Psyche, Science, and Society

Wikileaks reveals US war crime and cover-up in 2006 Iraq

McClatchy reports on a Wikileaks cable providing evidence that US troops in Iraq handcuffed and executed an entire family, then called in an airstrike to cover the evidence. As they virtually always did, the US command then lied about the incident and refused UN requests for information on this alleged war crime:

WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says

By Matthew Schofield

A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks’ website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.

But Philip Alston, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

Reached by email Wednesday, Alston said that as of 2010 — the most recent data he had — U.S. officials hadn’t responded to his request for information and that Iraq’s government also hadn’t been forthcoming. He said the lack of response from the United States “was the case with most of the letters to the U.S. in the 2006-2007 period,” when fighting in Iraq peaked.

Alston said he could provide no further information on the incident. “The tragedy,” he said, “is that this elaborate system of communications is in place but the (U.N.) Human Rights Council does nothing to follow up when states ignore issues raised with them.”

The Pentagon didn’t respond to a request for comment. At the time, American military officials in Iraq said the accounts of townspeople who witnessed the events were highly unlikely to be true, and they later said the incident didn’t warrant further investigation. Military officials also refused to reveal which units might have been involved in the incident.

Iraq was fast descending into chaos in early 2006. An explosion that ripped through the Golden Dome Mosque that February had set off an orgy of violence between rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and Sunni insurgents, many aligned with al Qaida in Iraq, controlled large tracts of the countryside.

Ishaqi, about 80 miles northwest of Baghdad, not far from Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, was considered so dangerous at the time that U.S. military officials had classified all roads in the area as “black,” meaning they were likely to be booby-trapped with roadside bombs.

The Ishaqi incident was unusual because it was brought to the world’s attention by the Joint Coordination Center in Tikrit, a regional security center set up with American military assistance and staffed by U.S.-trained Iraqi police officers.

The original incident report was signed by an Iraqi police colonel and made even more noteworthy because U.S.-trained Iraqi police, including Brig. Gen. Issa al Juboori, who led the coordination center, were willing to speak about the investigation on the record even though it was critical of American forces.

Throughout the early investigation, U.S. military spokesmen said that an al Qaida in Iraq suspect had been seized from a first-floor room after a fierce fight that had left the house he was hiding in a pile of rubble.

But the diplomatic cable provides a different sequence of events and lends credence to townspeople’s claims that American forces destroyed the house after its residents had been shot.

Alston initially posed his questions to the U.S. Embassy in Geneva, which passed them to Washington in the cable.

According to Alston’s version of events, American troops approached a house in Ishaqi, which Alston refers to as “Al-Iss Haqi,” that belonged to Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, whom Alston identified as a farmer. The U.S. troops were met with gunfire, Alston said, that lasted about 25 minutes.

After the firefight ended, Alston wrote, the “troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them. After the initial MNF intervention, a U.S. air raid ensued that destroyed the house.” The initials refer to the official name of the military coalition, the Multi-National Force.

Alston said “Iraqi TV stations broadcast from the scene and showed bodies of the victims (i.e. five children and four women) in the morgue of Tikrit. Autopsies carries (sic) out at the Tikrit Hospital’s morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.”

The cable makes no mention any of the alleged shooting suspects being found or arrested at or near the house.

 

The cable closely tracks what neighbors told reporters for Knight Ridder at the time. (McClatchy purchased Knight Ridder in spring 2006.) Those neighbors said the U.S. troops had approached the house at 2:30 a.m. and a firefight ensued. In addition to exchanging gunfire with someone in the house, the American troops were supported by helicopter gunships, which fired on the house.

The cable also backs the original report from the Joint Coordination Center, which said U.S. forces entered the house while it was still standing. That first report noted: “The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals.”

The report was signed by Col. Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf, who was described in the document as the assistant chief of the Joint Coordination Center.

The cable also backs up the claims of the doctor who performed the autopsies, who told Knight Ridder “that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed.”

The cable notes that “at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra’a (aged 5) Aisha (aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz’s sister (name unknown), Faiz’s nieces Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.”

(Schofield, an editorial writer at The Kansas City Star, was Berlin bureau chief and was on temporary assignment in Iraq at the time of the Ishaqi incident.)

READ THE CABLE:

Cable: massacre of Iraqi family by U.S. troops in 2006

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Commentary: Five years, and visions of dead are still haunting

Iraqi police report details civilians’ deaths in Ishaqi at hands of U.S. troops

 

September 1st, 2011

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness critique in Washington Post

The article that I wrote with Roy Eidelson and Marc Pilisuk critiquing the military’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program is discussed in a Washington Post article on CSF. Also discussed is a critique by by Penn psychologists James Coyne. Here are the sections of the article focussing on CSF critique:

“There’s little reason to believe that these techniques would have any efficacy at all,” said James C. Coyne, a psychology professor in the psychiatry department at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “It’s very difficult to do anything preventively before the fact.”

In cases of combat stress, he said, he fears that preventive techniques could disrupt a soldier’s natural coping process.

“Getting upset, saying, ‘I don’t like feeling this way, this is a horrible way to feel,’ can often be the first step in a very healthy, adaptive response,” he said.

“Targeted, secondary prevention is much wiser and has much more of an evidence base than primary prevention,” he said.

Another critic, Roy Eidelson, a board member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, added: “This is the largest experiment ever undertaken — it involves a million soldiers.”

“The stakes are very high,” he said, “because we’re talking about war. We’re talking about life and death. And there’s a lot that wasn’t done to prepare for this experiment.”

And:

In January, at the suggestion of Seligman, a special issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association, devoted 13 articles — by Cornum, Casey and others — to the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program.

Norman B. Anderson, head of the association and the journal’s editor, said Seligman’s work is a hot topic, and so is the mental health of American military personnel.

But in March, a trio of psychologists — Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk and Stephen Soldz — wrote a blistering online essay accusing the journal of “cheerleading” and attacking the Army program as research, not training.

And as research, the program should involve the consent of its subjects, the soldiers, the authors stated. “Such research violates the Nuremberg Code developed during post-World War II trials of Nazi doctors,” the authors said.

In addition, Seligman’s resilience work in schools has been “only modestly and inconsistently effective,” the authors contended, producing only small reductions in mild depression.

The critics also charged that the resilience work done in schools is probably not applicable to soldiers who face combat.

Finally, the authors worried that the program might actually harm soldiers: “Might soldiers who have been trained to resiliently view combat as a growth opportunity be more likely to ignore or underestimate real dangers, thereby placing themselves, their comrades, or civilians at heightened risk of harm?”

“Given those ethical questions,” Eidelson said, “psychology . . . should be thinking really hard about whether this is a good idea.”

Seligman countered that “it’s not remotely” a research project. “It’s an Army-wide course. . . . It’s no more subject to consent than . . . when you’re told to run in sneakers rather than boots.”

