Life is better on the margins

Almost a year ago, I published an essay at dkos entitled, “Late night optimism“.  This is a partial repost with some additional commentary about what’s changed since then, and what’s remained – wonderfully – the same.

Here was the original text, and I’ll add my new reflections at the bottom:

I stumbled back home a few hours ago from a Saturday night on the town, and I wanted to share a few observations with you all before bed.  This isn’t a hardcore political diary, but I had politics on the mind tonight – in the more abstract form of social interaction. 

Maybe a bar isn’t always the best place to be thinking about the Democratic party on the mind, not to mention dailykos.  I’ve been participating less and less here, partially because of an increased level of responsibility at my job, and partially because – and this happens to anyone who takes breaks from here – I’d felt the community was shifting away from what I’d come to know.

Which is fine.  Communities change over time; some people enter and some people leave, and it’s not always easy to find your bearings – even when you’ve been around for a while.  But I’m going to back up a bit and tell you about my night, and the kinds of thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head:

There’s a once-monthly dance night at one of the local bars that attracts an odd crowd of outsiders; when describing it to a friend, the best I could come up with was alternative-queer-punk-metro-grunge-something.  Imagine you’ve grabbed all those subcultures together, packed them into a smallish bar with a mix of music leaning heavily on indie rock from the 80s, and you’ll have some idea of the kind of atmosphere we’re talking about. 

But what an interesting mix of people!  The crowd tonight was nearly half gay, and neither side seemed to mind that the other half was there.  Guys were dancing with guys, girls with girls, guys with girls, and of course, a lot of people were having a damned good time by themselves.  People who spend time doing political activism were dancing with people who couldn’t care less about politics; people who spend time writing poetry were dancing with people who couldn’t care less about poetry; and on the rare occasion a popular song came up in the playlist, the entire room shouted the lyrics, even if it didn’t fit with the subculture they were there representing.

I got to thinking: this is what it looks like, really.  We sometimes talk about the Democratic party being a loose confederation of interest groups – women, minorities, LGBT, etc. – and we often see how interest groups can make dialogue on a broader platform more difficult.  How can people who have no real platform in common come together towards goals that should be common?

We’ve seen this kind of fracturing in the site time and time again, and it’s not just the interest groups: pragmatists can’t stand the way that idealists scuttle dialogue; idealists can’t stand the way that pragmatists dismiss important concerns.  Sensationalists run with exciting stories without double checking them; cynics question everything to the point that nothing gets done. 

And somehow, through all the pie fights, the shouting, the endless diaries arguing back and forth over controversial points, things do get done.  It’s not efficient, it’s not clean, but the site (and likewise the Democratic party) slugs along towards common goals – almost in spite of itself. 

I’m not a Romantic, by any stretch of the imagination, and as I looked at the room full of excited young people, I knew well enough that, if you asked them to sit down and work out political platforms together, they’d likely be fighting within the hour.  But somehow, those differences didn’t matter for now.  We could get together over beer and music, and those nagging roadblocks to communication just melted away.

So for tonight, I offer everyone a conciliatory beer and an invitation to join the dance.  It’s about community, after all.  And even if the members of the community have nothing else in common (h/t), we can still all groove to the same music.

That was mid-November, 2006.  Last night I went back, for the dozenth time, to the same once-monthly shindig and had many of the same reactions that I had when I first wrote this diary.

But some things have changed, or have been changing since I first attended this event back in 2003 or so.  The news of a gay-friendly club night has attracted a larger and more geographically diverse gay crowd, and we met people who’d driven an hour to come to what is essentially a local thing.  The increased gay presence also means that less straight people are attending, and soon it may hit a tipping point, after which the monthly get-together will become, for all intents and purposes, a gay night rather than the delirious mix that drew me to there in the first place.  Possibly because of that, the music is slowly shifting away from ragtag indie rock towards an equally ragtag indie electronica. 

As a gay night, it’ll be heads above anything in the area (for an ostensibly liberal haven, we’re pretty sad in that department), and I imagine it’ll be a huge success if the bar decides to embrace it as such.  But something will be missing.

This is what happens, the natural life and death cycle of something too good to keep a secret forever.  Maybe last night was one of the last times the mix would still be bizarre enough to enjoy, but at least we had last night, since I’m sure many people never get to experience a night like this at all.  There were drag queens and punks, frat boys and cheerleaders, black, white, Asian, Middle Eastern, and all points in between, and it felt great to be there.  The socially lubricating qualities of beer didn’t hurt, either.

It’s a pity places like this always exist on the margins of mainstream culture, but in a way, they have to be: mainstream culture tends to flatten things out, and events like this rely on a scruffy, underdog charm.  Granted, this event ceased to be purely marginal the moment I started attending (I’m the very definition of uncool, so if I know about it, it’s already sold out), but it still hovered (hovers?) safely outside popular radar, which is part of the reason it can exist at all.  Popularity brings with it a certain need for expectations, but the margins are free to drift in sense of hazy indeterminateness. 

The margins can be an exhilarating place to live, where the culture clash is greeting by a warm, inviting community.  It exists in places like New Orleans’ Marigny, a neighborhood bursting with elderly folks who’ve never left, bohemian young adults who can hardly afford rent, musicians, painters, queers, students, transients, and on, and on.  Its identity is protean, which both accounts for its value and explains why it can never be preserved.  Eventually the trendiness of the Marigny will encourage more people to migrate there, and money will start flowing, and houses will be restored, and property values will go up, and the neighborhood will acquire a capital I Identity.

Natural life cycles, of a sort. 

The cover charge at the club was higher this year than in the past.  We can sense the coming changes by the lighter weight of our pockets.  The extra two dollars carried a whiff of inevitability.

If Nothing Else: A Semi-Manifesto

“So why did you do it at all?” he asks.

I never expected it to work in the first place, is what I’ve just got done saying to him.  That’s why he asked me the question.  And now I don’t know what to say.

