Psyche, Science, and Society

Archive for November, 2010

Wikileaks doc: US lied about Honduran coup to protect military plotters

Truthout has found evidence in the new Wikileak that the US brazenly lied about the Honduran coup in order to avoid invoking the automatic cutoff in aid required under US law.

By July 24, 2009, the US government was totally clear about the basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009. The US embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a cable to Washington with the subject, “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” asserting that “there is no doubt” that the events of June 28 “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” The embassy listed arguments being made by supporters of the coup to claim its legality, and dismissed them thus: “None … has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution.” The Honduran military clearly had no legal authority to remove President Manuel Zelaya from office or from Honduras, the embassy said, and their action – the embassy described it as an “abduction” and “kidnapping” – was clearly unconstitutional.

Instead of involing the automatic mandatory cutoff in aid, the State Department made up absurd distinctions between “coup” and “military coup” that required Obama’s sycophantic lawyers to “investigate.”

Question: And so – sorry, just a follow-up. If this is a coup – the State Department considers this a coup, what’s the next step? And I mean, there is a legal framework on the US laws dealing with countries that are under coup d’etat? I mean, what’s holding you guys [back from taking] other measures according [to] the law?

Senior State Department Official: I think what you’re referring to, Mr. Davila, is whether or not this is – has been determined to be a military coup. And you’re correct that there are provisions in our law that have to be applied if it is determined that this is a military coup. And frankly, our lawyers are looking at that exact question. And when we get the answer to that, you are right, there will be things that – if it is determined that this was a military coup, there will be things that will kick in.

As you know, on the ground, there’s a lot of discussion about who did what to whom and what things were constitutional or not, which is why our lawyers are really looking at the event as we understand them in order to come out with the accurate determination.

Thus, the Obama administration, like vir provided protection for this blatantly anti-democratic coup, the first in Latin America since the Bush administration’s Haitian coup that forced democratically elected President Aristide from power. Alas, thanks to the US response, it will hardly be the last.

November 30th, 2010

Tea Party leader: Deny renters the vote

In a sign of just how reactionary the Tea Party forces are, a leader in the movement wants to restrict the vote to “property owners,” reversing nearly two hundred years of democratic progress:

Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips said denying the right to vote to those who do not own property “makes a lot of sense” during a weekly radio program.

“The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote,” Phillips said. “It wasn’t you were just a citizen and you got to vote.”

“Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today,” he continued. “But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community.”

“If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.”

He and another leaders went on the various Constitutional Amendments they want repealed.

It is hard to really comprehend that these people are a major force in the country today.

November 30th, 2010

Jenkins: Wikileaks and democracy

Simon Jenkins of the Guardian provides an excellent explanation of the importance of the Wikileaks to democracy. Of course our leaders have no interest in democracy, only in “Democracy™”:

The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment. If American spies are breaking United Nations rules by seeking the DNA biometrics of the UN director general, he is entitled to hear of it. British voters should know what Afghan leaders thought of British troops. American (and British) taxpayers might question, too, how most of the billions of dollars going in aid to Afghanistan simply exits the country at Kabul airport.

[...]

The money‑wasting is staggering. Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never evaluated. The impression is of the world’s superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the United Nations, are all perpetually off script. Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its power projection unproductive.

America’s foreign policy is revealed as a slave to rightwing drift, terrified of a bomb exploding abroad or of a pro-Israeli congressman at home. If the cables tell of the progress to war over Iran or Pakistan or Gaza or Yemen, their revelation might help debate the inanity of policies which, as Patterson says, seem to be leading in just that direction. Perhaps we can now see how catastrophe unfolds when there is time to avert it, rather than having to await a Chilcot report after the event. If that is not in the public’s interest, I fail to see what is.

Clearly, it is for governments, not journalists, to protect public secrets. Were there some overriding national jeopardy in revealing them, greater restraint might be in order. There is no such overriding jeopardy, except from the policies themselves as revealed. Where it is doing the right thing, a great power should be robust against embarrassment.

