Guantanamo Prisoners Protest on 10th Anniversary of US Gulag

A report from Democracy Now on a protest and hunger strike by prisoners at Guantánamo on this 10th anniversary of the opening of the detention center.


Other stories and reports about Guantánamo are widely available on this depressing anniversary, including:

"It was a sunny day" - an article by Jason Leopold at Truthout, who interviews former Guantánamo guard Brandon Neely on his experiences in the early days of the camp's opening.

Live From Guantánamo - Truthout op-ed by Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Staff Attorney, Wells Dixon, who is currently in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba visiting one of his clients.

“Close Guantánamo” Campaign and Website Launches: Retired Military Personnel, Lawyers Call for the Closure of Guantánamo After 10 Years - Article by Andy Worthington, who has reported more on Guantánamo than just about anyone else.

What's Ahead for Guantanamo Camps in New Decade? - by McClatchy reporter Carol Rosenberg, who has covered Guantanamo since the detention center's opening

This Gitmo Anniversary Needs to Be about Bagram, Too - by blogger Marcy Wheeler, who reminds us that the fate of Guantanamo is inextricably tied to other US detention sites where indefinite detention has become the new normal.

Guantanamo Bay: A Wound We Won't Let Heal - article by Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic, chronicling the story of one of the prisoners, Mustafa Ait Idr. (I wrote about the water torture inflicted on Idr at Guantanamo in an article at Truthout last August.)

The Guantánamo facility at 10: an assault on our constitutional government - an op-ed by Todd E. Pierce at the National Law Journal

“None of these cleared [Gitmo] prisoners is likely to leave any time soon..." - by Gotta Laff at The Political Carnival, highlighting a LA Times op-ed on the case of Guantanamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari (see also the Facebook page, "Free Fayiz and Fawzi")

An Innocent Man in Guantanamo - an ACLU podcast interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, who spent over 7 years without charges or trial in the Guantanamo hell. (See also ACLU's new webpage, Close Gitmo.)

Shut Down Guantánamo on its 10th Anniversary! - Center for Constitutional Rights, who was in the forefront in providing legal representation to Guantanamo prisoners, has a webpage up with news and actions, meeting, etc.

Guantanamo Remembered - the UK charity, Reprieve, which has also been instrumental in providing legal representation to Guantanamo prisoners, has posted videos of former Guantanamo detainees speaking about their memories of those still imprisoned there, like the last British man held there, Shaker Aamer, who has never been charged with an offense, and who was tortured at Bagram and Guantanamo. (The video is embedded for viewing below.)



See also the UK schedule of events surrounding the 10th anniversary at the Cageprisoners website.

Cyptome.org has also posted a number of photos of Guantanamo's detention facilities in a nod to the 10th anniversary.

And this late addition (h/t Jason Leopold), Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, "The Great Gitmo Blackout":

In the foreign press they are saying that the camp “weighs heavily on America’s conscience” and that “the shame of Guantanamo remains.” But most Americans are experiencing the anniversary without much conscience or shame; just with the same sense of inevitability and invisibility that has pervaded the entire 10-year existence of the camp itself: inevitability in that we somehow believe the camp was truly necessary and nobody ever really expects the conflict to be resolved; and invisibility in that nobody really knows what’s happening there, or why....

It’s hard to say anything new about 10 full years of Guantanamo, beyond the fact that most of what we wrote two, four, and seven years ago still holds mostly true. But given that Americans have an increasingly hard time thinking about the camp, and the rest of the world can think about little else, perhaps we can agree that pretending it isn’t there probably isn’t the answer.

"One Killer Killing Another": Allan Nairn on the Bin Laden Hit

From Democracy Now!, some necessary and important commentary from journalist Allan Nairn on what the death of Osama bin Laden means, and doesn't mean.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Allan Nairn into this conversation. Your response to the news and what you think this could mean? Could this mean the end of the U.S. war with Afghanistan?

ALLAN NAIRN: I don’t think it will. It should. It definitely should be an occasion for rethinking everything on a much bigger scale than Afghanistan.

The first thing that struck me was seeing the Americans out in the streets celebrating outside the White House, outside the old World Trade Center site, people cheering, people exultant. And while some of that may come from bloodlust, I think a lot of it comes from a sense of justice. People like justice. They want to see it. And in this case, I think many people have the feeling, well, he got what he deserved. This was a man who had massacred civilians; he got what he deserved. And there’s a lot of truth to that. But if we recognize that someone who is willing to kill civilians en masse, someone who is willing to send young people out with weapons and bombs to, as President Obama put it, see to it that a family doesn’t have a loved one sitting at the dinner table anymore, see to it that a child and a parent never meet again, if we say that someone like that deserves to die, then we have to follow through on that idea, and we have to recognize, OK, if these things really are so enormous, we have to stop them. Killing bin Laden does not stop them. Bin Laden is dead, but the world is still governed by bin Ladens. People cheer because they thought they saw justice, but this was not justice delivered by—a kind of rough justice delivered by victims. This was one killer killing another, a big killer, the United States government, killing another, someone who’s actually a smaller one, bin Laden. And the bin Laden doctrine that, to take out the CIA office that was at the World Trade Center, it’s OK to blow up the whole World Trade Center, to teach Americans a lesson, it’s OK to slaughter thousands of Americans—that doctrine lives on in the American White House, in the American Pentagon. You know, every day—and in seats of authority all over the world.

Every day, the U.S., directly with its own forces, or indirectly through its proxy forces, its clients, is killing, at a minimum, dozens of people. I mean, just since Obama came in, in the one limited area of drone strikes in Pakistan, something like 1,900 have been killed just under Obama. And that started decades before 9/11. We have to stop these people, these powerful people like Obama, like Bush, like those who run the Pentagon, and who think it’s OK to take civilian life. And it doesn’t seem that they can be stopped by normal, routine politics, because under the American system, as in most other systems, people don’t even know this is happening. People know the face of bin Laden. They know the evil deeds that he’s done. They see that he is dead, and they say, "Oh, great, we killed bin Laden." But they don’t see the other 20, 30, 50, 100 people who the U.S. killed that day, many of them children, many of them civilians. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be out in the street cheering about those deaths.

