Dr. John - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 9-25-1974
7 hours ago
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Climate change: What we do – and don't – know
There is much we do not understand about Earth's climate. That is hardly surprising, given the complex interplay of physical, chemical and biological processes that determines what happens on our planet’s surface and in its atmosphere.
Despite this, we can be certain about some things. For a start, the planet is warming, and human activity is largely responsible. But how much is Earth on course to warm by? What will the global and local effects be? How will it affect our lives?
In these articles, Michael Le Page sifts through the evidence to provide a brief guide to what we currently do – and don't – know about the planet's most burning issue.
Psychologists Start Petition Against DSM 5
Several divisions of the American Psychological Association have just written an open letter highly critical of DSM 5. They are inviting mental health professionals and mental health organizations to sign a petition addressed to the DSM5 Task Force of the American Psychiatric Association. You can read the letter and sign up at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dsm5/ It is an extremely detailed, thoughtful and well written statement that deserves your attention and support.
The letter summarizes the grave dangers of DSM 5 that for some time have seemed patently apparent to everyone except those who are actually working on it. The short list of the most compelling problems includes: reckless expansion of the diagnostic system (through the inclusion of untested new diagnoses and reduced thresholds for old ones); the lack of scientific rigor and independent review; and dimensional proposals that are too impossibly complex ever to be used by clinicians.
The American Psychiatric Association has no special mandate or ownership rights giving it any sovereignty over psychiatric diagnosis. APA took on the task of preparing DSM's sixty years ago because it then seemed so thankless that no other group was prepared or willing to do it. The DSM franchise has stayed with APA only because its products were credible enough to gain widespread acceptance. People used the manual only because it was useful.
DSM 5 has strained that credibility to the breaking point and (unless radically changed) will be much more harmful than useful. We have reached a turning point that will soon become a point of no return. A near final version of DSM 5 must be ready by next spring and all final wording will be set in stone within a year. Time is running out if DSM 5 is to be saved from itself.
Rescue attempts and pushback are coming from numerous directions and are fast gaining in momentum. The American Psychological Association's petition was preceded by an even harsher critique by the British Psychological Society. The Society of Biological Psychiatry has wondered why we need a DSM 5. Experts in personality disorder have universally decried the proposed revisions in DSM 5. And the American Counseling Association will soon weigh in with its own statement.
Meanwhile DSM 5 has lived in a world that seems to be hermetically sealed. Despite the obvious impossibility of many of its proposals, it shows no ability to self correct or learn from outside advice. The current drafts have changed almost not at all from their deeply flawed originals. The DSM 5 field trials ask the wrong questions and will make no contribution to the endgame.
But the DSM 5 deafness may finally be cured by a users' revolt. The APA budget depends heavily on the huge publishing profits that accrue from its DSM sales. APA has ignored the scientific, clinical, and public health reasons it should omit the most dangerous suggestions- but I suspect APA will be more sensitive to the looming risk of a boycott by users.
Here are best case and worst case scenarios. Best case: APA opens up DSM 5 to external, independent review and only those suggestions that pass muster are included. DSM 5 becomes safe, usable, and widely used.
Worst case: DSM 5 stumbles along blindly as it has and includes most or all of its harmful suggestions. DSM 5 loses its status as a useful and standard guide to psychiatric diagnosis, creating an unnecessary and unfortunate babel of diagnostic practice and research habits. And the American Psychiatric goes broke.
The APA Trustees and Assembly have thus far been almost completely and puzzlingly passive in exercising their governance role over DSM 5. I believe they can wait no longer if they are to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to the public, to the mental health field, and to their own membership. It is pretty much now or never.
Allen J. Frances @'Psychlogy Today'
The letter summarizes the grave dangers of DSM 5 that for some time have seemed patently apparent to everyone except those who are actually working on it. The short list of the most compelling problems includes: reckless expansion of the diagnostic system (through the inclusion of untested new diagnoses and reduced thresholds for old ones); the lack of scientific rigor and independent review; and dimensional proposals that are too impossibly complex ever to be used by clinicians.
The American Psychiatric Association has no special mandate or ownership rights giving it any sovereignty over psychiatric diagnosis. APA took on the task of preparing DSM's sixty years ago because it then seemed so thankless that no other group was prepared or willing to do it. The DSM franchise has stayed with APA only because its products were credible enough to gain widespread acceptance. People used the manual only because it was useful.
DSM 5 has strained that credibility to the breaking point and (unless radically changed) will be much more harmful than useful. We have reached a turning point that will soon become a point of no return. A near final version of DSM 5 must be ready by next spring and all final wording will be set in stone within a year. Time is running out if DSM 5 is to be saved from itself.