1 comment November 29th, 2010

CIA brain electrode experiments challenged in lawsuit

It has widely been know that the cold war CIA conducted numerous experiments with LSD and other drugs on unwitting soldiers and civilians. They also conducted horrific studies of various mind-control techniques including the rather silly “psychic driving” of Montreal psychiatrist Ewan Cameron, a monster if ever there was one.

Now the Washington Post‘s Jeff Stein reports on a lawsuit by veterans who claim electrodes were planted in their brains by the CIA. Bizzare, but, alas, not implausible:

CIA brain experiments pursued in veterans’ suit

By Jeff Stein

The CIA is notorious for its Cold War-era experiments with LSD and other chemicals on unwitting citizens and soldiers. Details have emerged in books and articles beginning more than 30 years ago.

But if military veterans have their way in a California law suit, the spy agency’s quest to turn humans into robot-like assassins via electrodes planted in their brains will get far more exposure than the drugs the CIA tested on subjects ranging from soldiers to unwitting bar patrons and the clients of prostitutes.

It’s not just science fiction — or the imaginings of the mentally ill.

In 1961, a top CIA scientist reported in an internal memo that “the feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated…Special investigations and evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to man,” according to “The CIA and the Search for the Manchurian Candidate,” a 1979 book by former State Department intelligence officer John Marks.

“[T]his cold-blooded project,” Marks wrote, “was designed … for the delivery of chemical and biological agents or for ‘executive action-type operations,’ according to a document. ‘Executive action’ was the CIA’s euphemism for assassination.”

The CIA pursued such experiments because it was convinced the Soviets were doing the same.

Victims have sought justice for years, in vain. Now, almost 40 years later, a federal magistrate has ordered the CIA to produce records and witnesses about the LSD and other experiments “allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975,” according to news accounts.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Larsen’s Nov. 17 order exempted the agency from having to testify about electrode tests on humans, but Gordon P. Erspamer, lead attorney for the veterans, says “we are pursuing this as well.”

“There is no question that these experiments were done,” Erspamer said by e-mail Tuesday, “but defendants say that they used private researchers and test subjects drawn from prisons, hospitals and nursing homes as subjects, not active duty military [personnel]. CIA said it had no one knowledgeable on this topic.”

Erspamer, senior counsel in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster, said “several” CIA witnesses “are…still alive,” naming some that have been publicly identified, but opting to keep secret others before he calls them.

Papers filed in the case describe “electrical devices implanted in brain tissue with electrodes in various regions, including the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, the frontal lobe (via the septum), the cortex and various other places,” Erspamer said, drawing on [research papers] (http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/spytalkheathdocument.pdf) written by government scientists.

“We believe that one of our plaintiffs was given a septal implant at [Edgewood Arsenal] (www.edgewoodtestvets.org),” he said, based on an MRI he has “showing a ‘foreign body’ on the border between the septum and the frontal lobe.”

“A lot of this work was done out of Tulane University using a local state hospital and funding from a cut-out (front) organization called the Commonwealth Fund,” he continued, again drawing on the research papers.

“We tried to get docs from Tulane, but they told us that they were destroyed in the hurricane flooding.”

The CIA claims that at least some of the documents should remain classified as “state secrets.” But Magistrate Larson told the agency to come back with a better rationale, a “supplemental declaration explaining with heightened specificity” why the documents should be protected after all these years.

1 comment November 29th, 2010

Obama attacks workers to reduce “deficit”

After doing everything to guarantee bankers, those who systematically and ruthlessly destroyed the US economy, obscene bonuses of magnitudes that can’t even be imagined, President Obama decided to be tough on those really hurting the US economy, namely Federal workers! While being a worthless gimmick — turning Obama into President Gimmick — that will have no disceranable economic benefit nor aid the deficit, socking it to the workers is a truly despicable act. Federal workers, indeed all workers, are among those who had nothing to do with creating the country’s economic mess.