We’ve got to stop this practice. And Americans aren’t doing it. Egyptians, Tunisians are doing their part. They’ve risen up against the repression they face. I think we need an American uprising, if we’re to put a stop to this kind of killing of innocent people. And we need an American Romero, someone like Archbishop Romero of Salvador, who, in the face of massacres, of daily massacres of what in the end was more than 70,000 Salvadorans, stood up and said to the army of his country, "Stop the repression. Defy your orders to kill, because there’s a higher principle." About a little more than a week ago, I was in El Salvador and visited Romero’s old home, which I had never been to before, and saw that on his bookshelf he had Why Not the Best?, a campaign book by Jimmy Carter, which he had apparently been reading. Romero wrote to Jimmy Carter in his capacity as the archbishop in 1980, asking Carter to stop supporting the Salvadoran military that was slaughtering his people. And from what I know of Romero, he probably really believed that Carter would respond. He didn’t. Carter kept sending the aid. And within weeks, Romero himself was assassinated by death squad, that had originated from U.S. backing. Writing letters didn’t work in that case. And it doesn’t work here. You know, we’ve got to put a stop to this. Bin Laden is dead. And bin-Ladenism, if you want to call it that, should die also.

Video stream of the interview here

"The United States of America Has Gone Mad"

On September 20, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now presented a video of John Le Carré reading from his 2003 essay on 9/11 and its disastrous political aftermath, including the invasion of Iraq.

From the Le Carré text (H/T Barry Eisler):

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost—because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people—in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall—just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist. [...]

What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us—to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

By the by, if you have not read Le Carré's last novel, A Most Wanted Man, you are missing one of the most amazing books of our time, akin to Eisler's Inside Out, two novels that expose the underlying realities of our time. Both books are thoroughly enjoyable, and yet also manage to condemn the use of torture for the modern barbarity that it is.

Democracy Now! Raw Footage of Israel Assault on Relief Ship - [Graphic]

Yesterday, Democracy Now! unveiled new, exclusive, unedited footage of the results of the Israeli assault on the Gaza relief ship, the Mavi Marmara. The following video also includes an interview of Iara Lee, filmmaker and director of the Cultures of Resistance network by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Much thanks to Goodman and company for covering this important news.



Click here to see the full report at Democracy Now's website, including full transcript from the show.

AMY GOODMAN: Describe that, because this is the footage, as the narrative was laid out over the days, we of course did not see, although the Israeli military has all of it in their possession. This footage that you have shows one person after another being dragged out and attempts at treating them. Describe the injuries that you saw.

IARA LEE: As I said, I was going up and down, just trying to get an overview and making sure some of the people I knew were OK. And, you know, like, it was very chaotic. I just know that when they call us like a hate boat, this is insane, because obviously we were there to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, and they were the ones using live ammunition, to the point when they did the autopsy, the people who are found dead, they had like thirty bullets. So, can we say the Israeli navy and the commandos, they came to play ball with us? No, they came to kill. They wanted to take over the ship. And we were actually—according to some research, the ship was even fleeing, because we didn’t want this kind of like heavy confrontation. But they came in the middle of international waters and overpowered us....

Yes, I think the miscalculation was that the Israelis thought, by jamming our satellite system, the world would not have any access to information. And they didn’t know that we had a backup system that was able to transmit live some of the events. And obviously it was dark in the middle of the ocean, so they thought they had it all taken care, as far as like no information would come out. They would be the only ones holding the information, because they were obviously filming. And we were hundreds of people, so some of us did manage to get, you know, photographs and video footage out. And today we are showing raw, uncensored footage, and everybody can take the clue. And we’ll make it available to the world for investigations.

U.S. Funding of the... Taliban?!

From a new Democracy Now! article by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, posted over at Truthout:

In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack....

“How the US Funds the Taliban” is the cover story of the latest issue of The Nation magazine.

Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack. The practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. US military officials in Kabul told Roston that a minimum of ten percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts consists of payments to the Taliban.

Well, well, well. Just when I thought the inanity and corruption of the U.S. adventure in Afghanistan couldn't get any weirder... I thought the scandal about Karzai's heroin-kingpin brother had already topped it all. Then there was the excellent article by Jane Mayer on the Predator assassinations in the Ag-Pak war. Now it's U.S. funding of the Taliban. Oh boy, no wonder Obama reportedly doesn't like any of the options presented on Afghanistan.

How about this, President Obama? Withdraw now.

And, by the way, as long as I've brought up the Predator issue, Mayer is now reporting that:

Philip Alston, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s investigator on extrajudicial executions, issued a formal warning to the Obama Administration, demanding proof that the C.I.A. program doesn’t violate international law:

While there may be circumstances in which the use of such techniques is consistent with applicable international law, this can only be determined in light of information about the legal basis on which particular individuals have been targeted, the measures taken to ensure conformity with the international humanitarian law principles of discrimination, proportionality, necessity and precaution, and the steps taken retrospectively to assess compliance in practice.

Police State Tactics at Pittsburgh G20 Protests

Essential reporting from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! Apparently, the use of sound cannon is the first reported usage in the United States.

Nearly 200 Arrested as Police Unleash Tear Gas, Sound Cannons at G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh

As leaders of the world’s richest nations gathered in Pittsburgh for the G-20 summit, thousands took to the streets in protest amidst a heavy police crackdown. Heavily armed riot police were out in force and used tear gas, stun grenades, smoke canisters and sound cannons, which direct extremely loud shrill sounds. Democracy Now! producer Steve Martinez files a report from the streets of Pittsburgh.

Watch the whole video report at Democracy Now!

More on PHR's Report "Aiding Torture," Steven Reisner on Democracy Now!

Psychologist Steven Reisner, who co-wrote Physicians for Human Rights' (PHR) new examination of Bush-era torture on the complicity of medical professionals and psychologists in planning and implementing and monitoring the abuse, was interviewed today on Amy Goodman's show, Democracy Now! The following is a transcript of the interview. (To download PHR's report, click on the title: Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 Inspector General’s Report, can be downloaded at through this link.)

AMY GOODMAN: A new report by Physicians for Human Rights has found that physicians and psychologists played a greater role than previously known in designing, implementing and legitimizing the Bush administration’s torture program.

A team of doctors analyzed the details of the CIA’s Inspector General report on prisoner interrogation that the Justice Department released last week. Among other revelations, the report detailed how medical professionals collected data on the reaction of prisoners to interrogation methods in order to help the CIA assess and refine the use of waterboarding and other techniques. Physicians for Human Rights found this data collection and analysis, quote, “may amount to human experimentation” and calls for further investigation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The group is calling for health professionals who have violated ethical standards or the law to be held accountable through criminal prosecution, loss of license and loss of professional society membership.

Dr. Steven Reisner is the co-author of the report, titled “Aiding Torture.” Dr. Reisner is the adviser on psychological ethics for Physicians for Human Rights. He’s also an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and a clinical assistant professor at NYU.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Thank you for having me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Summarize your findings of that report.

