Grit by any other name is torture

Angela Duckworth and her "academic" mentor Martin Seligman helped develop torture models that the CIA uses in places like Iraq. The very same elements of these torture models were taken from Duckworth et al. to establish the horrific "no excuses" policies of corporate charter school chains like KIPP. Both Duckworth and Seligman are monsters, and that the corporate media continues to provide them a platform is a testament to the pervasiveness of neoliberal ideology. Dr. Jim Horn and others have written quite a lot about Duckworth and her ilk at SchoolsMatter.

KIPP Psychology Guru Inspired CIA Torture Program

Dr. Martin Seligman is the man to see if you have questions about how to turn human beings into compliant automatons with persistent positivity.  His experiments torturing dogs in the late 1960s was seminal to the development of "learned helplessness," whereby subjects are pacified by repeated and unpredictable electric shocks that cannot be avoided.  Google "learned helplessness" for the readily accessible history of the research.

The subsequent "learned helplessness" exhibited by torture victims is countered by another Seligman invention, "learned optimism," which turns compliant human subjects into persistent, self-controlled, and gritty go-getters who will not let any amount of abuse or degradation interfere with beliefs in self-heroic capabilities.  

The Seligman treatment has been used by David Levin at KIPP to behaviorally neuter children and then to have the same children self-administer heavy doses of No Excuses positivity in order to maintain high test scores regardless of children's home life marked by pathological economic conditions.

The clip below (my bolds) is from a 542 page report on how well-known psychologists who were once highly respected worked to manipulate and shape APA standards and practices in order to comply with CIA torture of detainees who were swept up in illegal arrests and kidnapping in the wake of 9/11.

Seligman's "learned helplessness" techniques were central in the CIA torture program, and Seligman's assistance to the CIA to understand how his techniques work was critical to implementing torture programs.  Seligman's payoff for his assistance came in 2010 when his Positive Psychology Center at UPenn was handed a $31,000,000 no bid contract to do work for the Army to develop what amounts to a positive brainwashing technique that was hoped to counter the epidemic of PTSD among returning vets.  

It didn't work, but Seligman and his colleagues cashed the check anyway.  Meanwhile, veterans served as guinea pigs, and who knows how many committed suicide as a result of not receiving legitimate treatments.

B. Seligman Gathering

In December 2001, Martin Seligman, a former president of APA credited with developing the theories of learned helplessness and positive psychology, hosted a meeting at his home for “an international group of sixteen distinguished professors and intelligence personnel” to discuss how America could respond to Islamic Extremism. The group included “experts in terrorism and related topics from psychology, political science, history, Islam, sociology, the CIA and the FBI.”

Seligman said that this meeting was not at the request of any government agency, and was convened because he “wanted to send to the White House unsolicited recommendations to help the nation in a time of great need.”

At the close of the meeting, the group had made “six policy recommendations aimed at winning a victory that will lastingly contain global terrorism”: Isolate Jihad Islam from Moderate Islam worldwide; [n]eutralize Saudi support for jihad Islamic fundamentalism worldwide; [p]olice the Arab Diaspora in Western Europe forcefully; [s]ubvert the social structure of terrorist organizations; [b]reak the link between the terrorists and the pyramid of sympathizers; [and] [b]uild American knowledge of Arab and Muslim culture and language.

Seligman denied that there was a “single mention by anyone of interrogation, captives, or torture or any related subject” at the meeting, and the summary document produced by the group does not reflect that discussion of any of these topics occurred. Indeed, Seligman said that he has never worked on interrogations or held a contract with the CIA or any other entity related to interrogations.

Steven Band, Chief of the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI attended the meeting, as did Kirk Hubbard, Chief of the Research and Analysis Branch in the Operational Assessment Division of the CIA, and James Mitchell, whose only listed affiliation was “CIA.”

After communicating with the parties who attended this meeting, we cannot say with any certainty how Hubbard and Mitchell came to be present. Seligman said that he did not know who had invited Hubbard, Mitchell, or Band, and he described all three as “almost totally silent throughout” the meeting.

