Music: Two by Sharon Little
For a Sunday morning, two by Sharon Little:
What Gets In The Way
Follow That Sound
August 31st, 2008
Archive for August, 2008
Childhood abuse linked to asthma
A new study described in Science Daily reports intriguing findings linking childhood abuse to asthma rates in urban Puerto Rican children. Neighborhood violence, in contrast, was not associated with an elevated asthma rate, suggesting a specificity of mechanism. The differential effect of types of violence suggests that the negative effects have to do with the social context and/or personal meanings associated with the violence.
Physical And Sexual Abuse Linked To Asthma In Puerto Rican Kids
Children who are physically or sexually abused are more than twice as likely to have asthma as their peers, according to a recent study of urban children in Puerto Rico. In fact, physical and sexual abuse was second only to maternal asthma in all the risk factors tested, including paternal asthma and indicators of socioeconomic status.
“To our knowledge, this is the first report of a direct association between childhood abuse and asthma and asthma-related outcomes,” wrote Robyn T. Cohen, M.D., M.P.H., lead author of the paper of the Channing Laboratory of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“We wanted to explore whether exposure to stress and violence is associated with an increased risk of asthma in urban children living in Puerto Rico,” said principal investigator, Juan C. Celedón, M.D., Dr.P.H. “We already know that there is a high prevalence of asthma in Puerto Rican children, and many studies have linked stress and exposure to violence to health problems in childhood, including asthma.”
The researchers interviewed 1,353 parent-child pairs in between 2001 and 2003, and re-interviewed nearly 90 percent of the same pairs two years after their initial interviews. They used validated questionnaires to elicit information about stress and violence in the children’s lives (whenever possible, without the parent present), and used doctor-diagnosed asthma, allergic rhinitis, use of prescription medication for asthma and physician visits for asthma and/or allergic rhinitis within the previous year to assess the children’s asthma/allergy status.
“Children with a history of abuse had higher frequencies of all outcomes of interest than those without a history of abuse,” wrote Dr. Cohen. “After adjusting for relevant covariates, history of abuse was associated with an approximate doubling of the odds of current asthma, healthcare use for asthma, and allergic rhinitis.” For example, whereas 15 (20 percent) of the 75 children with a history of abuse had current asthma, 128 (11.5 percent) of 1,117 children without history of abuse had current asthma.
The study did not, however, find a link between neighborhood violence and asthma, as other studies have done in the past. The researchers suggest that the discrepancy may be the result of the fact that “it is not simply the exposure to a particular stressor but the physiological response to that stressor that predicts physical health outcomes.”
Individual responses to stressors such as community violence will vary, and according to some data, Puerto Rican culture itself may have protective features. “Latino culture places an emphasis on certain values and social supports that may buffer the effects of poverty and community violence experienced by children in Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Cohen. Direct physical or sexual abuse, however, could cause a break-down of those buffering systems.
The investigators postulate that abuse may alter the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which in turn may depress the glucocorticoid response, resulting in decreased suppression of airway inflammatory responses. Other studies have supported this possibility, especially among patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But while the exact pathway remains unclear, and beyond the scope of a cross-sectional study has yet to be ascertained, there is immediate relevance of the findings for social workers and physicians: “Our findings highlight the importance of both screening for illnesses such as asthma in children who are abused and of being aware of the possibility of abuse in children with asthma,” wrote Dr. Cohen.
The article was published in the first issue for September of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a publication of the American Thoracic Society.
August 31st, 2008
Thank you Emily Whitfield!
Our struiggle to change American Psychological Association policy on interrogations has been given an enormous boost in recent months by our pro bono media consultant. Emily Whitfield, who was the top press person for the ACLU for many years appeared and volunteered to help us in the month before the APA Convention. Largely, though not exclusively, thanks to her we have had remarkable success getting our message out, including my Op Ed in the Boston Globe, a front page article in the New York Times, another front-pager in the New York Sun, a story on NPR’s All things Considered, an NPR’s Talk of the Nation show, and a Democracy Now! interview. Now we have a Boston Globe editorial. And this is just the beginning.
I would like to extend an enormous “Thank You!” to Emily for all her wonderful efforts in promoting an ethical psychology and ending the regime of torture.
August 30th, 2008
Democratic platform on torture
The Democratic platform has nice sounding words on torture. If Obama wins, it will be up to us to keep the pressure on to make them a reality:
We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of “inherent” presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. [...]
We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court. We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.