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, what we found is clear evidence of the role of health professionals in every aspect of the Bush administration’s torture program, from devising the program to implementing the program and to monitoring the program in a way attempting to justify it according to the Bush administration Justice Department’s narrow reading of the laws against torture. The Bush administration argued that if it doesn’t cause organ failure or death or prolonged psychological harm, it’s not torture, and therefore health professionals were present at every moment during these torture sessions to ostensibly validate that the prisoner wasn’t about to die or have organ failure.

AMY GOODMAN: Human experimentation?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, what happened is that the Office of Medical Services of the CIA didn’t have any data to go on to assess how dangerous to the life of the prisoner waterboarding actually was. So what they decided to do, according to the report, is to gather data through each session of the waterboarding in order to better assess how you implement waterboarding in the future. So they asked for data on the amount of water that was issued, how frequently the sessions were, whether there was a seal, you know, a nasal seal, making sure the water entered the cavity or didn’t enter the cavity, how many sessions per day, etc., etc. So, gathering of data in order to improve the functioning of a technique seems to us to come very close to, if not crossing the line, of experimentation on prisoners.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And presumably that data was then collected into scientific reports, right, that exist somewhere?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, presumably. We don’t have any documentation of that at this point, but that’s why Physicians for Human Rights is calling for a thorough investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: The eleven techniques, Dr. Reisner?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: The eleven techniques—well, the main thing about that is that we’ve discovered that there were techniques that we didn’t know about before: diapering—

AMY GOODMAN: What’s diapering for?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Diapering is for humiliation. You put a diaper on the detainee, and especially with—they combine that with a purely liquid diet, so that the detainee was likely to lose control of his bowels and experience this terrible regressive humiliation. The aim of all of these techniques primarily was psychological regression.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Reisner, can you put this in the context of what’s happening at the American Psychological Association? I mean, we’ve had you on a number of times. You ran for president of the APA. You didn’t win, though you got the most nominating votes for your candidacy. And you’ve led this movement, along with a few other psychologists, supported by thousands within the APA, to challenge its allowing psychologists to participate in coercive interrogations. You just came out of a meeting in Canada, the APA’s annual meeting. What has come of this movement?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, the protest against the APA’s position has been pretty widespread. And the APA has been claiming that they’re against torture, just like the Bush administration claims that it’s against torture. But when it comes to actually putting teeth into their proposals, into their policy, they have yet to implement their own policy.

We got the—we forwarded a referendum. The APA membership voted overwhelmingly to keep psychologists out of environments that violate Geneva Conventions or the UN Convention Against Torture. That’s APA policy.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, has stated, and wrote a letter to the president of the APA, that Guantanamo still violates the Geneva Conventions and violates the UN Convention Against Torture, but the APA continues to refuse to implement its own referendum policy and ask for the withdrawal of psychologists from that site—at that site and other similar sites.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And have any of the—I assume that the report did not identify any of the medical professionals who participated, but have any of the medical professionals who participated in these programs been identified or come forward at all?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: Well, a number of them have been identified. The two psychologists that created the CIA’s torture program, oversaw it, implemented the waterboarding with a number of high-value detainees, Mitchell and Jessen, these were private contractors who had their own corporation. On the board of that corporation was a former president of the American Psychological Association. The Obama administration has terminated their contract, but so far there have been no ethical investigations. There have been no conclusions drawn for any of the psychologists or health professionals that were involved.

AMY GOODMAN: In your report with Physicians for Human Rights, the group is calling for health professionals who have violated ethical standards or the law to be held accountable through criminal prosecution, loss of license and loss of professional society membership. Do you see that happening right now?

DR. STEVEN REISNER: I don’t see it actually yet happening. And we’ve been pushing state licensing boards. We’ve been pushing the professional associations. And the way to really hold the professional associations to their own standards is to see whether they successfully investigate the ethical violations of their members. And so far, they have not.

AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Dr. Steven Reisner, co-author of the report “Aiding Torture,” adviser on psychological ethics for Physicians for Human Rights, an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and a clinical assistant professor at New York University.

Charges Dropped Against Democracy Now! Journalists

Good news from a press release at Democracy Now!

The St. Paul City Attorney’s office announced Friday it will not prosecute Democracy Now! journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman also issued a statement Friday that “the city will decline to prosecute misdemeanor charges for presence at an unlawful assembly for journalists arrested during the Republican National Convention.”

Both announcements come two weeks after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention where over 40 journalists were arrested while reporting on protests taking place outside the convention center.

Upon learning of the news, Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman said, “It’s good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public’s right to know what is happening on their streets. There needs to be a full investigation of law enforcement activities during the convention.”

Goodman was arrested while asking police to release Kouddous and Salazar who had been violently arrested while reporting on street demonstrations. After being handcuffed and pushed to the ground, Goodman reiterated that she was was a credentialed reporter. Secret Service then ripped the credential from around her neck.

During demonstrations on the first day of the convention police used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were arrested, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.

John Lundquist, attorney for the Democracy Now! journalists, said, “The most notable lapse by law enforcement during the RNC was the record-breaking number of journalists indiscriminately arrested and detained for doing nothing more than performing in the best tradition of reporters who gather the news.”

In the weeks after the journalist arrests, tens of thousands of members of the public contacted St. Paul officials to protest the unlawful arrests of working journalists. Goodman said, “We were deeply moved by the outpouring of support. We thank everyone who called and wrote first to have us freed and then to have the charges dropped. We thank everyone who stood up for press freedom and the First Amendment.”

Democracy Now! Appeals for $$ after RNC Dragnet Arrests

One of America's premier progressive journalists, Amy Goodman, was arrested along with other members of her Democracy Now! crew during the draconian arrests made by the St. Paul police during the recent Republican National Convention. Altogether 818 people were arrested, including the DN journalists and members of The Real Network News. Goodman and her colleagues are appealing for money to help them battle their legal problems and keep their show on the air.

It may sound redundant to say this, but government repression is meant to be repressive. The consequences don't end after the front page headlines are forgotten, but bear down on real human beings with legal bills, financial worries, sponsor jitters, fearfulness for future, career, and family, and a host of other ways in which government repression works to lock down and seal off dissent.

Defending oneself takes money. Putting on a great news program and managing a fantastic website also takes cash. (And if you don't regularly visit the Democracy Now! site, you can bookmark it now, and make it a regular stop.) So read DN!'s appeal, and show they some support. They are there for you; we should be there for them.

