Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has written a new piece Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay. In it Wilkerson describes some of the dirty secrets of the prison. Among these are the almost total absence of screening of who went there, the incredible lack of care in keeping records for possible criminal prosecution, and efforts within the administration to change some of these problems early on, efforts that were stymied by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney.
But perhaps most importantly, Wilkerson is the first person I can recall to say explicitly what I have long suspected, that the detainee’s innocence was irrelevant to their detention:
The fourth unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people, called the mosaic philosophy. Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals–in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.
Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees’ innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot.
I hope that this point will get greater attention. After all, we have a term for knowingly locking up innocent people, and its “kidnapping.” Certainly there ought to be investigations of this possibility, with potential criminal penalties where appropriate. Knowingly locking up innocent people indefinitely cannot be tolerated in a society claiming to be “civilized.” No habeas process, taken eight years can possibly make up for this.
Wilkerson is also one of few in a position to now to state clearly that no intelligence of value was obtained from the eight years of maintaining most of the detainees in this awful concentration camp disguised as an “intelligence-gathering” facility:
In addition, it has never come to my attention in any persuasive way–from classified information or otherwise–that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two of the detainees, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed in the relevant communities such as intelligence and law enforcement.
This is perhaps the most astounding truth of all, carefully masked by men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney in their loud rhetoric–continuing even now in the case of Cheney–about future attacks thwarted, resurgent terrorists, the indisputable need for torture and harsh interrogation and for secret prisons and places such as GITMO.
Wilkerson also responds to Cheney’s recent attacks on Obama for threatening the safety of the country:
Cheney went on to say in his McLean interview that “Protecting the country’s security is a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business. These are evil people and we are not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” I have to agree but the other way around. Cheney and his like are the evil people and we certainly are not going to prevail in the struggle with radical religion if we listen to people such as he.
Wilkerson concludes:
When–and if–the truths about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be revealed in the way they should be, or Congress will step up and shoulder some of the blame, or the new Obama administration will have the courage to follow through substantially on its campaign promises with respect to GITMO, torture and the like, remains indeed to be seen.
On that revelation and those actions rests much of the credibility of our nation’s return to sobriety and our truest values. In fact, on such positive developments may ultimately rest our entire future as a free people. For there shall inevitably be future terrorist attacks. Al-Qa’ida has been hurt, badly, largely by our military actions in Afghanistan and our careful and devastating moves to stymie its financial support networks.
But al-Qa’ida will be back. Iraq, GITMO, Abu Ghraib, heavily-biased U.S. support for Israel, and a host of other strategic errors have insured al-Qa’ida’s resilience, staying power and motivation. How we deal with the future attacks of this organization and its cohorts could well seal our fate, for good or bad. Osama bin Laden and his brain trust, Aman al-Zawahiri, are counting on us to produce the bad. With people such as Cheney assisting them, they are far more likely to succeed.
As we have known for a while, we as a people are left to decide whether we will close our eyes to these abuses in the name of “national security” or in the new name of “looking forward.” Will we allow these abuses to remain officially undocumented, unacknowledged, and unpunished?
Read the whole piece here.
March 18th, 2009
Reporter and attorney Mark Danner has obtained a copy of the International Committee of the red Cross’ report on the torture at the CIA’s black sites. The report was based upon extensive interviews with 14 “high value” detainees who were transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo in 2006. Danner has written an extended piece based on the report in the New York Review of Books and has excerpted a small portion of the article as an op-ed in the New York Times. As Danner points out, the 14 detainees had been kept isolated from each other since their capture. Thus they had no opportunity to coordinate their stories. The fact that many of the details were repeated by multiple detainees thus constitutes strong evidence for the veracity of the reports.
Here is one excerpt of what the detainees relate, as told by Abu Zubaydah:
After the beating I was then placed in the small box. They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about 3 months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box, I think I may have slept or maybe fainted.
I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress.