Hubbard also said that he could not recall how he had been invited

to this meeting, though he thought that Joseph Matarazzo had brokered

his initial introduction to Seligman. Mitchell said that Hubbard had invited him to the meeting, though he did not know how Hubbard had received an invitation.

It seems most likely that Matarazzo introduced Seligman, a fellow former APA president, to Hubbard, whom he had worked with on the CIA’s Advisory Committee, and that this introduction led to an invitation for Hubbard to attend the gathering at Seligman’s home.

Communications between Steve Band and Geoff Mumford suggest that Band discussed Seligman’s meeting with Susan Brandon and Mumford within days after it occurred, and that he encouraged them to brief Kurt Salzinger.

Band also seemed eager to share the report produced after the meeting, promising to show both Mumford and Brandon a copy of the “write-up” the next time he saw them, though he could not provide a copy. Band described the report to Mumford in provocative terms:

Seligman’s ‘gathering’ produced an extraordinary document that is being channeled on high (very high)... I did not get the impression from Seligman that it was intended for wide distribution or readership... some of the national strategies and supportive statements proposed by ‘the gathering’ are pretty intense; the authors may want their involvement to remain discrete.

Band later confirmed, based on email traffic between Seligman and Brandon, that his “gut feeling about not releasing [Seligman’s] product outside of its intended audience was on-point and . . . it may have discomforted [Seligman] to learn that Kirk [Hubbard] did.”

Brandon assured Band that she had not distributed the Seligman paper, but indicated that it had sparked some “lively debate here.”

During their interviews, both Brandon and Mumford stated that they did not believe they had ever seen the paper, but it seems likely that Brandon did see the paper and discuss it with some of her colleagues in the Science Directorate.  Hubbard stated that Seligman met with Hubbard and his staff several more times after the initial meeting in Seligman’s home. One of these meetings was with Hubbard and two psychologists on his staff, Judy Philipson and Liz Vogt, both of whom were married to attorneys in CTC.

Seligman confirmed that he met with Hubbard and a female lawyer at his home in April 2002, and they discussed Seligman’s theory of learned helplessness at length in the context of how the theory might help “our people who are captured.”

At another of these meetings, Hubbard stated that he, Mitchell, and Jessen met with Seligman in his home to invite him to speak about learned helplessness at the SERE school in Spring 2002.

As discussed above, Seligman said that he could not recall meeting with Mitchell or Jessen apart from the December 2001 meeting at his home. Rather, Seligman thought that he was invited to speak at the SERE school during the April 2002 meeting with Hubbard and a female lawyer.

However, after discussing the meeting with Hubbard during the course of the investigation, Seligman “surmise[d]” that there must have been an additional meeting in April with Mitchell and Jessen, and that it must have been at that meeting that he was invited to speak at the JPRA conference in May 2002.

APA’s critics have hypothesized that Seligman took a far more active role in supporting the CIA’s interrogation program than the relatively tangential interactions described above. They point to the December 2001 meeting at Seligman’s home and an email from Hubbard in March 2004 expressing gratitude for Seligman’s help “over the past four years” as evidence that Seligman was an active participant in supporting the CIA’s interrogation program. Seligman and Hubbard had similar, though not identical, explanations for Hubbard’s comment. Seligman explained that he had previously asked Hubbard about the email and that Hubbard had explained that he was referring to the pro bono lecture Seligman had given to the Navy SERE school in May 2002.

Hubbard said that he was “basically” thanking Seligman for hosting the meetings in his home in 2001. Thus, both Hubbard and Seligman explained that Hubbard was thanking Seligman only for his involvement in the meetings that have become public knowledge. 