BTW, it is interesting that resilience guru Martin Seligman here, after our critique,  denies that CSF is at all a research study. In contrast, in 2009, in the APA’s Monitor on Psychology Seligman bragged:

“This is the largest study—1.1 million soldiers—psychology has ever been involved in, and it will yield definitive data about whether or not [resiliency and psychological fitness training] works,” Seligman says.

Furthermore, Seligman admitted that CSF was being “tested” by the military in an article promoting resilience training for businesses:

It is now being tested in an organization of 1.1 million people where trauma is more common and more severe than in any corporate setting: the U.S. Army

Evidently it’s a research “study” when that brings Seligman bragging rights or potential business but not when questions about research ethics are raised. Perhaps the ability to utilize situational ethics like that is what Seligman means by “resilience.”

Here’s the complete Post article:

Army program works to make soldiers fit in body and mind

By Michael E. Ruane

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — The soldiers crowd around a large conference table, their maroon berets scattered on top. A digital clock on the wall shows the time in Afghanistan and Iraq. The unit’s flag, hung with battle streamers, rests at one end of the room.

Outside, not far away, stands the 16-foot bronze statue of World War II paratrooper “Iron Mike,” grim-faced with submachine gun in hand — the epitome of the rugged American soldier.

But the training here this morning has little to do with war.

A young soldier from Rhode Island is telling how his wife walked out on him when she was two months pregnant and he fell into depression and alcoholism.

A burly soldier with red hair admits that he has a bad temper, which leads to disputes with his spouse. There are murmurs of assent around the room, and other problems galore.

It feels like an intense group-therapy session.

In a way, it is.

It’s also a radical shift in the Army’s approach to mental health, a switch from the just-suck-it-up tradition of the past and a change that was expected to get a grumpy reception from rank-and-file “Joes.”

But the new program, designed largely by outside psychologists, appears to have been embraced by soldiers.

The critics, it turns out, are other psychologists.

The Army, burdened by almost a decade of war and beset by increases in suicides, substance abuse and combat stress, embarked on the controversial $125 million project to instill psychological strength in soldiers the same way it teaches physical fitness.

The program, called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, is designed to make soldiers more psychologically “resilient” amid the pressures of combat, repeated deployments, and family and financial crises.

The effort runs counter to many military traditions.

“It’s a big culture change,” said Col. Jeffery Short, a physician and the program’s medical director.

“For decades,” he said, the Army attitude was “everybody’s just going to be tough. . . . You’re going to sweat this out, and when you come out the other end, you’re going to be better for it.

“Now, to concentrate on how people are thinking, and how they’re feeling . . . that is an Army culture change,” he said.

Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, who oversees the program, said: “The Army recognized that its historical way of dealing with psychological fitness was to wait until somebody showed evidence of not having psychological fitness and then trying to fix it.”

This is an effort to help soldiers before that happens.

The program includes a mandatory confidential online assessment tool so soldiers can gauge their emotional status around issues such as relationships, job satisfaction and life in general. They can take further optional online training to get help in areas where they would like to improve.

The Army also wants resilience to be taught face to face, classroom-style and is in the process of teaching “master resilience trainers,” who go back to their bases and conduct sessions in person.

There, the MRTs use slides, excerpts from TV shows and round-the-table discussions to talk about ways to stay optimistic, avoid prejudging others and forestall “catastrophic thinking,” or dwelling on worst-case scenarios.

During one recent session touching on prejudgment, MRTs here played the now-famous segment of the “Britain’s Got Talent” TV show in which the drab-looking phone salesman Paul Potts turns out to have a world-class opera voice.

So far, according to recent interviews here and at training sessions at the University of Pennsylvania, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness seems to be a hit.

“It’s a revolution for us younger-generation soldiers,” said Spec. Matthew Gregg, 27, a Fort Bragg truck driver from Leesville, La., who has twice been deployed to Iraq.

“It shows that the military does care,” he said during a break in a recent Fort Bragg session. “When you fill out surveys, they’re not just going in the trash. People are actually . . . listening to what soldiers are saying.”

The program’s most vocal critics have been outside the Army — other psychologists who contend that it won’t work and that it is not training at all but rather a vast, quasi-ethical research project.

“There’s little reason to believe that these techniques would have any efficacy at all,” said James C. Coyne, a psychology professor in the psychiatry department at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “It’s very difficult to do anything preventively before the fact.”

In cases of combat stress, he said, he fears that preventive techniques could disrupt a soldier’s natural coping process.

“Getting upset, saying, ‘I don’t like feeling this way, this is a horrible way to feel,’ can often be the first step in a very healthy, adaptive response,” he said.

“Targeted, secondary prevention is much wiser and has much more of an evidence base than primary prevention,” he said.

Another critic, Roy Eidelson, a board member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, added: “This is the largest experiment ever undertaken — it involves a million soldiers.”

“The stakes are very high,” he said, “because we’re talking about war. We’re talking about life and death. And there’s a lot that wasn’t done to prepare for this experiment.”

Search for a strategy

The program was launched after the Army said it recognized some alarming trends.

Suicides among active-duty soldiers jumped from 138 in 2008 to 162 in 2009, according to the most recently available Army statistics.

Cases of spousal abuse and child abuse or neglect almost doubled between 2004 and 2009, from 913 to 1,625, the Army said. And referrals for alcohol and drug abuse rose from 15,000 in 1999 to 22,500 in 2009.

“It used to be that you just kind of joined the Army and lived your life . . . and there wasn’t anything very dangerous about it,” Cornum said.

“When I came in the Army, which was 1978, nobody was going anywhere and doing anything. Vietnam was over.”

Now, she said, almost everybody who joins is quickly deployed to a hot zone and faces redeployment over and over. “It’s a different Army, and nobody sees peace breaking out.”

The idea for the program was that of Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the recently retired Army chief of staff, who Cornum said was dismayed by the cases of suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder and family violence.

“We’ve got to have something besides the Whac-a-Mole theory,” Cornum quoted Casey as saying. “We need a strategy to teach people to do better and not just wait till they do badly.”

The Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, said day-to-day pressures on the modern soldier are enormous.

“We are putting as much stress on a soldier in the first six years in the United States Army” as many 80-year-old civilians have experienced in an entire lifetime, he said.

In 2008, Cornum said, the Army asked the University of Pennsylvania to help design something to combat negative behaviors.

The Army had a similar program, called Battlemind, but it was aimed at soldiers being deployed and coming off deployments and had not been implemented effectively, said Lt. Col. Sharon McBride, a senior research psychologist with the soldier fitness program.

Penn’s Positive Psychology Center and its director, Martin E.P. Seligman, are proponents of the idea of positive psychology, where attention is focused on positive aspects of life.

Seligman and his colleagues had already designed resilience programs for middle schools, high schools and college to prevent anxiety and depression, and they found that it was not that hard to adjust the training for soldiers.

“A lot of the material was directly relevant,” Seligman said. “The struggles of a soldier are relational — families, getting along with others. A very small part of life is going into battle.”

“I was worried that people would say [it was] ‘girlie psychobabble,’ ” he said. Instead, about half the soldiers who rated the program “said it was the best course they ever had in the Army.”