I was then placed again in the tall box. While I was inside the box loud music was played again and somebody kept banging repeatedly on the box from the outside. I tried to sit down on the floor, but because of the small space the bucket with urine tipped over and spilt over me…. I was then taken out and again a towel was wrapped around my neck and I was smashed into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as before.
I was then made to sit on the floor with a black hood over my head until the next session of torture began. The room was always kept very cold.
This went on for approximately one week. During this time the whole procedure was repeated five times. On each occasion, apart from one, I was suffocated once or twice and was put in the vertical position on the bed in between. On one occasion the suffocation was repeated three times. I vomited each time I was put in the vertical position between the suffocation.
During that week I was not given any solid food. I was only given Ensure to drink. My head and beard were shaved everyday.
I collapsed and lost consciousness on several occasions. Eventually the torture was stopped by the intervention of the doctor.
I was told during this period that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people.
Danner gives us the Table of Contents of the report, which clearly evokes the nature of the CIA program:
Contents
Introduction
1. Main Elements of the CIA Detention Program
1.1 Arrest and Transfer
1.2 Continuous Solitary Confinement and Incommunicado Detention
1.3 Other Methods of Ill-treatment
1.3.1 Suffocation by water
1.3.2 Prolonged Stress Standing
1.3.3 Beatings by use of a collar
1.3.4 Beating and kicking
1.3.5 Confinement in a box
1.3.6 Prolonged nudity
1.3.7 Sleep deprivation and use of loud music
1.3.8 Exposure to cold temperature/cold water
1.3.9 Prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles
1.3.10 Threats
1.3.11 Forced shaving
1.3.12 Deprivation/restricted provision of solid food
1.4 Further elements of the detention regime….
He also gives its conclusion which makes it unequivocall that, in the ICRC’s view, the United States government committed major crimes through its “enhanced interrogation” program:
The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Danner places the report in the context of the lies and disinformation continually told us by our leaders, President Bush foremost among them:
“This debate is occurring,” as President Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden the week after he delivered his East Room speech,
because of the Supreme Court’s ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that, you know, there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s like—it’s very vague. What does that mean, “outrages upon human dignity”?
In allowing Abu Zubaydah and the other thirteen “high-value detainees” to tell their own stories, this report manages to answer, with great power and authority, the President’s question.
Now that the President’s question has been answered, the question now remains what we, the American people, will do with this answer. Will we demand further answers, the who, what, why and when? Will we insist on making public all these sordid details? Will we demand punishment? What steps will we take to make sure this never happens again? Or will we, perhaps, continue our complicity in these abuses committed in our name?
As a psychologist, I am well aware that the techniques documented in this report were created and monitored by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, as Jane Mayer, Katherine Eban, and Mark Benjamin have documented. As Mayer reports in her book, The Dark Side, Mitchell and Jessen apparently adopted ideas on “learned helplessness” from former American Psychological Association President Martin Seligman, who lectured, under CIA auspices, to the Navy Survival Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school, with Mitchell and Jessen in the audience. [An earlier version of the following comments were made by me yesterday on a listerve and were quoted by Daily Kos blogger Valtin in his commentary on the Danner article.] These psychologists were present at the APA-CIA-Rand conference on the Science of Deception. Among the topics discussed at this conference were:
What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?….
What are sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors? How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?
Is it plausible that no APA official in attendance considered or has since considered the possibility that discussion of these topics at a CIA workshop was connected to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation,” a.k.a. torture program? If such thought ever occurred to any APA leaders, they have never been expressed publicly. Rather, the APA has never explained why these torturers were invited to this conference, what they said or what was said to them. Nor have the APA leaders who invited and participated with these torturers expressed any remorse that they may have aided their torture. Rather, these leaders tried to hide the attendance list for this conference, just as they later tried to hide the membership of their “ethics” task force, and even claimed to have “misplaced” it. And these leaders repeatedly have tried to change the subject to whether or not these torturers were “APA members”, as if its fine to aid torturers if they aren’t members of the association.
