyer in Chicago, H. Candace Gorman, said in an affidavit that she was no longer accepting new clients of any type because she could not assure them of confidentiality.
(more…)
May 7th, 2008
The Journal of Research Practice is a relatively new transdisciplinary journal seeking to bring together researchers from diverse fields to explore issues of research practice. JRP is open access, with a truly diverse and international editorial group. [Note: I have been on the Editorial Advisory Board since its first issue.] JRP is actively seeking high quality submissions.
All submissions should be written for a wide audience and should explore new ideas or experiences regarding the practice of research. As a reviewer, I’ve noticed that a major reason papers are rejected is because they are written to assume intimate knowledge of a particular research domain and are not obviously relevant to researchers from other disciplines.
A Call of Submissions can be downloaded here. Please download and post it. And do seriously consider submitting papers.
May 7th, 2008
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