In 2009, the university began teaching resilience to the first 150 of the more than 4,500 noncommissioned officers who have thus far become trainers.

“We teach a set of skills around building mental toughness,” said Karen Reivich, co-director of the Penn Resiliency Project, who helps lead training sessions at a hotel near the university’s campus in Philadelphia.

The teaching is “designed to enhance a person’s ability to handle stress, to perform well, to stay optimistic,” she said during a break in a recent session.

“It’s about making sure that the soldiers have the skill sets to be able to do what our army is asking of them,” she said.

Sgt. 1st Class Brian Diggs, 35, a drill sergeant who has twice been deployed to Iraq and took the Penn trainers course in March, said he found it “excellent.”

He said he believed it would be useful in dealing with recruits.

“The younger generation . . . coming in the military, some of them have, already, issues that they bring with them,” he said. “I think this is just a better tool for leaders to help these new recruits get past those individual barriers that they bring with them.”

Psychologists criticize

In January, at the suggestion of Seligman, a special issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association, devoted 13 articles — by Cornum, Casey and others — to the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program.

Norman B. Anderson, head of the association and the journal’s editor, said Seligman’s work is a hot topic, and so is the mental health of American military personnel.

But in March, a trio of psychologists — Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk and Stephen Soldz — wrote a blistering online essay accusing the journal of “cheerleading” and attacking the Army program as research, not training.

And as research, the program should involve the consent of its subjects, the soldiers, the authors stated. “Such research violates the Nuremberg Code developed during post-World War II trials of Nazi doctors,” the authors said.

In addition, Seligman’s resilience work in schools has been “only modestly and inconsistently effective,” the authors contended, producing only small reductions in mild depression.

The critics also charged that the resilience work done in schools is probably not applicable to soldiers who face combat.

Finally, the authors worried that the program might actually harm soldiers: “Might soldiers who have been trained to resiliently view combat as a growth opportunity be more likely to ignore or underestimate real dangers, thereby placing themselves, their comrades, or civilians at heightened risk of harm?”

“Given those ethical questions,” Eidelson said, “psychology . . . should be thinking really hard about whether this is a good idea.”

Seligman countered that “it’s not remotely” a research project. “It’s an Army-wide course. . . . It’s no more subject to consent than . . . when you’re told to run in sneakers rather than boots.”

Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff, said: “We do all kinds of mandatory things. . . . We make people pee in a bottle every month, too. We take mandatory physical fitness tests.”

At the same time, “they’re probably right in saying it’s an experiment,” he said. “Take an organization of 1.1 million people and try to institute a program like this, it probably is a little bit of an experiment. But that’s okay.”

Chiarelli said the debate is understandable.

“There are always going to be naysayers out there,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we should wait until all the publishers publish all the articles.

“I think we have enough evidence on Comprehensive Soldier Fitness,” he said. “We know resiliency is key. And we know we can train people to be more resilient. To me, that’s all I need to know right now.”

Working through crises

At Fort Bragg one recent morning, sun streamed through an open door to a meeting room of the 264th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion.

Inside, the soldiers were among the first “lower enlisted” to be exposed to the notions of resilience by the newly minted teachers.

They had broken into small groups to analyze a personal crisis detailed by one person in each group.

The Rhode Island soldier’s group offered the story of his reaction to his pregnant wife’s departure for general discussion in the room.

“What was the activating event?” asked the moderator, Staff Sgt. Nathan Hayes, 27.

“Uh, finding out your wife was two months pregnant, and she leaves you,” a spokesman for the group replied.

“Sorry to hear that,” Hayes said.

He asked for the soldier’s reaction to his wife’s departure.

“He went into a drunken rage,” the spokesman related, “went into a downward spiral, got put into AA . . . got put on medicine, went through depression, didn’t want to work, didn’t want to do anything.”

Why did he turn to alcohol? Hayes asked.

“Just to forget everything,” the 24-year-old Rhode Island soldier, who had been sitting quietly, replied. “Just block it out.”

“So, ‘I can’t handle this on my own? I need alcohol?’ ” Hayes asked.

“Yeah, basically” the soldier said.

“So what’s the thinking trap there?” Hayes asked.

A “thinking trap,” a decades-old psychological concept, is one of the things the program wants soldiers to identify and avoid.

Reivich, of Penn, identified eight thinking traps in “The Resilience Factor,” a 2002 book she co-authored with Andrew Shatte. They include jumping to conclusions, overgeneralizing and “personalizing,” or always blaming oneself for setbacks.

“ ‘Alcohol’s the solution’ was the conclusion you jumped to,” Hayes told the young specialist.

After the session ended, the Rhode Island soldier, who has since reached an understanding with his wife, said he found the program valuable.

“If I had this kind of training before, I probably would have still been with my wife,” he said. “It definitely does help.”

 

July 5th, 2011

Victory! Bradley Manning conditions improve

Courage to Resist reports that the international campaign against the abusive treatment of Bradley Manning has scored a major victory inn improving his conditions. Psychologists for Social Responsibility played a small role in this campaign through our two letters to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Here is the Courage to Resist statement:

Campaign Ends Torturous Treatment of Bradley Manning!

Supporters of accused WikiLeaks source vow to fight on for open trial and freedom

By the Bradley Manning Support Network. May 5, 2011

Hundreds of thousands of individuals globally celebrate today the confirmation that their efforts to end the torturous pre-trial confinement conditions inflicted upon US Army PFC Bradley Manning have been successful. Manning’s lead defense attorney, David E. Coombs of Rhode Island, has personally verified that Manning is indeed being held in Medium Custody confinement at the Joint Regional Corrections Facility (JRCF) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, as claimed by the Army last week.

“We won this battle because 600,000 individuals took the time to write letters and sign petitions, because thousands called the White House switchboard, because 300 of America’s top legal scholars decried Bradley’s pre-trial conditions as a clear violation of our Constitution’s 5th and 8th Amendments,” declared Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network. “We won this battle because over a hundred concerned citizens engaged in civil disobedience at the White House and at Quantico, and because our grassroots campaign shows no sign of slowing.”

These new conditions reflect a dramatic improvement for Manning following his transfer to Fort Leavenworth on April 20, 2011, after having suffered extreme solitary-like confinement at US Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. During the nine months at Quantico, Manning was denied meaningful exercise, social interaction, sunlight, and was at times kept completely naked. These conditions were unique to Manning and were illegal under US military law as they clearly amounted to pre-trial punishment.

“I was able to tour the [Fort Leavenworth] facility and meet with PFC Manning last week. PFC Manning is now being held in Medium Custody. He is no longer under…harsh pretrial confinement conditions. Unlike at Quantico, PFC Manning’s cell has a large window that provides adequate natural light….PFC Manning is able to have all of his personal items in his cell, which include his clothing, his legal materials, books and letters from family and friends….Each pre-trial area (including PFC Manning’s) has four cells, and each pre-trial detainee is assigned to his own cell. The cells are connected to a shared common area, with a table, a treadmill, a television and a shower area….PFC Manning and his group are taken to the outdoor recreation area [for approximately two hours daily],” explained Coombs on his blog at www.armycourtmartialdefense.info hours ago.