APA leaders also have given recognition and awards to a military psychologist who helped design the Guantanamo interrogation system, while refusing to disciple those psychologists whose participation in US abuses was reported to them.
But, perhaps most disturbingly, when the APA created a task force to formulate ethics policy regarding interrogations, they chose psychologists who had been involved in the U.S. government’s interrogation programs at the CIA’s black sites, Guantanamo, and Afghanistan to form the majority of that task force and then refused to reveal the task force membership. One member of the task force was even reportedly present at the torture of Abu Zubaydah, a fact he neglected to mention during the task force proceedings. Not surprisingly, the task force report echoed the government’s cover story that the participation of psychologists in these interrogations “puts psychologists in a unique position to assist in ensuring that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants.”
Accountability for US torture MUST include accountability for those who aided the torturers, including those in the APA leadership who, wittingly or unwittingly, helped provide cover for the torture program. Continued silence is not acceptable. The truth must come out. We must pressure any Truth Commission or other accountability process to explore the role of the APA, other psychologists, and other health professionals, in the US torture program. It is up to psychologists, along with other citizens concerned with human rights and human decency, to demand accountability from our leaders.
March 16th, 2009
SEE UPDATE BELOW:
Since the Iraq war began, an important question for those closely following the conflict has been the number of excess Iraqi casualties resulting from the war and occupation. Various researchers have attempted to estimate this number. Iraq Body Count has kept a running tab of civilian deaths reported in the Western media and, more recently, by certain Iraqi government sources., but their figure, now at around 95,000, is undoubtedly low due to its reliance on media reports and Iraqi government figures. During times of intense conflict, many deaths likely go unreported in the media, while there have been numerous inconsistencies in and reports of political manipulation of government figures as it may not be in the government’s interest to admit the extent of deaths from the conflict.
An alternate way to estimate conflict-associated mortality is through the conduct of carefully sampled household surveys counting the number of deaths in selected households and using statistical techniques to extrapolate to the overall population. Much attention has been focused especially, by myself and others, on the Lancet mortality studies of 2004 and 2006.The first of these studies estimated that there had been approximately 100,000 excess deaths from the war by September 2004. The second study estimated that there were around 650,000 excess deaths through summer 2006. They further found that the vast majority of these excess casualties — around 600,000 — were from violence, a stark contrast from most other such conflicts studied where large numbers die from poor health and the breakdown of social organization associated with conflict. “Excess casualties” here means the number who died above that number that would have been expected to die had prewar trends continued and the war and occupation not occurred.
We have recently learned that Gilbert Burham, the lead author of second Lancet study, has been sanctioned by Johns Hopkins for deviating from the approved IRB protocol and collecting the names of many survey respondents, a fact that was implicitly denied in numerous public pronouncements. The school does assert that, as far as they can determine, no one was harmed by this ethical lapse. As a result of this sanction, Burnham has been barred by Johns Hopkins from serving as the principal investigator (lead researcher) on studies involving “human subjects” (live people) for five years. He was also ordered to publish a correction in the Lancet, which has now appeared:
“The Methods section of this Article (Oct 21, 2006) stated that ‘Participants were assured that no unique identifiers would be gathered.’ Upon review, it was determined that a significant number of the surveys contained names of respondents and household inhabitants. This was a lapse in the authors’ obligations to protect participants. However, to the authors’ knowledge, the completed surveys remained in possession of the research team at all times and there were no known breaches in confidentiality.”
This error, and its possible coverup in subsequent public statements means that, in my opinion, we can no longer rely upon the Lancet II mortality estimates. If one major methodological detail was distorted, we simply cannot know whether other aspects of the study were carried out as stated. Until and unless there is far greater detail on these methods, I do not feel that their estimate of 650,000 post-invasion surplus deaths can be trusted.
