63 Articles

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Torture Trainers and the American Psychological Association
(7 comments) Recent revelations on US torture and detainee abuse provide further evidence that psychologists were central to developing the abusive tactics. Despite numerous links between torturers and the American Psychological Association, the APA still refuses to take action to break, or even comment upon these links.

Sunday, June 8, 2008
Accountability for Torture At Last?
(10 comments) Recent developments suggest that accountability for US torture may be on the horizon. The Homeland Security Inspector General is reopening an investigation of how Canadian Maher Arar was sent to be tortured in Syria. and nearly 60 Congresspeople have urged appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate Bush administration responsibility for torture. The health professions also need accountability for abetting US torture.

Thursday, May 15, 2008
Involuntary Drugging of Deportees: Part of a Pattern of Misuse of Health Professions
Recent reports that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has been systematically administering psychotropic drugs to immigrants in the process of being deported are part of a larger pattern of misuse of the health professions by the Bush administration.

Saturday, April 26, 2008
Isolation driving Guantanamo detainees insane: Will the American Psychological Association act?
(1 comments) The total isolation for most detainees at Guantanamo is driving many of these detainees insane, the New York Times reports. The American Psychological Association says that use of isolation is unethical, yet it has failed to condemn conditions at Guantanamo or follow its policies and forbid psychologists cooperating with the abusive conditions there.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Involuntary Drugging of US Detainees: A Crisis for the Health Professions
(7 comments) recent reports on involuntary drugging of US detainees adds to the evidence that health professionals are key actors in US detention and interrogation abuses. This involvement poses a crisis for the health professions. We need a Truth and Reconciliation process for these professions to come to terms with US abuses.

Sunday, March 16, 2008
On the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War
(2 comments) Reflections on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.

Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wikileaks responds to Bank Julius Baer lies
(2 comments) In the battle against the totally unprecedented judicial censorship of the entire Wikileaks.org web site, Wikileaks (still available at Wikileaks.be) has issued an editorial rebutting a number of false claims (i.e., lies) contained in press release issued by Bank Julius Baer & Trust, the bank that asked the judge to shut Wikileaks.org down.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Update on Wikileaks censorship. Costly mistake for bank?
(3 comments) Late last week, the whistleblower site wikileaks.org was wiped out by court order requested by lawyers for Bank Julius Baer. This article updates the story, including that the bank was preparing to issue a $1 billion IPO, an offer that maybe scuttled from the torrent of publicity from their lawyer's actions.

Monday, February 18, 2008
US court attacks web freedom; enjoins Wikileaks.org out of existence
(17 comments) The Wikileaks web site has been an invaluable source for releasing formerly secret materials revealing wrongdoing of the powerful. In an unprecedented step, a California court has enjoined them Wikileaks.org, their primary web identity in the US, out of existence in response to a request from a Cayman Islands bank. This attack on internet freedom is a threat to us all.

Monday, February 4, 2008
US Iraq Rules of Engagement leaked; Raises question about Rumsfeld authorizing war crimes
(1 comments) The just leaked Rules of Engagement for the Iraq occupation suggests there may be a documentary record of Defense Secretary authorizations for attacks with potentially significant civilian casualties. Congress should demand access to this record.

Thursday, January 17, 2008
American and California Psychological Associations move to gut bill on interrogations
A major battle is shaping up in California where a coalition is working to remove health providers from participating in military and CIA interrogations. Senator Ridley-Thomas has introduced a resolution that would request the military and CIA to remove all California licenses health providers from involvement in detainee interrogations. Proposed revisions by the American Psychological Association will gut the bill.

Sunday, January 13, 2008
Action Opportunity for California Residents: Get health professionals out of interrogations!
Monday will see an important hearing in the California legislature on a resolution to attempt to stop California licensed health professionals from participating in the interrogation of national security detainees. This bill is a major opportunity to stop health provider collusion with the Bush administration's legally sanctioned torture. California residents are encouraged to support it.

Friday, December 28, 2007
Fallujah, the Information War, and U.S. Propaganda:
A 2006 classified intelligence analysis of the aborted April 2004 Fallujah assault has just been leaked on the Wikileaks site. The document provides insights into the U.S. "information war" and the extent to which "Western reporters" were considered part of that war. It also elucidates the tactics used in the "successful" November 2004 assault. But the document also shows US intelligence blinded by propaganda.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Guantanamo staff trashing web sites and spreading propoganda
Staff at the Guantanamo base have been conducting amateurish propaganda efforts, the Wikileaks web site revealed today. Wikipedia reports that a Guantanamo IP addresss has been used to revise Wikipedia entries and to post self-serving propaganda pieces on web news sites.

