Psyche, Science, and Society

Noam Chomsky on French Intellectual Culture & Post-Modernism

I obviously haven’t been posting much lately. Not sure when or whether I will resume frequent posting. But I’ll use this as a place for things that really grab my attention. Here is an interview with Noam Chomsky on the peculiar features of French intellectual culture — its insularity, its anti-rationalism, its Stalinist traditions — that contribute to its embrace of odd ideologies like variants of postmodernism (and Lacanian psychoanalysis):

March 28th, 2012

Xenakis: Healers, Torture and National Security

Gen. Stephen Xenakis (Ret.), psychiatrist, has written a new article on health providers and torture. He succinctly reminds us of the history of the dangers of blurred boundaries and the the reasons to keep health providers far away from participation in interrogations:

Healers, Torture and National Security

by Stephen N. Xenakis

In 2004, the news that Americans had committed abuse and mistreatment in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was shocking. Even more alarming, were the revelations that physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals had assisted with interrogations that bordered on torture.

In the span of just two generations, the United States had drifted from condemning Nazi physicians at the Nuremberg Trials for their collusion with torture, inhuman experimentation and cruel mistreatment to justifying waterboarding in the pursuit of better intelligence.

As a retired brigadier general and Army psychiatrist, committed to a strong military and national defense, I find these scandals to be most disturbing. The complicity of psychiatrists and other physicians clearly deviated from the fundamental ethical principles of the medical profession and military medicine. My generation of soldiers, who had served during the Vietnam War, vowed not to repeat the misdeeds of the My Lai massacres and rampant indiscipline we witnessed.

However, after the attack on the World Trade Towers, fear and anger dominated the country’s emotional climate and the principles of our profession were hijacked. The incessant drumbeat of political rhetoric that “the war on terror is a war like no other” and that “we must take all measures possible to stop the enemy” made it somehow easier for psychiatrists to apply their skills and training to exploit the vulnerabilities of prisoners. To this day, former government officials justify cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees at Bagram and Guantanamo with unsubstantiated assertions that their confessions led to the trail of Osama bin Laden. The public supported such conduct and the television show “24″ gained wide popularity as viewers were captivated by threats of violence and new gimmicks for bringing the bad guys down. Even the presidential candidates in 2008 were ambushed by questions that judged their fitness to be commander in chief by their willingness to torture a suspect who planted a “ticking bomb.”

But, there is no evidence to confirm the assertions that torture of prisoners has helped the war effort at all.

The plain fact is that nothing that has been claimed in the name of defending our country can justify cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of another man or woman. Torture, in any form – light or heavy – is not a tool of interrogation or useful for gathering good intelligence. It is a propaganda tool and degrades the perpetrator as well as the victim. This is not just the rhetoric of bleeding heart progressives. It is the opinion of over fifty retired admirals, generals(1) and senior government officials convened by Human Rights First to discuss this issue, and our conclusions can be stated simply:

• Torture Is Un-American. Gen. George Washington laid down the directive that American soldiers will treat the enemy humanely and conform to high moral & ethical principles on the battlefield.
• Torture Is Ineffective. Experienced interrogators acknowledge that information extracted by the use of torture is unreliable.
• Torture Is Unnecessary. Veteran FBI agents and military interrogators have spoken out publicly against the use of physical pressure in interrogation.
• Torture Is Damaging. “… a person who is tortured is damaged, but so are the torturer, the nation and the military. [3]“

Torture has long been associated with political repression and with regimes without any semblance of an independent judiciary or media. The Soviet Union’s imprisonment of dissenters and forced use of psychotropic medication on them, the Khmer Rouge’s torture of thousands of people in Cambodia and the Augusto Pinochet regime’s brutality against prisoners in Chile all bear witness to the association between totalitarian or authoritarian regimes and their use of torture.

As the human rights lawyer Leonard Rubenstein and I wrote [4] in March 2010, “the medical staff at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon played a critical role in developing and carrying out torture procedures. Psychologists and at least one doctor designed or recommended coercive interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation and waterboarding. The military’s Behavioral Science Consultation Teams evaluated detainees, consulted their medical records to ascertain vulnerabilities and advised interrogators when to push harder for intelligence information. Psychologists designed a program for new arrivals at Guantánamo [5]that kept them in isolation to ‘enhance and exploit’ their ‘disorientation and disorganization.’ Medical officials monitored interrogations and ordered medical interventions so they could continue even when the detainee was in obvious distress. In one case, an interrogation log obtained by Time magazine shows [6] a medical corpsman ordered intravenous fluids to be administered to a dehydrated detainee even as loud music was played to deprive him of sleep.”

