THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES SUMMARY

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES SUMMARY VIDEO CLASS NOVEMBER 1ST 18.30 HS READ THE SUMMARY AT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416212/synopsis

STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

The Menace Within What happened in the basement of the psych building 40 years ago shocked the world. How do the guards, prisoners and researchers in the Stanford Prison Experiment feel about it now? Stanford Prison Experiment View photo album >> By Romesh Ratnesar It began with an ad in the classifieds. Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks. More than 70 people volunteered to take part in the study, to be conducted in a fake prison housed inside Jordan Hall, on Stanford's Main Quad. The leader of the study was 38-year-old psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. He and his fellow researchers selected 24 applicants and randomly assigned each to be a prisoner or a guard. Zimbardo encouraged the guards to think of themselves as actual guards in a real prison. He made clear that prisoners could not be physically harmed, but said the guards should try to create an atmosphere in which the prisoners felt "powerless." The study began on Sunday, August 17, 1971. But no one knew what, exactly, they were getting into. Forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment remains among the most notable—and notorious—research projects ever carried out at the University. For six days, half the study's participants endured cruel and dehumanizing abuse at the hands of their peers. At various times, they were taunted, stripped naked, deprived of sleep and forced to use plastic buckets as toilets. Some of them rebelled violently; others became hysterical or withdrew into despair. As the situation descended into chaos, the researchers stood by and watched—until one of their colleagues finally spoke out. The public's fascination with the SPE and its implications—the notion, as Zimbardo says, "that these ordinary college students could do such terrible things when caught in that situation"—brought Zimbardo international renown. It also provoked criticism from other researchers, who questioned the ethics of subjecting student volunteers to such extreme emotional trauma. The study had been approved by Stanford's Human Subjects Research Committee, and Zimbardo says that "neither they nor we could have imagined" that the guards would treat the prisoners so inhumanely. In 1973, an investigation by the American Psychological Association concluded that the prison study had satisfied the profession's existing ethical standards. But in subsequent years, those guidelines were revised to prohibit human-subject simulations modeled on the SPE. "No behavioral research that puts people in that kind of setting can ever be done again in America," Zimbardo says. The Stanford Prison Experiment became the subject of numerous books and documentaries, a feature film and the name of at least one punk band. In the last decade, after the revelations of abuses committed by U.S. military and intelligence personnel at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, the SPE provided lessons in how good people placed in adverse conditions can act barbarically. The experiment is still a source of controversy and contention—even among those who took part in it. Here, in their own words, some of the key players in the drama reflect on their roles and how those six days in August changed their lives. THE SUPERINTENDENT Phil Zimbardo Zimbardo joined Stanford's psychology department in 1968 and taught there until his retirement in 2007. The study was focused originally on how individuals adapt to being in a relatively powerless situation. I was interested in prisoners and was not really interested in the guards. It was really meant to be a single, dramatic demonstration of the power of the situation on human behavior. We expected that we would write some articles about it and move on. Courtesy Phil Zimbardo Zimbardo.After the end of the first day, I said, "There's nothing here. Nothing's happening." The guards had this antiauthority mentality. They felt awkward in their uniforms. They didn't get into the guard mentality until the prisoners started to revolt. Throughout the experiment, there was this conspiracy of denial—everyone involved was in effect denying that this was an experiment and agreeing that this is a prison run by psychologists. There was zero time for reflection. We had to feed the prisoners three meals a day, deal with the prisoner breakdowns, deal with their parents, run a parole board. By the third day I was sleeping in my office. I had become the superintendent of the Stanford county jail. That was who I was: I'm not the researcher at all. Even my posture changes—when I walk through the prison yard, I'm walking with my hands behind my back, which I never in my life do, the way generals walk when they're inspecting troops. We had arranged for everyone involved—the prisoners, guards and staff—to be interviewed on Friday by other faculty members and graduate students who had not been involved in the study. Christina Maslach, who had just finished her PhD, came down the night before. She's standing outside the guard quarters and watches the guards line up the prisoners for the 10 o'clock toilet run. The prisoners come out, and the guards put bags over their heads, chain their feet together and make them put their hands on each other's shoulders, like a chain gang. They're yelling and cursing at them. Christina starts tearing up. She said, "I can't look at this." I ran after her and we had this argument outside Jordan Hall. She said, "It's terrible what you're doing to these boys. How can you see what I saw and not care about the suffering?" But I didn't see what she saw. And I suddenly began to feel ashamed. This is when I realized I had been transformed by the prison study to become the prison administrator. At that point I said, "You're right. We've got to end the study." [As the study was underway], there was an escape attempt at San Quentin prison and [former Black Panther] George Jackson was shot and killed. Three weeks after that, there's the Attica prison riot [in New York]. Suddenly, prisons are hot. Two government investigative committees start hearings and I'm flown out to Washington to present to a congressional subcommittee on the nature of prisons. I went from knowing nothing firsthand about prisons to being an expert. But I worked hard to learn more. I visited a number of correctional facilities all over the country. I organized a program for Stanford students to teach a course at a prison. For years I had an active correspondence with at least 20 different prisoners. It wasn't a formal experiment. My colleagues probably never thought much of it. But as a result of the prison study, I really became more aware of the central role of power in our lives. I became more aware of the power I have as a teacher. I started consciously doing things to minimize the negative use of power in the classroom. I encouraged students to challenge me. I think I became more self-reflective. I'm more generous and more open because of that experience. I think it made me a better person. THE WHISTLEBLOWER Courtesy Christina Maslach-Zimbardo Maslach.Christina Maslach Maslach, PhD '71, became a professor at UC-Berkeley. She and Zimbardo married in 1972. They live in San Francisco. I had just finished my doctorate and was about to leave Stanford to start my new job. Phil and I had started dating. The prison study was never anything I was considering playing a part in. During the first few days of the experiment, I did hear from Phil, but not in great detail. What I was getting, though, was a sense that it was becoming a real prison—people were not just fooling around but actually getting caught up in the situation. But it still wasn't evident to me what that might mean. At first Phil didn't seem different. I didn't see any change in him until I actually