Friday, December 7, 2007
Did destroyed CIA tapes show psychologists torturing? Did APA dodge a bullet?
Last night we had news that the CIA, in 2005, destroyed videotapes of the "interrogation", aka, torture, of two al Qaeda detainees. One of these detainees has been identified as Abu Zubaydah. Of special relevance is that Zubaydah was tortured by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. If these tapes had come out, would the American Psychological Association have finally spoken out forcefully against these abuses?

Monday, December 3, 2007
The Facts be Damned! Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Participation in Detainee Interrogations
(1 comments) American Psychological Association President Brehm recently defended her association's policies allowing psychologists to aid the Bush administrations interrogations of enemy detainees from criticism by concerned students and faculty at her campus. Some of her statements i defense of APA policy were at variance with the facts while others were in conflict with fundamental propositions of Brehm's social psychology/

Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Pinky Show interview: Fear, Aggression, & Empire
What can psychoanalysis teach us about how we Americans understand our place in the world? Dr. Stephen Soldz talks with Pinky about narcissism, projection, and an enormous lost opportunity of our post-Cold War era. (

Saturday, November 17, 2007
Leaked Guantanamo Document Confirms Routine Use of Isolation as Psychological Torture. Will APA Protest?
(2 comments) Recently a major 2003 Guantanamo Standard Operating Procedures [SOP] manual was posted on the wikileaks web site. This SOP confirms that all new detainees were subjected to a minimum of four weeks near-isolation to foster detainee dependence on interrogators. Isolation is a highly abusive interrogation technique that causes long-lasting harm. Psychologists were undoubtedly involved in its administration.

Monday, November 5, 2007
American Psychological Association Writes the Administration and Congress Criticizing Torture: Modest Progress
(3 comments) In a recent set of letters to Congress and the Administration, the American Psychological Association has taken a more critical stance towards the Bush regime of torture that has shocked the world over the last several years. While the letters represent an advance in the APA's position, serious problems remain with APA's approach. APA is too tied to the military-intelligence establishment to take a truly ethical position.

Thursday, November 1, 2007
Letter to Senate Intelligence Committee: Psychologists out of Abusive Interrogations
A broad coalition of psychologists sent a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today. The letter expresses their concerns about psychologist involvement in the CIA's "enhanced interrogations" and other abusive interrogations. It requests the Committee investigate the role of psychologists in abuses and take action to protect psychologists and other health providers from involvement in future abuses.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Baiting and killing, one Iraqi at a time
(1 comments) Yesterday the Washington Post reported that American snipers are using weapons to bait Iraqis. They spread various weapons parts around and then killed anyone curious enough about the stuff to pick it up. Juan Cole ponders whether this is a war crime. But it turns out that not just weapons parts are being used to bait Iraqis, but even cameras. As if no innocent Iraqi would pick up a spare camera.

Friday, September 14, 2007
New study: Over one million Iraqis killed by violence since invasion
A new survey by a mainstream British polling firm has estimated that over one million Iraqis have died since the invasion. This provides important independent replication of the findings of a 2006 study, published in the British medical journal Lancet, which estimated 650,000 "excess deaths" since the 2003 invasion. The case is now stronger that many hundreds of thousands have died.

Friday, August 24, 2007
Author Mary Pipher returns award to American Psychological Association
(2 comments) For years psychologists have played a central role in our government's policy of abusive interrogations. . Despite pressure, the American Psychological Association has failed to take decisive action to stop these unethical uses of psychological expertise. Psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Mary Pipher has decided to return her Presidential Citation award from the APA in protest.

Sunday, July 22, 2007
"Enhanced" Interrogation Techniques: The Risk of Criminality
(4 comments) On Friday President Bush issued an Executive Order allowing the CIA to resume its program of "enhanced interrogation techniques", widely condemned as abusive. In response, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First released a summary of their forthcoming report on the criminality of the CIA's "enhanced techniques."

Thursday, July 19, 2007
Psychologists respond to Vanity Fair revelations on psychologists' responsibility for CIA torture
(1 comments) Vanity Fair Tuesday published shocking revelations on the role of psychologists in designing and conducting the CIA's torture regime in the black sites. These techniques then spread to Guantanamo and Iraq. the Coalition for an Ethical APA responds to this report by demanding major reforms in the American Psychological Association.

Friday, June 29, 2007
Torture treatment providers to APA: Its time for action, not words, on torture
(2 comments) Fifty-eight of those who work with torture victims have written an Open Letter to the American Psychological Association protesting the APA's refusal to take action to investigate and stop psychologists' aiding torture and abuse in US detention facilities.

Saturday, June 23, 2007
Response to Colonel Larry James: Letter to the President of the American Psychological Association
A group of psychologists (now numbering over 400) sent a letter to the President of the American Psychological Association protesting the Association's policy allowing psychologists to participate in interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Military psychologist Colonel Larry James objected to statements in our Letter. We here respond to Colonel James' claims.

