As a member of the city she lives in, this has been some interesting local news. It's disgusting to read some of the responses an article about this got on our newspaper's website. The fear is sickening and Nebraskan's desire to torture and purposefully harm others just makes me ill. The xenophobia and terrorism have won in the heartland and the people don't see it. They're afraid and in retribution for their own fear simply want to harm others to give themselves power back in their lives. Sad.

Its a terrible shame that the USA is now a torture state. I still find it hard to accept. This would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. Where will the world be in 10 years?

Ryan @ 2:

As a member of the city she lives in, this has been some interesting local news. It's disgusting to read some of the responses an article about this got on our newspaper's website. The fear is sickening and Nebraskan's desire to torture and purposefully harm others just makes me ill. The xenophobia and terrorism have won in the heartland and the people don't see it. They're afraid and in retribution for their own fear simply want to harm others to give themselves power back in their lives. Sad.

One has to wonder how they would feel if it happened to them or a member of their own family?

Mick @ 4:

Its a terrible shame that the USA is now a torture state. I still find it hard to accept. This would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. Where will the world be in 10 years?

What world? Do you mean that smoking cinder now orbiting between Venus and Mars?

Wow watch the traditional media outlets (let's stop calling it the MSM. Any source that seeks to report the truth should be considered the Mainstream Media and in the meantime we can call tv "news" and newspapers the traditional media) run with this story! This is going to be huge!

Hello?

[tap tap tap squuueeeeawrkk]

Is this thing on?

Good on Ms. Pipher.

Well done I hope this either causes the APA to rethink and change leadership, or as some members have proposed a new association is formed that does not endorse torture and leave the APA enablers to rot.

Thank you Ma'am,
For standing up and doing the right thing, for having integrity.

As the widow of a US airman who survived being tortured by the North Vietnamese, I am truly grateful for your stand.

It's now time for each and every American to stand up and tell their Senators and Congressional Representatives to STOP THE TORTURE ! To keep standing up and telling them this until they do STOP THE TORTURE.

Tell them:
NOT IN MY NAME!
NEVER IN MY NAME!

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

Torture is child's play compared to what this current group of tyrants is doing. I'm not condoning torture, I'm just saying, it is hideous what they are doing.

Good for the Good Doctor. We need more Americans to take a stand. Don't support corporate media, or their lies or their candidates.
Check out the issues and think...and feel...who would best serve to heal this country.
I'm not gonna say it, but you know who I'm talking about. Torture and murder are coming down from the top of this administration and corroding everything they touch. We tried the insane neo-con reality. Let's try peace...just this once. OK?

Vote peace. Vote strength through peace.

[...] Clark Prominent Psychologist Returns APA Presidential Citation - Sites Group’s Support For Torture &#187... This Summary is from an article posted at Crooks and Liars on Saturday, August 25, 2007 This [...]

Mel @ 17:

My two cents...Psychology as a discipline has struggled its whole existence to be taken seriously as a science. Allying with this government and its desire to torture empowers APA with contracts and money. The profession has basically sold its soul for Machiavellian perks.

Sorry, psychology is not a science. Being the safety major in campuses across the country doesn't help either...
A discipline to be considered a science must be able to create reasonable explanations (theories) to describe the reality for its field of study. Theories rely only on evidence not intuition, and it must be gathered and evaluated (and sometimes discarded) according to rigid rules meant to assure that a scientific theory reflects reality to the best of our ability. A science never draws conclusions directly from observations, it must be able to recreate the results predicted by the theories using a specific and verified framework of tools.

As a grad student I had to help some people in the psychology dept with some of their statistical models, flawed and laughable did not even begin to describe the stuff that got published in some of the major psychology journals. Basically they would gather shitloads of data, then they would try to do some sort of regression and fit it into some sort of model/distributio... et voila, paper-o-matic. Never bothered to actually verify the model, because since they are dealing with human beings, it is almost impossible to verify some of the models they were coming with. Thus a big chunk of psychology is based just on observations, which discualifies it from being considered a science for the most part.

Mick @ 4:

Its a terrible shame that the USA is now a torture state. I still find it hard to accept. This would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. Where will the world be in 10 years?

Right... USA is the country that never did a bad thing before 1998, suuuuure. You know is this the same USA that screwed every democracy south of the border because it considered it was its manifest destiny to rule this hemisphere? You know the same country that did such merry things like the Iran-Contra, Kissinger and his reign of fun which overthrew a democracy in Chile and installed that son of a bitch Pinochet -which made throwing people out of helicopters into shark infested waters a national sport-, maybe names like Somoza or Batista don't ring a bell. And who can't forget the fun time that was Vietnam and the milliard of dirty subwars fought in parallel in the region -Cambodia comes to mind. Or overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran, installing a Shah that liked to torture people just to get his day started, and now we are still trying to grasp why them Iranians don't like us!

The same country which has executed mentally retarded people, that has more black men behind bars that attending college, the same country that allows 40 million to be sans health insurance, that put most of its native population in reserves whose living conditions are sub par even for 3rd world standards (some US reservations have worse infant mortality rates than parts of Africa), this is the same country that could send you to jail just be a member of the communist party. That has a police force with some of the highest rates of documented brutality in the Western world.

Son now we all shocked, shocked I tell you that we torture? Honey, we have been torturing for years... we are just so god damned depraved that we just don't even care enough to even try to hide it. Just because we did not talk about it does not mean that our hands are dirty with blood, and that goes waaaaaaaaay back far more than 10 years ago.

Just because we made movies about being the good guys doesn't mean that we are innocent by a long shot. Going abroad, it is always shocking to see the sheer naivete of a lot of Americans. Jar Jar Binks was more aware of what was going on than the average American "Youse mean that innocent people are gonna die?"

I will no longer use APA format for any of my research papers.

It's going to take every little board, commission, and council in every hamlet, podunk town, and declining city, to cast what pathetic small votes they have in opposition to this insanity, only this will stop it, apparently. The Big Dawgs are still having a dick-swinging contest on our dime. I encourage everyone out there in la-la land to run for local office, and then pass resolutions calling for an end to America's Adventure with Armageddon.

If I win district 5 I'll let you know.

QuakerDave @ 23:

I was a fan of Dr. Pipher's work before. Now I'm a fan of her.

Well done, ma'am. Well done.

I 100% echo this statement.

This is how thugs gain the trappings of legitimacy in society, when they receive tacit approval from respectedinstitutions in that society. Dr.Pipher is to be applauded for this move, just as surely as the APA is to be condemned in strongest moral terms for it's position. Her move must only be a beginning, however. If the APA will not amend itself, all member of conscience must leave the APA . Colleges and universities, where membership usually begins, must disband any campus associations. Let those who have left the APA establish a new association that respects human rights.

There should be no doubt. The psychologists who have abetted the evil of GITMO and other nameless black prisons are war criminals. They are absolutely equivalent in every regard to the infamous Dr. Mengele. These pople do not deserve to be treated as respected colleagues. What they deserve, is to be brought to justice. If the APA sanctions such thing, it deserves not to exist.