Why Does this Psychopath Still Have a License to Practice Psychology?

James Mitchell, who designed the CIA's torture program, and who tortured people himself, has a sad over the prospect of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report describing how f%$#evil and twisted he is:

Mitchell insists the torture techniques he developed had produced results, and is dismissive of critics of the CIA program. Photograph: US Department of Defense/AP

The psychologist regarded as the architect of the CIA's “enhanced interrogation” program has broken a seven-year silence to defend the use of torture techniques against al-Qaida terror suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

In an uncompromising and wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, his first public remarks since he was linked to the program in 2007, James Mitchell was dismissive of a Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture in which he features, and which is currently at the heart of an intense row between legislators and the agency.

The committee’s report found that the interrogation techniques devised by Mitchell, a retired air force psychologist, were far more brutal than disclosed at the time, and did not yield useful intelligence. These included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in a box and being slammed into walls.

But Mitchell, who was reported to have personally waterboarded accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, remains unrepentant. “The people on the ground did the best they could with the way they understood the law at the time,” he said. “You can't ask someone to put their life on the line and think and make a decision without the benefit of hindsight and then eviscerate them in the press 10 years later.”

It's nice to know that your alibi would apply to Nazi war criminals as well.

BTW, he continues to claim that torture worked, but as whistleblower Steve Keinman observes:

Steven Kleinman, an air force colonel who participated in interrogations in Iraq and who is credited with blowing the whistle on abuses taking place there, told the Guardian he did not understand how Mitchell could still believe torture methods that generated false confessions could also produce “reliable, accurate and timely intelligence”.

“Why would anybody think that a model that would produce those outcomes would also be effective in producing the opposite?” Kleinman said.

Charlie Pierce correctly derided him as, "another monster":

Let us be quite clear. Nobody in the torture chambers -- and certainly not Mitchell -- was being asked to "put his life on the line." If you have someone fastened to a plank, and you're pouring water into his mouth to make him believe he's drowning, he is in no position to threaten your life. James Mitchell was not in any kind of danger, unless whatever vestigial conscience he had came to life and ate him alive, which I sincerely doubt. There is no excuse for what we did. September 11 is no excuse. It wasn't a matter of the "people on the ground" not understanding the law. It was a matter of them not caring what the law was because they had a thin legal excuse ginned up for them by pet lawyers in the employ of sociopaths. Mitchell should be facing a tribunal for war crimes, not whining about an unflattering Senate committee report.

He should be sharing a cell with John Yoo, who said that it was OK to crush the testicles of a child to get their parent to talk.

The problem with, "Looking forward, not backward," as Obama is wont to say is that these people continue to poison our national culture.

Of course, looking backward, and charging the malefactors of the Bush administration would set a precedent that might lead to Obama charged for the excesses of his murder by drone program, but I really don't care if any of them, from either administration, do some well-deserved time in a deep dark hole.

Jon Stewart is Weeping for Joy

Toronto's world-renowned on crack-smoking mayor is standing for reelection:

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford officially launched his re-election campaign before a crowd of supporters Thursday night — sticking closely to the issues he has stressed over his last four years as mayor.

In a 30-minute speech before some 2,000 supporters, Ford pledged to fight special interests, to cut red tape and to keep taxes low if returned to office on Oct. 27.

"I’m running on my record and my record is second to none," Ford told the crowd at the Toronto Congress Centre, the same venue where he celebrated his election victory back in 2010.

"Record second to none," huh?

I would have to agree with that characterization, but I really do not see this as a positive.

What is Japanese for "Assholes Who Should Have Been Drowned at Birth"?*

I'm just wondering because some members of the Japanese Diet, upset by the ruling of the ICJ banning the Antarctic whale hunt, have done up a whale buffet as a F%$# you to the civilized world:

Japan may have called off its annual Antarctic whale hunt in deference to a ruling from the U.N.’s International Court of Justice, but the country’s whaling industry has yet to give up the fight.

As a show of defiance, hundreds Japanese officials, politicians and other pro-whaling allies gathered Tuesday for a buffet featuring, what else, whale. According to the Associated Press, the group feasted on “Cutlets, sashimi, steak and other dishes made of whale meat” and shouted a one-word toast: ”Whale!”

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports, a Japanese parliamentary committee unanimously passed a resolution calling on the government to fully investigate its options, saying that the court’s decision was “truly regrettable” but “does not necessarily prevent Japan’s whaling, which is a unique tradition and culture.” Among Japanese consumers, the AP notes, whale meat has been declining in popularity.

Japan literally had decades of whale meat in freezers, and these guys are throwing a tantrum.

Wankers.

^*Google Translate gives, "出生時に溺れるれている必要がありますろくでなし," and translating that back to English gives, "Bastard that must have been drowned at birth," so it's probably pretty close.

Linkage

What Happened to Canada? (N+1) A good description of how a country of decent people is being converted to a, "rogue, reckless petrostate," by the, "formidable disciplinary forces of late capitalism."
Jack Halprin: As a Google Attorney, I Need the Homes of 7 Teachers, and Here's Why (SF Weekly) Satirist gets in the head of a Google Lawyer who bought an apartment in San Francisco, and evicted everyone, including at least 2 teachers, just because.
In U.S., right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists (CNN)  Since 2001, 50% more deaths from right wing white supremacist extremists than from Islamist extremists
Court Says That Tweeting Someone Is 'F**king Crazy' Is Not Libelous (Crooks and Liars) What a relief that this f%$#ing crazy lawsuit was tossed out.