went down to the basement and saw the prison. I met one guard who seemed nice and sweet and charming, and then I saw him in the yard later and I thought, "Oh my God, what happened here?" I saw the prisoners being marched to go down to the men's room. I was getting sick to my stomach, physically ill. I said, "I can't watch this." But no one else was having the same problem. Phil came after me and said, "What's the matter with you?" That's when I had this feeling like, "I don't know you. How can you not see this?" It felt like we were standing on two different cliffs across a chasm. If we had not been dating before then, if he were just another faculty member and this happened, I might have said, "I'm sorry, I'm out of here" and just left. But because this was someone I was growing to like a lot, I thought that I had to figure this out. So I kept at it. I fought back, and ended up having a huge argument with him. I don't think we've ever had an argument quite like that since then. I feared that if the study went on, he would become someone I no longer cared for, no longer loved, no longer respected. It's an interesting question: Suppose he kept going, what would I have done? I honestly don't know. The clearest influence the study had on me was that it raised some really serious questions about how people cope with extremely emotional, difficult situations, especially when it's part of their job—when they have to manage people or take care of them or rehabilitate them. So I started interviewing people. I started with some prison guards in a real prison, and talked to them about their jobs and how they understood what they were doing. At first I wasn't sure what I was looking for. I was just trying to listen. I interviewed people who worked in hospitals, in the ER. After a while I realized there was a rhythm and pattern emerging, and when I described it to someone they said, "I don't know what it's called in other professions, but in our occupation we call it 'burnout.'" And so I spent a good chunk of my professional life developing and defining what burnout is—what are the things that cause it and how can we intervene and help people cope with it more effectively. All of that work on burnout had some origins in the experience I had in the prison experiment. People will sometimes come up to me—at conferences, or maybe they're students who have taken psychology classes—and they'll say, "Oh my God, you're such a hero! What is it like to be a hero?" And it's always a little surprising to me because it sure didn't feel heroic at the time. The prison study has given me a new understanding of what "heroism" means. It's not some egocentric, I'm-going-to-rush-into-that-burning-building thing—it's about seeing something that needs to be addressed and saying, I need to help and do something to make it better. THE GUARDS Dave Eshelman The son of a Stanford engineering professor, Eshelman was a student at Chapman University at the time of the experiment. He was the prison's most abusive guard, patterning himself after the sadistic prison warden (portrayed by Strother Martin) in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Today he owns a mortgage business in Saratoga. Photo: Toni Gauthier Eshelman.I was just looking for some summer work. I had a choice of doing this or working at a pizza parlor. I thought this would be an interesting and different way of finding summer employment. The only person I knew going in was John Mark. He was another guard and wasn't even on my shift. That was critical. If there were prisoners in there who knew me before they encountered me, then I never would have been able to pull off anything I did. The act that I put on—they would have seen through it immediately. What came over me was not an accident. It was planned. I set out with a definite plan in mind, to try to force the action, force something to happen, so that the researchers would have something to work with. After all, what could they possibly learn from guys sitting around like it was a country club? So I consciously created this persona. I was in all kinds of drama productions in high school and college. It was something I was very familiar with: to take on another personality before you step out on the stage. I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, "How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, 'knock it off?'" But the other guards didn't stop me. They seemed to join in. They were taking my lead. Not a single guard said, "I don't think we should do this." The fact that I ramped up the intimidation and the mental abuse without any real sense as to whether I was hurting anybody? I definitely regret that. But in the long run, no one suffered any lasting damage. When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, my first reaction was, this is so familiar to me. I knew exactly what was going on. I could picture myself in the middle of that and watching it spin out of control. When you have little or no supervision as to what you're doing, and no one steps in and says, "Hey, you can't do this"—things just keep escalating. You think, how can we top what we did yesterday? How do we do something even more outrageous? I felt a deep sense of familiarity with that whole situation. Sometimes when people know about the experiment and then meet me, it's like, My God, this guy's a psycho! But everyone who knows me would just laugh at that. John Mark Mark was about to begin his junior year at Stanford. He graduated in 1973 with a degree in anthropology. He lives in the Bay Area and has worked for the last 18 years as a medical coder for Kaiser Permanente. Photo: Toni Gauthier Mark.I had spent my sophomore year at Stanford in France and returned to campus that spring. It was one of the most pivotal times in my life. Over Thanksgiving of the year before, I went with a friend to Amsterdam. You have to remember this is 1970, it was basically the '60s. We went to one of those clubs where you could buy drugs. We bought hash and actually brought some back with us, and I was caught at the French border. For a few hours I was told by French border guards that I was going to prison. In the end they let me go, but I definitely had been scared out of my wits. When I saw this thing about a prison experiment, I thought I had some life experiences to bring to it. I felt this was going to be an important experiment. I told them all about what I'd been through and why it was important to me to be a prisoner. It was very disappointing to be assigned to be a guard, but I did the best I could. During the day shift, when I worked, no one did anything that was beyond what you'd expect in a situation like that. But Zimbardo went out of his way to create tension. Things like forced sleep deprivation—he was really pushing the envelope. I just didn't like the whole idea of constantly disturbing people and asking them to recite their prisoner numbers in a count. I certainly didn't like when they put a guy in solitary confinement. At that time of my life, I was getting high, all day every day. I got high before I went to the experiment; I got high on my breaks and lunch. I got high afterwards. I brought joints with me, and every day I wanted to give them to the prisoners. I looked at their faces and saw how they were getting dispirited and I felt sorry for them. I didn't think it was ever meant to go the full two weeks. I think Zimbardo wanted to create a dramatic crescendo, and then end it as quickly as possible. I felt that throughout the experiment, he knew what he wanted and then tried to shape the experiment—by how it was constructed, and how it played out—to fit the conclusion that he had already worked out. He wanted to be able to say that college students, people from middle-class backgrounds—people will turn on each other just because they're given a role and given power. Based on my experience, and what I saw and what I felt, I think that was a real stretch. I don't think the actual events match up with the bold headline. I never did, and I haven't changed my opinion.

