Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON ― The two CIA-contracted psychologists accused of crafting the spy agency’s so-called “enhanced interrogation program” filed a motion to compel the U.S. government to turn over documents they requested so they can defend themselves in a separate lawsuit brought forth by survivors of the torture program.

The motion, filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, alleged that the CIA and Justice Department had been uncooperative in supplying James Elmer Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen with “documents critical to their defense.”

Their request is related to a separate ongoing lawsuit in Spokane, Washington, where the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of three former CIA detainees, is suing Jessen and Mitchell for their alleged role in creating and implementing an interrogation program that used techniques now considered to be torture.

The pair was hired by the CIA as contractors in 2002, as the agency was rounding up individuals suspected of having ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban and interrogating them in secret black sites around the world. Jessen and Mitchell’s company ultimately collected $81 million for their work.

The two psychologists have argued that they should have immunity from prosecution over the enhanced interrogation program because it was authorized by the executive branch during a time of war.

Mitchell and Jessen initially sought to have the lawsuit against them thrown out ― which is what has happened with past attempts to hold the CIA legally responsible for its torture program. But Senior Judge Justin L. Quackenbush of the Eastern District of Washington ruled in April that the case would continue and ordered both sides to begin discovery, the process of exchanging evidence before trial.

That’s where Mitchell and Jessen ran into problems.

According to the motion filed Monday, the subpoenas they submitted to the CIA and DOJ in June requested approximately 30 categories of documents. Back-and-forth correspondence between the government and lawyers for Mitchell and Jessen follows the same pattern, the motion alleged: “The Government claiming that it wants to provide Defendants with information, but is unsure how it can provide such information or when.”

The government has said that the psychologists’ request is overly vague and burdensome, ostensibly because of classification issues in documents related to the CIA’s now-defunct torture program.

In lieu of providing Mitchell and Jessen with the documents they have requested, the government has proposed “alternative and creative options,” the motion said. One option proposed by the CIA is to provide an anonymous witness who could answer questions in writing that could be used in court about the duo’s role in the torture program.

Lawyers representing Mitchell and Jessen rejected that option, “in part, because of the uncertain evidentiary value of such an affidavit and deposition,” the motion said. 

The court in Spokane, where the torture victims are suing Mitchell and Jessen, has set a discovery deadline of Feb. 17, 2017, although a list of expert witnesses and trial witnesses is due at the end of the year. The case is scheduled to go to trial next June.

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The stereotype of late 1960s authors and musicians is that certain drugs can help to expand the mind and make the user more creative. As someone who has never taken psychedelics, I can’t know this for sure, but a recent study seems to be the first step in displaying scientific evidence in support of that claim.

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This teacher makes the grade.

Brandy Young, a second grade teacher in Texas, has decided to not assign her students any homework this year. She passed out a letter to announce her new homework policy during “Meet the Teacher Night” according to CBS News. And one parent, Samantha Gallagher, decided to post it on Facebook.

Since is was posted on August 16, it has received over 68,000 shares on Facebook alone.

Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early.

The letters reads:

“Dear Parents,

After much research this summer, I am trying something new. Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year.

Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early.”

Comments on the post were pretty supportive. One parent expressed her frustration with her child’s workload, commenting that she helps her kid with “an hour of homework each night plus studying for tests and reading.”

A study published in The American Journal of Family Therapy, found students in early elementary school are getting three times the suggested amount of homework and that family stress increased as homework load increased.

“[Students] work hard all day. When they go home they have other things they need to learn there,” Young told CBS News. “I’m trying to develop their whole person; it’s not beneficial to go home and do pencil and paper work.”

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It was 11 pm, and as I was tidying up before going to bed, I decided to let the dog out the front door rather than letting him take his evening pee in the backyard. As I was setting the dishwasher, I could hear him barking frantically in the side yard. I grabbed a flashlight and went to investigate. As I shined the light into the side yard, I could see Benny, my 22 lb dachshund mix up the hill trying to climb the tree and as I swung my light up there were two eyes surrounded by a black furred mask staring back at me. The raccoon brought its attention back to the dog, hissing and spitting at him. Even though I live on the fringes of a rural area, I am still a city girl at heart. Spitting raccoons are not my forte.

