Posts Tagged ‘Department of Defense’

The New Face of Psychiatry/Psychology: Mind Manipulation & Social Propaganda get a new name-Perception Management

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Beverly K. Eakman
New American
October 13, 2009

To ensure that psychiatry “permeate every educational activity of national life” and “infiltrate the professional and social activities of [all] people” was a global goal that originated with British Brigadier General Dr. John Rawlings Rees in a 1940 speech to the National Council for Mental Hygiene. He ended on an ominous note: “Though our knowledge be incomplete … I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity.”

Canadian colleague Dr. Brock Chisholm chimed in with sinister comments of his own at the close of the war in 1946, in a speech to the World Federation of Mental Health. He argued for “freedom from morality” and the “eventual eradication of right and wrong.” Such traditional upbringing was making children ill, he insisted. “If the race is to be freed of its crippling burden of good and evil it must be psychiatrists who take the original responsibility.”

Rees and Chisholm had company — in political, educational, journalistic, marketing, and military circles, most ensconced within interconnected foundations, associations, and “research centers” (foreign and domestic). They became Rees’ and Chisholm’s enablers. Together, they created Rees’ dream: “a controlled psychological environment.”

Today, the Department of Defense has a new name for it: “perception management” (or “PM”), and the psychopharmaceutical industry has hit the jackpot.

Read entire article: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/culture/family/2074-the-new-face-of-psychiatry

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Physicians for Human Rights exposes shameful role of doctors/psychologists in CIA’s torture interrogations

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Nat Hentoff
Times and Democrat
September 21, 2009

The fearlessly independent Physicians for Human Rights — founded in 1986 and sharer of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 — has once again exposed the shameful role of doctors and psychologists throughout the CIA’s torture interrogations, banned by the international Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as in the Geneva Conventions and our own statues.

Despite all the attention and furor when the former CIA Inspector General’s 2004 report was finally released through an ACLU lawsuit — to the rage of objectors Dick Cheney and CIA Director Leon Panetta — the continuing debate has yet to focus on, and deal with, the Physicians for Human Rights Aug. 31 report:

“Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 Inspector General’s Report” — with additional incriminating details that “CIA Health Professionals’ Role in Torture Worse Than Previously Known.”

The startling indictment is that “health professionals were involved at every stage in the development, implementation and legitimization of this torture program.” They were as disgracefully complicit as John Yoo and the other Justice Department lawyers who provided torturously manipulated “legal” cover to the CIA and its bosses in the Defense department and the Oval Office.

Read entire article: http://www.timesanddemocrat.com/articles/2009/09/21/opinion/doc4ab472d350295030200859.txt

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The Huffington Post “How It Is: Psychiatrists, Physicians, and Torture”

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Dan Agin
Huffington Post
April 22, 2009

Our current troubles with torture by agencies of our government, and the shock of many that medical doctors stood by or even assisted in such torture, will be with us for a while. There is never too much of knowledge, and usually too little of knowledge of the past, and our present time is apparently an illustration of our public failings.

To be clear about my own views, the publicized recent physical and psychological stresses used in the interrogation of prisoners in American hands, from the perspective of medicine, neuroscience, and psychiatry, were indeed torture. Various legal minds apparently twisted the meanings of words and phrases into knots in their attempts to provide cover for the use of terror in interrogations, but my guess is they and everyone around them knew the truth. And now various media hacks sound the same corrupted chant, more out of foolishness than any reasoned argument. It’s an ugly dance, a jig that reminds one of a crazy gavotte in Bedlam.

Maybe the saddest cut of all is that we’ve been here before. Too many people are bemused by the illusion that physicians are incapable of standing by or assisting in the mechanics of torture. Maybe most are, but to say that all are is a public lie — and how many psychiatrists and internist physicians do you need to help turn the rack or rip at the mind with terror? Not many. For the few hundred prisoners at a place like Guantanamo, a handful of assisting psychiatrists and internists would be sufficient, both psychiatrists and internists already on the agency payroll and committed to agency operations.

Physicians of various kinds have always been involved in government interrogations. and it’s a bit silly to pretend otherwise.

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-agin/how-it-is-psychiatrists-p_b_189271.html

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