August 30th, 2008
Arrigo on APA referendum emphasis on settings
In her customary succinct style, Jean Maria Arrigo has expressed in a few words the reason why the APA Referendum focuses upon banning participation in certain setting [US detention centers] rather than the actions of individual psychologists. This statement complements yesterday’s statement by the Referendum authors:
Why does the referendum focus on the national security settings of interrogation rather than on the conduct of individual psychologists? Because we are psychologists!
Because we all know the studies of Solomon Asch on conformity, of Stanley Milgram on obedience, and of Phil Zimbardo on prison behavior-plus bystander, minority deviance, and whistle blower research. Where is the psychological research supporting the APA model of the morally autonomous BSCT psychologist? Unlike the randomly selected and disinterested experimental subjects of Asch, Milgram, and Zimbardo, the military and government-contract psychologists were selected for conformity, obedience, and role acceptance in national security settings; the career and financial stakes are very high; they have prior loyalties to co-workers in these settings; and there are legal constraints on disobedience.
The place for national defense psychologists to show their mettle as morally autonomous agents was in the PENS task force meeting itself. In fact, all six present as task force members-in spite of the obvious moral reservations of some-supported a psychological ethic that adhered to the permissive U.S. definition of torture. They did not vote their consciences, so to speak, but their institutional positions. We cannot expect more individualistic acts of dissent from BSCT psychologists at detention centers.
Jean Maria Arrigo
August 30th, 2008
Boston Globe editorial: Psychologists and torture
In a major development, the Boston Globe today editorialized against the participation of psychologists in US abuses. It calls for major change in American Psychological Association policies. It endorses both the APA Referendum and the Presidential campaign of Steven Reisner.
These votes are providing association members with a chance to end any ambiguity about their profession’s abhorrence of abusive techniques. Many came out of the playbook of totalitarian states and could easily be used against US personnel in future clashes. Psychologists should leave no doubt they are opponents, and not enablers, of these methods
The editorial is so good, it’s as if we wrote it.
The circumstances in a place like Guantanamo are by their very nature abusive and should rule out psychologists’ participation even in “good cop” questioning. Guantanamo-style interrogation is hard to square with the psychological association’s ethics code: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.”
This editorial follows by two weeks my Op Ed in the Globe. It follows by a week the the APA’s disingenuous and dishonest response. The Globe has clearly read both and conducted their own careful examination of the issues. Their verdict is in. The APA cover story does not pass the smell test. Our case is vindicated in all essential details.
Here is the complete Globe editorial:
Psychologists and torture
By Boston Globe
August 30, 2008
FROM THE moment US military and civilian officials began detaining and interrogating Guantanamo Bay prisoners with methods that the Red Cross has called tantamount to torture, they have had the assistance of psychologists. This has been a source of anguish to many members of the profession, who want to join their colleagues in other professional organizations and draw a clear line against psychologists’ involvement in interrogation of detainees.
Many psychologists fault their own professional organization, the American Psychological Association, for not taking a firmer stance and for not punishing association members who in the past have helped interrogators in using techniques like sleep deprivation to raise prisoners’ stress levels or in finding their emotional weak points. When the association convened a task force on the subject in 2005, a majority of members turned out to have ties with the military or US intelligence.
In its defense, the association points to a current policy statement that prohibits “direct or indirect participation” in torture or “cruel, degrading, or inhuman treatment or punishment.” The association should go further and forbid – as the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have – any involvement at all by medical professionals in interrogation.
The circumstances in a place like Guantanamo are by their very nature abusive and should rule out psychologists’ participation even in “good cop” questioning. Guantanamo-style interrogation is hard to square with the psychological association’s ethics code: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.”
In the coming weeks, association members will vote on new leadership, and one candidate for president wants psychologists banned from participating in interrogations at US detention centers that violate human rights and do not adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Members are also voting on a resolution banning psychologists from working in such facilities “unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.”
These votes are providing association members with a chance to end any ambiguity about their profession’s abhorrence of abusive techniques. Many came out of the playbook of totalitarian states and could easily be used against US personnel in future clashes. Psychologists should leave no doubt they are opponents, and not enablers, of these methods.
August 30th, 2008
APA Referendum: Why focus upon abusive settings?
The writers of the American Psychological Association referendum currently being voted upon have isued a statement explaining why the referendum focusses upon participation in abusive settings and not the actions of individual psychologists:
Why Settings?
