Fifty high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program gave President Bush a letter asking him to stop torture and respect human rights:
Scholars urge Bush to ban use of torture
President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to “violations of the human rights” of terror suspects held by the United States.
The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk with a young woman who handed it to him.
“The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights,” deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.
The students had been invited to the East Room to hear the president speak about his effort to win congressional reauthorization of his education law known as No Child Left Behind.
The handwritten letter said the students “believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions.”
“We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants,” the letter said.
The designation as a Presidential Scholar is one of the nation’s highest honors for graduating high school students. Each year the program selects one male and one female student from each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Americans living abroad, 15 at-large students, and up to 20 students in the arts on the basis of outstanding scholarship, service, leadership and creativity.
June 26th, 2007
The Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University is sponsoring a conference:
War, Torture and Terror: The Role of Psychology
Friday, June 22, 2007,
9 AM – 4 PM at the
Geraldine Schottenstein Center
239-241 East 34th Street, NYC
Schedule:
9 – 9:35 AM Registration and Continental Breakfast
9:35 – 10 AM Welcome
Shara Sand, PsyD, Chair;
Assistant Director of Clinical Training,
Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University
Opening Remarks
Lawrence J. Siegel, PhD
Dean,
Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University
10 – 10:45 AM Invited Address
The Development of Psychological Torture: A Modern
History of Coercive Interrogation and Its Effectiveness
Shara Sand, PsyD *
Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology;
Assistant Director of Clinical Training,
Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University
10:45 – 10:55 AM Questions and Answers
10:55 – 11 AM Abraham Givner, PhD, Conference Co-Chair;
Director, School-Clinical Child Psychology Program,
Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University
11 – 11:45 AM Invited Address
The Role of Psychologists in the Global War on Terror;
Professional and Ethical Considerations
Michael Gelles, PsyD *
Consultant, Washington, DC; Former Chief Psychologist,
Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)
11:45 – 12 NOON Questions and Answers
12 NOON – 1 PM Lunch
1:15 – 2 PM Invited Address
Torture, Ethics and the Consequences of Complicity
Leonard Rubenstein, JD
Executive Director, Physicians for Human Rights
2:15 – 3:30 PM Concurrent Workshops:
I. Torture Across the Generations: The Chilean Project of
Theater Arts Against Political Violence
Steven Reisner, PhD, International Trauma Studies Program,
Columbia University; New York University, Psychoanalytic Institute
This workshop will present videotapes and discussion from a theater Arts Against Political Violence project addressing the experience of two generations of Chileans who experienced torture under Pinochet. Theater Arts Against Political Violence consisted of a psychoanalyst, a director, and an international group of actors; its mandate was to work with survivors of severe human rights violations to create works of theater derived from such experiences. In the material presented, the needs of the younger generation for revenge are positioned along with the needs of the older generation to find meaning. The presentation will offer a live performance
attempting to represent and give meaning to the complex interface of trauma between generations. It will also offer tapes of the dialogue
between the members of the two generations of survivors
that inspired the artists.
II. Human Rights Violations in Homophobic Persecution
Leanh Nguyen, PhD, Senior Psychologist at the Bellevue/
NYU Program for Survivors of Torture; Candidate at the
NYU Postdoctoral Program for Psychoanalysis; Independent
Practice in NYC
Homophobic persecution is a global epidemic that has not been discussed in the context of torture or human rights violation. Often categorized as a “bias” crime, it is treated as having cultural/religious roots and is not considered in the politics of human rights advocacy. The author, who has been involved over the past five
years with victims of homophobic persecution, will present clinical data on homophobic violence from various parts of the world, on the psychic injuries sustained by its victims, and on the implicit conceptions of their human rights in the hands of advocates, law enforcers, and healthcare providers.
III. Therapeutic Responses to Displaced African Female
Survivors of Sexual Violence
Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith, PhD, Assistant Professor,
The City College of New York; Psychologist at the Bellevue/
NYU Program for Survivors of Torture
Sexual violence against women has been used as a weapon in numerous recent conflicts (Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Darfur). This workshop will focus on the nuances and extent of the crime of rape. Establishing an environment of trust and safety is essential, and because individual therapy can be a foreign concept, group therapy is frequently employed. Clinical aspects of working with survivors of sexual violence, war trauma survivors, refugees, asylees and asylum seekers will be explored.
IV. Riding Two Horses: The APA’s Support for Interrogations,
Psychological Ethics, and Human Rights
Edward J. Tejirian, PhD, Independent Practice,
New York City
In 2005, the APA Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics in National Security Investigations (PENS) was formed and opposed any participation by psychologists in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The report also said that psychologists could play a vital role in interrogations in settings such as Guantanamo that have been denounced as being in violation of the UN Convention Against Torture. The APA Board of Directors invoked a little-used rule to adopt the PENS report as APA policy without consultation with the membership, resulting in a complex controversy within the APA. This workshop will invite participants to
look at and discuss both sides of that controversy.