I didn’t have any hope for it.  I think the last time I had hope, back then and before back then, even growing up, hope about anything at all, was . . . no.  I’m not sure I ever had any.  I don’t remember it if I did.  But I don’t say that out loud.

It’s thirty years on, now.  2037.  I’m sixty-six years old — not an old man but hardly a young one.  You’d think I’d have an answer to this question my friend has just asked me.

Why did I join the blogosphere?

We’re sitting around a porch, some of us, some of us who survived this long.  We toasted our fallen bretheren at nine o’clock and passed the weed at nine-plus-two-minutes, and now it’s, I dunno, eleven, I guess. 

Just say no
to family values,
and don’t quit
your day job.

Drugs
are sacred
substances,
and some drugs
are very sacred substances,
please praise them
for somewhat liberating
the mind.

Tobacco
is a sacred substance
to some,
and even though you’ve
stopped smoking,
show a little respect.

Alcohol
is totally great,
let us celebrate
the glorious qualities
of booze,
and I had
a good time being with you.

We don’t have to say No
to family values,
cause we never
think about them;

just
do it,
just make
love
and compassion.


— from “Just Say No to Family Values”, John Giorno

History hasn’t moved in years, decades, is what I want to say to him.  It’s congealed; the scum on a bowl of pea soup.  I guess it started with Carter.  But it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter who the President was and certainly doesn’t matter who the President is, people stopped caring about that in 2011, thereabouts.  I remember that year ’cause that was the year Julia Louise Dreyfus finally found another TV series that worked for her.  Lasted ’til 2019.  She played a tree surgeon.

Somewhere in there — it’s hard to explain — Washington sealed itself off completely, rhetorically, actually, not quite literally, though some politicians tried to seal Washington off literally.  They might as well have.  Watching the Sunday shows just became a joke.  Like watching a closed circut TV monitor showing an image of another closed circuit TV monitor.  It’s not like life stopped, or anything.  We still vote.

I want to tell him that I joined the blogosphere because back then, back in the first decade of the 21st century, it felt like we were in the sound booth and we were in record.

And
what I really want to know is: Are things getting better
or are they getting
worse? Can we start all over again?
Stop. Pause. We’re in record. Good
morning. Good night.
Now I in you without a body move.
And in our hearts
we fly. Standby.

— from “Same Time Tomorrow”, Laurie Anderson

So, why, for example, march?  Why blog at all?  As cliche as it is, because I wanted to be able to look in the mirror.  Because someday, someday, you’re gonna have to pick up a phone and call someone, and you’re gonna have to tell them where you’re calling from, and you don’t want it to be a very unclean place.

But it isn’t fair, I say, I claim, it isn’t fair to say that the American people failed America.  Although some say that, and although sometimes I have been one of the some who say that, who thought in the 2020s that everyone was at their most rigorously brain-dead, it really wasn’t true.  Look, you never expected this to fucking work, did you?  Did you think we lived in a democracy?

But I don’t say that either.

Come a little bit closer
Hear what I have to say
Just like children sleepin
We could dream this night away.

But theres a full moon risin
Lets go dancin in the light
We know where the musics playin
Lets go out and feel the night.

Because Im still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because Im still in love with you
On this harvest moon.

— from Harvest Moon, Neil Young

It’s 2037 and every moon is a harvest moon.  Every sky is orange and burnt.  Did you think it would not come to this?

We didn’t save the United States but we saved a part of America.  We were left on our own and so we did something on our own.  And now we don’t live in the United States anymore, we live somewhere else, though we have the same drivers’ licenses.  In the face of a dark age coming like a tidal wave, an age of ignorance and fear, we didn’t, it’s true, manage to do much.  How could we.

But we built a city of light, for awhile there.

People come, people go,
Some grow young, some grow cold
I woke up in between
A memory and a dream

So lets get to the point, lets roll another joint
Lets head on down the road
Theres somewhere I gotta go
And you dont know how it feels
You dont know how it feels to be me


— from “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, Tom Petty

In the 2016 elections, 604,318 people wrote in “Ralph Wiggum”.  We did that.

I dont believe in
I dont believe in
In your sanctity
You privacy
I dont believe in
I dont believe in
Sanctity
A hypocrisy
Could everyone agree that
No one should be left alone
Could everyoone agree that
They should not be left alone yeah
And I feel like a newborn
And I feel like a newborn
Kicking and screaming

— from Take a Picture, Filter

We didn’t do what we set out to do but in the meantime we did something else.  We built a city of light.  We don’t live there any more, either, but we did for awhile.  We conversed and argued and dreampt and considered and we gamed-out and story-boarded and talked.  And we saved something from the darkness. 

If that’s all we did, it will have to have been enough.

Why did I join the blogosphere?  “Why did you do it at all?”  Well, I might as well try to sum it all up.

“I just wanted someone to talk to,” I say.

What Is The Unitary Executive Theory?

I think there is some confusion about the unitary executive theory and what it has become under the Bush Adminstration. Initially, it meant something less ambitious than what the Bush Administration turned it into. The older theory was describe by now Justice Alito, as follows:

In a speech to the Federalist Society in 2001, Alito said:

When I was in OLC [] . . ., we were strong proponents of the theory of the unitary executive, that all federal executive power is vested by the Constitution in the President. And I thought then, and I still think, that this theory best captures the meaning of the Constitution’s text and structure . . . .” “[T]he case for a unitary executive seems, if anything, stronger today than it was in the 18th Century.

Frankly, this is not a remarkable nor important view of the theory. The problem is what is has become under the Bush Administration:

Here’s what it means for Bush:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

The Bybee Memo put it this way:

Any effort by the Congress to regulate the interrogation of battlefield combatants would violate the Constitution’s sole vesting of the Commander in Chief authority in the President. . . . Congress can no more interfere with the President’s conduct of the interrogation of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategic or tactical decisions on the battlefield.