Critics also allege that the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, founded by Seligman, received a $31 million sole source contract from DoD in 2010 because of assistance Seligman provided to the government with its counter-terrorism efforts. Seligman said that this contract was awarded because there were no competing entities who had the same experience in training and research on the topic of positive psychology, and there was an urgent need for a program in positive psychology to help returning troops. Seligman clarified that during negotiations on this contract, there was never any mention that the contract related to past work he might have done for DoD or other intelligence agencies. Sidley has not uncovered evidence that Seligman had interactions with the CIA beyond the isolated meetings and lectures in the year after 9/11 that are a matter of public record. It is possible that more interactions occurred, particularly given Hubbard’s comment that Seligman had provided assistance over the course of four years, but no evidence suggests that interrogations were ever directly discussed at these meetings, despite the fact that the scientific theories that Mitchell and Jessen later adapted to construct the CIA’s interrogation program clearly were. On balance, it seems difficult to believe that Seligman did not at least suspect that the CIA was interested in his theories, at least inpart, to consider how they could be used in interrogations. However, we found no evidence to support the critics’ theory that Seligman was deeply involved in constructing or consulting on the CIA’s interrogation program, and no evidence that such consultation would have involved APA officials even if it had occurred.

Will UN Be Able to Close MA Torture School Known as the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center?

"The shocks are generated by a device known 
as a GED which children are made to 
carry 24 hours a day in backpacks or 
around their waist. Photograph: 
Rick Friedman" Guardian

This story has to be the greatest of all local shames to any Massachusetts or U. S. citizen who is not involved in some of the millions in hush money from the torture center known as the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.  Above is a photo of a child wearing the torture device.

Here are some of the details of this horrendous procedure of manually shocking students who misbehave: 

The Center makes use of aversives as part of their intensive, 24/7 behavior modification program. Until the late 1980s, aversion therapy was administered in the form of spanking with a spatula, pinching the feet, and forced inhaling of ammonia.^[5]

The Center administers 2-second electric skin shocks to residents using a Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED), which was invented to administer the skin-shocks by remote control through electrodes worn against the skin.^[7] Most often, the shocks are initiated manually by the staff. Automatic punishment is also used by forcing the patient to sit down on a cushion; if they stand up, they are automatically shocked. To address high-risk, low-frequency behaviors, a "Behavior Rehearsal Lesson" has been planned: The person is restrained and forcibly told to misbehave: if the student pulls away, he is shocked; if he follows the order to engage in the risky behavior, he is shocked even more. Reduction of food is also used as punishment: up to three-quarters of the daily required calories can be withheld from the patients if staff members judge that they are misbehaving.

The center stated on its website that electrical shock aversives are only employed after positive behavioral interventions have not been proven to help with violent, self-injurious behaviors and the GED is used with only 42% of residents of school age.^[8] In 2011 facilities licensed by the DDS (Department of Developmental Services) in Massachusetts, including but not limited to the Judge Rotenberg Center, were banned from subjecting new admissions to severe behavioral interventions including electric shock, long-term restraint, or aversives that pose risk for psychological harm. ^[9]

This is from Jonathan Turley's blog on May 5, 2012 with news of a new report detailing the horrors:  

Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) has filed a disturbing report with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled in Massachusetts is engaging in the torture of disabled children through electric shocks and restraints.

The report, entitled “Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center,” gives pictures and accounts of how restraints and shocks are used to control the behavior of the children.

What is most disturbing are the allegations that electronic shocks are administered by remote-controlled packs attached to a child’s back called a Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GED).

This is not the first controversy for the Judge Rotenberg Center. Judge Rotenberg CEO and founder Dr. Matthew L. Israel established the program in California back in 1977. The center was the subject of an investigation into the death in 1981 of a 14-year-old boy who was tied to his bed. After the investigation cleared Israel, he moved first to Rhode Island and then to Massachusetts. Recently there was an allegation that the Center destroyed tapes after giving shocks to children in a prank call,here.
For a copy of the report, click USReportandUrgentAppealFor the full story, click here.