V. From Trauma to Tragedy: How Holocaust Survivors
Rebuilt Shattered Lives
Carl Auerbach, PhD** and Shoshana Mirvis, PsyD*
During the Holocaust, six million Jews were systematically annihilated in Nazi-run concentration camps and ghettos. Despite enduring years of incomprehensible horror, many survivors managed to begin anew and lead apparently normal lives. This workshop will focus on exploring this question of survival and resiliency. The survivors’ experience will be explored through the lens of a theory of structural dissociation.
VI. Defining Evil, the Depravity Standard and War Crimes
Michael Welner, MD, Chairman, The Forensic Panel;
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine;
Adjunct Professor of Law, Duquesne University School of Law;
Special Consultant, ABC News
Judges and juries both across the United States and in other countries who decide that a crime is “depraved,” “heinous,” or “horrible” can assign more severe sentences. There is no standardized definition for such dramatic words. The Depravity Scale research aims to establish societal standards of what makes a crime depraved, and to develop a standardized instrument based on specific characteristics of a crime that must be proven in order to merit more severe sentences. This instrument distinguishes not who is depraved, but rather what aspects of a given crime are depraved and the degree of a specific crime’s depravity.
3:30 – 4 PM Open Forum Discussion
Shara Sand, PsyD, Moderator
Download a brochure here, register online here.
June 12th, 2007
What a country! Allowing publication of article advocating tolerance gets teacher transfered!
WOODBURN, Indiana (AP) — A high school teacher who faced losing her job after a student newspaper published an editorial advocating tolerance of gays can continue teaching at another school.
Amy Sorrell, 30, reached an agreement that allows her to be transferred to another high school to teach English, said her attorney, Patrick Proctor.
“The school administration has said in no uncertain terms that she’s not going to be given a journalism position,” Proctor said.
Sorrell, who had been an English and journalism instructor at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School, was placed on paid leave March 19, two months after an editorial advocating tolerance of homosexuals ran in Woodlan’s student newspaper, The Tomahawk. Sorrell had been the newspaper’s adviser.
School officials in the conservative northern Indiana community about 10 miles east of Fort Wayne said Sorrell did not comply with an agreement to alert the principal about controversial articles.
The agreement she signed includes a written reprimand that says she neglected her duties as a teacher and was insubordinate in refusing to obey school officials’ orders.
Sorrell said she is “very proud” of Megan Chase, the student who wrote the editorial calling for tolerance and acceptance of gays, and the Tomahawk’s other writers and editors. But she said she could not financially afford to fight the school district over her discipline.
April 28th, 2007
Alternet reports about a Canadian psychologist and psychotherapist who has been barred from the US for life because, as a Goodle search revealed, he used LSD 30 years ago:
The Blaine border guard explained that Feldmar had been pulled out of the line as part of a random search. He seemed friendly, even as he took away Feldmar’s passport and car keys. While the contents of his car were being searched, Feldmar and the officer talked. He asked Feldmar what profession he was in.
When Feldmar said he was psychologist, the official typed his name into his Internet search engine. Before long the customs guard was engrossed in an article Feldmar had published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a “path” to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could “be preferable to psychiatry.” Everything seemed to collapse around him, as a quiet day crossing the border began to turn into a nightmare….
The official said that under the Homeland Security Act, Feldmar was being denied entry due to “narcotics” use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn’t interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file.
Then Feldmar disbelievingly listened as he learned that he was being barred from ever entering the United States again. The officer told him he could apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver, if he wished, and gave him a package, with the forms.
He can appeal for a waiver, but it costs thousands of dollars in lawyers fees, and he would have to reapply every year!
Nine months after being turned back at the border, Feldmar has concluded that his banishment is permanent. The waiver process is exhausting, costly and demeaning. The David and Goliath aspect of the situation is too daunting.
This is devastating to his family and friends. “My father was doing nothing wrong, illegal, suspicious, or at all deviant in any way, when he was trying to visit the U.S.,” his daughter, Soma, an instructor at a Denver college, says. “In terms of family it really sucks. “
Feldmar is far from alone in his exclusion from “the land of the free”:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied Professor John Milios entry into the country upon his arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport last June. Milios, a faculty member at the National Technical University of Athens, had planned to present a paper at a conference titled “How Class Works” at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Milios told Academe Online that U.S. officials questioned him at the airport about his political ideas and affiliations and that the American consul in Athens later queried him about the same subjects. Milios, a member of a left-wing political party, is active in Greek national politics and has twice been a candidate for the Greek parliament. Milios’s visa, issued in 1996, was set to expire in November. The professor had previously been allowed entry into the United States on five separate occasions to participate in academic meetings.