Burnham had early last month been censured by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for refusing to reveal details of the study methodology. I must say I find this censure highly unusual at best as Burnham is not a member of AAPOR. I have never previously heard of a professional association investigating, much less censuring, a non-member. However, as the Hopkins investigation shows, the non-cooperation may have been to cover up the methodological discrepancy, rather than for more understandable reasons.
I find this episode deeply disturbing. The issue of the magnitude of civilian deaths in Iraq is a profoundly important one. Given the known political sensitivity of the issue, the researchers should have been especially careful in the controllable aspects of their methodology. They were not. Rather, they gave ammunition to those who would inevitably attack their conclusions for political or ideological reasons. The result is that we are less knowledgeable about this important question than many of us believed as an important data source is no longer reliable.
While I find David Kane’s self-satisfied tone to be disturbing, I must admit that he was more right than I had believed regarding the weaknesses in the Lancet II study. As Kane points out, Burnham’s public statements were, in spirit if not in legalistic wording, not accurate.
We are left with several other studies estimating Iraqi casualties. The British ORB polling company estimated as of August 2007
that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003
While ORB is a reputable polling company, the faith we can place in these results is weakened due to their failure to publish a detailed methodology; such information is typically included in papers published in peer-reviewed journals, which is one reason researchers typically place greater credence on studies published in such journals. When the Lancet II findings were credible, the ORB study appeared to be a replication of the general order of magnitude of casualties found in that study. With the increased doubts about the Lancet II study, the ORB stands as an outlier. I wish the firm would publish a detailed methodology that would allow better evaluation of their findings.
At the low end, a study conducted by the Iraq Ministry of Health and other Iraq government entities in collaboration with the World Health Organization, estimated 151,000 violent between January 2002 and June 2006. While the authors did not estimate the total number of excess deaths — nonviolent as well as violent — presumably because these estimates would be less precise, dependent as they would be on estimates of prewar mortality rates, those estimates would be considerably higher by several hundred thousand. Critiques of this study have questioned whether many Iraqi citizens might be reluctant to admit to Iraqi government-associated researchers that a family member was killed by violence. Thus, it is not implausible to assume that this study is an undercount and constitutes a lower bound. As the Ministry of Health study period ended while some of the most severe violence was still occurring, there have likely been many more violent deaths since then.
Thus, the best guess we can make at present is that at least 200,000 people died through violence since the US-led invasion, and that the true figure may be far higher. Moreover, an additional number that could be in the hundreds of thousands may have died from nonviolent causes — e.g., lack of clean water and healthcare — associated with the conflict, but this figure is uncertain. No matter what the correct figures turn out to be, it is clear that far too many have died as a result of this war of choice and subsequent occupation which may have deposed a dictator but which also disrupted an entire society.
UPDATE:
Postscript:
Several readers have raised the question as to why the lapse committed by Burnham et al. in this study warrants dismissing the entire study. After all, they argue, the lapse of recording names was an ethical lapse, perhaps, but recording extra information should not affect the results. Let me take this opportunity to clarify my reasoning.
The faith one has in the results of any study depends largely on the quality of the research design and on how carefully that design is followed. In the case of a population-based epidemiological survey like the 2006 Lancet study (Lancet II), even minor deviations from the survey design can have large effects on the results. (Survey research depends crucially on every person in the population having an equal chance of being selected.) As one example, if interviewers used discretion - beyond that mandated by safety considerations - in selecting households, it could introduce (probably unintentional and unconscious) bias that would make the findings unreliable. For this reason, survey researchers attempt to maintain strict control over the procedures actually used by those collecting data in the field.
We have been assured for years that the design of Lancet II was carefully followed. Now we hear that the specified design was not followed in a crucial way that may have put participants at risk. Furthermore, the Lancet researchers have for years pointed to those very risks as reasons to deny access to raw data and to withhold crucial methodological information when questioned. The fact that the protocol wasn’t followed in a central aspect severely reduces the confidence we can have that the study procedures were carefully monitored.
