Dehumanized Cruelty: New Abu Ghraib Pictures Released

Are we naturally mean? thoughts on Howard Zinn's "The Myth of the Killer Instinct"
The Lucifer Effect: Zimbardo Lecture
"Trigger Guilt": Taser, iRobot to build remote TASER
why is *our* government buying TASER RIFLES?

Obama, Clinton spook Canada’s hardcore free-traders at SPP ministerial meeting
February 28, 2008, Posted by Stuart Trew

The threat of renegotiating or dropping NAFTA altogether as proposed by Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made its way to Los Cabos, Mexico this week where Security and Prosperity Partnership ministers were cajoling with the CEOs of the North American Competitiveness Council at their annual pre-SPP summit meeting. ...

McCain links Canada's military support to NAFTA
Updated Fri. Feb. 29 2008, CTV.ca News Staff
... Republican front-runner John McCain warned on Friday that his Democratic rivals are jeopardizing Canada's military support for the U.S. by threatening to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

McCain said national security and trade issues are "interconnected with each other." ...

WASHINGTON V. CUBA AFTER CASTRO
Written by Stephen Lendman, Monday, 25 February 2008
...& the shame is that readers believe this stuff because the Journal & rest of the major media suppress the truth about Cuba, Venezuela and other regimes that successfully challenge Washington. In Cuba's case, it defeated a US invasion, a 49 year economic embargo, over 600 attempts to kill Castro, repeated US state terrorism to destabilize the country, & relentless efforts to isolate the island politically & economically.

Castro aimed at George Bush as well and stated: "Annexation, annexation, annexation! the adversary responds. That's what he thinks, deep inside, when he talks about change."

MotherJones Blog: New Abu Ghraib Pictures Released.

Wired magazine just released a batch of ten new Abu Ghraib photos (warning, they're graphic), among them a picture of a naked detainee bleeding profusely from his left leg and another of a female soldier smiling and giving the thumb's up sign next to a corpse. The magazine obtained these photographs from psychologist Philip Zimbardo, an emeritus professor at Stanford University and an expert witness for one of the soldiers accused of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib, Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick. In 1971, Zimbardo conducted what is now popularly known as the "Stanford Prison Experiment," in which a group of college students were assigned the role of guards or prisoners—an experiment that was stopped when the "guards" took to their roles with too much gusto. When asked how the results of his experiment compared with what transpired at Abu Ghraib, the psychologist told the the magazine:

The military intelligence, the CIA and the civilian interrogator corporation, Titan, told the MPs [at Abu Ghraib], "It is your job to soften the prisoners up. We give you permission to do something you ordinarily are not allowed to do as a military policeman —to break the prisoners, to soften them up, to prepare them for interrogation." That's permission to step across the line from what is typically restricted behavior to now unrestricted behavior.

In the same way in the Stanford prison study, I was saying [to the student guards], "You have to be powerful to prevent further rebellion." I tell them, "You're not allowed, however, to use physical force." By default, I allow them to use psychological force. In five days, five prisoners are having emotional breakdowns.

The situational forces that were going on in [Abu Ghraib]—the dehumanization, the lack of personal accountability, the lack of surveillance, the permission to get away with anti-social actions—it was like the Stanford prison study, but in spades.

on The Mind of a Terrorist:

More then thirty years later psychiatrist, Jerrold M. Post came along and wrote a book which just came out called The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda. He is a true terrorism expert, he's been studying them, talking with them and is called in as an expert in terrorist trials. Sometimes he jokes the real threat to America isn't from weapons of mass destruction, but the proliferation of so-called terrorist experts, most of whom never even met a real terrorist. One of the revelations in his book is that the terrorists are not psychologically abnormal. They aren't psychotic or depressed for example. It makes sense they would be that way. Terrorist cells would see unhealthy individuals as a security threat. We don't want mentally unsound people in our armed forces either.

Part of the link is the terrorists and prison guards both see their victims as sub-human. Not as equals. This is critical. The second important thing is Zimbardo wouldn't have gotten terrorist prison guards if he had picked abnormal people. Perhaps he'd have different results..."

A Nightmare World of Torture and Prison Guard Suicides

By Debbie Nathan

A psychiatrist who has treated former military personnel at Guantánamo prison camp is telling a story of prisoner torture and guard suicide there, recounted to him by a National Guardsman who worked at Guantánamo just after it opened. ...

Medical Ethics: professionals, torture & the APA's Military Psychology Division