Letters to the Editor
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Reagan & deinstitutionalization
Mona: The idea was that many of those in the hospitals could live in a less restrictive environment in their communities, with the proper supports and programs.
And Reagan's reductions in federal support to the states meant the promised 'proper supports and programs' never happened. Which caused an increase in the homeless population. Which would eventually work against Bush 41's reelection. Which is why his son was careful to call himself a 'compassionate' conservative. Which means torturing brown people is a-ok.
And Giuliani is praised for cleaning up the homeless, by jailing them.
It would have been far more efficient just to change the names from 'Mental Hospital X' to 'X Correctional Institution'. A few sign changes, new stationery, and VOILA! instant compassion, with Tasers for the safety of the bulls... er, CNAs.
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Rudy, the long-suffering somnambulist
Shades of Rumsfeld saying something like, "prolonged standing? I stand four hours a day." Prolonged standing was one of Stalin's most effective methods.
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Well put, Kevin
:-)
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Prop 13/ Jarvis-Gann and Reagan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978)
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Erm... Mona... Reagan was elected governor of California in
1966; he took office in January, 1967; he signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short act in 1967 and immediately began restricting budgets for state mental hospitals, cutting staff and reducing services. In time, this pattern led to the closure of many state mental health facilities. There was no money to staff them, therefore there was no way to keep them open.
Patients were supposed to be cared for in their communities. Many were unable to get this care, because it was not available. Not only were the state hospitals closed due to lack of funding, there was insufficient funding for community based services as well. That situation is largely unchanged today.
California's mental health situation was nationalized when Reagan took office as President in 1981, though the California Example was well on its way toward nationalization beforehand.
While it is inaccurate to claim that Reagan was solely responsible for the deterioration in and frequent absence of mental health services in this country, it is equally inaccurate to claim he had nothing to do with it.
He had plenty to do with it, and one of his rationales may well have come through Nancy Reagan's step-father Loyal Davis, a well-known neurosurgeon.
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How we know
The basis explanation for it all. We have a guy in our possession and we KNOW that he KNOWS about some imminent attack. And we must get that information. How do we know that he knows?
http://margalis.blogspot.com/2007/10/just-how-dumb-do-they-think-we-are.html
http://margalis.blogspot.com/2007/09/hypothetical-questions.html
Short answer: Lasso of Truth.
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@ Margalis
Interrogation Experts (Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association) debunk the "ticking time bomb" scenario:
2) The self-described civil libertarian, Alan Dershowitz, published a book in 2002 entitled, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge. In Chapter Four, he calls for the use of "nonlethal" torture in "ticking bomb" situations. Unfortunately, he neither tells us how we can be sure that an event is not imminent nor how we can be sure that the torture applied will not have a fatal result. On the surface, his recommendation of pushing needles under someone's fingernails appears to be a nonfatal technique. But, can we be sure of that in the case of an older source with a heart problem? As evidence that torture works, Dershowitz describes an event that took place in the Philippines in 1995. It seems the police captured one Abdul Hakim Murad after finding a bomb-making factory in his apartment in Manila. They beat him and broke his ribs, burned him with cigarettes, forced water down his throat, then threatened to turn him over to the Israelis. Sixty-seven days later he broke and told of terror plots to blow up 11 airliners, crash another into the headquarters of the CIA and to assassinate the Pope. Unsaid here is which of these purported plots were subsequently confirmed. Also, I find it curious that Dershowitz would argue for the use of torture in a "ticking bomb" situation based on a torture-interrogation example that took sixty-seven days to bring to fruition. According to WO Brian Copeland of the Navy/Marine Intelligence Training Course (NMITC), Dam Neck, Va., current Marine Corps interrogation doctrine is that detainee information is highly perishable and, in a tactical environment, has a shelf life of 24 to 48 hours.
http://www.mcitta.org/torture.htm
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deleting posts?
Stupid. He is the one cling the anonymous box before every post. All he has to do is not click the check box. But hey, deleting posts works too... Maybe Salon should merge with Red State?.
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Mona
Wintin the boundaries you have described, Mona, you are correct. People remanded to insane asylms and institutions for the intellectually challenged would and did benefit from alternative settings. And, that was very much a progressive initiative. If memory serves, it was under JFK's administration that deinstitutionalization was first proposed. The advent of community mental health had its origns there, I believe. But it was woefully underfunded the day it was proposed. State, county and municipal governments stepped in to take up some of the slack. The initiative managed to limp forward in spite of itself. When and if I get time, I'll try to research specifically which of Reagan's initiatives cut it off at the knees. But, as for many social programs, Reagan's administration is not held in high regard, and it was nearly ordained at that time the corrections system would become the last resort provider of "mental health services" as alternative community system slowly starved to dealth.
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-- zorro
"What Did He Say?
This is the first time I've taken a look at the comments section. What the Hell is Bebop-o talking about. Can anyone decipher this gibberish?"
I certainly cant, I tried for a while and finally gave up. I have learned to recognize his/her style and just scroll past. Evidently others can as occasionally someone replies to him/her.
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My apologies if someone has already posted, but
The SERE program was designed strictly for defense against torture regimes, but the C.I.A.’s new team used its expertise to help interrogators inflict abuse. “They were very arrogant, and pro-torture,” a European official knowledgeable about the program said. “They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses. It takes a psychologist trained in this to understand these rupturing experiences.”
[...]
The program tied together many strands of the agency’s secret history of Cold War-era experiments in behavioral science. (In June, the C.I.A. declassified long-held secret documents known as the Family Jewels, which shed light on C.I.A. drug experiments on rats and monkeys, and on the infamous case of Frank R. Olson, an agency employee who leaped to his death from a hotel window in 1953, nine days after he was unwittingly drugged with LSD.) The C.I.A.’s most useful research focussed on the surprisingly powerful effects of psychological manipulations, such as extreme sensory deprivation. According to Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, who has written a history of the C.I.A.’s experiments in coercing subjects, the agency learned that “if subjects are confined without light, odors, sound, or any fixed references of time and place, very deep breakdowns can be provoked.”
Agency scientists found that in just a few hours some subjects suspended in water tanks—or confined in isolated rooms wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs—regressed to semi-psychotic states. Moreover, McCoy said, detainees become so desperate for human interaction that “they bond with the interrogator like a father, or like a drowning man having a lifesaver thrown at him. If you deprive people of all their senses, they’ll turn to you like their daddy.” McCoy added that “after the Cold War we put away those tools. There was bipartisan reform. We backed away from those dark days. Then, under the pressure of the war on terror, they didn’t just bring back the old psychological techniques—they perfected them.”
The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. “It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,” an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. “At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”
Jane Mayer, "The Black Sites"
I'm sorry if I don't think water boarding is the worst that's being done. Perhaps Mr. Giuliani would like to address whether reducing a person to a semi-psychotic state and producing deep breakdowns qualifies as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."
You're right Mr. Giuliani, it does matter who does it, it is worse "when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
Those are the definitions, Mr. Giuliani, in a document that the U.S. was so sure was a description of unconstitutional behavior, it declared it wouldn't need to enact implementing legislation.
One other thing, Sir.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
Any country that would even think of electing your sorry ass is flirting with jail bait.