Through this act Obama shows where his loyalties lie, and their not with me and you. He’s only interested in taking this opportunity to reduce the living standards of millions to enrich the few.

November 29th, 2010

Challenge to NY psychology board’s evasion of responsibility

We have been trying for years to get some portion of the system — APA, state licensing boards, the administration, Congress, the courts — to investigate and impose accountability for psychologists’ roles in creating, implementing, studying, monitoring, and justifying torture. So far, ever institution has failed to act.

In New York the state licensing board punted an ethics complaint by claiming that a military psychologist consulting to torture as a Behavioral Science Consultant wasn’t conducting psychology because he wasn’t trying to help the person being tortured. The same logic would apply to prison psychologists who helped guards abuse prisoners. Evidently, if you’re doing harm., you’re immune from ethics discipline in New York State.

Fortunately, attorneys for human rights groups are challenging this bizarre reasoning being used by the board to evade responsibility for some of the greatest abuses ever committed in the name of “psychology.”

Here is a report.

Court asked to order probe of Gitmo psychologist

NEW YORK — A court was asked Wednesday to force an investigation into whether an Army psychologist developed abusive interrogation techniques for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and should be stripped of his license.

The court petition, filed by the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability and the New York Civil Liberties Union, furthers human rights advocates’ efforts to spur probes of some psychologists involved in detainee interrogations. Critics argue that the psychologists’ activities amount to professional misconduct and that state regulators should look into the matter.

Last summer, the California center filed a complaint about John Leso with New York’s Office of Professional Discipline, which oversees psychologists. Leso is licensed in New York; Army spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to inquiries Wednesday about him and where he could be reached.

While leading a behavioral science consultation team at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 and 2003, Leso developed “psychologically and physically abusive interrogation tactics” based on Army survival strategies, said the complaint, which drew on government documents, academic journal articles and other sources. The complaint said Leso wrote a memo promoting techniques such as exposing detainees to severe cold, depriving them of sleep and forcing liquids into them intravenously.

The agency declined in July to pursue a probe of Leso, saying his Army work fell outside its scope.

“It does not appear that any of the conduct complained of constitutes the practice of psychology as understood in the state of New York,” Director Louis J. Catone wrote in a letter to the California center. As for larger questions about the appropriateness of detainee interrogation methods, he said, “It is not within this office’s purview to express an opinion on that issue.”

A spokesman declined to comment on Wednesday’s court filing. It asks a judge to tell the agency to investigate the allegations that Leso’s conduct warrants revoking his license, or other discipline.

“We think that the professional standards that prohibit abuse or harassment — that prohibit, generally, misconduct — would generally cover abusing detainees and devising ways to hurt people in a professional role,” said Kathy Roberts, a lawyer with the Center for Justice and Accountability. It focuses on deterring torture.

Psychologist licensing boards in California, Louisiana and New York have rejected such complaints. But the American Psychological Association voted in 2008 to ban its members from taking part in interrogations at the Guantanamo prison and other military detention sites where the professional group believes international law is being violated.

The APA took an unprecedented step this year by encouraging Texas officials to revoke the license of James Mitchell, a retired Army psychologist accused of overseeing the torture of a CIA detainee in Thailand in 2002. Mitchell said the complaint against him, filed by a law professor, was full of “fabricated details, lies, distortions and inaccuracies.”

In a complaint filed last summer with Ohio’s psychologist licensing board, Harvard University’s International Human Rights Clinic said retired Army Col. Larry James observed abusive interrogations at Guantanamo in 2003, 2007 and 2008 and didn’t do anything to stop them. James has declined to comment; the Ohio board declined to pursue a similar complaint against him in 2008.

An update on the status of the current complaints against him and Mitchell wasn’t immediately available Wednesday.