After Wrongful RNC Arrests, Democracy Now! Vows to Continue Reporting, Unabated and Unembedded

We need your support.

We hope you had a chance to tune in to Democracy Now!'s extended coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions over the past two weeks. We grilled politicians with tough questions and exposed the backroom corporate suites. We deployed our reporters into the protest-filled streets to broadcast voices of the silenced majority.

And, last week, we came head to head with the $50 million RNC security operation.

This week's arrests of journalists including Democracy Now!'s own Amy Goodman [see video clip above], Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar are chilling examples of how police targeted journalists during the RNC in St. Paul. As you probably know, Amy has been charged with a misdemeanor for intervening to stop the wrongful arrests of her colleagues who face pending felony charges for simply carrying out their journalistic duties.

The world watched as the Twin Cities Police trampled the first amendment. The YouTube video of Amy's arrest has been viewed more than 750,000 times. It was the most watched YouTube video on Tuesday. The story of journalist arrests and charges was covered by media outlets from the LA Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Guardian, Philadelphia Daily News, Denver Post, Associated Press, Editor & Publisher, Salon.com, as well as by local and public radio stations, and by political and news bloggers around the world.

At this time when reporters are being targeted, we rely on your support to continue our unembedded, independent journalism. More than ever, you are the key to protecting our first amendment right to a free and independent press.

As an ally of independent media, you know that government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. We know that too. That's why we refused to let these significant disruptions prevent us from bringing you the kind of the news and information that you expect from Democracy Now! From the streets to the suites to the convention floor, we worked around the clock to broadcast independent, unembedded reporting you can't find anywhere else.

The public has cried out against the flagrant disregard for press freedom demonstrated by Twin Cities police. Thanks to many of you, St. Paul officials have received thousands of email messages and phone calls demanding that they drop all pending and current charges. Our own site received over one million hits this week as people sought out information they could trust. On Friday morning, Freepress.net delivered over 60,000 signatures to local officials demanding the charges be dropped.

Now, we ask for your financial support. After all, donations from thousands of committed viewers and listeners like you are what keeps us independent. Please help keep this critical program on the air. Without you, there would be no Democracy Now!.

Thank you for your continued support.

Democracy Now!

PS - Please forward this appeal to anyone you know who believes democracy depends on a vibrant and free press.

Donate to Democracy Now!
Video of DN! Arrests & Action Alert
Media Coverage of Journalist Arrests at RNC

Protest Arrests of Democracy Now! Journalists Covering Republican Convention

Following the arrests yesterday of noted journalist Amy Goodman and two of her producers from Democracy Now! while they were covering the arrests of demonstrators at the Republican National Convention, DN has released an action call for letters and emails to prosecutors in charge. (H/T to MS at Daily Kos)

I strongly urge my readers to write or contact the individuals named in the press release and call for an immediate dropping of all charges against those arrested.

Today it is critical that you make your voice heard in the Ramsey County Attorney and St. Paul City Attorney offices. Demand that they drop all pending and current charges against journalists arrested while reporting on protests outside the Republican National Conventions.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s office is in the process of deciding whether or not to press felony P.C. (probable cause) riot charges against Democracy Now! Producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Please contact Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner by all means possible to demand that her office not press charges against Kouddous and Salazar.

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner
RCA at co.ramsey.mn.us (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org)
651-266-3222

Susan Gaertner for Governor
info at susangaertner.com (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org)
(612) 978-8625
(612)804-6156

The St. Paul City Attorney’s office has already charged Amy Goodman with misdemeanor obstruction of a legal process and interference with a peace officer. Contact St. Paul City Attorney John Choi by all means possible to demand that the charges against Goodman be dropped immediately.

St. Paul City Attorney John Choi
john.choi at ci.stpaul.mn.us (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org) (651) 266-8710

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.

IMPORTANT

Be sure to cc: dropthecharges@democracynow.org on all emails so that our team can deliver print outs of your messages to the St. Paul City Attorney and Ramsey County Attorney offices.

The arrest of Nicole Salazar
(Thanks YouTube, and H/T to Dave1942 at Daily Kos)

For those wishing to protest the preemptive arrests made via police invasions of homes in St. Paul, as reported yesterday, the following contacts are via Michael Gass at Docudharma:

Ramsey County contact info:

email: ContactRamseyCounty@co.ramsey.mn.us
tel #: 651-266-8500

Here is who needs to be contacted:

Ramsey County Manager: David J. Twa
Email: david.twa@co.ramsey.mn.us
Phone: 651-266-8000
Fax: 651-266-8039

U.S. Unfolds Gestapo-like Raids at GOP Convention

Amy Goodman reported from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), site of the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2008, Labor Day:

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than a half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of preemptive raids before the Republican convention. The coordinated searches were led by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher but conducted in coordination with federal agencies....

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the FBI is at least one of the "federal agencies" acting in concert with the Minneapolis/St. Paul police departments. A professor at the University of Minnesota has snapped a photo of FBI presence at one of the raids. Many of these police gestapo actions involved two dozen or more riot police entering private homes with guns drawn, handcuffing the residents, and rifling through the house to search computers, and political literature.

Amy Goodman's article continues:

The raids and detentions have targeted activists planning to protest the Republican National Convention, as well as journalists and videographers documenting police actions at protests. Groups directly affected by the raids include Food Not Bombs, the RNC Welcoming Committee, I-Witness Video and Communities United Against Police Brutality.

By late afternoon, Goodman herself was under arrest in St. Paul, and reports were coming in that rubber bullets and tear gas were being used on a crowd at the SEIU Take Back Labor Day concert. The victims are said to include women and children. Meanwhile, a number of those arrested preemptively remain in jail. Bruce Nestor Nestor from the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild explains how the preventative detentions were organized:

The raids were carried out by [Ramsey County] Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who had been arguing for months that there needed to be a stronger law enforcement response, and he was being told that wasn’t necessary. And so, he sent his officers in, after doing intelligence gathering and infiltrating these groups.

And then, really what he did is he took common household items that you would find in any home in Minnesota—a hatchet, rope, glass bottles and rags—attached the label “anarchist” to the people who are living in the homes, and then raise this public fear that the anarchists were threatening violence, public disorder. But really, it’s taking a common household item, something you’d find anywhere, calling it an edged weapon and then attacking people for their political beliefs, that then is used to generate this public fear and keep activists detained...

Both the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality have filed a motion with Judge Mark Wernick asking for "injunctive relief to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.”

Domestic Spying is a Danger to Democracy

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has detailed the role of domestic spying and the use of informants in the run up to the police assaults on demonstrators' homes:

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing....