This is the pernicious Unitary Executive theory as we know it today. It is utterly unsupported by the Constitution and the jurisprudence. I’ll explain on the flip.

In December 2005, I wrote this post on the subject:

Does War Make Presidents Kings?

by Armando

Fri Dec 23, 2005 at 08:34:26 AM PDT

Despite much noisemaking, even from non-conservative sources, it is now clear that legal justification for President Bush’s authorization of warrantless domestic electronic surveillance rests entirely on the argument that Article II of the Constitution vests the Executive with plenary Commander in Chief powers which can not be restricted by the other branches of our federal government. The Justice Department’s feeble apologia for the President’s actions makes clear that the claim that FISA permits what the President has authorized is based on the view that if FISA does NOT permit it, then FISA is unconstitutional:

Justice says:

[U]nder established principles of statutory construction the AUMF and FISA must be construed in harmony to avoid any conflict . . .

I agree. But Justice continues the passage in dishonest fashion:

. . . between FISA and the President’s Article II authority as Commander in Chief.

Come again? The conflict to be avoided is between the law duly enacted by Congress, FISA, and the Bush claim of unfettered Commander in Chief power? Say what? No, the conflict to be avoided is between AUMF and FISA! Justice cites a case, Zadvydas v. Davis. I presume Justice is referencing this:

“[I]t is a cardinal principle” of statutory interpretation, however, that when an Act of Congress raises “a serious doubt” as to its constitutionality, “this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided.”

So what Justice is saying is that if FISA is interpreted as limiting the President’s Article II Commander in Chief power, then it would be unconstitutional. Thus, it should be construed as permitting Bush’s ordering of warrantless domestic electronic surveillance. And here we arrive again at the questions that can not be avoided — Is FISA unconstitutional? Does the President have plenary powers when acting as Commander in Chief?

Professor Cass Sunstein states that:

The legal questions raised by President Bush’s wiretapping seem to me complex, not simple.

With due respect to Professor Sunstein, the legal questions may be hard ones, I don’t think they are, but they are NOT complex. They are very straight forward. What we have are claims by President Bush of unenumerated inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution for the Executive that conflict with the express undisputed powers of the Congress, pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. To wit – the President claims that FISA, an Congressional enactment that is clearly within the express powers of Congress, is nonetheless unconstitutional because it impinges upon the President’s power as Commander in Chief as granted in Article II.

The proposition is a simple one – in time of war, the Commander in Chief powers granted the President by Article II of the Constitution are superior to the powers granted to the Congress by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. When they conflict, the President’s Commander in Chief power prevails. That is the argument. It is not complex at all.

Two Supreme Court decisions, one expressly and one implicitly, address this issue most directly. They are Youngstown Co. v. Sawyer and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. I’ve discussed Hamdi previously.

In Youngstown, Justice Black stated:

We are asked to decide whether the President was acting within his constitutional power when he issued an order directing the Secretary of Commerce to take possession of and operate most of the Nation’s steel mills. The mill owners argue that the President’s order amounts to lawmaking, a legislative function which the Constitution has expressly confided to the Congress and not to the President. The Government’s position is that the order was made on findings of the President that his action was necessary to avert a national catastrophe which would inevitably result from a stoppage of steel production, and that in meeting this grave emergency the President was acting within the aggregate of his constitutional powers as the Nation’s Chief Executive and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. . . .

The President’s power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself. There is no statute that expressly authorizes the President to take possession of property as he did here. Nor is there any act of Congress to which our attention has been directed from which such a power can fairly be implied. Indeed, we do not understand the Government to rely on statutory authorization for this seizure. There are two statutes which do authorize the President to take both personal and real property under certain conditions.  However, the Government admits that these conditions were not met and that the President’s order was not rooted in either of the statutes. The Government refers to the seizure provisions of one of these statutes ( 201 (b) of the Defense Production Act) as “much too cumbersome, involved, and time-consuming for the crisis which was at hand.”

. . . It is clear that if the President had authority to issue the order he did, it must be found in some provision of the Constitution. And it is not claimed that express constitutional language grants this power to the President. The contention is that presidential power should be implied from the aggregate of his powers under the Constitution. Particular reliance is placed on provisions in Article II which say that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President . . .”; that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”; and that he “shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”

The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The Government attempts to do so by citing a number of cases upholding broad powers in military commanders engaged in day-to-day fighting in a theater of war. Such cases need not concern us here. Even though “theater of war” be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation’s lawmakers, not for its military authorities.

Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. The [343 U.S. 579, 588]  first section of the first article says that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . . .” After granting many powers to the Congress, Article I goes on to provide that Congress may “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

The President’s order does not direct that a congressional policy be executed in a manner prescribed by Congress – it directs that a presidential policy be executed in a manner prescribed by the President. . . . The power of Congress to adopt such public policies as those proclaimed by the order is beyond question. . . . The Constitution does not subject this lawmaking power of Congress to presidential or military supervision or control.

It is said that other Presidents without congressional authority have taken possession of private business enterprises in order to settle labor disputes. But even if this be true, Congress has not thereby lost its exclusive constitutional authority to make laws necessary and proper to carry out the powers vested by the Constitution “in the Government of the United States, or any Department or Officer thereof.”

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times. It would do no good to recall the historical events, the fears of power and the hopes for freedom that lay behind their choice. Such a review would but confirm our holding that this seizure order cannot stand.

(Emphasis supplied.) Black’s opinion casts serious doubt on the President’s claim of inherent authority. Certainly the actions of President Bush can be considered a form of lawmaking that Black clearly states is beyond the province of the Presidency. But more importantly, it is patent that even if the President has such inherent authority under Article II, such authority can not impinge upon the Congress’ lawmaking power granted by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. If Youngstown remains good law, as it does, then the President’s claims must fail.