Monday, June 11, 2007
Life in a CIA torture center
The Council of Europe released last week a report on the CIA's system of secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Contained in that report was a vivid look at life inside these prisons. This description constitutes one of the most detailed views we have of a regime of psychological torture. I have extracted those sections from the larger report.

Thursday, June 7, 2007
Open Letter to the President of the American Psychological Association
(3 comments) An Open Letter to the President of the American Psychological Association was sent by over 40 psychologists protesting the organization's policies allowing psychologist participation in enemy combatant interrogations. A recently declassified Defense Department report demonstrates conclusively that psychologists were central to the development of our country's regime of abusive interrogations.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Defense Department Releases Evidence of Central Role of Psychologists in Guantánamo and Iraq Interrogation Abuse
(2 comments) A recently declassified document demonstrates conclusively the central role that psychologists play in the development of US abusive interrogation strategies. These findings put the lie to the repeated claim of the American Psychological Association that psychologists participating in interrogations help keep those interrogations "safe and ethical."

Sunday, April 29, 2007
Psychologist participation in interrogations at US detention centers: The Moratorium fight goes on
For most of the past year, efforts have been underway in the American Psychological Association to call a Moratorium on psychologist participation in coercive interrogations in America's detention centers. These efforts have been stymied by APA leadership. But efforts by concerned members to change the policy continue.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Is prolonged solitary confinement unconstitutional in America and in the Guantanamo gulag?
(1 comments) Two prisoners who have been in solitary confinement for 12,775 days, 35 years, are suing, claiming that prolonged isolation is unconstitutional. In addition to its implications for our criminal justice system, a positive finding would have implications for psychologists being able to participate in coercive interrogations at Guantanamo and other national security prisons.

Saturday, April 14, 2007
Aid and Comfort for Torturers: Psychology and Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective
Psychologists have a long history of aiding the development of abusive interrogation techniques. Understanding this history helps put psychologists' participation in torture at Guantanamo in context. It also helps to explain the American Psychological Association abetting of this torture.

Thursday, April 5, 2007
Michael Gelles condescends to APA critics
Micheal Gelles, the former Navy psychologist who reported to his superiors of abuses at Guantanamo, including abuses involving psychologists, has written a response to recent critics. The response ignores all the critical human rights issues raised by critics.

Saturday, March 24, 2007
"Whistle-blower" Michael Gelles throws in lot with American Psychological Association on interrogations issue
(2 comments) Michael Gelles, a psychologist and formerly in charge of Naval criminal investigations at Guantanamo, is well known as a one of those who called attention within the Department of Defense, to reported abuses occurring during interrogations at Guantanamo. He now uses that moral authority to support the participation of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo, disregarding the serious human rights issues thus raised.

Friday, March 2, 2007
Is abetting torture a requirement to be an "expert" on "psychological ethcs"?

Wednesday, February 28, 2007
New Perspectives on the Psychology of Evil; Why Good People Do Bad Things
(1 comments)

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Aliens in an Alien Land: Iraq Through the Lens of Soldiers' Memoirs
With the Iraq war and occupation, US troops entered an alien land, one in which they could not feel at home. An examination of the memoirs of some of these troops helps understand their experience, as well as the course of the occupation.

Monday, January 15, 2007
Psychology and the cruelty at Guantánamo
(2 comments) A New York Times letter-writer perceives the essential cruelty of Guantanamo. "Capital punishment is often condemned as barbaric. Destroying human beings from within while keeping their bodies alive is infinitely crueler." Unfortunately, the American Psychological Association remains blind to and abets that destruction of human beings from within.

Monday, January 1, 2007
Screams at 3,000
Mélida Arredondo, who lost her stepson Marine Lcpl Alexander S. Arredondo on August 25, 2004, expresses the feelings of many of the 3,000 families today in her poem, Screams.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Abusive interrogations: A defining difference between psychiatrists and psychologists
In his Presidential address, American Psychiatric Association President Steven Sharfstein identified participation in coercive interrogations as the defining issue distinguishing between psychiatrists and their rivals, psychologists: "If you were ever wondering what makes us different from psychologists, here it is." It is long past time for the American Psychological Association to ban participation in interrogations.

Monday, December 11, 2006
650,000 dead given voice in Congress
Organized by Reps. Kucinich and Paul,Congress today received a briefing on the recent Lancet study estimating that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion and occupation.

Monday, December 4, 2006
The destruction of Jose Padilla
(5 comments) New evidence reveals the barbarous treatment doled out to imprisoned "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla. His treatment is a textbook illustration of the CIA's decades-under-development program of psychological torture.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Letter to the CEO of the American Psychological Association
(5 comments)

Monday, November 27, 2006
Recording street conversation - Another step towards the British Total Surveillance Society
Britain is contemplating another leap toward the Total Surveillance Society with a proposal to install microphones to record "aggressive" street conversation. Integrated with other data, these efforts are leading toward a society in which our every movement and action can be monitored.