By Dan Aalbers, Ruth Fallenbaum, & Brad Olson
Q. Why have you chosen to focus on settings rather than individual actions?
A: We have four main reasons for doing so:
1. Psychologists know from decades of research that good people do bad things in bad situations (cf. Ross and Nisbett, 1991, Zimbardo, 2007). Psychologists subject to the chain of command in an inherently abusive environment (e.g., the CIA black sites and Guantanamo Bay) are no less vulnerable to “drift” than anyone else; it is time to start applying the hard-learned lessons of psychology to psychologists.
2. The presence of psychologists legitimizes the operations of these facilities. This is because the Bush administration has redefined torture in a way that all but guarantees that psychologists will play a role in any given torture session. To understand why one needs to explore the labyrinths of this administration’s legal defense of torture.
Most psychologists have heard of the infamous Yoo-Bybee legal memos that redefined torture so that only pain equivalent to that experienced during “death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function” could be considered torture, but fewer psychologists know that the same memos incorporate psychologists into this administration’s legal defense of torture.
Yoo argues that torture can only take place if the perpetrator intends to cause prolonged mental harm:
“If a defendant has a good faith belief that his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture. A defendant could show that he acted in good faith by taking such steps as surveying professional literature, consulting with experts, or reviewing evidence gained from past experience.”
http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/yoo_army_torture_memo.pdf
Thus, by consulting with a psychologist an interrogator demonstrates that his or her intent is to extract information and not to cause harm; if the interrogator is a psychologist he or she can demonstrate good intent by reviewing the literature before an interrogation. Of course members of other professions — say sociology — could also perform this same role but there is an advantage in using clinical psychologists since Yoo argues that one has only suffered ‘prolonged mental harm’ if the victim suffers from PTSD or (untreated) depression and psychologists can diagnose these disorders while other social scientists cannot:
“the development of a mental disorder such as posttraumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which also can last for a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement”
http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/yoo_army_torture_memo.pdf
Psychologists hold the keys to these abusive settings because the clandestine services need psychologists to tell them that they are not torturing. As Alexander Leighton once said: “the administrator uses social science the way a drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination.”
3. We find these settings inherently offensive. Even without evidence of torture, we would object to the participation of psychologists in a system that buys people from mercenaries, ships them off to secret locations and holds them there for an indefinite period of time.
4. Although the accounts of prisoners who have been released and information emerging from military tribunals are beginning to provide first hand accounts about the treatment in Guantanamo Bay, we do not know what actions are being performed in the CIA black sites. These settings are – by their very nature – closed to scrutiny. What little we do know comes from heavily redacted documents released through the freedom of information act requests and a handful of leaked documents. We do know that abuse has taken place, we do know that psychologists have contributed to this abuse and we do know that those have who operate these facilities have resisted calls to allow a full, independent investigation. Obviously, this is not a sound basis for oversight.
1 comment August 29th, 2008
Petition for dropping charges against “child soldier” Mohammad Jawad
UPDATE: Maj. Frakt informs me that he is getting very few letters in support of Jawad. Please, please, please write a letter today. Also sign the petition, but the letters are much more important. Go here for instructions on writing an effective letter.
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Mohammad Jawad — arrested when he was 16 or 17 on highly questionable charges of throwing a grenade at US troops — has been imprisoned at Guantanamo for 5 1/2 years. Now he is up on war crimes charges. His defense attorney, Maj. David Frakt, last week asked supporters to write letters to the Military Commission Convening Authority requesting her to drop the charges against Jawad. Now Maj. Frakt is supplementing this letter-writting campaign with a petition. So please write a letter [more information and instructions here] and sign the petition.