Justice Frankfurter’s concurrence also is apt to the present circumstances:

By the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, Congress said to the President, “You may not seize. Please report to us and ask for seizure power if you think it is needed in a specific situation.” . . . But it is now claimed that the President has seizure power by virtue of the Defense Production Act of 1950 and its Amendments. And the claim is based on the occurrence of new events – Korea and the need for stabilization, etc. – although it was well known that seizure power was withheld by the Act of 1947, and although the President, whose specific requests for other authority were in the main granted by Congress, never suggested that in view of the new events he needed the power of seizure which Congress in its judgment had decided to withhold from him. The utmost that the Korean conflict may imply is that it may have been desirable to have given the President further authority, a freer hand in these matters. Absence of authority in the President to deal with a crisis does not imply want of power in the Government. Conversely the fact that power exists in the Government does not vest it in the President. The need for new legislation does not enact it. Nor does it repeal or amend existing law.

History repeats itself. Again a President makes farfetched claims of power superior to that of the Congress. Again a President makes such claims in a time of war. Unfortunately, at this time there are too many who try to render the claims legitimacy. But Justice Frankfurter properly dispatched similar claims thusly:

Apart from his vast share of responsibility for the conduct of our foreign relations, the embracing function of the President is that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed . . . .” Art. II, 3. The nature of that authority has for me been comprehensively indicated by Mr. Justice Holmes. “The duty of the President to see that the laws be executed is a duty that does not go beyond the laws or require him to achieve more than Congress sees fit to leave within his power.” Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 177 . The powers of the President are not as particularized as are those of Congress. But unenumerated powers do not mean undefined powers. The separation of powers built into our Constitution gives essential content to undefined provisions in the frame of our government.

. . . A scheme of government like ours no doubt at times feels the lack of power to act with complete, all-embracing, swiftly moving authority. No doubt a government with distributed authority, subject to be challenged in the courts of law, at least long enough to consider and adjudicate the challenge, labors under restrictions from which other governments are free. It has not been our tradition to envy such governments. In any event our government was designed to have such restrictions. The price was deemed not too high in view of the safeguards which these restrictions afford. I know no more impressive words on this subject than those of Mr. Justice Brandeis:

“The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, [343 U.S. 579, 614]  by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.” Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 240, 293.

The much cited concurrence of Justice Jackson describes the actions taken by President Bush from the Constitutional standpoint, even granting the inherent power theory being forwarded:

When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject.  Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.

. . . This leaves the current seizure to be justified only by the severe tests under the third grouping, where it can be supported only by any remainder of executive power after subtraction of such powers as Congress may have over the subject. In short, we can sustain the President only by holding that seizure of such strike-bound industries is within his domain and beyond control by Congress. Thus, this Court’s first review of such seizures occurs under circumstances which leave presidential power most vulnerable to attack and in the least favorable of possible constitutional postures.

. . . The Solicitor General seeks the power of seizure in three clauses of the Executive Article, the first reading, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Lest I be thought to exaggerate, I quote the interpretation which his brief puts upon it: “In our view, this clause constitutes a grant of all the executive powers of which the Government is capable.” If that be true, it is difficult to see why the forefathers bothered to add several specific items, including some trifling ones. 

The example of such unlimited executive power that must have most impressed the forefathers was the prerogative exercised by George III, and the description of its evils in the Declaration of Independence leads me to doubt that they were creating their new Executive in his image. Continental European examples were no more appealing. And if we seek instruction from our own times, we can match it only from the executive powers in those governments we disparagingly describe as totalitarian. I cannot accept the view that this clause is a grant in bulk of all conceivable executive power but regard it as an allocation to the presidential office of the generic powers thereafter stated.

The clause on which the Government next relies is that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States . . . .”  . . . [T]his loose appellation is sometimes advanced as support for any presidential action, internal or external, involving use of force, the idea being that it vests power to do anything, anywhere, that can be done with an army or navy.

. . . Assuming that we are in a war de facto, whether it is or is not a war de jure, does that empower the Commander in Chief to seize industries he thinks necessary to supply our army? The Constitution expressly places in Congress power “to raise and support Armies” and “to provide and maintain a Navy.” (Emphasis supplied.) This certainly lays upon Congress primary responsibility for supplying the armed forces. Congress alone controls the raising of revenues and their appropriation and may determine in what manner and by what means they shall be spent for military and naval procurement. I suppose no one would doubt that Congress can take over war supply as a Government enterprise. On the other hand, if Congress sees fit to rely on free private enterprise collectively bargaining with free labor for support and maintenance of our armed forces, can the Executive, because of lawful disagreements incidental to that process, seize the facility for operation upon Government-imposed terms?

There are indications that the Constitution did not contemplate that the title Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy will constitute him also Commander in Chief of the country, its industries and its inhabitants. He has no monopoly of “war powers,” whatever they are. While Congress cannot deprive the President of the command of the army and navy, only Congress can provide him an army or navy to command. It is also empowered to make rules for the “Government and Regulation of land and naval Forces,” by which it may to some unknown extent impinge upon even command functions.

That military powers of the Commander in Chief were not to supersede representative government of internal affairs seems obvious from the Constitution and from elementary American history. Time out of mind, and even now in many parts of the world, a military commander can seize private housing to shelter his troops. Not so, however, in the United States, for the Third Amendment says, “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Thus, even in war time, his seizure of needed military housing must be authorized by Congress. It also was expressly left to Congress to “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions . . . .” 11 Such a limitation on the command power, written at a time when the militia rather than a standing army was contemplated as the military weapon of the Republic, underscores the Constitution’s policy that Congress, not the Executive, should control utilization of the war power as an instrument of domestic policy. Congress, fulfilling that function, has authorized the President to use the army to enforce certain civil rights. 12 On the other hand. Congress has forbidden him to use the army for the purpose of executing general laws except when expressly authorized by the Constitution or by Act of Congress. 