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone.

The police actions in the Twin Cities follow the penning of protesters in Denver at the Democratic Party convention, and the resulting mass arrests and pepper spraying of demonstrators there. From Indymedia:

As the Democratic Party listened to speeches inside the Pepsi Center on the opening day of the convention, a few hundred protesters had gathered to march. The police arrived in riot gear, surrounded the protesters, blocking them in and firing pepper spray into the crowd. Some protesters tried to flee across the park, but they were met by dozens of police officers who boxed them in there, and nearly a hundred people were arrested.

The Denver police actions targeted not only leftists and other anti-capitalist protesters, but included ABC producer Asa Eslocker, seized for, as the Glenn Garvin at the Miami-Herald put it, "the crime of taking pictures of big-ticket Democratic Party donors."

Eslocker's camera crew was on a sidewalk outside Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, shooting video for a series of reports on the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention to air on ABC World News. The hotel told Eslocker to beat it; when he didn't, the cops handcuffed and hauled him off to the slam where he was charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order -- taking pictures of rich plutocrats evidently being against the law in Denver.

From Infomercial to Police State

The preemptive attacks against organizers of protests is a new tactic by the FBI and its police lackeys, upping what was already a serious escalation of repressive measures against lawful protest and demonstration. To put it plainly, they are, as Glenn Greenwald noted, "redolent of the worst tactics of a police state."

I would put it even more finely, they are the actions of a police state in ovo, or in its embryonic, beginning stages. This implies that such actions are not an aberration, but the initiation of sharper era of government repression. The St. Paul raids, as the arrests at the Democratic Convention in Denver, were meant to spike any large scale demonstrations against the two political parties that brought the world a war in Iraq that has killed over 600,000 Iraqis, over 4,000 U.S. dead, and over two million refugees.

One wonders if the raids aren't only meant to quell political protest, but also hide the fact that these giant, expensive party conventions are nothing more now than ersatz infomercials for the two political parties. The mini-drama over the roll call vote for the Democratic presidential nomination -- whether it would include the votes for Hillary Clinton, or not -- played out on the canvas of profound national historical ignorance.

Before 1980, most national conventions featured some kind of battle over a party's nomination, including a roll call of votes. Today, a banal totalitarianism of schmaltzy theme music and branded nominee roll out has replaced the rough-and-tumble of an earlier day of U.S. national party politics. But this is a banality backed by the policeman's truncheon and the informer's sinister ratting out. It is not banality, but the image of blandness in service of a deadly reality.

The reality behind the conventions is revealed in the white phosphorus-torched bodies of Fallujah, the tortured ghost prisoners of Baghram and Abu Ghraib, the now walled-off neighborhoods of Baghdad, and the decaying superstructure of America proper.

It is also revealed by the choice for GOP Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. With nothing to recommend her but her far-right wing credentials -- she opposes abortion for the raped or the victim of incest, she advocates teaching creationism, and, of course, she is for oil drilling in the disputed ANWAR territory in Alaska (while opposing federal protections for polar bears). The Palin nomination clearly shows it doesn't matter who is president, as the ruling powers in Langley, at the Pentagon, and at the board tables of America's energy, finance, and war-making industries, call the shots in the former land of the free.

A small crew of would-be protesters planning not insurrection, but to march with signs and chants against war, globalization, or whatever issue they felt important, were too threatening to the potentates running the United States, so they would have to be tear gassed, pepper gassed, penned in, rounded up and arrested, and finally, their homes invaded to prevent any protest from even taking place.

The simulacrum of democracy in America is now as fragile as the make-up on an aging dowager's face. Even a smile of irony could break the mask of placid self-assurance and smugness that has settled upon U.S. politics. Hundreds arrested at the conventions, and no protest from Barack Obama, or from supposed left-wing Democrats like Kucinich. To hope a Republican politician would speak up would be to invoke a science fiction world.

Hope Talk, War Talk

The war talk about Georgia and Russia, with its manifold lies and posturing, almost guarantees that aggressive U.S. foreign policy will continue, as Obama talks about escalating the Afghan war, and meanwhile, Cheney readies another trip to new NATO would-be vassal states, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine. The "war on terror" means a war on political dissent at home.

A lot of people are putting hope in the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. It is clear that he is not simply a man to be manipulated, as was George W. Bush, or his purported successor, John McCain (and his new running mate, Palin). But everything so far points to a Obama presidency that would try and effect some reforms at home, while engaging U.S. allies abroad to support the American imperial impulse abroad. The more aggressive the latter campaign, the more important quelling protest at home will become. Of course, the ruling powers would prefer a compliant puppet from the GOP ticket, but some within those same ruling circles would prefer someone smart, who has his or her pulse on the population, who wouldn't let the hubris of the rich and powerful go unchecked, and hurdle the U.S. down a reckless road. That's a good way to lose power, as French historians well know.

Those famous clips showing the police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 -- in a city and state run by Democrats, during the presidential administration of yet another Democrat, Lyndon Johnson -- demonstrate that state repression is not the monopoly of one party alone.

All must demand the freeing of those arrested in Denver and St. Paul, and an immediate investigation into who ordered the police abuse.

UPDATE, 9:45pm:

The Washington Post is reporting that after three hours in policy custody Amy Goodman was charged with a misdemeanor and released. Her two Democracy Now! producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, are still being held. Both are said to have been injured. Goodman is quoted:

"I was down on the convention floor interviewing delegates when I heard that two of our producers had been arrested," said Goodman. "I ran down to Jackson and 7th Street, where the police had moved in"....

"They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter."

Democracy Now has published the following appeal, evidently prior to Goodman's release:

Ramsey County Sherrif Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

H/T to Jessical and feline at Docudharma.

U.S. Secret Prison Ships Hold Untold Number of Detainees

The UK Guardian is reporting the United States is holding hundreds of detainees from its international wars on at least 17 "floating prisons" in different harbors around the world. The detainees are interrogated, and then many of them sent via extraordinary rendition to other countries for further interrogation and torture.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.

According to Reprieve's legal director, Clive Stafford Smith, the U.S. admits to holding 26,000 people without trial in various secret prisons, and Smith believes "up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001."

Smith was interviewed on May 19 by Amy Goodman at Democracy Now, and had more to say about the prison ship program (thanks to ask at Daily Kos).

