Archive for January, 2006
David Ignatius, in the Washington Post, writes of the willful ignorance and denial of the potential danger to human survival posed by global warming: Is It Warm in Here? We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History.
Excerpt:
One of the puzzles if you’re in the news business is figuring out what’s “news.” The fate of your local football team certainly fits the definition. So does a plane crash or a brutal murder. But how about changes in the migratory patterns of butterflies?
Scientists believe that new habitats for butterflies are early effects of global climate change — but that isn’t news, by most people’s measure. Neither is declining rainfall in the Amazon, or thinner ice in the Arctic. We can’t see these changes in our personal lives, and in that sense, they are abstractions. So they don’t grab us the way a plane crash would — even though they may be harbingers of a catastrophe that could, quite literally, alter the fundamentals of life on the planet. And because they’re not “news,” the environmental changes don’t prompt action, at least not in the United States….
So many of the things that pass for news don’t matter in any ultimate sense. But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are right, we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind. Kolbert concluded her series last year with this shattering thought: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” She’s right. The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.
BTW, evidently Al Gore wiil star in a new movie on the threat to our environment [Warmer Al Gore finds a new stump: Former vice president asserts his global warming warnings in a documentary].
January 19th, 2006
Psychologist Gary Walls has written this synopsis of American psychologists’ involvement in interrogation and torture, based on Alfred W. McCoy’s new book. He has kindly given me permission to post it.
“The following is to provide the promised historical background of psychologist’s involvement in military torture and interrogation.
This is from Alfred W. McCoy’s new book A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. (2006) New York: Henry Holt.
The book summarizes fifty years of the history of the CIA’s development and deployment around the world of so-called “no-touch” torture techniques based on psychological research. Beginning in the 1950s, many psychologists, including prominent APA members -even several APA Presidents- played a major role in military funded research to develop psychological techniques of sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain that became the core of the CIA’s counterintelligence torture and mind control program. These are the techniques used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
The book names names, research programs, even grant numbers at times. Both Project Artichoke and MKUltra were codenames for overarching programs of the CIA that psychologists participated in. Donald O. Hebb (APA President), Charles Osgood (APA President), Irving Janis, Jack Vernon, John Gittinger, were among the legions of psychologists who produced research for these programs. I highly recommend this book for the history of the involvement of psychologists in torture. As George Santayana said, ‘Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.’
A quote from the book: (p.32) ‘Emerging from WWII as the most militarized among the social or biological sciences, psychology already had a professional mind-set that made it a natural CIA ally in the search for new interrogation techniques. Not only did hundreds of psychologists serve in the wartime army and navy as professionals, but after the war university psychologists, affiliated with the American Psychological Association’s Division of Military Psychology, did contract Pentagon research, presenting academic papers on topics such as ‘the group structures of combat rifle squads” or “evaluations of B-29 crews in training and combat.’ More broadly, psychologists studied the human mind, gaining knowledge and power without being restrained, like psychiatrists, by the Hippocratic Oath, making them more flexible in their service to the state, its military, and clandestine agencies. At the Cold War’s peak in the 1950s, the agency cultivated an intimate relationship with this academic discipline, providing critical funding, flying psychologists to international conferences, and monitoring the annual meetings of the American Psychological Association for useful papers. By mobilizing some of the finest minds working in the field of cognitive science, indeed some of the most creative intellects of their generation, the CIA would create, within just a decade, a new form of interrogation grounded in a deeper understanding of human consciousness.’
The results of this research program was the 1963 document Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Handbook that contains many of the techniques used in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib.
I am concerned that there are those who only wish to clear the good name of the psychological profession, rather than acknowledge the historical reality of our professions’ involvement in military interrogation and torture, and discover the specific contemporary forms of psychologist involvement in the military’s activities of psychological warfare (some of which is undoubtedly, in my opinion, organized within the Division of Military Psychology).”