. . . We should not use this occasion to circumscribe, much less to contract, the lawful role of the President as Commander in Chief. I should indulge the widest latitude of interpretation to sustain his exclusive function to command the instruments of national force, at least when turned against the outside world for the security of our society. But, when it is turned inward, not because of rebellion but because of a lawful economic struggle between industry and labor, it should have no such indulgence. His command power is not such an absolute as might be implied from that office in a militaristic system but is subject to limitations consistent with a constitutional Republic whose law and policy-making branch is a representative Congress.

Justice Burton noted this salient fact that is also present in regard to President Bush’s actions:

The controlling fact here is that Congress, within its constitutionally delegated power, has prescribed for the President specific procedures, exclusive of seizure, for his use in meeting the present type of emergency. Congress has reserved to itself the right to determine where and when to authorize the seizure of property in meeting such an emergency. Under these circumstances, the President’s order of April 8 invaded the jurisdiction of Congress. It violated the essence of the principle of the separation of governmental powers. Accordingly, the injunction against its effectiveness should be sustained.

Justice Clark wrote:

I conclude that where Congress has laid down specific procedures to deal with the type of crisis confronting the President, he must follow those procedures in meeting the crisis; but that in the absence of such action by Congress, the President’s independent power to act depends upon the gravity of the situation confronting the nation. I cannot sustain the seizure in question because here, as in Little v. Barreme, Congress had prescribed methods to be followed by the President in meeting the emergency at hand.

So too has Congress prescribed the methods to follow here. The very methods President Bush has violated.

In dissent, Chief Justice Vinson wrote:

There is no statute prohibiting seizure as a method of enforcing legislative programs. Congress has in no wise indicated that its legislation is not to be executed by the taking of private property (subject of course to the payment of just compensation) if its legislation cannot otherwise be executed. . . . Whatever the extent of Presidential power on more tranquil occasions, and whatever the right of the President to execute legislative programs as he sees fit without reporting the mode of execution to Congress, the single Presidential purpose disclosed on this record is to faithfully execute the laws by acting in an emergency to maintain the status quo, thereby preventing collapse of the legislative programs until Congress could act. . . . In his Message to Congress immediately following the seizure, the President explained the necessity of his action in executing the military procurement and anti-inflation legislative programs and expressed his desire to cooperate with any legislative proposals approving, regulating or rejecting the seizure of the steel mills. Consequently, there is no evidence whatever of any Presidential purpose to defy Congress or act in any way inconsistent with the legislative will.

In the present situation, President Bush has not only deliberately defied the legislative will, he expressed no desire whatsoever to cooperate with the Congress on the matter. Indeed, his actions were kept secret from most of the Congress and the American People.

So, I restate, the issue is not complex. The questions are not difficult. The actions of President Bush are outrageous, criminal, and deserve censure, at the least.

To understand the perniciousness of the Unitary Executive theory it is important to understand it and describe it accurately. Everything Bush does is not an act in furtherance of the Unitary Executive theory.

Fence? Bullshit Nancy

http://www.usatoday….

Clear evidence is emerging that the secret government is clashing with the “sheeple” government and they can’t get their stories straight.  While Pelosi is dissing “the fence” the reality of a long term pet project of the Bilderburg/New World Order/CFR crowd is pushing for an EU style merger called the North American Union.
Yes, elite shitheads whose sole existence consists of being parasites want to grab even more power for themselves.
www.spp.gov,  ya, that is dot gov
http://www.nascocorr…
Note that these pricks have changed their site, updating it to make it out like it’s a benevolent service.
http://www.augustrev…
And as timely as government is the factories are already flying out of Mexico in favor of far cheaper China labor rates. 
I can testify to the efficiency and “stellar” quality coming out of the factories in Mexico.  The company I work for did it.  Massive goat fuck that was.  Incidentally the flight to Mexico actually started before NAFTA.  I do remember one of my projects in the late 80’s was to recycle American made parts because the ones from Juarez were useless.  So will that make it twice in my lifetime I get laid off because some asshole wants his 1.78 billion golden parachute bonus.

Hmm…If I wrote my memoirs would they just rub me out?
http://www.bilateral…
http://www.teamliber…

Just as I said three days after those Nov 7 elections I knew Pelosi was with the Illumninati and this one shows it once again.  Note here I should not use the term Illuminati, but rather global interests who own the US government.

So on top of nuking Iran, thug cops tazering and breaking the arms of high school kids, the bird flu, bio-safety-level4 labs,depleted uranium tanks in Kansas, Habeus Corpus and that funny echo effect you hear on your cell phone, what’s up in your life.  Ain’t “freedom” wonderful?

Hersh: Cheney Wants Iran War, But No Order’s Been Given

The new Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker has both good news and bad news, on the Bush Administration’s warmongering against Iran.

The good news?

I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the “execute order” that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued.

Furthermore, understanding that the American public isn’t buying his demonizing of Iran, Bush has realized that he can’t sell an all-out war. He also seems to understand that Iran really is at least five years from having nuclear weapons capabilities, so there is no imminent threat.

The bad news?

Bush realizes that Iran is the big winner of his Iraq disaster. So, he has to do something. As an average adolescent would, Bush seems to have decided that the best way to reverse the victory he handed Iran, by invading Iraq, is to bomb them.

(T)here has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group.

Three points:

First, the Senate’s recent declaration that Iran is a terrorist organization gave Bush nothing, operationally, if he intends to invade Iran. He can do the labeling all by himself. And if he so intends, he certainly will. The Senate resolution was asinine because it helped Bush catapult the propaganda, but it in no way gave Bush powers he didn’t have. He will do whatever he intends to do, and fuck the world. He’s the Commander Guy. The Decider. The Unitary Executive.

Furthermore, Hersh says a lot of people are being moved to the Iran desk. Some of the same people who worked Iraq, in 2002. And as was the case with that war’s disastrous “planning,” the people planning a possible strike on Iran are clueless about some basics. Like about Iran. Like about the Iranians’ possible reaction.

