A Redacted America: Critiquing the Lack of Transparency at Guantanamo Bay

The willingness to undermine liberal standards of justice and imprisonment has been a major criticism of the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. The camp’s propensity to evade judicial mechanisms offered on American soil is particularly due to its deliberate opacity. This paper begins with a brief overview of the major arguments in favour of the closure of the facility and the challenges that have prohibited the closure thus far, based on a review of debates and commentary found in investigative reports, legal documents, and scholarly analyses. A substantive portion of this piece will highlight three demonstrable areas where transparency is being detrimentally avoided in the conduct of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp: press access, health care, and the detainee defense counsel. A critique of increasing transparency as a possible impetus to keep the facility open will close the discussion. Ultimately, the transgressions of Guantánamo are so detrimental to American self-conception of liberal values that a correction of the facility’s opacity should be but an intermediary step to closing the facility entirely.

Psychedelics, placebo effects, and set and setting: Insights from common factors theory of psychotherapy

Psychedelic-assisted treatment is at first glance markedly different in structure and approach from mainstream forms of psychotherapy in the West. A major criticism of clinical psychedelic research rests on the difficulty of executing placebo-controlled studies and distinguishing drug effects from those of the psychotherapeutic container in which psychedelics are typically presented. Detractors also tend to find fault in spiritual or mystical themes that often arise in the context of psychedelic use. Common factors theory of psychotherapy is a useful and extensively studied framework that can help make sense of these issues, and has much to contribute to our understanding of contextual effects that are often discussed in psychedelic literature as “set and setting.” In this article, we examine four major contextual “common factors” shared by various healing traditions: 1) the therapeutic relationship; 2) the healing setting; 3) the rationale, conceptual scheme, or myth; and 4) the ritual. We explain how these factors show up in psychedelic-assisted treatment and how they may contribute to therapeutic effects. Lastly, we discuss the implications of these factors for the concept of placebo, and for future research.

Voting behavior is unaffected by subtle linguistic cues: evidence from a psychologically authentic replication

Do small wording differences in message-based behavioral interventions have outsized effects on behavior? An influential initial study, examining this question in the domain of political behavior using two small-scale field experiments, argues that subtle linguistic cues in voter mobilization messages describing someone as a voter (noun) instead of one who votes (verb) dramatically increases turnout rates by activating a person's social identity as a voter. Two subsequent large-scale replication field experiments challenged this claim, finding no effect even in electorally competitive settings. However, these experiments may not have reproduced the psychological context needed to motivate behavioral change because they did not occur in highly competitive and highly salient electoral contexts. Addressing this major criticism, we conduct a large-scale, preregistered replication field experiment in the 2016 presidential election. We find no evidence that noun wording increases turnout compared to verb wording in this highly salient electoral context, even in competitive states.

Supersize My Mouse

Although human beings have been altering genomes by selection and breeding of particular animal or plant variants for thousands of years, and X-rays and chemicals were first used to create mutants in the early 20th century genetic engineering in the true sense only became possible much more recently. First, the discovery that genes are made of DNA, revealed the material nature of the genome. Second, scientists in the early 1970s discovered enzymes in bacteria that can be used to cut and paste DNA in the test tube. Using such molecular ‘tools‘ bacteria were engineered to produce important medical products such as human insulin for diabetics, and from this was born what would become a billion-dollar biotechnology industry. A further important development was the discovery of embryonic stem cells and manipulation of these to make ‘knockout’ mice that had a deletion of a specific gene, or ‘knockin’ mice that had subtle changes in a gene. However such an approach was still relatively expensive and time-consuming, and cold only be applied to mice. And although gene constructs could be introduced into cells in a less precise manner, the crude nature of this approach limited its application for both agriculture and gene therapy. In both areas of application there have been concerns about the safety and ethics of using such an approach. A major criticism has been the lack of precision in where a gene construct would end up the genome, leading to concerns about possible adverse effects.

The Psychology of the Main Social Groups

This chapter suggests that some of the perverse features of préséance can be understood in a certain perspective. It explains that when the rational-choice model fails, it is either because of indeterminacy or of irrationality. It confirms that indeterminacy arises largely because of uncertainty. The chapter considers the mental precursors and causes of action, such as motivations and beliefs, of the main categories of agents in the ancien régime. It mentions Jean Egret, who emphasized that the major criticism the parlements made of the administrative monarchy was that under the name of the intendant one had established the anonymous despotism of the clerks.