Thursday, November 2, 2006
Iraq: Corporate Rats flee as country lurches toward civil war
A few recent ominous reports give a sense of what is really going on in Iraq, as the rats flee the sinking ship and the country lunges into full-scale civil war.

Monday, October 30, 2006
Death in life in Iraq
Two new article shed light upon the death in life that is overtaking Iraq. University professors are overcome with death anxiety. For others, death in life erodes families, community, even the ability to remember and to think.

Thursday, October 26, 2006
The bottled water corporate scam and fantasies of purity and virtue
Bottled water is often no better tasting or safer than tap water. Then why do we buy it? Fantasies of purity and virtue aid the corporate campaign to get us to pay what we could get for free.

Saturday, September 16, 2006
Does McCain realize he was had?
As we witness the amazing spectacle of Washington Post today has an article which suggests that Sen. John McCain may realize that it was a mistake to write the definition of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment [CID] into his Amendment last year.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Protecting the Torturers: Bad Faith and Distortions From the American Psychological Association
(1 comments) The American Psychological Association has gone out on a limb protecting psychologists' participation in abusive behaviors at Guantánamo and elsewhere in America's national security prisons. This article provides additional evidence of the limits to which the Association has gone. Only a full discussion of the links between psychology and the national security state will bring change.

Monday, August 28, 2006
American Medical Association emphasizes interrogation policy differences with APA
The American Medical Association denies claims from the American Psychological association that their positions on members' involvement in interrogations are similar.

Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Psychologists, Guantánamo, and Torture: A Profession Struggles to Save Its Soul
A movement among psychologists is demanding that the American Psychological Association forbid mmbers from participating in Guantanamo interrogations. The APA has pulled out all stops to protect its military ties.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Paranoia, depression, or a world of hope:
We live in a nation dominated by fear. That fear arises from the economic insecurity that permeates our society and from the disowned destructiveness of American society, instead ascribed to our “enemies.” We can either continue to fear, be immobilized in self-attack and hopelessness, or acknowledge our destructiveness, accept the world’s uncertainty, and transform it into a constructive force for creating a better society.

Monday, March 27, 2006
Sending mentally ill soldiers back to Iraq:
The Pentagon is sending “mentally ill” soldiers back to combat in Iraq. In addition to being bad for the soldiers, this policy increases the dangers to Iraqis who are subject to split-second life-or-death decisions by US occupation troops.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006
The Avian Flu Threat is Real
(1 comments) As talk of an avian flu threat has spread, so too have various conspiracy theories, based on the Bush administration record of dishonesty. One recent theory is that the avian flu threat is largely bogus and is being hyped to allow government money to flow to drug companies. This article demonstrates that the threat of an avian flu pandemic is not bogus, and is, indeed, real.

Saturday, March 11, 2006
Toward a Society of Equals
Emotions and metaphoric "frames" play a large role in how political messages are perceived. Currently pervasive frames, based on a metaphor of the polity as family, assume inequality. Can alternate frames based on an ethic of equality be imagined?

Sunday, March 5, 2006
Why Leave Iraq
The Irqi occupation has made life worse and more dangerous for Iraqis. Polls show Iraqis want us out and US troops want to leave. It is time to go.

Monday, February 6, 2006
When Promoting Truth Obscures the Truth:
Raises questions about the Iraq Body Count estimate of civilian deaths in Iraq since the occupation. This estimate must be a radical underestimate, a fact obscured by IBC.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Narcissism, the public, and the President
(5 comments) President Bush exhibits many narcissistic traits, which may help understand both his strengths and his weaknesses.

Thursday, December 29, 2005
The Sex Lives and Sexual Frustrations of US troops in Iraq
(1 comments) Over 100,000 young adult US troops are in Iraq for long tours of duty. Yet, virtually nothing is known about their sex lives while there. This lack of knowledge interferes with a full accounting of the costs of the occupation to Iraqis and to the occupation troops themselves.

Saturday, December 24, 2005
The 1914 Christmas Truce and the Possibility of Peace
The Christmas truce of 1914 has been brought to screen, proving as occasion to mediate on the psychological requirements for peace.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Total surveillance state takes giant leap in Britain
Britain is constructing a system of surveillance cameras that will be able to record and store for years every trip taken by every driver. This step toward the total surveillance state is unwise in light of governments’ habitual tendency to abuse whatever tools are available to them.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Is prejudice a mental illness?
Certain mental health professionals are attempting to get extreme prejudice accepted as a diagnosable mental disorder. While these efforts may be satisfying to the victims and opponents of bigotry, they are intellectually questionable and pragmatically dangerous.