NEW DELHI, India (CNN) — Pista Devi struggles to keep her toes from poking out through the holes in her shoes, as she pushes and pulls a wicked-looking farm tool. She is a widow, struggling to feed herself and five children.

Pista Devi is struggling to feed herself and five children in a region with a rain deficit 85 percent below normal.

She is bone thin but strong. She has to be. The soil is as hard as stone and as dry as the desert. Pista is trying to prepare the land for seeding.
But her part of India is dealing with a rain deficit that is 85 percent below normal.
“If the rains don’t come then these fields will remain empty,” Devi says.
“No one will call us for work, and the children will have to go hungry. We won’t have anything to eat.”
Devi is among roughly 600 million people in India who make a living off the land. That is about 60 percent of India’s population of 1.1 billion.

Most of the country is suffering from a rain deficit. The monsoon has been delayed in some parts of the country. Usually the season begins around the first of June.

The time to act is now. So why can’t we do that because of special interests and that never bite the hand that feeds you thinking. She is bone thin but strong. She has to be. The soil is as hard as stone and as dry as the desert. Pista is trying to prepare the land for seeding. Can’t happen in the greatest nation on Earth? It has already started.

1. The APA doesn’t do a very good job of representing its practitioner-members. It sold out to managed care and the insurance industry a long time ago.

2. The opposition to the APA’s torture-interrogations policy involved all sectors of the organization. But, if I had to select a group who played the greatest role in the movement, it would definitely be the practitioners. In fact, the psychoanalytically-oriented practitioners were/are very overrepresented. For example, four of the six or seven psychologists most identified with this movement are from the psychoanalytic division, as was the founder of the withhold dues movement. Official support for the anti-interrogations referendum came largely from that division, among a very few others.

3. If the APA leadership represents anybody,it is not the practitioners, but the military/intelligence establishment. This group is always highly represented on the APA Board. They love their secret meetings with intell officials.

4. The “perfectly good alternative scientific society” you refere to, the APS ["S" = "Society"] is as tied in with the military/intell establishment. Unlike the APA, the APS refused to do anything whatsoever in response to US torture. When the issue was raised, the only thing they would consider was a forum on whether torture “works.” Hardly an ethical alternative. They, like the APA, are so busy lobbying intelligence and war officials that they would never bite the hand that feeds them.

5. A major part of the scientist base of the APA, so-called “clinical
scientists,” have just expelled a long-time member for criticizing the military and CIA ties of sectors of the leadership. Hardly a sign the greater moral sophistication of the “scientist-members.” After all DoD has tons of research support money money to divvy out.

Torture has sullied all parts of the profession, and others from every sector have opposed this.

What I don’t understand is why these enlightened psychologists continue to belong to, and lend their good names to, the APA. There is a perfectly good alternative scientific society they could rely on, and under whose aegis they could reconstitute their scientific journals, many of which are now published by APA.

James Speer, Ph.D. Psychology
Former Member of APA

What is it that does not compute here? Why does the public choose to subsidize fossil
fuels, rather than taxing fossil fuels to make them cover their costs to society? I don’t think that
the public actually voted on that one. It probably has something to do with all the alligator shoes
in Washington. Those 2400 energy lobbyists in Washington are not well paid for nothing. You
have three guesses as to who eventually pays the salary of these lobbyists, and the first two
guesses don’t count.

As a point of reference a fee equivalent to $1/gallon of gasoline ($115/ton CO2) would
yield $670B in the United States (based on energy use data for 2007). That would provide a
dividend of $3000/year to legal adult residents in the United States ($9000/year to a family with
two or more children).
A person reducing his carbon footprint more than average would gain economically, if
the fee is returned 100 percent to the public on a per capita basis. With the present distributions
of income and energy use, it is estimated that about 60 percent of the people would get a
dividend exceeding their tax. So why would they not just spend their dividend on expensive
fuel? Nobody wants to pay more taxes. They prefer to have the money for other things. As the
price of fossil fuels continues to increase, people would conserve energy, choose more energy
efficient vehicles, and choose non-fossil (untaxed) energies and products. James Hansen

Oh Glenn what are your thoughts on this and why is it that it can’t even be considered wait don’t tell me it’s to simple it will work and money going back to the people is the wrong direction. Anybody that even brings this up needs a psychologist. I can hear it now, “when did you first start having these thoughts”? “Is it true that you people hug trees”? “Have you ever advocated the overthrow of the United States government”? “Do you watch the Glenn Beck show”? “Ok times up stay on your medication and come see me in two weeks”. “Oh I almost forgot here is how you go to my web site and did you buy my new book yet”? “Here’s a copy and do you like the snake on the cover”? “It’s only $19.95 just for you today”.

Could I refer you to Jonathan Cook’s article on this site on the complicity of Israeli doctors in torture.

Also I wish to mention Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a RAF psychiatrist who refused to return to Iraq, was court-martialled and imprisoned. A brave and honourable young man who stood up against the crimes that were being carried out in Iraq. Shame on Bush and Blair and their ilk and may their bloodied hands never become clean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Kendall-Smith

He had served in Iraq on two previous occasions but probablly couldn’t stomach any more. I surmise that he had decided he could no longer participate in the methods employed to question suspects.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4906496.stm