We cannot dismiss the psychiatrists and psychologists, who participated in interrogations in Guantanamo and helped devise the abusive practices, as mere rogues or outliers. They were actors on a much larger stage. They were swept up by a pervasive and persuasive attitude that subsumed the country and energized a military plan to “hunt down the criminals wherever they may be hiding.” The Department of Defense (DoD) issued policy accordingly and the Office of Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs contended that the legitimate objective of fighting terrorism trumps the ethical responsibility of the healing practitioner. In their eyes, “the ends justify the means” and a few brutalized prisoners were a small price to pay for protecting the citizens of the United States.

But, in truth, the use of torture and practices of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment detracted from the military mission and compromised the international stature of our country, while also undermining the effectiveness, credibility and ethical foundations of the medical professionals. To a certain extent, the administration realizes this. Now, ten years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has changed the national strategy and President Obama has insisted, “human rights is both fundamental to American leadership and a source of our strength in the world.” In his words, it “does not merely represent our better angels …” Standing up for human rights has come front and center both as a matter of national strategy and measure of human decency. Historically, the human rights stance against torture has been unequivocal, one of the few absolutes in human rights law: It is never permitted, never excused, never to be balanced against national needs or interests – even in cases of national emergency. Torture is also forbidden under the laws of war. It is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions [7].

This is important and good, but it is not enough. The political leadership of our nation does not have an appetite for investigating the misdeeds that were committed in the past ten years. A change for the better that is not informed by an honest assessment of the sins of the past is not likely to be either permanent or fully integrated into the power structure. Several human rights groups have called for a Commission of Truth and Reconciliation to spur corrective action. By this, they are referring to comprehensive programs that were undertaken in South Africa and in the former Soviet Union to bring to justice the perpetrators of misdeeds and examine the range of responsibility that society as a whole had for the injustices of the past. Mental health professionals understand the power of confession and repentance, for individuals, communities and institutions. Something is needed that goes beyond apology, regret or even a vow to do better. A Commission of Truth and Reconciliation is a step toward corrective action.

By reflecting on the ethical principles and traditions of the healing professions, a stronger case can be put forward against torture and mistreatment:

• First, do no harm. The victims of torture and mistreatment breed political instability and discontent, weakening governments and societies.
• Beneficence. Torture and mistreatment violate the intents and purposes of medical healers and participation in any way corrupts the ethical foundations of the practitioners and professions.
• Professional role. Physicians are not interrogators, any more than they are fighter pilots or infantrymen. The military and other governmental agencies have other professionals to do those tasks and calling on physicians to fill such roles is irresponsible and ineffective.
• Trust. Physicians enjoy special trust and confidence across almost all societies. That trust is undermined with participation in harmful, coercive and abusive conduct that is neither doctor-like nor appropriate.

In 1947, our nation and its allies tried and sentenced the Nazi physicians who violated basic principles of medical ethics. In 2003, the political dynamics and national sentiment induced physicians and psychiatrists and other health care professionals to commit actions that violated core ethics. The healing professions can lead corrective action, help the country recover the “high ground” and prevent future lapses in professional conduct and policies that violated human rights. Human rights are vital to national security in the 21st century.

Much has improved since the dark days of 9/11, but our nation has been damaged. Where once the symbol of our great democracy was the Statue of Liberty – it has now become the image of that poor hooded man in detention with wires strung from his hands and feet. Our men and women on the front lines are endangered because of the increased risk of retaliatory measures. We are not safer because of these misguided policies and how we have acted as a country.

1. I have recent experience that confirms my opinions on the ineffectiveness of harsh interrogation techniques, their unethical nature and harmful consequences. In the past five years, I have been asked to assess several detainees and review the medical records of many more on behalf of defense attorneys. Many detainees subjected to harsh interrogation, as designed and approved by clinicians working for the CIA and DoD, still suffer with the prolonged injuries and adverse psychological effects of their treatment. The evidence of negative effects of the harsh interrogations has been compelling. Moreover, the information gleaned in interrogations that involved harsh treatment has not been allowed in court proceedings.