Rescue attempts and pushback are coming from numerous directions and are fast gaining in momentum. The American Psychological Association's petition was preceded by an even harsher critique by the British Psychological Society. The Society of Biological Psychiatry has wondered why we need a DSM 5. Experts in personality disorder have universally decried the proposed revisions in DSM 5. And the American Counseling Association will soon weigh in with its own statement.
Meanwhile DSM 5 has lived in a world that seems to be hermetically sealed. Despite the obvious impossibility of many of its proposals, it shows no ability to self correct or learn from outside advice. The current drafts have changed almost not at all from their deeply flawed originals. The DSM 5 field trials ask the wrong questions and will make no contribution to the endgame.
But the DSM 5 deafness may finally be cured by a users' revolt. The APA budget depends heavily on the huge publishing profits that accrue from its DSM sales. APA has ignored the scientific, clinical, and public health reasons it should omit the most dangerous suggestions- but I suspect APA will be more sensitive to the looming risk of a boycott by users.
Here are best case and worst case scenarios. Best case: APA opens up DSM 5 to external, independent review and only those suggestions that pass muster are included. DSM 5 becomes safe, usable, and widely used.
Worst case: DSM 5 stumbles along blindly as it has and includes most or all of its harmful suggestions. DSM 5 loses its status as a useful and standard guide to psychiatric diagnosis, creating an unnecessary and unfortunate babel of diagnostic practice and research habits. And the American Psychiatric goes broke.
The APA Trustees and Assembly have thus far been almost completely and puzzlingly passive in exercising their governance role over DSM 5. I believe they can wait no longer if they are to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to the public, to the mental health field, and to their own membership. It is pretty much now or never.
Allen J. Frances @'Psychlogy Today'
The bankers' blockade of WikiLeaks must end
In December 2010 three of the world's biggest payment providers, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, cut off funding to WikiLeaks. Ten months later, Julian Assange has announced the whistleblowing site will suspend operations until the blockade is lifted – and warned WikiLeaks does not have the money to continue into 2012 at current levels of funding.
On the surface, it appears as if the bankers' blockade – encouraged by several US senators, including Joe Lieberman – may have come close to accomplishing its goal. WikiLeaks is, for now, silenced – though not before publishing the full cache of 251,000 diplomatic cables, and the files of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
The real picture is murkier. As Reuters journalist Mark Hosenball noted at the WikiLeaks press conference, it's not clear exactly which operations WikiLeaks has to suspend: WikiLeaks has not released a single file since the publication of the Guantánamo Bay material – obtained independently by the Guardian and New York Times – in April. The site's primary submissions system has been offline since Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others walked away from WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010. Assange says a replacement will be online by the end of November.
Assange also claims WikiLeaks has over 100,000 documents waiting to be released – but this claim might not bear scrutiny. WikiLeaks has previously been publicly criticised for claiming to hold five million documents when in reality it did not, by John Young of Cryptome.org, in whose name the WikiLeaks website was originally registered.
In reality, WikiLeaks' cupboard presently stands almost bare: Assange has laid the responsibility for the non-appearance of a much-heralded cache of documents relating to Bank of America on sabotage by ex-employees. However, sources close to the site believe the real issue is more mundane: journalists at more than one financial outlet have been given access to review the material, and found nothing of interest.
WikiLeaks' financial claims are similarly questionable. Assange declared the site will need $3.5m to continue operations at their current level. Questions as to who needs $3.5m to publish nothing new in six months aside, this figure is highly dubious.
In 2010, when the Collateral Murder video was published (and a crew flown to Iraq), the Afghan and Iraq war logs were released, and the massive cache of diplomatic cables was unveiled to the world, WikiLeaks spent just €400,000. Given Assange also requested – but was refused – access to WikiLeaks funds towards his bail surety, WikiLeaks' track record on financial claims is also not unblemished.
So given WikiLeaks' status as an unreliable purveyor of financial information, and given its operations might have crashed to a halt with or without financial restrictions, is the banking blockade a mere non-issue? In short, it is not. The banking blockade against WikiLeaks is one of the most sinister developments in recent years, and perhaps the most extreme example in a western democracy of extrajudicial actions aimed at stifling free speech – made all the worse by the public support of numerous people sitting in the US House of Representatives.
Payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market have shut off the funding taps between WikiLeaks and those who would donate to it. Unlike many of the country's leading corporations, WikiLeaks has neither been charged with, nor convicted of, any crime at either state, federal, or international level.