And we’ve identified thirty-two prison ships, sort of prison hulks you used to read about in Victorian England, which have been converted to hold prisoners, and we’ve got pictures of them in Lisbon Harbor, for example. And these are holding prisoners around the world, as well. And there’s a bunch of proxy prisons -- Morocco, Egypt and Jordan -- where this stuff is going on. And this is a huge concern, because the world focus is on Guantanamo Bay, which really is a diversionary tactic in the whole war of terror or war on terror, whatever you’d like to call it. And actually, most of these people who have been severed from their legal rights are in these other secret prisons around the world. [bold added for emphasis]

While there may be more detainees held in other secret prisons, or Iraqi and Afghani jails and U.S. military and CIA black site prisons, the idea of prisoners held in small holds and cells for an indefinite time, out of sight of land or hope, conjures memories of tryanny that predate the democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century. Prison ships harken back to the days of the British deportations of convicts to America and Australia, and even earlier, to the slave ships which transported the kidnapped and sold Africans into what was supposed to be eternal servitude. An article at Newsday describes the "wretched prison ships" of the American Revolutionary War (h/t to Edger at Docudharma for this):

More Americans died in British prison ships in New York Harbor than in all the battles of the Revolutionary War.

There were at least 16 of these floating prisons anchored in Wallabout Bay on the East River for most of the war, and they were sinkholes of filth, vermin, infectious disease and despair....

Few aspects of the war were documented as well as life on the prison ships, presumably because the experience, for those who survived, was forever imprinted in their memories.... In 1778, Robert Sheffield of Stonington, Conn., escaped one of these ships, and told his story to the Connecticut Gazette. He was one of 350 men jammed in a small compartment belowdecks.

"Their sickly countenances and ghastly looks were truly horrible," the newspaper wrote on July 10, without identifying the ship. "Some swearing and blaspheming; some crying, praying, and wringing their hands, and stalking about like ghosts; others delirious, raving, and storming; some groaning and dying -- all panting for breath; some dead and corrupting -- air so foul at times that a lamp could not be kept burning, by reason of which the boys were not missed till they had been dead ten days."

In George Bush and Nancy Pelosi's America, we know less about the crimes done in our name than your average American or European knew about the atrocities of their day. Outstanding blogger GreyHawk has an essay just out that shows that news about the prison ships has been leaking out, without making much of a stir, for years.

So, now we will have to add secret prison ships to what Reprieve at their website calls the "global matrix of CIA torture flights and secret prisons scattered from Poland to Afghanistan."

Soon, I will be writing a rather lenghty piece about the history and current U.S. policy of targeted assassination: torture, assassination, aggressive invasion and occupation of other countries, disputed elections, out-of-control war profiteering and an oil industry raping the economy without any governmental restraints. This nation is sliding into a totalitarian nightmare. While the population is diverted by the entertainment of the mainstream election, the worst crimes are taking place, and if the many are ignorant or indolent today, the consequences tomorrow will be unable to escape.

The Empire Strikes Back: APA Tops Lash Out at Anti-Torture Opponents

While few may be aware of it, the battle to keep Bush's torture camps and "black sites" operational continues in listservs and little-known websites and state psychological association meeting rooms. The situation is heating up, fueled by charges of slander, corrupt practices, and accusations and denials -- all under the looming shadow of Senator Levin's pending Senate hearings on psychologists and torture, due this fall.

There are two plot lines, for those trying to understand what's happening:

1) Military psychologists who work for the Pentagon's Survival, Evasion, Rescue, and Escape program (SERE), meant to "stress innoculate" U.S. pilots and officers against POW interrogation by hostile forces, were implicated by the Pentagon's own Inspector General in reverse-engineering SERE training methods to produce torture; and that these methods were spread from forward bases in Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and CIA "black site" prisons holding Bush's "war on terror" "enemy combatants". (One ex-President of the APA has already been swept up via association, with some of these SERE-influenced accused torturers.)

2) The APA passed a "reaffirmation" of their 2006 resolution against torture. The 2007 resolution refused to ban psychologist participation at prison sites where indefinite detention, sensory deprivation or overload, or sleep deprivation were inflicted upon prisoners (at least insofar at they didn't cause "significant" or "lasting" harm -- itself an abandonment of APA's ethical aspiration to "to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm").

How Torture Task Force Was Manipulated

At the APA convention where the issue was "debated" (only Council of Representative members are allowed to vote on resolutions), a member of the APA Presidential Task Force (PENS) that helped create the 2006 resolution, Jean Maria Arrigo, spoke out forcefully about how political pressures were placed upon the task force, beginning with the stacking of its membership with military psychologists, in order to bring about a set of positions that would be consistent with Pentagon and Bush Administration needs. Dr. Arrigo's presentation was later publicized by Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! The result? A torrent of invective and mea culpa from APA leadership.

What follows is a selection of Dr. Arrigo's statement. The quote is long, but very important and revealing about how "democracy" really works in our contemporary institutions.

When appointed to the task force in April 2005, I looked forward to a fruitful collaboration with six members employed by the Department of Defense.

Although perplexed and disturbed by our PENS report in June 2005, I did not take any public action for months. Gerald Koocher's President's Column in the February 2006 issue of the APA Monitor first alerted me to my responsibility. Koocher represented the task force -- the PENS report as the product of an independent ten-member task force. I knew it was not independent....

So the first irregularity was APA board liaisons who interfered in task force business. As I learned from these other insiders, APA task forces typically have only one liaison from the APA board. The liaison's role is to coordinate with the task force, but not to make decisions or to intervene in task force business. For us, a second board liaison was added: President-Elect Gerald Koocher. He exerted strong control over task force decisions, as evidenced in the PENS listserv, printed matter, and he censured dissidents.

For example, the last item in the task force mandate from the APA board was the question, "Has APA responded strongly enough to media accounts of activities that have occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?" Nothing in the mandate precluded our recommending an investigation. But Koocher emphatically denied this possibility and castigated the person who raised the issue. He also personally took a very strong stand against the APA adopting strict international law, rather than permissive US law, in defining torture....

The second irregularity were observers who intervened or who had conflicts of interest. Task force meetings typically have no observers or only expert consultants invited in briefly. The following people sat in on our task force meeting: Russ Newman, Director of the APA Practice Directorate; four members from Science Policy or Science Directorate, Susan Brandon, Steven Breckler, Heather Kelly, Geoff Mumford; the APA Office of Public Affairs publicist Rhea Farberman; Mel Gravitz, a former director of the Navy Internship Program; and an APA intern, whose name I didn’t catch.

Russ Newman, who is the head of the Practice Directorate, took a lead role and prevailed with these principles: that the task force mission was to put out the fires of controversy right away, that we would keep the proceedings confidential so as not to feed the fire, that the PENS report must express unity, and that only a couple of people would speak for the task force....