“President Obama’s recent pronouncement that Bradley Manning ‘broke the law’ amounts to Unlawful Command Influence, something clearly prohibited because it’s devastating to the military justice system. Manning will eventually be judged by a jury of career military officers and noncommissioned officers. Will they be able to set aside the declaration of their commander in chief?” explains attorney Kevin Zeese, a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. “Along with the illegal pre-trial punishment already inflicted upon Bradley, the government has more than enough legal basis to drop the prosecution. Instead, the death penalty or life in prison hangs over Manning’s head.”

After nearly a year in confinement, the Army is expected to soon announce Manning’s first public hearing, an Article 32 pre-trial proceeding, which will be held in the Washington DC area. Scores of international solidarity events are already being planned.

US Army intelligence analyst Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, 23-years-old, was arrested in Iraq on May 26, 2010. He still awaits his first public court hearing, now expected to begin in June 2011. Over 4,300 individuals have contributed over $333,000 towards PFC Manning’s legal fees and related public education efforts. The Bradley Manning Support Network is dedicated to thwarting the military’s attempts to hold a secret court martial, and to eventually winning the freedom of PFC Manning.

May 5th, 2011

Sam Richards: A radical experiment in empathy

This reminds me of the conclusion to a 2004 article of mine [Iraq:What Went Wrong?]:

“[I]magine yourself an Iraqi. You’ve suffered terribly under a ruthless dictator. The Americans invade your country under false pretenses. They promise democracy but don’t organize elections. They appoint exiles to rule you, exiles who spend most of their time out of the country and the rest in a few highly protected areas. The occupiers break into your homes in the middle of the night and arrest your men, who then disappear, with no accountability. They shoot Iraqis at roadblocks and from convoys. They declare war on the second most popular man in the country, announcing his death in advance. They open the economy to US corporations and give them sweetheart contracts, ignoring local business. Then they write hundreds of laws and establish commissions limiting any future government. They build permanent military bases on your soil. Then they turn your country over to a former associate of Saddam Hussein, also a former CIA agent, known for his ruthless brutality. Imagine that was your country. What would you do?”

This was quoted by Pepe Escobar at the time in Asia Times:, where he contrasted it with statements by President Clinton:

Conspicuously absent from Clinton’s roadmap for Kerry was the Iraq question. For a simple reason: neither the Democratic Party, nor Kerry, nor Bush for that matter, knows what to say and do about Iraq. Stephen Soldz, founder of Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice in Boston, frames the problem to perfection.

April 24th, 2011

Bradley Manning song interupts Obama fundraiser

The Bradley Manning issue will dog Obama until the end of his Presidency or else until he does the right thing. CBS News reports that an Obama fundraiser was interrupted by protesters singing a song for Obama, and for Bradley Manning’s freedom:

Obama fundraiser interrupted by protesters seeking release of Bradley Manning

By Brian Montopoli

President Obama was interrupted by a group of protesters at a fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco on Thursday who called on him to release from jail alleged Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning.

Mr. Obama was in the middle of his speech when he was interrupted by a woman in the back of the room, who stood up and started singing, according to a pool report. The room was small – there were only about 200 people – and Mr. Obama could not ignore the woman, who said she had prepared a song for the president.

She began singing and humming as the other people at her table held up 8.5×11 yellow signs reading “Free Bradley Manning.” Her song, which the other eight people at the table also began singing, included the lyric “we paid our dues, where’s our change.”

The song also included the lyric: “We’ll vote for you in 2012, yes that’s true, Look at the Republicans, what else can we do.”

The woman eventually took off a White blazer to reveal a black t-shirt with Manning’s picture. White House aides approached the table to try to end the song, and the woman was eventually escorted out by the aides. After the song ended, Mr. Obama said, “That was a nice song, much better voiced that I.”

As she was escorted out, the woman said: “Free Bradley Manning. I’m leaving. I hope I don’t get tortured in jail.”

The lead protester was later identified as Oakland-based activist Naomi Pitcairn. In a forthcoming interview after the event with CBS station KPIX, Pitcairn reprized her performance and started singing the song again to the camera.

Turning back to his speech after the disruption, Mr. Obama said “Where was I? That didn’t break my flow.” The fundraiser then continued with the rest of the protesters still in the room.

Added the president: “As was indicated by that song, Over the last two and a half years, change turned out to be tougher than we expected.”

It was one of six fundraisers Mr. Obama is holding on his three-day West coast swing, which also includes two town hall events. Tickets for the event ranged up to $35,800, with money going to the Obama Victory Fund.

Manning was moved to a Kansas jail this week after spending nine months in a Marine brig, where critics say he was held in unnecessarily harsh conditions.

One of the protesters gave a reporter a copy of the song lyrics, which were written on the back of a menu for the fundraiser. Also there was the url for the website for “Fresh Juice Party,” which pays people small amounts to sing about Manning in public forums.

Briefing reporters on Air Force One after the event, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Mr. Obama said he thought the protest was “kind of funny.”

Carney said the president took it in stride and suggested that it “certainly perked up the morning.”

The song lyrics:

Dear Mr. President we honor you today sir
Each of us brought you $5,000
It takes a lot of Benjamins to run a campaign
I paid my dues, where’s our change?
We’ll vote for you in 2012, yes that’s true
Look at the Republicans – what else can we do
Even though we don’t know if we’ll retain our liberties
In what you seem content to call a free society
Yes it’s true that Terry Jones is legally free
To burn a people’s holy book in shameful effigy
But at another location in this country
Alone in a 6×12 cell sits Bradley
23 hours a day is night
The 5th and 8th Amendments say this kind of thing ain’t right
We paid our dues, where’s our change?

April 21st, 2011

Bradley Manning to be moved

The Associated Press reports that Bradley Manning is to be moved out of Quantico to Fort Leavenworth

in the wake of international criticism about his treatment during his detention at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va.

It is unclear at this moment if this is a victory for decency and human rights or simply another maneuver.

1 comment April 19th, 2011

Compressive Soldier Fitness critique in TIME and Scientific American

The recent article by Roy Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk, and myself critiquing the military’s Compressive Soldier Fitness program has received considerable positive attention, including blog posts on the Time and Scientific American web sites. Here are those posts.

Time:

Does the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program Violate the Nuremberg Code?

By Mark Benjamin

There is new criticism of the Army’s high-profile effort to train mental toughness into soldiers so they can better handle the stress of repeated combat tours. This time, the critique comes from a group of psychologists who say the program appears to be scientific research without consent.

The Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program is a $125 million effort to teach mental resiliency to troops. The program is a pet project of Army Chief of Staff George Casey, who retired this week, and is run largely by famed psychologist Martin Seligman through the University of Pennsylvania.

“This is a mandatory program for a million soldiers with no pilot testing,” says psychologist Roy Eidelson. “We don’t know if it is no use, harmful, or potentially helpful.”