Reconciliation Perspectives in Colombia: Characterizing the 2016 Peace Agreement With the FARC

Despite ending a 60-year armed conflict with the oldest guerrilla group in Latin America, the 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc) has faced growing opposition and resentment from the general population. This resistance has mainly occurred due to the absence of literature clearly providing an explanation of its contents, compromising its implementation and stability. Using the Peace Accords Matrix of the University of Notre Dame, this article explores some of the widespread criticism by comparing this agreement to others in 31 other countries. The key findings suggest that the 2016 Colombian peace agreement is the most extensive and the second most complex signed since 1989, and its crux may be categorized into five different groups of provisions. Statistical analysis suggests that its major criticism —its complexity— is the main impediment to the expected implementation level. Therefore, its stability should be guaranteed by exploring inventive strategies to gain popular support and legitimacy.

A Beginning of Dialogue or an End of History?

At the beginning of his article the author postulates a general decline of culture nowadays which manifests itself in many kinds of arts, and also in the “art of History”. To the author’s dismay, the latter has been reduced to what can be called, according to Iu. I. Semenov, “istoriology”. Many historians now forget what history is, what an essence of scholar’s work is, what a scholar’s novelty is, and so on. To exemplify this tendency, the article concerns with the book recently published in Moscow. This monograph written by T. V. Chernikova consists of two books devoted to so called Europeanization of Russia. The first book focuses on the 15-16th centuries, and the second book — on the 17th century. This work is severely criticized in this review. The author shows that T. V. Chernikova does not explain the meaning of the word “Europeanization” and the essence of this notion. The author objects to the historiography and the sources in these books. However, the major criticism is concerned with the fact that historiography is not connected with the following text. The text itself based on a very limited range of scholarship and sources abounds in a large number of inaccuracies, errors and nonsense. Even this limited range of historiography the author of the books uses very originally. She simply retells some books or articles — sometimes she refers to them, sometimes — not! There is no academic novelty in the reviewed books, and their author does not understand what is “a historian’s craft” is. These books do not contribute to the scholarship at all.

Organizational and Socio-Relational Factors Undermining Knowledge Sharing in Family SMEs

This chapter investigates if and how the knowledge sharing process between the generations involved in business succession is actually accomplished. Furthermore, this chapter addresses if the next-generation family members are (adequately) trained to develop the proper knowledge and skills for their future role as entrepreneurs. Findings suggest that, even in SMEs, the entrepreneurs and their children often perform different jobs, developing different skills, and undermining the knowledge sharing process. Moreover, the training/learning (both formal and informal) process of the next generation does not appear to help in the development of entrepreneurial skills. Finally, it is suggested that the knowledge sharing process faces major criticism when a daughter of the business family is involved.

Gods or Monsters? Non-Explicit Consent in the hastening of deaths by Intensivists in Belgium

The Belgian Euthanasia Act of 2002 (The Act), amended in 2014 to include the Minor Act (The Minor Act), has drawn international criticisms for its liberal laws and practices regarding Euthanasia. This research study is a response to media allegations that the liberal laws on euthanasia has encouraged doctors to adopt a paternalistic approach towards their patients by terminating their lives without their explicit consent, i.e. engaging in involuntary Euthanasia. Although in theory, only voluntary euthanasia (explicit patient request and therefore consent) is permitted in Belgium, the media allegations implied that in practice, involuntary euthanasia (no explicit patient request and therefore no consent) is practiced, especially in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in Belgium. One major criticism is that because of its liberal laws, Belgian doctors are killing patients without their non-explicit consent. Specifically, it is alleged that Intensivists are shortening lives or hastening the deaths of their patients without their non-explicit consent in the ICUs in the Wallonia Region in Belgium. This research study conducted an empirical-qualitative study to discover if these media allegations were true or false, by interviewing heads of ICUs in five major hospitals in the Wallonia region in Belgium. The research discovered that the media allegations are true, but they are also false. The media allegations are true because shortening life or hastening the death is sometimes practiced in the ICUs without the patient’s non-explicit consent. The media allegations are false because consent is not available due to the patient’s critical condition, and not because it was not asked for. In other words, what is practiced in the ICUs is non-voluntary euthanasia or where patient is unable to request or consent to euthanasia.