Dr. Arrigo then went on to detail the links between the task force "civilian" observers and the Department of Defense. Courageously, she was not afraid to name names (some of which I have highlighted in similar ways but other contexts):

Numerous announcements at the APA's online Science Insider Policy News, or SPIN, show the four observers associated with APA Science Policy to be very high-level lobbyists for DOD funding, people who would meet with very high-level DOD people and congressional leaders and so on. For example, in October 2004, Geoff Mumford and Heather Kelly met with the DOD Counterintelligence Field Activity Agency -- that’s CIFA -- which allocates resources. At that time, one of the DOD task force members headed CIFA's Behavioral Sciences Directorate, where he supervised "20 psychologists and a multi-million dollar budget," There were many such reports on SPIN. Now, this is not to criticize at all the APA for lobbying DOD funders, OK? The criticism I’m making is that these observers had a very highly vested interest in a PENS report which was compatible with DOD policy, because they’re seeking DOD funding....

A third matter is an unbalanced task force [link added by Valtin, to list of task force member bios]. Six of the ten members were highly placed in the Department of Defense, as contracts and military officers. For example, one was the commander of all military psychologists....

There were also two APA outsiders, you know, finishing out the ten. One resigned in protest in February 2006, and I am here regrettably as a dissident member....

By majority vote -- all but the two outsiders -- the task force imposed confidentiality on the proceedings. There was also an informal ban on note-taking at the meeting. On the first afternoon, a military psychologist sharply told me not to take notes, and no one gainsaid him. After that I took only brief notes, and nobody else appeared to take any notes, except for the Director of the Ethics Office who prepared our report. Because of the severe conflicts of interest of the observers and the liaison with DOD members, I call this one-sided secrecy.

No task force member was permitted to speak about the PENS report. Two non-members of the task force were authorized to field all public inquiries: that is, the Director of the APA Ethics Office and the APA publicist....

A Counterintelligence Expert Speaks Up

Dr. Arrigo continued:

In trying to understand this a couple years afterwards, I finally consulted with two retired intelligence operatives. David DeBatto served in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq as a Team Leader of the Elite Tactical Human Intelligence team....

DeBatto interpreted the PENS task force process as a typical legitimization process for a decision made at a higher level in the Department of Defense. Because of the hierarchical structure of the DOD, he said, it was absolutely impossible that the six DOD members of the task force participated as individuals bringing their expertise and judgment to the policy issues at hand for [inaudible]. He said that they were certainly there as representatives of the decision maker. And because the decision maker's decision had to be sustained, had to prevail, a quorum of DOD members was necessary, rather than just one or two to express DOD concerns.

The presence of the APA Science Policy observers, DeBatto said, was a standard intimidation tactic to insure the DOD task force members stayed in line. As funding lobbyists and recipients, they were strictly beholden to DOD interests. In effect, they outranked the DOD task force members because of their high-level connections.

Zeus Fires His Thunderbolts

Gerald Koocher, who is described by Arrigo as exerting "strong control over task force decisions", fired back at Arrigo with an "Open Letter to Amy Goodman", which can be found at his website. Koocher was angry:

Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo recently spoke on “Democracy Now” and made a substantial number of false and defamatory allegations regarding me and other members and staff of the American Psychological Association. She also omitted mention of several factors regarding personal her biases [sic] and troubled past....

Koocher takes exception at Arrigo's characterization the PENS panel was stacked with military representatives, but ignores her documentation of multiple and pervasive links of many civilian members to the Department of Defense. He then tries to minimize his role, i.e., he was "only" there for the "six hours of the two day meeting" -- almost the complete first day!

Here are the facts. The PENS group was officially the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security. It was appointed by 2005 APA President Ronald F. Levant. The Board of Director’s liaison was Dr. Barry Anton of the University of Puget Sound. Because Dr. Levant could not attend the meeting, I (as 2006 President) represented him at the start of the meeting to help the group understand it’s charge and . [sic -- Dr. K really did a poor proofreading job!) I was present for only the first six hours of the two day meeting.

And then, in a twist of logic and psychological motivation that I will leave others to unravel, Koocher offered that Dr. Arrigo's childhood traumas had made her advocate

...a broad expansion of the task force's mission and scope. At that time I spoke up, expressed sadness and respect for her traumatic life experiences, but noted that the task force had been budgeted for a single 2-day meeting and had a highly specific charge (i.e., to recommend to the Ethics Committee - the only body authorized to interpret our ethics code - what guidance might be offered to our members who found themselves in roles involving such matters). It was Dr. Arrigo, not me, who sought to intervene in the business of the task force, and who became embittered when she was rebuffed by the full group.

Imagine that! Dr. Arrigo, a task force member, "sought to intervene in the business of the task force"! What arrogance! Why didn't she do what she was told? Instead she became "embittered". Which leads us to Dr. Koocher's thundering, accusatory conclusion:

Until now, I had remained respectfully silent in public regarding Dr. Arrigo’s biases, history of personal trauma, and lack of boundaries, but will no longer do so. Her behavior during the portions of the meeting I attended, and in subsequent public forums, has underscored the sad emotional aftermath of a troubled upbringing...

I have left out a serious false charge made by Dr. Koocher against a relative of Dr. Arrigo's, as I don't wish to further his agenda by retailing it in this forum.

Bluster, False Charges, and "Bad Eggs"

Now, Dr. Koocher's bizarre letter is followed by a more restrained missive from the former chair of the PENS Task Force, Dr. Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, who also means to answer the Goodman/Arrigo posting. Circulated on the listserv for the APA's Council of Representatives, it has the imprimatur of APA President Sharon Brehm. The letter is long, and since this posting is itself already way too long (have you really read it this far?), I'll only note a few things from it. (I also have no online link for others to assess it fairly themselves. I'll post one should it become available.)

Dr. Moorehead-Slaughter defends her work on the PENS task force. She finds it prudent -- although I don't know why, since I can find no evidence anyone ever made such charges -- to state:

I have never worked in any capacity for the CIA, the FBI, or the Department of Defense....I have never received monies or compensation of any nature from APA for my time.... When I was asked to chair the PENS Task Force, I accepted. At no point was there any mention of compensation, reward, benefit, or other inducement for serving in this role or for coming to a particular position on the substantive issues. Any other suggestion is, quite frankly, an insult to my integrity.