Rather than simply screening soldiers for potential problems after combat, the Army says it is trying to provide troops with mental tools to help them handle the rigors of battlefield stress when they deploy and the impact it can have on a soldier and his family when troops return home. The program combines individual assessments, virtual training and classroom instruction.

Critics say the program’s aims are valiant, but its efficacy is far from clear. Eidelson and two colleagues, Marc Pilisuk and Stephen Soldz, wrote a critical essay about Seligman’s program in Counterpunch late last month.

The psychologists note that there is little scientific evidence to show that this kind of training works. “It is highly unusual for the effectiveness of such a huge and consequential intervention program not be convincingly demonstrated first in carefully conducted randomized trials,” they wrote. They argue that other well-meaning intervention programs to prevent delinquency, for example, have only been “modestly and inconsistently effective.”

Rather than a program based on experiments that prove it works for soldiers, the psychologists argue that the training itself may be the experiment. Seligman has referred to the program as “the largest study – 1.1 million soldiers – psychology has ever been involved in.” If that is the case, the Nuremberg Code, developed in response to Nazi doctors’ experiments during World War II, requires that soldiers give their consent to any kind of research for which they are subjects. “The soldiers apparently have no informed consent protections – they are required to participate,” the psychologists wrote.

The Army is dismissing this latest controversy as an academic tiff. “The Army is aware of this ongoing discussion and views it as an academic discussion and debate between the psychologist and behavioral health communities,” Army spokesman Gary Tallman says. “The Army’s CSF program continues to move forward to help soldiers and families.”

It is not the first scrutiny the program has attracted. Writing in Salon late last year, I explained how Seligman received a $31 million no-competition contract to begin the work, despite similar programs and research going on at other institutions around the country. Seligman is known for his close ties to the military and intelligence communities, and my article explored how his early work appears to have informed psychological interrogation tactics during the Bush era.

The Army has promoted the program hard, unveiling a website complete with flashy videos. Seligman scored a nice rollout article in the New York Times and the January 2011 issue of American Psychologist, the magazine of the American Psychological Association, published some glowing reviews of Seligman’s work. Seligman is a former president of the APA.

Scientific American:

Beware the military-psychological complex: A $125-million program to boost soldiers’ “fitness” raises ethical questions

By John Horgan

Fifty years ago, in the same farewell speech in which he warned about the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex” on American politics, President Dwight Eisenhower also deplored the growing dependence of scientists on federal funding. “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded.”

Eisenhower’s speech comes to mind as I gravely regard the latest example of the militarization of science, a $125 million collaboration between psychologists and the U.S. Army called “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness,” or CSF. The program calls for giving “resilience training” to more than one million Army soldiers and civilian employees to help them cope with the stress of military life. A U.S. Army Web sitecalls the CSF “a long term strategy that better prepares the Army community—including all soldiers, family members, and the Department of the Army civilian workforce—to not only survive, but also thrive at a cognitive and behavioral level in the face of protracted warfare and everyday challenges of Army life that are common in the 21st century.”

The program is the brainchild of one of the most powerful figures in American psychology, Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. A former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), Seligman is best-known for founding the enormously popular positive psychology, or “happiness,” movement, which emphasizes positive rather than negative personality traits and emotions.

The APA’s main journal, American Psychologist, devoted its January 2011 issue, co-edited by Seligman, to explaining and extolling the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. No articles in the issue questioned the program’s scientific or ethical soundness, but the psychologists Roy Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk and Stephen Soldz did just that in “The Dark Side of  ‘Comprehensive Soldier Fitness,’” a hard-hitting article published in the newsletter Counterpunch. (Scientific American‘s Gary Stix also critiqued the methods underpinning the CSF in this incisive recent article.)

Is it ethical for psychologists to help soldiers to participate in what may be unethical behavior? This is the toughest question raised by Eidelson et al. “Helping people who have already been harmed by trauma is essential,” they wrote. “But should we be involved in helping an institution prepare to place more people in harm’s way without careful and ongoing questioning and review of the rationale for doing so?”

The trio also charged that the CSF is based on “resiliency techniques,” developed by Seligman and others, that have been shown to be “only modestly and inconsistently effective” in studies of civilians. Indeed, according to Eidelson et al., the techniques are still so experimental that the CSF may violate the Nuremberg Code of ethics, which prohibits research on people without their consent. Eidelson et al. noted that soldiers “apparently have no informed consent protections—they are required to participate.” According to TIME blogger Mark Benjamin, the Army dismisses the issue of informed consent as an “academic tiff”—or, as an Army spokesman put it, “an academic discussion and debate between the psychologist and behavioral health communities.” The spokesman said the CSF “continues to move forward” despite these concerns.

The Army’s own description of the CSF sounds like psychobabble: “Conceptually, while CSF is largely focused on training skill sets, it also delves into root causes of emotion, thought and action—what psychologists refer to as ‘meta-cognition’. With this in mind, CSF serves as a programmatic first step towards training members of the Army community to understand how and why they think a certain way. Once people begin to understand this, they are best postured to change their thoughts and actions to strategies that are positive, adaptive and desirable for both the person and the Army.”

Even in the face of declines in non-military funding, some scientific fields have resisted militarization. In 2009 the American Anthropological Association declared that a program to embed anthropologists with troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones violated the profession’s code of ethics, which one article described as “a sort of Hippocratic oath in which anthropologists vow to do no harm.”

But as I pointed out in a column last year, neuroscience is chasing after defense dollars. In 2009 the National Academy of Sciences published a 136-page report, “Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications,” that advised brain scientists on how to get on board the military gravy train. The authors included two leading brain scientists: Floyd Bloom of the Scripps Research Institute and Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, both former members of The President’s Council on Bioethics. Potential applications of neuroscience include drugs and electromagnetic devices that can boost or degrade soldiers’ capacities.

The APA is capable of taking a stand. In 2007, after reports that psychologists were helping the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency refine their interrogation techniques, the APA condemned the involvement of its members in “planning, designing, assisting in or participating in any activities including interrogations which involve the use of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” But the APA leadership should be ashamed by its uncritical promotion of the CSF program. The association should encourage a debate among its members over whether the CSF represents a genuinely beneficial, ethical program or just another sordid example of what Eisenhower called the “the power of money.”

Alas, Horgan in the last paragraph get’s taken in by APA’s putative “anti-torture” resolution that led Mark Benjamin at the time to wonder Will psychologists still abet torture?

April 19th, 2011

UN official critical of US refusal to allow Bradley Maning visit

As Glenn Greenwald points out, today one can go to the British newspaper the Guardian to learn that UN Special Rapporteur on Torture is vigorously protesting the US violation of its own rules in denying the Rapporteur an unmonitored visit with Bradley Manning. In this way, as in so many others, the US under Obama resembles the various authoritarian governments around the world:

Bradley Manning case sparks UN criticism of US government
UN torture representative suggests White House stalling his private meeting with American soldier

By Ewen MacAskill

A senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, issued a rare reprimand to the US government on Monday for failing to allow him to meet in private Bradley Manning, the American soldier held in a military prison accused of being the WikiLeaks source. It is the kind of censure that the UN normally reserves for authoritarian regimes around the world.

Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: “I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr Manning.”

Manning’s supporters claim that the US is being vindictive in its treatment of Manning, who is held at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, in conditions they describe as inhumane.

Mendez, who has been investigating complaints about his treatment since before Christmas, said the US department of defence would not allow him to make an “official” visit, only a “private” one. An “official” visit would mean he meets Manning without a guard present. A “private” visit means with a guard and anything the prisoner says could be used in the planned court-martial.

Mendez pointed out that his mandate was to conduct unmonitored visits, and that had been the practice in at least 18 countries over the last six years.

“Since December 2010, I have been engaging the US government on visiting Mr Manning, at the invitation of his counsel, to determine his condition,” Mendez said. “Unfortunately, the US government has not been receptive to a confidential meeting with Mr Manning.”

He added: “I have since last year on several occasions raised serious concern about the conditions of detention of Mr Manning, who since his arrest in May 2010, has been confined to his cell for 23 hours a day at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia. I have also urged the authorities to ensure his physical and mental integrity.”

He had been due to issue his statement on Friday but delayed it until after a meeting the same day with representatives of the US defence and state departments to ask them to reconsider their decision to deny him unfettered access. The officials confirmed that Manning could ask to see Mendez if he wished and, in that case, the US government would have no objection to a “private visit”, Mendez said.Mendez, an Argentinian, took over the job last year for a six-year term. Before that, he worked for the UN as a specialist in genocide.

He said: “My request for a private, confidential and unsupervised interview with Manning is not onerous: for my part, a monitored conversation would not comply with the practices that my mandate applies in every country and detention centre visited.”

Mendez made it clear he expected more from the US. “The United States of America has a key role in setting examples on issues concerning my mandate as special rapporteur on torture, which makes it a vital partner for engagement.”

In spite of the government decision, he would still meet Manning if the detainee wished, while continuing to insist on an interview without witnesses.

David Coombs, Manning’s lawyer, in a blogpost on his website, said he had been trying to organise visits by Mendez and others, including the Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich. “Despite multiple inquires from the defence and the interested parties, the Quantico brig and the government have denied the requests for an ‘official visit’,” he said.

April 11th, 2011

Lawrence Tribe, Obama Constitutional law teacher, joins critics of Manning’s treatment

President Obama was apparently asleep during his Harvard Law classes on Constitutional law. In any case he seems to have missed that pesky ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Now his Constitutional law teacher Lawrence Tribe has joined hundreds of other legal scholars in criticizing the Obama administration’s abusive treatment of alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning.

Obama’s constitutional law professor joins group calling Manning’s treatment illegal

By Stephen C. Webster

Nearly 300 experts, scholars and authors demand an end to Manning’s rough treatment

The Harvard professor who taught President Barack Obama about America’s founding document has added his name to a letter damning the treatment of U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, the lone soldier accused of leaking a vast number of government secrets to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

Harvard Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, who quit his post as an adviser to the Obama administration about three months ago, is just one of nearly 300 of the nation’s top legal minds and other experts to sign an open letter calling on the government to treat Bradley Manning as it does other prisoners.

Manning has been held in solitary confinement in the Quantico military brig since July. He gets one hour of exercise per-day, must be checked by guards every five minutes and is forced to sleep naked and undergo a nude inspection every morning. Critics of this treatment say it amounts to torture and an illegal punishment for an American who has not been convicted of a crime.

Tribe wrote that Manning’s treatment “violates his person and his liberty without due process of law and in the way it administers cruel and unusual punishment of a sort that cannot be constitutionally inflicted even upon someone convicted of terrible offenses, not to mention someone merely accused of such offenses”.

“Private Manning has been designated as an appropriate subject for both Maximum Security and Prevention of Injury (POI) detention,” the open letter explained. “But he asserts that his administrative reports consistently describe him as a well-behaved prisoner who does not fit the requirements for Maximum Security detention. The brig psychiatrist began recommending his removal from Prevention of Injury months ago. These claims have not been publicly contested. In an Orwellian twist, the spokesman for the brig commander refused to explain the forced nudity “because to discuss the details would be a violation of Manning’s privacy.”

The letter also cites former U.S. State Dept. spokesman P.J. Crowley, who called the treatment of Manning “counterproductive and stupid,” suggesting it may make prosecuting the soldier even more difficult. Crowley resigned his post after criticizing the administration’s handling of the case

“If Manning is guilty of a crime, let him be tried, convicted, and punished according to law,” the open letter continues. “But his treatment must be consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There is no excuse for his degrading and inhumane pretrial punishment.”

The document was authored by Bruce Ackerman, of Yale Law School, and Yochai Benkler, of Harvard Law School. It had 295 co-signers at the time of this story’s publication.

The full letter and list of distinguished signatories appears below. It was first published by The New York Review of Books.

####

Private Manning’s Humiliation

Bradley Manning is the soldier charged with leaking US government documents to Wikileaks. He is currently detained under degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral.

For nine months, Manning has been confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day. During his one remaining hour, he can walk in circles in another room, with no other prisoners present. He is not allowed to doze off or relax during the day, but must answer the question “Are you OK?” verbally and in the affirmative every five minutes. At night, he is awakened to be asked again “Are you OK?” every time he turns his back to the cell door or covers his head with a blanket so that the guards cannot see his face. During the past week he was forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in front of his cell, and for the indefinite future must remove his clothes and wear a “smock” under claims of risk to himself that he disputes.

The sum of the treatment that has been widely reported is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against punishment without trial. If continued, it may well amount to a violation of the criminal statute against torture, defined as, among other things, “the administration or application…of… procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.”

Private Manning has been designated as an appropriate subject for both Maximum Security and Prevention of Injury (POI) detention. But he asserts that his administrative reports consistently describe him as a well-behaved prisoner who does not fit the requirements for Maximum Security detention. The brig psychiatrist began recommending his removal from Prevention of Injury months ago. These claims have not been publicly contested. In an Orwellian twist, the spokesman for the brig commander refused to explain the forced nudity “because to discuss the details would be a violation of Manning’s privacy.”

The administration has provided no evidence that Manning’s treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates. Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.

If Manning is guilty of a crime, let him be tried, convicted, and punished according to law. But his treatment must be consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There is no excuse for his degrading and inhumane pretrial punishment. As the State Department’s P.J. Crowley put it recently, they are “counterproductive and stupid.” And yet Crowley has now been forced to resign for speaking the plain truth.

The Wikileaks disclosures have touched every corner of the world. Now the whole world watches America and observes what it does, not what it says.

President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency. He should not merely assert that Manning’s confinement is “appropriate and meet[s] our basic standards,” as he did recently. He should require the Pentagon publicly to document the grounds for its extraordinary actions—and immediately end those that cannot withstand the light of day.