December 15th, 2011

Dryboarding at GTMO

Almerindo Ojeda has raised new questions regarding the mysterious deaths of three prisoners at Guantanamo in June 2006. He raises the possibility that the deaths occurred under torture using a technique known as “dryboarding”:

Death in Guantanamo: Suicide or Dryboarding?

By Almerindo Ojeda

On June 10, 2006, three Guantánamo prisoners were found dead in their cells. Two days later, a Department of Defense (DoD) news release described these deaths as suicides. The news release quoted Camp Commander Harry Harris, who described these suicides as acts of asymmetric warfaremeant to advance al-Qaeda’s cause in the war on terror.

The news release was categorical with regards to the self-inflicted nature of the deaths. And the camp commander was equally certain of their hostile intent. Yet the news release was curiously guarded about themanner of these deaths – the three “appear” to have hanged themselves with nooses made of bed sheets and clothing, it said.

The deaths of these three individuals was the subject of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). The much-awaited report of this investigation concluded that these deaths were indeed self-inflicted. Yet, a close reading of the heavily redacted material released by the NCIS raises more than a few questions, both for this researcher and for others, regarding the exact circumstances of these deaths. To wit:

• Why did the prisoners have their hands tied when they were found hanging in their cells? (NCIS185, NCIS950,NCIS1012, NCIS958, AUTO693-1)
• Is it possible to tie one’s own hands?
• Why were the prisoners gagged with cloth? They were already going to kill themselves by silent suffocation through hanging; why suffocate themselves silently twice? (NCIS966,NCIS975, NCIS1073f, NCIS1079, NCIS1091)
• Why did all three prisoners have masks – or mask-like contraptions – on their faces as they hanged? (AUTO693-1,NCIS950, NCIS990f)
• Is it physically possible to hang yourself bound, masked and gagged?
• Why was there a bloody T-shirt around the neck of one of the prisoners found hanging in his cell? (NCIS1113)
• Rigor mortis had begun to set in on the prisoners when they were discovered. Consequently, they had to have been hanging for two hours before they were discovered. According to Standard Operating Procedures, each of the prisoners had to be visually inspected every ten minutes. That means six inspections per prisoner per hour, or 36 inspections overall. How could the guards have missed the hangings in 36 visual inspections? (NCIS1025, NCIS1070,NCIS1078f, AUTO693-8, AUTO588-7)
• Why were the neck organs (the larynx, the hyoid bone and the thyroid cartillage) removed from one of the corpses? According to subsequent autopsies done privately, these would be essential in establishing whether or not hanging was the cause of death (AUT693-5)
• Why is there a page missing from a log book begun on the day the deaths were discovered and recording the entries and exits to the cell block where the suicides took place? (NCIS1354)

Incidentally, the information that the dead prisoners were gagged with rags came out before the NCIS report was even begun. This information was provided by Col. Michael Bumgarner, one of the Guantánamo commanders. Speaking to The Charlotte Observer, Col. Bumgarner said that the prisoners who had hanged themselves, “each had a ball of cloth in their mouth either for choking or muffling their voices.”

The deceased were known officially as Ali Abdullah Ahmed (ISN 693), Mana Shaman Allabardi al Tabi (ISN 588), and Yasser Talal al Zahrani (ISN 93). Their lifeless bodies were found hanging in cells A5, A12 and A8, respectively, of Alpha Block, Camp 1, Camp Delta (NCIS938).

The Testimonies of Several Guards And One Commander

In January 2010, Scott Horton published an explosive article in Harper’s Magazine. In it, he told about Staff Sgt. Joseph Hickman, who was guarding the entrance to Camp Delta on the night of the deaths. Early that night, Sergeant Hickman saw a white van pick up three prisoners from the Camp and drive them to a secretive facility within the Guantánamo Naval Base. Then, about an hour before the bodies were found hanging in their cells, the van returned and backed up to the entrance of the clinic as if to unload something. Hickman went to the clinic and a medical corpsman informed him that three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. The corpsman furthermore told him that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised.