While generally more restrained than Koocher's blustering letter, Moorehead-Slaughter sets up one false premise and charge after another, so she can shoot it down and look both injured and virtuous. But nowhere does she mention Koocher's charges, nor does she or Koocher or anyone in the APA majority on this issue state any moral uncertainties, any misgivings about what has happened in Bush's gulag-like prisons, any regret over the misuse of psychological knowledge and authority. If anything, they are mildly uncomfortable that they even have to admit occasionally, as psychiatrist Charles Morgan did at the APA conference, "there may have been a few bad eggs."

Fight to Stop Collaboration with Torture Practices

The APA leadership can only respond with shrill personal charges and strained fabrications because they have no real answer to the truth. That truth is dark and difficult to accept, especially among those who put their faith in long-lasting American institutions. And, cynically, the Pentagon and CIA types who wish to maintain the monopoly of force in interrogations, and over their prisoners and political opponents in Bush's Asian and Middle East military adventures, count on this otherwise healthy incredulity. As Senate hearings near, we can expect more invective and/or obfuscation from 1333 16th St., NW, as well as from numerous pundits, generals, ex-military psychologists, ivory-tower researchers, and others too numerous to mention... even from some who sincerely believe they are doing the right thing in supporting APA and the Pentagon's position on interrogations.

Now is the time to support those psychologists and anti-torture activists who are fighting to stop abusive practices by the U.S. government. Write your Senators and Congressmen/women, tell them to support Sen. Levin's hearings (with which, to be fair, APA officially promises cooperation), and that we need to get to the bottom of what has really happened with the use of torture and the collaboration of behavioral science right now, and since the beginning of the "war on terror", and even more, since the Cold War itself.

Double Feature: VF's Katherine Eban and APA critic Brad Olson on Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman over at Democracy Now! has a great show just posted. You can watch it streaming or listen to it on mp3.

Katherine Eban, who wrote "Rorschach and Awe" in Vanity Fair, talks about her research on psychologists torturing for the Defense Department. I reviewed her article a few weeks ago.

Brad Olson is an assistant professor at Northwestern University and a founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical APA. He also chairs the Divisions for Social Justice, a coalition of 13 American Psychological Association (APA) divisions within the larger APA structure. Along with Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, he was an author of an Open Letter to APA President Sharon Brehm calling for "APA [to] take immediate steps to remedy the damage done to the reputation of the organization, to our ethical standards, to the field of psychology, and to human rights". Such steps would include:

...APA leadership should support and the Council of Representatives must, at the August Convention, pass the Moratorium on Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations at US Detention Centers for Foreign Detainees proposed by Dr. Neil Altman and scheduled for a vote at Council....

The APA Board of Directors encourage, support, and cooperate with the Senate investigations of detainee treatment....

The APA Board of Directors commence a neutral third-party investigation of its own involvement, and that of APA staff, in APA-military conflicts of interest. [emphasis in original]

The Democracy Now! show is certainly very much worth watching. I think it's worth a donation to DN too, don't you?

Here's a snippet from today's interview:

AMY GOODMAN: Katherine Eban, you write about how the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, both of these associations have passed resolutions banning involvement in military interrogations. They will punish members who are involved. What has happened here with the APA, the larger association, American Psychological Association, of, what, some 150,000 members?

KATHERINE EBAN: Well, that is an open question. I mean, why does the American Psychological Association stand alone in allowing its members to participate in interrogations? Some would say because psychologists don't take a Hippocratic Oath. Some would say because they have had a long experience in assisting law enforcement with interrogations. However, I always found that comparison specious, because a military interrogation or a CIA interrogation is occurring in an environment where there is no habeas corpus, where it’s already been deemed that these detainees are not covered by the Geneva Conventions. So critics would argue that it’s a fundamentally coercive environment. So there's no level playing field. There’s no way in which detainees can invoke their rights, because it’s been deemed they have none.

Has Ms. Eban been channelling my last post, "Will APA Psychology Convention Endorse Indefinite Detention?" Who knows? I'm sure I'm not the only person on the planet who sees the cruel irony of being an ostensible health care organization, and a UN-recognized NGO (non-governmental agency)(and the APA is SO proud of this), and then say it's okay to send one's members to work with interrogators in a prison that allows no hope of release, no hope of ever having your case heard. And this whether one formally "tortures" or not.

I'll close with this provocative and interesting exchange between Amy Goodman and Brad Olson:

AMY GOODMAN: Who is fighting this, having a moratorium to investigate further?

BRAD OLSON: Who is fighting it? Well, it’s difficult to tell. I mean, what we do know is that -- I mean, clearly the staff of the American Psychological Association, some staff members who are very high up are the ones that are really -- seem to be fighting tooth and nail.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is the APA so closely tied to the military and military intelligence? What is the history of this relationship?

BRAD OLSON: Well, I mean, the history certainly goes way, way back. I mean, certainly in -- you know, some people might question the morality of any wars, but certainly some people would argue that World War II, that psychologists really were -- really created some effective means and techniques to do some positive things, although that -- there's also a great history of that being very sordid and sinister and harmful, which is exactly why we need to stick to our ethics code. But, I mean, now it’s a question, why -- where are the ties? I mean, some people argue that this has a lot to do with our competition with psychiatry, psychologists' competition with psychiatrists.

I think the ties are about more than competition with rivals in the field. But I will forego a complete statement of my beliefs here, directing interested readers to two prior essays: Frankenstein's Children: Modern Torture's Scientific Bible and Military Psychologists Oppose Torture Moratorium.

"The Task Force Report Should Be Annulled"

Here's a quick link to a Democracy Now! interview of utmost importance to those who are following the fight within the American Psychological Association to stop collaboration with torture and coercive interrogations at America's "war on terror" prisons abroad.

The entire title is ""The Task Force Report Should Be Annulled" - Member of 2005 APA Task Force on Psychologist Participation in Military Interrogations Speaks Out". It's another great interview by national treasure Amy Goodman. Here's the introduction from Democracy Now's website:

In 2005, the American Psychological Association convened a Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security that concluded psychologists' participation in military interrogations was "consistent with the APA Code of Ethics." It was later revealed that six of nine voting members were from the military and intelligence agencies with direct connections to interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we speak with two members of the task force, Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo and Dr. Nina Thomas. Arrigo says the task force report "should be annulled," because the process was "flawed." As an example, Arrigo says she was "told very sharply" by one of the military psychologists not to take notes during the proceedings. She later archived the entire listserve of the task force and sent it to Senate Armed Services Committee. Dr. Arrigo also calls for a "moratorium" on psychologists involvement in military interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. We also speak with Dr. Eric Anders, a former Air Force officer who underwent harsh training in "SERE" (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) techniques, as well as Dr. Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights.

(Tip of the hat to Stephen Soldz for bringing this to our attention.)