Psyche, Science, and Society

Chomsky & Zinn together on Democracy Now!

Democracy Now! has In Rare Joint Interview, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on Iraq, Vietnam, Activism and History. Read, watch or or listen to it. There will be a Part II later in the week.

Add comment April 16th, 2007

Will be on satellite radio CII out of South Africa

I am scheduled to be interviewed about the role of psychologists in interrogations on satellite radio station CII out of South Africa on Wednesday, April 18 at 12:15 PM EDT (5:15 PM CAT).  [UPDATE: NOTE TIME CHANGE, due to conversion error]

You can listen live here.

2 comments April 16th, 2007

Conservatives for human rights

Time magazine writes of a letter to President Bush calling upon him to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. What is different about this letter is that it is from the American Freedom Agenda, a group of prominent conservatives who are calling for a restoration of traditional American Constitutional rights. Here are the things they call for:

• Prohibit military commissions whose verdicts are suspect except in places of active hostilities where a battlefield tribunal is necessary to obtain fresh testimony or to prevent anarchy;
• Prohibit the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture or coercion in military or civilian tribunals;
• Prohibit the detention of American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants without proof of criminal activity on the President’s say-so;
• Restore habeas corpus for alleged alien enemy combatants, i.e., non-citizens who have allegedly participated in active hostilities against the United States, to protect the innocent;
• Prohibit the National Security Agency from intercepting phone conversations or emails or breaking and entering homes on the President’s say-so in violation of federal law;
• Empower the House of Representatives and the Senate collectively to challenge in the Supreme Court the constitutionality of signing statements that declare the intent of the President to disregard duly enacted provisions of bills he has signed into law because he maintains they are unconstitutional;
• Prohibit the executive from invoking the state secrets privilege to deny justice to victims of constitutional violations perpetrated by government officers or agents; and, establish legislative-executive committees in the House and Senate to adjudicate the withholding of information from Congress based on executive privilege that obstructs oversight and government in the sunshine;
• Prohibit the President from kidnapping, detaining, and torturing persons abroad in collaboration with foreign governments;
• Amend the Espionage Act to permit journalists to report on classified national security matters without fear of prosecution; and;
• Prohibit the listing of individuals or organizations with a presence in the United States as global terrorists or global terrorist organizations based on secret evidence.

To which this secular leftist says “ahmen!”

[Thanks to Steven Miles for alerting me to this.]

UPDATE FROM COMMENTS:

It would be lovely if the American Psychological Association would at least amend their policies so that no psychologist could participate in BSCTs or interrogation for any prison who was deprived of any of these constitutional rights.
Sigh.

Steven  Miles

1 comment April 16th, 2007

Bush and the psychology of self-delusion

Michael Shermer, in Scientific American, writes of the human tendency to rationalize error rather than acknowledge it. Based on a new book by psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), he writes of Bush’s inability to acknowledge error, leading to ever worse policies. Tavris and Aronson are social psychologists who use the language of cognitive dissonance. We psychoanalysts tend to speak of defense mechanisms. But both are getting at that universal human tendency to self-delusion that, as both history and great novels illustrate, can easily lead to tragedy.

Add comment April 16th, 2007

Neuroscience for killing as military moves in

Hugh Gusterson, in The militarization of neuroscience, warns of the the dangers of military “application” of new neuroscience research. Based upon “Jonathan Moreno’s fascinating and frightening new book, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense (Dana Press 2006)”[which I have not yet read]  he writes:

the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding research in the following areas:

• Mind-machine interfaces (”neural prosthetics”) that will enable pilots and soldiers to control high-tech weapons by thought alone.
• “Living robots” whose movements could be controlled via brain implants. This technology has already been tested successfully on “roborats” and could lead to animals remotely directed for mine clearance, or even to remotely controlled soldiers.
• “Cognitive feedback helmets” that allow remote monitoring of soldiers’ mental state.
• MRI technologies (”brain fingerprinting”) for use in interrogation or airport screening for terrorists. Quite apart from questions about their error rate, such technologies would raise the issue of whether involuntary brain scans violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
• Pulse weapons or other neurodisruptors that play havoc with enemy soldiers’ thought processes.
• “Neuroweapons” that use biological agents to excite the release of neurotoxins. (The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention bans the stockpiling of such weapons for offensive purposes, but not “defensive” research into their mechanisms of action.)
• New drugs that would enable soldiers to go without sleep for days, to excise traumatic memories, to suppress fear, or to repress psychological inhibitions against killing.

And the article’s end is sobering:

Unfortunately, however, Moreno (p.163) quotes Michael Moodie, a former director of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, as saying, “The attitudes of those working in the life sciences contrast sharply with the nuclear community. Physicists since the beginning of the nuclear age, including Albert Einstein, understood the dangers of atomic power, and the need to participate actively in managing these risks. The life sciences sectors lag in this regard. Many neglect thinking about the potential risks of their work.”

Add comment April 16th, 2007