Jurassic Park as it should have been:

No Anthropogenic Climate Change, My Ass!

Well, now I know why we had snow on Tuesday, the mid-Atlantic and Northeast US ended up an island of cool in an ocean of global warming:

NASA’s map of March temperatures around the globe is covered in orange and red, indicative of temperatures well above the norm and symptomatic of a planet running a fever for over 29 years. Yet various shades of blue light up eastern North America shivering under a cold regime which seized control in January.

The wave after wave of bitter cold that has walloped the eastern half of the U.S. since the start of 2014 has truly been an anomaly set against the temperature pattern around the rest of the world. Incredibly, the eastern U.S. is the only region of the world that has been colder than normal each of the first three months this calendar year.

………

So the tens of millions of winter weary residents of the eastern U.S. shouldn’t let the frigid weather in their backyard cloud their view of the relatively warm planet.

While March produced areas of exceptional cold in the Great Lakes and Northeast – it was the third warmest March on record for the globe, 2 degrees (F) warmer than (the 1950-1981) average according to NASA.

Our climate is f%$#ed up and sh%$, and it is getting worse fast.

Would You Like a Loss of Civil Rights with Your Breakfast Cereal?

General Mills is looking to make binding arbitration mandatory for people who take their lives into their hands when they eat their food:

Might downloading a 50-cent coupon for Cheerios cost you legal rights?

General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, “join” it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.

Instead, anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site.

In language added on Tuesday after The New York Times contacted it about the changes, General Mills seemed to go even further, suggesting that buying its products would bind consumers to those terms.

“We’ve updated our privacy policy,” the company wrote in a thin, gray bar across the top of its home page. “Please note we also have new legal terms which require all disputes related to the purchase or use of any General Mills product or service to be resolved through binding arbitration.”

………

The change in legal terms, which occurred shortly after a judge refused to dismiss a case brought against the company by consumers in California, made General Mills one of the first, if not the first, major food companies to seek to impose what legal experts call “forced arbitration” on consumers.

“Although this is the first case I’ve seen of a food company moving in this direction, others will follow — why wouldn’t you?” said Julia Duncan, director of federal programs and an arbitration expert at the American Association for Justice, a trade group representing plaintiff trial lawyers. “It’s essentially trying to protect the company from all accountability, even when it lies, or say, an employee deliberately adds broken glass to a product.”

You have problem with Corporate Capitalist ^™®©, comrade?^*

We really need to pass Al Franken's Arbitration Fairness Act, and put an end to this bullsh%$.


^*H/t CZ at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for this quote.

Yes, this is the Very Epitome of Terrorizing the Populace

Peter Schaapveld, a forensic psychologist, has surveyed people Yemenis who live in areas target by drones, and has determined that 92% of the populace is suffering from PTSD:

The people of Yemen can hear destruction before it arrives. In cities, towns and villages across this country, which hangs off the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, the air buzzes with the sound of American drones flying overhead. The sound is a constant and terrible reminder: a robot plane, acting on secret intelligence, may calculate that the man across from you at the coffee shop, or the acquaintance with whom you've shared a passing word on the street, is an Al Qaeda operative. This intelligence may be accurate or it may not, but it doesn't matter. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, the chaotic buzzing above sharpens into the death-herald of an incoming missile.

Such quite literal existential uncertainty is coming at a deep psychological cost for the Yemeni people. For Americans, this military campaign is an abstraction. The drone strikes don't require U.S. troops on the ground, and thus are easy to keep out of sight and out of mind. Over half of Yemen's 24.8 million citizens – militants and civilians alike – are impacted every day. A war is happening, and one of the unforeseen casualties is the Yemeni mind.

Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma and anxiety are becoming rampant in the different corners of the country where drones are active. "Drones hover over an area for hours, sometimes days and weeks," said Rooj Alwazir, a Yemeni-American anti-drone activist and cofounder of Support Yemen, a media collective raising awareness about issues afflicting the country. Yemenis widely describe suffering from constant sleeplessness, anxiety, short-tempers, an inability to concentrate and, unsurprisingly, paranoia.

Alwazir recalled a Yemeni villager telling her that the drones "are looking inside our homes and even at our women.'" She says that, "this feeling of infringement of privacy, combined with civilian casualties and constant fear and anxiety has a profound long time psychological effect on those living under drones."

Last year, London-based forensic psychologist Peter Schaapveld presented research he'd conducted on the psychological impact of drone strikes in Yemen to a British parliamentary sub-committee. He reported that 92 percent of the population sample he examined was found to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – with children being the demographic most significantly affected. Women, he found, claimed to be miscarrying from their fear of drones. "This is a population that by any figure is hugely suffering," Schaapveld said. The fear of drones, he added, "is traumatizing an entire generation."

Throughout Yemen, it seems, the endless blue heaven above has become a bad omen.

So, do you think that these folks will learn to hate the United States, and revisit violence with violence?

We are damaging a whole generation, and these damaged people will become tomorrow's warriors determined to get vengeance.