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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! How Cops Extort Confessions;
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
How Cops Extort Confessions;
How the U.S. “Justice System” Really WorksNinety-two per cent of felony convictions in the U.S. are obtained by plea bargains or confessions. Without them the “justice system” would grind to a halt. In an important piece in our latest newsletter, available only to subscribers, Emily Horowitz shows how totally innocent people will “confess” under police pressure, even without physical torture. Horowitz outlines the powerful case for banning confessions altogether. Also in this new edition Marcus Rediker, co-author of the legendary The Many Headed Hydra, writes of popular heroism and resistance in the favelas of Medellin, Colombia. Alexander Cockburn reports on how America’s oldest bank, patronized by the global elites, washed billions smuggled out of Russia, and how the Russians might win their money back, shaking the world’s banking system if they do so. Serge Halimi describes the real battle for the soul of Europe. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories August 7, 2008 Dr. Trudy Bond August 6, 2008 Marc Herold Greg Moses Sheldon Rampton Kevin Young Michael Estrada Robert Weissman Dr. Susan Block Cindy Sheehan Ronald Hoffman Website of the Day August 5, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Jeff Halper Patrick Cockburn Nancy Welch Peter Morici Sousan Hammad Eamon Martin Shepherd Bliss Tim Matson Website of the Day August 4, 2008 Uri Avnery Saul Landau David W. Remington Rev. Jesse Jackson Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Ramzy Baroud Christian Wright Website of the Day August 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler James Abourezk Andy Worthington Brian Cloughley Robert Fantina Benjamin Dangl Marlene Martin David Yearsley Fatemeh Keshavarz David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis Harvey Wasserman Jason Hribal Phyllis Pollack Laray Polk Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Rosen Dan Bacher Joe Allen Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 1, 2008 Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff Rannie Amiri Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli M. K. Bhadrakumar Patrick Cockburn James J. Brittain Dan Bacher Website of the Day
July 31, 2008 Michael Hudson Carl Finamore Mike Whitney Joshua Frank Andy Worthington Ralph Nader Bill Moyers / Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day July 30, 2008 Brian M. Downing Chuck Spinney William S. Lind David Ker Thomson Karl Grossman Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg James Murren Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Website of the Day July 29, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair John Ross Peter Morici Alison Weir Gary Leupp David Macaray Brenda Norrell Marjorie Cohn Eric Ruder Website of the Day July 28, 2008 Dr. Bryant Welch Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli Clifton Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day July 26 / 27, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair James G. Abourezk Joseph Nevins Uri Avnery Linn Washington, Jr. David Yearsley Binoy Kampmark Saul Landau Joshua Frank Brendan Cooney Jonathan Cook Robert Fantina Lee Sustar Michael Winship David Macaray Missy Beattie Robert Weissman Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend July 25, 2008 Harvey Wasserman Paul Craig Roberts Alan Farago Paul D'Amato Gary Leupp Niranjan Ramakrishnan Mike Whitney Paul Krassner Mike Roselle Website of the Day July 24, 2008 Greg Moses Andy Worthington James Bovard Joe Bageant George Wuerthner DC Larson William Willers David Macaray Website of the Day July 23, 2008 Winslow T. Wheeler Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Susie Day Website of the Day July 22, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff Patrick Cockburn Soldz, Olson, Reisner Arrigo and Welch Moshe Adler Martha Rosenberg Dan Bacher Harvey Wasserman Anthony Papa Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day July 21, 2008 Ishmael Reed Mike Whitney Andy Worthington Scott Pellegrino John Ross Robert Weitzel Mike Stark Website of the Day July 19 / 20, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Dave Lindorff Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Uri Avnery Neve Gordon Roane Carey Robert Fantina Christopher Brauchli Fred Gardner David Macaray Richard L. Hutto Bill Moyers / Ronnie Cummins David Yearsley Alison McKenna Wajahat Ali Poets' Basement Website of the Day July 18, 2008 Corey D. B. Walker Mike Whitney Robert Bryce Mike Roselle Bouthaina Shaaban Eve Spangler Website of the Day
July 17, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts James G. Abourezk Ralph Nader Allan J. Lichtman Andy Worthington"Screwed Up" and"Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo Ronnie Cummins