The Baltimore Sun reported:
“Because of the difficulty of carrying out research in Iraq during the war, Burnham and his team partnered with Iraqi doctors at a university in Iraq. Burnham, working out of Jordan, said he made it clear to the doctors that they could collect the first names of children and adults, to help keep the information straight, but that last names could not be collected.
“When the surveys came back to him in Jordan, it appeared that some had last names. Many were in Arabic. Burnham said he asked his Iraqi partners and was told that the names were not complete, which he accepted. But Hopkins, in its investigation, found that the data form used in the surveys was different from what was originally proposed, and included space for names of respondents. Hopkins found that full names were collected.”
This description, if true, supports the assumption that Burham was in no position to carefully monitor the details of data collection for the study. Further, at its most charitable, it indicates severe communication difficulties with the Iraqi staff that may easily have left him unaware of other possible deviations in procedures. If one is not so charitable, one may wonder why Burham was told a falsehood, that the names were only first names, and thus what else was distorted. In any case, in the absence of this confidence in the study procedures, we cannot maintain confidence in the study’s results.
There is yet another troubling aspect of this incident. The lapse that occurred, recording of full names of respondents reporting deaths from violence in a country undergoing civil war after the Johns Hopkins ethics committee and the respondents were told no names or unique identifiers would be collected, is no trifling error. As Johns Hopkins Magazine reported in its February 2007 issue:
“Concern for the safety of interviewers and respondents alike produced two more decisions. First, they would not record identifiers like the names and addresses of people interviewed. Burnham feared retribution if a hostile militia at a checkpoint found a record of households visited by the Iraqi survey teams.”
Thus, the researchers were well aware that collecting names of respondents could put them at grave risk. Burnham owed it to the people in his study to have enquired further when he noticed names on the forms and not so easily accepted false reassurances. That he did not suggests that he may have (perhaps unconsciously) looked the other way at other possible deviations from protocol.
Since the study was released over two years ago, it has been subjected to severe criticism. While much of this criticism was likely motivated by concern for the political implications of the study, and some of the criticism was clearly unwarranted, that does not give the study a free pass on criticism. And we shouldn’t look the other way to its potential problems just because its findings support our antiwar position.
In response to the criticism, the Lancet study authors have been less than forthcoming with key details, such as their exact sampling procedure for selecting streets, which, under criticism, they admitted was not accurately described in the published paper. That we now know that another crucial detail, the collection of identifiable information, deviated from the published record, and that the authors failed to correct the public record on the matter until forced to, raises questions about what other aspects of the study may not have been conducted as described. As long as these questions remain, the study cannot be considered reliable.
March 15th, 2009
Roy Eidelson, President-Elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR] has a new article on the psychology of anticipating change:
On the Road to Change: The Psychology of Progress
By Roy Eidelson
The morning after last November’s historic election, triumphant chants of “Yes We Did” drowned out the Obama campaign message of “Yes We Can.” Now only four months later enthusiasm has waned, and last Friday the President felt the need to reassure reporters on Air Force One, “I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future.”
The striking contrast highlights the fact that any long and difficult journey should be measured in two parts - the distance already traveled, and the distance still left to go. Both measurements are necessary to really understand how much progress you’ve made toward reaching your destination. Neither one alone is sufficient.
This simple idea - appreciated by many a parent during road trips with young children repeatedly asking “Are we there yet?” - has special relevance for progressives as we contemplate where we stand today. On the one hand, we rejoice that the previous administration’s unprecedented incompetence, corruption, secrecy, and lawlessness are fading in our rear-view mirror each day. On the other hand, we are sobered by the realization that the horizon ahead is clouded by a crippled economy, an inadequate healthcare system, and multiple wars with no clear end in sight.
These competing tensions are readily apparent in the daily news headlines. One day last week, for example, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll revealed a sharp one-month jump - from 26% to 41% - in the percentage of Americans who think the country is headed in the right direction. A very encouraging sign. But then the following day the Labor Department reported that 651,000 people had lost their jobs in the month of February alone. These Americans are certainly not among those now brimming with greater optimism.