Hersh quotes President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski- in his time, a known hawk:

Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

And finally, what this all clearly reflects is a desire to attack Iran, no matter the facts. Just as was the case with Iraq. The public isn’t playing along, and the supposed nuclear threat isn’t imminent, so a new justification had to be created: Iraq. Iran is interfering with our occupation of Iraq! Our immoral, illegal, and unjustified occupation of Iraq…

The push to attack Iran is led by Vice President Dick Cheney. Pretend you’re surprised.

“There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

It should be noted that he also clearly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about some things that are immeasurably more important: people’s lives. Hersh says the Administration has been redrawing its attack plans, now realizing that a full-scale war will not sell with the American public. So, they’re thinking strategic bombing. And we know how well such bombing works out. Should it happen, expect the TV foofs to continually use that insidious phrase “collateral damage.” Cheney also clearly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the damage such an attack would do to America’s already collapsing standing in the world. Dick Cheney is the greatest threat to our national security.

In other news, on the insane warmongering front, Bush’s former U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, is also a busy man. As the Guardian reports:

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.

Of course, in a recent Spiegel Online interview, Nobel Peace Prize winning IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had this to say:

There are hopeful and positive signs. For the first time, we have agreed, with the Iranians, to a sort of roadmap, a schedule, if you will, for clarifying the outstanding issues. We should know by November, or December at the latest, whether the Iranians will keep their promises.

And this:

(T)hose in the West must realize that if all they expect is confrontation, they might as well forget dialogue — and they should not be surprised if the other side seeks retribution.

In other words, negotiations haven’t failed, but are ongoing. And, as Hersh noted, even Bush seems to accept that Iran is not close to actually having a nuclear bomb. So, there would seem to be an alternative to a pre-emptive strike.

But Bolton has his mission:

“I don’t think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don’t know what the alternative is.

“Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities.”

He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the “source of the problem”, Mr Ahmadinejad.

There’s some diplomatic genius, for you. He knows of no alternative but bombing. He wants to take out another nation’s elected leader. And he seems oblivious to the fact that Ahmadinejad isn’t actually the effective leader in Iran. Removing the real leaders would mean attacking living religious icons, and Bolton probably hasn’t bothered to consider the backlash should such be done.

The narrative is clear: Cheney, Bolton, and their ilk really want to attack Iran. Planning is being fine-tuned, but no order has yet been given. It may never be given! Republican politicos are frightened, but only for their own political futures. Someone needs to stand up to Dick Cheney.

It seems to me that the Democrats could at least attempt to play on those Republican political fears, and craft some sort of legislation or public framing about opposing an actual attack on Iran. With Lieberman-Kyl, they played the game of talking tough, while also insisting that the resolution be purged of language actually authorizing use of force. They can, and should, now back that maneuver, publically. Because they aren’t on board with a war on Iran. Right?

My APA Paper on Isolation, Sensory Deprivation & Sensory Overload

This essay is a reprint of a posting made a while back on my own blog, Invictus, and over at Daily Kos. Given the emphemeral nature of blog pieces, and the importance of this well-researched essay and the material herein, I am reposting it for the readers of Docudharma.

As an added bonus, I’d like to give a link to a site where for a small fee you can download the entire 1977 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Hearings on MKUltra in Adobe format. (Thanks to an anonymous commenter for this link.) For those interested in researching or studying the covert actions of this government, this is not only an important historical document, but a crucial resource for understanding what has happened to the U.S. government since World War II.

In the opinion of myself and others, the move to total war in the struggle against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan initiated a major shift in power within the United States to the Department of Defense, and increasingly, the intelligence apparatus of the government. Both became inextricably intertwined with the scientific, educational, and medical establishments, until today, it seems there is no severing the connection and control of the government over civil society.

When reading what follows, in essence you are studying an important case history — of much significance in and of itself, of course — of this overarching influence of military-government design covertly taking over an entire portion of the intellectual establishment, e.g. the fields of behavioral psychology and psychiatry/neurology.

I hope you will appreciate the reposting of this most significant presentation.

++++++++++

The following is the text of a paper I presented on Sunday, August 19, 2007 to an audience of about three hundred at the American Psychological Association (APA) convention in San Francisco, California. It is, in fact, an abstract of a much longer paper now in the final stages of preparation. Its brevity was dictated by the very short time speaking time allowed. I have included my bibliography here for those interested.

As many are no doubt aware, the APA Council of Representatives passed a resolution on psychologist participation in coercive interrogations that was long on rhetoric, but far short on substance. In essence, the APA legitimized psychologist practice in settings where indefinite detention occurs, along with sensory and sleep deprivation, sensory over-stimulation, and use of drugs (as long as not for the purpose of eliciting interrogation).

My paper was written with the intent to document the long history of behavioral science collaboration with abusive interrogation research, particularly around the subject of sensory deprivation (SD). I did not have time in this paper to address the strong observational and naturalistic evidence of the debilitating effects of isolation and SD, and readers will have to await my longer, published paper.

It is also worth noting that the negative effects of SD are powerfully amplified by the overall context of the coercive and abusive environment in the prison or detainee environment. In fact, as regards interrogation or conditions of prisoner incarceration, SD is never used alone, but in combination with other coercive techniques.

++++++++++

Isolation, Sensory Deprivation, and Sensory Overload: An Historical Overview

“The abuse of knowledge causes incredulity.” – Rousseau

The use of isolation and sensory deprivation at U.S. foreign prisons, the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, and the Charleston Naval Brig in South Carolina has been well documented. Physicians for Human Rights has an excellent pamphlet called “Break Them Down” that offers an overwhelming amount of documentation. The important thing to understand about the use of psychological torture is that the conditions of detention are inexorably intertwined with the techniques of interrogation.