The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors and PEN American Center, filed a lawsuit this year challenging a provision of the Patriot Act that is being used to deny visas to foreign scholars. They did this after Professor Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss intellectual, had his visa revoked under “the ideological exclusion provision” of the Patriot Act, preventing him from assuming a tenured teaching position at the University of Notre Dame. It’s a suit that attempts to prevent the practice of ideological exclusion more generally, a practice that led to the recent exclusions of Dora Maria Tellez, a Nicaraguan scholar who had been offered a position at Harvard University, as well as numerous scholars from Cuba.
In March 2005, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government’s use of the Patriot Act ideological exclusion provision. Cuban Grammy nominee Ibrahim Ferrer, 77, who came to fame in the 1999 film Buena Vista Social Club, was blocked by the U.S. government from attending the Grammy Awards, where he was nominated for the Best Latin album award in 2004. So were his fellow musicians Guillermo Rubalcaba, Amadito Valdes, Barbarito Torres and the group Septeto Nacional with Ignacio Pineiro. The list goes on.
April 25th, 2007
In a brilliant attempt to avoid the total closing of Iraq’s university system where multiple faculty are often killed in a single day, Iraq’s Prime Minister al Maliki, safe in the Green Zone, has ordered attendance or face firing or expulsion, McClatchy reports. Al Maliki is, of course, going to do nothing about the terrible security situation at universities:
An odd thing has happened at Baghdad’s universities: the professors have begun hiding their education by donning ratty clothes, pulling on traditional Arab head scarves and driving to campus in beat-up cars.
It’s all part of an effort to keep from getting fired.
With the threat of violence emptying university campuses, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki took the rare step earlier this month of ordering students and professors back to class. Anyone who doesn’t obey could face dismissal or expulsion.
Maliki’s aides defend the order, saying that education is the lifeblood of Iraq and its collapse would threaten the government and the nation.
But those forced to obey the order complain that they’re risking their lives as unwilling pawns of a government that can’t guarantee their security. …
Iraq’s universities have been a target for insurgents and militias alike almost since the war began in 2003. Professors tell of armed gangs taking over buildings and classrooms and even issuing threats about grades. Thousands of students have requested transfers to campuses where their sects - Sunni Muslim or Shiite Muslim - are in the majority. Thousands of professors and students, seeking to avoid violence and threats, have fled the nation to pursue their studies in neighboring countries.
Around Baghdad, many campuses are desolate. Many families refuse to let their children, particularly women, finish their education for fear of what will happen either en route to class or once they get there.
According to the Iraq Students and Youth League, a university advocacy group, at least 10 violent incidents racked Baghdad’s two main universities in the first week of this month, when Maliki issued his order. Among them were attempted kidnappings in front of Iraqi police officers, who didn’t try to stop the attacks.
At Baghdad University, only 6 percent of student and professors attended in early December, the group found. The highest attendance level was 59 percent at private universities.
Ali Adeeb, a top Maliki adviser, said he recommended to the prime minister that he issue the order after a Sunni insurgent group, Ansar al Sunna, posted fliers around campuses threatening to kill students and professors for coming to campus. …
Badri, the professor, said it wasn’t fair to expect academics to defy violence when no one else in Iraq was forced to. He pointed out that the nation’s 275-member parliament often can’t meet because too many members don’t attend, sometimes because the roads leading to the heavily fortified Green Zone are too dangerous.
Presumably, al Maliki feels that Iraq will be better off when all the country’s professors are dead.
December 21st, 2006
As the Administration and the Christian right push abstinence education for our youth, instead of teaching them the skills necessary to navigate the real world of sexuality and contemporary relationships, a new study gives further evidence of how truly silly this is. A new study combining data from interviews conducted from 1982 through 2002 found that 95% of Americans had had sex before marriage, including at least 88% of women born in the 1940’s. So not only are abstinence-only programs not teaching our children to live in the real world of today, they are not teaching them to live in the real worl of their parents. Presumably support comes from parents who want to maintain the fantasy that their children, unlike all other human beings, are truly pure.
EXCERPTS:
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades….”
The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.
Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.
Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods.
The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.
“The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds,” Finer said.
Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
“It would be more effective,” Finer said, “to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active — which nearly everyone eventually will.”
December 20th, 2006
With so much attention being focussed on the lack of knowledge or insight in the President and his administration, we’ve evidently ignored the imbeciles from both parties in Congress. The new Chair of the House Intelligence Committee doesn’t know a Sunni from a Shiite. Neither does the Republican vice-chairman of the House intelligence sub-committee on technical and tactical intelligence, nor does the Republican Congresswoman who “oversees the CIA’s recruiting of Islamic spies.”
The new Democratic chairman of a US congressional intelligence committee did not know what Hizbollah was and incorrectly described al-Qa’eda as deriving from the Shia rather than Sunni sect of Islam.