Spc. Tony Davila, also serving at Guantánamo at the time, was likewise told, according to Harper’s, that the prisoners had died as the result of having rags stuffed down their throats.

The article in Harper’s Magazine adds two critical questions to the nine raised thus far:

• Who were the three prisoners taken to the secret facility on the evening of the deaths?
• What happened to them there?

In addition to this information, two Guantanamo guards other than the ones mentioned thus far told Horton that no prisoners were taken from the regular cell blocks to the clinic that night. Several guards also confirmed to him that Bumgarner had acknowledged the gagging early on. Indeed, according to Harper’s, the colonel called a meeting of personnel on the morning of the deaths; at that meeting, he is said to have told those in attendance that, “you all know three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death.” (The Guantánamo Suicides, §5)

“He also told them,” Horton continued, “that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored.”

The Dryboarding Of Ali Al-Marri

Ali Saleh al-Marri is a citizen of Qatar who entered the United States lawfully in September 2011. Ostensibly, he had come with his wife and five children to pursue graduate studies at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois – the same institution from which he had earned a bachelors degree in 1991. On December 12, 2001, Mr. al-Marri was arrested by the FBI as an alleged material witness of the terrorist attacks of September 11 (Complaint,§§14-15).

Mr. al-Marri was initially detained at the Peoria County Jail. From there, he was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, and then back to the Peoria County Jail in May 2003. By then, Mr. al-Marri had been detained without charge for 17 months, most of which he had spent in solitary confinement (Complaint, §§15-16, 21).

On June 23, 2003, then-president George W. Bush designated Mr. al-Marri an enemy combatant and had him transferred to the US Naval consolidated brig in Charleston, South Carolina, the same prison that once housed alleged dirty-bomber Jose Padilla, former Guantánamo prisoner Yasser Hamdi and former Guantánamo Chaplain James Yee. Mr. al-Marri remained at the brig until February 2009. By then, he had been held for more than seven years – all without charge; all in virtual isolation (Complaint, §§25-26).

In 2008, President Obama transferred Mr. al-Marri’s case to the federal court system, where he pleaded guilty of supporting al-Qaeda and was sentenced to 15 years. He is now held at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He received a reduced sentence for time served and the harsh conditions of his confinement and is due to be released in January 2015 (Federal Bureau of Prisons web site).

This December, Mr. al-Marri will have spent ten years in custody. Of these years, the most brutal were the first year and a half he spent at the Naval consolidated brig, from June 2003 to October 2004. There he was held incommunicado – meaning that he was denied any contact with the outside world, including his family, his lawyers and even the International Committee of the Red Cross. His only human contact then was with government officials during interrogation sessions, or with guards when they delivered trays of food through a slot in his cell door, escorted him to shower or took him to a concrete cage for “recreation” (Memorandum, p. 4).

During this period, Mr. al-Marri was held in a 6-by-9-foot cell, denied basic necessities, including adequate clothing, recreation, and hygiene items such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and toilet paper. Sometimes the water to his cell was cut off for up to 20 days. If Mr. al-Marri needed water to drink or to wash himself, he had to ring a buzzer. Brig staff would often fail to respond for several hours. Brig staff also interfered with Mr. al-Marri’s practice of his religion. A devout Muslim, he was denied water to purify himself, a prayer rug, and a kofi to cover his head during prayer. When he used his shirt as a substitute, he was punished by having his shirt removed. He was prohibited from knowing the time of day and the direction to Mecca, thus preventing him from properly fulfilling the Muslim requirement of praying five times a day. The only religious item he was permitted was a Koran – but it was sometimes taken away and desecrated (Memorandum, pp. 5-6).

While held incommunicado, Mr. al-Marri was subjected to a brutal interrogation regime which included stress positions, prolonged exposures to cold temperatures, extreme sensory deprivation, and threats of violence or death to himself or to others. Interrogators, for example, told Mr. al-Marri that they would send him to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia to be tortured, sodomized and forced to watch as his wife was raped in front of him. They also threatened to make him disappear so that no one would know where he was (Memorandum, pp. 4-5).

But of all the interrogation techniques that Mr. al-Marri endured, there is one that is, potentially, of great importance for an accurate interpretation of the deaths at Guantánamo in 2006. Yet, it would have gone unnoticed were it not for a recent articleby Tony Bartelme in Charleston’s Post and Courier.