IRAN S NUKE CAPABILITIES

INTERPRETING 1ST YEAR MATERIA ASPECTOS DE LA REALIDAD SOCIAL CONTEMPORANEA THE PHANTOM MENACE ARTICLEW FRON NEWSWEEK http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/10/04/the-phantom-menace.html

A POLITICAL HEADACHE FROM THE ECONOMIST

Do you know how to say arrtimia in English ? Our president is suffering from this condition . Find out how to say this in English This and many other words will appear in THE ECONOMIST ARTICLE Cristina Fernández's health A political headache Oct 7th 2013, 8:32 by H.C. | BUENOS AIRES .. NEWS from Argentina can resemble a David Lynch film: the more you learn, the less you fathom. In the past year alone the government signed a pact with Iran to investigate a bombing in 1994 of a Jewish centre which the Iranians were suspected of executing, invited tax evaders to buy financial instruments with preferential rates of return, and puffed up growth rates so much it may have to shell out billions of dollars in GDP-linked securities. Last weekend’s goings-on are no less bizarre. On October 5th the president, Cristina Fernández was rushed to hospital on account of an irregular heartbeat. On arrival the 60-year-old complained of a severe headache. Neurological tests revealed that Ms Fernández was suffering from a subdural hematoma, an accumulation of blood between the tissues surrounding the brain. Such internal bleeding can be caused by trauma. Following her diagnosis, the president’s press secretary casually explained that on August 12th, the day after Ms Fernández's Front for Victory (FPV) party was drubbed in nationwide legislative primaries, she fell and hit her head. The president was briefly hospitalised but tests concluded that she was fine. The public were never informed. That head bump is now blamed for triggering the hematoma. Doctors have ordered Ms Fernández to rest for one month. The vice-president, Amado Boudou, immediately called back from an official visit to Brasil but he has yet formally to assume presidential duties. Convalescence would put Ms Fernández out of action until after the midterm elections on October 27th. The results of the August primaries as well as recent polls have been boding ill for the FPV, which may be in for its worst-ever showing. It is far from assured that Ms Fernández's health shock will win her any sympathy votes. After the sudden death of her husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, in October 2010 her popularity shot up from a meagre 36% to 55% in a month, according to Poliarquia, a pollster. The widow, dressed in black ever since, rode the sympathy wave to win re-election with an unprecedented 54% of the vote a year later. This time may be different, however. For a start, Mr Boudou is not the ideal standard-bearer. Last year he faced allegations of illegal enrichment and influence-peddling. Prosecutors ultimately failed to provide convincing evidence of wrongdoing, but Argentines may be reminded of the imbroglio now that Mr Boudou will once again come into the spotlight. More important, perhaps, the hematoma is Ms Fernández’s second big health scare in less than a year. Last December she underwent surgery to remove a suspected tumour. This ultimately proved to be healthy tissue but the president was still unable to work for 20 days. All this risks making her appear fragile—and lead Argentines to ask searching questions about her physical ability to govern, just as they have been about her political capacity to do so.