And this from the Guardian, June 2, announcing a UN investigation into torture, no less: 

The UN's special rapporteur on torture has made a formal approach to the US government over a special-needs school near Boston that inflicts electric shocks on autistic children as a form of behavioural control.

Juan Mendez has told the Guardian that he has opened discussions with the US mission to the UN in Geneva as a first step towards investigating the school.

The rapporteur plans to contact the US state department and has the option of reporting the matter to the UN human rights council.

Mendez said he was "very concerned" about the use of electric shocks, which are inflicted on autistic children through pads applied to their skin. . . .

Can anyone who is not involved in the payola explain how this can continue in Massachusetts??  Here is the recent video from a local TV station.  If you find it hard to watch, imagine what it was like to the child being tortured:

Bring the Bush-Cheney War Criminal Gang to Justice

Is there anybody in the Obama Administration who can read this and then advocate for letting these arrogant war criminals off the hook for their betrayal of the concept of humanity and their shredding of the Constitution? If so, they will have become one and the same.

From Raw Story:

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.”

Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted.

Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in a Human Rights First report in 2006.

“Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. “Although a U.S. Army medical examiner found that Hatab had died of strangulation, the evidence that would have been required to secure accountability for his death – Hatab’s body – was rendered unusable in court. Hatab’s internal organs were left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Baghdad heat, the organs were destroyed; the throat bone that would have supported the Army medical examiner’s findings of strangulation was never found.”

In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest.

“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”

Another Iraqi man was killed in a US detention facility on Mosul in 2003.

“U.S. military personnel who examined Kenami when he first arrived at the facility determined that he had no preexisting medical conditions,” the rights group writes. “Once in custody, as a disciplinary measure for talking, Kenami was forced to perform extreme amounts of exercise—a technique used across Afghanistan and Iraq. Then his hands were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he was hooded, and forced to lie in an overcrowded cell. Kenami was found dead the morning after his arrest, still bound and hooded. No autopsy was conducted; no official cause of death was determined. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, a review of Kenami’s death was launched, and Army reviewers criticized the initial criminal investigation for failing to conduct an autopsy; interview interrogators, medics, or detainees present at the scene of the death; and collect physical evidence. To date, however, the Army has taken no known action in the case.”

Death from interrogation is hard to separate from simple detainee death while in US custody. But one particular case stands out that seems to have fallen by the wayside — the murder of CIA “ghost” detainee named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was tortured to death by a CIA team at Abu Ghraib in 2003.

“Pictures of Abu Ghraib guards Charles Graner and Sabrina Harman posing with al-Jamadi’s dead body, the so-called Ice Man, were among the most notorious of the Abu Ghraib photographs published in April 2004,” Sifton notes. “A CIA officer named Mark Swanner and an interpreter led the team that interrogated al-Jamadi. Nine Navy personnel were also implicated. An autopsy conducted by the U.S. military five days after al-Jamadi’s death found that the cause: “blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration.”

“Reporting by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and NPR’s John McChesney revealed that al-Jamadi was strung up from handcuffs behind his back, a torture tactic sometimes called a ‘Palestinian hanging,’” he adds. “After an investigation, the CIA referred the case to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution of the CIA personnel involved, but no charges were ever brought. Prosecutors accused 10 Navy personnel of the crime; nine were given nonjudicial punishments, such as rank reductions and letters of reprimand, and a 10th was acquitted.”

Additionally, Sifton notes the CIA may have had some close calls with detainees nearly dying during interrogations: the May 10, 2005, Bush Administration torture memo by Stephen Bradbury notes that doctors were nearby to perform a tracheotomy if during waterboarding the suspect is approaching death.

“Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue of psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness,” Bradbury wrote. “An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately, and the integrator should deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water. If this fails to restore normal breathing, aggressive medical intervention is required….’”

The memo says CIA doctors were on hand with necessary equipment to perform a tracheotomy if necessary during waterboarding sessions: “[W]e are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present—although not visible to the detainee—during any application of the waterboard.”