Indeed, on one occasion, interrogators decided to stuff Mr. al-Marri’s mouth with cloth and cover his mouth with heavy duct tape – a technique of controlled suffocation that Mr. al-Marri’s lawyer, Andrew Savage, has called dryboarding. Dryboarding is not just a criminal practice; it is a potentially lethal procedure. As he was being dryboarded, Mr. al-Marri tried to relieve the pain caused by the duct tape by loosening the tape with his lips. He succeeded. Taking note of this, the interrogators taped his mouth again, but this time more tightly. At this point, Mr. al-Marri began to choke to death. Panicking, the interrogators acted quickly and removed the tape, thus managing, narrowly, to keep Mr. al-Marri alive (Memorandum, p. 5).

This account of the events is apparently undisputed. Ms. Joanna Baltes, who appeared on behalf of the government in the sentencing of Mr. al-Marri, seems to have acknowledged that this incident took place. She also recognized that this procedure was inconsistent with the Army Field Manual (Sentencing, pp. 259, 261). There are no signs, however, that anyone has been held accountable for carrying it out.

Video recordings of this incident exist, but have been repeatedly denied to Mr. al-Marri’s legal team on grounds of national security (Sentencing, p. 261; Andrew Savage, personal communication).

Suicide or Dryboarding?

The dryboarding of Mr. al-Marri raises an unavoidable question:Did the three individuals found hanging in Guantánamo die from dryboarding rather than by hanging? If so, they would be cases not of multiple suicide, but rather of torture leading to multiple loss of life.

Whether the Guantánamo prisoners died from hanging or from dryboarding is something for a thorough, independent and transparent inquiry to determine – the NCIS investigation was none of these. If it had been thorough, it would have disposed of all the questions we raised above; if it had been independent, it would not have been carried out by the Navy, which runs the Guantanamo Naval Base; and if it had been transparent, it would not have censored more than half of its report.

Be that as it may, it is clear that dryboarding can dispose, singlehandedly, of all the questions we have raised thus far – especially the questions regarding the need for gagging with cloth and for using masks or mask-like contraptions. They would be nothing short of essential to the task at hand.

The dryboarding hypothesis would also explain the binding of the hands, the fact that no hanging was observed after 36 visual inspections, the removal of the organs of the neck, and the missing pages in the log book – the latter being attempts at destroying evidence of a crime. It would also void the need for dubious appeals to self-binding and hobbled hangings. Similarly, it would identify the prisoners taken from Camp Delta and reveal their fate.

And the violent conditions necessitated by dryboarding could account for the bruising and bloodied T-shirt. Even the guarded description of the manner of death in the early news release would make sense under a dryboarding scenario.

But there is more. Two of the documents in the NCIS report affirm that the rags in the mouths of the deceased were socks. One of these socks was described as white athletic; the other as white nylon (NCIS1073f, NCIS1091). Interestingly, the cloth used in the dryboarding of Mr. al-Marri was also a sock (Andrew Savage, personal communication).

In light of the unanswered questions, one thing remains clear: there is a need for a thorough, independent and transparent investigation into the June 10, 2006, deaths at Guantánamo and, more broadly, for a thorough, independent and transparent inquiry into all the practices and policies of detention enacted since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

To view in full the documents cited in this report, click here.

 

November 14th, 2011

NY cop punches and kicks demonstrator in Friday’s protests

Again, this brutality is by one of the white shirted supervisors who have, apparently, been given total license to brutalize at will. [If they hadn't been given license they would be more careful about beating and pepper spraying in front of cameras.]

October 15th, 2011

New Yorker on Occupy Boston

Ian Crouch reports on Occupy Boston for the New Yorker.

October 12th, 2011

Best signs from Occupy Wall Street

BuzzFeed has an excellent collection of the best signs from Occupy Wall Street.

The Phoenix has photos an video from yesterday’s Occupy Boston march, which I participated in. They seemed to have missed the signs from the Painters and Allied Building Workers Union (with their “Proud to be a Union Thug” t-shirts) and National Nurses United, both of which seemed to have joined in force. also not shown was the Leftist Marching Band, which provided great marching music.