SAME SEX MARRIAGES

If interested in the topic, see how AMERICA is faring on this controversial issue The article is from our long old friend NEWSWEEK http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/09/27/what-s-next-for-the-gay-rights-movement.html

gliphosate

BATTLING AGAINST MONSANTO DEFENDING OUR RIGHT TO LIVE Last Thursday, environmental activists and residents of this municipality ran a big event, inviting artists, scientists, and human rights organisations to a stop on route 88, where Monsanto, a global agricultural corporation specialising in genetically modified (GM) crops, is building Latin America’s biggest seed plant. The ‘Spring Without Monsanto’ protest in Malvinas Argentinas (photo: Paola Castillo, via Tierra Negra) The event brought over 2,000 people together, with participants from the provinces of Córdoba and Buenos Aires, as well as visitors from other countries, such as Colombia and Brazil. As the festival organisers were afraid of possible obstacles by the provincial government and Monsanto itself, they set up an encampment at the company’s entrance on Wednesday night to ensure the event would take place as planned. Since then, the encampment has remained in place, expanding into a “selective roadblock.” Celina Molina, from the organisation ‘Malvinas Assembly Fights for Life’ told The Indy: “Our objective was to make the fight against Monsanto visible, to demand enforcement of the [environmental] law, scientific studies, and a public audience.” The rapid expansion of Argentina’s agricultural sector – particularly the soy industry – has created tensions along the agricultural frontier, with disputes over territory, particularly in northern Argentina, resulting in violence and repression of peasant farmers and indigenous communities. The controversial decision to build Monsanto’s plant in Malvinas Argentinas came just a few days after an unprecedented trial on the excessive use of agrochemicals that took place in August 2012 in Ituzaingó Anexo, also in the province of Córdoba. After a decade of legal struggles, a group of mothers convinced that excessive use of chemicals on nearby soy fields was behind high levels of disease and deformations in the town, received vindication in a court ruling that condemned two agricultural workers to a three-year suspended sentence for contamination. However, in the same month as the historic verdict was delivered, the national government also approved the use of new GM seeds, including new soybean and corn varieties, the latter of which will be “conditioned” in the plant in Malvinas Argentinas, due to be inaugurated in 2014. Monsanto denies any risks of contamination, claiming that it promotes “sustainable agriculture”. However, social media campaigns like Millones contra Monsanto (Millions against Monsanto) and Fuera Monsanto (Go away Monsanto) have emerged in Argentina, gathering thousands of volunteers who organise regular marches, conferences, and seminars, spreading information on agrochemicals around the country. The anti-Monsanto movement has received a lot of support from other environmental movements, like anti-fracking, anti-mining, and others. Molina lives in Malvinas Argentinas and is very concerned about the current situation: “We are not given these basic rights and no one can guarantee there will be no impact on our health”. She and other protesters are demanding that a referendum is held to give local residents the chance to make their own decision on the new plant. She says she doesn’t like to use the word “roadblock” to describe the current protest, opting instead for “selective manifestation” as the idea is to limit further progress on construction works without harming the workers. “We let workers pass as we understand they need this job to feed their families”, continues Molina and adds: “This measure is very strong, but we’ve already done everything we could by informing the local population about the risks and filing the lawsuits against Monsanto.” So far, protesters say neither the government or Monsanto have offered dialogue. “We knew it would be hard,” Molina confesses. “We were not used to this struggle, and we basically didn’t know anything about Monsanto.” The assembly says they ran a survey among local residents some time ago and determined that over 60% were against Monsanto’s presence in the vicinity. “Unfortunately, only 5% take to the streets,” Molina adds. Those that are there say the ‘selective roadblock’ doesn’t have an end date, with volunteers planning to “keep up the fight” until their demands are met. All updates and information about the protest and further events can be found on two Facebook pages, here and here. This post was written by:marc - who has written 629 posts on The Argentina Independent. Contact the author Facebook comments