January 19th, 2006
The following is something I sent to a Listserv of Psychoanalysts for Social Responsibility, which has been campaigning to get the American Psychological Association [APA] to take a stand against psychologists being involved with torture. During this discussion one member suggested going further and pushing for the APA to kick out its Division of Military Psychology. He received an avalanche of negative responses from those who accused him of demonizing military psychologists. Instead, people suggested a dialog with the Division. I wrote the piece below in support of this member.
My Contribution:
I for one, am sympathetic to a campaign to terminate the Military Psychology division. I don’t believe there is a chance in hell that would occur, but it would make a statement. In my opinion, the question of torture is just one of many reasons this should be done. The US military has been a force for domination of innumerable other countries around the world: Iraq, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, to cite just a few off the top of my head. Chalmers Johnson reports [America's Empire of Bases] that the US ” currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories.” The United States spends more on its military than do all other countries in the world combined! This vast organization has nothing to do with defense of the US and everything to do with the bipartisan consensus that the US is and should be the dominant power in the world. The illegal war in Iraq, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, [see my: 100,000 Iraqis Dead: Should We Believe It? for a discussion of deaths as of Sept., 2004] is just the icing, or perhaps strychnine, on the cake.
Thus, in my opinion, any ethical organization would be extremely reticent to be involved with this behemoth. It is not a matter of whether some Military Psychologists are nice people. I’m sure they are.[I'm not being facetious here. I mean this and respect many military people. I just don't respect their mission.] Some are even well-meaning. One doesn’t have to demonize individuals in order to declare that the organization and mission they serve is inimical to human well-being.
I would go further. I believe that the evolution of modern weaponry places the survival of the human race at risk. It seems inconceivable that nuclear and other hyperdestructive weapons will continue to flourish indefinitely without nuclear war or similar catastrophe being unleashed upon the human race. At the end of the Cold War there was a potential that the world would find some way to control this scourge. But the United States saw an opportunity, not for peace, but for world domination through being the only remaining superpower. The US took no steps to remove its nuclear arsenal and, in fact, has modernized it.
Among the worst horrors of the Iraq war is that it sent a clear message that the United States felt entitled to intervene in any country it deemed opposed to US interests, making up pretexts along the way, as states routinely do. The result is that countries such as Iran and North Korea know that their only protection is the possession of those nuclear weapons that Iraq failed to develop. Without a total turnaround in US policy and a major disarming of the US military, any hopes of avoiding major nuclear proliferation and an inevitable nuclear war are doomed.
Surely, those concerned with Social Responsibility could take a stand against cooperation with this leap toward human destruction. While being skeptical of drive theory, Freud, in postulating his death drive after World War I was anticipating the forces toward destruction that bedevil the human race.
January 18th, 2006
A reader of my recent article on Bush’s narcissism has called my attention to a 1994 RAND Monograph on the Hubris-Nemesis Complex [Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis by David Ronfeldt]. I have not had a chance to thoroughly read it yet, but it looks fascinating. The report was written for RAND’s National Security Research Division for the CIA. While discussing supposed enemies of the United States – such as Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Milosevic – it has an uncanny resonance in America today.
Here is the Summary:
“In the years ahead, the United States will assuredly find itself in new international crises involving nations or groups that have powerful leaders. In some cases, these leaders may have a special, dangerous mindset that is the result of a ‘hubris-nemesis complex.’
This complex involves a combination of hubris (a pretension toward an arrogant form of godliness) and nemesis (a vengeful desire to confront, defeat, humiliate, and punish an adversary, especially one that can be accused of hubris). The combination has strange dynamics that may lead to destructive, high-risk behavior. Attempts to deter, compel, or negotiate with a leader who has a hubris-nemesis complex can be ineffectual or even disastrously counterproductive when those attempts are based on concepts better suited to dealing with more normal leaders.
This essay introduces and defines the concept of the hubris-nemesis complex, illustrates it by drawing upon both mythic characters and real personalities, relates it to other psychological phenomena that have been described well in the past, and discusses some challenges that may be faced in recognizing and dealing with the complex in the course of international relations. The essay argues that the complex is relatively common, but often unappreciated, and that we can see it at work in current-day figures such as Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Milosevic—leaders about whom the United States has made serious misjudgments over the years. Thus, while the essay is intended to be conceptual and scholarly, it may have direct significance for understanding and dealing with foreign leaders in future crises and conflicts.”