Usually, I would have wakened my husband to have him battle the wilderness. But this time, there is no husband. My husband was transitioning into a woman, and nothing in my world was familiar. My ordinary life was no longer. I could have gotten my partner up and out of bed, and she totally would have dealt with the situation at hand but instead I broke through the protective bubble that I as a wife, as a woman, had always placed myself. I’m going to do this I thought. I pulled on some sweatpants and laced up my sneakers, with the flashlight in one hand, and a right size stick in the other, I climbed the hill towards the ruckus. I kept chanting the raccoon is more afraid of you than you are of it, bullshit, the raccoon is more scared of you than you are of it, bullshit, the raccoon is more afraid of you.. you get the idea. With one lunge I scooped up Benny, turned and slid down the hill on my rear with a squirming dog in my lap. When I hit the bottom of the hill, I leaped up and ran for our lives into the house. I set the dog down, and I sat on the floor next to him as I let my heart rate get back to its normal rhythm.

This story seems like a little thing, cute even, but it was a big moment for me. I broke through the familiar into the unfamiliar. I did something very unfamiliar to me. I stepped forward rather than step back. I stepped forward into the darkness, climbed the hill to get the dog, and slid back down to safety and got back up on my feet.

In the weeks and months that followed, I had many moments when I had to break through the familiar into the unfamiliar. My familiar and comfortable place in our marriage were that I let my husband, the man of the house take care of traditional male roles. I was conditioned that way. Now it was changing. I grew into my new place. I figured out how to fix a leaky toilet by watching Youtube and asking questions at Home Depot. I carried the yearly load of firewood that gets delivered and dumped on the driveway to the rear of our house. I started making sure the oil was changed regularly in all the cars. All things I was capable of doing before, it just wasn’t familiar to me. I’ve learned that I could step forward and do these things, rather than step back and let my husband do it. Today I don’t have a husband; I have a partner, and we are in this together.

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I stopped by Bergamot Station last week to check out a few exhibitions at various galleries and spent –to my surprise– more time there than I had initially intended. So let me take you on a short tour…

At bG Gallery, I found an exhibition of sculptures by Austrian artist Martin Krammer — his first exhibition in the U.S. Inspired by early 20th century photographic portraits, Krammer carves his figurative sculptures out of wood, with their flattened surfaces enhanced by black watercolor paint.

The exhibition’s press release quotes Krammer, saying that “[his] intention is to connect with the characters and melt the pose and the moment of the photo into a new object, a free standing bas- relief which is nearly as flat as the picture…”. I found myself walking around these roughly carved sculptures that leave the strange but appealing impression that after making his “realistic” full-body portraits, the artist somehow pressed and flattened them into 2 dimensions, thus enhancing their resemblance to the original photographic portraits. The exhibition runs through August 30th.

ROSEGALLERY has an unusual exhibition, “Collectors’ Favorites”, which is comprised of over 70 photographs culled from private collections of members of The Photographic Arts Council – Los Angeles. This exhibition offers not only a rare chance to see works by such masters as Robert Frank, Irving Penn, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston but it also provides insights into the intriguing, and sometimes peculiar, preferences and choices made by these private collectors.

The exhibition is closing on September 3rd, but this coming Saturday, August 27th ROSEGALLERY will host a conversation between these L.A. photography collectors and Virginia Heckert, curator at the Getty Museum. This event is scheduled to start at 11:30am and is open to the public.

Now I want to invite you to the Robert Berman Gallery to see the exhibition “Save America” which will throw you into the very center of the political drama and circus of our presidential election. Starting with the Warhol’s 1972 demonic portrait of Nixon bearing the slogan “Vote McGovern”, the exhibition proceeds with a series of political portraits all appropriated from Warhol, among them a portrait of George W. Bush with a handwritten note, “Vote Obama”.

And the most sizzling of them all is a smiling but scary face of Donald Trump with a particularly poignant written message underneath: “Vote Bernie”, but with Bernie’s name crudely scratched out and replaced with Hillary. All of these appropriated works are created by RJ Berman, and if you do a little research, you will be appropriately amused to learn that the full name of this daring artist is Robert Berman, the very art dealer and owner of this gallery.

So ladies and gentlemen, if you’re still uncertain as to whom you’ll vote for in this upcoming election, come see this exhibition before it closes this Saturday, August 27th. It will definitely help you make the right choice.

To learn about Edward’s Fine Art of Art Collecting Classes, please visit his website. You can also read The New York Times article about his classes here, or an Artillery Magazine article about Edward and his classes here.

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Edward Goldman is an art critic and the host of Art Talk, a program on art and culture for NPR affiliate KCRW 89.9 FM. To listen to the complete show and hear Edward’s charming Russian accent, click here.

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