July 16, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig Roberts Conn Hallinan Dave Lindorff William S. Lind Christopher Brauchli Website of the Day
July 15, 2008 Michael Hudson Brian Cloughley Patrick Cockburn John Ross Howard Lisnoff Website of the Day July 14, 2008 Uri Avnery Paul Craig Roberts Trish Schuh Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Alan Farago Seth Sandronsky Phyllis Pollack Website of the Day July 12 / 13, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair James Abourezk Nicole Colson Stan Cox Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Wajahat Ali / John Stauber Alan Farago Missy Beattie Robert Fantina Rannie Amiri Gregory Kafoury Fran Shor Martha Rosenberg David Macaray Andrew Wimmer Ron Jacobs Farzana Versey Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend July 11, 2008 Kevin Alexander Gray Sasan Fayazmanesh Peter Morici Mike Whitney Manuel Garcia, Jr. Robert Weissman Ramzy Baroud Kelly Overton Adrian Burgos Website of the Day July 10, 2008 Brian McKenna Paul Craig Roberts Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Joshua Frank Peter Morici Alan Maass Robert Weissman William Blum Alan Farago Website of the Day July 9, 2008 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Luis Rodriguez Sheldon Richman Fatemeh Keshavarz Chad Hanson Sen. Russ Feingold Niranjan Ramakrishnan Dave Lindorff Stanley Heller Philip Rizk Website of the Day July 8, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff Laura Carlsen Mike Whitney Andy Worthington Patrick Irelan Chellis Glendinning David Macaray Dave Lindorff John Chuckman Phillip Doe Website of the Day July 7, 2008 Patrick Bond Kathy Kelly Andy Worthington Clifton Ross Elizabeth Schulte Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Binoy Kampmark Stephen Fleischman Website of the Day July 5 / 6, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair / Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Robert Fantina Binoy Kampmark Rannie Amiri Eric Ruder Brian Cloughley William Blum Frank Barat Christopher Brauchli David Yearsley Ron Jacobs Karim Makdisi Wendy Thompson / N. D. Jayaprakash Ramzy Baroud Kelly Overton Richard Neville Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
July 4, 2008 Kathy Kelly Dave Lindorff Paul Krassner Jackie Corr Laray Polk Dan Bacher Walter Brasch Charles Modiano Website of the Day July 3, 2008 Sharon Smith Andy Worthington Laura Carlsen Peter Morici Ramzi Kysia Martha Rosenberg Anne Landman Dave Zirin Kristin Bricker Website of the Day
July 2, 2008 Patrick Irelan Vijay Prashad Brian Cloughley Ralph Nader Robert Fantina Dave Lindorff Parvez Ahmed Robert Bryce Website of the Day July 1, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Mike Whitney Douglas Macgregor Steven Higgs Andy Worthington Binoy Kampmark Dave Lindorff Roger Burbach Richard W. Behan Gary Leupp Website of the Day |
August 7, 2008 The Strange, Post-Gitmo Career of Col. Larry JamesFixing Hell and Curing ObesityBy Dr. TRUDY BOND Colonel (Retired) Larry James, Chief Psychologist at Guatanamo Bay in 2003 and 2007, as well as Abu Ghraib in 2004, has a new vocation: Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. Seems that James perhaps realized that some academicians might find it difficult to understand how his experiences at these illegal detention facilities qualified him for an academic deanship: he did not include his time at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib on the CV he presented to Wright State. More true to fact is the bio that he presented in 2005 when James stated that he was assigned to Guantanamo Bay as Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group in 2003 and Director, Behavioral Science Unit, Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib in 2004. We're talking Intelligence and Interrogation at two of the most notorious sites of abuse and torture that this country has perpetrated in this century. Though he camouflaged his deployments at these sites on his most recent resume, conversely James has written an entire book about his time at Abu Ghraib: Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib. Wright State beware: James' grandiose claims border on the absurd. According to the publisher's promotion of Fixing Hell:
Never mind that Rumsfeld and the Pentagon wasn't calling Abu Ghraib a "catastrophe" at the time James was dispatched (at least not publicly). To remind some readers, this is the same Colonel Larry James who was Chief Psychologist of the Guantanamo Joint Intelligence Group [JIG] at the time that the Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) manual was put into place. This secretly-released SOP at Guantanamo was written specifically for the Joint Intelligence Group of which James was Chief Psychologist. The SOP makes it clear that the Joint Intelligence Group was specifically the military unit that decided how long isolation was used on each detainee to "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process," along with other means of torture, abuse and violation of international law, such as hiding detainees from the International Red Cross. This is the same Colonel Larry James who had command responsibility for BSCT psychologists who were involved in SERE-based interrogation methods at Guantanamo during the period documented in a report from the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General. Superhero that he claims to be in Fixing Hell, James couldn't write the book alone, even though his coauthor, Gregory A. Freeman, also seems to lack the credentials required of an academic researcher or historian (are you listening Wright State?), unless we're talking historical fiction and homophobia. Freeman's most notorious writing was in 2003 when he wrote a piece for Rolling Stone with the indelible title of "Bug Chasers: the men who long to be HIV+." Freeman was writing about gay men who found sex with HIV+ partners erotic, suggesting that the numbers of such men were about 10,000 per year. Freeman's two experts immediately denounced the quotes Freeman attributed to them, and Freeman's shoddy misinterpretation of the statistics from the Center for Disease Control (he had assumed that all HIV+ cases were the result of men having sex with men) resulted in a sensationalized scenario that Sean Hannity and others were only too happy to pass along as truth in the midst of trashing gays. Andrew Sullivan said it best: "The entire lead of the piece is written in a prose style that reads like Jerry Falwell channeling Hunter S. Thompson . . .That's why this piece isn't journalism. it's hysteria, wrapped in a homophobic and HIV-phobic wrapper." James' co-author has also made a couple of attempts at military-related books, neither of which would lend credibility to James' story of Abu-Ghraib. Freeman's book, Sailors to the End: The deadly fire on the USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought It, was reviewed in the Naval History Magazine from Annapolis in August, 2003:
And Freeman's more recent attempt in 2007, The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For The Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II. (The grandiose title of Freeman's books begins to take on a familiar pattern: Sailors to the End . . . The Greatest Rescue Mission . . . Fixing hell.) Apart from minor details such as referring to the Yugoslav Air Force in WWI, when Yugoslavia didn't even exist at that time (remniscent of McCain's difficulties with Chekoslovakia), Freeman utterly misrepresents the roles of Tito's Partisans and Mihailovic's Chetniks in his depiction of that piece of history. Why did Colonel Larry James choose Freeman as his coauthor to write about his time at Abu Ghraib? And why did Dr. Phillip Zimbardo of the Stanford Prison Experiment write the foreward to a book with Freeman as a coauthor? But the presses are hot. Dr. Larry James has another book coming out the same month. (Could Wright State be any happier?) This book has nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. It's about . . . obesity. How did James research and edit a book on obesity intervention while being the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib? You decide. For this book, which James co-edits with John Linton, James' bio states that he is Chair of the Department of Psychology at Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, while simultaneiously holding adjunct appointments at the (1) Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences School of Medicine, Bethesda, MD (2) Howard University Hospital, Washington, DC (3) University of West Florida, Pensacola, FA (4) American School of Professional Psychology, Hawaii (5) University of Hawaii, AND (6) Hawaii Pacific University. Busy man, this Dean of Psychology at Wright State University, wright next door to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Once more, no mention of his time at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib in this bio, even if he was fixing hell in addition to all his faculty appointments. There is one final tale of tragic irony. Colonel Larry James has been chosen by the American Psychological Association to receive the Booz Black Award to honor outstanding research and practice in Counseling Health Psychology at their annual convention next week, the same convention that was the stage in 2007 for Colonel James, straight from Guantanamo, to urge his fellow psychologists to continue to professionally support those locations where men, women and children are held illegally for years, kept in solitary confinement, lives ruined, tortured and killed. Perhaps APA is confused, thinking it's giving James the Black Boots Award rather than the Booz Black. Dr. Trudy Bond has been a licensed psychologist for 28 years. She can be reached at ar_mordilo@yahoo.com.
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