Saturday, August 15th, 2015
Stephan: Here, with some caveats that are explained in this report, is some excellent news: The American Psychological Association has overwhelmingly decided to no longer allow its members to be involved in torture. The dark cancer of the Bush Administration has been at least partially excised.
I urge you to click through and at least scan the actual reports cited. This is what our country was doing and, I suspect, is still doing. Exactly what the difference is between America torturing people, and ISIS torturing people is a moral distinction I am unable to make. But I am glad that most of American psychologists will not participate in the future. Some will, of course, when the money is right, but the general point has been made and most ethical psychologists will behave honorably.
It is worth noting that corporate media, particularly television outlets paid hardly any attention to this development. CNN and MSNBC, for instance, could not be bothered to interrupt their wall to wall coverage of Donald Trump. That I think tells us a lot.
American psychologists have voted overwhelmingly against helping their government torture people. In an even more radical step, the psychologists voted to obey international law, even in instances where US law tolerates war crimes or crimes against humanity.
That would be really good news if there weren’t a huge exception: the psychologists also voted that it would be all right for them to take part in “constitutional” interrogations by federal, state, and local law enforcement in the US. Given the ragged history of US law enforcement, this is a loophole that could at any moment become another noose.
Nevertheless, this action by the American Psychological Association (APA), the largest organization of professional psychologists in the US, represents a significant sea change in the professional ethics of American psychologists since their secret alliance with the Bush administration’s “dark side,” as Vice President Cheney characterized their crimes against humanity. This ethical change has taken almost a decade since Read the Full Article
American psychologists have voted overwhelmingly against helping their government torture people. In an even more radical step, the psychologists voted to obey international law, even in instances where US law tolerates war crimes or crimes against humanity.