Signed:

Bruce Ackerman, Yale Law School
Yochai Benkler, Harvard Law School

Additional Signatories (institutional affiliation, for identification purposes only):

Jack Balkin, Yale Law School
Richard L. Abel, UCLA Law
David Abrams, Harvard Law School
Martha Ackelsberg, Smith College
Julia Adams, Sociology, Yale University
Kirsten Ainley, London School of Economics
Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University
Philip Alston, NYU School of Law
Anne Alstott, Harvard Law School
Elizabeth Anderson, Philosophy and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan
Kevin Anderson, University of California
Scott Anderson, Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Claudia Angelos, NYU School of Law
Donald K. Anton. Australian National University College of Law
Joyce Appleby, History, UCLA
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
Stanley Aronowitz, Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center
Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD, social psychologist, Project on Ethics and Art in Testimony
Reuven Avi-Yonah, University of Michigan Law
H. Robert Baker, Georgia State University
Katherine Beckett, University of Washington
Duncan Bell, Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
Steve Berenson, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Michael Bertrand, UNC Chapel Hill
Christoph Bezemek, Public Law, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Michael J. Bosia, Political Science, Saint Michael’s College
Bret Boyce, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law
Rebecca M. Bratspies, CUNY School of Law
Jason Brennan, Philosophy, Brown University
Talbot Brewer, Philosophy, University of Virginia
John Bronsteen, Loyola University Chicago
Peter Brooks, Princeton University
James Robert Brown, University of Toronto
Sande L. Buhai,Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
Ahmed I Bulbulia, Seton Hall Law School
Susannah Camic, University of Wisconsin Law School
Lauren Carasik, Western New England College School of Law
Teri L. Caraway, University of Minnesota
Alexander M. Capron, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law
Michael W. Carroll, Law American University
Marshall Carter-Tripp, Ph.D, Foreign Service Officer, retired
Jonathan Chausovsky, Political Science, SUNY-Fredonia
Carol Chomsky, University of Minnesota Law School
John Clippinger, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Andrew Jason Cohen, Georgia State University
Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University
Marjorie Cohn, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Doug Colbert, Maryland School of Law
Sheila Collins, William Paterson University
Nancy Combs, William& Mary Law School
Stephen A. Conrad, Indiana University Mauer School of Law
Steve Cook, Philosophy, Utica College
Robert Crawford,Arts and Sciences, University of Washington
Thomas P. Crocker, University of South Carolina
Jennifer Curtin, UCI School of Medicine
Deryl D. Dantzler, Walter F. Gorge School of Law of Mercer University
Benjamin G. Davis, University of Toledo College of Law
Rochelle Davis, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Wolfgang Deckers, Richmond University, London
Michelle M. Dempsey, Villanova University School of Law
Wai Chee Dimock, English, Yale University
Sinan Dogramaci, Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
Zayd Dohrn, Northwestern University
Jason P. Dominguez, Texas Southern University
Judith Donath, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Norman Dorsen, New York University School of Law
Michael W. Doyle, International Affairs, Law and Political Science, Columbia
Bruce T. Draine, Astrophysics, Princeton University
Jay Driskell,History, Hood College
Michael C. Duff, University of Wyoming College of Law
Lisa Duggan, Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Graduate Center,CUNY
Stephen M. Engel, PhD, Political Science, Marquette University
Simon Evnine, Philosophy, University of Miami
Mark Fenster, Levin College of Law, University of Florida
Martha Field, Harvard Law School
Justin Fisher, Philosophy, Southern Methodist University
William Fisher, Harvard Law School
Joseph Fishkin, University of Texas School of Law
Mark Fishman, Sociology, Brooklyn College
Martin S. Flaherty, Fordham Law School
George P. Fletcher, Columbia University, School of Law
John Flood, Law and Sociology, University of Westminster
Michael Forman, University of Washington Tacoma
Bryan Frances, Philosophy, Fordham University
Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School
Nancy Fraser, Philosophy and Politics, New School for Social Research
Eric M. Freedman, Hofstra Law School
Monroe H. Freedman, Hofstra University Law School
Kennan Ferguson, University of Wisconsin, MilWaukee
John R. Fitzpatrick, Philosophy, University of Tennessee/Chattanooga
A. Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law
Gerald Frug, Harvard Law School
Louis Furmanski, University of Central Oklahoma
James K. Galbraith, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
Herbert J Gans, Columbia University
William Gardner, Pediatrics, Psychology,& Psychiatry, The Ohio State University
Urs Gasser, Harvard Law School, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Julius G. Getman, University of Texas Law School
Todd Gitlin, Columbia University
Bob Goodin, Australian National University
Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, Human Rights, University of Washington
David Golove, NYU School of Law
James R. Goetsch Jr., Philosophy, Eckerd College
Thomas Gokey, Art and Information Studies, Syracuse University
Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School
Stephen E. Gottlieb, Albany Law School
Mark A. Graber, University of Maryland School of Law
Jorie Graham, Harvard University
Roger Green, Pol. Sci. and Pub. Admin., Florida Gulf Coast
Daniel JH Greenwood, Hofstra University School of Law
Christopher L. Griffin, Visiting, Duke Law School
James Grimmelmann, New York Law School
James Gronquist,Charlotte School of Law
Jean Grossholtz, Politics, Mount Holyoke College
Lisa Guenther, Philosophy, Vanderbilt University
Christopher Guzelian, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Gillian K. Hadfield, Law, Economics, University of Southern California
Jonathan Hafetz, Seton Hall University School of Law
Lisa Hajjar, University of California – Santa Barbara
Susan Hazeldean, Robert M. Cover Fellow, Yale Law School
Dirk t. D. Held, Classics, Connecticut College
Kevin Jon Heller, Melbourne Law School
Lynne Henderson, UNLV–Boyd School of Law (emerita)
Stephen Hetherington, Philosophy, University of New South Wales
Kurt Hochenauer, University of Central Oklahoma
Lonny Hoffman, Univ of Houston Law Center
Michael Hopkins, MHC International Ltd
Nathan Robert Howard, St. Andrews
Marc Morjé Howard, Government, Georgetown University
Kyron Huigens, Cardozo School of Law
Alexandra Huneeus, University of Wisconsin Law School
David Ingram, Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago
David Isenberg, Isen.com
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard Kennedy School
Christopher Jencks, Harvard Kennedy School
Paula Johnson, Alliant International University
Robert N. Johnson, Philosophy, University of Missouri
Albyn C. Jones, Statistics, Reed College
Lynne Joyrich, Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
David Kairys, Beasley Law School
Eileen Kaufman, Touro Law Center
Kevin B. Kelly, Seton Hall University School of Law
Antti Kauppinen, Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School
Daniel Kevles, Yale University
Heidi Kitrosser, University of Minnesota Law School
Gillian R. Knapp, Princeton University
Seth F. Kreimer University of Pennsylvania Law School
Alex Kreit, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Stefan H. Krieger, Hofstra University School of Law
Mitchell Lasser, Cornell Law School
Mark LeBar, Philosophy, Ohio University
