Psyche, Science, and Society

General strike in Greece

Greece was paralyzed by a general strike Wednesday as anger over the shooting death of a student coalesced with concerns about the faltering economy. As the economic crisis spreads, stories such as this one of mass resistance will become more common:

Greece hit by 5th day of violence, general strike

By Michele Kambas and Renee Maltezou, Reuters

ATHENS (Reuters) – Riot police clashed with demonstrators for a fifth day and a general strike paralyzed Greece on Wednesday, piling pressure on the beleaguered conservative government.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis announced financial support for businesses damaged in the riots and main opposition leader George Papandreou appealed for an end to the violence that has gripped more than 10 Greek cities.

“Government murderers!” demonstrators shouted, furious at the shooting of a teenager by police on Saturday. The killing ignited unrest fueled by simmering public anger at political scandals, rising unemployment and poverty.

Karamanlis, clinging to a thin majority, pledged to safeguard people from violence, but did not say how. Government sources denied rumors emergency measures were being considered. No more protests are planned this week but tension remains high.

Youths lobbed firebombs at police, who returned volleys of tear gas outside Athens polytechnic university, hours after clashes outside parliament following a union rally against economic and social policy.

“Participation in the strike is total, the country has come to a standstill,” said Stathis Anestis, spokesman for the GSEE union federation which called the 24-hour stoppage.

Foreign and domestic flights were grounded, banks and schools were shut, and hospitals ran on emergency services as hundreds of thousands of Greeks walked off the job.

Unions say privatizations, tax rises and pension reform have worsened conditions, especially for the one-fifth of Greeks who live below the poverty line, just as the global downturn is hurting the 240 billion-euro economy.

“There is demand for change: social, economic and political change,” said Odysseas Korakidis, 25, who does two jobs. “It’s not unusual here to hold down two jobs to get just 800 or 1,000 euros a month. In other countries, that’s inconceivable!”

COUNTING THE COST

The Greek Commerce Confederation said damage to businesses in Athens alone was about 200 million euros ($259 million).

“In Athens, we had 565 shops suffering serious damage or being completely destroyed,” said Vassilis Krokidis, vice president of the federation.

In a televised message, Karamanlis, who swept to power amid the euphoria of the 2004 Athens Olympics, announced subsidies, loans and tax relief measures for those affected.

“The government is determined not only to make citizens feel safe but to support businesses which suffered damage,” he said.

In four years of conservative rule, a series of scandals, devastating forest fires, and unsuccessful economic measures have erased the optimistic mood of 2004.

The opposition socialist party, which has overtaken the ruling conservatives in opinion polls, has called for elections.

“I appeal to all to show responsibility, restraint and to end the violence that our country is experiencing these days,” Papandreou told a conference.

One policeman has been charged with murder over the shooting of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, 15.

He testified on Wednesday before a prosecutor that he had fired in the air.

“The investigation shows it was a ricochet … in the end, this was an accident,” his lawyer Alexis Kougias told Reuters. The ballistics report has not yet been officially published.

Witnesses told TV stations after the shooting that the policeman had aimed at the boy and fired.

Rioting over the boy’s death began in Athens on Saturday and quickly spread across the European Union nation of 11 million people. Greeks also protested in Paris, Berlin, London, The Hague and in Cyprus. The unrest is the worst in Greece since the aftermath of military rule in 1974.

Wednesday’s strike by GSEE and its public sector counterpart ADEDY, which include half of Greece’s 5-million-strong work force, was the latest in a series of labor protests by unions.

Many shops in central Athens stayed shut, boarding up their windows to prevent further damage. Bus stops and litter bins were blackened by fire, public telephone booths smashed and some buildings gutted by blazes.

Greece has a tradition of violence at student rallies and firebomb attacks by anarchist groups.

December 10th, 2008

Steven Reisner message to campaign supporters

Steven Reisner has sent the following message to his supporters in the recent APA Presidential election:

Hi Everyone,

So the results of the APA election are in and I’m afraid we lost. Although the APA’s presentation of the data makes it appear that their candidate had a huge margin of victory, let’s remember that using the HARE system, tallies include many redundant votes. To get a real sense of how the voting went, it makes sense to look at the first ballot:

Goodheart: 5436 (30%)
Rozensky: 4934 (27%)
Reisner: 3977 (22%)
McGrath: 2172 (12%)
Kitaeff: 1767 (10%)

I feel confident that we ran the best campaign we could have run. We got the word out to the press and public, and raised the issues that were important to us at every convention, many national and international conferences, and in Division newsletters. But in spite of our efforts, if the count is a fair one, we have to acknowledge that the membership was not mobilized for the fundamental change we were hoping for.

So I’d like to share my thoughts.

First, I want to thank everyone who’s worked so hard, both to change the APA’s culture and for my campaign. This group has developed into an extraordinary force for change, and even though we lost this one, we have many victories alongside this effort: the referendum, the Brennan letter, and the fact that the APA has been put on notice: we will make sure that psychologists’ and the APA’s actions on behalf of our nation’s national security apparatus will be exposed where they are unethical or illegal or violate fundamental human rights. I also want to acknowledge the notes I’ve received since the results arrived – it’s been a rare privilege for me to have had the opportunity to make a contribution to something as important as this effort. Everyone has been so generous, kind and supportive, and I am incredibly grateful to be a part of this community of activists.

To be honest, I am disappointed that we didn’t do better. I had come to believe we could win and in doing so could free the APA from its involvement and support for abuses, facilitating a transition to transparency, as opposed to APA collaboration with reactionary forces in our government, military, and intelligence agencies. This will be more difficult now. At the same time, I must admit to a sense of relief.