This is more than just a “half-empty versus half-full” moment. It’s a reminder that these dueling psychological perspectives will inevitably shape our efforts as we push forward in our pursuit of progressive goals, as we look for ways to collaborate with policymakers and with each other, and as we confront resistance from those who will smugly smile and celebrate if we fail.
Some valuable guideposts for this unfolding journey can be found in an intriguing study published last year by social psychologists Amanda Brodish, Paige Brazy, and Patricia Devine. Comparing the responses of white and non-white Americans to survey questions about racial progress in the United States, here’s what these researchers found:
The non-white participants perceived significantly less progress toward equality for minorities in the U.S. than did their white counterparts.
The non-white participants primarily relied on comparisons with the future rather than the past in forming their judgments about the extent of racial progress.
A subset of white respondents displayed three characteristics: they focused on comparisons with past inequality, they emphasized that much progress has already been made, and they scored higher than others on a measure of racial prejudice.
Although this study focused specifically on perceptions about racial progress, it can help illuminate the challenges facing progressives as we track our progress toward a more equitable world.
First, many of those who have suffered most egregiously from the heartless and greed-driven agenda of the Bush years will understandably be skeptical and slow to embrace the view that better days have arrived. They will not easily be persuaded that things are suddenly different now. Personal experiences of hardship and injustice create powerful and stubborn mindsets that are not quickly changed without tangible improvements in the circumstances of people’s daily lives. A freshly-paved road offers little promise if your car is stuck in the mud.
Second, over time many vulnerable individuals and groups - for whom progressive policy alternatives offer real hope - will evaluate their situations much more in terms of goals not yet achieved rather than on the basis of progress made to date. Although this particular focus may seem to discount important advances, it represents a reasonable perspective for those who have learned that their plight and efforts have typically been forgotten as soon as the news cycle changes. Ongoing forward momentum requires never coming to a complete stop. Or to look at it another way, no matter how clean and attractive it may be, a highway rest stop is nobody’s dream home.
Finally, given their support for “free” markets and greater inequality, many conservatives will be quick to argue that enough change has already taken place - while secretly longing for the “good old days” of elite rule and consolidated wealth. Despite appeals to bipartisanship, they will oppose and obstruct all efforts to advance policies with real redistributive effects, claiming that they are unnecessary, unwarranted, or dangerous. In short, as progressives we need to recognize that Rush Limbaugh and his supporters will never be well-behaved passengers on the road trip we’re undertaking. Given a chance, they will grab the steering wheel from us, find excuses for time-consuming detours, or simply flatten the tires. As we’ve recently heard from the very top of their ranks, they would love to see us fail.
There is no doubt that this is an ascendant moment and a special opportunity for progressive advocates for a more just society. But this new era has begun during a time of turmoil and despair. For many people, things are slipping backward even as the stage is finally set to move forward.
Unfortunately, we simply don’t get to live in the utopian world where the first leg of our collective journey unfolds under cloudless skies. These realities reinforce the critical role that dueling perspectives on progress will play in the weeks and months ahead - and we need to understand all of them. Psychological perceptions will often be at least as important as any facts on the ground. So even when we think we’ve traveled great distances in leaving the past eight years behind us, we are wise to heed the warning on our car’s side-view mirror: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
************
Roy Eidelson is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational and group conflict settings. He is a consulting partner with Cognitive Policy Works, an educational center and consulting firm that provides guidance to the progressive movement. Roy can be reached at roy@eidelsonconsulting.com and welcomes your reactions.
March 10th, 2009
We have received this urgent communication from Wikileaks. Please help if you can:
WIKILEAKS ALERT
Mon Mar 9 05:10:41 GMT 2009
“Murder in Nairobi”
Two Wikileaks-related senior human rights activists have been assassinated.
We ask for your assistance.