Brian Leiter, University of Chicago
Mary Clare Lennon, Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
George Levine,Rutgers University
Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School
Margaret Levi, Pol. Sci., University of Washington and University of Sydney
Tracy Lightcap, Political Science, LaGrange College
Daniel Lipson, Political Science, SUNY New Paltz
Stacy Litz, Drexel University
Fiona de Londras, University College Dublin, Ireland
John Lunstroth, University of Houston Law Center
David Luban, Georgetown University Law Center
Peter Ludlow, Philosophy, Northwestern University
Cecelia Lynch, University of California
David Lyons, Boston University
Colin Maclay, Harvard University, Berkman Center
Joan Mahoney, Emeritus, Wayne State University Law School
Chibli Mallat, Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
Phil Malone, Harvard Law School
Jane Mansbridge, Harvard Kennedy School
Jeff Manza, Sociology, New York University
Dan Markel, Florida State University
Daniel Markovits, Yale Law School
Richard Markovits, University of Texas Law School
Michael R. Masinter, Nova Southeastern University
Ruth Mason, University of Connecticut School of Law
Rachel A. May, University of South Florida
Jamie Mayerfeld, Political Science, University of Washington
Diane H. Mazur, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Jason Mazzone, Brooklyn Law School
Jeff McMahan, Philosophy, Rutgers University
Richard J. Meagher Jr., Randolph-Macon College
Agustín José Menéndez, Universidad de León and University of Oslo
Hope Metcalf, Yale Law School
Frank I. Michelman, Harvard University
Gary Minda, Brooklyn Law School
John Mikhail, Georgetown University Law Center
Gregg Miller, Political Science, University of Washington
Eben Moglen, Columbia Law School and Software Freedom Law Center
Immanuel Ness, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Charles Nesson, Harvard University
Joel Ngugi, Law, African Studies, University of Washington
Ralitza Nikolaeva, ISCTE Business School, Lisbon University Institute
John Palfrey, Harvard Law School
James Paradis, Comparative Media Studies, MIT
Emma Perry, London School of Economics and Political Science
Charles Pigden, University of Otago
Adrian du Plessis, Wolfson College, Cambridge University
Patrick S. O’Donnell, Philosophy, Santa Barbara City College
Hans Oberdiek, Philosophy, Swarthmore College
Duane Oldfield, Political Science, Knox College
Michael Paris, Political Science, The College of Staten Island (CUNY)
Philip Pettit, University Professor of Politics and Human Values, Princeton
Frank A. Pasquale, Seton Hall Law School
Matthew Pierce, University of North Carolina
Charles Pigden, Philosophy, University of Otago
Leslie Plachta, MD MPH, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Thomas Pogge, Yale University
Giovanna Pompele, University of Miami
Joel Pust, Philosophy, University of Delaware
Ulrich K. Preuss, Law& Politics, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin
Margaret Jane Radin, University of Michigan and emerita, Stanford University
Aziz Rana, Cornell University Law School
Gustav Ranis, Yale University
Rahul Rao, School of Oriental& African Studies, University of London
Calair Rasmussen, Affiliation: Political Science, University of Delaware
Daniel Ray, Thomas M. Cooley Law School
Jeff A. Redding, Saint Louis University School of Law
C. D. C. Reeve, Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bryan Register, Philosophy, Texas State University
Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley
Cassandra Burke Robertson, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
John A. Robertson, University of Texas Law School
Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center
Clarissa Rojas, CSU Long Beach
Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Susan Rose-Ackerman, Law, Political Science, Yale University
Norm Rosenberg, History, Macalester College
Clifford Rosky, University of Utah
Brad R. Roth, Poli. Sci. and Law, Wayne State University
Barbara Katz Rothman, Sociology, City University of New York
Bo Rothstein Political Science, University of Gothenburg
Laura L. Rovner,University of Denver College of Law
Donald Rutherford,Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
Leonard Rubenstein, JD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Chester M. Rzadkiewicz, History, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
DeWitt Sage, Flimmaker
Cindy Skach, Comparative Government and Law, Oxford
William J. Talbott, Philosophy, University of Washington
Natsu Taylor Saito, Georgia State University College of Law
Dean Savage, Queens College, Sociology, CUNY
Kent D. Schenkel, New England Law
Kim Scheppele, Princeton Univeristy
Ben Schoenbachler, Psychiatry, University of Louisville
Jeffrey Schnapp, Harvard University
Kenneth Sherrill, Political Science, Hunter College
Claire Snyder-Hall, George Mason University
Jeffrey Selbin, Yale Law School
Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
Jose M. Sentmanat, Philosophy, Moreno Valley College, California
Omnia El Shakry, History, University of California
Scott Shapiro, Yale University
Stephen Sheehi, Languages, Lit. and Cultures, University of South Carolina
James Silk, Yale Law School
Robert D. Sloane, Boston University School of Law
Ronald C. Slye, Law, Seattle University
Matthew Noah Smith, Philosophy, Yale University
Stephen Samuel Smith, Political Science, Winthrop University
John M. Stewart, Emeritus, Psychology, Northland College
Peter G. Stillman, Vassar College
Alec Stone Sweet, Yale Law School
Robert N. Strassfeld, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, SUNY-Buffalo Law School
Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College of CUNY
Frank Thompson, University of Michigan
Matthew Titolo, West Virginia University College of Law
Massimo de la Torre, University of Hull Law School
John Torpey, CUNY Graduate Center
Vilna Bashi Treitler, Black& Hispanic Studies, Baruch College, City
Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard University
David M. Trubek, University of Wisconsin (emeritus)
Robert L. Tsai, American University, Washington College of Law
Peter Vallentyne, Philosophy, University of Missouri
Joan Vogel, Vermont Law School
Paul Voice, Philosophy, Bennington College
Victor Wallis,Berklee College of Music
David Watkins, Political Science, University of Dayton
Jonathan Weinberg, Wayne State University
Henry Weinstein, Law, Literary Journalism, University of California
Margaret Weir, Political Science,University of California, Berkeley
Christina E. Wells, University of Missouri School of Law
Danielle Wenner, Rice University
Bryan H. Wildenthal, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Langdon Winner,Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Naomi Wolf, author
Lauris Wren, Hofstra Law School
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Attorney and author
Betty Yorburg, Emerita, City University of New York
Benjamin S. Yost, Philosophy, Providence College
Jonathan Zasloff, UCLA School of Law
Michael J. Zimmer, Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago
Lee Zimmerman, English, Hofstra University
Mary Marsh Zulack, Columbia Law School

2 comments April 11th, 2011

Positive Psychology Anthem

Tom Greening finds poetry in positive psychology and its ties to the military’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness:

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY ANTHEM

Thanks to Martin Seligman
we have got a noble plan.
Aided by psychology
we’ll fulfill our destiny.
Wimpy guys like you and me
will face stress resiliently.
He’ll convince us that we must
realize our cause is just,
and he’ll show us clearly why
for us to live bad guys must die.
We’ll decimate our enemies
and celebrate our victories.
With positive psychology
we’ll take our place in history.
(If there are some who disagree
we’ll ably treat their treachery.)

Tom Greening

1 comment April 2nd, 2011