Our aims have been threefold: First, we wanted to expose and stop the fundamental role that psychologists played, with the support of our association, in overseeing and implementing national security interrogations and conditions of detention that amount to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and which violate the most common standards of human rights, medical and professional ethics, and international law.

Second, we wanted to expose and change the culture of the American Psychological Association, in which a few well-positioned psychologists can guarantee that (a) the association supports the military and intelligence aims of our government over the independent standards of professional and medical ethics, (b) members of the military/intelligence establishment are given veto power over any policy or statement attempting to assert an independent ethical position, and (c) the association uses its resources for the benefit, profit and power of psychologists with financial, political and professional ties to these groups. In other words, we were trying to extricate our association from its intimate position as part of our nation’s security apparatus, and restore the APA as an independent voice for ethical behavior in research, practice, and as an agent of social change.

Third, we wanted to help re-establish our chosen profession on the solid foundation expressed by the ethical Principle A: “to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.” We have learned through our engagement with the interrogations issue that some in our profession have strayed far from this foundation. Perhaps more disturbing was our realization that the APA was willing to close its eyes to harm done by its colleagues. But let’s not fool ourselves. Participation in interrogations and other national security activities are far from the only places where our profession is making moral compromises with the wealthy and powerful.

We have made enormous progress in terms of the first issue. Through a combination of pressures, including (in chronological order) pressing for and helping to pass anti-torture Council resolutions, mobilizing the press and the blogosphere, the creation of withholdapadues, the public protests at the Conventions, the APA-presidential campaign, and the passage of the referendum prohibiting psychologists’ presence at detention sites that violate human rights and international law, as well as behind the scenes contacts with investigative reporters, whistle-blowers, and congressional investigators, we have come near to victory in both prohibiting psychologists from participating in these activities and in changing the specific APA ethics code standards that permit such ethical violations.

But we have fallen short of making much headway on the second: transforming the culture that led the APA to close its eyes to detention abuses when they were in full swing. And we have not really begun to engage the third broader set of issues regarding the moral foundations of psychology.

I had hoped to use the President’s platform to press for these changes, but now that the election is over, we have to find alternative mechanisms and strategies. Meanwhile, we must continue in our efforts to consolidate our victory with the referendum and resolve the remaining issues concerning the role of psychologists in interrogations and other national security activities. Some of these efforts will require working with APA; other efforts require working with the new administration and Congress to remove psychologists from any direct role in national security interrogations.

I want to address two remaining questions. First, is whether I would consider running again. And second about whether I believe people ought to resign from the APA.

I ran for President, originally, in order to give the issue we cared about as much public exposure as possible. It was only after the nomination totals were counted and after the referendum vote that I began to have hope that the campaign might go further and change the APA itself. In hindsight, this might have been hoping for too much. I believe we ran an extraordinary campaign, capitalized on every opportunity, made our case as well as it could be made, both to the membership and to the public. In addition, we had the momentum of the nation’s disgust at Bush administration policies, along with the extraordinary hope for change embodied in the Obama campaign. Our efforts reached the front page of the NY Times, the editorial pages of the Boston Globe, and were featured in Newsweek. Still, all of this translated into only about 22% of the vote. My sense is that my moment has now passed. I am proud to have run, proud to have had the support of an extraordinary number of extraordinary people. But I could not do it again. The responsibilities of the APA President require being at meetings and conferences two to three weekends a month for three days each, at least. While I was certainly willing to take on this schedule and adjust the time I devote to my practice, teaching, and family, not having to do so is simultaneously a great relief.

As for resigning, of course, that is an individual decision, which at the same time only has power in numbers. For my part, I often think of John Lennon’s decision to accept the Order of the British Empire, because one day he would probably want to return it (which he did to protest British support for the Vietnam War). I will think about whether that point has been reached, in terms of my own membership, as I watch the referendum implementation process unfold.

Together we have had a huge effect, and we have further to go. What is important is that we continue claim the opportunities given us, as engaged citizens and activist-psychologists, to improve this country and world in which we live.

It’s a privilege to be on this journey together.

Steven

Steven Reisner, Ph.D.

email: drreisner@gmail.com
alternative email: sreisner@psychoanalysis.net

December 10th, 2008

Reisner loses American Psychological Association Presidential bid

I’ve been too upset to post this news previously. But our candidate, Steven Reisner, was defeated in his bid for the American Psychological Association (APA) Presidency. Rather, the candidate of the status-quo, APA Treasurer Carol Goodheart, won. The APA announcement, designed to magnify the extent of Dr. Goodheart’s victory, is available here. The vote counts presented there are virtually meaningless as they represent the number of votes received at the point that candidate was removed in the complex multistage, Hare-system, vote counting process.

With Reisner’s defeat, the APA has managed for the time being to preserve its status quo position as an unofficial member of the military-intelligence establishment, committed to perverting psychology in the interests of so-called “national security.” If things go well nationally, those interests will soon cease to include legalized torture. Thus, the APA will cease to covertly support psychologists’ participation in detainee abuse through its “policy of engagement.”

Notwithstanding Reisner’s defeat, now is the time for a thoroughgoing review of our profession’s, and the APA’s, sordid recent history.

The failure to transform the organization to make its relationships with the military-intelligence establishment transparent, and to really come to grips with the implications of psychologists playing central roles in US government abuse, will ill-equip the profession to resist the next time “national security” calls. The struggle must continue to transform the Association and the profession so that human rights and human decency are central to our work.

December 10th, 2008