This presentation is a historical look at the research project that was sensory deprivation, conducted 35-50 years ago, in which psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists worked for the CIA and the Pentagon to understand the effects of sensory deprivation, and which ended in making sensory deprivation, and later sensory overload, an integral part of the U.S. coercive interrogation paradigm. One obvious problem with this research is the lack of any controlled experiments upon actual prisoners. A less obvious but even more serious problem concerns lack of access to classified materials and studies, especially given that much of the research was done by intelligence and military entities and kept secret.

The beginnings of concentrated psychological research into the manipulation of sensory and perceptual stimulation began early in the Cold War in the late 1940s-early 1950s. Donald Hebb, a past president of the American Psychological Association and an important theoretician in psychology, was an early researcher into sensory deprivation’s effects upon adult human beings.

Dr. Hebb explained his involvement at a Harvard symposium on sensory deprivation in June 1958.

The work that we have done at McGill University began, actually, with the problem of brainwashing. We were not permitted to say so in the first publishing…. The chief impetus, of course, was the dismay at the kind of “confessions” being produced at the Russian Communist trials. “Brainwashing” was a term that came a little later, applied to Chinese procedures. We did not know what the Russian procedures were, but it seemed that they were producing some peculiar changes of attitude. How?

One possible factor was perceptual isolation and we concentrated on that. (Solomon 1961)

Marks (1979) describes the atmosphere in behavioral and psychiatric research in the 1950s and early 1960s:

Nearly every scientist on the frontiers of brain research found men from secret agencies looking over his shoulders, impinging on the research.

University of Virginia bioethicist Jonathan Moreno, wrote recently (Moreno 2006):

To a great extent, modern psychology and social science were founded on the financial support they received from national intelligence agencies during and after World War II…. These close ties remained after hostilities against the Axis powers ended. In the early 1950s, nearly all federal funding for social science came from the military, and the Office of Naval Research was leading sponsor of psychological research from any source in the immediate postwar years. The CIA found ways to support a large number of Ivy League academics, often without the professors’ knowledge, as its funds were passed through dummy foundations that often gave grants to other foundations. (p. 65)

Besides Hebb’s research at McGill, other centers of extensive research on sensory deprivation during the period under consideration included many U.S. and Canadian sites, including, but not limited to: Princeton University; the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland; Boston City Hospital and Harvard University; the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland; the University of Manitoba; the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the Research Center for Mental Health at New York University; Cornell University; various VA hospitals, and many others.

By the mid-1970s, however, there was a steep drop-off in published literature on sensory deprivation. The reason for this is unknown, but could be due to controversies over revelations of these and other programs by the military and CIA (Greenfield 1977). The decline in research is also coincident in time with the cancellation of the CIA’s MKSEARCH program, the successor of MKULTRA, in June 1972.

In any case, the use of isolation and sensory deprivation was continued by U.S. intelligence agencies, as evinced by the CIA’s 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual (HRETM) (CIA 1983). What follows is a selection of relevant quotes, presented here as giving an intelligence operational view of the effects of sensory deprivation and overload:

The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships, or to cope with repeated frustrations.  (CIA 1983, p. K-1)

As regards deprivation of sensory stimuli, the CIA training manual explains:

Solitary confinement acts on most persons as a powerful stressor. A person cut off from external stimuli turns his awareness inward and projects his unconsious [sic] outward. The symptoms most commonly produced by solitary confinement are superstition, intense love of any other living thing, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, hallucinations, and delusions…

Deprivation of sensory stimuli induces stress and anxiety. The more complete the deprivation, the more rapidly and deeply the subject is affected…

Some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly, and produce delusions, hallucinations, and other pathological effects. (CIA 1983, pp. K-6, K-7)

The conclusions of the anonymous authors of the CIA manual are congruent with many of the findings of psychological and psychiatric researchers over the previous three to four decades. Princeton psychologist Jack Vernon examined the effects of sensory deprivation and isolation on a group of 18 volunteer graduate students and reported the results in 1958. He found that sensory deprivation had “a significant and essentially deleterious influence upon the subjects”, as measured by tests measuring rotary pursuit ability, color perception, motor coordination, mirror tracing, body weight, and galvanic skin resistance (Solomon 1961). The longer the period of sensory deprivation, the more marked the influence.

In the early research literature, one outstanding feature was the variability of results across experimental conditions. One important and misunderstood variable concerned the presence or absence of hallucinations in different individuals. This variability was due, in part, to a lack of standardization of variables, of controls, of definitions, in addition to personality and neuropsychological factors.

One finding that held across multiple experiments was the susceptibility of the deprivation subject to suggestibility (Solomon, 1961; Zubek 1969; (Hebb 1970). One researcher, Peter Suedfeld, concluded:

Susceptibility to external influence, including both primary suggestibility and persuasibility, is clearly increased by SD. The data indicate that this phenomenon originates with the lack of information anchors in the SD situation: the subject is at loose ends, without guidelines for his behavior, unable to concentrate, and in a state of stimulus- and information-hunger… (Suedfeld 1969, p. 166)

The question of personality variables and their influence upon isolation and deprivation results was tackled early on. Goldberger and Holt (Solomon 1961; Goldberger 1961) found that the ability to handle primary process internal stimuli, as well as other measures of ego-strength, differentiated individuals better able to adapt to sensory deprivation and isolation environments than individuals who scored low on these variables. The government found the influence of personality variables to be very important in planning interrogations, and a large part of psychologist participation in interrogations is related to personality assessment (CIA 1963).

Over the years, researchers discovered other effects of the sensory deprivation situation. One researcher concluded that the evidence was substantial: “both simple and complex measures of visual and motor coordination are adversely affected by sensory and perceptual deprivation” (Zubek 1969). Cognitive tests show “considerable impairment… on unstructured behaviors” (p. 165).