When the Department of Justice mounted a lawsuit against Microsoft in 1998, the idea that payment companies might cut it off due to state disapproval would rightly have been seen as ludicrous and illiberal. Yet when payment companies do exactly this to WikiLeaks, who have never appeared in court opposite the US state, many tacitly accept the action.
Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are none-too-choosy about who they provide payment services for. Want to use your credit card to donate to the Ku Klux Klan? Go right ahead. Prefer to support the English Defence League? Paypal will happily sort you out. Prefer to give cash to Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, who oppose the "radical homosexual agenda"? Feel free to use your Visa, Mastercard or Paypal.
Visa and Mastercard are already inescapable. As the world becomes ever-more digital, and cash continues its journey to obsolescence, they will become still more pervasive. If they are allowed to cut off payment to lawful organisations with whom they disagree, the US's first amendment, the European convention on human rights' article 10, and all other legal free speech protections become irrelevant.
Those who value free expression, whether they like WikiLeaks or loathe it, should hope it wins its current battle.
James Ball @'The Guardian'
On the surface, it appears as if the bankers' blockade – encouraged by several US senators, including Joe Lieberman – may have come close to accomplishing its goal. WikiLeaks is, for now, silenced – though not before publishing the full cache of 251,000 diplomatic cables, and the files of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
The real picture is murkier. As Reuters journalist Mark Hosenball noted at the WikiLeaks press conference, it's not clear exactly which operations WikiLeaks has to suspend: WikiLeaks has not released a single file since the publication of the Guantánamo Bay material – obtained independently by the Guardian and New York Times – in April. The site's primary submissions system has been offline since Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others walked away from WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010. Assange says a replacement will be online by the end of November.
Assange also claims WikiLeaks has over 100,000 documents waiting to be released – but this claim might not bear scrutiny. WikiLeaks has previously been publicly criticised for claiming to hold five million documents when in reality it did not, by John Young of Cryptome.org, in whose name the WikiLeaks website was originally registered.
In reality, WikiLeaks' cupboard presently stands almost bare: Assange has laid the responsibility for the non-appearance of a much-heralded cache of documents relating to Bank of America on sabotage by ex-employees. However, sources close to the site believe the real issue is more mundane: journalists at more than one financial outlet have been given access to review the material, and found nothing of interest.
WikiLeaks' financial claims are similarly questionable. Assange declared the site will need $3.5m to continue operations at their current level. Questions as to who needs $3.5m to publish nothing new in six months aside, this figure is highly dubious.
In 2010, when the Collateral Murder video was published (and a crew flown to Iraq), the Afghan and Iraq war logs were released, and the massive cache of diplomatic cables was unveiled to the world, WikiLeaks spent just €400,000. Given Assange also requested – but was refused – access to WikiLeaks funds towards his bail surety, WikiLeaks' track record on financial claims is also not unblemished.
So given WikiLeaks' status as an unreliable purveyor of financial information, and given its operations might have crashed to a halt with or without financial restrictions, is the banking blockade a mere non-issue? In short, it is not. The banking blockade against WikiLeaks is one of the most sinister developments in recent years, and perhaps the most extreme example in a western democracy of extrajudicial actions aimed at stifling free speech – made all the worse by the public support of numerous people sitting in the US House of Representatives.
Payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market have shut off the funding taps between WikiLeaks and those who would donate to it. Unlike many of the country's leading corporations, WikiLeaks has neither been charged with, nor convicted of, any crime at either state, federal, or international level.
When the Department of Justice mounted a lawsuit against Microsoft in 1998, the idea that payment companies might cut it off due to state disapproval would rightly have been seen as ludicrous and illiberal. Yet when payment companies do exactly this to WikiLeaks, who have never appeared in court opposite the US state, many tacitly accept the action.
Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are none-too-choosy about who they provide payment services for. Want to use your credit card to donate to the Ku Klux Klan? Go right ahead. Prefer to support the English Defence League? Paypal will happily sort you out. Prefer to give cash to Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, who oppose the "radical homosexual agenda"? Feel free to use your Visa, Mastercard or Paypal.
Visa and Mastercard are already inescapable. As the world becomes ever-more digital, and cash continues its journey to obsolescence, they will become still more pervasive. If they are allowed to cut off payment to lawful organisations with whom they disagree, the US's first amendment, the European convention on human rights' article 10, and all other legal free speech protections become irrelevant.
Those who value free expression, whether they like WikiLeaks or loathe it, should hope it wins its current battle.
James Ball @'The Guardian'
jeremyscahill jeremy scahill
By invading Somalia, Kenya has given Shabab exactly what it wants. It has also unnecessarily endangered its own citizens
Monday, 24 October 2011
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