October 9th, 2011

Police brutality at Wall Street demo

New York police apparently have a brutality problem. Reportedly this video was filmed last night at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street:

In another video a NYPD Officer on Wall Street is heard bragging :

“My little nightstick’s going to get a workout tonight”

NY Channel 5 reports that its reporters were hit and pepper sprayed by police:

Officers swatted protesters with batons and sprayed them with mace, according to video from the scene. Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace, and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by what he believes was an officer’s baton. Both were all right and continued to cover the protests and arrests.

The NY police apparently are out of control.

October 6th, 2011

Apple thugs collude with police to raid house over lost iPhone

Apple once had a reputation as a “progressive” alternative to the capitalist behemoth Microsoft. If that was ever the case, it seems to have transformed itself into a thuggish company that easily tramples upon individuals’ rights when convenient.  In addition to repeated reports of Apple censorship of what aps users of its iPad can install, there are now reports of Apple “investigators” raiding someone’s house and computer, with the collusion of San Francisco police, because they claim to have tracked a missing iPhone prototype to that house.

While Apple investigators apparently obtained permission to search the house, the fact that they did not identify themselves as private investigators and were accompanied by SF police who did identify themselves raises disturbing questions as to whether this permission was implicitly coerced. Also problematic is the claim, that during the raid, the Apple investigators threatened the resident, 22-year old Sergio Calderón:

The visitors also allegedly threatened him and his family, asking questions about their immigration status. “One of the officers is like, ‘Is everyone in this house an American citizen?’ They said we were all going to get into trouble,” Calderón said.

In this unusual collusion between Apple agents and SF police, the police identified themselves, while the Apple investigators actually entering the house never identified themselves as private investigators:

One of the officers left a phone number with him, which SF Weekly traced to Anthony Colon, an investigator employed at Apple, who declined to comment when we reached him.

Reached this afternoon, Calderón confirmed that only two of the six people who came to his home actually entered the house. He said those two did not specifically state they were police officers.

However, he said he was under the impression that they were all police, since they were part of the group outside that identified themselves as SFPD officials. The two who entered the house did not disclose that they were private security officers, according to Calderón.

In an additional indication that something fishy occurred, for 24 hours the SF police denied that there was any record of police involvement in a raid. Then records mysteriously appeared.

As Talking Points Memo says about this incident:

]I]t raises the question of whether SFPD has assisted Apple before, off-the-books, how many times, and in what capacities. We’ve reached back out to SFPD with these questions and will update again when they respond.

TPM has raised these questions with SFPD. We’ll see if they get a response.

This incident is another indication of the extent to which police serve as agents of corporate interests. It also illustrates the lengths to which Apple will go, largely to protect its corporate mystique. Apple, rather than being an alternative company, is now the epitome of the worst of corporate America.

By the way, the phone was not found in the house, despite Apple’s claims.

September 3rd, 2011

The dark side of close social connections

Psychologists and sociologists have found many positive effects from being socially connected. But a new line of reasoning suggests that social connection may have a dark side. It may contribute to an increased tendecy to dehumanize outsiders. This finding should not be especially surprising to those who have experienced the strengths and limits of close-knit social groups within a wider culture.

These possible negative consequences of social connectedness poses a conundrum. What conditions will allow us to accomplish both? Are trade-offs necessary?

Given these results it is, perhaps, not surprising that studies of altruists, like those who smuggled Jews out of Nazi-occupied Europe find that a degree of outsider status is common among them. Being an outsider apparently helps one identify with others who are outside the dominant group. Yet, in some instances, such as in Denmark and Holland, whole communities, or at lest major segments of those communities, participated in the rescuing of Jews, often at great risk. We need better understanding of what characteristics of those communities allowed them to resist the tendencies toward dehumanization of outsiders.

A Miller-McCune article summarizes the evidence for the dark side of social connectedness:

Strong Social Bonds Promote Health, Belonging — and Torture
New research finds people who feel a strong connection with their social group are more likely to dehumanize outsiders.

By Tom Jacobs

It was no surprise when a recent meta-study found people with strong social support networks tend to live longer, healthier lives. As the Mayo Clinic notes on its website, having close, lasting relationships strengthens one’s feelings of security, self-worth and sense of belonging.

