[lbo-talk] God, Man, and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

Chuck Grimes cagrimes42 at gmail.com
Mon Feb 25 18:30:56 PST 2013


Wow, was that an interesting read. The militarization of the social sciences. I think that's been around for a very long time in all sorts of ways. That doesn't make it okay or its funding for new upgraded versions.

There is military propaganda and psychological manipulation of the (the few) reluctant elected officialdom and the civilian population to support all sorts of atrocities, aggressions, and wars.

This is a telling quote:

``The center’s primary goal would be to coach U.S. Special Forces on interviewing tactics designed to detect lies. Charles Morgan III, a professor of psychiatry who will head the project, calls these tactics people skills.''

The difference between psychology and psychiatry is the professional certifications for the use of drugs and heavy handed quasi-medical control techniques. This is particularly handy for torture and military raids for obvious reasons.

As for the use of Yale as an academic institution, well there's gold in them hills. The military industrial complex has a bigger budget than DOE, NSF, NIH, NEH and the rest combined. I'll assume there is a lot less accountiability for this kind of software.

This is really not that much different than nuclear weapons development back in the 1950-60s when big physics was king. The student generation just before me caused such a stink over Lawrence Berkeley Labs (LBL) that the government built a new location and moved the work to Lawrence Livermore out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by fences, guards, etc. Now of course it is surrounded by subdivisions.

This history suggests the tactical methods to get rid of the Yale based program. Students, faculty, and community need to expose the work to public scrutiny. Make security impossible. Then it will go away. It won't go far but it will be elsewhere.

What are they calling this The Torture Institute for Corporate Kleptocracy? TICK for short.

This reminds me that there are a lot of institutional and federal oversight rules for the use of human subjects in NIH and NSF. I would try to work on that angle through formal legal channels. Does Doctor Charles Morgan Jekyll have to sign forms on the use of human subjects? These forms which we had to sign off in plant biology were beyond merely `informed consent'. There are detailed questions about methods and use if you do anything with people. In questionable cases, there are ethics committees and institutional review boards. These forms come with the grant information package. I think if anybody is serious about this, they are going to need some radical law people around.

I would suggest tracking down these bureaucratic details to cause as much trouble as possible. Somebody within the alumni orders must care. That's another angle to work. Your tax deductible donations help TICK move ahead...

CG



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