On Thursday afternoon, Oscar Kamau Kingara, director of the Kenyan based Oscar legal aid Foundation, and its programme coordinator, John Paul Oulo, were shot at close range in their car less than a mile from President Kibaki’s residence. The two were on their way to a meeting at the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights.
Both had been investigating extrajudicial assassinations by the Kenyan Police. Part of their work forms the basis of the “Cry of Blood”
report Wikileaks released on November 1 last year and subsequent followups, including the UN indictment last month.
Since 2007 the Oscar foundation had documented 6,452 “enforced disappearances” by police and 1,721 extrajudicial killings.
The murders come just two weeks after United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Professor Philip Alston called on on Kenya’s Attorney General and Police Commissioner to be sacked over murders by pollice.
On 18 February 2009, the Oscar Foundation presented its findings for use in a parliamentary debate.
The Oscar Foundation vehicle was blocked by a minibus and a Mitsubishi Pajero vehicle, both of which had been following them along State house road. Several men were in the two vehicles. Two men got out, approached the vehicle of Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu, and shot them through the windows at close range.
According to eyewitnesses, the driver of the minibus was in police uniform whilst the other men were wearing suits. The closest eyewitness to the incident was shot in the leg and later taken away by policemen.
A coalition of civil society organizations released a statement blaming police for the murders.
“These were very decent men who had done more work than anybody in examining police killings,” said Cyprian Nyamwamu, the executive director of the National Convention Executive Council, a non-governmental organization advocating social and economic reform. “I have no doubt that is why they were killed.”
Police said that students from the nearby University of Nairobi moved Oulo’s body into a hostel and one student was shot dead when officers tried to retrieve it.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights have demanded an immediate external investigation into the deaths. The US Ambassador to Kenya has offered the Kenyan government the services of the FBI. The offer has been declined.
Those with intelligence assets in the area, or non-public information on Police Commissioner General Hussien Ali or other suspects, please contact us via wl-kenya@sunshinepress.org
Alternatively help fund our investigation of these murders:
https://secure.wikileaks.org/
If you are in a position to signficantly fund a reward for conviction or apprehension of the assassins and those behind them, contact:
wl-kenya@sunshinepress.org
March 9th, 2009
Talking Points Memo quotes this interesting key passage from a new Wall Street Journal piece on the market woes:
In a report over the weekend, analysts from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said they had expected government intervention to help protect the interests of bondholders at financial institutions. However, they noted that “in the extreme, losses can be so large that the political willpower to continue bailing out banks and insurance companies evaporates, forcing senior creditors to share in losses or producing other unorthodox outcomes.”
Obviously, these folks are playing us for saps to continue supporting their enormous wealth. Any government institution that go along with this plan is complicit.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has another example of how the rich and powerful are reacting to the crisis:
“They are laying off older workers to reduce their pension exposure and their health-plan exposure,” he said. “The young people are being hired in without medical plans and pension plans.”
What is clear, said economist Joel Naroff, is that companies are using the recession to reconfigure their workforces - and that is what they should do.
“There is a popular phrase - ‘don’t waste a perfectly good crisis’,” said Naroff, chief economist with TD Bank N.A. “The idea behind that is you can do things you couldn’t do under a normal set of circumstances. You have the opportunity to make the changes that you really should have made before.”
Companies that cut jobs just to shave expenses will not be prepared when the economy rebounds. The cuts should be strategic to position the companies for the future, said Naroff, of Holland, Bucks County.
If companies are going to announce layoffs of 5,000, he said, it does not give them much more of a publicity problem if they say they will lay off 5,500, with the idea of getting rid of “dead wood” or entire unproductive divisions. “It looks the same to the public.”
“Now they’ve been given free hand to do it,” Naroff said. In a sense, “the economy gives them cover.”
Either there will be mass movements fighting back or living standards will fall precipitously in the next few years as a massive assault on ordinary Americans [and Germans, and Italians, and Chineese, and Korean, and Kenyans ...] is waged.
March 9th, 2009