But there appears to be a dark side to those life-enhancing bonds.Newly published research suggests they may make it more likely you’ll view those outside your social group as less than human —and treat them accordingly.

“Connecting with others brings individuals closer to each other, but moves them further from people from whom they are disconnected,” Adam Waytz of Northwestern University and Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago write in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. “The most tightly knit groups — from military units to athletic teams — may also be the most likely to treat their adversaries as subhuman animals.”

Waytz and Epley are scholars of dehumanization — the tendency for people to think of others as somehow less than fully human. It is at the root of racism (consider the well-documented tendency of many white people to think of blacks as ape-like), and it provides internally permission for both crimes (such as the taking of innocent lives during wartime) and misdemeanors (ignoring the homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk).

The researchers argue that “feeling socially connected to others may enable people to represent more distant others as subhuman.” Since their need for social contact has been satiated, such people are less motivated to consider the “interests, attitudes, feelings and preferences” of those outside the group — commonalities that reinforce our shared humanity.

“Being socially connected not only diminishes the motivation to connect with others, but may also diminish the perceived similarity with more distant others,” they add, “because social connections delineate those within one’s social circle and those outside of it.”

In other words, people tend to identify with their fellow group members, meaning they’re more likely to perceive outsiders as different. And asearlier research has shown, when people are viewed as dissimilar to ourselves, “they are evaluated as less humanlike as well.”

That may sound like a leap, but Waytz and Epley describe four experiments that back up their thesis. In one of them, 35 members of the University of Chicago community completed a “moral disengagement scale,” which included four statements indicating dehumanization. Specifically, they were asked their level of agreement with such propositions as “Some people deserve to be treated like animals.”

Before completing this survey, half of the participants were instructed to “think about going back home to attend a big family Thanksgiving dinner” and discuss the person at the gathering they feel closest to. The other half were told to “think about walking around Hyde Park to do some shopping” and describe shops and restaurants they patronize routinely.

Those who had contemplated someone close to them scored higher on dehumanization than those who had discussed their everyday shopping chores. “These results suggest social connection increases dehumanization specifically,” the researchers write.

If you consider the opinion “some people deserve to be treated like animals” too theoretical to be truly predictive of someone’s behavior, consider another of their experiments. Fifty-nine Chicagoans took part in what they were told was a study of attitudes. Half were instructed to attend with a friend, the others arrived alone.

“Those who arrived with a friend were assigned to the ‘connected’ condition,” the researchers write. They completed the experiment while sitting in a room with their friend (who could not see or influence them). The others were joined in the room by another test participant they didn’t know.

All were presented with 11 photos of men described as terrorists responsible for planning the 9/11 attacks. They then completed the aforementioned moral disengagement scale and answered a series of specific questions, including the degree to which they found acceptable such torture techniques as waterboarding and the application of electrical shocks.

Those who filled out the test with a friend in the room “dehumanized the detainees significantly more” than those who came alone, “and were also significantly more willing to endorse harming them,” Waytz and Epley report.

The researchers do not believe closeness to our own confederates means we automatically feel antipathy toward those outside our group. It’s just that we are more likely to think of them in abstract terms. Rather than individuals with specific needs and wants, they’re lazily lumped together as outsiders. This makes it easier to dehumanize them — and act accordingly.

“Being socially connected to close others has great benefits for one’s own physical and mental health,” the researchers conclude, “but it also satiates the motivation to connect with others.” With that urge satisfied, we’re prone to not give enough time or thought to those outside our social sphere to fully grasp their humanity. As this provocative research suggests, that can be a dangerous thing.

 

August 10th, 2011

Barney Frank: Credit downgrade because of bloated military budget

Barney Frank again speaks out on ridiculous military budget:

The senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee says the biggest reason the United States is seeing its credit downgraded is that it spends too much money being “the military policemen of the world.”

….

The liberal Massachusetts Democrat says $200 billion could be saved “without in any way endangering our security” by dialing back U.S. military involvement in the world, including operations in Western Europe. Frank says the military establishment has always had this “great momentum” in politics, but says the credit reversal “could change our thinking.” Frank calls the military a logical target “if we’re looking for something that breaks the mold” on spending.

Only $200 billion? That’s chump change to the military-industrial complex, given the US spends as much on war as all other countries combined.

August 8th, 2011