Representative Silvestre Reyes was flummoxed when a journalist rounded off a 40-minute interview by asking him two basic questions about the Islamic groups that are the principal targets of America’s intelligence agencies.
“Al-Qa’eda is what – Sunni or Shia?” Jeff Stein, the Congressional Quarterly magazine’s national security editor, asked Mr Reyes. “Al-Qa’eda, they have both,” came the reply. “You’re talking about predominately?” the congressman then asked, before venturing: “Predominantly – probably Shi’ite.”
As Mr Stein noted in his subsequent column: “He couldn’t have been more wrong. Al-Qa’eda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shi’ite showed up at an al-Qa’eda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.”
He then asked the congressman about the terrorist group Hizbollah. “Hizbollah. Uh, Hizbollah…” he said, laughing. “Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”
Now for the Republicans:
Democrat flunks his first intelligence test
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 8:13am GMT 13/12/2006
# Read the Reyes interview
The new Democratic chairman of a US congressional intelligence committee did not know what Hizbollah was and incorrectly described al-Qa’eda as deriving from the Shia rather than Sunni sect of Islam.
Silvestre Reyes
Silvestre Reyes: ‘Hizbollah. Uh, Hizbollah…’
Representative Silvestre Reyes was flummoxed when a journalist rounded off a 40-minute interview by asking him two basic questions about the Islamic groups that are the principal targets of America’s intelligence agencies.
“Al-Qa’eda is what – Sunni or Shia?” Jeff Stein, the Congressional Quarterly magazine’s national security editor, asked Mr Reyes. “Al-Qa’eda, they have both,” came the reply. “You’re talking about predominately?” the congressman then asked, before venturing: “Predominantly – probably Shi’ite.”
As Mr Stein noted in his subsequent column: “He couldn’t have been more wrong. Al-Qa’eda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shi’ite showed up at an al-Qa’eda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.”
He then asked the congressman about the terrorist group Hizbollah. “Hizbollah. Uh, Hizbollah…” he said, laughing. “Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”
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The holes in his knowledge are a fresh embarrassment to Nancy Pelosi, the incoming Speaker of the House of Representatives, whose leadership was undermined when her chosen deputy was rejected by Democrats.
She selected Mr Reyes to chair the House intelligence committee over the head of Jane Harman, who is widely respected as having a firm grasp of the nuances of the Middle East. Miss Pelosi is said to harbour a long-time personal grudge against Miss Harman.
Mr Stein has been quizzing senior intelligence officials and politicians with similar questions for the past 18 months. In a similar gaffe-laden session, Willie Hulon, chief of the FBI’s national security branch, did not know the difference between Sunnis and Shia either. “The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following,” he said. “And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following.”
So which were Iran and Hizbollah? With a 50 per cent chance of getting it right, Mr Hulon flunked by plumping for Sunni.
Congressman Terry Everett, a Republican and vice-chairman of the House intelligence sub-committee on technical and tactical intelligence, chuckled when he was asked the same question.
“One’s in one location, another’s in another location,” he said. “No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”
When Mr Stein outlined the difference, which dates back to the death of the Prophet Mohammed in AD632, Mr Everett said: “Now that you’ve explained it to me, what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”
Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis, a Republican who oversees the CIA’s recruiting of Islamic spies, was also stumped when asked if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shia. “Do I? You know, I should. It’s a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia.”
Any hope of a rationale foreign policy from these dopes is just a fantasy.
December 13th, 2006
As the TV shows get ever more risque, our sexually conflicted society gets even crazier. A four-year old in Texas was suspended for
“inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment.”
The offending action? Either a hug or else “rubbing his face in the chest of a female employee,” depending on who’s describing.
As a psychoanalyst, it’s upsetting that the parent’s fight against this absurd school department behavior has to be fought using the concept of sexual innocence:
Blackwell says it’s ridiculous that the aide would misread a hug from a four-year-old. Blackwell wrote to administrators demanding that the whole incident be expunged from his son’s academic file because his son is too young to know what it means to act sexually.
David Davis, the executive director of the Advocacy Center in Waco tends to agree with Blackwell. He says assuming the boy has not had sexual encounters, or been inappropriately exposed to pornography, most four-year-olds are sexually innocent.
One hundred years after Freud, we still need the cultural defense of pretending that children are innocent. They must have no “sexual” desires. Once we grant them the existence of desires, they are not safe from the thought police taking over in our schools. So, at age four the choice really is innocence or guilt.
By the way, the school administration is holding firm:
Blackwell got a response from the La Vega administration. The sexual references on the discipline referral were removed. But the thing that makes Blackwell most upset is they told him “your request for an apology by the aide and removal of all paperwork regarding this incident is denied.” Now the young student’s file will refer to the incident as “inappropriate physical contact.”
Perhaps, if he does it again, they’ll send him to Guantanamo.
December 8th, 2006