A fairly robust finding was that sensory deprivation increases sensitivity to pain, at least in its initial stages (Solomon 1961). At a symposium held in April 1956 by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, researcher Harold Wolff reported:

We also have reason to believe that the painful experience is one that has a highly symbolic significance and is closely linked with feelings of isolation and rejection, especially when imposed by other human beings under hostile circumstances. (Vernon 1956)

In their paper from the 1958 Harvard symposium, Ruff, Edwin and Thaler (Ruff 1961) described various reactions to reduced sensory input. Examining both military and civilian volunteers at experiments done at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, they described a series of experiments utilizing varying levels of sensory deprivation and conditions of isolation. They found that by the last experiment, in which the conditions allowed the least specific amount of structuring of time duration, communication, or other activities, that a high number of subjects terminated the experiment early, unable to tolerate the conditions of the procedure and displaying “impending or partial breakdown of defenses” (p. 76).

In his article for the book The Manipulation of Human Behavior (Biderman 1961), Lawrence Hinkle, Jr. (1961) described how isolation and sensory deprivation could produce a state of disordered brain function (DBF) similar to that produced by disturbance of brain homeostasis through fever, hypothermia, dehydration, blood abnormalities, shock, hemorrhage, vomiting, and starvation. Individuals with DBF experience thinking difficulties, along with “illusions, delusions, hallucinations, and projective or paranoid thinking” (p. 26).

Hinkle concluded:

It is well known that prisoners, especially if they have not been isolated before, may develop a syndrome similar in most of its features to the “brain syndrome” [see also (Grassian 1983)]… They become dull, apathetic, and in due time they become disoriented and confused; their memories become defective and they experience hallucinations and delusions…. their ability to impart accurate information may be as much impaired as their capacity to resist an interrogator…

From the interrogator’s viewpoint it has seemed to be the ideal way of “breaking down” a prisoner, because, to the unsophisticated, it seems to create precisely the state that the interrogator desires: malleability and the desire to talk, with the added advantage that one can delude himself that he is using no force or coercion…. However, the effect of isolation on the brain function of the prisoner is much like that which occurs if he is beaten, starved, or deprived of sleep.

Hebb (1970) succinctly described the effects at a presentation at the 1970 APA convention: sensory deprivation can produce “an acute disturbance of the normal personality”. It is an “atrocious procedure,” which “raises the whole question of the relation of man to his sensory environment”. Hebb noted, “making the isolation more drastic produces motivational and emotional disturbance more quickly”.

Sensory Overload

While there was for many years a multitude of studies on isolation and sensory deprivation, studies on excessive sensory stimulation were far fewer, and less focused (however, see Lindsley, 1961). Lipowski (1975) conducted a literature review of the research extant some 30 years ago. He reported on some of the work of the Japanese researchers at Tohoku University, whose reports echoed the methodological difficulties of the deprivation researchers in the U.S. Their results, however, were significant.

The Tohoku workers exposed their experimental subjects to intense auditory and visual stimuli presented randomly in a condition of confinement ranging in duration from 3 to 5 hr. The subjects showed heightened and sustained arousal, found sensory overload more aversive than deprivation, and had mood changes in the direction of aggression, anxiety, and sadness. Two subjects reported “hallucinationlike” phenomena. (Lipowski 1975)

Other U.S. researchers have replicated these results. Use of sensory overload has been a technique utilized by SERE schools, and has reportedly been transmitted to use by U.S. military and intelligence interrogators abroad (Streatfeild 2007).

In conclusion, sensory manipulation is well studied; its effects on interrogation have been known for over a generation. The belief that we don’t have enough research on these matters is unfounded. The use of sensory deprivation and overload constitutes torture, is outlawed by international treaties and agreements, and illegal under U.S. law. Active psychologist participation at facilities where it exists constitutes a war crime and should be abandoned immediately.

J—— K—–, Ph.D.

San Francisco, CA

August 19, 2007

Bibliography

Biderman, A. D. Z., Herbert, Eds. (1961). The Manipulation of Human Behavior. New York, John Wiley & Sons.

CIA. (1963). “Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation.”  Retrieved August 15, 2007, 2007, from http://www.gwu.edu/~….

CIA. (1983). “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual.”  Retrieved July 30, 2007, from http://www.gwu.edu/~….

Goldberger, L. & Holt, R. R. (1961). A Comparison of Isolation Effects and their Personality Correlates in Two Divergent Samples. New York, Research Center for Mental Health, New York University: 1-52.

Grassian, S. (1983). “Psychopathological effects of solitary confinement.” American Journal of Psychiatry 140: 1450-1454.

Greenfield, P. (1977). CIA’s Behavior Caper. APA Monitor: 1, 10-11.

Hebb, D. O. (1970). “The Motivating Effects of Exteroceptive Stimulation.” American Psychologist 25(4): 328-336.

Lipowski, Z. J. (1975). “Sensory and Information Inputs Overload: Behavioral Effects.” Comprehensive Psychiatry 16(3): 199-221.

Moreno, J. D. (2006). Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. New York Dana Press.

Ruff, G. E. L., Edwin Z.; & Thaler, Victor H. (1961). Factors Influencing Reactions to Reduced Sensory Input. Sensory Deprivation: A Symposium Held at Harvard Medical School. P. Solomon, et al. , Eds. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press: 72-90.

Solomon, P., Kubzansky, Philip E., Leiderman, P. Herbert, Mendelson, Jack H., Trumbull, Richard, & Wexler, Donald , Eds. (1961). Sensory Deprivation: A Symposium Held at Harvard Medical School. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Streatfeild, D. (2007). Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control. New York, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press.

Vernon, J., M. Meltzer, D. Tyler, Weinstein, E. A., Brozek, J., & Woolf, H. (1956). Factors Used to Increase the Susceptibility of Individuals to Forceful Indoctrination: Observations and Experiments. Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Asbury Park, NJ, Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry.

Zubek, J. P., Ed. (1969). Sensory Deprivation: Fifteen Years of Research. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, educational division.

The Top Tier on the Near-term Future of Geopolitics: I Got Nothin’.