January 17th, 2006
James Lovelock, author of the Gaia Hypothesis, was featured in an article in the Independent today [The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. It is a preview of his upcoming book: The Revenge of Gaia] in which he argued that global warming was beyond the point of no return:
“We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface we have depleted to feed ourselves….
[B] efore this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”
In response, the Scotsman has solicited comments [Global warming: Is it too late to save our planet?] from a range of environmental scientists, most of whom believe we still have time to make the drastic changes necessary to avoid catastrophe, but only if we start now. The message is sobering and its is urgent. Either the human race stops its massive denial and acts, or nature will act for us.
January 17th, 2006
A reader reminds me that E. L. Doctorow described our President’s psychology in 2004 in his essay: The Unfeeling President. Of course his description is much more moving than mine in Narcissism, the public, and the President.
Extract:
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be….
He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.
January 16th, 2006
More bad news on the influenza scene: CDC: Two influenza drugs don’t work: Doctors asked to stop prescribing amantadine and rimantadine. The problem of drug resistance is spreading rapidly. This is of special concern as questions have been raised about the effectiveness of drugs, particularly Tamiflu, against avian flu. The CDC says Tamiflu is still effective against this year’s influenza strain.
January 14th, 2006
A reader of my article on President Bush’s narcissism has called my attention to the following example in an exchange President Bush had back in the distant past when he was peddling social security “reform” [President Discusses Strengthening Social Security in Nebraska, February 4, 2005]:
MS. MORNIN: That’s good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.
THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?
MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)
MS. MORNIN: Not much. Not much.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, hopefully, this will help you get you sleep to know that when we talk about Social Security, nothing changes.
The reader points out that, unfortunately, the President is correct when he says that working three jobs is “Uniquely American.”
January 10th, 2006
My article Narcissism, the Public, and the President is now available from OpEdNews and ZNet. It greatly expands upon my recent entry here: Wounded vets, narcissism, and the President.
Excerpt:
President Bush spoke last week to wounded soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center and uttered these immortal words indicating a lack of true appreciation for the suffering of the gravely wounded, often permanently disabled soldiers he was speaking to:
“As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel.”
At a time when the number of severely wounded soldiers is rising, this lack of appreciation is disturbing and portends badly for adequate resources being made available to care for damaged soldiers and veterans over the coming months, years, and decades.
This episode was far from the first time Bush uttered bizarre sounding comments in response to the injuries of others. Who can forget his remarkable message to the hundreds of thousands of people, many poor and black, whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Katrina:
“Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.”
While Bush’s comments to wounded GIs were uttered together with the usual platitudes expected on such occasions, these quotes illustrate Bush’s greatest strength and also his greatest weakness, his narcissism….
January 10th, 2006
Madeline Drexler has an interesting piece in the Los Angeles Times, reprinted in Common Dreams, [Dr. Bush's Flu Flim-Flam], discussing the centrality of trust for successful coping with a potential pandemic, such as that posed by avian flu. She points out that government lies and missteps in dealing with situations such as the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina may come back to haunt us in the form of popular distrust and lack of cooperation with public health efforts to prepare for and combat this possible catastrophic threat.
I would go further than Drexler and argue that a potential pandemic of uncertain likelihood poses even greater challenges. Massive resources must be mustered in advance to deal with a threat that may never occur. If the resources are made available and the pandemic doesn’t hit, cynicism may make mustering resources against the next threat all the more difficult. On the other hand, fears of being seen as crying wolf can interfere with devoting the resources needed now, with few overt indicators of the degree of danger we face.
The only solution to this dilemma I can see is real democracy, wherein people are actively involved in discussing, understanding, and preparing for the threat. With information and active participation in decision-making, people are less likely to react in ways that make preparing for this and future threats more difficult. Unfortunately, democracy of that nature is virtually absent from America today.
January 8th, 2006
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