Here is the text of the Petition:
Support Defense Request for Guantanamo Detainee Mohammad Jawad
Target: The Honorable Susan J. Crawford, Convening Authority of the Military Commissions
Sponsored by: Major David J. R. Frakt, Detailed Defense Counsel, Guantanamo CommissionWHEREAS,
1. Significant doubt exists about Mohammad Jawad’s culpability for the grenade attack on U.S. forces on December 17, 2002, in Kabul, Afghanistan;
2. Mohammad Jawad was a juvenile, only 16 or 17 years old, at the time he was taken into U.S. military custody on December 17, 2002;
3. Mohammad Jawad was subjected to extreme and illegal physical and psychological abuse at Bagram Air Base prison from December 18, 2002 to February 6, 2003, including, but not limited to, sleep deprivation, prolonged stress positions, threats, beatings, and being chained to the wall;
4. Mohammad Jawad has been subjected to extreme and illegal physical and psychological abuse at Guantanamo Bay from February 6, 2008, including, but not limited to, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, threats, beatings, temperature extremes, sensory deprivation and sensory overload;
5. Mohammad Jawad has been consistently denied the rights accorded to him under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and under the Geneva Prisoner of War Convention and Geneva Convention Common Article 3;
6. Mohammad Jawad’s alleged act of throwing a hand grenade at lawful combatants in an armed conflict does not constitute a violation of the international law of war;
7. Mohammad Jawad has been unlawfully denied any opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration during his nearly 6 years of captivity;
8. Mohammad Jawad is not affiliated in any way with the Taliban or Al Qaida, and is not alleged to have any involvement in any terrorist attacks and is not charged with any crimes of terrorism;
9. The United States has consistently opposed trying child soldiers as war criminals, and there is no mention in the entire legislative history of the Military Commissions Act by a single member of Congress of 2006 of any intent to try juvenile combatants or child soldiers; no juvenile or child soldier has ever been tried in an international war crimes tribunal for war crimes in modern history;
10. It is our view that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was intended to provide a vehicle to bring to justice those persons responsible for major terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies, such as the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the bombing of U.S. Embassies in East Africa;
THEREFORE, we concerned citizens implore you to reconsider your earlier decision to refer charges against Mohammad Jawad to trial by military commission and urge you to withdraw and permanently dismiss those charges.
Now go sign!
[Blogger Valtin at Invictus has also written about this petition.]
4 comments August 27th, 2008
US pressures Britain to withold torture and war crimes info
The Guardian reports that the US State Department is putting pressure on the UK to block release of documents providing detials on the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed. Lawyers want documents about his detention and interrogation from his capture in 2002 till his trasfer to Guantanamo in 2004. The case is revealing that a British intelligence official has refused to testify, even in secret, as he is being questioned about “alleged war crimes.” Interesting how protecting the US torturers is considered the same as protecting “national security.”
US warning to court in alleged torture case
By Duncan Campbell
The US state department yesterday warned that disclosure of secret information in the case of a British resident said to have been tortured before he was sent to Guantánamo Bay would cause “serious and lasting damage” to security relations between the countries.
Stephen Mathias, a legal adviser to the department, also claimed that the “national security of the UK” would be affected by disclosure of the details of the detention and interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, 30, who is accused of conspiring with al-Qaida.
Lawyers for the Ethiopian national have been arguing in the high court that they should have access to details of his interrogation from the time he was detained in 2002 until he was taken to Guantánamo Bay – where he is still held – in 2004. Mohamed claims that he was tortured by, among other methods, having his penis cut with a razor blade.
In an email to the Foreign Office, which was read out to the court, Mathias said disclosure would cause “serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence-sharing relationship and thus the national security of the UK”.
Ben Jaffey, for Mohamed, told the court that the US had said 44 documents would be made available to the “convening authority” in the US which will decide on Mohamed’s prosecution but not to his legal representatives, Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley and Clive Stafford-Smith, of Reprieve, although both had been security-cleared in the US.
Jaffey said there was “no movement on the central question – where was Mr Mohamed between 2002 and 2004?” Tim Eicke, for the government, said the US had made concessions by making documents available to the convening authority.
After hearing from both sides in open court, the judges retired to hear further arguments in private. No decision was made last night but a ruling is expected tomorrow.
Mohamed, a UK resident, was initially held in Pakistan in 2002 and was later secretly rendered to Morocco, where he claimed that he was tortured and had his penis lacerated while further threats were made. He was then flown by the US authorities to Afghanistan, where he claims he was subjected to further ill-treatment and interrogation. In September 2004, he was taken to Guantánamo Bay. He claims that all his confessions were a result of torture. He faces the death penalty.
Last week, in the initial hearing of the case, the high court found that MI5 had participated in the unlawful interrogation of Mohamed. One MI5 officer was so concerned about incriminating himself that he initially declined to answer questions from the judges, even in private.
Although the judges said that “no adverse conclusions” should be drawn by the plea against self-incrimination, it was disclosed that the officer, Witness B, was questioned about alleged war crimes, including torture.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has provided the US with documents about the case. He has declined to release further evidence, arguing that disclosure would harm the intelligence relationship with the US.
August 27th, 2008
Quote of the Day
From Andrew Sullivan:
Quote of the Day
“Look, I owe the American people an apology. If I had beaten the old man you’d’ve never heard of the kid and you wouldn’t be in this mess. So it’s all my fault and I feel that very, very strongly,” – Michael Dukakis.
August 27th, 2008